Matthew 9:9-13

A Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost


“There must be some mistake”,
the Pharisees thought,
“he’s started out on the wrong foot”
So they asked the disciples
“Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners”?

We will never know if the critics thought they were being polite
by asking the disciples instead of directing the question to Jesus himself
or whether they were being nasty and trying to undermine his support.

But the question is asked nonetheless

Why indeed? Why does a teacher of righteousness not seek out the righteous
- people he has a natural affinity with?

I have ministered in many small towns
– places where people have long memories.

I have heard young people
compared unflatteringly to their grandparents
in such a way as to suggest
that their behaviour
and their fortunes
were something quite predictable.

Coming into any settled community as a stranger
one is struck by how inter-related everybody is.

There they are at the village fete:
rich and poor,
clever and not-so,
powerful and powerless
respectable and less-so.

It’s like watching a machine
seeing all the parts inter-related
one part meshing with another.

Everyone has his place
we know who to love and who to hate
who the teams are.

We learn this from a young age
We’re sent out to school as small children
knowing who to avoid.

Even in our families we have our appointed places.
I’m the capable one.
My big brother is such a worry to our parents.
He’s aged them, he has.

Or I’m the failure of the family.
I have to work hard to get ahead.
I’m not as clever as my brother.
Everything he touches turns to gold.

When the minister or priest is called to a parish or a congregation
there is a tacit understanding (sometimes)
that he will reinforce what everybody already knows
about what’s right and wrong, what’s good and bad,
who is on one side of the line and who is not.

It’s all so simple.
Why indeed would a teacher of righteousness not seek out the righteous?
Why would a pastor not stand behind his core parishioners
when a dispute arises in the congregation?
Why would he not share the quite natural grief and disappointment of parents and grandparents and siblings
with respect to a child who has strayed from her appointed path?.

The Gospels as you know
tell the story about the Good News of God shown to the world in the man Jesus.

The Gospels record the effect he has
upon the lives of men and women who had pretty well decided for themselves
where they were going
or upon whom the judgement of society had been pretty solidly passed.
He has a term for these folks: He calls them the ‘Lost Sheep of the House of Israel”

And the part of the story which we’re reading this morning
the calling of St Matthew
is not set as it might have been later in the Gospel
in the great city of Jerusalem
where a man might go and lose himself in the crowd
but in one of the small towns of Galilee
where the eyes of all are immediately fixed
upon a stranger walking into the village square
and where everybody knows everybody else’s business.

And so the question must be asked at the outset by us
the readers and observers of this story
as well as by the local Pharisees:

What will he make of this town
this teacher of righteousness,
this prophet, this holy man?

Will he come to know what we already know but quicker?
Surely he won’t need to have watched the slow downfall of this man.
He’ll know him to be a rascal from the outset.
He won’t need to carefully mark down how this one tarts herself up for the fellows.
He’ll see that right away.

And he’ll reveal his superior insight by wanting to associate with gentler folk.
He’ll seek out the city fathers.
He’ll plant himself at the feet of the Pharisees
who are people, after all. of his own kidney and his natural allies.

But that’s not how it works out.

And so the story of the calling of Matthew the tax collector
somebody who in the popular mind had made himself a pariah
by standing against his own people and entering the employ of their oppressors
is not so much about Matthew’s decision to follow Jesus
as it is about the whole mechanism of Jesus’ ministry to the outcast
and his ability to bring into being what was fortold about him:
that valleys would be exalted.
Mountains and hills laid low.

And so Matthew leaving his tax table to follow Jesus
is part of the same tradition
where his colleague Zaccheus climbs a tree in order to see Jesus
and finds himself hosting Jesus at his own dinner table
while Nicodemus – a member of the Sanhedrin
must steal away in the dead of night to hear Jesus –

part of the same story in which the woman taken in adultery
sees her accusers turn away
and those who were about to stone her to death
drop their fist-size chunks and rock and wander away
leaving her alone with Jesus
while in another story the ‘rich young ruler’ rides away on his donkey.

When Jesus is ushered in to a stable situation fortunes appear to change.
People receive a gracious welcome they had not expected
and find themselves in the light once again.
Some who expected to have an automatic hearing
find they do not.

The Gospels as they are read, preached and proclaimed,
remain an agent for change.
We are on the receiving end of this story this morning.
Who are we?

As they are read, preached and proclaimed
the very same Jesus extends the same invitation
– this time to man and women sitting in Church in West Linton
or listening on their radios.

We could remain observers of a story
about nasty Pharisees and lucky St Matthew
were it not for the fact that the Jesus proclaimed and preached in the Gospel
is a living Lord who speaks to us.

And we are men and women who have settled in our minds
who we are
and who our neighbours are.

We can draw a map and place ourselves,
for better or worse,
in a particular place.

So where are you then?

Are you a lost sheep
and do you suffer under the cold gaze of your betters?
Have you even grown comfortable with the diagnosis
that it’s just the way you are –
that life has dealt you a few unfair blows
and you’re now too old to change?

That would be the better news.

Because you could assume yourself
to be Jesus’ first choice in dinner partners
and have, therefore, become part of the problem
and not part of the solution.

There has been no mistake.
Jesus is set about the raising up of valleys
and the bringing down of mountain ranges.

The comfort of remaining firm
in the knowledge we think we have about ourselves and other people
is cold comfort
and no new news.

He prepares a better place for us all
if we will stay and listen
and, ultimately, be changed.

Did you appreciate this sermon? Did you nick bits of it for your own sermon on Sunday morning? Here's the collection plate. Fr Kenny's congregation in Dumbarton raises the lion's share of the budget of a primary school in Serrakunda, the Gambia.

The recording was made as part of New Every Morning - BBC Scotland's Sunday morning service and is used with their kind permission.

Follow this link to 'listen again' to New Every Morning or any of Radio Scotland's shows.

St Patrick's Breastplate
(sort of)

thanks to Malcolm over at SimpleMassingPriest for the link

Everyone's agog about a dog

Matthew 7:21-29


A Sermon for the 3rd Sunday after Pentecost


We all stop working when the bell rings.

Not the sharp little bell indicating that a client is at the counter looking for some attention. Not the bell that announces the end of the day or time for lunch but that constant droning bell designed by some bright person to be able to cut through background noise and cause us to straighten up and pay attention which indicates that the fire alarm has been pulled somewhere in the building.

A mistake? Possibly. A drill? Were we to expect one – was one announced? You look around the office and everybody has stopped work. There are a few weak smiles. Your colleagues shuffle their papers on the desk. It’s possibly nothing. But we are on the seventeenth floor. There’s a long way to go before we can leave the building.

When it is all right to alarm somebody? When your children are playing outside you’ll hear one of them cry out because they’ve fallen. They cry. It’s nothing, you say to yourself, and you just hope they don’t come in sniffling and requiring too much attention because you’re in the midst of a conversation. But there’s a different sort of cry which gets you up out of your chair. It’s the real thing. Somebody’s hurt.

The reading from Matthew’s Gospel this morning is alarming. It is intended to alarm. It’s not just a general call to vigilance. These words were meant to alarm particular people. They were not spoken, remembered and written down in order to alarm those who have never made a profession of Christian faith. They were not intended to provoke someone who’s never given the Gospel a second thought. So they are not a fairly aggressive evangelical thunderbolt aimed at those outside the Church (because, after all, words to the stranger on Jesus’ part are generally words of invitation). No – these words are directed to us – to people who may never have allowed the thought to pass through their heads that they might be on the wrong track.

We are, after all, members. We are card-carrying Christians.

What would it say on your card? Maybe you actually have a card. If I dug around long enough I’d find my card. I filled one out at an evangelical crusade some time back in the seventies. It had a space for your name and a space for you to write down the date and a prayer which you were supposed to say. I think I’m supposed to be able to recite the date – tell you which evening it was that I made a commitment to Jesus Christ but I can’t be that specific. Maybe you don’t have an actual card but if you did, what would it say? That you were born here – that these pews and that Sunday School room were home turf for you – that you were raised in a Christian home, that you attended this or that Church, were part of the Sunday School and the Youth Group. Maybe you were part of the Christian Union at College.

Now none of us are the sort of folks who believe that the book of life is just a collection of parish rolls from all around the world. We know more than that – there’s something which comes from the heart which is counted for more than our names on any piece of paper. We know that or we think we know that and so to supplement our sense of well being and ‘being at home’ in the Church we will recount the times that we have ‘felt’ something like God in the midst of our services or the times we have ‘resolved’ to be better Christians than we are. We can tell the story of our own lives and can underline the parts where we believed we drew near to God and He to us.

How safe is that story – safe in the sense of it being an accurate telling of men and women growing gradually closer to their Redeemer over the course of years?

After all – any story can be told in the best possible light. And we do have some investment in telling our own story like that. We belong. We reassure ourselves in moments of doubt that we belong.

The tale Jesus relates is that of two houses - one which is built upon rock and another which is built upon sand. It’s not a complicated image. We might be familiar with it as it was retold in the story of the Three Little Pigs.

I live in a frame house in Penicuik which was built on fairly inadequate foundations back in the late sixties. It’s a great little house – purpose-built as a rectory with the office and a large entrance allowing people to come and visit without dominating the whole place and which leaves the family adequate protected space to carry on their lives. But I’ve seen cracks in the wall which indicate to me that there is movement going on. I know that eventually these cracks will widen. This is not a rectory which will survive a hundred years. The choices made back in the late sixties about expenditures and construction costs will eventually come back and haunt us.

What can be done? Nothing much really – the place is nicely tarted up. Every time the place is painted the cracks have been plastered. That’ll do it for a few years. But they open again and show themselves. There is a problem.

Most church basements in Montreal see at least one twelve step group in the course of the week. Narcotics anonymous, Alcoholics anonymous – gamblers maybe. They shuffle in – from all walks of life – and they tell of the years in which they patched up the cracks in their walls until eventually the walls gave in. They will recount – sometimes quite dryly and dispassionately – the lengths to which they would try and convince themselves and others that they really had no problem at all – that every man has the right to a drink or two at the end of the day – that a few pounds spent on the horses really didn’t amount to anything – that other people consumed much more cocaine than they ever did and managed to hold down a job and stay out of the hospital. These lies eventually cost them jobs – it cost them their marriage – it pushed them into activity which may have ultimately cost them their liberty.

They may even count themselves the luckiest of people the wall came tumbling down because it was footed on a tissue of falsehood and that when it came tumbling down they found themselves owners of the only thing they had left and the greatest gift of all – time. Time to rebuild. Time to take stock and form an accurate assessment of their situation.. Time to make amends. Time to come to know their ‘Higher Power’.

When will we be honest? One thing that stands out in the Gospel is that Jesus does not abide fakery – will not remain silent as those who find themselves privileged proceed to tie heavy burdens upon those around them. He does not defer to the religious leaders of his day. He finds strength in people who others have given up on and he finds deceit and untruthfulness in people who ought to know better. “You are a teacher of Israel” he says to Nicodemus, “and you do not know these things” “Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees” he calls out “blind guides”.

We could get agitated about this. The reading begins this morning with a word of doom

Depart from me you evil doers - I never knew you!

spoken to a group of people who claim to have done great things in Jesus’ name but who have not been formed by his words nor have they done what these words require – they have only ‘spoken them’. With these words men and women have felt special, honoured, included. With these words men and women have differentiated themselves from the others – from the great unwashed – they have forged identity – Christian identity – with words such as these. But the inside has not matched the outside. The truth has been kept secret – the lonely existence of men and women who should have been alarmed but weren’t has finally been revealed for what it is. A sham – a show. As with so many things – a good dose of bad news early enough can be the best thing that has happened to us and the one who faces us up to the mirror only feels like our enemy.

We have heard this story. It was written for us. It was designed to place within us a germ of self doubt – a pebble in our shoe. Faith is tried and proved in adversity. How do we do in adverse conditions? Love is tried and proved in those circumstances where love is required by somebody not overly loveable and may prove more difficult a commodity to find than we ever thought. How do we measure up in our gift of love to those around us?

And you have heard this Gospel story read, preached and proclaimed on the morning of June the first, 2008. It was remembered and written down for us – not merely to reflect on the fact that we are probably doomed but with adequate time on our hands this morning to reflect on whether the inside looks like the outside and whether the story we would tell about ourselves resembles in any way the true story of who we are.

Did you appreciate this sermon? Did you nick bits of it for your own sermon on Sunday morning? Here's the collection plate. Fr Kenny's congregation in Dumbarton raises the lion's share of the budget of a primary school in Serrakunda, the Gambia.

The recording was made as part of New Every Morning - BBC Scotland's Sunday morning service and is used with their kind permission.

Follow this link to 'listen again' to New Every Morning or any of Radio Scotland's shows.

There's always room for one more

One hopes this will not be the case

Thought for Today

Good morning

News this last few days of a series of dramatic photographs from the polar region of the planet Mars. At one time Mars was simply a reddish disc which transited across the night sky - early photographs of the planet reveal a mottled red blob.

Not so these days. I have a photograph on my hard disk taken by one of the Rover land vehicles in 2005 of a Martian sunset behind a ridge of rock. It’s crystal clear. So clear, in fact that one could almost imagine a silhouetted figure leaning on a stick watching the sunset - perhaps with his faithful dog seated beside him – something of course which can never be since the atmosphere is primarily carbon dioxide and the planet spends most of its time clutched by temperatures which would make the South Pole look summery. We will continue to accrue accurate knowledge about and even more stunning photographs of a place where we can never live.

Jesus' parables are also glimpses into a world which seems unfamiliar to many of us. It's a place where you gain your life by losing it, where forgiving those who have wronged you makes sense and where worrying is a waste of time. It's a world where you do not need to fear those who can kill the body or nick all your stuff. Much of what we spend our life doing, or fretting over or being outraged about makes no sense in Jesus’ world – many of our desires and even our sense of justice and retribution would wither and be strangled in the atmosphere of the Kingdom of God.

And yet its alien logic is put forth as the key to tremendous courage in the midst of this life and gives rise to love and renewed purpose and happiness. The man (with or without his dog) can live in such a world - in fact he won't be truly happy and whole unless he does.

Matthew 6:24-34


A Sermon for the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost


We’ve all known folks with a light touch on life – given to making major changes in the midst of life, not overly careful with their money, spontaneous and maybe a big glib. They can be grouped into two categories – those we felt were foolish and irresponsible and those we have admired and who completely amaze us.

In the first group are all the mad children we ever knew. The ones who went off to Europe with their boyfriends at a scandalously young age – the ones who used the entire inheritance their grandparents had left them to invest in something which was not a sure thing – most of the class clowns we went to school with who would open their mouths and say the most outrageous things and who didn’t seem to care who was listening or what their permanent records would look like at the end of their education.

Someone – we might have thought – should sit that person down and give them a few home truths – let them know the importance of building up credits for themselves – both personal and financial. A bad credit reference – well that can follow you for years – as can a bad reputation. Living for today will not see you through until tomorrow. There’s that little fable about the grasshopper and the ants - it might do them a world of good.

“Is not life more than food” says Jesus.

"Yes", we might reply, "but when you are hungry everything looks like food".

We will always be able to find counter-examples – sufficient in number to defy anybody who would take this passage from Matthew’s Gospel and these words of Jesus as promoting carelessness in personal life or denial about the reality of poverty or hunger.

We said at the outset that there were two groups of people with a light touch on life. The first group leave us thinking how thankful we are not to have ruined our lives through indiscipline, laziness, carelessness and irresponsibility. The other folks, however, are the graceful ones. They leave us wondering whether we’ve missed the point somewhere along the line. When we think of them we look in the mirror and feel suddenly very old and frightened.

They did something very well. They were bold – they took risks in order to do it and they seemed to do it without effort – gracefully. An opportunity arose and there was simply no question. It was the right time and they found themselves in the right place and they seized it. Surely they must have had occasion to wonder whether there was a safer option. Surely they sweated for a moment or two. They must have stopped at the top of the cliff before diving into the water and marvelled at the distance they would need to dive before they hit the water. They must have stopped to think that they were risking rather a lot and stepping out beyond the known into uncharted territory.

The first group would have done well to worry a little more. We are not unhappy in having been that little bit more careful and having established our trajectory and the credits we needed. But we – at least some of us anyway – have a deep rooted suspicion that there is no point at which we could stop being so careful. There’s no sign post on the road that says ‘you’ve been careful long enough”. “Stop now”. Now is the time to kick over the traces and gain for yourself a sense of adventure. “Take a few risks here before the next bend”. It’s not as if we’re alone. Everybody wants to play safe these days. I don’t need to tell you how full the newpapers are of good advice on safety and security. There are plenty of doomsayers: our lawyer or insurance agent would advise against anything untoward.. There is no governance board which will ever advise a chief executive to stop compressing and economising. That’s the problem. Playing safe becomes such a habit. It goes on for ever – and ever – unless a decision is made to stop.

When Jesus travelled through the communities of Galilee in the early part of the Gospel account he entered these communities as complete and pure opportunity. Opportunity. His words were words of invitation – words which attracted some and repelled others. One is taken and another is left. One rises from the boat and follows. Another gets back on his donkey and rides away because the risks are too great.

Opportunities. We’ve had ‘em. We think of the paths we have not taken – the forgiveness we have not granted because the risk of being hurt and compromised all over again was too great. The love we did not discover because the risks to our independence seemed too severe. The truth we did not speak because it might have alarmed the stockholders and driven down the share prices.

Reasons to worry don’t go away. Not when we’ve made a habit of hedging our bets. . If you’re looking for reasons to be prudent, or, as T.S. Eliot put it to ‘measure out your lives in coffee spoons’ those reasons can always be found.

It’s a wonderful word – worry. Our fears are given to us as part of our animal equipment – part of the natural man. They keep us at a distance from large predators, they equip us to differentiate between friend and foe. They spur us on to fill our larders before the first snow falls. We worry for a reason – there is much worth worrying about. Apart from its habitual use to describe the sort of anxious fretting we engage in at the prospect of some dimly perceived future it also describes what my Labrador retriever Clio does to one of her stuffed dog toys. She sits in the corner and chews it – she worries it until it is nothing but a pile of threads and polyester fluff.

We can worry ourselves like that. We can worry ourselves sick. We worry about real things and we worry about rubbish. We worry ourselves small, we worry ourselves into corners, we worry ourselves out of community – we sorry ourselves away from opportunities – away from love – away from value.

Membership in the Kingdom of God, which draws near every time Jesus draws near, requires the response of free men and women..

Did you appreciate this sermon? Did you nick bits of it for your own sermon on Sunday morning? Here's the collection plate. Fr Kenny's congregation in Dumbarton raises the lion's share of the budget of a primary school in Serrakunda, the Gambia.

A recording was made as part of New Every Morning - BBC Scotland's Sunday morning service and is used with their kind permission.

Follow this link to 'listen again' to New Every Morning or any of Radio Scotland's shows.

It was still there yesterday morning but nothing like it was the day before - the day I didn't have my camera with me. After dropping S off to school in West Linton I drove home over the Moor Road. The light was magical. The band of broadleaf trees in the middle of the photo was shining. The next day I brought my camera along took this shot.

But it's not the same thing.

We live in a world of 'moments' which can't be captured again just by being in the same place at the same time.

As the lady said to the knight who'd spurned her invitation but decided after a bit that he wasn't that busy after all and returned for an 'amorous romp'

If you will not when you may
you may not when you will.

The next day it was only just a reasonably good picture.

The Gorse is is full flower right now. We took a longish walk on the Estate following the services on Sunday. The young rabbits are running about to the great delight of two dogs who didn't manage (this time) to catch one although it wasn't for want of trying. Clio sometimes manages to catch one if it turns the wrong way. She got two last year. She makes a surprisingly clean job of it and I have a neighbour who ends up putting them under a crust with some herbs and lots of black pepper. Clio gets the scraps. Most of the time, however, they've got their noses in the grass and their backsides sticking out while the rabbit runs behind them and finds a different route home.

In their wisdom the powers-that-be down at Grosvenor Crescent have decided that the Scottish Episcopal Church needs car stickers. Most of the cars driving around these parts have some sort of sticker on them.

Give us car stickers or give us death!

When I first moved to Penicuik I figured that there was a very popular Scottish Liberal Democrat named Arnold Clark running for election. Turns out that this is only the car retailer after all and people seem willing to advertise their car salesman without demanding a discount which seems very un-Scottish.

Anyway - we in the SEC now have a bumper sticker and it's more or less what appears at the top of the page. I couldn't find an online copy of the original anywhere so I threw this together as a reasonable facsimile.

It's not a sterling demonstration of Evangelical mojo. No strong language here, that's for sure. Still, it's all true. If you show up we will, in fact, welcome you, your children, your weekly envelope, your helpfulness in helping to paint the church and, in a moment of weakness or stupidity, your willingness to serve as a lay representative to Diocesan Synod.

Is it the best we can do? How about this?

Or even these

last one - I promise

---drumroll---

Back in the saddle!

It's almost palpable.

The silence, I mean. It's almost palpable.

Caireen and I are just back from two weeks' honemoon in Cuba.

Before that we'd taken her 11 year old son and my 22 year old daughter to Eurodisney for a couple of days.

Before that was our wedding.

The days prior to the wedding were spent welcoming family members from the four corners of the world.

Before that was the whole process of moving Caireen and Stewart from their house in West Linton into the Rectory at Penicuik - boxes, skips and endless trips ferrying things back and forth.

Easter was in there too and Holy Week and the tail end of Lent!

I don't think there have been many spare moments in the last six weeks.

Until this morning. Caireen hopped on a bus and went to work. I took Stewart to school and then went to get the holiday photos put on a CD. I came home and then I plugged in the kettle and sat down.

Silence! The first multi-hour lonely silence (and I think I'm not exaggerating) in 6 weeks! There are plenty of calls to make and plans to hatch and meetings to organize for the next few days but a few hours of lonely quiet have been frankly marvellous!

An amazing collection of Canadians, Scots and Israelis. Not all those wearing kilts are Israelis. But all the Israeli men are wearing kilts.


Cuba was fab! It's strange coming back from a failed Communist state to one run by failed Communists!

We spent a few days in Havana in the old part of town hauling our luggage up four flights of stairs to a tremendous balcony with a great view. We'd arranged to rent a not terribly healthy Skoda for seven days, drove down to the Bay of Pigs (Playa Giron) for a couple of days and then pretty well the half the length of the island to a beach north of Holguin. We drove north of Holguin and about three hours along the worst road I've ever seen until we came to a little fishing village. We were trying to make it to a beach recommended by my sister. In this case, however, the engine light was on on the the rented Skoda so we stayed here and collected sea shells.


There are a zillion pics which aren't edited yet. Here's one.

Unplugging for a while!

I'm getting married on Saturday! Family arrives tomorrow from Canada and Israel in three waves. There are a zillion things to do and blogging figures fairly low on the list. Blogging at this juncture would probably be grounds for divorce. We are to be married on Saturday at 2 pm here in Penicuik.

Off to Euro-Disney Sunday with the two children for a two-day trip and thence to Cuba later in the week with the Missus for a couple of weeks. Back in the saddle mid-May. Will post a few holiday pics, maybe a wedding pic or two but little from me until then.

Hasta la proxima vez!

Maybe it's some sort of doggie reincarnation

I find the resemblance amazing between my wife-to-be's collie cross and Laika the stray dog the Soviets shot into space on a one-way mission in 1957. Even down to the chewed right ear. This will remain a private reflection. Patch is finding the transition to life at the Rectory a little unsettling as it is.

We all need heroes

Although perhaps not the black-rubber-suited type. Our heroes could well be folks who do some of the things that we do, but who do them better and have done so consistently for a very long time. The old Archdeacon who I served under as a theological student back in Montreal for about five years was one such hero. I hear his voice frequently and believe that, were he still alive, he would again be looking down his long red nose and shaking his head at me about some of the same issues we struggled with twenty-some-odd years ago.

I've had the opportunity to do a few Thought(s) for the Day on Radio Scotland over the last several months. I'm certainly not used to having a producer - especially one who lets me know when she thinks what I'm proposing to say doesn't quite pass muster because it's too 'newsy' or 'not newsy enough', not in line with the BBC 'style' or simply unclear and a bit dribbling. Members of my congregation could probably be located who'd testify that I might profit from a producer back home in the congregation. Perhaps they're secretly hoping that my impending marriage will produce such a result in the long term.

Thought for the Day on Radio Scotland makes use of a two minute format. These two minute talks are not prepared far in advance - they're worked out the day before, based on what's been on the front page of the Scotsman (Edinburgh) or the Herald (Glasgow) or elsewhere. You get a phone call from the studio in Glasgow just before noon. You chat a bit. You hammer something off and email it along. Then after 20 minutes there's another phone call and a few more emails back and forth - so far generally about four drafts seems to be the average. It takes the better part of an afternoon of my time to come up with something serviceable every four or five weeks.

What is being sought is a faith perspective on the daily news- what the news means when spoken about by somebody with a religious vocation.

I will admit to a certain initial discomfort with the idea of providing a 'faith perspective'. I don't provide just 'any' faith perspective. It seemed a pretty generalizing thing - like somebody pulling a coat off a hook and saying 'wear this - it should fit you' - where the 'you' in the sentence could be an Episcopalian, a Roman Catholic, a Muslim, a Jew or a Sikh. I am not so post-evangelical as to think that one can be all things to all people. I wondered whether what was being asked for was the sort of gentle vicar-spew you sometimes hear in the media.

What clinched it for me was the parallel I drew in my mind between Thought for the Day and work I'd done in hospitals, schools, port chaplaincies or homeless shelters. It was some of the best and most interesting work I ever did. It was done, though, by hospital standards or under the watchful eye of a head teacher, in partnership with shipping agents or social agencies. A fair number of us are used to working by our own rules and on our own turf within the confines of our congregation. Even if that turf shrinks to a small patch of ground and a handful of souls we feel no tremendous discomfort. Life carries on after a fashion and above all we can preach the Word in the way we feel called to preach it. We don't often get challenged and we don't always make very good guests in somebody else's pulpit. We don't always stand up to the scrutiny of the marketplace.

A radio station is somebody else's turf - it's a civic platform. You're being heard in a car by a commuter. It's his car. That's his turf. He has a button in front of him that can turn you off. It's not so much that one has an obligation to 'tone things down' or to be 'winsome' instead of 'direct' but that one has been given a tremendous 'opportunity' - one which is worth the effort of changing one's style and approach.

Once treated as opportunity and not as obligation - the fun really begins.

Lots of people listen to Thought for the Day on Radio Scotland. It's a 'good gig'. Even more listen to Thought for the Day on Radio 4, however. It's broadcast throughout Britain. They're generally made up of three-minute meditations. That extra minute allows for quite a bit. Among the regular contributers to Radio 4's Thought for the Day is one who I consider a bit of a hero. Her name is Angela Tilby and she's the Vicar of St Bene't's Church in Cambridge. She has managed to combine the gentleness of a guest with some really quite chewy and provocative talks. Her style is one worth keeping in the back of my head.

A list of her Thought(s) for the Day can be found HERE. You can read them or listen to them.

On my way to Mass at West Linton this morning. The view of the town taken from the Moor Road. The lambs are all pretty well out now - most have numbers painted in red dye on their sides. I told one visitor last year that the numbers represented the optimal oven temperature for lamb done medium rare.

There is no West Linton newspaper. There's the Peebleshire - a regional paper - which will give you the local bumpff a week or so late. You'll find a News Agent in the village, however, and it's in the shop itself where you will hear everything: Who's divorcing whom, who has died, who has had twins. Who's been shagging about? Probably not. You might hear that up at the Gordon Arms if you eavesdropped on the sotto voce conversation going on beside you.

Most of the phone calls I get announcing that somebody has died or fallen sick begin with the words 'I was in the News Agent this morning and......'

My fiancee lives in West Linton. We've engaged a 'man with a van' for Friday afternoon to begin the slow process of moving her worldly belongings and those of her son up to the Rectory in Penicuik. Penicuik is not a village - it's a town - which has it's up sides and it's down sides.

In West Linton you don't need to lock your doors or your cars. If you do lock your door it's because the dog knows how to push down the handle. If you forget to lock the door and the dog bolts during the day the neighbour will send her children over to bring the dog home, the children already know where you keep the key and they'll fish it out from under the mat, put the dog in the house, lock up and replace the key. You'll find out about all of this a week later when somebody mentions it to somebody else in the News Agent.

Frogspawn in copious quantities!

Oh, sorry - you were having lunch....

Notwithstanding the weather, the Scottish variety of the European Common Frog have managed to exhibit all the appropriate spring-like behaviour. Hamish and Morag the Scottish frogs have been at it and there are now huge gollops of frogspawn in every available puddle and pond. These little black dots will all be swimming around as tadpoles in a few weeks.

Caireen was joking with me a few months back about how it could snow on our wedding day. At the time it seemed an unreasonable concern.

Well sir, this is Penicuik right now - two weeks to the day before our wedding.

It will warm up. It will warm up!

Awake, O Sleeper!

A picture taken in the church yard at St Mungo's Penicuik. The words below are from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday (ca. fourth century).

Something strange is happening. There is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the king is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh, and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parents, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives, Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. [...]

I am your God, who for your sake, have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants, I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. [...]

For your sake I, your God, became your son. I, the Lord, took the form of a slave. I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.

See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back, see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.

I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you. Rise. Let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. [...]

The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers, swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.

Quite a decent day, really!

Service in West Linton this morning and only a few things to do in the office afterwards. I meandered home to Penicuik on the Moor Road and took this shot of the Pentland Hills in the distance. Marriage prep tonight with a couple from St James.

My own marriage prep this weekend! The shoe will be on the other foot!


After having bitterly complained about the very existence of my wife-to-be's terrier/collie/rat admixture I must grudgingly admit that he's coming along. He doesn't chase chickens for a start. Since he's been spending more time with Clio he's decided that he enjoys the company and will try being (relatively) good for a change.

Why we have the internet

So that a couple of Vietnamese lads with baggy T-shirts and badly wanting a comb can give a boost to an upcoming Sunday sermon on the Road to Emmaus.

Diem Xua (Old Charm) by Trinh Cong Son

I remember this cover of Time magazine from the summer of 1971 and I remember the article! As I read the opening lines this morning I found myself completing the sentences. I was thirteen years old at the time. I can remember the hammock I was lying on at my grandfather's cottage in Ontario and being woken at night by loons on the lake - feeling strangely troubled - and turning the light on to re-read the article.

That October there were two 'Jesus people' staying at the Catholic Charities Hostel for Men on the corner of Robson and Cambie in Vancouver where I stayed after absconding from home for a week or ten days. I trailed along with them to a prayer meeting at some sort of 'Upper Room' in Vancouver. These two had decided to 'live light' like the 70 or like the deacons in the Acts of the Apostles. It was a strange time - the beginning of rather a lot of things for me.

In the words of Dr Shadrach Meshach Lockridge
Thanks to Scott Gunn for this

Full Circle

The last decent camera I had was given to me by my mother in about 1972 (or so). I can't remember whether there was a connection between how badly I was doing in Junior High School and the gift of an only-slightly-used Pentax SP1000. Perhaps it was hoped that I'd develop an interest in something other than cutting classes. The camera served me well during my three years at Hippie Alternative School in the Yukon Territory. Chums with much posher cameras saw their shutters freezing up at extreme low temperature. Anyway - light meter batteries for the aforementioned Pentax now need to be ordered from specialists. The mirror flips up and stays up for some reason with slower shutter speeds and, besides, it's not digital.

Mrs Rabbit and I will be heading off to Cuba for a honeymoon in just a few weeks and so it seemed a good idea to browse around Ebay and see what was available in the only-slightly-used Pentax range and so here it is. The instruction manual is 220 pages long. I've pushed every button - 50% of the time I've pushed the wrong button. I've recorded some great photos in the wrong format. Technology is not my strong suit.

I feel a bit like the Peter Sellers character in the video below.

Quick, the sun's out!

A nice day in Penicuik. We haven't had overly many of these and one takes advantage of the very moment the sun is out because it won't be out in an hour or so.

The leaves haven't even emerged yet. The leaves are all out down south. Edinburgh even has leaves and blossoms. Penicuik is just a little higher up. We've had what seems like a very long and dreary winter. I get the feeling that there's a magnificent Spring just waiting to jump out at us.

Fr Nick Knisely's long quote from an essay by Anne Hunt made me think: I've never actually preached a sermon on Christ's descent into Hell (or "descent among the dead" as the cleaned up version would have it) in all the years of my ministry. I must rectify that before Pentecost.

Amongst all the media caricatures of clergy which are a constant source of irritation and resentment there are a few which are an awful lot of fun. Fr Dougall and Fr Ted get lost in the lingerie section. Fr Jack ends up in the toy department.

No question that we remember things better when we sing them

Amazing coincidences

On Monday as we were driving back from our long walk in the country the step-dog passed wind rather nastily in the back of the car. The step-son-to-be could not let this go without comment accompanied by waving arms and all the requisite facial expressions. I took the opportunity to tell him the story from the 1001 Nights called How Abu Hasan Brake Wind. Wanting to be a good step-father and knowing, as I do, the degree to which small boys thrive on stories which make references to farting I supposed it would be a good bonding exercise.

It was an elderly clergyman in the Diocese of Montreal doing a locum at the church where I was the honourary assistant who told me the story perhaps six or seven years ago as we were sitting around the office waiting for the faithful to gather for Mass. I haven't thought of the story since. Until Monday I'd never found myself in the situation of needing such a story.

So after having told the story at about 3:30 in the afternoon on Monday and after having delivered my fiancee and her son back to their house in West Linton I poured myself a cup of coffee and listened to the downloaded episode (March 22) of News from Lake Wobegon which ended up being an updated version of How Abu Hasan Brake Wind.

Strange, non?

Mr Happy Goes to Church

From our friends at ASBO Jesus

No it's not exactly my new religion.

But it has proved a bit of a distraction during an otherwise rather busy week. It is of course my brand spanking new

which my beloved gave me for my birthday last week. I'm only now figuring out how to use the damned thing. I've subscribed to a couple of podcasts - News from Lake Wobegon, Thought for the Day on BBC 3 and the CBC nightly news programme - the World at Six.

I've got about half of my disk collection on it so far - need to go back into Itunes and join up the various movements of the classical music so that they don't get shuffled like singles.

One really interesting snippet from this week's Spectator was the interview with Dom Hugh Gilbert conducted by Mary Wakefield. In light of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor's eventual retirement the rumour mill is speculating that Fr Gilbert will be his successor. Hugh Gilbert OSM is the Abbot of Pluscarden here in Scotland and Mary Wakefield rightly asks the question:

Why a monk? Why even consider giving England's soul to a man who's spent 33 years buried in northern Scotland?

The answer, according to the Wakefield's reading of the pulse of 'Vatican gossip' is that the Pope:

...is concerned about our capsizing country and wants England to have a devout, inspired leader - one as far removed the tired clique of England's urbane and power-hungry liberal bishops as possible

and in Dom Hugh Gilbert they've apparently found their man.

It's a good interview. The journalist admitted to some discomfort - she started with the fact that the Abbot was known as a 'holy' man and wondered aloud on several occasions what that might actually mean. Some of the questions posed to the Abbot are fairly basic: what exactly do monks do? What is the raison d'etre of 30 robed men gliding around in isolated surroundings. What does prayer do?

The best part of the interview is provided directly by the subject in the form of the short email which Mary received once she'd returned to her office and starting banging away on her old typewriter:

Dear Mary.

You may well have decided that I was not worth 'profiling', which I would quite understand. If not, am I allowed a little follow-up?

I like the idea that beauty and holiness are the apologia for Christianity. The beauty of Christianity needs to shine out more; this is where the celebration of the liturgy becomes central. And the goodness of Christianity, i.e. the holiness of self-giving love (the witness of charity) and of prayer, needs to be sustained and developed. And this too, certainly: that the one thing Christianity has to offer is Easter. Simply: Christ is risen!

Sincerely
Fr Hugh

Easter Monday walk along the old Roman road near Carlops with the wife-to-be and the soon to be stepson. We endured about five different types of weather in the course of an hour an a half including a few snow squalls. Cold pasta and hot coffee at the halfway point.