On 13 March 1996, 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton arrived at Dunblane Primary School and murdered sixteen children and their teacher. The Dunblane massacre as it became known, remains the deadliest mass shooting in British history.  He entered the school gym, in which a Primary One class were preparing for a PE lesson and started shooting.  Within four minutes he had killed sixteen children, as well as their teacher, Gwen Mayor, injuring fifteen others. He then turned the gun on himself. The children who died were all aged between five and six years old.

Two days after the shooting, a vigil and prayer session was held at Dunblane Cathedral which was attended by people of all faiths.  The following Sunday the Queen and Princess Anne, attended a memorial service at Dunblane Cathedral.

In trying to find hymns that offered an appropriate response, John Bell realised that there was precious little and so he wrote one.  The result is the hymn “There is a place prepared for little children”. I find these extracts very moving:

There is a place where hands which held ours tightly
now are released beyond all hurt and fear

There is a place where al the lost potential
yields its full promise, finds its true intent

There is a place where God will hear our questions
suffer our anger, share our speechless grief,
gently repair the innocence of loving
and of belief.

At 11:47am on Monday in Southport, three young girls were killed in a “ferocious” knife attack at a Taylor Swift-themed summer dance and yoga class. Eight more children were injured, with five left in a critical condition. Two adults also suffered critical injuries in this truly horrendous incident. A 17 year old boy from Banks in Lancashire a few miles away has been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder, all in all a tragedy for so many people.

Few of us, if any, can fully comprehend what the parents of the Dunblane children went through or what the parents of the Southport children are going through. All we can do is hold them all in our prayers.

Lord of all compassion

We pray for all of those caught up in the tragedy in Southport.
For the children who have lost their lives
For those who are worried about people they love
For those who will see their loved ones no more
For all whose lives will never be the same again
Lord Have Mercy.

For those in need of the peace that passes all understanding
For all who turn to you in the midst of turmoil
For those who cry out to you in fear and in love
For all whose lives will never be the same again
Lord Have Mercy.

For those in confusion and those in despair
For those whose tears are yet to dry
For those in need of your unending love
Lord Have Mercy

Lord of all compassion

Father and unfailing friend,
be with all the people of Southport 
as they try to take up the threads of their lives again
facing the future with fresh courage and renewed hope;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Blessings
James

In the last year two members of our congregations who were over 100 years old have died. Eric Dawson from St Finnbarr’s died in September last year at the age of 100 and Barbara Rae in the St Andrew’s congregation died only a couple of weeks ago at the age of almost 104. Both were stalwart members of their congregations and contributed so much to both them and the communities in which they lived, they affected the lives of all those that met them.

At Barbara’s funeral, I was reflecting on how much has change she saw born as she was in the immediate aftermath of the Great War. When she was 19, Britain was was once again plunged into war and Barbara lived and served through the second world war, and all its after-effects – a life changing and life affirming experience for so many of that generation. Barbara’s war included the blitz of Liverpool were she worked but she was at the time still living with her parents in Birkenhead. A bomb badly damaged their family home in May 1941 and they had to move out, but they all survived. In one of life’s coincidences, in the 50s, Barbara and husband Willis moved to the same road, some 10 doors along.

Every week in the Church Times, there’s a short piece printed from the archives and I found the piece from 20^th June 1924 fascinating. It concerns an international advertising convention held in London in July. As a sign of how much times have changed since Eric and Barbara were children, it’s interesting to note that a programme of religious services and meetings had been arranged to satisfy the spiritual needs of delegates to the convention:

“On Sunday morning, July 13, it is proposed that the delegates shall choose between Westminster Abbey, where two thousand seats are to be reserved for them, and the Bishop of Durham will preach, and sitting under Fr. Knox in Westminster Cathedral. In the afternoon there is to be ‘a great inspirational meeting’, and in the evening a special service in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and others for Nonconformists. Such recognition of religion is, of course, to be welcomed, but we confess to feeling a little uneasy about the two days’ discussion on Church advertising. ‘The personal touch in Church advertising’, to mention the topic of one of the speakers, sounds suspiciously like a form of vulgarity which we devoutly hope will remain for ever in its native land across the Atlantic.”

Church Times Archive 20th June 1924

There are those in the church who believe that the best route to evangelism is through advertising, but the idea somehow sits rather uneasy with me. In my view, the best way to attract people to our faith is by example. If in acting out our Christian faith, we set an example that causes people with whom we have interactions to think – whatever it is that motivates them is something that I could do with a little of.

Leo Tolstoy wrote that:

“he became a Christian because he saw that the men and women round about him who believed in the faith, received from it a power that enabled them to face life and death with peace and joy”

On the other hand, Friedrich Nietzsche, the nineteenth century philosopher, wrote about Christians and Christianity. He praised Christianity as a religion but he never became a Christian. When asked why not, he said:

“For a group of people who claim to believe in Resurrection, none of them looks redeemed”. Oh dear!! 

In contrast Eric and Barbara clearly thought that a sign of Resurrection Joy is looking and acting redeemed and by so doing, bringing a sense of hope to others that’s tangible and irresistible. They were, to put it simply an inspiration to us all and an example for the rest of us to follow. May they both rest in peace.

Blessings
James

Christmas, Lent, Holy Week, Easter and Pentecost are behind us and we have now arrived at the Feast of Trinity and the start of what is often referred to as ‘ordinary time’.  Since December we have reflected on God’s coming to earth as a human child at Christmas and the change that makes to God’s relationship with human beings, we have reflected on our relationship with God in Lent.  The levels to which human beings can stoop to get their own way and to stay in power are in many ways the focus of Holy Week with God rising above it all in the Resurrection at Easter. 

We have heard about how God the Son appeared to His despondent disciples during the seven weeks of Easter, culminating in His Ascension to be reunited with God the Father. Finally last week we reflected on God the Holy Spirit descending upon the disciples empowering them to continue the Son’s teaching and action in the world. ‘God in three persons, Blessèd Trinity’ as that well know Trinity hymn ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’ puts it.

In my sermon last week on the Feast of Pentecost I said:

“The Ascension doesn’t mean that Jesus is abandoning them, that He’s running away. He’s leaving so that something more powerful can take his place. He repeatedly tells them what it is that will take his place. He tells them that he is sending them the Holy Spirit, the advocate, the Spirit of Truth, the Comforter. The purpose of the Holy Spirit is to do in them what He himself had been doing among them. The message is simple, something that’s familiar (Jesus with the disciples in person) is to be replaced by something that’s unfamiliar (God’s Spirit within them). 

The Holy Spirit is God’s way of being present with them, and also with us, all the time (if we allow that to happen), making our life and work continuous with the life and work of Jesus. So in the same way that God was present to the disciples in Jesus, he can also be present to others through the disciples and through each of us. Everything that Jesus said and did amongst the disciples can be continued in what they and we say and do. The Holy Spirit is the divine power, God at work in and through us as the perpetuation of Jesus presence in the world amongst those who follow him.”

After the service, a visitor (who incidently was from New Zealand and who with a friend from England was nearing the end of their cycle ride from Land’s End to John O’Groats) remarked that it was wonderful to hear a sermon preached about the Holy Spirit, because it always seems to be a rather mysterious and little talked about aspect of God. At that service we also sang one of my favourite hymns ‘Spirit of God, come dwell within me’ (not to be confused with the better know ‘Spirit of the living God’ or ‘Spirit of God unseen as the wind’ sung to the ‘Skye Boat Song’). No, this one is sung to a wonderful Gaelic Air called ‘Leaving Lismore’.  The first verse and chorus are:

Spirit of God, come dwell within me.
Open my heart, O come set me free.
Fill me with love for Jesus, my Lord.
O fill me with living water.

Jesus is living, Jesus is here.
Jesus, my Lord, come closer to me.
Jesus, our Saviour, dying for me,
and rising to save his people

Now that seems to me to capture rather neatly what the Spirit of God is and what the Holy Spirit does for us in our lives and should provide encouragement to us all.

Blessings
James

I was browsing though a book that recently arrived on my desk, when I came across this rather interesting passage:

“Even of those who do come [to church], we find many behaving themselves in such a careless Manner, as if the Worship of God was either not their Business there, or not worth minding. Some sit all the Time of the Prayers; or put themselves into such other lazy and irreverent Postures, as shew sufficiently that they have no Sense of what they should be doing, nor any Awe or Reverence of the glorious Being they come to address. Others lay themselves to sleep, or trifle away their Time thinking of their worldly Affairs. Others gaze and stare upon the Congregations, or keep talking and whispering with their Neighbours; and this is especially observable while the Lessons are reading; as if the Holy Scriptures, though given by Inspiration of God, were not always to be heard, marked, learned and inwardly digested . . . Others there are, who do indeed shew some Inclination to mind the Prayers and all the rest of the Service; but they do it with so much Ignorance, Distraction, or Confusion, as discover that they do not rightly understand the Difference between one Part of the Service and another . . . We often find them repeating after the Minister what he alone should speak, and they should only hearken to. They are also apt, when they join the Prayers, to say them after him so loud, as must needs be troublesome, and disturb those that are near them . . .”

It comes from a tract ‘Directions for a devout and decent behaviour in the public worship of God; more particularly in the use of the Common Prayer appointed by the Church of England’, which was published in the early 1700s. It was apparently so popular that by 1799 it had reached it’s thirtieth edition and had been translated into both Welsh and French.

Just in case you thought that this was purely an English problem and we in Scotland were immune from such deviations from ‘seemly conduct’, closer to home the ‘Directory of Publick Worship of God’, published in Edinburgh in 1645 for the benefit of Scottish congregations included this paragraph: 

“The publick worship being begun, the people are wholly to attend upon it, forbearing to read any thing, except what the minister is then reading or citing; and abstaining much more from all private whisperings, conferences, salutations, or doing reverence to any person present, or coming in; as also from all gazing, sleeping, and other indecent behaviour, which may disturb the minister or people, or hinder themselves or others in the service of God.”

So that is us all told!  It set me wondering if inattentiveness to what is going on in church is such a bad thing or if what my training rector when I was a curate used to call “looking about yourself” might actually be part of encountering God rather than a turn away from God.  It is interesting that whilst Scottish edition of ‘The Directory’ is concerned with signs of inattentiveness that cause noise and distract others, the other document is much more concerned with the internal thoughts of worshippers that manifest themselves in the distracted behaviours.

The last two verses from “Lenten Thoughts of a High Anglican” a poem by John Betjeman, that recounts the day-dream of a man rather distracted by a lady in church, reads:

The parson said that we shouldn’t stare
Around when we come to church,
Or the Unknown God we are seeking
May forever elude our search.

But I hope that the preacher will not think
It unorthodox and odd
If I add that I glimpse in “the Mistress”
A hint of the Unknown God.

I wonder if how we behave in church nowadays and any advice on such matters shouldmake more allowance for the fact that we’re all different in how we encounter God and shouldn’t be quite so judgemental about outward signs and how we interpret them. I wonder what feedback such exhortations might elicit today – perhaps you might let me know:-)

Later on in the ‘Directory’ it says:

“IT is the duty of the minister not only to teach the people committed to his charge in publick, but privately; and particularly to admonish, exhort, reprove, and comfort them, upon all seasonable occasions, so far as his time, strength, and personal safety will permit.”

That last clause certainly gives food for thought and I wonder how Our Lord viewed His ‘personal safety’ when He was out and about in Galilee and Jerusalem admonishing, exhorting, reproving and comforting!!

Blessings
James

“Nothing” David Hume, enlightenment philosopher, historian, economist, librarian, and essayist, maintained: 

“is more dangerous to reason than flights of the imagination.and nothing has been the occasion of more mistakes among philosophers.”

Hume has hardly proved the most popular philosopher in Christian circles. Nevertheless, ever since the era of the Church Fathers many theologians have done their work as if nothing were more dangerous to theological reason than flights of the imagination.

Undoubtedly the imagination can lead us into a mess at times. That happens when we use images in attempts to describe and explain abstract realities as though they were the reality itself. At the same time, was there not value in the view championed by the romantics – that art and the imagination provide an authentic way of reaching reality?  The poet Keats put it this way: “What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth”.

In ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Shakespeare writes:

“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, such shaping fantasies, that apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact”.

What then has any of this to do with Easter and Christ’s resurrection?  Well, I wonder ifsome images help us to understand those mysteries much better than a more literal understanding of what the Gospels are telling us about such matters. If we take things too literally, we might fail to see what the Resurrection actually means and why it’s so important. However a word of caution, in doing so we need to avoid any temptation to try to actually describe what a risen life might look like?  So what can we learn from a moreimaginative approach to Christ’s Resurrection and even our own?

Many Christians find it easier (and bizarrely more comforting) to think about the life and death of Jesus rather than His resurrection. Their imagination fails, once they move beyond Good Friday. Amos Wilder, the American poet, minister, and theologian, observed: 

“Imagination is a necessary component of all profound knowing and celebration”.

Great artists create ‘symbols’ through which we can share their experience and insights. They invite us to enter in our imaginations, into the work of their imaginations. In imagining the human body, artists as different as El Greco and Rodin go behind the familiar appearance of the human body to re-express it in a new way. They move beyondorganic, material bodies beyond mere replicas, to glimpse hidden splendour and beauty. This is much the same as seeing beyond skin colour, gender, disability or any other observable characteristic, to see the real person within. They discover an inner glory in their subjects and, as it were, propel them into another world. The creative imaginations and hands of the artist liberate new life from within the constraints of ordinary life.

The Apostle Paul repeatedly speaks of God the Father as having “raised Jesus from the dead”. Might we see God the Father as the ultimate artist who sets free Jesus’ real bodily glory? In doing this for his crucified Son he promises to transform each of us into the splendour and beauty of what Paul calls the ‘spiritual body’. Paul encourages such an imaginative leap when he recalls an analogy from his Jewish background. Even dull readers, he expects, can marvel at the growth that transforms a grain into a mature plant ready for the harvest.

“But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.” (1 Cor. 15:35-38).

Here Paul invites us for all our foolishness, to make the leap from the lesser miracle of harvest to the great wonder of the risen life: 

“So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.” (1 Cor. 15:42-44).

Over the past 18 months some of us have had to spend quite a bit of time thinking about church buildings, as we work to get St Andrew’s belfry tower repaired. In spite of the fact that once again we’ll celebrate the Resurrection with scaffolding inside the back of the church, Easter urges us to disconnect with the physical world and use our imaginations to see beyond such things as mere buildings.

At Easter, nothing trumps God’s Son being raised from the dead. Without that, Christianity is nothing at all and so as Christians we must never forget that it’s the risen Christ that’s at the heart of our faith and Easter is that time of the year when we try to use our imaginations to enter as fully as we’re able into the mystery of God Incarnate, Resurrected and Ascended and what that means for our lives.

May this Easter be a time of blessing for you and all those that you love.

Blessings
James