Sermons - November 2023

HOLY COMMUNION, ST. COLUMBA'S, PONT STREET
SUNDAY 19th NOVEMBER 2023

Let us pray 

Lord, help us to enfold our words in silence and to enter the silence which enfolds Your living  Word that we may learn the wisdom born out of the silence of the womb even Jesus Christ, that  Word made flesh - Amen 

St. Matthew 6;28b 

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow … 

Last Sunday, I conducted the Remembrance Day service at Cellardyke. This included marking  the Memorial Stone. The kirk was full. Amongst the congregation, there were representatives  of the armed and emergency services. 

There were a lot of young people too – parents and young children, the Sea Queen and her  attendants, the scouts and cubs on parade, the two captains from the Wade Academy who read  the lessons. 

Afterwards, I spoke to a member of the congregation and said how impressed I was that the  children were so well-behaved observing the silence and respecting the act of worship. ‘They  were well warned!’ came her cynical reply.  

This was probably true but I do not believe for a moment that this is what commanded their stillness and attentiveness for it doesn’t happen always when young people are in attendance  on other occasions. 

No matter where it happens, the Act of Remembrance is literally awesome. It commands our  attention not because it is about war or peace but because it is about service and sacrifice, the  sacrifice of life itself. 

‘Greater love hath no man than this …’ says Jesus. And what is our natural response to this? It is  awe. We are awestruck by the courage, the heroism, the self-sacrifice. This is what gathers us all  up into a profound and collective silence! 

In all the political controversies of the previous week, our nation was united for two minutes on  Remembrance Sunday. And this two minutes was not full of political opinion, inter-racial  division, religious bigotry but silence! 

Right at the heart of this two minutes is something which defies all our attempts to put into  words. It’s love, a quality of love inspired by Christ crucified on the cross! It is a love born out of  silence and silence is its awesome home.  

I think some would say that for a Church of Scotland congregation to initiate a ‘Festival of  Silence’ is counter-cultural. Afterall, the distinguishing feature of our Kirk is the centrality of the  Word and the importance of preaching. 

Despite all our words, there is a lot of silence enfolding the Kirk. In the first of its defining  Declaratory Articles, we read that the Church of Scotland ‘receives the Word of God which is  contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as its supreme rule of faith and life’. 

The Kirk is saying that there is not necessarily a one to one correspondence between the words  contained in the Bible and the Word of God. In this it refuses to define precisely the relationship  between the two, preferring to enfold its understanding of the Word of God at that point in a  profound silence.

In the fifth of its defining articles it writes about our Confession of Faith and how it relates to its  office-bearers famously declaring that they have ‘liberty of opinion in points which do not enter  into the substance of the Faith’. But it is careful not to define with any more clarity what it  means by ‘the substance of the Faith’. 

Once again, silence prevails. Instead of more words no further attempt is made to pin down the  substance of the Faith. What exactly must an office-bearer believe? It is not defined precisely.  What exactly is the Word of God? It is not defined with any precision.  

Instead, silence prevails and inspires respect for the other in the primacy of love. Just as the  nation’s two minutes silence unites people of differing political and religious opinion, so these  silences in the Kirk prioritise not the words which may seriously divide but the love which is born  out of the eternal silence of God. 

It may be unfair of me to say that silence must be a more elusive commodity in the great city of  London than it is in the ancient university town of St. Andrews where we live or even on the  shores of Loch Fyne where I was brought up. So the provision of carefully curated opportunities  to experience silence is to be commended. 

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus enfolded himself in silence. His words were born out of the  silence of God and he discerned this Word of God by regularly withdrawing from the crowd.  ‘Now during these days Jesus went out to the mountain to pray and he spent the night in prayer  to God.’ says St. Luke. (6;12) 

Out of an experience of prayer, the disciples ask him to teach them how to pray. And here in St.  Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus teaches them about coping with worry and securing their well-being by  encouraging them to return to nature and the silence enfolding the lilies of the field. ‘Consider  the lilies of the field, how they grow …’ he says. 

He doesn’t lead us to some ancient text from the Torah nor the prophets but to the natural  world. It opens us up to the possibility of discovering God. ‘The heavens declare the glory of God  and the firmament sheweth his handywork.’ sings the Psalmist. 

In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul articulates a natural theology. ‘Ever since the creation of the  world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and  seen through the things he has made.’  

As children growing up in Ardrishaig, we were mesmerised by Mr Carr who lived in a nearby  tenement flat with his French wife. Often we would see him feeding the birds at the edge of a  bush-lined path leading up to his flat. 

He didn’t scatter breadcrumbs or bird seed on the ground. He took some food out of an old  tobacco tin, placed it in his hand and waited until the birds flew down, sat on his fingers and  broke their fast. 

He was a man of deep silence. I never heard him say a word. But the memory of his patient  engagement with the natural world was awesome and intrinsically inspiring to a child.  

In his sermon, Jesus invites us to consider the lilies of the field. According to my Chambers  Dictionary, ‘to consider’ means ‘to look at attentively or carefully’. In particular, Jesus wants to  draw our attention to two things – their silent beauty and contentment. 

They have done nothing to earn their beauty. They simply grow in the grace of God.

Their eloquent silence articulates the secret of contentment. They are not busy striving to be  something else. Their contentment is the more surprising because their existence is transient.  Here today, gone tomorrow. 

In her startling essay on education, Simone Weil, twentieth century teacher of mathematics and  philosophy, begins, ‘The key to a Christian conception of studies is the realisation that prayer  consists of attention.’ The one is a preparation for the other. Both have their home in silence. 

She makes an extraordinary connection between school studies like Latin or geometry and  prayer. What leads the student from the one to the other is the development of attentiveness  which she sees as crucial to academic study. Education is not about passing exams but  increasing attentiveness.  

She goes on to argue that remaining attentive to the academic task in hand will reward a  student on the spiritual plane whether they are successful in the solution of their geometrical  problem or not. The insights gained from the attentive struggle will redound in mysterious ways.  It is born out of silence. 

And here Jesus does not simply direct our attention to the lilies of the field but to the mystery  inherent in their growth. He doesn’t say, ‘Consider the lilies of the field!’ simpliciter. But,  ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow!’ 

In the Parable of the Seed Growing Secretly, the farmer plants the seed and then he leaves it to  grow. How does this happen? Jesus says of the farmer, ‘He knows not how.’ It is a mystery which  belongs only to God. 

For his part, the farmer is called to exercise a ministry of patience or long-suffering. The waiting  is full of silence. The mystery of growth takes time to unfold. It takes courage and strength to  wait in this silent uncertainty. 

In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul challenges the divisions within the church so much  so that when they come to eat the Lord’s Supper ‘each of you goes ahead with your own supper  and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk’. (11;21) 

The mystery of the Lord’s Supper is being disturbed by divisive words. It happened at the  Reformation. Some said that the bread and the wine were ‘naked and bare signs’. Symbols!  Others said that they were transformed into the actual flesh and blood of Jesus.  Transubstantiation! 

Our Kirk said neither of these things choosing to enfold the Sacrament in a mysterious silence.  In our Scots Confession, approved by the Scots Parliament of 1560, it says that our union with  the body and blood of Christ: 

‘… is wrought by means of the Holy Ghost, who by true faith carries us above all things that are  visible, carnal and earthly and makes us feed upon the body and blood of Christ Jesus ..’ 

Our communion is beyond a defining set of words and is enfolded in a silence where faith can  grow and in the understanding that in some mysterious way the bread and the wine become  what Jesus says they are, his body and his blood. 

Here St. Paul quotes Jesus as saying, ‘For as often as you eat the bread and drink the cup, you  proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.’ ‘To proclaim’ is to announce or preach. It is something  done with words.

But the command is simply to eat the bread and drink the cup. They are silent activities. In this  silent feast, there is a proclamation not enfolded in defining and divisive words but in a  mysterious silence created by the Holy Spirit. 

The Kirk’s proclamation is born out of our obedience to the command, ‘Do this in remembrance  of me.’ And it’s enfolded in a silence which challenges those who would seek to define our  ministry too tightly in human words. 

Do you remember what happens after the Last Supper? Jesus goes out into the Garden of  Gethsemane to pray. ‘I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here and stay awake with me.’  he says to his friends. But they don’t. They align themselves with God. They do not respond to  his agonising prayer.  

Jesus is enfolded in silence – the silence of sleep and the silence of an absent God. Where has  God gone? Why doesn’t God answer the prayer of one who so eloquently ministered in his  name - healing the sick, raising the dead, embracing outcast and sinner? 

Experiencing the silence of God has a profound effect upon Jesus. It actually changes his  prayer. He no longer asks, ‘Let this cup pass from me.’ But, ‘Your will be done.’ The powerful  silence of God encourages him to hand himself over to the very One who has abandoned him  in the silence of his prayerful struggle. 

Here Jesus places his trust not in the presence of God but in the absence of God, not in the  affirmation of his enduring love but in the loneliness of one who has clearly been abandoned.  Like the Sacrament and our Kirk’s constitution, silence is the creative gift of the Holy Spirit which  wrought for us our whole salvation. 

So ‘Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.’ and learn the lessons revealed within its  silent growth and form. For hidden in this English word ‘consider’ there is a Latin word. You can  see it in its latter part. ‘Sider’ is Latin for ‘star’ or 'heavenly body'. 

‘To consider’ is to look attentively at something as one would look at the stars. ‘The heavens are  telling the glory of God …’ This leads us to consider any education or activity as a preparation  for the spiritual life through the nurture of attentiveness, being present to the task, the person,  the galaxies of stars! 

So ‘Consider the lilies of the field …’ And not just the lilies but look attentively at everything as if  you were looking into the heavens and at this intersection between earth and heaven  discover God’s secret enfolded there in silence, revealing something beautiful and unexpected  shining out at you like a new star!

HOLY COMMUNION, ST. COLUMBA'S, PONT STREET
SUNDAY 26th NOVEMBER 2023 11.00 A.M.
(CHRIST THE KING SUNDAY)

“Come, you that are blessed by my Father,
inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;
for I was hungry and you gave me food,
I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink … Matthew 25

Today, the Church year gives us Royal Sunday.
The feast of Christ the King was first marked in 1925,
just a few years after the end of the First World War,
to counter a tide of rising totalitarianism.
Pope Pius XI instituted it, in the hope that a world ravaged by war,
might find in Jesus’s humble kingship, an alternative
to empire, nationalism, consumerism, and secularism.

Since Royal/Christ the King Sunday, 2022,
we have had a real time coronation,
food for thought about kings and crowns.
What images/memories do you retain from that day in May – its parade and pageantry?
How do you feel about worshipping a King?
Is King Jesus a helpful image, or leave you a little uneasy?

In C16th Scotland, the reformer Andrew Melville offered a bracing reminder,
declaring to King James VI: “Sirrah, ye are God's silly vassal;
there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland:
there is King James, the head of the commonwealth;
and there is Christ Jesus, the King of the Church,
whose subject James the Sixth is,
and of whose kingdom he is not a king, not a lord, not a head, but a member.”

Perhaps less politically explosive, that sentiment was echoed by Elvis:
“There’s only one King – and that’s the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Kingship may not be the image of choice for our own age,
but the language of kingship is deeply embedded in the gospel story.
Wise men from the East enquire:
“Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?”
Mary prophesies how her child will:
“… bring down rulers from their thrones,”
Jesus’ first adult, public words:
“… the kingdom of God is at hand.”

Kingship is even more woven into the tapestry of Easter.
Palm Sunday, the highly symbolic, provocative entry into Jerusalem:
“See, your king is coming to you, gentle and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
Later, Jesus dragged before the Roman governor, for three reasons:
“We found this fellow subverting the nation,
opposing payment of taxes to Caesar,
and saying that He Himself is Christ, a King.”
Pilate faces an angry mob outside the praetorium,
then grills Jesus alone back inside. “Are you the king of the Jews?”
“My kingdom is not of this world,” Jesus replies.
“My kingdom is from another place.”
“You are a king, then!”
“Yes, you are right in saying that I am a king.”

When Pilate weighs up the innocence of the man before him,
against the political cost of maintaining that innocence, he folds.
He declares the man innocent,
but then lets his soldiers flog and humiliate the prisoner
with purple robes and a crown of thorns.
Their fake and exaggerated obeisance, a reminder - to victim and onlookers –
of who wields the real power.
“Shall I crucify your king?”
“We have no king but Caesar!”

Just in case anyone is missing the point,
or is feeling the stirrings of rebellion against an occupying power,
fastened to the cross above Jesus’ tortured head, a parchment,
an additional mockery of a subjugated people:
“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”
In Aramaic, Latin, and Greek – let the world understand.

There is objection: “Don't write - The king of the Jews -
but this man said/claimed, to be king of the Jews.”
“I have written what I have written.”

In time, believers will come to think of Jeus, not simply
as the king of the Jews, but “the king of kings” (1 Timothy 6:15, Revelation 19:16),
the “king of the ages” (Revelation 19:3),
and “ruler of the kings of the earth” (Revelation 1:5).

So, if the biblical account asks us to proclaim Jesus as king –
What type of king is he?
From today’s scriptures – old and new – he is a king both of mercy and judgement.
Calling to account as well as protecting the people.
That is neatly conveyed by the thought:
The shepherd is a king, and the king is a shepherd.

Ezekiel calls out the "shepherds" of Israel who serve themselves
and ignore the weak, the injured, the sick, the stray, and the lost.
Pushed and shoved their way among the flock.
Consequently, the sheep became prey to hostile predators.
God himself will therefore defend the weak and the lost,
and but also judge the sleek and the strong.
Echo into this week's gospel
about a king who sits on his throne judging “all the nations”, separating sheep and goats.
Matthew alone records the parable/vision of the Last Judgement,
placing it along with several other stories connected to the end of times.
Urgent stories told, as his own death approaches.
Last words summarise what is passionately important;
what you want to hand on, to survive once we have gone.
For Jesus: understand that God’s judgement rests,
not on the orthodoxies of our beliefs,
but the willingness to ease the burdens of others.

The good deeds – food, shelter, care – are not revolutionary;
Rather, a regular and recognisable part of Jewish teaching -
responsibilities attached to the nation’s religious calling.
What is radical, is the claim – if you do these things (feed, water, clothe, tend, visit)
to the least of any of these, my brothers and sisters –
you do it to me. To Christ.

Again: apparently, the judgement is not between those who believe
and those who do not believe:
The criteria is, between those who care and those who do not care.
How we treat each other is the barometer of our faith.
James Forbes, the former pastor of Riverside Church in New York City:
“Nobody gets to heaven without a letter of reference from the poor.”

Soon, we will enter into Advent, a season of waiting, longing, and listening.
Soon we will hear the first cries of a vulnerable baby
who redefines our notions of kingship, authority, and power.
“But on this Sunday, here and now,
we are asked to see Jesus in places we’d rather not look;
asked to remember that every encounter we have with “the least of these”
is an actual encounter with Jesus.
“It’s not a metaphor. It’s not wordplay. It’s not optional. (D Clendenin)
The person huddled beneath the blanket is our king. Let's see him.”
Or as the homeless shelter prayer for volunteers asks:
“Lord, help us to see you coming through the line tonight.”