Pulpits!

 

Recently, I've been doing a bit of preaching.  On the Saturday in Assumption tide I popped up at the Stow Pilgrimage and wittered on about the BVM to a small gathering in Stow Parish Church which, although Presbyterian, rejoices in the dedication "St Mary of Wedale".  I do find C of S architectural ordering a pest liturgically speaking, as everything focuses on the pulpit and the altar is almost an afterthought.  My next outing is on Saturday when I am due to preach at the annual Festival of the Scottish Guild of Servers in St Peter's Lutton Place in Edinburgh, where the pulpit is rather splendid but made of marble and very chilly on the preachers hands if you lean on it for effect or emphasis.  This I learnt many moons ago when doing a student placement there from Theological College (the scence of my only ever encounter with Choral mattins with the Athanasian Creed recited on Trinity Sunday!!!).  Then it's a normal Sunday sermon in Spikey Mike's the day after.

I enjoy preaching and always have. I also often enjoy hearing stimulating sermons.  But sometimes it is an effort to find something elevating or even interesting to say.  I despise bland platitudes from the pulpit but sometimes that's what you get. Even from me (mea culpa!).   Earnest and heartfelt, but basically lightweight.  It often doesn't nourish me. Equally, too learned a discourse makes me recall the great sermon critique I encountered when a rookie curate in Glasgow: "And whit did that hae tae dae wi' the price o' Spam in Govan, Son?"  Now I sympathise with the preacher who has to perform every week to the same gathering of familiar faces, but I also know from experience it's easier to pitch your stuff at a group you know.  Guest preaching is actually trickier.  So prayer for us preacher now and at thour of our dearth!

Embra Festival

Time off in August as ever means hitting a wee bit of the Festival.  So far we've seen Jo Caulfield (good), a comic play on Politics by the title of "Coalition" (expect to see Phil Jupitus & Co in the West End in the near future at £30 a ticket rather than for just over a Tenner!), a one man show about George Formby (good fun) and "Allo, Allo" (joy for us oldies).  I do enjoy wandering the streets of Embra and spotting wandering celebs - spotted a Proclaimer near the Meadows this year, sat in Cafe nero at the next table to Simon Callow a year or two back.  Festival time is actually a time of year I enjoy a lot.

Motes and Beams

The new RC Archbishop of Weegiedom, Dr Tagliatelle, has managed to get himself in much hot water prior to his enthronement.  First, the Grub Street hacks of the West dug out a video of him at a Conference in the august setting  of CS Lewis's old Oxford college where he suggests (albeit with enough hedges to make you think he was a Sussex farmer) that a fairly recently departed Labour MP who was a former RC priest and openly gay had somehow had his lifespan shortened by his lifestyle. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/archbishop-condemned-for-remarks-about-gay-mp.18248404  The fact that the gallstones and pancreatitis that actually carried off the said MP are not normally cited as a "gay plague" may lead one to suspect the said prelate is talking through an orifice not normally linked to the vocal chords.  Then they ran a stinker on a former colleague of his - indeed his former deputy and successor at the Pontifical Scots College in Rome, who had been disciplined for getting drunk and making a pass at another bloke. http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/how-the-catholic-church-whitewashed-priests-homosexual-advances.18276120

This litany of foot-in-mouth may suggest that the it's the liberal "meeja" out to get the Church.  Or it may suggest that the media is targeting public institutional hypocrisy in the RC Church in Scotland.  either way, it's a startlingly inept performance from someone who has be the Scottish RC "Media Bishop" for the past 6 years.  I have much sympathy for the rebuked cleric whose lapse of judgement fuelled by alcohol has been put in to the public domain well after he doubtless hoped it was water under the bridge.  If he took the pastoral counselling offered and worked on his issues with drink and sexuality successfully, then my sympathies are all the stronger.  Occasionally one does think that the Bishops of all the Churches might reflect rather more on Matthew 7:3 before opening their traps.

A Sunday off.

Sunday past I was enjoying a weekend off with no official religious duties whatsoever (holiday cover and that sort of thing had not been asked for this week) - which delivered me from another Sunday presiding over liturgical ineptitude inherited from other clergy who have no sensible idea what lay officiants should and should not do (like the Gospel) and where they should and should not stand (in my way at the altar for a start).  Sadly, we slept in missing both the local Kirk service and the local Piskie Eucharist.  We did however brunch at Morrison's and I read PD James's excellent follow on to Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" - "Death Comes to Pemberly. A Georgian whodunit.  Sadly, Elizabeth Bennett's mother was not the victim (she is the 2nd most annoying Austen character after Emma Woodhouse).  A most enjoyable read and highly commended.  The memsahib could not be persuaded to Evensong as her experience of the nearest C of E parish has been negative - primarily due to liturgical incompetence and clerical fawning.  I've seen the former there but avoided the latter.

Odd as it was not to "do" Church, I enjoyed the rest.  Maybe I should snooze at the weekend more often?  Mind you it was really the 1st weekend we've had since the wedding to ourselves so I call it "relationship maintenance time" and feel no particular guilt!

On Liturgical Peculiarities.

 

As I wander around the diocese a wee bit (Spiky Mike's for choice, Eyemouth if I'm with Rachel and not on duty and elsewhere if covering services) it has come to my attention that a new liturgical oddity has surfaced in the last few months. (The last oddity I noticed in all honesty was the funny habit of the congregation saying bits of the Eucharistic Prayer that the priest normally did solo, but this is now the "norm" in the SEC and it's hardly worth protesting about now).  We have now taken to praying for a new Trinity in the intercessions - viz "David our Primus, John our Bishop and Susan our Dean".

Now don't get me wrong, all three are good and godly and doubtless need and appreciate all the prayers they can get (don't we all?).  But I am somewhat baffled by this sudden and peculiar elevation of 2 "Offices" to equal status as an "Order".  The Bishop is the chief pastor of the diocese - the Primus is the elected Chair of the College of Bishops and "1st amongst equals" Not and never an Archbishop, quasi, virtual or otherwise.  One of the reasons the Anglican Covenant fell flat in Scotland was it's odd idea that "Primates" were super special and wise and needed more authority and less accountability to the clergy and laity of the Church.  That is not an idea the Scots have ever borne well with - I mean we shot Archbishop Sharp for that sort of thing in the old days.  Prelacy it was called and not at all the "pure and primitive episcopacy" that Bishops Jolly and Skinner sent to Connecticut in 17Oatcake!  Equally, Deans have never been elevated to near Episcopal status. (I can't actually recall hearing anyone pray for "Kevin our Dean" or even "John our Dean" prior to the recent vacancy in the See).  I can understand the enthusiasm for Susan and her breaching the glass ceiling and all that but...  it's a bit like praying for yer Archdeacon in England.  And I've never heard of that happening in the mass very often.

Then again, maybe I'm just the grumpy old man of Scottish liturgy!  It's all gone down hill since the '70 Liturgy (1570 I mean!).  And I do pray for them all.  When directed by the Diocesan cycle of prayer!  (It's probably an Asperger's sorta thing!)