1 August 2025 The life of the Good Shepherd has two attractive qualities. The first is compassion, a willingness to share the sufferings of others. This ministry is the fruit of that intimacy which exists between the shepherd and the sheep. ‘He calls his own sheep by name.’ says St. John. He knows their names. He knows our names. ‘Even if a mother should forget her child, I will never forget you.’ says the Lord. ‘I have written your name on the palms of my hands.’ Compassion deepens when names are known. The second is courage. ‘He calls his own sheep by name. ‘ says St. John, ‘and leads them out … to green pastures and still waters and through the valley of the shadow of death where we may fear no evil. Why not? He has gone before us to give us an example. ‘When he was abused he did not return abuse. When he suffered, he did not threaten.’ says St. Pater. Consequently, we discover that by his wounds, we have been healed. So the Good Shepherd’s abundant life is marked by...
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31 July 2025 The fifth century, Italian Saint Benedict is largely unknown save for his famous ‘Rule of St. Benedict’. Unlike other monastic rules defining the life of the monastic community, the ‘Rule of St. Benedict’ is imbued with a rare tenderness. The monks are encouraged to follow the Rule ‘not for fear of hell but for love of Christ’. And the Abbot is to understand that ‘what he has undertaken is the charge of weakly souls, and not a tyranny over the strong’. There is to be no favouritism. Everyone takes their turn in the kitchen. Everyone washes the feet of the community. Everyone participates in the decision-making process even the young. As Benedict says, ‘God often reveals what is better to the younger.’ Treatment of the poor is the exception! ‘In the reception of poor men and pilgrims special attention should be shown because in them is Christ more truly welcomed.’ writes Benedict. ‘For the fear which the rich inspire is enough of itself to secure them honour.’...
30 July 2025 It’s the priesthood of Christ which liberates us from the tyranny of the Bible and the Church or rather the tyranny of those who would replace the authority of Christ with the Bible or the Church! In denominations like our own, the Scriptures are declared to be ‘the supreme rule of faith and life’. So far so good! However, we may be oppressed by particular interpretations of the Word unless we remember that the words in the Bible are not sufficient in themselves. They point to that Word made flesh, even Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Lord. This living Word reminds us that the truth cannot be contained fully in any document nor any collection of words. By their very nature, they are a finite resource and God who is infinite transcends all our finite resources. How can such a thing contain the whole truth of one who is eternal? And so the priesthood of Christ calls us firstly to humility and secondly to a gracious disposition towards fellow Christians who...
29 July 2025 St. Peter writes that we are called ‘to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ’. (1 Peter 2;5) We are privileged people with access to the heart of God. However, this brings responsibility, a vocation. We are called to be bridge-builders, sharing the love of God with the world. This has implications for the missionary endeavour of the Church and for the shape of its ministry. We all have a responsibility to make God’s love known in acts of goodness and grace. These are the spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God. There is a tension between the priesthood or the ministry of Word and Sacrament and the priesthood of all believers. If the ministry of Word and Sacrament is elevated too highly, the people of God may be disempowered to fulfil their rightful ministry. On the other hand, if everyone is a priest with a similar vocation, then the preaching and teaching office of the Church is devalued and diminished and...
28 July 2025 Prince- Archbishop, Father Adelhard, Now at the pinnacle of priesthood, I say to thee, Farewell. Almighty God grant all go well with thee. Be an honour to the church, follow Christ’s word, Clear in thy task and careful in thy speech. Be thine an open hand, a merry heart, Christ in thy mouth, life that all men may know A love of righteousness and compassion. The poem was written by the eighth century Yorkshire schoolmaster, Alcuin. When he was fifty, he left York to take over Charlemagne’s Palace School. It’s from there that he wrote to his friend, Adelhard. He had just become the Archbishop of Canterbury. Alcuin gives him some useful advice. ‘Be thine an open hand, a merry heart.’ And he describes his achievement as ‘the pinnacle of priesthood’. Whether we reach high office or not, the advice which Alcuin gives is well-suited not only to priests and ministers but to elders and members of the Kirk. We desire to follow Christ’s Word and to do ...
27 July 2025 When Eric Fischbacher’s daughter was seriously disabled as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning, his family were strengthened not by a miracle of healing but by the support and strength which they received from family, friends and God! ‘Faith did not take from us all the emotional agony engendered by the accident and Esther’s critical state,’ he wrote, ‘but God’s love seemed to surround us like a warm and comforting blanket, and we like children wrapped in it on mother’s knee, wept.’ What was significant for him was not a miracle of healing but an awareness of God’s presence. At the point of greatest need, they had not been abandoned by God. He was sharing their problem too and that was sufficient to bring them peace and even joy!
26 July 2025 God forgives our sins. Things go wrong. We feel badly. We long to be free. But only love can liberate us – that unconditional love of God which has shown us on the cross that there’s nothing we can do to make God stop loving us. God heals us. The forgiveness of sins is not a prerequisite for healing. Like God’s forgiveness, God’s healing is an act of grace. It is undeserved and unexpected. He heals not because we have been good or said sorry or suffered long enough. He heals simply because he loves us and wants to restore us to health. But not everyone is healed? Jesus dies on the cross despite praying that the cup of suffering would pass. Paul lived with the thorn in his flesh despite asking God to take it away. In both cases, there was no healing – but there was liberation. Jesus’ fear subsided in the Garden of Gethsemane and he had the courage to face death. Paul discovered that God could use his disability in a remarkable way. ‘My grace is sufficie...
25 July 2025 Friends brought a paralysed man to see Jesus. They couldn’t get close. They carried him up onto the roof, removed some tiles and lowered the paralysed man down into the crowd so that Jesus could heal him. Jesus was amazed at their faith. He said, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven.’ The Pharisees were appalled. Deep down, the Pharisees felt that they were justified in not sharing the paralyzed man’s problem. ‘It’s his own fault!’ they argued. ‘Illness is a consequence of sin!’ He had done something wrong and the consequences had been disastrous. The trouble with this argument is that it’s easy to agree with it. Something goes wrong. We want to know why. We search our past and, of course, we can always discover things that we did wrong. We don’t need Job’s comforters to tell us, ‘You’ve been bad that’s why this has happened to you.’ But it isn’t true! Yes – Jesus says to the paralyzed man, ‘Friend, your sins are forgiven!’ And yes – he says, ‘I say to you,...
24 July 2025 Jesus visits the home of Mary and Martha. They both have something valuable to contribute to his visit. Mary’s gift of listening is largely undervalued in our world where people long to have a listening ear. The ministry of hospitality – the warm welcome, the generous invitation, the willingness to set a table, cook a meal, wash the dishes is often undervalued. But it’s through these gifts that the world is fed and watered and Jesus is known in the breaking of bread! The difference between the sisters was not that listening was more important than exercising a ministry of hospitality but that the one was content in what she was doing and the other was not. Martha lacked joy in her work. ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?’ Tell her then to help me.’ Jesus describes Martha as ‘worried and distracted by many things’. She not only lacks joy but she lacks the attentiveness which Jesus describes as ‘the better par...
23 July 2025 Yesterday, we got a beautiful postcard featuring the East Sands in St. Andrews. Whilst there was not a cloud in the clear blue sky, there was a text from the Bible in a white, friendly font, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.’ (St. John 3;16) The familiar text immediately revealed the identity of the sender. It was clearly an evangelical invitation to holiday-makers and residents staying in St. Andrews. Sure enough, it was from the local Gospel Hall offering free Bibles, interviews and a four-week programme of half-hour talks on themes from the Gospel. The postcard was well written. The directions were clear. The dates were clear. The timing was clear. Hospitality was offered and nothing was hidden. It was clear that this was a series of events for people interested in knowing more about the Christian Faith. I admired their initiative for three re...
22 July 2025 The Queen didn’t think that Alice had enough practice at believing impossible things. ‘When I was your age,’ she said, ‘I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!’ ‘Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible!’ Well, that’s not true. But it was one of Scotland’s greatest scientists who said it. I don’t know whether Lord Kelvin lived to rue the day but he made his statement when he was President of the Royal Society in 1895. ‘Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances.’ Who said that? Lots of us. But now Dr. Lee de Forest seems a fool for having said it too. But he was no fool! He was the inventor of the vacuum tube and the father of television. The world is changing all the time. It seems to me that impossible things are happening all the time before and after breakfast. What would Lewis Carroll, the White Queen and Alice in Wonderland make of ...
21 July 2025 I met another retired minister recently and quite by chance. In the course of our conversation, he referenced a particular congregation where a minister was making an impact. He had been in the charge for many years and had nurtured a wide-ranging ministry with people of all ages. I knew the minister and the charge and couldn’t deny the evangelical zeal of the minister. What concerned me about this ministry was the cult of personality which characterised it. ‘What was going to happen to this charge when the minister was called elsewhere?’ As our conversation progressed, I became more concerned by what my old friend was saying. ‘Referring to this charge which we both knew, he went on to say, ‘It’s one of only twelve charges in the Church of Scotland which are alive.’ And then he added somberly, ‘Only twelve!’ My immediate reaction was shock but then I began to analyse what he was saying. What are the criteria for a congregation that is alive? Is it dependent o...
20 July 2025 Our younger son lives and works in Leeds. Whenever we visit, we always go to the Art Gallery. Its tiled café is a wonder. The craft shop underneath always has some tempting art work and the city’s collection of art is certainly worth visiting. In the main hall, there is a painting by Holman Hunt called ‘The Shadow of Death’. A youthful Christ looks as if he is dancing in the carpenter’s shop. There are wood-shavings on the floor and carpenter’s tools on the wall. Mary is kneeling down. She has opened a highly decorated kist. Her attention is caught by a shadow on the wall. It’s the shadow of the youthful Christ with his arms outstretched in dance! And it looks like a man on a cross! The youthful Christ doesn’t see the shadow of death on the wall but Mary, His mother, does. And inside the half-opened kist, we see a crown! It isn’t a crown of thorns as one would expect but a crown of glory! This is the intrinsic shape of the gospel manifested in the li...
19 July 2025 We went to the Pitlochry Festival Theatre recently. We saw two plays – one a comic version of a novel transformed for the stage via a film by Alfred Hitchcock. The other was a musical with a lively cast of young people who not only acted and sung well but played assorted musical instruments. The former had been adapted interestingly. However, it waned in two places and would have benefitted from some rigorous editing. The latter was too loud for nuance and any depth in the tale was drowned out by the desire to entertain. Everyone who goes to the theatre wants to be entertained. They certainly don’t want to be bored. However, a balance has to be struck between diminishing the audience into people who desire instant pleasure from music, comedy and accessibility to people with intellects capable of engaging with deeper matters too. It struck me that what was happening in this theatre was what was happening on the television and in churches. Things were being ‘du...
18 July 2025 Bijan Omrani has written an article in ‘The Critic’ entitled, ‘Striving for the Divine’. His opening illustration was a summary of a sermon preached by what he called ‘a senior Church of England clergyman to a large congregation of hoary-haired church volunteers’. The clergyman invited the congregation to make a prayer fist and proceeded to invite them to wiggle their thumb, their forefinger etc. With each wiggle, he talked about a different aspect of prayer. The wiggly thumb is for thumbs up i.e. things for which to give thanks! You have probably heard this address hopefully not in a sermon but in a piece for children. The idea of ‘a senior clergyman’ speaking to a group of church volunteers in this patronising way makes me thoroughly embarrassed. Omrani writes, ‘Certainly, there are many individual clergy who do justice to the ‘lively oracles of God’. Yet, all too often, the Church of England now smacks of a primary school.’ Is there some of this in ...
17 July 2025 ‘My days are like an evening shadow,’ says the Psalmist and then, ‘but you, O Lord, are king forever!’ This magnificently bold and dramatic change from lament to hymn of praise reminds me of that brilliant musical moment which Benjamin Britten created in his version of the Medieval Mystery Play, ‘Noye’s Fludde’. Noye, his wife and family are all safely in the ark. The rain begins and as the drops become heavier there is thunder and lightning. At the height of the storm, the strings reach a hair-raising crescendo and the percussionists have a field day creating the thunder, the lightning and the chaos of this devastating flood. Like the Psalmist’s lament, it could go on forever getting louder and louder and evermore fearful and troubled until above the musical chaos of the storm the cast begin to sing the familiar words and music of the seafarer’s hymn of praise: Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm doth bind the restless wave, Who bidd’st the mighty ...
16 July 2025 We have a choice. Stand aloof from other people’s sufferings. Or reach out to share – a listening ear, a gentle touch, a timely visit, an encouraging word, a faithful presence. Little things … but they have a power completely beyond their size. When I was a student at New College, a contemporary engaged me in several conversations on the steps to the library, in the courtyard beneath the statue of John Knox, on the corridor outside the common room. Several months later, he came up and thanked me for sharing his problem. I was puzzled because I didn’t even know his problem. He didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask. But through our conversations, he was able to share his anxiety, face the uncertainty, put his confusion into perspective without the need to tell me the specific detail of his situation. For me, it was a revelation. It illuminated a truth. The best ministry must surely be the one which remains hidden even from ourselves because it’s nothing...
15 July 2025 On Sunday, the Orthodox Calendar of Saints drew our attention to two. The first was an angel called Gabriel. His name means ‘mighty one of God’. He describes himself as one ‘who stands in the presence of God’. He brought news to Mary that she had been chosen to be the mother of Jesus. The second was described as ‘our Holy Mother Sarah the Egyptian’. Apparently, she was an abbess of a women’s monastery in Scetis, Northern Egypt. In Lawrence Farley’s biography, it says, ‘For thirteen years she was plagued by thoughts of impurity.’ As a consequence, she prayed constantly against it, saying, ‘Lord, strengthen me!’ She didn’t ask that the temptation should be removed but that she should be made strong to overcome the temptation contained in these unwanted thoughts. It seems remarkable that the tale of her sanctity should centre on her struggle with impure thoughts. What can we do about them? We cannot help their unwanted visitation but we can resist the tem...
14 July 2025 The Parable of the Prodigal Son says some interesting things about parenting. If I were asked, ‘What should characterise a home with children?’ I would say, ‘Parents who wait.’ Too many parents want their child to walk, talk, count, skate, sit exams before their time and do not wait for their unexpected blossoming. Waiting is a discipline which is best learnt early because it becomes even more important when children become teenagers and even more so when teenagers become adults. Waiting is an art. It requires strength and courage not to intrude but to wait. For ‘God makes everything beautiful in his time.’ says Ecclesiastes. For some, my second answer would be their first but I think it is contained in the waiting. Forgiveness lies at the heart of the Gospel and at the heart of a Christian home. While the prodigal son was still far off, the father ran to embrace him and didn’t allow his son to finish his confession. We travelled to St. Petersburg to s...
13 July 2025 On Tuesday, we went to see an free exhibition in the V and A, Dundee entitled, ‘Thread Memory: Embroidery from Palestine’. It was an exploration and a celebration of the exquisite craftsmanship which is put into the creation of Palestinian dresses and jackets. A preliminary panel explains: ‘Tatreez is an ancient practice of elaborate hand-embroidery, and each region of Palestine has its own distinct and identifiable style making embroidery a language as much as a craft. For centuries, a Palestinian woman’s dress – its cut, colour, textiles, stitches and motifs – reflected her life story. Written into garments are the signs of youth or grief, the marks of motherhood and rural life, as well as the traces of social, political and economic change in Palestine, from the late nineteenth century to the present.’ This year marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the twinning established between Dundee and Nablus. They are comparable cities in terms of population. Nablus...
12 July 2025 In one of his parables, Jesus says, ‘Ask and it will be given to you; search and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.’ Persistence in prayer is an honourable and worthwhile occupation. Here Jesus promises a good outcome for those who never give up pestering God with their petitions. Whilst I agree with the heart of the parable, I did not avail myself of its promise. Last Saturday, our younger son was married in our garden. It was a great honour for us to prepare the garden for this profound event. However, there was some agony attached to it. What if it rained? We had a contingency plan. We would have squeezed the twenty-seven guests into our house! Seats for everyone! For two weeks before the wedding, I was examining closely, the long-term weather forecast. It started out well – full sun on Day 14. But it quickly disint...