Martin Tarr
Below are two extracts from Rev Sheila Cameron’s sermon on Ash Wednesday, 22 February 2023, when our readings had included Isaiah 58:1–12 and John 8:1–11.
We are all beloved children of God, but we must “participate in our own redemption.” Today, at the beginning of Lent, our liturgy invites us to enter the darkness of our sin, to recognize it for what it is and face the pain it has caused ourselves and others. We may find consolation in the thought that our sins are perhaps less extreme than other people’s but so, of course, did those preparing to stone the woman caught in adultery. It’s not our business to feel holier than others and to cast stones at others, but to know that our nature is flawed and reflect on our own shortcomings.
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Isaiah warns us not to pay mere lip-service to our liturgy this morning, for receiving ashes on our faces will do us no good at all if our hearts are hardened towards the needs of those around us. We are entering what our liturgy calls a “desert of repentance,” forty days of reflecting on how we might be God’s people once again. This, we’re told, is a journey of discovery, “a pilgrimage of prayer and discipline” through which we hope to reconnect with the God we have offended by our sinfulness and our disregard for the welfare of others.
The promises of renewal are there in our reading from Isaiah: the promise of light breaking into our darkness like the dawn, of healing springing up quickly, of the glory of God shielding and protecting us. In this place of contrition, our prayers will be answered, for God never disregards a cry from a broken and a contrite heart. We wait sorrowfully and yet expectantly, and it’s best if we don’t anticipate anything precise, for when the light comes it will certainly arise in unexpected places.
Do read the whole sermon, which is available at this link, if only to read the first illustration! Sheila ended quoting and commenting on sections of Louis Untermeyer’s poem, Ash Wednesday, which you can read in full on-line at this link.
Our picture is the one taken by our friend Liz Crumlish to accompany the Ash Wednesday 2023 thought on her blog, and can be seen in context at this link.
Everyone will be welcome at the next meeting of the St Andrews West Area Council, which will be held in St Peter’s, Kirkcaldy on Tuesday 21 February at 7.30pm. The guest speaker is Carol Morton (a member of St Peter’s) and her talk will cover Palestinian Christians Cry for Hope, Sabeel-Kairos UK, the hoped-for movement within SEC dioceses, her 9½ years in Jerusalem and the work there, as well as her current service with the Hadeel Palestinian Fair Trade shop in Edinburgh.
Please allow me to read to you seven verses from Paul’s letter to the Rosythians:
- Dear friends, observe for yourselves that uniformity does not exist in nature, but only in the minds of men and women.
- Recognise that God loves diversity, for diversity is the key to survival in all that is alive. Therefore celebrate your differences.
- Reflect on your different ways and see how they can bring strength to all who are living in his service.
- Waste no time on things which may bring you negativity, but build upon the same foundations of the many good things that prevail amongst us.
- Be confident that, in God’s sight, your individuality makes a good servant but is a poor master.
- Therefore put your ways to good effect and be united only in Christ and in your faith in his teaching, that you may prosper according to God’s holy will.
- And may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God, be with your spirit, my brothers and sisters.
Amen.
This is how Mary Kidd finished her sermon on 25 January 2023, within the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. You can read the whole sermon at this link.
Photo by Wylly Suhendra on Unsplash
Mary treasured up all of these things and pondered them in her heart. (Luke 2:19)
I think that pondering gets a bad press. It sounds indecisive. Like we should be getting on with something. Not just pondering it. But right from Advent Sunday we’ve been hearing about what’s going to happen: prophecies, angels, a long journey, a star and then, Christmas morning, the birth of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, the word made flesh, Emmanuel, God with us. Now it’s happened. And Mary’s response isn’t to say, right, what’s next? It’s to treasure up all of these things, and to ponder them in her heart. We can’t say she’s doing nothing, she’s pondering.
And although it sounds like a rather funny old-fashioned word, that is what she’s doing. It’s not decisive, and I believe that’s the point. It’s a moment between what has happened and what will happen, turning from the old to the new, much as we are all doing on this new years’ day. And that place we go where we ponder things – maybe a favourite quiet place, maybe just somewhere in our minds – is somewhere God can meet us all, where our hearts, our minds, our very souls are open to him. It is chance to listen to that still small voice of calm as we try and work out what’s just happened and now what’s going on. Maybe even a time to pray. Take time to ponder. Give others the time they need to ponder things too.
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As we ponder things that are now past and the things that this new year holds for us, it gives us chance to offer all our plans and hopes and fears to God, knowing that like Mary, our true calling is to follow the calling, the plans, the resolutions that he has made for us, given life in his Son, revealed to us today through the presence of the Holy Spirit. And it is our chance to pray the prayer sometimes called the Prayer of Affirmation on this New Year’s Day: “For all that has been; thanks. To all that will be; yes.”
Amen.
These are extracts from the sermon preached by Dave Lewis that your webmaster heard on New Year’s Day 2023. Do read the whole of it, downloadable at this link.
Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
On the Second Sunday of Advent we are reminded that a fundamental change of heart is necessary if we are to experience the coming of God’s peaceable kingdom. This change of heart is repentance, without which participation in God’s kingdom will not be possible. Matthew’s Gospel reminds us of the need to repent now.
There’s an urgency in the call of John the Baptist; the rule of God is about to break upon the world; the words of the prophets are about to be fulfilled. John’s appearance, the way he dresses and the way he behaves, quite deliberately recall the prophet Elijah. John is a new prophetic voice after centuries of silence, of patient waiting for God to act anew, and the people respond to him in large numbers.
Everyone, even the religious leaders, is eager for some new thing to set them free. It’s very important that even the most religious people repent and don’t just rely on their position in the Synagogue as evidence of their righteousness, for God’s coming activity will involve judgement as well as redemption and none will be exempt. The call must be to stop where you are and turn back to God.
This is an extract from Sheila Cameron’s sermon on 4 December. Do read the whole of it, downloadable at this link, to see the link with the picture by Edward Hicks, which comes from the online collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=175611)
