Music of Eternity

Robyn Wrigley-Carr’s Music of Eternity, a series of meditations for Advent based on the writings of Evelyn Underhill, is the Archbishop of York’s book for Advent 2021, and laden with ‘gems’ from the work of Underhill. I really enjoyed it, and commend it as well worth reading.

It is, as you would expect, a reflective book and, appropriately for the time of Advent, particularly reminding us of the place of adoration within our prayers and worship. “Advent is a season of great human experience, one of expectant faith between what God has begun and what He is yet to complete.”

Advent reminds us that God comes to us, and that direction of travel is critically important. We need to look for what God is saying to us. “Evelyn encourages us to learn the art of listening to the Spirit’s whisper.”

The book helps us to explore a range of aspects of what we might call holy living, constantly reminding us of the challenge (and opportunity) this provides. “Our world is completely penetrated by God, and we’re invited to respond, like Mary, to His ongoing action.”

There is much to enrich our reflecting in the way in which Robyn Wrigley-Carr introduces us to Evelyn Underhill.

Advent Retreat

I was fortunate, with a small group of colleagues, to spend about 48 hours on an Advent retreat at Gladstone’s library in Hawarden in Wales in the second week of December.

 We considered the pilgrimage in which we participate in the light of the Christmas story. We are always on the way somewhere, but where? And what does that mean? Thus, the picture of a Brio (or similar) train and some Christmas card depictions of the story of the nativity.

 We considered what we are called to do and to be, doing so in the light of how the same questions might have been faced by the characters that appear in Luke’s and Matthew’s accounts of what happened. So, how did Mary feel? Joseph? The shepherds? The magi? And others, perhaps less prominent, but definitely in those stories? What did they feel about what God was saying to them? What do we feel about what God is saying to us?

 Mary’s life was radically transformed when an angel appeared and told her what was going to happen. It was beyond her wildest thoughts. It was hugely exciting, yet also highly risky, as there would clearly be those who misunderstood – something which certainly still happens today.

 But part of the angel’s message to Mary was about how much God loved her. Realise, if you will, that the angel who appeared to Mary is now kneeling before you and waiting. Can you accept the love God is offering you?

 

Words for a Dying World

Words for a Dying World, edited by Hannah Malcolm, is a delightful, but also pretty stark series of pieces about the devastating challenge of climate change from around the world. As the sub-title says, it is indeed a series of Stories of Grief and Courage from the Global Church. Various perspectives are offered, and it is particularly important to take this opportunity to hear from those most effected by this crisis in different parts of the world.

For example, speaking from the Pacific, Jione Havea comments: "The label ‘global warming’ reminds the global community that the ecological crisis is a shared burden. The signs are everywhere – from droughts and famines to extra heavy monsoons and more frequent and more powerful storms pounding shores everywhere."

Pilar Vicentelo Euribe offers a perspective from Peru, concluding: "We need to learn to live in another way, reassuming our relationship with nature from a more respectful and appreciative perspective, living with it, with everything and its creatures. We have to search for abundant life here and now."

Anderson Jeremiah, though UK based, provides us with an Indian glimpse of the theology that might move us 'from climate grief to shared hope'. He says: "If we all live and move and have our being in this God, then all of humanity and the universe share in the very being of this generous God. Human dignity and environmental integrity are rooted in recognizing that we have our being in God. To deny this is to deny God’s being."

There is certainly much food for thought in this carefully compiled and fascinating collection of essays.

Visiting Oban

Just thinking of the wonder of God, the wonder of creation ....   we are living in difficult times as the pandemic produces challenge after challenge, but God is good - and we need to be people of hope.

Our recent visit to Oban was a great reminder of the beauty that is there just for the looking - and so this brief post (and picture) is a reminder of all that is wonderful in what we encounter.

Learning from John's Gospel

I really enjoyed reading Ian Galloway's Called To Be Friends: Unlocking the Heart of John's Gospel, and found his approach both refreshing and fascinating. He conjures up a sense of excitement at what Jesus does - "Jesus loves people. He is irrepressible. You can’t turn a page in the Gospel without meeting someone experiencing a life-changing encounter with Jesus."

The matter of how we can relate to Jesus is central to Galloway's concern. He puts it like this - "Discovering that Jesus knows you is a very exciting moment. Suddenly, nothing is hidden. He can see around the corners of your heart. He can see the good that sits inside you. He can see the potential that is in you, which others have not yet seen. He can also see where things have gone horribly wrong. No one enjoys that sort of stuff coming out into the light, but Jesus has a gentle way of insisting that it does. He is able to create the safe spaces where our past failures can get not just painfully re-examined but also resolved and healed."

I love the way in which he explores the stories and incidents that John records, how they relate to each other, and how we might link them with stories in what we usually call the Old Testament. But I particularly like the way in which he brings us in as participants. So, for example, he writes of the story that we would likely name as the feeding of the five thousand - "Imagine being part of that. Imagine being given half a loaf and five hundred plus people to feed. How would you handle that? How much would you give to start with? Imagine the strange and fearful joy of seeing that bread in your hand never diminish, no matter how much you break it. In the prayer of Jesus and the hands of Jesus and his disciples, the breaking of bread is the multiplying of bread. What Is the Outcome? (6:12–13) An abundance. A shortage is turned into a massive surplus. People take it home with them for tomorrow’s lunch."

And I do like his reflections on leadership and the way in which he links those to the end of Jesus' earthly life - "Making mistakes is part of leadership development in Jesus’ world. Failure is not the problem. It is what you do next that counts. If you are a leader already, try not to get too big-headed about it. You are only following Jesus, just the same as everyone else. There are two men in this final story. One is invited into a very high-profile leadership role. The other is invited to look after Jesus’ mum. You can make your own mind up about whether one is more significant than the other."

Riders On The Storm

Alastair MacIntosh's Riders on the Storm: The Climate Crisis and the Survival of Being is a rightly challenging read, but worth it. He makes clear that climate change is a major issue way beyond others things that are happening - "The pandemic and climate change are not comparable. While the solutions for controlling the virus are simple and short term, those for getting to grips with climate change comprise a deeply entangled ‘wicked problem’: one for which there are no short, sharp shock fixes sitting on the horizon." 

However, he also recognises the value of a realistically positive approach - "Climate change denial is a waste of time. But climate change alarmism is a theft of time. We have no mandate to collapse the possibilities of the future, to contract and restrict our latitude for agency and action." 

And he adds: "What if we were to take climate change not just as a threat, but as an opportunity to deepen our humanity? What if we, who might be of the countries that historically have done the most to cause climate change, were to find it in ourselves to welcome climate refugees? And to do so not just as cheap labour, but as friends and fellow citizens? If we treat others like ourselves, they’ll come into the family. Who knows what gifts the welcomed stranger bears."

Climate change needs to be taken hugely seriously - and that means doing what we can.

COP 26

COP 26 is undoubtedly one of the most important global events ever and it has been fascinating to see just a little of the impact on Glasgow. I have been pleased to be at the Interfaith Prayer Vigil, organised by Interfaith Glasgow and Interfaith Scotland, which took place in George Square on the afternoon of Sunday 31st October. This was an important faith marker and prayers were led by representatives of nine different faiths. It was followed by a reception in the City Chambers, hosted by the Lord Provost.

I was also pleased to have a small part in the ecumenical service at Glasgow Cathedral on 7th November. The issue of climate change remains a huge challenge, and will. It is important that people of faith speak up and speak out. It was encouraging to see such a wide spectrum of Christians at the cathedral for this service. Let's each do what we can. It may seem small, but it's all important.

 

Interfaith Summit

It was a great privilege yesterday to be part of the annual Interfaith Scotland summit here in Scotland, and on Zoom on this occasion when faith leaders from a wide range of religious communities had the opportunity to meet with First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and a couple of her key colleagues, Mairi McAllan MSP, the Minister for Environment and Land Reform, Shona Robison MSP, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government. All three spoke well and clearly value their links with faith communities. They had listened carefully to those who spoke on our behalf, including Christian, Sikh, Muslim, Jewish and Bahai'i representatives. Time was short, just one hour, and presentations and conversation largely focussed on the effects of the pandemic and the importance of COP 26. It was good to see politics and faith in touch. 

The City Is My Monastery

Recently read, Richard Carter’s The City is my Monastery offered some interesting and helpful insights, not least the value of slowing down and being aware of God’s presence. The trouble is that we over-estimate our importance and think things will collapse if we step back, while that actually can make a positive contribution, not least to our being able to sustain what we do. As Carter says, “although I loved so much of what I did, I felt that if I slowed down, all the plates I was trying to spin at the same time would come crashing down around me. What I was missing was the experience of being attentive to the love of God, and being recharged by it. I was no longer awake to a world alive with miracles.”

He reminds us of the importance of making space for the good stuff, the creative stuff. “One of the rules of life of our community is each week to make space or the time for a creative encounter. Perhaps as simple as a visit to see a painting or exhibition, or a church you have not yet visited. Or maybe it will be sitting down and listening to a piece of music that needs time to hear. Or perhaps reading a book that has been recommended and is waiting to be read. You will know what is life-giving for you. Perhaps music or theatre or dance or birdsong or painting or knitting, or running or walking or cooking or libraries or buildings or art. Take time to look carefully at what you see. Take time to focus on what you love doing. These encounters feed us. They can replenish our spirit and help us discover and deepen the relationship between ourselves and our world. They awaken our wonder. Put these times into your diary. They are as essential as recharging your mobile. More so, they can recharge your soul.”

And we need to something, indeed a great deal, to contribute. “The greatest poverty is to believe you cannot help another, and it is a real truth that those who believe they have least in fact often have the grace to give the most. We all have the opportunity to be the Good Samaritan.”

Monk in the Marketplace

Bowthorpe Church

Ray Simpson, and the Community of St Aidan and St Hilda, of which he was one of the founders, have become one of the obvious places to look these days when considering what we can learn from and experience with Celtic spirituality. Ray has written widely and his recently published autobiography, Monk in the Marketplace, is a fascinating account of his life and ministry, but with many insights from Celtic spirituality. Though by no means the only places he has worked, a lot of the book focusses on his ministry in Bowthorpe, Norwich, and the founding of a ground-breaking ecumenical partnership there, and his subsequent ministry in and from Holy Island (Lindsifarne).

I was particularly interested in the Bowthorpe reflections, as that was part of my ‘patch’ as Moderator of the Eastern Synod of the URC, and I have preached there a few times. We also once had a great holiday on Holy Island, so reading something of the spiritual perspective of Ray and his colleagues was fascinating.

He reflects perceptively on what we need to do to be church today in a relevant way. “In a twenty-four-hour society, people relate better to seven days a week churches. In a multi-choice society people look to churches that offer facilities for a range of temperaments, cultures and ages. In the cafe society churches are eating places as well as praying places. In a visual, sound-byte age people resort to churches that use different media – poetry as well as pulpits, storytelling as well as sermons. In an age of mass travel, when people look for B&Bs and hostels that they can relate to, churches provide accommodation – in their grounds, or on their websites. They once again link up with hostel and guest house movements. In a multi-ethnic society people expect to find within the wider church services that are culturally Muslim or Sikh in style. In an orphaned society, when mentors, life coaches and growth buddies are in demand in the worlds of business, fitness and AIDS care, people seek out spiritual homes where they can find soul friends and mentors. In a packaged, pressured society, suffering from data overload and stressful bureaucracy, people make a bee line for churches where they can chill out, be themselves, have space. In a world where equality of regard is written into statutes few people under forty any longer wish to be defined by a protest movement of 450 years ago called the Reformation, but are drawn to churches that are transcending the Protestant or Catholic label.”

He is clear that we need to find space for God, and so we do. “If we never get off the treadmill of life we may become prisoners of the treadmill. Generally, I have felt drawn to pilgrim places where nobodies became somebodies because they lived for God and loved people.”

One final point of note for me was his connection with Ash Barker and Winson Green. I was minister of Winson Green URC for four years in the nineties and am fascinated by the interesting work that Ash is doing, including the church in a yurt to which Ray refers – “I also maintained contacts with Ash Barker and friends who, following years living in Bangkok slums, developed in his revolutionary new ministry at Newbigin House, Birmingham, near the prison. He leads a Fresh Expression of Church in a yurt in the garden. His wife Anji heads up the multiple activities of Newbigin Community Trust, and they oversee the School for Urban Leadership. He invited me back to give a Celtic blessing on the yurt. This was it: May each person who enters this yurt Receive from You a big spurt To fight for right and overcome wrong To laugh and dance and sing your song.”

Lesslie Newbigin, left, me, centre, and others signing an agreement between the Church of England and the United Reformed Church at Winson Green

Walk Tall, Walk Well, Walk Safe, Walk Free

A recently enjoyed read is Graham Usher’s The Way Under Our Feet: A Spirituality of Walking. Graham is now Bishop of Norwich, and so was an ecumenical colleague during the latter part of my time as Moderator of Eastern Synod. Graham clearly has a great love of walking and frequently enjoys it as a spiritual experience. He writes: “Walking refreshes me and slows me down. The gentle movement relaxes my body, while the rhythm gives me time to think, so that those complex thoughts and worries that spin around my mind are sieved and sifted, memories are filed and my head becomes somewhat clearer,” adding, “Walking helps me to pray and leads me to encounter God: it’s as if I have a companion at my side, or up in front leading me on, or whispering from behind, encouraging me to take the step I dare not, but need to take.”

Usher recognises the value of walking in all sorts of ways, not least as he sees the model that Jesus offers and the challenge that he brings. “Jesus entrusted a small community that he had shaped to go out and walk his message. Those disciples’ walk would change the world as that message ‘gained legs’. Within a few years of his death, the words of Jesus would be walked to the ends of the known world, and as people were baptised, so the wet footprints of the totally immersed could be seen going in every direction! Acknowledging this, St Paul echoed a phrase of the prophet Isaiah ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’ (Rom. 10.15). He could see the power of walking in telling the story of what God has done for the whole world in the birth and life, passion and death, resurrection and ascension of his son, Jesus Christ.”

Walking can certainly play a helpful role. “We may be heartened by this prayer from South Africa: Walk tall, walk well, walk safe, walk free and may harm never come to thee. Walk wise, walk good, walk proud, walk true and may the sun always smile on you. Walk prayer, walk hope, walk faith, walk light, and may peace always guide you right. Walk joy, walk brave, walk love, walk strong and may life always give you song.”

Climate Sunday

 

Beside the 'Mungo Mural' on the way to Glasgow Cathedral

I was delighted to be part (in a very small way) of today’s Climate Sunday service at Glasgow Cathedral. In about eight weeks Glasgow will be hosting the important COP 26 conference – and this was an opportunity to pray for that and to reflect on it and the issues it will be considering. Climate change is undoubtedly the single biggest issue facing the planet, and it needs critical attention if we are to avoid climate catastrophe. The preacher, Christian Aid CEO Amanda Khozi Mukwashi, gave a powerful message reminding us of the importance of getting our relationship with God right and, having established that basis, also our relationship with the planet and with other human beings.

A number of church leaders, and others, particularly young people, contributed a range of insightful prayers and comments, some in person and others on pre-recorded video. We were reminded that we were in the city of St. Mungo and of his love of nature. I was especially struck by the commitment to these issues expressed by the Lord Provost of Glasgow. His description of Glasgow’s aim to be at the cutting edge of city responses to environmental issues was both encouraging and challenging. This was certainly an important occasion of which to be part.

Borders and Belonging - Lessons from Ruth

“Borders and Belonging: The Book of Ruth: A Story For Our Times” by Pάdraig Ó Tuama and Glenn Jordan offers a fascinating look at Ruth and many interesting links to contemporary times.

In particular, they emphasise lessons of kindness, so often missing from our experience – “the contrast between this biblical narrative of kindness and compassion couldn’t be starker when compared to the bear pit of politics and civic discourse in recent years on the issue of the EU. But maybe that is exactly why Ruth is important for us today when kindness and compassion seem to be in such short supply. This apparently simple book situates itself at the very places where the tectonic plates of conflicted communities threaten to crack and split apart whole nations and societies. Perhaps it offers us a way towards the healing of our fractures and the building of new and healthy relationships in the aftermath of trauma.”

There are a number of references to Brexit, very current when the book was written, but in a way that runs deep and fits numerous politically turbulent times. There is a strong push to remember the vulnerable and the marginalised. “The book of Ruth reminds us to look to the margins and to ask about who is being affected by these global eruptions. The bright and shiny baubles of Brexit, for instance, are overwhelmingly powerful, but they can also distract us from what is going on behind the loud exterior. Ruth reminds us that there will always be those driven back by the noise, pinned down by the tumult, who will be seeking mediating voices to speak to them words of comfort and inclusion and assure them they have not been forgotten.”

Another key point they raise is around the risks and damaging elements of stereotyping. “The book of Ruth is also a radical theological act. It recognizes that the national stereotype of Moabites is overcome by a new story; indeed, it is an acknowledgement that new stories are always possible. And these new stories are not told on the level of nation states or whole people groups but through personal and human encounter. In this way the book demonstrates the enduring and transforming power of incarnation.” We should always be looking for the contribution that different folk can make, and so the different stories that they are telling.

And, of course, there is a reference to migration, its challenges and contributions, and the blinkered approach that we often take. “The story of the world is a story of migrating peoples. For millennia, people have moved across seas and over mountain ranges. Empires seized lands and created borders. With borders and empires came the idea of policing the permission to move, and the era of Christianist empires introduced the imagination that you only have to be in a country a few hundred years before you become the ones with the right to be there, policing other people who are seeking to arrive as your recent forebears did, only a generation – or three or four – before. This book of Ruth is an intervention into the story.”

Scotland's Soul

I really enjoyed reading Harry Reid’s The Soul of Scotland: Celebrating Scotland’s Spiritual Richness. It is a fascinating selection of pieces exploring Scotland’s religious heritage in a variety of ways, and I found it far more interesting than I had expected.

Reid recognises the challenges of a secular society, but also the depth of Christian faith that has been part of Scottish history. I love the comment that: “Scottish Christianity is neither dead nor dying; it may just be having a wee nap before it rises and flourishes once more.”

Reid is clear that it has flourished in the past, and contributed a great deal. Different articles talk about people, places and literature. So, for instance, he says of George MacLeod – “I think of George MacLeod as a world-class troublemaker, and a frequently inspirational one. His legacy may be slightly misty (as Iona often is), but I suspect that it may become more important in time,” and of William Barclay, my first New Testament teacher at the University of Glasgow – “one genuinely great, and utterly natural, television communicator had emerged. This was the perhaps unlikely figure of Professor William Barclay of Glasgow University, a brilliant Biblical scholar possessed of a pleasant, if rather hoarse – and very Scottish – voice, a broadcasting manner that somehow managed to combine gruffness and charm, and the supreme gift of interpreting the teachings of Jesus – and in particular his parables – in a way that was lucid, intelligent and couthy all at once. Barclay was an authentic and very clever scholar, but he was never an aloof academic.”

But perhaps I was most fascinated by his writings about Scottish novels, and their contribution – which set me to reading John Buchan’s “Witch Wood.”

Reforming the Kirk

I have just finished reading Doug Gay’s Reforming the Kirk: The Future of the Church of Scotland, (based on the 2017 Chalmers Lectures), a fascinating, but also extremely challenging, read. Gay is very clearly writing to and for the Church of Scotland context and there is much that is specific to that; but there is also a great deal that can easily be applied to my own United Reformed Church context, either directly or with just a little thought as to the differences. Indeed, Doug Gay has served as a URC minister and seeks to apply some of what he learned there to the ‘Kirk’ context.

He is writing into the situation of decline which challenges the vast majority of mainline traditional denominational Christianity in the UK in these days. As he says of the Church of Scotland context, but it applies much more widely: “From the 1960s, membership began to decline, numbers of church weddings declined, numbers of infant baptisms declined and attendances at worship declined. That such decline has been a painful and dispiriting experience for hundreds of thousands of Scots is beyond question. Some of the ministers retiring now or who retired in the past decade, especially those who were ordained in the 1970s, have spent their whole ministries with declining congregations.”

He is concerned to suggest possible solutions for a refreshing of the Kirk. As he says: “Increasingly, institutional survival will come only through missional renewal. The tide is going out too fast for it to be otherwise. Sessions which had functioned reasonably well as administrative or pastoral bodies are experiencing new and unsettling challenges as urgent questions about missional leadership are put to them.”

I am fascinated by some of what he says about eldership, ministry and church organisation – but exploring that would take too much space here. What can certainly be agreed is that there is a crisis. He talks of the Kirk seeing the threat of congregationalism but, I think, suggests we need to reduce the amount of centralisation. He says: “Without compromising on generosity and solidarity, we need to reinvigorate local motivations to be sustainable and adventurous. Our current highly centralised systems are strong on pooling and sharing, but they look increasingly less well suited to motivating local giving. The acute missional challenges facing the Kirk over the period to 2030 call for a new financial imagination which will maintain a powerful commitment to smart, creative and empowering expressions of national sharing while incentivising a new era of local responsibility and offering greater local and regional flexibility.“  That same debate is very live in the URC, as we, too, struggle with the balance between emphasising the local, the regional (presbytery/Synod) and the denomination, despite those points where he cites us as being a good example. Though many colleagues would disagree with me, I, too, wonder if we have become, and continue to become, too centralised.

Incidentally, I really like his idea of commissioned elders, not replacing, but going alongside the traditional ordained for life model. He suggests: “The Kirk would introduce a new form of eldership alongside the old. Commissioned elders, as I suggest we call them, would be set aside to serve for periods of three years, with that three-year commission capable of being extended indefinitely, subject to concurrence on both sides. The decision to be commissioned or ordained would lie with the prospective elder and they would be asked to make it on the basis of discerning whether they understood their calling to the office in terms of a lifelong consecration or a time-limited assignment. No judgement would be made about depth of faith or degree of commitment, the discernment of vocation would be related to what Moltmann describes as the ‘charismatic freedom’ of the church, recognising that after one or more terms of commissioned eldership, a woman or man might feel called to a different sphere of service. Both forms of eldership would be eligible to fulfil exactly the same functions within the courts and councils of the Church of Scotland. The advantage of this reform would be that without diminishing, altering or undercutting the status of those already ordained to eldership, or preventing others being ordained in the future, new avenues of ministry could be opened up to church members who have the gifting and calling to serve, but have not felt called to be ‘ordained’ to this office for life.”

Could we possibly pull that off?

Discernment

Henri Nouwen has, of course, long been one of my favourite and go-to authors. My latest exploration of his insights came in reading his book Discernment, one of a number of books put together posthumously from his notes and records of his lectures and speaking. As always, there is lots of value.

Discernment is not necessarily easy, or something that helps us find a way of avoiding difficult things. As the book’s introduction says – “In Henri’s view, discernment should proceed from a person’s grounded, ordinary life. He did not want people to think that our goal is to escape from our everyday stresses and conflicts. Instead, we should invite the Holy Spirit into our direct experience, into our thoughts, memories, worries, and plans. Instead of seeking a life free from pain and suffering, we should trust that Jesus is present in our pain and suffering.”

Nouwen points out that discernment is about discovering where God wants us to be. “To discern means first of all to listen to God, to pay attention to God’s active presence, and to obey God’s prompting, direction, leadings, and guidance.”

He adds: “When we are spiritually deaf, we are not aware that anything important is happening in our lives. We keep running away from the present moment, and we try to create experiences that make our lives worthwhile. So we fill up our time to avoid the emptiness we otherwise would feel. When we are truly listening, we come to know that God is speaking to us, pointing the way, showing the direction. We simply need to learn to keep our ears open. Discernment is a life of listening to a deeper sound and marching to a different beat, a life in which we become “all ears.””

God is there for us, but it is all too easy not to notice that – if we lack discernment. It is important to notice that we are valued by God. As Nouwen puts it – “Claiming our belovedness does not come easily for many of us. There are competing voices we hear. When one voice says we’re nothing but a sinner and another voice says we are the beloved of God, we are called to discern the spirits and follow the inner voice of love.” Yes, we matter!

Jane Haining

Jane Haining would not have said so herself, but she lived a remarkable life of service and commitment to what God called her to do. Jane was born in 1897. Her father, Thomas, farmed just outside the village of Dunscore, near Dumfries, and her mother was also Jane.

In due time she went to Budapest as a missionary with the Church of Scotland, serving in the Scottish Mission and at the Scottish Mission School from 1932 until her death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1944. Her story serves as a reminder that alongside the well-known ‘martyrs’ of the twentieth century, there are those who are not so well known, but equally dedicated. It is sympathetically and movingly retold in Mary Miller’s Jane Haining: A Life of Love and Courage.

As Miller comments: “She epitomised the ordinary person who becomes extraordinary through faith, hope and love, although she chose to be reticent all her life about her personal feelings and views.”

Jane lived in a different era, and there is no doubt that her aim was conversion of the Jewish girls for whom she cared in the Scottish Mission School. That approach would not be adopted today. However, it is equally true that her prime aim was to care for those in her charge and, in those later days, to protect them from the Nazi persecution of the Jews. For that she paid the ultimate price.

And so, again quoting Mary Miller: “She challenges us to remember that the most ordinary people still have a choice when they are confronted with intolerable evil: even if only in our hearts, we can refuse to consent to the division of humanity into ‘them’ and ‘us’ and the dehumanising of the ‘other’. We can refuse to be corrupted. It is for this that Jane Haining stands as an inspiration for ‘ordinary’ people in all times and places.”

Reflecting on First Peter

Jennifer Strawbridge has edited a great commentary, The First Letter of Peter: A Global Commentary. It is the Biblical resource prepared for the Lambeth Conference, originally scheduled for 2020, but now re-arranged for August 2022. The commentary was written pre-pandemic, but will still be used for the conference though, undoubtedly, with updated comment reflecting world events.

It’s has ended up as an extraordinarily good and relevant choice for the moment in which we find ourselves. “Peter’s letter not only offers encouragement for those living in difficult times, but also calls others to stand in solidarity with those who are suffering and not in judgement. The letter makes clear that those who are vulnerable don’t always have the luxury of resisting oppression or stepping away from suffering, continually returning to the person of Christ and his rejection, unjust suffering and exaltation.”

“Themes of hope and of holiness are as central to this letter as those of suffering and offer mechanisms for remaining resilient in the face of suffering and, at times, resisting oppressive systems.”

The book (and the commentary) certainly pick up important themes for today. “In the context of holiness and suffering, both of which are connected to God in Christ, 1 Peter raises issues for the Church today about how we engage with difference.”

There is a lot to be said too around themes of movement and migration. As the commentary points out: “1 Peter is highly relevant today, as the twenty-first century has been called ‘the century of migration’. The letter touches on the themes of exile, diaspora, migration, interreligious relationships, living as minorities, second class citizenship, gender relations and relationships to authorities. The strategies the letter offers to the suffering Christians in Asia Minor may not be applicable to all Christians living in different parts of the world today. Yet, it offers a mirror for us to examine power dynamics both in the public and domestic sphere.”

We need to be reminded so often that God’s way is different. This letter, and this commentary, helps us to embrace God’s alternative view. “As a letter written to ‘aliens and exiles’, it is fitting that shepherds in the Roman world were considered outcasts; they were outsiders to the upper classes, as dirty, smelly people. A call to shepherd the flock of God thus must be a call to be with and among the people, to be involved with the most vulnerable of the community, a call away from status to service.” 

Columba's Iona

Iona is a special place – especially in the Scottish history of Christianity. It is most well known for being the base from which Columba, having come over from Ireland, took the message of Jesus to so many in and beyond Scotland.

I recently read Rosalind Marshall’s Columba’s Iona, which, gently but purposefully, traces the place of Iona in the history of Scottish Christianity. The story certainly starts with Columba and there are many fascinating stories about him and the role he played. A good example is a story that is sometimes used to suggest something of his care for the environment.

“Most famously of all, perhaps, Columba ordered one of his monks to rescue a crane which had flown in, exhausted, from the north of Ireland and fallen on to the beach. The monk was told to bring the bird into the monastery and tend it until it had recovered. Some commentators have seen in this a strikingly early example of concern for the environment, while others have remarked that Columba was only interested in the crane because it had come from Ireland. Read without prejudice, the anecdote simply shows that he had a kind heart.”

However, Columba is only the beginning of the story and the book makes its way through the ups and downs of the island’s history, recalling times of abandonment and times of renewal alongside those first accounts of the establishment of a Christian community and the construction of an infrastructure that supported it.

It ends, of course, with the reconstruction inspired by George MacLeod which culminated in the founding of today’s Iona Community. MacLeod certainly recognised how special a place Iona is once suggesting that “on Iona, only a paper as thin as tissue separates the material from the spiritual and”, as Marshall comments, “this is a feeling shared by a significant number of its visitors. The dramatic scenery is a great attraction but, for believers and non-believers alike, it can be merely one element in their response, for there is often something beyond aesthetic appreciation. The blue green waters, the pebbled shore, the distant blue mountains, the peace of the abbey church and the memory of the saint himself, however he is imagined,

Photos taken on Iona in 1998

fierce warrior or friendly presence, merge in a spiritual experience which draws them back, time and again, to Columba’s Iona.”

Hitchhiking With Drunken Nuns

I have just finished, and much enjoyed reading Emily Garcés’ Hitchhiking with Drunken Nuns. She tells her story beautifully descriptively and with great honesty, humour and insight. The blurb on the back of the book describes her as “an artist, poet, ex-missionary, and all-round creative enthusiast.” She is all of that, and so much more. We all have a story, and it is sometimes good to read somebody else’s story – and this book was one such occasion for me.

Quite near the beginning of the book she reflects on her work with and for Youth With A Mission (YWAM) and how she struggles with their ethos. She reflects on the circumstances in which she finds herself. “I am the world's worst missionary. Stopped seeing the point of evangelism. Do not see why the world needs more Christians. What changes when someone repeats a prayer just to get us to stop talking to them? Is that really all it takes to get someone into heaven? If they end up going to church, how does that help? Would rather just put my arms around them and let them know I care. Making the gospel appear like a quick fix solution for people's problems is not helpful. Truth can't be pinned down like a bug in a frame. It is a direction to run in, something to chase with a butterfly net (and maybe never catch). Not a second-hand thing. Cannot be inherited or purchased in an expensive Bible with concordance features. We cannot fake possession of it.”

She certainly plenty of adventures, one of which leads to the hitchhiking with drunken, though probably more accurately slightly inebriated, nuns that provides the book with its title. “When we kiss them goodbye, I feel like curtseying. I enjoyed travelling with the nuns far more than I would have enjoyed travelling by bus. I decide to accept this dynamic – life’s missed buses will no longer be perceived as road blocks to some allegedly perfect plan. A missed bus will become a new opportunity. When I screw up and am forced to find an alternative solution, the Great Mystery of life will cup its hands together to pool its resources. Mistakes will be bridges into mystery. Wrong turns will be roads to unexpected destiny. Failure will lead me to admit the degree to which I need other people, and the degree to which I enjoy their company.”

Needless to say, the book could have any of a dozen or more other titles as it describes so many incidents from which she could have got her headline, but, though there are plenty of incidents of equal stature, I can’t help feeling she chose absolutely the right title.

What I found particularly good was the way in which she draws out life lessons from so many of the things that happened to her. A missed bus leads to the encounter with the nuns and all that it gave her – but that includes the revelation that in future ‘a missed bus will become a new opportunity.’

I found myself reflecting on quite a few of her insights, but perhaps nowhere more than what she says about love, and where it is to be found.

“Love and relationships are two separate things. Love is not a magic spell that leaps out of the blue occasionally. Love is a constant. It does not pop out at an inopportune moment, like a fairy on a bungee rope, only to spring back to wherever it came from. Love is the eternal blanket that we are all wrapped in. The sea that we float in regardless of whether we choose to view the experience as sailing or drowning. Love does not come and go - it stays still - we are the ones who move.

The miracle of love is right in front of us - but we do not see it because we do not know what a miracle looks like. We look for love in one form and miss it when it appears in another. We look for lightning and rainbows, mountains breaking through clouds, for the perfect family home. We miss the sweetness of the grass growing up slowly and gently beneath our feet, the tired beauty of old paint flaking on a broken window frame, the old lady we walk past who chooses to give us her only smile of the day.”

God is love. Do we always see God where God is? Or are we sometimes looking in the wrong places?

 

Dear England

For a good few years – while he was Bishop of Chelmsford and I was Moderator of the United Reformed Church’s Eastern Synod – Stephen Cottrell was a good colleague, part of the group of Essex church leaders with whom I met regularly for prayer and conversation (and, pre-pandemic, breakfast).

I have learned to value his insights and wisdom, and so was interested to read Dear England, even though I should now probably have rejected it purely on the basis of the title. However, in fairness to Stephen, he does explain why it is specifically for England, and indeed why some of the differences in Scotland make that the case. Of course, that does not mean that those of us who are north of the border have nothing to gain from reading the book.

It is typical of Stephen that a chance encounter on a railway station would get him thinking as to what he really would like to have said, at length, to the young lady who interrupted his coffee buying. Indeed, I am reminded of a similar encounter on a train from York to London. Not wearing a clerical collar, and so, unlike Stephen, not identifiably Christian, I, after a while, responded to the conversation started by the young man sitting opposite. It turned out that he was interested to discuss spiritual matters, but it was a short conversation, as he was leaving the train at the next stop. I wished we had spoken sooner – but who knows the effect of such passing conversations?

Bishop (or now, Archbishop) Stephen uses his experience to reflect on how we relate to each other and the contribution that Christians can and should make to that. He recognises that much is possible. “We know that love is not a finite resource. You can give it all away completely and still have every bit of it left to give again. We know that there isn’t a limited supply of love. You don’t need to ration it. You don’t need to give just a small slice of love away so that there will be enough to go round. I can give you all of my love, the whole caboodle, and still have all of it left to give to another. And another. And another. Love replenishes itself by being given away. So God is constantly giving and receiving and overflowing, because God is love.”

Do we let our faith, and the love that spills out from it make the difference that it should? – “the Beatitudes are a set of values and attitudes by which we can inhabit the world differently and through which we can begin to see what matters in the world and what must be done. The Beatitudes describe what it means to live as a child of the God who is love and in God’s commonwealth of love in action. They are anchored in Jesus’ own life and ministry.”

He points out that “God does want to change me, but not into someone else (which, on reflection, seems to be the message of the world, forever trying to sell me a highly idealised version of what humanity could be if, clambering over the backs of others, I were the one with the fast car and the beautiful body). God wants to change me into something of more lasting beauty: the person I am meant to be.”

Indeed, God wants to make a difference to our lives, but to make us who we were meant to be.

God Unbound

 Brian McLaren's God Unbound: Theology in the Wild, which I read recently, is a fascinating mix of travelogue and theology, as McLaren reflects on the wonder of nature and the way in which that demonstrates the presence of God.

He describes an amazing trip to the Galápagos Islands with some stunning descriptions of the wonderful things he encounters. For example, "I come upon two kinds of sea stars I haven't seen before, one red like the sand with orange spikes on the side, one wheat-coloured with coffee-brown lines radiating from the centre. I pick up a beautiful shell that contains a hermit crab.”

Again: “In another area, several especially beautiful pyramids sea stars cling to a tower of rock. Their five slender legs vary from mottled olive to mustard yellow. Beneath them in patches of sand I see a half-dozen rounded chocolate chip sea stars also clustered together, their bodies the colour of café au lait, with a chocolate stripe running from the centre the blunt end of each broad, rounded foot, chocolate chips scattered generously between the stripes."

He goes on to reflect theologically on the experience, not least on the connection between theology and science and the perceived (by some) challenge to the theological perspective of Charles Darwin. McLaren comments: "Anyone who investigates Darwin's story fairly and honestly will agree: he was no iconoclastic rebel, brash, bold, and eager to challenge every convention. No, he worked patiently and painstakingly for twenty years to test his argument and face every objection, from the theory’s Inception by 1839, to his first intention to write on the subject in 1844, to his firm decision to begin what he considered a short book on the subject in 1854, to the final publication of On the Origin of the Species in 1859.”

He then draws a link with St Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, which has a large mural of Christ leading a dance and "joining him are suns, moons, stars, four animals, and ninety larger-than-life-sized saints." 

The dancing saints include Darwin and McLaren adds: “Jesus himself, I would venture to say, would be proud to have Darwin pictured as one of his dancing companions. After all, their life's work was similar, as if they were moving to the same rhythm. They both challenged the long-established and nearly universally affirmed understandings of God. They both dared to utter, after a pious truism, the revolutionary word but. They both dared to say aloud the simple but revolutionary truth that what is has not always been, and what is will not always be. And they both were seen by some as monsters for doing so.”

Like There's No Tomorrow

I met Frances Ward probably only once or twice when she was the Dean of St Edmundsbury Cathedral in Bury St Edmunds and I was Moderator of the Eastern Synod for the United Reformed Church - but that was what made me notice  her book Like There's No Tomorrow: Climate Crisis, Eco-Anxiety and God - and what a great discovery. I think it's one of the best books that I have read for a while. She is describing a time of sabbatical spent on a narrowboat on the canals. The book is a mix of describing her travels and reflecting on 'stuff', particularly around the climate crisis and the anxieties it evokes in her. There is a good deal of theological reflection, in particular a dipping into the Psalms. It just really worked for me.

She is undoubtedly, and rightly, alarmed by the situation in which we find ourselves - but she cannot abandon the hope that we find in God. Hope is generated every time we turn towards the God who creates, seeking God’s love and forgiveness, looking for signs of the grace that energizes each particle of existence. Hope springs eternal, when we align ourselves with God’s creative power.

Again, she comments: Even as it seems the whole of creation plummets towards catastrophe, God does not give up on the wonderful creation that God continues to create.

Also: To focus on our own hopelessness is to miss the meaning of God.

I particularly liked a reference to Luther: Luther apparently said, “If I knew the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree.” That impulse is a good and true one: that even in the face of utter disaster and tragedy, we can still do things as if there is a tomorrow, trusting, hopeful in a love that transcends death.

The book is abundantly clear as to the serious situation we face, but not to the exclusion of the God of hope. 

Peacework

I have been reading Henri Nouwen’s Peacework in which he offers a helpful, but challenging, look at the question of peace-making, but doing so through three particular lens, those of prayer, resistance and community.

 

I particularly like some of what he says about prayer in this volume. For example, he comments: “Prayer is such a radical act because it asks us to criticise our whole way of being in the world, to lay down our old selves, and to accept our new self, which is Christ. This is what Paul has in mind when he calls us to die with Christ so that we can live with Christ. It is to this experience of death and rebirth that Paul witnesses when he writes: “I live now not with my own life, but with the life of Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).”

 

He also says: “Prayer can never be a panicky request to avoid disaster. In the daily life of the community prayer is first of all an expression of thanks for what we already have received. A life in community is a life lived in unceasing gratitude to the Lord with whom we dwell. Community reveals that true prayer always moves us to thanksgiving for what already has been given us. Even a cry for God's help cannot be separated from a spirit of gratitude.”

 

Prayer is at the centre of his thesis, but so is the fact that we need to treat people as people and recognise that how we are with each other is the proper expression of the principles and ideas we adopt.

 

So, Nouwen says: “When our “Yes” remains compassionate, that is, people-oriented, the complex issues of our time will not drag us down into despair and our hearts will burn with love. We cannot love issues, but we can love people, and the love of people reveals to us the way to deal with issues. A compassionate resister always looks straight into the eyes of real people and overcomes the human inclination to diagnose the “real problem” too soon. …….. Jesus understood the problems of the world in the most radical way, but wherever he went he responded to the concrete needs of people. A blind man saw again; a sick woman was healed; a mother saw her dead son come back to life; an embarrassed wedding host was given the wine he needed; thousands of hungry people received bread and fish to eat. Jesus left no doubt that the help he offered was only a sign of a much greater renewal. However, he never let that truth prevent him from responding to the concrete and immediate concerns of the people he met.”

Julian of Norwich on the Question of a Pandemic

I have just finished reading Matthew Fox's Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic - and Beyond and found it to be full of useful and challenging insights. Julian lived through a time of what was then called the plague, and without all the possibilities of modern science. She knew well the challenge of such a time, and yet maintains a positive spin. As Fox points out: "Julian also knew something about fostering a spirituality that can survive the trauma of a pandemic. While others all about her were freaking out about nature gone awry, Julian kept her spiritual and intellectual composure, staying grounded and true to her belief in the goodness of life, creation, and humanity and, in no uncertain terms, inviting others to do the same.”

She offers a vision of engaging with life, even in the midst of grave difficulty. “The first thing we must learn from this vision is the bluntness and directness with which she faces Jesus’s—and, correspondingly, our—suffering. She is teaching us not to sentimentalize, cover over, or (like many politicians) go into denial about the suffering we are undergoing as we face both the coronavirus and climate change. We should not run from the sorrow, fear, and grief, but we should stay connected to our feelings. Only the truth will make us free, and we must confront that truth directly. James Baldwin put it this way: “Not everything faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Fox, commenting on Julian and the lessons she teaches, reminds of the importance of discovering a ‘new normal’ that takes account of what we have been through and the opportunities for learning that it has provided. Pandemics do have their positive side, and the risk is that we don’t see the important things that are staring us in the face.

“It is not enough to “return to normal” after this coronavirus, even if it does finally go away. That “normal” was far from healthy to begin with. It brought us climate change, the extinction of millions of species, with our own species on the cusp of extinction as well, and, of course, lots of denial in the name of those whose gods are Wall Street and multinational corporations. It brought us racism and sexism as a way of life, and it has distorted education and religion, politics, media, and economics. Who wants to return to that? A pandemic is too important to waste. This pandemic is here to wake us up. To what? To a “new normal.” One that honors the sacredness of the earth and of all its life forms. One that honors the divine feminine alongside a sacred masculine. One that honors the human body and its basic needs, along with those of the earth’s body, and on that basis gives birth to a new body politic. One that does not put billionaires and the structures that create them on pedestals. And one that does not elect narcissistic politicians who incarnate the very meaning of fatalistic selfhatred by watching hundreds of thousands die with a shrug of the shoulder (“It is what it is”). Julian absolutely lays waste to a punitive Father God who operates on anger, punishment, and what she calls “vengeance.” She found none of that in Divinity—only in humans (who project it onto Divinity)!” 

We live in a world that needs to learn a lot. Let’s hope the pandemic lessons take us to a better place.

Forsaken

Samuel Wells' book A Cross in the Heart of God: Reflections on the Death of Jesus offers some fascinating and challenging insights on Jesus' being abandoned, which, I think, help us in engaging with questions of despair and desolation as we can know that Jesus has been there.

Wells writes:  "The gospel isn’t about some contest of pain in which Jesus came out the winner. The gospel is not that Jesus physically suffered. It’s that he was forsaken.’"

"Forsaken. Jesus’ last words, in Mark’s gospel, are, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ At first sight, this is simply the last in a chain of abandonments. The disciples flee, Peter denies, Judas betrays, now the Father forsakes. It’s a litany of desertion. And there’s something in this litany. Remember, if the crucial word in the gospel is with, then the events leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion are a heartless and wholesale dismantling of that with. Jesus is left without all those he worked so hard to be with – the disciples, the authorities, the poor – and all of them have not just disappeared, but actively deserted or betrayed him. Jesus is still with us, but we, at this most precious moment of all, are not with him."

The fact is that Jesus re-defines so much. Wells also comments: "in the wonder of the incarnation and in the horror of the cross: God hasn’t stopped being a king; God’s redefined what it means to be a king. If we’re to look for true kingship, it’s to be found among those who do as Christ has done; among those who set aside the power, acclaim and influence to discover love in true encounter. In Christ, in the crucified Lord, God is presenting us with a transformed picture of what it means to be a king."

Our problem is trying to stick to the old models,

Learning from Julian of Norwich

Part of my Lenten reading has been Sheila Upjohn’s The Way of Julian Norwich: A Prayer Journey Through Lent. I have found it a fascinating drawing on the insights of Julian of Norwich. Julian clearly still has much to say of relevance, despite the passing of the years.

I was especially struck by some of the comments on prayer. Prayer is essentially the expression of a relationship. As Upjohn reminds, drawing on Julian’s insights: “Julian tells us that prayer is not one-sided. God is longing to hear from us.”

She also stresses that prayer is worth the effort. It takes effort, may produces surprises, but certainly brings us close to God. “Praying can be hard work, and it also needs time. And finding time seems to get harder and harder in our busy world.” ….    “All prayer has a result, whether or not we recognize it at the time, but such repeated prayer often has dramatic and unexpected consequences, as Julian found. We can be sure that St Paul was praying repeatedly – and praying for the wrong thing – when he stormed down to Damascus to seek and destroy the blasphemous heretics whom he believed were profaning his God’s name. The result overturned not just his mistaken expectations but his whole life.”

Prayer should be integral to our life with God but, just as someone we know in human terms may relate to us in a very particular way, so our prayer life should not be bound to a particular pattern. “We all pray in different ways. There is no one-size-fits-all. But pray we must if we are to come to know God. And we can begin no matter what state we are in.”

Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire

Akala's Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire is a powerful and important exploration of the way in which prejudice, especially racial prejudice, but also class prejudice, has had such a devastating impact on so many, often doing a great deal to dent the views and opportunities of those who are seen as not fitting. He holds nothing back, but rightly so, in demonstrating how limited perspectives create an unfair society.

For example, he writes: "The government and the education system failed to explain to white Britain that, as the academic Adam Elliot-Cooper puts it, we had not come to Britain, but ‘rather that Britain had come to us’. They did not explain that the wealth of Britain, which made the welfare state and other class ameliorations possible, was derived in no small part from the coffee and tobacco, cotton and diamonds, gold and sweat and blood and death of the colonies. No one explained that our grandparents were not immigrants, that they were literally British citizens –many of them Second World War veterans – with British passports to match, moving from one of Britain’s outposts to the metropole. Nobody told white Britain that, over there in the colonies, Caribbeans and Asians were being told that Britain was their mother country, that it was the home of peace and justice and prosperity and that they would be welcomed with open arms by their loving motherland."

He points out that the way people are treated contributes heavily to how they respond. As he says of himself - "I was not born with an opinion of the world but it clearly seemed that the world had an opinion of people like me. I did not know what race and class supposedly were but the world taught me very quickly, and the irrational manifestations of its prejudices forced me to search for answers."

Here is a telling reminder of what prejudice can do; and it ought to be a clear call to find ways, however difficult that is, to address our wrong and unfair perspectives. A powerful and compelling read - well worth it!

God Is Green

Climate change and environmental issues are undoubtedly the most important consideration of the moment for our planet. It is important that Christians get involved. I have just read Ian Bradley’s God is Green. Bradley very clearly states the necessity of our Christian involvement – “if Christians fail to speak out and act on the most important issue of our time we will not only have lost an enormous missionary and pastoral opportunity but we will have failed the human race and the planet. We will also have failed the triune God.”

Bradley is rightly clear, citing a strong Biblical basis, that God is concerned with the whole of creation. “The Bible clearly proclaims God to be lord of the cosmos as well as lord of history, involved in an active relationship with the whole of creation and not just with the human part.”

It is important to recognise that God created things to be in balance. Its diversity is both wonderful and necessary. Bradley puts it like this – “The emphasis on diversity is maintained in the story of the Flood where Noah is commanded to take with him in the Ark two of every kind of living creature and in the covenant that God makes after the flood not just with humans but with all living things. It is reinforced with particular power in the Psalms and in the Book of Job which point to the pleroma or fullness of God’s creation and proclaim that every part of it has a significance and importance to God in its own right and not just for its usefulness to humans. It is a key theme of the wisdom literature which reinforces the message of the opening chapter of Genesis of the goodness and value of all creation in God’s sight: ‘You love everything that exists and nothing that you have made disgusts you, since, if you had hated something, you would not have made it’ (Wisdom of Solomon, 11:24).”

We therefore do well to get engaged in ecological concerns and to do the little we can to make a difference. Yes, it is true, using some further words from Bradley, that – “Christians urgently need to come back to the realisation, and the Biblical revelation, that God is Green, deeply concerned for the whole of creation and calling us to share and act on that concern.”

Faith After Doubt

I recently finished Brian McLaren’s book Faith After Doubt. It is a very honest account of the legitimate struggle that most of us have with doubt. As I have said so often, doubt is not the opposite of faith. It is part of faith. In fact, for that very reason, I might have preferred a title that more obviously placed them alongside each other, which is what I think the book does, rather than one that suggests they might be sequential, whatever the order.

As McLaren himself says: “Let’s grant one another permission to doubt. And let’s see the doubt in ourselves and each other not as a fault or failure to be ashamed of, but as an inescapable dimension of having faith and being human, and more: as an opportunity for honesty, courage, virtue and growth, including growth in faith itself.”

Of course, they will come in different measures at different times and there is a sense of progress as we recognize how that happens – but the ultimate aim is not that of doubt-free faith. McLaren expresses that point like this: “I do not regret my journey of faith and doubt, because I do not regret who I have become. Faith and doubt together have made me who I am. I wouldn’t want to live without either.”

He points out, and I find this very helpful, that what really matters is love, and it is not exclusive to either faith or doubt, or a mix. McLaren puts it like this: “Jesus dissented from the typical understandings of purity, loyalty, authority and liberty. Instead of neglecting them, however, he redefined them and in a sense recycled them in service of justice and compassion. For Jesus, justice and compassion were ultimately two facets of one thing: love.”

He also says: “In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus doesn’t teach a list of beliefs to be memorised and recited. Instead, he teaches a way of life that culminates in a call to revolutionary love. This revolutionary love goes far beyond conventional love, the love that distinguishes between us and them, brother and other or friend and enemy (Matt. 5:43). Instead, we need to love as God loves, with non-discriminatory love that includes even the enemy.”

That is pretty challenging; but it’s a challenge we need.

Nearly 50 Years On

As I begin my second month as Moderator of the National Synod of Scotland, I have taken a moment to think back to my early opportunities of leading worship, many of which were at churches which I look forward to visiting again before too long, when the pandemic restrictions are not as at present. One of the few things I have managed to do across the years is keep a record of leading worship – which now goes back almost fifty years.

It was on the 4^th March 1973 that I preached my first ever sermon – and that was at Bathgate, where my Dad was then the minister, and the good folk of Bathgate had to put up with this novice preacher on quite a few further occasions.

Other early ‘attempts’ (at some of today’s Synod URCs) were at School Wynd, Paisley (November 75), Greenock East (May 76), Morison Memorial, Clydebank (October 76), Rutherglen (May 77), Barrhead (also May 77 – and they invited me back in November 77), Granton (October 77), Saughtonhall (November 77), Augustine, Edinburgh (February 78), and Carluke (March 78).

(It wasn't only Barrhead that invited me back!)