10th July
2005
“In touch with our roots”
Last Sunday Pastor Dave spoke to us about making a splash with our lives. I thought that his sermon was very good indeed. You could say that I have continued on the theme of making a splash this morning. Look at how I am dressed: my trousers are Scottish Tartan; the tartan of the McInnes clan, the clan of my maternal grandmother whose roots can be traced back as far as records go in Glencoe in Scotland. This is what I wear on a Sunday. Like a growing number of Scottish ministers, I wear robes only on special occasions such as funerals, weddings, civic services and Remembrance Sunday, which in Britain takes place in November.
You could say that I am making a splash, but it is as nothing compared to the Splash that Celtic Christianity made 1500 years ago, and indeed, Celtic Spirituality is making today. This sermon reflects upon strands of Celtic Christianity and the relevance of these strands to life today.
Celtic Christianity or Spirituality has enjoyed an upsurge in popularity in recent times and many people, myself included, believe that it has a message that is very relevant for today’s Church.
Unfortunately there is little written material describing the early Celtic Church and indeed faith before that. So we have to take care not to invent something that never was.
Celtic Christianity was established in Ireland by St Patrick. It evolved from an early form of Christianity in Western Europe, probably brought to Ireland from the Brittany region of France. Celtic Christianity was the first form of Christianity to come to Scotland, from Ireland. St Columba established his mission base on Iona, on the West Coast of Scotland in 563. Legend has it that Columba was exiled from Ireland, and Iona was the first land to be reached from which he could no longer see his native shores.
As I said, there is not a lot of written material from those early days, but we do know a little about the characteristics of Celtic Christianity, and it is those characteristics that form the foundation of my ministry in Scotland.
Let me say a little about some of them and why I think they are so relevant. I am going to touch upon attitudes to the environment and creation. I will say something about attitudes to life in general, and about mission, and finally something about Celtic Christianity and Religion.
In terms of attitude to the environment and creation, the Celts saw a very clear connection between God and Creation. On the one hand they saw God in all things - in the ordinary - and that’s why you find Celtic prayers about making the fire, milking the cow, making the bed, and so on.
They also saw God in the extraordinary: they believed that in experiencing creation at its deepest levels, they were led to a form of communion with God. For example: being moved by its beauty, by both the complexity and the simplicity, being moved by the inter relationship between the whole of the created order, being left speechless by its majesty and grandeur. In a sense, to them, Creation was a Sacrament. Wouldn’t the world be a much richer place if that view were to prevail today?
Creation was/ is, a priceless gift which we have inherited, and which we must preserve and pass on as the inheritance to the generations that will walk these lands long after we are forgotten. As a Church, it is our duty to hold creation in trust.
In terms of their attitudes to life in general, the Celts believed, very much, that life was a blessing, that in life we had the greatest of all gifts from God.
Their approach to life was as though the glass were half-full, not half-empty. In their view we were not all born sinners. This view may well challenge some of you. We do all have the potential to sin, or to do wrong, but we are not born with the hallmarks of sin branded on our souls. On the contrary: we were born with the love of God in our hearts. As a Church, I believe that it is a God given task to proclaim that life is a blessing, and to show that fact in the way we lead our daily lives.
The Celts were also very keen to let God out of the box. So many people keep God firmly locked up and conveniently out of the way, only to be let out on a Sunday, for an hour, at best, and at worst, only for funerals, weddings and the occasional baptism.
Since they saw God in all things, the Celts knew that you could not keep God locked up. So they followed what we would call a 24/7 faith, worshipping God, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, trying to live as we believe God wants us to live, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
In my view, this is the foundation for mission. I believe that mission is best done on a softly, softly approach. We are all missionaries trying to live our faith and attract people to it, through who, what, and how we are. I do not think that you can shout people into Church membership, nor can you frighten them with threats of hell and sin.
The Celtic missionary style was to build relationships and gain trust. It was to talk about faith within relationships, and in time, as people discovered what they believed, they could then be invited to join the Christian Church. Set this against what could be called the Roman missionary style. I am sure that you will recognise it: preach the Gospel; present the message; invite the decision to follow Christ; welcome converts. Can you sense the difference in the approaches? It is heart against head, right brain against left brain.
The early Celtic missionaries went to live amongst the people. They were not set apart. They spoke to people about their understanding of God, and we have today the development of Soul Friends. They built relationships. They lived and experienced ongoing daily life, in all its shades.
One of the other missionary characteristics of the Celts was that they sought to build upon the existing faith systems of the native people, in the main, simple farming and fishing people, for whom the presence of God was amply manifest in the rough materials and activities of everyday life. The rich, earthy spiritual practices of the Celts melded gracefully into the inviting Christian vision of divine love. Compare that approach to the Spanish treatment of the Incas.
The Celtic approach to mission led naturally to a similar approach to worship. It was the way of the mysticism of John’s Gospel: the way of intuition and emotions; of imagination; of art; of music; of poetry. It was the way of experience. The Roman way, on the other hand, the way of the Church built by St Peter, was the way of the head: logical; based on concepts and language; rational and structured.
Let me finish by saying a little about the Celtic way to God and Religion and Spirituality. The faiths of the world include Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and so on. Faiths describe the belief systems, for example: what is God like? what happens when you die? etc…
Religions are the way in which different people practise their faith. Within Christianity we have three main strands of Religion: there is the Eastern Church; the Roman Catholic tradition; and the Reformed tradition. When we think about religion, we are dealing with the rules and regulations, the way we worship God, and buildings and money and so on.
Finally, there is Spirituality and this, for me, is the way in which people allow a belief in something more than they can see or touch, to influence how they live their lives.
Spirituality tends to be a bit less encumbered by rules and regulations. It is more responsive to God touching human hearts, and it seems to me that, first and foremost, the early Celts were spiritual people as distinct from religious people.
I believe that it is the spiritual road that we should travel today. It is the spiritual road that the world is begging us to travel.
Our lessons today spoke of our Biblical Roots. The Old Testament reading was from Genesis, and the New Testament from the prologue to John’s Gospel.
The Celtic way it is the way in which our Christian roots evolved in one part of Western Europe.
I believe that these are roots that we must reclaim. Our Celtic roots lead to a God who is more relevant today, than ever before. They lead to a God, for whom the world is crying out .
I commend the way of Patrick and Columba to you.
Let us pray:
May we walk in the name of God,
The hand of God keeping us,
The love of Christ in our hearts,
The strength of the Spirit enfolding us,
The Three each step aiding us,
The Three each step shielding us,
The Three each step protecting us.
Amen.
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17th July 2005
Take care of my lambs
Feed my sheep
Follow me
These words of Jesus are recorded towards the end of John’s Gospel. What is that people say? The most important things are frequently said at the end of a conversation.
These words: take care and follow me seem, to me, to sum up the whole of our faith in action. As I read them a few weeks ago in the context of a sermon back home in Scotland, my thinking strayed to the weeks ahead and a request that, while here in Brighton, I might preach on the Celtic Church. This request sat well with me, for Celtic Spirituality serves to provide rich preaching ground with its focus on God in all things, seven days a week and twenty four hours a day, the Church in the Community, the creation of Colonies of heaven, and its awareness of thin places.
Moreover, I have a sense that my spiritual roots lie somewhere deep in the Celtic Way
However, a similar request to preach on the Reformation presented me with a little bit of a challenge. I am not “big” on the Reformation.
For three years I studied Divinity at Edinburgh University and daily walked past a twenty foot high bronze statue of John Knox, austere, hand outstretched in the act of proclaiming God’s word. At this year’s General Assembly the hand was adorned with a “Make Poverty History” armband!
Are you aware of the Make Poverty History Campaign and its goal to eliminate Third World Poverty? If not, can I suggest that you ought to be, because it seems that the most obscene wrong that we - you and I – commit is the condoning of unequal distribution of global wealth, closely followed by the rape of creation and global warming. The human race is destroying its own habitat through self-centred, wanton abuse of resources. Last week’s bombings in London were horrific, but they have to be set in context with the G8 Summit and its efforts to address third world poverty and global warming.
About a month ago, British news headlines were full of the fact that the Whitehouse Website had just accepted that humanity’s abuse of resources was one contributory factor in global warming. The overwhelming view of the rest of the world is that humanity’s pollution of the atmosphere is the major cause of Global Warming.
Look at your children and your grandchildren. Do you want them to have a planet on which to live in the future? Should the cost of petrol rise to $10 a gallon?....Perhaps I’d better stop. I was warned by my friends back home not to be political….
Back to John Knox…..
As I said, this year he was wearing a make poverty history arm band. Generally speaking, the students rarely give poor old John a thought. Countless numbers have walked past him through the ages and probably most have ignored him completely.
Anyway, although I am not “big” on the Reformation, I have given it some thought, and have come to the conclusion that we are probably the poorer for our lack of attention to it. I commend Diarmid MacCulloch’s book to you.
In America, you celebrate Reformation Sunday on the last Sunday of October, commemorating one of the significant events in the history of the Reformed tradition. It was on October 31, 1517, that Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg, and in many senses, set the Reformation ball rolling, the ball centred on the debate about justification by faith and justification by works: being made good in the eyes of God either by what we believe and the strength of our faith, or by what we do and the quality of our good works.
I had considered drawing partly from the Book of Romans for this sermon on the Reformation, and what it says about that debate. However I thought again, because this morning’s passage from John’s Gospel is probably a more fundamental cause for Luther’s protest against the practice of the Religion of his time being supported.
Take care of my lambs
Feed my sheep
Follow me
If the pre Reformation Church had been doing just that: caring for the people - all the people - the vulnerable, the marginalized and the poor, as well as those for whom life was comfortable…..
If it had been following the teaching of Jesus Christ: Love God and love your neighbour as you love yourself…………….
If love and care had been the ethos of the pre Reformation Church…………
then Luther’s protest would most likely have fallen on deaf ears. However this was not the case. In many cases the Church was corrupt. The Church existed to worship the Church. Religion had replaced God. The Celtic roots, that were so important to so many, had almost shriveled and died. The Church was the puppet of the monarchy and the aristocracy….…and the poor?
Well, they were not even good enough to watch the Sacrament of Holy Communion let alone participate in it.
In the face of this corruption Martin Luther stood up, spoke out, and a new way to God was mapped out. And we have been following that way ever since. We have had almost 500 years of balanced faith, worshipping God rather than Religion. We have had 500 years of caring for the poor, standing alongside the marginalized, standing with the vulnerable….. Have we? …Oh, how I wish it were so…….
At our 9.00am service in Kirriemuir, we have been working through a passage from the Book of Acts, each week, and time and time again, I have been aware of the tensions of the period between the establishment and the free flowering of faith, and the free flowering of the teaching of Jesus.
Little seems to have changed and there is the very real danger that we are the Pharisees of today. In a similar way I have a growing sense of realisation that we need to return, very quickly, to that Reformation commitment to put God before self, and to put Spirituality before Religion.
Not for the first time do I find myself in complete harmony with the writings of Matthew Fox. I don’t know if any of you read Matthew Fox. He may dance a bit too closely to the edge for some of you.) Let me read a little of what he says …
"I have great respect for what Luther achieved when he
protested against corruption. I also believe the church needs a reformation
more today than it did 500 years ago,"
He calls for a new awakening for Christians. In one of his latest books he
argues that we are confronted with two versions of Christianity: one,
fundamentalist and characterized by a Punitive Father God, a rigidly
hierarchical church structure, a belief that we are born of original sin,
intolerance of lifestyles that do not conform to ours, and a fear of
science.
The other version: a loving God of justice and compassion,
earth centered and eco-conscious,
interfaith and lifestyle tolerant, it embraces the feminine, believes in
original blessing and encourages scientific thought. Fox believes that
"Religion is not necessary, but spirituality is;" He believes it is time
for Christianity to choose whom it will follow: an angry exclusionary God,
or the loving God who opens the path to wisdom.
And again I quote: "At this critical time in human and planetary history, when the earth is being ravaged by the violence of war, poverty, sexism and eco-destruction, we need to gather those who offer a future that is one of compassion, creativity and justice ,to stand up and speak their conscience together as never before.
Religion ought to be part of the solution, not the problem."
Take care of my lambs
Feed my sheep
Follow me
How would it be if these words were taken to heart by us, lived out by us, every day, all day, really lived out by us? The Reformation for which Fox calls , (the Reformation that Luther, Calvin, Knox and so many others began,) the Re-formation of our commitment to Jesus Christ and our commitment to God would strengthen this church and increase its relevance.
Love would be such a focus that nobody would ask “What?” or “Why?”. All would see its purpose and want to be part of a true colony of heaven, here on earth. Amen
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24th July 2005
In this sermon, I intend to speak about the Church of Scotland as it is nowadays , as well as the Christian Church in Scotland, and I want to do so in the context of the lesson from John’s Gospel:
I am the vine; you are the branches
I was talking to Pastor Dave on Friday and saying to him that there is really very little difference between 1st Presbyterian Church here in Brighton and the Glens and Kirriemuir Old Parish Church. Much of what you do is what we do. Many of your strengths are our strengths. Many of your challenges just the same as ours. And like us, you too have Jesus Christ as the vine and the members as the branches.
It is a good picture to describe the Church as an organisation. It is a good picture to describe the Christian Church in the land. So let me use that picture of the vine and the branches, and push it just a little to include roots, trunk and branches.
In Scottish terms, as I have described in previous weeks, our roots lie in the Celtic Church, and the Catholic- the universal- Church which evolved. In a sense what had been the core trunk divided. It was torn apart in some cases, in the 16th Century, at the time of the Reformation. I will leave the detail of that to your own reading, but just let me leave you with this thought:
We have religious extremism and persecution at the moment, but what we have is nothing compared with what has happened in the past. Consider the Inquisition and the deaths and torture that resulted, the persecution of women. As a matter of fact, we have records back home that say that the minister of Cortachy Church (the picturesque little church in the photographs we saw a little while ago) was absent from his pulpit one Sunday in the late 1600’s.
Why?
Not because he was ill, nor because he was on holiday, but because he was present at the burning of a witch at the head of one of the local glens. That took place only 400 years ago.
Today’s extremism is to be wholly condemned. Yet, it is but nothing compared to our past. I am digressing…….
At the time of the Reformation the trunk of the tree in Scotland, or rather in Britain, divided. On the one hand lay Presbyterianism, and on the other Roman Catholicism. One set of roots, two key branches. In the four hundred years that followed, the Roman Catholic Church followed a fairly consistent course.
The other branch split again: the Anglican tradition and the Church of England; the Protestant tradition and the Church of Scotland.
In my opinion, the Anglican Church sits between Presbyterianism and Roman Catholicism. Anglicans do not have a Confession of Faith as we do.
They focus more on liturgy than we do. They have a hierarchical structure of Government with Bishops and Arch Bishops. We are governed by the Presbyterian, committee-based approach. Some of the Anglican clergy actually sit in the House of Lords and are part of the British government. This is not the case with us, the Church of Scotland. And it is with us that I want to stay…..
To get back to my tree…..
The trunk of the universal catholic church, from 400ad to 1500ad, then the split into major sub trunks: Roman Catholicism; the Anglican Tradition; the Presbyterian Tradition.
In Scotland that Presbyterian trunk split again in the 19th Century, and we had the formation of what became known as the Free Church.
In the early part of the 20th Century there was a process of re union, although the Free Church still survives strongly today, especially in the northern highlands and islands. The Free Church would not have women ministers or Elders. Frequently there is no organ. Services are in Gaelic and are generally more austere, and Biblical interpretation is far more literal than in the main Church of Scotland.
In a sense, that is a brief picture of the roots and the trunk of the Christian Church in Scotland.
(There are many independent Christian Fellowships, but typically, they have much fewer members than the National Church.)
Let me draw three things to your attention from what I have said so far.
Firstly we have the same roots: Jesus Christ, God and God’s Word.
Secondly, we may think that we are civilised, but, you know, the gap is thin. I have already spoken about thin places in a positive sense. Let me use that phrase again: thin places…but this time I use the term as a warning. We have to be ceaseless in our vigilance, witness and practice of God’s presence in our lives. “Love God. Love your neighbour as you love yourself,” has to be the constant mantra that we say to ourselves.
The third thing I want to say is born out of my observation of the huge number of independent congregations in this area.
Be aware of those who claim to have a telephone line to God. How do they know?
Be aware of those who claim to know all the answers. Are they aware of all the questions or just those that suit their political ambitions?
Be aware of those who tell you how to live your life. God has given us the gift of freedom. The choices are mine. The choices are yours.
Be aware of the establishing of little groups that gather around magnetic personalities. When the personalities go, so often the structure goes with it.
The death of Marshall Tito and the fall of Yugoslavia in the 1980’s and 90’s illustrates that.
And here is a fourth and practical point. What is going to happen to all the buildings in the long term? When the Church of Scotland split in the 19th Century a whole heap of new churches were built. At the start of the 21st Century we have this huge millstone around our necks. What do we do with the buildings that are now surplus to requirements? What message does a picture of empty churches send out on a Sunday?
My one concern about the Christian Church here in Brighton is the diversification that I see. However that worry is appeased by what I have experienced here.
Let me end by quoting an Anglican Bishop. (If nothing else, Church of Scotland ministers know how to use resources, and how to avoid re-inventing a wheel that already exits.) The Bishop of Portsmouth writes about the Church today:
We need to have the courage to face the (sometimes scary) new questions that we are experiencing, to have the faith to explore tradition’s resources critically, to have the humility to accept and reflect on our context instead of pretending it is something else, or somewhere else, and to have the hope that enables us to engage in reconstruction, and own up to the fact that some of the things we do and say may have to be superseded by something else
– all these are the marks of the faithful Christian in any age. The challenge is to realise that God is God regardless of who we are and where we are, and that our prayerful, thoughtful discipleship is a small part of God’s work.
We need the capacity to be reticent, and not try to say everything on every occasion; the capacity to be confident about the centrality of God in our lives; and the capacity to be self-critical, and to see all our forms and structures as provisional.
These are worth cherishing, in our quest for a spirituality that is vibrant, realistic, and God-centred; a spirituality that is relevant to his Church.
It is relevant to this Church
It is relevant to my Church.
May God give us the grace and the wisdom to unite around the quest for a spirituality that is vibrant, realistic, and God-centred.
In God’s name,
Amen
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31st July 2005
Meanwhile these three remain
Faith, hope and love
and the greatest of these is love
Chris and I have had a truly great time with you. It will be your love that will live long in our hearts. We have met some wonderful people, been to great places, and enjoyed your welcome and hospitality. Your hot weather has been murder! There are a great number of people who do not understand Queen’s English, spoken as it ought to be. Your drivers have, in the main, been very gracious, (pretty hairy on the freeway) but gracious none the less….only the occasional toot….And we have been very impressed by the dexterity of drivers who are able to phone, change gear, smoke and turn at an interchange - all at the same time!! Do that in Scotland and, if the police catch you (and they most likely will) you are liable to end up walking! Now there’s a thought for Americans!!
We have visited many interesting places, including Niagara Falls with its huge contrast … one of the great wonders of the world on the one hand and all the modern tourist tat on the other.
We went to see the Detroit Tigers at Comerica Park, ( there had to be a down side to our visit!) They lost, and Pastor Dave was sad. I was actually impressed to see that the Rev David Mihocko walks in the footsteps of many Church of Scotland ministers who attend soccer matches. In total anonymity, he was able get rid of all the frustrations of the day, by giving loud advice to the players and the referees.
We went to Kensington Park and the mill pond in Brighton. We were at Howell nature reserve as well as numerous golf club bunkers, the local shops and Birch Run where I was fortunate to buy a polar tec fleece jacket for under $40 and a pair of shoes at Marshall’s for $15 - a Scotsman’s heaven.
We went to the Henry Ford and Greenfield Village, and the Ford Rouge Plant, all topped by a visit to Hell. I was surprised to be let back out!!
And a trip to the Buick Open …..
We have had a great time and, in a nutshell, we have experienced Christian Love in action.
It was actually during the visit to the Ford Rouge plant that I began to see the bones of this sermon knit together. I knew that I wanted to talk about the Church of the future, your church and my church, but I wanted a local starting point, something with which you might relate. I think, and I hope, that I found it at the Rouge.
Ford staff will be happy with that and I do hope that the GM folks will not switch off. For those of you who have never been to the Rouge, you must go, it is a fascinating experience. There is a film introduction to the plant and during it, I noticed the following phrase. The narrator, speaking of Henry Ford, said “he had left a legacy of constant improvement and reinvention.”
For me, that clicked as being something to which the Churches should aspire in God’s name, serving God through a commitment to constant improvement and reinvention. I had actually heard that phrase before. It had been used by a Benedictine Monk with whom I am friendly. I had asked him how these guys had managed to survive for 1500 years, living in their communities (not the same monks living for 1500 years, but the Benedictine Order…)
His reply was that they just kept reinventing themselves, but, he added, around the fundamental truths of the Christian Faith: faith, hope and love. My friend was in Kirriemuir for the weekend, and on the following Tuesday was flying to Poland to speak to Volvo’s corporate lawyers about community, belonging and team building. I commend him to Ford and GM.
OK…… so to the church of the future…….
What will it look like and will you be leaving it as a legacy of constant improvement and reinvention?
In automobile terms how many of you would want to drive around with Model T’s as your main car? None of you, I am sure. Think of the bumps and the lack of air conditioning, let alone all the safety and modern technical gadgets. How many of us, though, still want a Model T church? The church of our youth, unchanged and unchanging?
We have to take a leaf out of the Benedictine book and constantly re invent ourselves constantly seeking only the best, for God. And we will do that if we build a church of the future that is based upon love.
Here are some cornerstones of my church of the future. It will be a church that works with its neighbours. You have started that in Brighton with Love Inc and I commend that initiative to you. The churches in this area are combining to provide support and guidance for the poor. I wonder aloud, though, how the three PCUSA congregations in Livingstone County could work as a group? Something in me says that Jesus would be dismayed when churches compete with each other rather than co-operate in his name.
The Church of the future will be a place of soft skills. It will be a place of the heart, a touching place where people can set their spiritual roots and find them nourished on an ongoing basis.
Are you familiar with the term soft skills? For me these are the skills of human interaction and relationship building, and you know, I wonder…..
Can we have a relationship with the God who said “wherever 2 or 3 gather in my name, then I am there” if we cannot have a relationship with each other?
Let me give you an example. I invite you to look around this Church, right at this moment. Are there people here that you see regularly whose names you do not know? Are there people here that you have never spoken to?
I know that people come to 1st Pres here in Brighton because it is a friendly church. They have told me. Folks say the same of my own Church. In the past we were reckoned to be unfriendly but we have worked hard at being welcoming these past 12 years, and we have succeeded (so people tell us) but there are folks in my congregation - regular worshippers - who do not know those with whom they are worshipping . Our strengths are in welcome and relationships but we also have a long way to go. Soft skills will help us get there: becoming better at listening, empathy, compassion.
The Church of the future will need to major on soft skills if it is going to meet the needs of the folks of the future because we now live in a world of self centeredness, loneliness and isolationism. I can bank and shop from my computer, but I can’t experience human warmth from my computer.
I can’t experience unconditional love from my computer.
I envisage the church of the future as a place of co-operation and a place of soft skills; a place where people are encouraged to develop a sense of confidence in their faith, building upon the likes of the Kerygma work that you are doing. Some of my folks would give their back teeth for the opportunity that you have to learn about the Bible in the depth of the Kerygma course. Take the chance, but think also of other needs.
In Kirriemuir we did a one year course that looked at spirituality and how we see God, how we understand God and how we apply that understanding to our lives, both secular and religious. It seems to me that if we want to worship God we should have some idea of what we are worshipping. Yet how many of you have actually spent time thinking about God? how many of you have spent time thinking with someone else prompting, guiding you?
The Church of the future will need to offer that support as well, because if it does not, then folks will look elsewhere for help in what is our ground.
There will be confidence too, to talk about feelings, concerns and joys; confidence to talk about doubts, illness, what is eternal life?; is there a Hell Heaven as well as a Hell Michigan?
In many ways the church of the future will build upon the past, and for me, it will build upon the Celtic values that I have been speaking about:
 | seeing God in all things; |
| nurturing creation; |
| 24 / 7 God; |
| creating colonies of heaven, thin places, sacred spaces and touching places; |
| engaging with rather than big stick thumping mission; |
and so on…..
As I have travelled this past month with you, I have met people who are well on the way to being the kind of Church that I have described, as well as one or two who still hanker after a Model T Church. However, that is life.
You are just like the folks back home, and like them, I know that you will build upon your areas of agreement and work through your differences of opinion, because this past month, time and time again, I have been struck by the love that underpins life here in this Congregation.
You have faith
You have hope
and above all
You have love.
Amen.