New additions to the back garden!

In the person of three Aylsbury ducks purchased from a farm near Peebles. These, I am instructed by my wife and stepson, are never to become duck stock or confit de canard. They exist for pleasure and companionship. They have their own little house and a largish 40 litre basin which is sufficient for this breed. Their names are Poppy, Rosie and Peekotang. Don't ask!

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain
Flying off the Handel

An aging cleric reminisces

It was a difficult funeral. Shirley had taken me out for a cup of coffee after early Mass and mentioned that she was in poor health and needed to put her affairs in order. She had never written a Will and knew that she needed one. Well sir, if she didn’t up and die on us within the week - before she'd had time to arrange any of these things. Her grown children gathered to make the arrangements.

And the little old man Shirley was still officially married to but who no one had seen for twenty years – he arrived in town too and moved into Shirley’s flat. He sold her things, took the art off the walls and drove it down to a dealer, found the key to the safety deposit box and claimed the contents of that as well.

The children had told me this would happen. There was precious little they could do to prevent it. A number of items, of purely sentimental value, were simply disposed of. Which hurt. Which seemed almost like spite. When the old man showed up at the funeral or at least at the graveside, people were pretty subdued. They shifted their weight from foot to foot. They didn’t know what to say around him.

After I’d finished the words of committal and Shirley’s coffin was lowered into the ground, the old renegade husband broke the silence.

“She was a good wife” he said.

It was the wrong thing to say. Bill the funeral director and I caught this sudden movement out of the corner of our eyes as the youngest daughter – a pretty little blonde thing - launched herself across two or three relations in the direction of the old man. We stepped between them Bill and I did. I was young and Bill had good reflexes. Like many funeral directors, Bill is a solemn fellow – very prompt and very correct. But he admitted later that he’d delayed intervening just long enough for the daughter to land one good right hook.

“It was the least I could do”, said Bill, with a twinkle in his eye.

Rick Warren is no Billy Graham

Notwithstanding the Economist's recent headline, no fat man in a hawaiian shirt can be the new Billy Graham.

Which puts me out of the picture as well but I have no such pretensions.

Did you ever see the interview which Woody Allen did with Billy Graham? I've put it here before but it's worth repeating. I clearly comes to us from a more respectful age.



part two of the interview

I've just ordered a couple of fair trade clergy shirts. My every-day shirts are getting transluscent and greeny-black so I'm overdue.

What gives with these young English clergy tromping around in grubby blue jeans, tho? I wear my grubby blue jeans too when I'm with people I know really well but they're generally worn with the requisite Hawaiian shirt.

Folks would have a fit if I showed up somewhere with my top bits housed in a clergy shirt and my bottom bits looking like the Marlboro Man. Somebody here is not comfortable looking like a priest. It's more about him than it is about anybody else. That's why we had curacies in the old day. You got all this ambivalent bullshit dealt with. The head teacher at the local High School wouldn't let me in the door to do an assembly dressed like this and he'd be right. Jeez!

When the mighty Norwegian Royal Guard with their fearful feathered bowler hats needed a mascot they chose a penguin. Only a Scottish Penguin would do. Sir Nils Olaf: the world's most decorated penguin.

Bathtime in Clerkenwell

One of the stranger things I've seen for a while. Think of it as Badger Badger, meets Wallace and Gromit meets "V" for Vendetta. Muchas Gracias to Fr Denman from Edmonton for the reference.

The Peebles Agricultural Show

The Peebles Agricultural Show took place today during which the rain miraculously ceased for a few hours. We've got a parish outing tomorrow and we're hoping the interlude lasts until then.

The first album I ever owned was by a group called The Collectors (whose later incarnation under the name Chilliwack was a bit better known). I can't remember how I came to own this record album - it seems to me that somebody was moving house and gave it to me. The second album I owned was a little more sophisticated - Herman's Hermits.

Anyway - back to The Collectors - there's this girl called Lydia who wears purple and lives in a steeple. The most pressing thing for the songwriter(s) would appear to be to have words at the end of each line that rhyme. Little else matters.

An article by the Georgian president appeared in today's Guardian.

My favourite line from the last paragraph:

I have staked my country's fate on the west's rhetoric about democracy and liberty.

A fresh spirit of militancy is rising up even in peaceful corners of the world. This is the Ginger Heartland after all. Mr Spongecake and Mr Cherry Tart, along with their families and their gods are not welcome anywhere in the oven.

Reuters
August 12, 2008 at 5:04 AM EDT

TOKYO — Japanese police have arrested a 20-year-old man who attacked and robbed two people after they stared at his Winnie-the-Pooh costume, officials said on Tuesday.

Masayuki Ishikawa was hanging out on a Tokyo street corner after midnight last month while wearing the cuddly costume, accompanied by two friends dressed as a mouse and a panther, when he took offence at being stared at, police said.......

.......Mr. Ishikawa and his friends beat up the two victims and stole $160 from them, the spokesman said, adding the group had apparently donned the unusual garb because they had run out of clean clothes.

Hmmm. I remember the whole phenomenon of 'my cleanest dirty shirt' back in college days. I don't believe I was ever reduced to this though.

Dmitri Orlov on the Georgian crisis. He was once a student of Abkhaz language and culture (I wonder if he's available for dinner parties - it certainly beats an after supper game of Twister) and by his his own admission his take on the present situation is influenced by an earlier keen interest in one party to the present troubles. His parallels with Kosovo make things seem a simple matter of alliances - who's bloc one supports.

Things are probably even simpler than that.

Yards of stuff here I didn't know, though, about the ethnic makeup of the region.

Thanks to Sam Norton for the ref.

This is more or less what was preached at a Requiem Mass for Frances McLean. A couple of folks have asked for the text. I couldn't help adding a few bits and pieces which better reflected the whole day and not just the sermon at the Requiem Mass. Think of it as a retrospective sermon.

---------

A funeral sermon for Frances McLean
November 7th, 2008
The Church of Saint James the Less
Penicuik, Midlothian

The words which the Bishop recited as he led Frances McLean’s coffin out of the church were those of devout Simeon who had been told by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. As Luke tells the story, Simeon has now arrived at the end of his life and the child Jesus is brought to him. What he says is this:

Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,

according to your word;

for my eyes have seen your salvation,

which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,

a light for revelation to the Gentiles

and for glory to your people Israel.

Simeon was promised one thing only and has now received it. Words like his speak of ‘sufficiency’ and, in my way of thinking; sufficiency has a lot going for it. You might not leap for joy to see the word ‘sufficient’ scrawled across the top of an exam paper or on a written appraisal of our work but I think sufficiency is badly under-rated.

We balk nowadays at eulogies – with their long lists of achievements – being read at funerals in the church. They’ve gone out of style, haven’t they - eulogies? You get the feeling that when such lists of achievements are being read out that we are swimming upstream and are battling what everybody in the church already knows, which is this: that rich or poor, famous or unknown, languid or troubled – we all go this same way!

The same sentences from the Burial Office – which Tony read on the night before the funeral as Frances’ coffin was carried into the chancel - are going to be read at our funerals one day. Our coffins, made of solid cherry wood with real brass handles, or made of veneer or canvas-covered chip-board are going to be covered with the same funeral pall in the church and will give the same visual effect as any other coffin. Frances was buried at Rosebank Cemetery on Pilrig Street near the 200 soldiers on their way to the front lines in the First World War who died in the Gretna Train Disaster, in the same graveyard as her grandfather and great grandfather and in the company of saints and rascals from two centuries of Scottish history. Gravediggers – Council employees in yellow coats – could be seen hiding behind trees puffing on their cigarettes until we’d gone. It was just one more burial to them.

We’re all together in our deaths. It is a great leveller.

Notwithstanding the uniqueness of the woman and our feelings for her, and even though there are remarkable stories that can be told about her, what the bishop said in his prayer at the Commendation referred simply to her participation in the Grace which God has granted to us in Christ:

Into your hands, O merciful Saviour, we commend your servant, Frances. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming…..

I believe that when Frances asked her nurse on Wednesday whether she would survive this illness and was told, as directly as any nurse could possibly tell her, that she would not survive it - she must have put her head back on the pillow and said to herself

that she’d had enough.

There was sadness. I sensed it on the Tuesday afternoon when we spoke. There was solemnity. The bishop told me that Frances said ‘goodbye’ to him on Wednesday after lunch with a great sense of occasion and finality.  You see,

She’d had enough. 

What does that mean? Not that she had no strength to fight it (we can’t know what she was thinking about that) – but that had you asked Frances if she’d had occasion to love and be loved, to apply herself to the world around her, to fill her generation and to meet Christ in the midst of the world’s people she’d have said ‘yes’. It was sufficient. 

She’d had enough.

I hope this for you – first of all, sufficiency.

Do remember that funeral sermons, such as they are, are intended for the living and not for the dead. The question today is not only ‘who was Frances’, but ‘who are we’? Men and women, boys and girls who may well not be in a position yet to say that

we have ‘enough’

- that we live today in sufficiency – that we would be satisfied were our life to reach its end on the 7^th of November 2008. This poses for us a challenge. It could provoke in us something of an ‘ache’ and were we to walk away from the hospital bed, the church or the graveside resolved that we would follow the lead of that nagging feeling rather than fleeing from it, then the loss of our friend and the experience of gathering around her coffin or more accurately, the experience of gathering with her around the Lord’s Table could be a tremendous blessing and a new beginning.

Now - you know and I know that ‘sufficiency’ is not a word that adequately exhausts the subject of Frances McLean. It doesn’t end there of course – but it’s something that has to be said.

The image we all have in our minds when thinking of Frances is certainly not a checklist with one ticked and sufficient box but something more akin to a cornucopia – a horn of plenty – filled with fruit – a cup - running over. It has much to do with a sense of humour, with a very loud and boisterous laugh and with a series of active associations around the world of a woman in her eighties. It has to do with the stories we heard of Frances on her last trip to South Africa with Angela being surrounded by the children she helped bring into the world, by the nurses and students she encouraged – people who remembered her and looked at her as one who nurtured life and enjoyed the fullness of her relationships.

And so, this I hope for you as well – abundance – not in what you gather to yourselves but what you scatter abroad into the lives and beings of others. In the remarkable lives or ordinary saints like Frances McLean we get a sense of what can be done with our particular portion of life.

This is the route of the pipeline which is Europe's alternative route to the Russian pipeline running from Baku to Novorosslysk. It doesn't leave a whole hell of a lot to the imagination, does it?

Mixing military enterprise with the oil business is not unknown, of course. It always seems a little more craven when somebody else does it though. Amateurs! Where were the spin doctors?

Disclaimer

Please note this sign does not appear outside the house of a clergyman just returned from holiday. I don't feel remotely the way this man feels.

Don't even suggest that I do.

The rectory at Penicuik is open for business.

Snowdome

At over 11,000 feet, this glacier-capped massif drains in three direction. It is a (possibly 'the') hydrological apex of North America. Its glaciers drain into the Pacific Ocean via the Columbia River, the Arctic Ocean via the Athabasca and Mackenzie Rivers and into Hudson Bay via the North Saskatchewan and Nelson Rivers.

If you've got a big screen you might click on the picture. I'm pleased with how it turned out.

The Stanley Cup has apparently been used in a 'private christening', according to the Canadian Press. The service took place in Sweden where Tomas Holmstrom was having 'his day' with the Cup having been a member of the Detroit Redwings which took the Cup out of the country (Canada) and the city (Montreal) which would ordinarily merit it.

Okay, so Detroit is a cold place and the Redwings a venerable team. We've now got a whole lot of teams in places where ice doesn't occur normally. They get the best teams American oil money can afford. Long past are the days when desirable foreigners had to defect in order to play hockey and all the American teams had Canadian players.

There is a long tradition of Canadian Naval Chaplains using an upended ship's bell for baptisms so I suppose it's not too much of a stretch. No mention in the article of a minister being involved in the service or whether the baptism was properly peformed using Trinitarian formulae.

We eagerly await to hear about the child of a Formula One winner being sprayed with champagne. Thanks to Joe over at Felix Hominum for the link.

More news from Rev Ruth about other innovations in ecclesiastical hardware.

Back in the saddle

Scotland is suitably grey and rainy. Will look idly out the window for an hour or so this morning and get back into it. Coming back from holidays isn't always easy. But we did see bears, and mountains. We spent time with my family in British Columbia and a week in a great summer community in Sorrento. Good worship - new friends. The whole nine yards.

The picture above is of two nice little people standing in the Columbia Ice Fields with somebody who looks like the rector of Weyburn Saskatchewan.

I can report that a wonderful time is being had by all at the Sorrento Centre in the interior of British Columbia. All the good ghosts - all those memories of past summers - are still well and truly in place. Many new friends and insights. I am probably not the first to discover that placing one's self in the tutelage of brothers and sisters in the faith is a good idea. I must do more of this. Caireen and I are in different courses - a good idea - Stewart is spending hours climbing onto the wobbly little dock out on the lake with his friends until it begins to upend, falling off with great shrieks of delight and then climbing up onto it again.

A good time being had by all.

RR

I'm leaving on a jet plane.......

Off on holidays with my wife and stepson.

Three days with the folks on Saltspring Island, British Columbia and then off for a week to the Sorrento Centre in the interior of the Province. I first went to Sorrento with my parents in about 1967 or thereabouts and have made my way back there periodically.

It's a magical place filled with grace and good memories. I'm hoping that my new family will sense some of what I sensed there.

Will finish up with a couple of days bumping around the Rockies before getting on the plane in Calgary and returning to Scotland.

And, as it turns out, it's also good for you!

Abundant, grainy and not overly expensive. Think of it as Red River Cereal for the soul. We know already that incense is an appropriate symbol of the soul's ascent and a means of hallowing or 'pointing to' significant places or actions - something which enjoys both clear Biblical warrant and obvious analogues in other religious traditions.

But is it good for you? From the reaction of certain folks it might appear not:

... Consider this symptom of distaste: the Protestant Frankincense Cough, a psychosomatic or (as we used to say) hysterical phenomenon. People who disapprove of incense often respond like Pavlov's dogs to the dinner-bell. I, way up in the sanctuary of my last parish, could merely hold up an unlit thurible, for one dear soul, thirty yards away, to hack and retch as if gassed. Her Scotch blood, perhaps: she only had to see an incense machine to think of popery (rather than pot-pourri), and she couldn't think of popery without gagging on the thought of Inquisitions, idolatry of false bones, pyres at Smithfield, Armadas, papal concubines, Jesuit assassins -- and of Galileo, mocking Abbés in powdered periwigs, salacious nuns, the Provisional Irish Republican Army bombing schools -- .

Now Fr Major has, I suspect, never been accused of understating a case. Nonetheless there is much unhappiness on the part of some people when the new rector begins to slowly and carefully introduce the practise on selected Sunday mornings. Not all of it has to do with the physical effects of the stuff.

This just in: It is now being suggested that the components of frankincense act to reduce anxiety and depression - at least among mice.

Those short unhappy lives, marked by high heartrates and quick dashes between corners of the kitchen looking for crumbs and dodging the cat and the householder's broom. If such lives can be made tolerable with the addition of a little frankincense think of what it can do for you.



If you've not read the irascible Fr Richard Major's (as yet) uncompleted series of articles on the Mass entitled 'The Freeze-Frame Mass" it's worth a read. The link sends you to a table of contents. Look a little further and you'll see a link to download the .pdf file


I heard some vile little creature cheering him on at certain points and realized, to my shame, that it was me.

Jeez, I suppose this is vaguely familiar.......

thanks to Ugley Vicar via Tim Chesterton

Feelgood video for the day

In order to get some quiet time with a book on a Sunday afternoon it's occasionally necessary to set some boundaries. This is possibly taking it a little far.

The very latest thing

Unfold Google page whereever you happen to be. Images immediately appear in the rectangular spaces provided. Move the page to the right or left, up or down. Borders will adjust themselves accordingly.

This morning at Saint James the Less we're celebrating Sea Sunday at our Family Service. We do this once a year. We hold a Fellowship Lunch afterwards and make a donation to the Mission to Seafarers. A few years back one of our stalwarts discovered and old hymn from the Sankey hymnal which has become a favourite here in Penicuik. The lyrics are below and the dreadful MIDI tune-bar thingy is here

Light in the darkness, sailor, day is at hand!
See o’er the foaming billows fair haven’s land,
Drear was the voyage, sailor, now almost o’er,
Safe within the life boat, sailor, pull for the shore.

Pull for the shore, sailor, pull for the shore!
Heed not the rolling waves, but bend to the oar;
Safe in the life boat, sailor, cling to self no more!
Leave the poor old stranded wreck, and pull for the shore.

Trust in the life boat, sailor, all else will fail,
Stronger the surges dash and fiercer the gale,
Heed not the stormy winds, though loudly they roar;
Watch the “bright and morning Star,” and pull for the shore!

Bright gleams the morning, sailor, uplift the eye;
Clouds and darkness disappearing, glory is nigh!
Safe in the life boat, sailor, sing evermore;
“Glory, glory, hallelujah!” pull for the shore.

What Joe really said at Woodstock

Regarding the subtitler's art. This was circulating around last year:


Muchas Gracias to Padre Mickey down in Panama for the first link

Mrs Rabbit and I went to the Royal Garden Party at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh today. We'd been invited last year but had been out of the country at the time and couldn't go. We were told solemnly that these invitations are given out sparingly and that once refused one could consider one's self off the list for any future invites. Such is life.

So we were surprised to receive the cream coloured envelope postmarked Buckingham Palace again this year and we resolved to go.

The weather threatened ominously but held nonetheless. The drive in Edinburgh from Penicuik was terrible - it took an hour and a half to make what is normally a half hour journey.

My lady wife is a mental health nurse and got herself scratched on the face at work yesterday. When it came to the choice of hats this morning she came out with a wide brimmed black affair. Fine except that the scratch on her face had a bit of an upturn to it which, when viewed from the side and with your eyes squinted, looked just a bit like a twirled moustache.

"No", I said, "you have to lose the wide brimmed hat. You look like Zorro"

I think that sometimes I'm not as sensitive as I should be. She changed hats for a less wide brimmed affair with several feathers and looked just fine.

The Bishop of Edinburgh and his wife Lissa were there. Our Primus was apparently somewhere at the party dressed in a frock coat. I'd have loved to see that but managed to miss him in the very large crowd. At least two other clergy - Church of Scotland types I think - were wandering around in their frock coats carrying glasses of iced coffee.

One of the options for the dress of the day was 'national costume' and I'll admit that the idea of showing up as a Mountie, a lumberjack or a trapper did cross my mind. The Royal Company of Archers were drifting in and out of the crowd and they have a head-dress with an enormous feather standing straight up. They carry longbows as well.

Eventually the Queen and Prince Philip walked by on their way from the Royal Tea Tent. The Queen was dressed in a cheery yellow dress and hat and looked quite grand.

Happy Canada Day everybody! We used to call it Dominion Day back in elementary school where the map on the wall had large portions (of which we were the largest, as I remember) coloured pink to show the extent of Britain's rule around the world. I'm not sure we've replaced Dominion Day with anything quite as grand as membership in the British Empire. But it's our day.

In brown paper wrappers!

Eleven year old boys are passing around videos (or at least their URLs) to each other in class. Aha, say I: time for the 'little talk'.

It would appear, though, that the age of innocence will endure a while longer. This appears to be hit number one these days. Steamier videos may arrive in due course.

Happy St Jean Baptiste Day everybody.

Historically the Patron Saint of French speaking communities throughout North America but now officially only the Patron Saint of Quebec. The day has become a fairly tidy and secularized 'Fete Nationale' in Quebec.

Sundry shots from around the garden this afternoon

Monday Morning Fairy Tale

I did an assembly this morning for the year 5/6 class at Penicuik High School about the mistaken belief that 'life should be fair'.

Then I read this in the Times this morning:

It’s bad enough being swindled out of $5 million (£2.5 million) by your former manager. But when your manager is also a one-time lover who robbed you of your retirement fund during the five years you spent at a Buddhist retreat, you could be forgiven for believing the Zen teaching that all life is suffering. Leonard Cohen, 71, is now virtually penniless after the apparently impossible-to-undo swindle by Kelley Lynch, and he has no choice but to get out on the road to perform concerts and — worse of all for the reclusive, principled Canadian — attend awards ceremonies and similar industry events. “It’s enough to put a dent in one’s mood,” Cohen says.


On a coincidental note, Leonard Cohen is listed as one of the musicians (Jew's Harp) in the credits of the following short film presented to the Toronto Film Festival.

On the way to West Linton this morning - Icelandic horses and buttercups.

From the Globe and Mail

RCMP in Campbell River on Vancouver Island said a local woman strolling a beach found an Adidas sneaker this morning, containing what appears to be a man's foot.

“It's certainly suspicious,” Sergeant Mike Tresoor said in an interview.

It's a lovely album. I hadn't listened to it for a decade but I came across it as I was loading the disk collection to iTunes this afternoon. My question is, though:

who comes up with the conception for album covers?

You want to add a little white balloon over Benjamin Luxon's head which reads

"I appear to have gotten lost on my way to the studio. Can you help me?"

or perhaps:

"I intend to continue being a damned fine British baritone the moment I've gotten my limit of ducks"

Mummy, who is that man

and why does he look so cross?

This is a newly appointed Convenor of a Canons Committee and the best laid plans which the mice and he presented to General Synod that afternoon had gone completely tits up.

He should think of it as a sort of hazing ritual. A lay delegate, a clergy delegate and a bishop flip a coin in the men's loo to see who'll do the deed this year. And what shall we do? Shall we get the new Convenor liquored up and put him naked on a train for Cornwall? Maybe lure him into a tattoo studio?

Or why not simply defeat his flagship motion from an unexpected corner?

A fine young fellow. You can't help but like the guy and think back fondly back to the years when you were young and your limbs grew all out of proportion and you had these feelings you didn't understand.

The Scottish Episcopal Church
General Synod Meeting

It's been a heck of a week or so. I was down in Glasgow on Thursday, thence to Derbyshire for a conference (more on that later) from Monday until Wednesday and our General Synod has been in session since yesterday morning. Lots of fun and too much travelling. I'm sitting next to the 'naughty corner' of disgruntled clergy who are abstaining and objecting to everything. I'm told that they're not all from Glasgow Diocese but I don't believe it. They've already been referred to as 'the usual suspects' by the chairman of the last session.

Forensic references - sounds like Glasgow to me!

Clearly they will have no portion among the just!

The very contentious 'Congregational Status' Canon has finally been resolved after two years of bitching.

Regularly updated text and audio updates of the proceedings of General Synod can be found HERE.

Whipman Week Service in West Linton

The Whipman and his Lass were piped to church this morning by the West Linton Pipe band. West Linton has a Common Riding as do other communities in the Scottish Borders. It has its roots in quite distant history. Communities would have a 'posse' which went out to maintain boundaries and where necessary to reclaim property and livestock which had been stolen by marauders. Every year the community 'elects' a young local worthy to be the Whipman and he, in turn, names his Lass. Gareth and Tracey are this year's Whipman and Whipman's Lass.

I must really stop wearing my specs on my head. I'm remembering a television show I used to watch as a small child called 'My Favourite Martian'.

The things you see from the train...

Especially when you *don't* have your camera with you!

I was riding on the train from Glasgow yesterday. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon. I was sitting at a table seat, facing the direction of travel ,and reading a course manual on church growth which I'd pinched for a few days from the Diocesan office. A bit bored. Reading a bit and looking out of the window from time to time. Suddenly we pass a grassy meadow in the very centre of which are three young women dressed all in black doing some sort of unison dance.

As I recall, the gal at the head of the line was fairly buxom and had a head of flaming red hair.

I looked across at the guy on the other side of the table. He was still reading his potboiler and obviously hadn't noticed. "Bubble bubble, boil and trouble" I muttered to myself.

Scotland's always had a spare witch or two - this must be some sort of resurgent ritual reserved for sunny Thursdays at the beginning of the warm weather.

And I went back to my reading.

Twenty minutes later I'm bored again by a lot of affirmations set out in bullet point form about 'thinking big' and 'bringing ministry to the people'. I look out the window.

This time we're passing through a planted field - filled with ankle deep somethingorother - and there's a young man dressed in a black suit with a waistcoat, wearing wellington boots and running with big hopping steps through that field waving at the train and carrying an open blue and white umbrella - all this on a sunny day.

Again - nothing from the bloke across from me reading his book and breathing through his mouth.

Why? I say to myself, feeling suddenly very uncomfortable.

I'm less prepared, now, to go home and say to my wife 'guess what I saw from the train today'.

I must assume that there is no guild of people planted along the train route between Glasgow and Falkirk High who fill their days by entertaining and confounding train passengers. Things aren't set up merely to present themselves to my consciousness. Whatever people are doing as you pass them on the train will doubtless have some logic of its own. But fecked if I know what it might be.

I worried Caireen would feel my forehead or wonder what my friend in Glasgow had put in the coffee he served me when we were meeting.

And she didn't think I'd gone nuts. Or at least if she did she didn't say.

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.