16 September 2026

Some ministers are like fire-crackers. Others offer what Hovda calls ‘a running commentary which covers  the ritual action like a heavy and almost impenetrable syrup.’ He reflects, ‘Presiding in liturgy … requires a kind of modest prayerfulness that is heavy on awe and mystery, light on answers and recipes.’

The Kirk is strong on what it doesn’t know about God. The Word of God is contained in the Scriptures. Office-bearers have ‘liberty of opinion’. There is a silence between Word and Scripture, substance and the Faith, broken bread and the Body of Christ.  God is there in what RS Thomas calls the ‘interstices in our knowledge’.

Our life has been constrained by the ’Five Marks of Mission’ which say nothing about worship. They have become  a  measure of  growth - success and failure.  But growth belongs to God, as Paul says and in the parable of the seed growing secretly, the farmer is puzzled. Jesus says,  ‘He knows  not  how’.  It is a mystery at the heart of the Gospel:

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,

it remains just a single grain;

but if it dies, it bears much fruit.