A Sermon

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 10:25-37

You’ve heard it said that “familiarity breeds contempt”. Sometimes we know something – a story or a saying - that we’d actually prefer not to hear it again. The story we’re told by parents and grandparents that seems to be a truism – we roll our eyes when we hear it yet again, one more time. I suppose that the term “good Samaritan” provokes a bit of a yawn. So-and-so is a good Samaritan – meaning that he serves on all sorts of committees – a good Samaritan – a do-gooder – someone who might not be a lot of fun in a conversation at a houseparty. Someone like that would end up making everybody feel guilty.

And yes – it’s a story that suffers from overuse – but like many of the parables which Jesus told he is, in fact, answering a question in such a way as to change minds and to change people’s perceptions. To tell us something we didn’t already know and in a dramatic fashion. It’s a shame, then, that the story suffers so from over-use.

A lawyer – or a teacher of the law – depending on your translation asks him a question. There’s something in the tone of voice of the lawyer who addressed Jesus that gets the readers back up from the get-go. Luke tells us that the question was asked to “test Jesus” but we’d have known that from the question itself. The questioner is a lawyer, after all. It’s Jesus who appears to be in the witness booth. The lawyer asks what is necessary to inherit eternal life – a very general question. Jesus asks him what is written in the law and the lawyer comes back with the two great commandments – love of God and love of neighbour. A general answer to a general question but Jesus plays along and tells him that - yes - he has it. Do these two things and you will live. Ah, says the lawyer, thinking that Jesus is guilty of imprecision – “and who exactly is my neighbour”?

There we are – the world is filled with different people. Some are friends and some are not. Tall and short, familiar and unfamiliar, rich and poor. All of them have some sort of status based on their relgion and nationality, whether they pay taxes or don’t, whether they go to church or don’t. They’re thin or fat, black or white, pleasant or unpleasant. Neighbour is a huge category – who, amongst all these people in the world is “my neighbour”.

Because we all have enemies – we may have national enemies who live in the next country over and who have invaded us in living memory. We have people who are guilty of notable crimes and about whom the tabloid newspapers scream popular indignation in three inch high headlines. We have within our borders troublesome sub-communities who live in slums on the edge of town and who are accused of being a vector for crime and disease. And these are just the targets of community lovelessness. As individuals we can name off lists of people who have offended against us and who have never said sorry. There are, it seems, people who are not only difficult to love but who we would be forgiven for not loving.

This is the problem with sweeping laws and pronouncements. Love your neighbour. But who do we have permission “not to love”. To whom does the second part of the two Great Commandments “not” apply? How does this apply in the real world where we must practise discernment – we who have a finite pool of resources and who might end up squandering them on loving the wrong people. This seems to be the import of the question on the lawyer’s part. He is hoping that Jesus will prove himself hopelessly naïve or, even better, that he will name some popular and hated character as the proper object of a faithful Israelite’s love and will bring upon himself scorn and infamy.

Jesus answers this with a story:

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead".

Ah, a victim, the lawyer thinks It will be important to know who this victim is. The victim, however, is just referred to as a man. The setup is not what the lawyer would have hoped. This is the one who must be loved – the neighbour. But is this anonymous person a neighbour? He is someone of my clan, my religion? Is he the person covered by the definition of “neighbour” in the Great Two Commandments? Is he a Roman or a tax collector or a thief or a traitor – a criminal or a foreigner?

The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is a lonely downhill road which leads through sun-baked wilderness. I have driven it and cannot imagine walking through such a lonely place. The cliffs are peppered with caves. It is a place where men can hide and for centuries have done so. Being waylaid by bandits, beaten, robbed and left for dead is one of those things that can happen to any traveller. Neutral maloccurrence – something that could happen to anybody. It must have been frustrating that the victim of the story – the presumed object of neighbour love has not yet been named and is the victim of quite ordinary violence. We are still in the realm of the anonymous until Jesus goes on with the story.

As the anonymous man lies there helpless and bleeding - a man whose tribe and lineage doesn’t seem worthy of description – there is shuffle of footsteps down the trail and somebody enters the story. This time there is a name given or at least a title. This is a priest from Jerusalem walking down the long seventeen mile hill to Jericho. Without seeming to give it a second thought – the priest changes sides of the road and passes by. A Levite – one of those who assisted the priests with the sacrifices in the temple also shuffles down the path. He too switches sides and gives the injured man a wide berth. It is noteworthy that both the priest and the Levite cross to the other side. Within their communities they are the designated religious leaders. They are people who are held in awe and esteem and who presume to mediate between human beings and their creator. And it’s these men who choose not to see the suffering that is before them. They don’t want to see it. It’s not to be included in their snapshot of the Jericho road. They choose not to engage with the anonymous victim.

Finally a Samaritan – a national enemy – someone from the other side of the tracks – somebody that everyone could reasonably despise, even in polite company comes by and ministers to the man, binding his wounds, placing him on his donkey, provisioning him with a bed at an inn and paying for his keep.

The lawyer’s question is answered but not in the way the lawyer had hoped. He would have hoped that amongst all the needy people in the world some distinction could be made between those who “qualify” and those who do not so that the loving Israelite would be able to judge between those who are worthy of love and those who are not. If Jesus had told a parable about an injured Samaritan then he and the Lawyer could have disputed at great length about whether a Jew was obligated to help a Samaritan but Jesus has an entirely different instrument. It doesn’t measure the worthiness of the object of love. Jesus won’t even name and identify the victim in this story who remains anonymous throughout. The instrument Jesus uses in his story is one which measures the willingness of the subject to be loving and not the object who remains mute and unidentified. Jesus story makes a distinction between those who will love the victim and those who will not.

Because that, ultimately is the choice we need to make. In any time of disaster, in every struggle we have with another human being, in every case of family strife, in every case of blatant discrimination in our schools or workplaces, The meter on the wall is not measuring how loveable the object of love is – whether he or she fits the category of neighbour or, more properly, falls into the category of “neighbour” but how loving the person at the other end of the equation is – how loving the giver of love, care is – how willing he or she is to be and to become “neighbour”.

We can do nothing to choose or change the status of the person who needs help. We inherit situations that are beyond our control. We cannot control which side of a border a needy person falls, or how they speak or who their ancestors were.

What is in our control is not who they are but who we will become to them.

Let the Good Times Roll!

Holidays begin today. Down to London Gatwick this aft, thence to Vancouver tomorrow morning.

It's never been possible...

...to begin one's holidays completely fresh with nothing hanging over one's head. There is always some burden of the heart or the schedule which gets in the way. At least that's the way it works with me. I'm working flat out to get the second of these - that which falls within my control - out of the way, completely and utterly.

As for the first, well...that's life.

My lady wife and I are going out to British Columbia and the end of the week with our young one and meeting up with our slightly older one at the other end. We'll spend some time with the truly old'uns on the other side and will spend a little over a week with them on Saltspring Island. I shall try to behave myself in the presence of my mother's magnificent cooked breakfasts and get up early enough to get some good pictures of the beach.

We're then heading off to the Sorrento Centre (between Kamloops and Salmon Arm - you know where I mean!) in British Columbia for the week of the 18th-24th. Caireen is going to be doing a creative journaling course there. The young man is going to be doing some drama and I'm going to be hiking around the Shuswap country during the day. We've time together as a family in the afternoon. Think Progressive Anglican Butlins with Mass in an outdoor chapel rather than the usual clown shows (although some of the chasubles one sees from time to time might qualify for the latter).

We then top things off with a drive through the Rocky Mountains before flying back to Glasgow from Calgary on the 28th.

So for the next day or two and the remaining tasks - Ora Pro Nobis!

A Sermon
The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
2 Kings 5:1-14

Naaman the Syrian general had a problem – one which was an embarrassment all around.

On the one hand he had proved to be very good value to his monarch who appreciated his services.

In ordinary circumstances, he'd have been both feared and envied by those below him on the pecking order. He would have reasonably expected to be seen at the King’s right hand and to have been in the inner circles of the court were it not for a devastating skin disease which caused people to keep their distance. Naaman the Syrian general, it seems, was affected by leprosy – a disease with a terrible social stigma attached to it – and people consequently gave him a very wide berth.

What was his king to do? An intractable problem presents itself and one must imagine the dilemma facing the king. He depends on the skill of men like Naaman – aggressive and opportunistic – able to command loyalty among the troops, able to analyse an enemy’s weakness, able to pick the right moment to pull back and the right moment to strike forward.

Valuable man, Naaman, but the King can’t shake his hand. He can’t have him over for supper. Or have him sit in the royal box at the victory parade. An intractable problem – one that doesn’t admit of any ordinary solutions or strategies - so intractable, in fact, that when a little slave girl in the in the entourage of Naaman's wife says that back home in her own country there’s this prophet who performs miracles and heals the sick, he tells the King who gives it both a first and a second thought. He has no choice. He listens to the little girl. His decision to act seems more forced than faith – more the result of desperation that it is a faithful step into an uncertain future – but whatever it is, it takes place.

And what does he do? He writes a letter to the King of Israel – which is the little girl’s home country - and he tells him that he’s sending him a this leprous general to be cured.

And that’s when the second intractable problem emerges. This time not for the Aramean King but for the Israelite King who reads the letter he’s received several time to glean its meaning. What does this mean that the king of a not always friendly neighbouring country is sending his favourite general – a man with an incurable condition – to the neighbouring country to be cured. This doesn’t seem like a request, it smells like a trap - this is an unfulfillable condition and an unmeetable demand issued by one country to its neighbour.

The Israelite king cries out to his ministers: “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.”

What to do, then? Dig the moats deeper and reinforce the walls! Call up the reserves. Send out the spies. Get the beacon fires ready on all the hilltops so that they can be lit at a moment’s notice to let the army know when the enemy has crossed the frontier. All the automatic processes kick in which countries rely on to protect themselves from threats but at the heart of the nation, in the king’s court, there is anxiety and despair. The king tears his clothes with fear and rage.

You’d hardly notice the little messenger ushered in to corner of the room - a messenger from the prophet Elisha. Why, prophet asks, are there work companies on all the high places adding parapets to the earthworks? Why are there men in armour drilling in formation in the village square? Why are there diplomatic notes being sent to and fro across the borders. And your majesty “…why have you torn your clothes? Let (this Syrian general) come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel”

The king is surrounded by experts – experts in the defense of vital infrastructure, generals in command of troops, diplomats skilled in intrigue. And now the prophet, through the agency of this nameless messenger shifting his weight from one foot to the other and looking aimlessly around at the sweets on the table and the tapestries as he waits for an answer – is counselling a response which seems both faithful and hopelessly naïve. Meet the threat – treat it, instead, as challenge. Let Israel be a source of healing for the nations as it has claimed itself, since Abraham, to be. Simply say “yes” rather than drawing the shutters and calling forth the troops.

There is no record of the conversation which ensued, no “blow by blow” of the king’s decision to follow the prophet’s advice and to embrace and affirm the challenge that is presented to him and to the nation. How he comes to deal with this intractable problem we’re are not told but the very next scene opens with the chariot and the retinue of Naaman the Syrian General clattering up to Elisha’s front door and poor leprous Naaman climbing out and waiting there. And waiting until finally one of the servants appears with instructions to walk over to the river and wash himself.

And now we have a third important man facing a situation standing at a crossroads facing an intractable problem. This time it’s simple human and national pride which stands in the way. He is consumed by anger. A commander of thousands he has left his own country, his servants and underlings not only to be ordered around by a foreign prophet but, in fact, to be handed a few cursory instructions by a foreign prophet’s servant. The instructions sound like a recipe: “Go wash in the Jordan and you will be clean”.

Is he not an important general? Has he not left the greatest country in the world? Has he not just walked past the greatest rivers? Could he not, at least, have been greeted formally and had a solemn prayer? Could not the great prophet of Israel have done something with a little magic to it, could he not have waved his hand about and invoked the deity? He seems ready to turn around and leave until his own servants take of the risk of bringing him to his senses: had the prophet given him a difficult task to perform he would have done it without question – a monster slay or a difficult pilgrimage to accomplish. Why not, then, do something simple. Why throw away such an opportunity in a fit of pique? He goes to the river and washes. He emerges completely restored and makes a confession of faith in Israel’s God.

The voices in this story which provide the sense of the narrative come in from the side, obliquely. They are voices which can, potentially, be ignored. Powerful men are deliberating in the midst of crises and yet it is the voice of a child which provides opportunity, the voice of a prophet which brings the powerful back to first principles and the voice of an underling speaking “out of turn” beside us which speaks to us of common sense that our pride and anger will not allow us to see.

Subtle voices which we will ignore at our peril.

It may be that we need to run out of clear and easy answers before we will rely on them. Perhaps we need to be facing the wall before voices we would never listen to in a million years suddenly start ringing out loud and clear.

Testing the hypothesis -
a recipe
Luke 10:1-20

You've heard the parables about what the Kingdom of God is like, or even better, like unto. All those images of treasures in fields and pearls of great price swirl around in your head. You'd be forgiven for wanting, eventually, to see this 'fleshed out' in the course of ordinary life and discourse.

Where can this phantom thing, variously described as being within you or around you or among you, actually going to take shape?

Forget "like unto". Nobody talks like that anymore.

Well sir, we'd like to give you the opportunity to see it whipped up in front of your very own eyes. Keep it simple, enjoy the company and have fun.

Serves 69 (plus the cook). Benefits many more.

A) Ingredients

Virtually nothing. A call or commission to go forth would be advised. The message that the Kingdom of God has drawn near where the name of Christ is proclaimed is probably essential and should be pinned where clearly visible near your work surface.. This is one of the few recipes with no further ingredients beyond a willingness to stir the pot and an enthusiasm to see the results. Other versions which include such things as sandals, purse and bag are to be avoided at all costs and will make the results cloudy and resemble something bought off the shelf.

B) Method

Assemble your group and then go in in various directions. Disperse widely. Big cities are not necessarily the best option. Everyone goes there. As you mix vigorously you will be surprised at how things come together. Don't be surprised if not all parts of the resulting batter show the same welcome response. Quality of parts rather than uniformity of response is the order of the day.

As your results increase, don't waste time overmuch on the parts of the batter which haven't turned out.

These things happen.

Separate your product. Rejoice in what is good. Dispose of what isn't in a suitable container.

Some likelihood exists of serpents or scorpions crawling onto the work surface. Don't worry. It's nothing that a good whack with a wooden spoon won't solve. Take some authority.

Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Monday, June 28th, 2010

I went to the funeral last Wednesday of a better man than me.

Now, I don’t rate myself with a number on a scale and then note other peoples’ scores when attending or officiating at their funerals. Sometimes, though, you hear an account of a person’s life and attributes – ringing true to the much or the little you knew them yourself - which makes you wonder how you’ll ever muddle through. You’d certainly never manage that!

It’s not a question of time and relative age, Sure, my generation is only now beginning to feel its aches and pains and is not ready to move on - not by a long shot – but the foundation for what this man had built in his family and ministry and within his own soul was founded at a much younger age than I am now. Those opportunities, even in early middle-age, are now lost to me.

Yes – I attended the funeral of a better man than me.

Jesus said ‘Judge not, lest ye be judged’. We are judged, though – justly or unjustly – by others. Sometimes it’s merely enough to stand in the shadow of people who made better use of their gifts than we have. In the light of better lives than ours we feel the sting of our inadequacy.

Now there are, in fact, millions of better people than me. Ask my wife.

Because the better man can never be me, all I can do is to utter a word of thankfulness for the lives of others lived well and look again at the time and the space that are allotted to me.

Some conversations will never take place unless I initiate them. Forgiveness and reconciliation may not happen until this half-good human picks up the telephone. Strangers will not be welcomed in my neighbourhood or church until this bog-standard individual musters up the courage to step outside his small circle and engage with them

It’s not a competition.

In the best of worlds, beautiful lives would provoke our hunger to make more of what we wake up with every morning.



Audio is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:19.56 - about halfway along the audio bar.

Apparently not a spoof in the Onion

"Dressing for G20 protests is tricky. Look too corporate and you might be paintbombed. Dress like a militant protester, you run the risk of being tear gassed."

The Toronto star has a page on "fashion choices" for those going along to protest at the G20 in Toronto. Does one wear black? Do you bring a facecovering "just in case"? With respect to the peaceful protests being planned this Saturday by the Canadian Labour Congress, their spokesman Jeff Atkinson

"...mused on advice for the protester looking to steer clear of police and militant attention.

“Plaid?” he offered. “I hate to think of people at home in their closet missing the protest because they can’t make a fashion decision.”

An Interview With Tony Jordan 

at the Churches Media Conference

It's midsummer - when Christian concern naturally settles around the Nativity of our Lord.Or so it did, for a while anyway, at this year's Churches Media Conference held at the Hayes Conference Centre near Alfreton in Derbyshire. An interview took place there with the writer of an upcoming four-part series on the Nativity. The series will be presented, helpfully, in a more traditional time-slot this December.

Tony Jordan has had an interesting career - moving from running a market stall in London's East End to writing 250 episodes of East Enders and co-creating Life on Mars - just to name a few of this remarkable gentleman's credentials. The Nativity will run this Christmas with a mix of well known and lesser known actors in the cast.

The interview with Tony Jordan was sufficiently good that it demanded some coverage. There is a link provided at the temporary website of the Churches Media Net to a longer version of this interview (an hour and thirty minutes long), complete with housekeeping matters about seats being available at the front and a pre-interview with the interviewer himself.

What's more, it can only be listened to online.

Which means that those of you with domestic committments will end up getting your heads nipped for sitting glued to the computer with the family around or for coming to bed at an ungodly hour.

I know it's a matter of opinion but I found many of the questions asked at the end fairly pious and a bit trite. The heart of the interview - about the way in which a writer like Jordan comes up with characters for the television shows he writes and how he ended up inheriting the project of the Nativity- was of sufficient grace and moment that it simply "called out" to be topped and tailed and set out in a format which somebody could download and listen to on their way to work.

In a conference which purported to have the Christian presence on and use of New Media as one of its major themes, it would seem that the first lesson is this: if you have a good piece of audio stuffed in some virtual corner the bloggers will want it for their mates to hear.

They could ask.
I'm sure the real Christians among them would ask.

The rest of us will simply steal it - cheeky buggers that we are - top it and tail it and make it something which faithful readers of Raspberry Rabbit (all eleven of them - including Evelyn with the articial leg and the shocking pink lippy - Hi, Evelyn!) - can download onto their Ipods and listen to at their leisure.

There were other bits: Elaine Storkey versus Andrew Copson, the Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association? I didn't pinch that. Andrew Copson was twice the evangelist Elaine was. The BHA could have used that audio in one of their recruiting drives. Does Elaine Storkey really believe that Christians invented democracy?

Spinning the Pope - Catholicism in the Spotlight? Charming fellow, that Opus Dei guy, but I kept expecting the albino monk to come swinging in on a rope at any moment with a knife between his teeth. Too much of the Army of God for my taste.

No - Tony Jordan was the star - by a mile!

The interview was conducted by Michael Wakelin the former head of Relgion and Ethics Broadcasting at the BBC.

Note: The entire interview above is worth listening. Jordan talks about the process of developing a character and his time writing for East Enders and, later, developing the character of DCI Gene Hunt in Life on Mars. The material dealing specifically with The Nativity begins at 19:37 on the Soundcloud bar.

Enjoy!

This is the fourth Churches Media Conference that I’ve attended.

I've been married a little over two years now. My wife looks over the conference schedule and can't see the allure. She imagines that there must be many beautiful young women at the conference, so at our house we simply refer to the conference as "Hot Totty" as in "will my sisters' birthday BBQ in June conflict with Hot Totty this year?"

I try to reassure her that, while the women at Hot Totty are eminently toothsome, they probably have better things to do with their time than interface on any level with complex and aging Scottish Episcopal clergymen whose affections lie elsewhere.

As for the ones who dont, well, they can chase me but they can't catch me.

Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

We hate to wait. We try to figure out what’s coming down the road. We guess. We make stuff up. There’s a lot of that going on with the budget about to be read out today. Speculation is rife. Opponents are already lining up with things they think they know or believe they’ve figured out.

We’ve been prepared for it, even here in Scotland. The chancellor has told us that this is the ‘unavoidable budget’ – the one where we will pay the price for what’s gone on in the past in order to make what is to come workable and liveable. People in the here and now, however, are the ones who will need to do their part and pay the price.

But you and I know this won’t be the end of the story. We’ll wonder why we’ve been targeted by certain taxes or have to pay the price of cutbacks in our sector. “What makes us special”, we’ll ask. Not everybody will have been won over by this time tomorrow.

A coalition government producing a budget must take enormous risks. These are two very different animals welded together – a Tiger-Lion, if you like, or a Beaver-Duck. We're not privy to all the late night telephone calls between convinced Liberals or convinced Conservatives warning that the pure principles of their Party are being put at risk.

Whether or not you believe we’re living in the sort of age which requires an “emergency budget”, we are all familiar – or will be – with those moments when emergency measures are required in our relationships – when bottoms fall out of things, when the rock rolls down the hill and, all of a sudden, the love we take for granted between ourselves and our spouses, or the religious faith which we ‘ascribe to’ but have never absolutely needed become extremely valuable. Our priorities will change in an instant and our creativity “kick in” when the bad news is known, but we’re pointed back to things we had neglected.

Things we didn’t value at the time.


Audio available for a limited time HERE.
TFTD begins at 1:23.13 - about halfway along the audio bar.

After Dinner Speech
at the SEC General Synod

I missed the General Synod Dinner this year and while the conflicting engagement was both important and enjoyable it would have been good to hear Robin Angus' after dinner speech.

The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church in America was in attendance.

There are some in-jokes which non-Piskies might not get but there is plenty to amuse even outsiders. Dr Patricia Peattie, who is referred to on a number of occasions in the speech, is the outgoing Convenor of the Provincial Standing Committee. She is a retired nurse (and professor of nursing) of the old model who, we must imagine, could have reduced the prickliest of old-fashioned male Consultants to blobs of jelly back in the day. She is a highly organized and intentional lady and David Palmer, her successor, has very big shoes indeed to fill.

Ruth Innes has a copy of Robin's after-dinner speech on her blog and it can be seen HERE. Enjoy.

I will forgive him for mentioning pretty well every Scottish Episcopal blogger except me. Then again, we haven't been introduced.

The Presiding Bishop of TEC
at the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church

The Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schiori was invited to speak to the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church this afternoon. She was sitting in the pews during the final presentation of the Inter-Church Relations Committee and a presentation by a delegate at the Edinburgh 2010 Mission Conference. At long last she took the podium and spoked about elements of our shared history, the importance of the Baptismal Covenant in the Episcopal Church and in those churches in whose prayer books it appears in some form and the future shape of our shared ministry in the world.

There will be a video version of this appearing on the Scottish Episcopal Church website and Kelvin's blog. In the mean time, you have an audio version of what was said during Bishop Katharine's talk to us this afternoon. Enjoy!



Update: The Convenor of the Information and Communication Board, Kelvin Holdsworth, had the opportunity to interview the PB at General Synod. That interview can be found HERE.

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Thursday, June 10th, 2010

Good morning,

If somebody referred to you as an"inhibited person" you might not be particularly pleased..
True - some of our inhibitions hamper us. They make it difficult for us to be honest with each other or to relate intimately with friends and lovers. They keep us off the dance floor. They keep us from applying for jobs or from raising our voice in support of a cause.

But some of our inhibitions make it possible to disagree without killing each other. We'd be stuffed without a few inhibitions. Extended family gatherings would turn into battle grounds. A loss of inhibitions can even have fatal consequences. A Scottish police chief is concerned about the role alcohol has played in 14 murders committed around the country in the last few months. He worries that drink-fueled violence will escalate during the World Cup which begins tomorrow. A bottle of cheap vodka, after all, goes for about seven pounds fifty. Trouble is only a transaction away.

We see the way in which young people – particularly young men – get dragged into risky or violent behaviour in the midst of drunken peers. One suspects that with a little more self esteem the individual would be strong enough to stand apart from the crowd.

There’s an old saying - “in vino veritas” – which suggests that the truth comes out with a drink or two. A family gathering or a group of close friends can become unglued or fractious because somebody has done or said something untoward under the influence of a few drinks. Again, you suspect that there’s a price being paid for a lack of honesty in the midst of normal sober conversations. The turmoil was there in the soul to start with – darkness, jealousy and frustration. A cork comes out with a few drinks, that’s for sure - but the contents were under pressure anyway. A little more honesty between family and friends in ordinary sober life would not have gone wanting.

We pay a price for not tackling our dragons in the daylight.


Audio available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:23.15 - a little more than halfway along the audio bar.

General Synod Session One Audio Recap

For the last few years I've been asked to put together a little audio recap of the events of General Synod at the end of each session. This has been filtered into the Scottish Episcopal Church website and has, I gather, been a source of joy and information for unnamed persons who like to keep an eye on what's going on. This year it would appear that the SEC website has crashed at the beginning of General Synod so it's being placed here. For my part I've always found the audio recaps a little dry. As you can see from the pictures (above and below) the Bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church look nothing like a cold war era Politburo.





So my little three minute recap and its similarity to reports on tractor production on the evening news of various Soviet satellite countries in the mid-sixties provides the only similarity.

An interview with Jim McRae

Commander Jim McRae, the Development Director of the Mission to Seafarers Scotland has set up a display at General Synod. I interviewed him about the work of the Mission in Scotland and what clergy and lay delegates might do to get on board this very important and active industrial chaplaincy in Scotland.

The Opening Eucharist and
The Primus' Charge

The Opening Eucharist took place in Palmerston Place and was presided over by the Primus, David Chillingworth. The offering was taken (earmarked for the Sisters of St Margaret in Haiti) and the gifts presented at the altar by a group of Synod freshers.

The Primus’ Charge, positioned as a sermon within the Eucharist, underlined the place of the Church between its understandable craving for security and certainty and the challenges of stepping beyond what we know best into the place where God calls his people. The body of the charge outlined the shape of the discussions which will take place during our meetings and ended with a note of hope about the prospects (backed up by evidence of energy and commitment within the Province) for Mission in a Church which is small but which is “rich towards God”.

The Primus' Charge to the General Synod can be found HERE.

General Synod
The Scottish Episcopal Church
Begins Today

The Primus kicks off by speaking to the Freshers' Group - delegates attending for the very first time.

We are expecting a number of fraternal delegates. Some well-known and some less-so.

Audio feed from the floor of Synod with picture (picture updated every thirty seconds) is available HERE. Have fun. I intend to.

Voices in the Cloud

Off for a few days to the Churches Media Conference in deepest Derbyshire. Very grateful to the Edinburgh and District Churches Council for Local Broadcasting who have sent me along on this three day conference for the last couple of years.

It's an interesting programme and some excellent contributors. I always come back with ideas. I don't always put them into practice though. Gotta work on that.

And then there's General Synod which begins the day after I return. So a busy week all in all.

I am now British (as well)

No longer will I be known merely as "that Canadian fellow". I am now a British citizen (as well).

The ceremony was, shall we say, a little "low key". No portrait of Her Majesty adorned the wall, nor was there a Union Jack anywhere in evidence in the room. It had all the taste of a 1960s-era Soviet wedding but, nonetheless, at the end of the service I was a citizen of the United Kingdom - having taken all the necessary oaths.

My family and the in-laws came to cheer me on.

Thought for the Day
Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010

You should have been with me and the dogs early yesterday morning on top of one of the local hills outside Penicuik.

Scotland was at its best – the gorse in full flower and sufficient rabbits on the hillside to keep the dogs’ interest up.

Back at my desk afterwards, I caught up with the news. It was filled with horrifying details of murder investigations in Scotland and England and the encounter between the Israeli Defense Force and the flotilla heading for Gaza.

Bring on a sense of hopelessness about human violence.
Cue the sound of sabres rattling around the world.

I picked up the habit of reading the newspaper regularly from my father, along with his suspicion that the news does not reflect the good things which happen to individuals on a daily basis. It is a distillation of the most dramatic and frequently the most terrible events which have occurred. As communications occur more rapidly we can follow events pretty much as they unfold – complete with pictures taken on the very front lines. Which tells us something and which doesn’t.

Sunday was Trinity Sunday. One of the themes which recurs on this particular Sunday is the fitness of the world as a place for God to work. The world bears his creative imprint. God has acted redemptively within it and he continues to abide with us. A place with tremendous possibilities. Many of us live in communities and in relationships which are fruitful and nourishing. We are often struck by how noble and honest the men and women around us can be. In spite of what we are assailed with – terrible dark stories and depths of human evil and failing – that remains the truth about the world we live in.

The news may report true facts about a number of events. But it leaves most of us out. It doesn’t always tell the world’s story and it doesn’t reflect its potential.

Much of what is good in our communities and our relationships,
like Rob’s morning in the Pentland Hills,
will never make the news.


audio is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:18.02 - about halfway along the audio bar.

Penicuik Church Float

We've talked off an on for years about the local churches having a float in the annual "Penicuik on Parade". It's the usual affair with cotton candy, cadets marching in perfect step and pipe bands. We tried something last year but it was only so successful. This year, the bull was taken by the horns and one of the local ministers found a stiltwalker, a tractor and a trailer. There were a million last minute glitches but a small group of ministers and parishioners managed to hand out balloons and literature along the whole course of the parade. It looks like we'll be doing this again next year.


The Rev'd Ian Cathcart on why the churches in Penicuik might have a float with David and Goliath at "Penicuik on Parade". Please excuse the lack of a wind screen for the microphone. A note to self has been issued



All present and accounted for: Four local clergy, a Philistine on stilts and a wee boy in cardboard armour.

Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Monday, May 16th, 2010

My parents are over from Canada. They head off this morning on a bus tour of the highlands and islands for five days. They are part of that great crowd of North American visitors who will try to connect with their roots this summer. You’ll see them on the high street. You might roll your eyes when they announce to the young lady behind the counter in the shop that their ‘grandmothers were Scotch’

Visitors are a strange lot, aren’t they?

You see them coming off the ferry in places like Iona as you’d see them walking along the cobbled streets of Jerusalem. At St James and St Mungo’s we get our share of visitors throughout the year. They file into Church at an Easter Vigil or a Christmas Carol service or pop up in the back pews on an ordinary Sunday morning. Pilgrims and visitors – looking for something old and worthy or something novel and even transcendent.

The raw material for this experience is our countryside – our history – our Sunday morning service. They want to be a part of us for a while. They’re the only ones in church who actually read the pew leaflet. In town you’ll see them standing on the street corner reading through the tourist guide. By the time they finish their visit they can tell us things about our city that we didn’t even know.

Grant them this, at least: Strangers, pilgrims and visitors are here on purpose. They don’t find themselves here because they’re in transit or because they were born here.

They’re sometimes a lot more alert than we are. Their eyes drink in more of the beauty and the magic than ours do. Have we grown so used to the landscape – physical or spiritual - that we find ourselves amazed to see people so nourished by it?

And so there’s a gift to be given here – not from us but to us – a prompt, if you like, to rediscover some of the beauty and the sense of what we have forgotten or overlooked.



The audio is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:22.06, about halfway along the audio bar.

nb. This month's "Rector's Letter" in our church magazine was, in fact, a revision of an ordination sermon I preached ten years ago. All the then-candidates are, as far as I know, still in ministry so the original sermon didn't do overmuch damage to their morale.

I try not to revise old material. In my youth I rolled my eyes at the fifty-somethingish clergy who fished through old stuff and updated it for their current needs and now, it seems, I have become what I once mocked.

Rector's Letter, May 2010

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon
son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “You know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”
Again Jesus said, “Simon, son of John, do you truly love me?”
He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”
The third time he said to him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time “Do you love me?”
He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”
Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. I tell you the truth, when you were younger
you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old
you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead
you where you do not want to go”
Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God.
Then he said to him, “Follow me!”
Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them
(This is the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and
had said “Lord, who is going to betray you?”)
When Peter saw him he asked, “Lord what about him?”
Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return,
what is that to you? You must follow me.”

Peter turns around and sees John walking after them
a few paces behind
humming one of his new hymns

What about him? Peter asks. Does he have to feed the sheep as well? Does he have to follow too? Does he also have to die in service?

There is a child’s question here -a question about Justice. Am I the only one who has to do this? What about him, what about her?

There is an adult’s fear of loneliness as well. Will I have company?

And the answer – the grown up answer is – yes and no

Yes, you are the only one who has to do ‘this’ and no, you will not always have company while you’re doing it.

But maybe I need to backtrack: Most of my early essays were filled with the words ‘this’ or ‘these’ circled by the professor because it was no longer clear from the context what ‘this’ of ‘these’ referred to.

Jesus asks Peter – Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? These ‘what’? More than ‘this’ life, represented by the tokens of a fisherman’s livelihood scattered around on the beach – these nets, these spools of braided line, these floats?

Or – do you love me more than these other disciples love me? You, Peter, pre-eminent among my followers, do you love me more than these others do?

The question arising between a man and a woman, - a parent and a child could be playful or maybe it probes at some perceived weakness:

Do you love me (of course you do)
Do you love me (I want to hear you say it)
Do you love me (I suspect that you do not)
Do you love me (I wonder if you know what that means)

I’ll roll the dice and will hold that:

1. When Jesus asked Peter if he loved him more than these that he was referring to the other disciples gathered with them on the beach.

2. He asks the question three times because Peter has denied him three times and

3. That when he asked Peter whether or not he loved him he was wondering if Peter knew what that meant.

Because it is not clear that we always know what love means.

The general moves to the particular:

The general - whether it is love (in general), ministry (in general) or the life of human beings (in general) - is something that can be talked about but never experienced.

We will never meet humans in general. We will meet Stan and Doris and Tabitha and Rex.

Nor will we live in a neighbourhood which is typically working class or typically old money but, rather, live and minister in a particular place with its particular population and its particular history. God (in general) is the god of the philosophers - the idea of god, the possibility of God,

We know very little about God in general

The glory of the Incarnation is that God wrapped himself up in the particular life of Jesus of Nazareth and achieves His highest moment not in the solitary being of a point of light but tied up with the smells and sounds of the Middle East, the dust of the road, the quiet of the Garden, guests at a wedding, the crowded roads of Jerusalem at Passover.

The local church is asked to interpret the fact of the resurrection. The request will be similar in most cases. What does the fact of God’s love mean here? What does it mean for me - in this moment in my life and in the life of my family?

What does Christ say about this?
What does the Bible say about this?
Where is God in all of this?

In all this grief – in all this change?
In this weakness of mine?
With respect to this son of mine, this illness of mine, this loss that I have incurred?

Will you translate the generalities of the Bible, the generalities of the Mass, the generalities that my child is taught in Church school into something which can give me life?

Does this beautiful field of wheat, blond, expansive and everlasting, ever become a loaf of bread?

And then ministry of the congregation, like love, will become knowable and known:

We have the choice of extending our personalities and our energy and our time into the lives and fortunes of other human beings and we decide to do so rather than simply falling into line

We do so not because we are impelled by some Ghostly force (that would not be a gift on our behalf but rather an empty reflex) but because we choose to - we want to - we feel we must.

There is a price to be paid for wrapping ourselves in the life and the environment of another person. Acts of love take their toll on our person, on our time, on our innocence and on our sleep.

But we are not called to suffer for suffering’s sake but for Christ’s sake.

We should be up for a little adventure - the demolishing of a few horizons We’d like to see things go ‘boom’. We should cultivate a healthy and godly curiosity about what people are like on the inside, and entertain the fancy that maybe – just maybe – the parish or the ministry we are a part of might just turn a corner and bring the whole Church with it and that we might have had some small part to play in that transformation.

And why not?

God knows that we’ve waited long enough for something more than this: that we should simply preserve ourselves at all costs – our buildings and our congregation as it stands.

We’ve been there – we’ve done that. We are ready for something more. We might be ready to participate in what God is about in the world - at the risk of seeming foolish, or credulous and at the risk of falling flat on our faces.

John likens it, in the larger story about fishing. We have cast our nets the better portion of the night and have gained only questionable purchase on anything remotely resembling a school of fish.

So why not now – with us – with out particularities of history and personality?

That we would cast our nets for the five hundredth time this time at a different angle and at the behest of a voice which we hear within ourselves and that something would, in fact, pull back – that to our surprise our net would actually grab on to something and we would find ourselves hauling in a miraculous catch of fish?

After a brisk climb and a more leisurely descent down the other side we all arrived at Dryburgh Abbey safe and sound although with a few sore ankles and tricky knees. The Bishop of Edinburgh led his flock on a small pilgrimage along the first wee bit of St Cuthbert's Way - the section joining Melrose Abbey and Dryburgh Abbey.

The weather held - just. An especially good time was had by the four dogs.

Our small collection of parishioners from St James the Less and St Mungo's - all of whom made it to their destinations. It was the first time, in recent memory, that the Diocese has put on a jaunt like this. Folk seemed interested in doing it agaiin.

Abbey to Abbey

Tomorrow morning a group of us are going for a walk with our bishop.

We send the bishop our statistics each year, we reserve a special chair for him in our churches, we are polite to him at Synod.

We don't go walking in the hills with him nearly enough.

All that changes tomorrow. We'll be gathering at the Market Cross in Melrose, visiting Melrose Abbey and then heading out over the Eildon Hills "in the footsteps of St Cuthbert" to Dryburgh Abbey. All this has necessitated complex plans to leave cars in two places so that we don't have to walk back the same way we came.

Packed lunches are in order.

Tonight's Game

One of the betting sites is listing the odds of any of the following teams winning the Stanley Cup:

The Boston Bruins 18/1
The Chicago Blackhawks 4/1
The Detroit Redwings 11/2
The Montreal Canadiens 35/1
The Philadelphia Flyers 16/1
The Pittsburgh Penguins 4/1
The San Jose Sharks 5/1
The Vancouver Canucks 6/1
The Washington Capitals 7/2

My team is clearly at the back of the pack but they're still in there and if Halak's goaltending keeps up with the momentum and we win tonight's game against the favoured Capitals, a few of these figures might change. The Canadiens were down in the series 3-1 at one point but have inched their way up and have forced a 7th game. It ain't over until the fat lady sings.

So we wait and see. I'm staying up late and watching it online.

update: We did win. A defensive game which worked well against this set of opponents but may not against Pittsburgh. Still - a good fast game!

Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends

One of our West-Country types here at St James', Penicuik was telling me that the same record company which manages Lady Gaga and Amy Winehouse is just after signing a group of Cornish fishermen to a major record deal.

The Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends were singing in a pub when a record executive on holiday stopped in for a pint. The rest, as they say, is history.

The Amazon site has a video which doesn't appear elsewhere in a format easily nicked for a blog page. It'll set your foot to tapping.

We have our requisite number of Cornishmen at both St James and St Mungo's. I grew up in Canada and the only West Country accents we ever heard issued from the lips of pirates in movies. Stereotypes are hard to cast off. The old stories about Cornish villagers luring ships onto the rocks with torches are nothing but dreadful slander.West Country folk are, in fact, lovely people.

I am still hesitant to let ours help with the parking for major events at church, just in case one of them should revert to type and, waving a flashlight, tell one of our visitors to back straight into the wall at high speed, with other Cornishmen swooping over the wall and making off with the spare petrol tin, the jump leads and the dog gate.

Like I said, lovely people, but that sorta stuff is not part of our Mission Statement......

You said if we paid them no mind,
they'll stop bothering us!

A website in Britain called Neighbours from Hell in Britain is offering to help "hardworking normal citizens" develop a strategy for dealing with terrible neighbours who wreak chaos for those living in close proximity to them.

Positively Managing Negative Neighbours. Are you suffering or suffered in the past with a nuisance neighbour, noisy neighbour, harrassment, bullying, boundary problems, anti-social behaviour or any form of unwanted neighbour attention or interference? Neighbours From Hell in Britain (NFHiB) can help you to resolve neighbour problems or any issues with neighbours within many different situations, there's no need to be or feel alone.

So is there anything they can do, then, with the good folks in Iceland who, since 2008 and the banking crisis, have made their little nation painfully well-known to the rest of us.

Having neglected their family debts and chequebooks in 2008 they've now clearly forgotten to perform regular volcano maintenance and they've got one heck of a spewing example of such neglect right in their back garden (which they named Eyjafjallajoekull - in order to irritate the Welsh who thought they could only come up with unpronounceable names using few vowels) which is spewing ash and delaying travel for the rest of us.

An ASBO. That's what's needed. It may be too late for mediation by a good hearted local charity.

One of the "must do's" when visiting the Sea of Galilee for the first time (other than seeing if the water will bear your weight) is to sample the famous Saint Peter's Fish at one of seaside restaurants on the Kibbutz Ein-Gev. The Rabbit family are due for a return visit to Israel to visit family in the summer of 2011 except the St Peter's Fish will be in short supply. A two-year ban on fishing the Sea of Galilee will begin this month.

These are a fast-growing fish which, being vegetarian, does not accumulate mercury in its flesh through eating smaller prey fish. It can be eaten in copious quantities with no risk to health unlike the big Lake Trout in northern Canada.

They are one of a large family (1300 subspecies) of the family Cichlidae found in various parts of the world. Africa and Central/South America host the greatest number of these fish and these populations are very distantly related to each other in that the continents were joined in the distant past. In like manner the cichlids of India and Madagascar, related to each other, are examples of the same sort of Gondwanan distribution. The popularity of ciclids as aquarium fish and the intentional or accidental introduction of these energetic and fast-growing fish into the watercourses of Florida or Australia have (unfairly) given such fish as the Tilapia a bad name as a destructive interloper. The particular branch of the Cichlid family represented by the Saint Peter's fish is, in fact, vegetarian. They tend to clear up weed-choked watercourses and improve the habitat for other fishes.

They are definitely a warm water creature and they suffer in the cool water of the Sea of Galilee in the winter time. One of the places they congregate in enormous schools is at the outlet of the fairly warm spring which gushes forth from the foot of the Mount of the Beatitudes, near Tabgha at the north-north-west corner of the lake.

So, if you knew where to drop your net - or if somebody told you - you'd be in business.

Thought for the Day

Good Morning Scotland
BBC Radio Scotland
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

When did you last make up your mind? How difficult was it for you to get married or to change careers?

When I was a teenager, I attended a church service where the preacher asked people to make a commitment of faith – to make up their minds - and to signal that decision by sticking a hand up in the air. I remember the preacher saying:

I see that hand…yes, and that hand too.

Life would be easier if we’d been part of a Golden Age when men and women didn’t need to agonize over decisions – when everything was so blindingly obvious that there really were no decisions to make. Even in a time of national crisis or a family emergency we imagine it would be easier. Adrenaline would take over. We’d be inclined to act rather than to deliberate.

Some of us look back at the collection of stories in our Bibles to find people who, we suppose, had it easy - who heard a voice speaking out of a burning bush or encountered the risen Christ standing on the beach welcoming them. “Bowled over”, we imagine they were, “gobsmacked” even. People like these didn’t need to weigh options like we do.

Except that’s exactly what they did in these stories – from Moses to Saint Peter. These people were presented with promises and challenges which they measured and pondered. You’d be safer to read some silences into the text. That silence is the sound of Saint Peter making up his mind. That silence is the sound of God waiting to see what Moses will decide.

God does not rob people of their right to choose – of their ability to say yes or no. The energy for faith – the energy for community building – the energy required to change your course in life. This is energy which is triggered by decision and every decision you make requires a certain amount of human agony - just enough blood, perhaps, to mark it out as “yours” and not merely the byproduct of events.



the audio is available for a limited time HERE. TFTD begins at 1:18.33 - a little more than halfway along the audio bar.

Happy Easter Everybody. An amazing collection of services in at least two Scottish Episcopal Congregations yesterday. News from others will filter down over the next few weeks. These images are NOT from St James' Penicuik but, rather, from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. We had two baptisms at St James at our Easter service, though, and there were visitors in copious quantities and it had something of the same feel.

It's not evolution, it's just the truth nonetheless

That liberalism and atheism (and male sexual exclusivity) are associated with high Intelligence Quotients. Article HERE. I say Intelligence Quotient instead of IQ in order to prove that those of us who are believers in God and not particularly radical in either our political beliefs or theological constructs (and who just might have "put it about" a little more in our single years than we'd like to admit to our children and grandchildren) still know what the abbreviation stands for.

It's not - as is frequently maintained - a question of evolution. Theism "helps people to be paranoid" and so keeps them looking over their shoulders where, coincidentally, they see the lion and the bear creeping up on them and are able to run away and continue to add to the gene pool. Conservatism helps maintain solid tribal affinities and, hence, community survival. And, as the article helpfully adds at the end, intelligent people don't have large families.

So it's not evolution, then.

It's just a fact.

Well it's good to know that I can relax. It appears that I am as stupid as I feel sometimes and so are many of you. I actually find it strangely liberating! My father told me once that life would improve once I took it to heart that we don't really ever amount to anything. I can relax now.

I do see a few seams in the study as it's being presented on the CNN site and wonder whether any peer review was ever done on this man's work. But that might be, duh, wishful thinking.