The Armour of God

23 August 2015. Readings: 1 Kings 8: 22-30, 41-43, Psalm 84, Ephesians 6:10-20, John 6:56-69.

I have a special affection for the "armour of God" passage from Ephesians which is read in churches around the world today. It was the basis of a sermon by the man I studied for my PhD, Daniel Sandford, Bishop of Edinburgh 1806-1830 and founder of St John's, Edinburgh, delivered to young people whom he had just confirmed. It drew attention because the rite of confirmation itself was new and strange in Presbyterian Scotland: a bold statement of Episcopalian resurgence.

But I was more interested in what the sermon suggested about Bishop Sandford's religious culture. He is usually seen as part of the ecclesiastical late Enlightenment. Characterised by rationalism, evangelicalism, scholarly sermons delivered in sober black gowns, it was superseded over the Victorian period by a preference for robed choirs, processions, Eucharists, stained glass and all the other furniture which became standard in the Edwardian church. A hundred years before, however, Bishop Sandford seemed to be ahead of his time in promoting a more artistic and emotional approach to spirituality in the New Town of Edinburgh, enabling me to argue in my PhD that this previously obscure figure in fact made a groundbreaking contribution to history.

You do not need to read Bishop Sandford's sermons to see this. Simply walk into St John's and realise that it was built a quarter of a century before the Victorian Gothic revival supposedly began. But his "armour of God" sermon is interesting because it suggests why this sea-change in British religious culture had at least one of its beginnings in the Edinburgh New Town.

St John's Church. Photo by chrisradleyphotography.com

The Bishop played up the chivalric romance of the Ephesians passage, addressing the young confirmands as if he were King Arthur, and they his valiant knights, sent out on heroic quests. It was published in 1809, just at the time when Walter Scott's chivalric romances The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), and Marmion (1808) were causing a British publishing sensation. Scott lived nearby and was closely connected with the chapel. Popular literary culture had suddenly been drenched in the romance of chivalry, and the fountainhead was on Sandford's doorstep. Sandford used today's passage from Ephesians to harness that literary excitement as religious excitement, and in doing so brought the romantic movement into religion.

So, now we've examined some historical church culture, let's examine our own.

Despite their ubiquity in the gospels, most of us, whether Christian or not, feel deeply uncomfortable about the idea of supernatural miracles being performed today: miracles do not fit with our scientific worldview. Yet it seems to me that we feel equally uncomfortable with the idea of questions performing "heroic" acts. We have a similar sense that well heroism might have been acceptable in "olden times", it is awkward and inappropriate in the twenty-first century. But what is the logic behind this? A British fear of showing off? The lesson of the World War trenches that "heroism" was a sham, a fruitless waste of life? A cultural reaction, in fact, against the chivalric romance of Walter Scott. There is nothing evidential or scientific about our antipathy to heroism.

Nor is there anything unbiblical about heroism: the "armour of God" passage was a gift to Sandford in his context of Scott's poetry, but he didn't make it up. Paul really did write about heroism, and Christians have been inspired by the passage in many eras of history. It seems to me we are suspicious of heroism merely from prejudice formed of historical baggage. And this is the point when my cultural antennae go up and I ask, have we lost something valuable?

The projections of extinction rates, climate change and deforestation on the one hand, and of realistically likely scenarios of changed society, business practices and political will required to avert rapid catastrophic environmental collapse on the other, are now so pessimistic that many scientific commentators would say that nothing short of a miracle could save the world.

Perhaps now your antennae have gone up, suspecting me of shoehorning a "modern issue" into the traditions of Christianity? Look no further than the psalm set for today: "Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God" (Psalm 84.3). There are supposed to be sparrows on the altars.

Yet not only do we live in a society in which Christians have forgotten that the Bible is far fuller of biodiversity than our modern urban life; we live in a society in which scientists do not believe in miracles. The obstacles to saving the world seem to be insuperable.

Yet again, in the Bible, the key quality for miracles is not so much supernatural magic, as heroic courage.

And it is quite clear that to save the world from environmental destruction, we do not need supernatural magic, but a heroic courage so unlikely it would deserve the term miraculous. The obstacles are not physical, but only psychological – which is just what Paul writes to the Ephesians: "our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil". Not poltergeists, horned devils or crazed axemen, but doubt, depression, cynicism, low self-esteem.

So where would such heroic courage begin? Not zapping down from the sky; nor infusing like vapour around society. It can only begin inside a single, individual heart.

And what resources do you have to save the world? You don't have the power to make gods zap from the sky. Nor do you have the power to infuse the whole world with miraculous vapour. Your only resource is the only thing that might work: a single, individual heart.

"Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled round your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God."

You are called to be a hero. You are called to save the world. And because, like all the best heroes from Anne Frank to Superted, you are just a perfectly ordinary person, when the world is saved, it will be a miracle.

 

 

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Flesh-and-blood Religion

Since I haven't heard a sermon for a couple of months, I thought I'd write one, for a lark.

16 August 2015. Readings: 1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14, Psalm 111, Ephesians 5:15-20, John 6:58

Today's gospel reading presents special difficulties for those of us brought up in the intellectual tradition which has dominated Western thought certainly since the days of David Hume. It is the passage where Christ says, "my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed: whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood shall have eternal life".

Before being abruptly halted by illness last March, I was researching how nineteenth-century mainstream Christianity, which was evangelical, was enriched by narratives of the Gothic imagination - initially to explain why those evangelicals left us so many neo-Gothic churches. Those Victorian Christians loved bible passages like this one. It is rich in the Gothic emotion which had rescued their evangelical "economy of salvation" from a tendency to cold, dry rulebookiness. It adds drama into the Lord's Supper, enhanced with music, robes and images. Above all, it was exciting, titillating, with just a hint of vampires: vital tools for making an intellectual religious tradition popular with the masses.

This was all very well for the Victorians, and I believe was genuinely vital for infusing the Gradgrindish society of the 1830s and 40s with the twin ideals of middle-class social responsibility and working-class self-improvement, resulting in the public libraries, better housing, universal education and so forth of the later Victorian period.

But it is no use for us. We may enjoy vampire stories more than ever, but we cannot take them seriously. "Gothic Evangelicalism" has lost intellectual credibility. Our reaction is that of the Jews in the story, which was, more or less, "What the fuck is he wittering about?"

The Jews in the gospels, and especially the Pharisees, are always depicted as lacking imagination, stuck in a rut, their whole identity invested in an outdated worldview. The Jews of Jesus' time are clearly the equivalent of our "establishment" thinking today, whether religious or secular. I said at the start that we live in an intellectual tradition overshadowed by the scepticism of philosophers such as David Hume, although its roots go back to Socrates. It has stood us in excellent stead, providing us with the tools to access to seemingly unlimited riches, power, and scientific knowledge. It has been a good tradition to commit to. Evangelical Christianity was a product of this tradition, a historical fact which often surprises non-Christians today. Yet if you went back to the Christianity which evangelicalism slowly replaced – belief in the divine right of kings, doubts about the humanity of black Africans, unwillingness to promote popular education in case common people had ideas – you would easily see it was a religion of the enlightenment. Evangelicals built schools, abolished slavery, spread democracy. (There were also, of course, plenty of selfish, cruel or greedy people who hijacked the evangelical bandwagon to promote harsh capitalism, conquest or imperialism, but they were not the soul of the movement).

Modern secular humanism, often seen as the opposite of or alternative to evangelicalism, is really the same philosophy. It rubbed off its religious veneer to accommodate the loss of intellectual credibility; but in doing so weakened it, by losing the narratives and traditions which enrich and sustain any worldview over long periods. "Liberal" Christianity represents various shades of attempts at compromise between the two.

This is the worldview, apparently three but really one, in which I have been brought up. Yet I am convinced that, like the "evangelical" Pharisee and "humanist" Sadducee Jews in the gospel stories, it has become wrong, because the world has changed. In my lifetime, the environmental crisis has unfolded. This week we passed "world overshoot day", when human exploitation of the earth's resources exceeds what ecosystems can regenerate in a year, a date which in 2000 did not occur till October. Since I was born, 37 years ago, the amount of wildlife in the world has halved, and my nephew is unlikely to share our world with large mammals such as rhinos or tigers in his adulthood. Biologists now generally agree that life on earth is experiencing a mass extinction event, such as the last occurred when the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago, but this time caused by our activities. Jesus and the Pharisees, a mere 2000 years ago, suddenly seem like yesterday.

The scale of the out-of-the-box thinking required to face a situation which has never occurred during the existence of homo sapiens, which has unfolded within the lives of still young people, is hard to comprehend. This is why I believe those weird statements of Jesus, and the Jews' reaction, are still deeply insightful and instructive – perhaps more today than ever. I have said before when speaking of Christianity and the environment, that "Jesus" doesn't mean sustainability, social projects, or sensible solutions: "Jesus" means "salvation". Because that's what we need: salvation.

"My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood shall have eternal life."

"What the fuck do you mean?"

"I mean, if you do not wish to destroy everything which gives you life, and gives your life meaning, you need to unhook yourselves from these enlightenment, rational, theoretical ways of thinking; from your blind faith in human intellect and problem-solving. The "wisdom" which the other Bible readings today keep insisting upon, will no longer be found in that. I don't mean you should believe in made-up nonsense, but rather that you should acknowledge two things:

First, what all great scientists and intellectuals discover eventually: how little we know. Watch a documentary about animal behaviour, or the deep oceans, or astronomy, and see how many transformative discoveries are made every week. Learn humility.

Second, that the establishment "religion" of our society (whether the Christian or humanist version) has diminished the physical world, the world of flesh and blood, bread and wine, into mere objects of study; while our own ideas, in books, on blackboards, on the internet, have become all the meaning, all the gods that we have. But "God" (or "meaning" if you prefer to be secular) is not floating about in ideas. God, or meaning, is here, in flesh, blood, the sporting dolphins, the poached rhino, the cleared rainforest, in bread, wine, the starving child, the obese cake-addict, fantastic sex, wild swimming, chronic illness. God, or meaning, is right here, in me, in my hands and feet, standing in front of you – and can be in you too, if you get the point of what I'm saying. Learn that God is down here."

"What the fuck does he mean? Crucify him."

"Eat, and drink. When you are complicit in perpetrating mass extinction, wisdom, salvation, is not just remembering the things I said, but remembering that I, like you, was flesh and blood."

 

 

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Holy Trinity's Hogmanay

The Choir of Holy Trinity form the setting for my novel, Ursula, but they don't get much chance for action themselves, so I thought I would give them a short story of their own.

 

It had all been fine until the bells. It always goes wrong at the bells.

The Choir of Holy Trinity, or at any rate a quorum of six who deemed themselves the essence of that community, finding themselves still in Edinburgh at Hogmanay, and flat and weary after the excitements of Christmas singing, arranged to go into town in search of atmosphere. They all rocked up at their usual drinking den, The Half Mast, at about nine o'clock in expectation of being cheered.

'Sophie!' cried Penelope and Portia merrily. 'Feels like it's been ages!' added Portia, whose drink was long and luminous red.

'Longest week of the year,' agreed Sophie. 'What you guys been up to? No, hold that thought: I need a pint.' She headed for the bar.

'Hi,' said her flatmate Dave, who had come in after Sophie like a shadow, and whose glasses had steamed up.

'Where's Tom?' Penelope asked, when they came back with pints.

'Gone off to spend quality time with his godmother,' said Sophie. 'Staying with Ursula's cousin or something in Stonehaven. God, I need this!' She sourced a beer mat with the hand not employed in tipping beer into her mouth, before putting the considerably-depleted pint down on it.

'Oh here's Matt,' cried Portia. 'Matt!' She leaped up and gave him an embrace of greeting. 'Merry Christmas! Muah!'

'How come I never get that?' said Richard to Penelope.

'What, from me or from her?' said Penelope.

'Either!'

'Well, from her, because I'd thump her.'

This reply pleased Richard sufficiently that he forgot to ask his girlfriend why he wasn't 'muah-ed' by her, so he just gave her a squeeze and said across her, 'Cheer up Soph, you've got that face on.'

'She's grumpy 'cause she won't get a snog from Tom at the bells,' said Dave. 'She's a godmother widow.'

'No!' Sophie disclaimed (probably disingenuously). 'I'm just worried about this thing tomorrow.'

'You're worried?' said Portia, sitting back down. 'I have to play the organ on the radio -- you're only reading your thing -- I assume you've written it?'

'Yeah -- they won't know who you are though, and you're just playing carols everyone likes. They'll all be listening to me and saying "Who the fuck's this plonker?"'

'I meant to do some practice this week but everyone else at work buggered off so I've been chained to the desk,' said Portia. 'Och well, as you say, they won't know who I am. Drink, Pen, Richie?' She bounded off to the bar.

'I have a bad feeling about tomorrow,' said Sophie. 'How many of those awful red things has she had?'

'That was only the first,' said Richard.

'But we have all been drinking wine and eating pizza since half past five,' pointed out Penelope.

'So is this New Year's Day radio service all your fault?' said Richard.

'Kind of. Some BBC person rang up Peter on -- whatever day it was that email came out -- the day after Boxing Day -- I've lost track.'

'That was Monday', said her flatmate Dave precisely. 'I know because I went back to work on Wednesday, because we'd had Monday and Tuesday off as Bank Holiday, because of Christmas being on a Saturday.'

'Useful to know,' said Sophie sarcastically. 'Anyway, Rev Pete rang up me, and said they wanted to do a morning service about hope for the planet for the New Year, and could we provide a choir and an environmentalist.'

'Gift-wrapped,' suggested Matt.

'But then it turned out they were also supplying their own environmentalist who's this guy called Roddy who's head of Nature Scotland, so I've spent the whole week madly emailing him and Peter to agree what we're all going to say.'

'So what's he like, this Roddy guy?' asked Richard.

'Ha!' said Dave, with the knowing glee of one who's heard the story.

'Well,' said Sophie. 'I met him once at some environmental networking thing, and he said hello, how'd'you do, where are you from what d'you do, you know; and I said, I'm from the church, I run environmental initiatives with Holy Trinity Calton Hill, and he said, ah, the church: you're that lot who think the floods in Somerset were caused by gay marriage.'

Everyone laughed. 'He can't have really thought that?' said Penelope.

'I dunno, I couldn't tell,' said Sophie. 'He sounded serious.'

'I bet he does,' said Dave. 'It's what people think we think.'

'So how did he get persuaded to do this gig?' said Penelope.

Sophie shrugged. 'Chance to get Nature Scotland on the radio. He's not going to turn it down. He probably only got asked because the heads of Scottish Wildlife Trust, WWF and the RSPB are all getting drunk together in some castle in the Highlands.'

'Are they?' said Portia, wide eyed at the image.

'I've no idea,' said Sophie. 'But that's what all sensible people are doing, not scrambling around in Edinburgh with the great unwashed.'

'Admit it, you'd be delighted to be in Edinburgh for Hogmanay if Tom was here,' said Penelope.

Sophie scowled over the rim of her pint glass, not at the tease, but at the glance of promise which Penelope gave Richard as she finished the sentence.

Conversation moved on to gossiping about other members of the choir, and thence quickly, lubricated by another round of drinks, to singing Christmas carols. It is true that Matt sang the first phrase of Three Kings from Persian Lands afar only because it seemed the best response to the remark that Edith, George and Quentin had booked a holiday in January to Turkey, but when everyone else began singing the chorale underneath, it seemed a shame to stop, and they warmed to the performance. He grew quite operatic in verse two, and after he floated the final phrase, 'offer thy heart,' with the smallest of controlled vibrato into the air of the noisy pub, there was a little smattering of applause from the largely unseen people at tables around their alcove. They all burst into laughter. Richard cut into it by singing, 'Good King Wenceslas looked out?' in a tone of question, answered by a rousing, 'On the feast of Stephen!' and they sang the whole carol in rollicking pub style, stamping their feet and thumping the table. 'Ding dong merrily' followed in the same style.

'Sing Twelve Days of Christmas? shouted a voice from the pub, so they all launched into that, Penelope and Sophie improvising descants, and laughing at Portia who was still forgetting all the words after 'seven swans a swimming' even three verses later. Then they sang the Scottish dance-carol, Ecce Novum Gaudium, and then Past Three O'Clock, although that fell apart quickly when no-one could remember the words to the verses.

'There's that one about the hinds', said Matt doubtfully.

'Cheese from the dairy, bring they a fairy,' suggested Penelope.

'And not for butter, money and Rutter,' said Dave. 'No, that can't be right ...'

'It's half eleven!' said Matt suddenly.

'Oh, come on, bells! Bells!' cried Portia, leaping up and scrabbling for her coat.

'Calm yourself, woman,' said Richard.

'It's going to be freezing out there,' said Sophie.

'Oh for God's sake, cheer up,' said Dave. 'You should have had more to drink.'

'I'm in one of those moods where however much I drink, I don't get drunk,' said Sophie crossly.

'Oh dear,' said Dave.

They followed Portia and Penelope, jostling and giggling their way out of the door, into the sudden comparative silence of the traffic-less street.

Portia gasped. 'Oh, it's snowing!'

'Oh fuck it,' said Penelope, who resented Nature its inconveniences. Sophie, in contrast, felt immediately calmed and cheered by this intervention of circumstances beyond her or any human control, as if an act of God.

They skipped and shuffled up the hill through the already-trampled two inches of snow. Portia grabbed Penelope's gloved hand on one side, and Matt's, which happened to be nearest, on the other, and led them threading through the crowds towards Princes Street, Richard, Dave and Sophie following in their wake. They found a spot with a view of the castle and a female DJ with the weariness of one who has been flannelling since 9pm broadcasting over a loudspeaker. She audibly cheered up as she realised she only had a minute to go, and a ripple went round the crowd.

'Here we go!' said the DJ. 'Ten!'

The whole crowd, from one end of the city to the other, joined in. 'Nine! Eight! Seven! Six!'

Sophie suddenly thrilled to the moment. A new year, all fresh and innocent out of the box. Maybe it will be all right after all.

'Three! Two! One! Happy New Year!'

Edinburgh Castle went white as it stretched its first burst of fireworks like dragons' wings. Sophie was captivated. The swirling snow filling the air was lit by red and blue spheres. Huge white explosions illuminated the great black rock of the Castle, picked out in snow like an old engraving: a sublime, unreal representation of volcano and blizzard. Snow was getting in her eyes.

'Bugger me, look at that,' said Dave between explosions, tugging her sleeve. Sophie startled and looked down, reluctant to tear her eyes away from the fireworks. It took her a while to recognise Portia and Matt, their faces hidden in each others'.

'Oh,' said Sophie. She felt sorry for Dave, whom she knew was partial to Portia. She felt even sorrier for herself, missing Tom their first New Year together.

'Didn't see that coming,' said Dave.

No, me neither,' said Sophie. 'Well, not before tonight. Portia suddenly seemed to be on a mission.'

'Oh well -- why not bless 'em,' said Dave. 'Happy New Year, Soph.' They embraced, and kissed, as you do at New Year, but forgot to stop. Dave's mouth was warm, and opened, and Dave's tongue was alive, and intimate, the only living, intimate, warm thing in that cold, old, unreal engraving of a historic city.

They jumped apart and Sophie looked around. Portia and Matt were still entwined, like amorous slugs. Penelope and Richard had vanished. No-one had seen.

'Sorry,' said Dave.

'No, my fault,' said Sophie, like polite strangers who had jostled in a library cafe.

'Time to head?' said Dave.

'Yeah,' said Sophie. 'Early start.'

Everyone was freezing, and Princes Street was emptying fast. The snow fell.

* * *

'I set off at six,' George was saying.

'Have you walked all the way from Colinton?' asked Edith. George signified assent with a slight, triumphant smile. 'Puts us to shame, doesn't it?' Edith said to Violet. 'That must be, what, four miles at least?'

'Oh more than that -- five or six,' said Quentin.

'I confess walking from Bruntsfield was quite epic enough for me these days,' said Violet, who, however, was dressed like an advertisement for 'countrywear' and whose walk across town through a foot of snow had left her looking glowing and energised.

'It's strange how quiet the city goes, isn't it?' said Ben. 'I came over Arthur's seat and a great golden dawn was breaking all over East Lothian. It was spectacular. You must have seen it?' he added to George.

'Yes, just as I came down the Mound,' said George. 'Crackin', wasn't it?'

'Like an egg! You must have set off in pitch darkness,' said Ben.

'Well, except that the snow was reflecting the street lights so the whole place was bright,' said George. 'It was as quiet as quiet, though. I didn't see a soul all the way here, actually.'

'No, nor did I,' said Edith.

'I saw one person walking their dog on the Meadows,' said Violet.

Sophie had stumbled in during this conversation, having discovered her wellies had sprung a leak and, having lost her good hat, wearing an absurd bobble hat with her faded mountaineering coat. Under the absurd hat she had an absurd hangover. The shame of the horrible orange bobble stood proxy for the shame of the knowledge of having kissed Dave, which she could hardly believe was less glaringly evident, although of course nobody knew about it. Dave was taking off his coat and chatting to Quentin with what seemed to Sophie to be unseemly nonchalance. She hated them all, with their smug wax jackets and experiences of sunrises and clear heads and consciences.

'Ah, Sophie,' said Peter, dog-collared and official-looking. 'I'm glad you're here. Have you met Roddy?' He presented a tall, thin man with spectacles and a little beard, and a woolly brown jumper with a zip at the collar. Sophie remembered he looked like a meerkat.

'Oh yes, we've met,' said Sophie superciliously. 'At the Scottish Green Cities Forum?'

'Oh -- yes,' said the meerkat, who evidently forgotten it. 'I think we've put a good script together.'

'Yes, I'm looking forward to it,' said Sophie, wishing she were still in bed.

'Where is everybody?' said Matteo the choirmaster was saying crossly. 'It's quarter past eight.'

'Here's Penelope and Richard,' said Dave.

'So sorry!' panted Penelope. 'We've just been haring it up Leith Walk. Gosh that snow's deep.'

'I don't suppose you know what's happened to Portia?' Matteo asked her.

'No -- what's happened to Portia?'

'I don't know! I was hoping you would. I just work here, nobody tells me anything.'

'She was out with us last night. Give her a ring.

'I've tried. Her phone's off.'

'She'll be struggling through the snow. I'm sure she'll turn up. What time are we on? Nine?

'Yes. And Matt's not here either. Sorry, Ben.' Ben was the only other tenor, and not a confident singer.

'I'm sure they'll appear,' said Dave, giving a conspiratorial glance at Sophie. Sophie didn't want to be involved in any conspiracies with Dave, even ones that only involved third parties' kisses.

'Right we may as well have a run-through,' said Matteo, beginning to dole out little stapled sheaves of photocopies. 'Everything you need is in this.'

'Oh Holy Night?' said Penelope with incredulous scorn, opening the bundle at random.

'You're here to sing it, not to comment on it,' said Matteo impatiently. 'Here, have one too -- feel free to join in the carols.' He gave a sheaf to Roddy.

'Oh -- thank you -- I don't know much about --' stuttered Roddy inarticulately -- as if he had been asked to participate in a Satanic ritual, thought Sophie.

'This is Roddy, our environmentalist,' said Matteo, gesturing in a welcoming manner. The meerkat nodded nervously.

'Hi Roddy,' said Penelope across the choir, in an awkward one-woman attempt at a chorus of welcome. Everyone else just stared at him.

'How'd'you do, I'm Ben,' said Ben, who happened to be standing next to him, and put out his hand to shake.

'How'd'you do,' said Roddy, looking tense.

'And this is Kylie, our Producer,' said Matteo, gesturing further away to a smiley lady ensconced like a queen wasp amongst the nest of coloured cables and button-spangled steel boxes which had encrusted the area around the pulpit.

'Hello, everyone,' called Kylie, who shared with Matteo the task of making this reluctant, hungover, sleepy rabble a conduit of festive cheer to the Nation at 9am on New Year's Day.

'Hello Kylie!' responded a far more respectable chorus of choristers smiling back at her.

Sophie thought, now the meerkat thinks we are rude and posh as well as religious weirdos. She hated him for the prejudices she had projected on to him.

'Do you want to run through what's going to happen?' Matteo asked Kylie.

'Yes,' said the queen wasp, deftly stepping forward out of her nest of wires while consulting her own, much thicker, sheaf of pages. She explained to the choir how the service would work, how Peter would begin it from outside, and how Roddy and Sophie would come forward to the microphone to read their spoken sections. 'Now -- do you want to have a sing through some things?' she asked, batting their shared authority back to Matteo. The choir looked back at him like spectators at a tennis match.

'Yes, we better had. Where the hell is Portia? I'll have to play. We'll start with the first one, Hark the Herald.' The last sentence was spoken while hurrying towards the organ-loft door, and full-stopped with a bang.

'Oh God, not Hark the Herald,' said Quentin, voicing the thoughts of a choir who had sung it at least six times in the past month, and believed they had seen the last of it on Christmas morning.

There was a moment of tense silence, broken by the sound of Matteo's feet hurrying up the wooden organ-loft staircase. He reappeared in sight, facing away from them, his curly hair flying about as he added a few extra loud stops to the piston setting. 'My descant, not Willcocks', he called, and started to play. The choir sang. 'Skip to verse three!' he shouted at the end of verse one, and Sophie and Penelope gave each other a slight cross-eyed glance of resignation. A descant with a hangover without having had time to warm up.

'We sound awful,' said Richard unconstructively at the end.

'Dave, you'd better sing tenor with Ben,' called Matteo.

'Oh what?' said Dave, running his hands through his hair.

Sophie remembered the warmth of his tongue, and thought of Tom, and hated herself.

'Matt'll turn up,' said Richard, confidently.

'Sorry I'm so useless,' said Ben.

'Right, next one, O Holy Night', called Matteo. 'Damn it, Matt was supposed to be singing the first verse of this as well. OK, we'll have full men, please, unless he arrives.'

He started to play. The men, who had previously only sung the harmony part in verse two, hesitantly sang in dubious unison.

Matteo stopped before verse two.

'It's not the most obvious tune, is it?' said George.

'How long have we got?' Matteo called to Kylie.

'Oh, you can have five minutes yet,' called the ever-cheerful queen of the wires.

'Just do that again', said Matteo, trying to sound as if everything was under control. The men read the tune again, eliminating eighty percent of the mistakes they made first time round, and they made it to the end.

'Right, quickly, While Shepherds Watched, just the first and last verse,' called Matteo. Everyone's voices had warmed up a bit by now, and, with the hungover Dave adding some audible tenor, it didn't sound too bad. The expression of strangled agony on his face wouldn't be visible on the radio.

'You sound great, guys,' said smiley Kylie, coming forward again as they finished, clutching her photocopies and a pen.

'We're singing all the verses in the service, right?' interrupted George.

'Yes, of course,' said Matteo, in the tone of one answering a stupid question.

Kylie, who had stopped with pen poised and smile fixed on her face, unfroze and continued talking. An engineer emerged, troll-like, from the shadows and moved microphones around slightly. Nobody introduced him, but Kylie said, 'Thanks Jim.'

Kylie gave a few more instructions and Roddy and Sophie read parts of their script so Jim could check the balance. In the organ loft, Matteo was still trying to phone Portia. At three minutes to nine they still hadn't appeared. 'Looks like we're not going to have a conductor. You'll have to watch my head,' said Matteo irritably. 'Just do try remember diction is especially important on the radio. And do try to get the consonants together at ends of lines. I won't be able to indicate anything, just put them where they're supposed to be. And please turn the pages quietly.'

Dave clownishly flapped his photocopies noisily. Penelope tittered.

'OK guys,' called Kylie, wearing headphones. Everyone snapped into order. 'Peter, can you hear me?' She listened, head cocked, for the response from Peter outside, heard only through her headphones. 'Good -- ready? ... Right, any minute now ... OK -- off you go.'

There was tense silence in the church: no-one was sure whether they were on-air or not. They stood poised, clutching Hark the Herald.

'Jim, can we feed Peter through to here so we can hear him?' said Kylie. Peter's disembodied voice suddenly filled the church, mid-sentence, full of good cheer.

'... Year to you all!'

'Thanks,' said Kylie to the invisible Jim.

'I'm standing on Calton Hill, overlooking the centre of Edinburgh', went on Peter. 'After last night's heavy snow, the city is white and beautiful ...' Kylie pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows in approval: Peter had re-written his introduction to take account of the snow. Sophie, who had a full script, showed it to Penelope next to her. He was supposed to be talking about the busy city waking up, with the sound of buses and traffic in the background, but, because of the snow, there was no sound of traffic. '... it seems appropriate to reflect, in the stillness ...' said Peter, getting himself back on-script. Suddenly there was the sound of feet running through snow and loud panting. '... on our place in the world, in the order of nature, at time of dire danger and grave responsibility...' Peter's voice inappropriately brightened up as he began to speak of the environmental crisis and the recent climate summit in Lima, and the explanation came a moment later as the church door gave a double creak-clunk, once from the outside over the loudspeakers and once in reality on the inside, and Portia and Matt, red-faced and dripping with perspiration, ran into the church. Matteo said not a word, but slipped out of the organ loft as Portia burst in. Matt tried to control his breathing as he looked through the photocopied sheet Ben handed him with a scowl. Everyone glared at the delinquents, except Dave, who looked gratefully relieved at being able to sing bass again.

Jim silenced the end of Peter's broadcast so as not to interfere with the beginning of the carol in the church, and Matteo glued his eyes to Kylie, who had her head and pen cocked beneath her headphones. She indicated with her pen and eyebrows. Matteo pointed at Portia. Portia began the introduction to Hark the Herald, and they were off.

* * *

'That was great guys,' said Kylie, taking off her headphones and stepping out of her wires. 'I'll just go and rescue Reverend Peter, he's been banished to the hall.' She headed off.

'Well, that could have been worse,' said Richard philosophically.

Much worse,' said Matteo. 'Thanks guys.'

'You looked very funny doing your O Holy Night thing,' said Penelope to him, imitating the way Matteo had conveyed in pantomime that Matt was to sing the first verse solo after all.

'I was so relieved we didn't have to sing that,' said Quentin. 'What a peculiar tune.'

'I'm amazed you didn't know it,' put in Roddy the environmentalist. 'It's the only one I did know.

'Our confidence is all a front,' said Richard. 'We're actually pretty ignorant.'

'Once we were singing carols in the Balmoral and a child requested Rudolph the red-nose reindeer' said Penelope. 'We made such a hash of it. We could never decide whether the tune went up or down, and no-one except Dave could remember the words.'

'Because I'm a legend,' said Dave ironically, in a hollow Marvin voice. His hangover had kicked in properly and his head hurt.

Kylie came back followed by Peter the vicar, and Ben's boyfriend Frank.

'Frank!' cried Penelope.

'Happy New Year everyone,' said Frank. 'I heard you on the radio in the hall -- you sounded fab!'

'Well, we got through it anyway,' said Richard, voicing the feeling of the choir.

'It's nice and warm in there -- and Peter's got the kettle on,' said Kylie, as they Happy-New-Yeared Frank.

'Tea anyone?' affirmed Peter.

'Oh I could kill for a cup of tea,' said Ben. 'Come on Rod.'

'I could kill for a bacon roll,' said Dave.

'You know what I could kill for,' said Matteo. 'An Aberdeen buttery roll.'

'Oooooh, a buttery!' said Sophie. 'I wish you hadn't made me think of that.'

'I don't know what one of those is,' said Portia.

'Amazing things you only get in Aberdeen,' said Sophie.

'I know where you can get them,' said Roddy unexpectedly. 'There's a wee bakery at the top of Leith Walk.

'No -- is there?' said Matteo, his eyes widening. 'How did I never know about this?'

'Let's go and get some,' said Ben putting his coat on. 'Come on Frank. Where is it?'

Armed with the meerkat's instructions, Frank and Ben headed out into the snow on a breakfast raid. By the time they returned, the second pot of tea was being brewed.

Ben proffered the bag of butteries to Roddy, saying, 'You first -- that was a good tip!'

'Thanks,' said Roddy, adding to Portia, 'Try one.'

Portia gingerly took out one of the contents of the greasy-looking bag. 'It looks like a squashed croissant,' she said. Then, with her mouth full, 'Oh, wow!'

'I'd just like to remind everyone this was my idea,' said Matteo, diving in to the bag.

'You didn't know where to get them though,' said Sophie, following suit and looking with gratitude at Roddy, who had suddenly developed hero status.

'It's like ... the best hangover cure ever,' said Portia. 'It's so ... buttery.' everyone laughed at her ineloquence.

'And salty,' added Sophie, taking a more scientific approach to its therapeutic properties.

'I've got bacon rolls, too,' said Frank, holding up a much bigger bag.

'Oh, good man,' said Dave, hastening thither.

'Here, Roddy, have a cup of tea,' said Peter, handing one into his free hand handle-first. 'Well done in the service.'

'Well done all three of you,' said George, looking at Sophie, Peter and Roddy. 'It was very well put-together. I wish I'd come to your Light for Lima vigil now.'

'Ah!' said Sophie significantly, meaning, 'let that be a lesson to you'. 'Still, there's still time to fast for the climate. Peter's doing it.'

'Hang on, didn't you say you were supposed to fast on the first day of the month?' said Richard, looking at the second half-eaten buttery Sophie was holding. The guilt of the hypocritical environmentalist washed over Sophie.

'We're launching it at Holy Trinity next month,' said Peter, coming to her rescue. 'Sophie's just said so on the radio.'

'I'm not sure about it,' said Dave. 'It looks a bit -- like you think you're going to solve climate change by praying rather than actually by doing stuff.'

'If you'd listened to what I was saying in the service,' said Sophie, 'you'd know it was about solidarity. And it's being done all round the world by people of all faiths and none.'

'Hm,' said Dave, his mouth full of bacon roll. 'My main concern in the service was staying upright.'

'What was everyone doing last night?' said Matteo. 'You all look like death warmed up.'

The reprobates exchanged guilty glances, except Penelope who said, 'We all went out for the bells. It was great -- bloody freezing though.'

'Typical Pen,' said Sophie. 'You lead everyone astray by trying to get them to keep pace with you, then turn up on time and looking absolutely fine. I don't know how you do it.'

'I was steaming,' admitted Dave. Sophie began to wonder whether he actually remembered the disaster. She hoped not.

'Very unprofessional. And why were you so late?' said Matteo to Portia. 'And you,' he added to Matt.

'My alarm didn't go off,' said Portia, trying to look brazen like Penelope, and only half-succeeding.

'No, nor did mine,' said Matt, looking thoroughly sheepish.

Violet, Edith and George came over, saving them from further interrogation.

'Well, that's the year launched,' said Violet.

'Shame we didn't get any decent music to sing,' said Penelope.

'You can choose it next time,' said Matteo crossly. 'And get more than eleven singers to turn up, on time.'

'Never mind. Only a week till Epiphany carols,' said Violet. 'What are we singing, Maestro?'

'Er, Bethlehem Down ...' began Matteo.

'Oh, lovely, my favourite!' said Edith.

'And the Leighton. You're doing the solo by the way,' Matteo said to Sophie.

'Lully, lulla!' croaked Sophie, more witchily than seraphically.

'Not a drop of alcohol before then,' said Marcus.

'What else?' said Penelope eagerly.

'Oh -- Good King Wenceslas -- Three Wee Kings -- I Saw Three Ships -- anything with the word Kings or the number three you know.'

Roddy laughed. 'Three Wee Kings?'

'We three,' elucidated Ben. 'Tedious old choir joke.'

'Then what's the next excitement after Epiphany?' pressed Penelope. 'We need things to look forward to at this time of year.'

'Well, there's the wedding of the century,' said Ben.

'Oh, who's getting married?' asked Roddy politely.

'Me and Ben,' said Frank. Sophie almost laughed out loud at the look of shock on Roddy's face.

'Instead of bridesmaids we'll have all the clergy of the diocese in procession pink fluffy stoles,' said Frank, 'Coing all along Princes Street and up Calton Hill. It'll be like that painting of George IV's visit to Edinburgh, only with more people.'

'I think you'll find it's against canon law to wear fluffy pink stoles in procession,' said Peter doubtfully.

'Isn't it against canon law to marry us at all?' said Ben.

'I'm working on it,' said Peter, slightly grimly. 'The institutions of our esteemed religion are not always quite up to speed with the rest of society,' he explained to Roddy. 'But,' he added to Frank, 'when I officiate at your wedding, I shall wear a pink fluffy stole.'

Everyone laughed at the unlikely vision.

'Right,' said George, 'Fortified by my bacon roll I think it's time to begin the long march back to Colinton. I may be some time.'

'Farewell Captain Oates,' said Richard.

'See you at Epiphany Carols, I hope,' said Matteo.

'You have more carols?' said Roddy.

'Epiphany's the last, thank God,' said Penelope. 'And not for a week.'

'Hobbit's on telly at eleven,' said Dave, who was consulting his phone.

'Rest of the day: sorted,' said Peter.

* * *

It was dark already by the time Sophie and Dave listened to the broadcast on iPlayer. They'd both fallen asleep near the end of the Hobbit, then Tom had phoned. He said he and Ursula had been listening and it had sounded great.

'You should have seen what it was like in real life,' said Sophie. 'Remember that farce about the theatre, Noises Off? It was like that.'

'Did everyone get stuck in the snow?'

'Oh, everyone: we all had to walk.'

'Really? Wow. What, Violet and everyone?'

'George walked from Colinton.'

'Bloody hell.'

'And we all went out for the bells last night, and Portia got us all pished.'

'All entirely her fault, I'm sure,' said Tom wryly.

'I wasn't as bad as some,' said Sophie, glaring at Dave.

'Sore heads all round?'

'And, Matt and Portia nearly didn't make it. Did you hear people running in the background and the door banging, in Peter's introduction?'

'No? I was listening to what he was saying.'

'Listen to it again. That's them running in!'

'Really? What -- as, in, running in together?'

'Yes! Exactly!'

'Together together?'

'Yes! They succumbed to the bells!' Sophie stole a glance at Dave, but he was fiddling with his phone. She decided he must have been sufficiently drunk to have forgotten.

'Haha! That's funny,' said Tom. 'I hope it doesn't cause angst next year -- this year. Do you think it'll last?'

'I don't know -- I think Portia's been angling for it, for a while. Ever since Penelope landed Richard at the choir retreat.'

'Ha -- anything Penelope can do, Portia can do better. We're all getting old and coupling up, Soph. There won't be wild parties like there used to be in our gay bachelor days.'

* * *

And now Dave and Sophie were drinking mugs of tea listening to the broadcast, agreeing it didn't sound nearly as bad as they expected.

'Hope I never meet that ruddy Roddy again,' said Sophie.

'I thought he was all right,' said Dave. 'Bit quiet. Overwhelmed probably. I'd be a bit quiet if I was thrown into the middle of us lot.'

'There's Quentin!' they both chorused at one point when his distinctive voice stuck out.

'Portia fluffed that bit,' said Dave as the organ played a curious inharmonious pedal.

'I'm astonished she managed to play it at all,' said Sophie.

'It is pretty good, considering there were only eleven of us.'

'Let's listen to the bit where Matt and Portia run in again.'

Dave spooled the iPlayer back, and found Peter's voice saying, '... it seems appropriate to reflect, in the stillness ...' followed by the sound of two pairs of boots scrunching on snow, audible panting, and the door banging. They both laughed.

'Who's sending me emails on New Year's Day?' said Dave. 'Oh -- it's to the choir from Peter.'

'Oh, what's he say?' said Sophie.

'Thank you for your efforts bla bla epic journeys bla ... I thought you'd be interested to read this email I have just received from ruddy Roddy.'

'He doesn't say that?'

'No, he just says Roddy.'

'What does ruddy Roddy say?' said Sophie, beyond intrigued.

'Dear Peter, many thanks for the opportunity to join Holy Trinity in their New Year morning service ...'

'As if we'd have been doing it if it wasn't on the radio!'

'... I hadn't had the best start to the day as my boiler had broken down the night before ...'

'Bloody hell -- no boiler this morning, can you imagine?' Sophie shivered at the thought.

'... so I hope I didn't seem too grumpy! I must say, though, that I was completely cheered up and quite inspired by you and the choir. I'm not used to churches, but the choir were so friendly and welcoming I confess it changed all my expectations...'

'Awww,' said Sophie.

'I bet he didn't expect Ben and Frank,' said Dave.

'No one expects Ben and Frank!' said Sophie, with Pythonesque emphasis.

'I mean, after his thing about gay marriage causing climate change.'

'Oh yeah -- they must have been a bit of an eye opener for him. Peter in a pink feather stole. Ha!'

'Do you want to hear the rest of his email? You'll like this bit.'

'Go on?'

'I didn't know about the Fast for the Climate initiative but I was very impressed by the idea of a global movement of solidarity. I'm thinking of taking part myself, and will see if I can get Nature Scotland officially involved. I'll contact Sophie in the next few days about whether we might be involved in the launch in February.'

'Gosh,' said Sophie.

'There, thought you'd like that,' said Dave. And what do we learn from this, Miss Strang?'

'I dunno -- what do we learn?'

'Don't go pre-judging people. Judge not, that ye be not judged.'

'Ah -- fuck off Jesus,' said Sophie, and bombarded him with the screwed-up foil from a chocolate Santa.

* * *

Ursula is available as a Kindle novel for £2.58: search Ursula on Kindle or follow this link. All profits from its sale raise funds for my own eco-project, the refurbishment of a field centre in the Angus Glens, which you can read about here. Penelope would hate it. Meanwhile, Merry Christmas and happy New Year! Eleanor @eleanormharris.

Guest Post: Esther, in Advent

On Sunday during a candlelit evensong, Markus Dünzkofer managed to cover the nature of religion and scripture, identity and 'othering', the environmental crisis, fear and power, and fasting and partying, all on the basis of a 2000 year-old story. I liked it so much that I begged it as a guest blog post: I hope you enjoy.

A few days ago I was called a “Socialist” on national TV. The person who labelled me thus was rather angered. And one could argue that because of something I had done he was justifiably infuriated. I would say, though, that his conclusions are not mine. But there we are.

I did wonder, though, why he used this particular word: "Socialist". Was he trying to insult me? And if so, was he trying to link me to the murderous regime of Joseph Stalin? Eventually, I had this thought: Maybe he used the word "Socialist" to imply that despite of being a priest, I am a godless person. Because that’s what Socialists are, right?

Well, if that is true, we have a problem today, because this would make the biblical book of Esther, from which we have heard earlier, "Socialist," too. The book of Esther is one of two books in the Bible that never mentions God. It is godless. And yet, is divine revelation. Intrigued? Well, let me tell you the tale:

The story begins with Persian King Ahasuerus, whose Greek name Xerxes at least I can somewhat pronounce, having a jolly in his palace. In antiquity this often was code for an outrageous orgy. Drunk with power and with wine, hormones and lust raging, Xerxes wants to show off his wife to his equally drunk and horny guests. It doesn’t need much fantasy to realise that the showing-off would have led to other things. Understandably, the queen refuses. Xerxes, however, is so outraged that he casts her out. A man must save "his face and his manhood," right? So, there is need for a new wife.

Meanwhile, Mordechai, a Jew, who, together with his king, Jechonja of Juda, had been forcefully exiled to the city of Susa in Persia and now, at age 120 is working at the palace in Susa -- this Mordechai comes up with a cunning plan. His niece Esther, who he took in after her parents had died and whose beauty captivated many, should be shown to Xerxes as a potential future queen.

And even though there was stiff competition from a number of women from the 127 countries he governs, Xerxes picks Esther and makes her queen. And did they live happily ever after? No.

Mordechai learns of a plot to kill Xerxes. Through Esther he conveys the plan to the king, who hangs the two assassins. Mordechai’s deed, however, is written into a dusty old book.

This is when Haman, the anti-hero of the story enters the scene. Xerxes appoints him prime minister. But Haman is full of spite, envy, vanity, and ambition. And when Mordechai, because of his religion, refuses to bow to him, he completely loses his plot: He convinces Xerxes to order a day of pogrom on which all Jews throughout the Persian Empire shall be annihilated. But the lots he casts to determine the date pick a day almost a year later. This gives the Jewish community time, and they use it to fast and to pray. Not what I expected!

During this interval Mordechai approaches Esther to intervene. And this is where we find ourselves in today’s reading.

It takes some convincing of Esther, though, because she is not out as a Jew at court. Eventually Esther does agree and comes up with a shrewd plan to influence Xerxes, a plan that involves two banquets and copious amounts of alcohol. I will spare you the details and some other subplots, so that the choir can get to their own banquet in time.

But Esther knows what she is doing and convinces Xerxes to change his mind. But it isn’t so easy. He cannot just revoke his original order – what has been written has been written. Instead, he allows for the Jews to arm and defend themselves on the day of the previously appointed Reichskristalnacht.

When others side with the Jews -- after all they are now in Xerxes’ good books -- it all ends in a bloodbath that would make our contemporary stomachs rightfully churn. It is pretty awful. And no, Haman and his house don't survive. Ironically, Haman ends up on the gallows he'd built for Mordechai. The end.

We could have a long discussion about the heinous ending of this biblical book, and maybe that will be the content of the sermon in three year's time, when we will read the text again. Let me just say so much:

This is not a historical account but a historical novella that builds on numerous experiences of pogroms during the Jewish exile. Mordechai's age is but one indicator that makes the story factually unbelievable. And there are others. Historically, there was no massive bloodshed. It’s all a hyperbole.

We have to remember, though, that the story was written from the perspective of the oppressed, of an enslaved people. This it is a scenario far away from the comforts of our 21st century mostly middle-class comfort. Achieving justice back then did look different from the ways we pursue liberation from oppression. Yet, this is not cop-out. The book of Esther still entices us to confront oppression, even at the price of one's own safety. If injustice is not named, even at times named provocatively, then those, who shy away from naming it, enable that very injustice – even if they are only bystanders.

But enough of this part of the story, because today I would like to focus not on the end of the book of Esther, but on two principles we find within the book: the principles of faithfulness and identity.

From the reading the book of Esther it is clear that Mordechai is held up as a model of faithfulness to the covenant that God made with Moses: He doesn't bow to Haman, because that would violate the first and second commandments, which orient our worship to God alone.

But one might ask: doesn’t exactly this refusal to bow to Haman get Mordechai into trouble? Isn't Mordechai's faithfulness the reason for the impending genocide? Well, you would say this only if you forgot that God's plan for salvation is already in place. And through the faithfulness of the Jews, through their fasting and praying, God’s plan of salvation can take its course.

Fasting and praying. These are not necessarily activities we would choose. But I wonder how fasting and praying would empower our personal life and the life of our faith community? And I wonder what our planet would look like if we were to engage in more fasting and praying?

This reminds me of this year's Lent, when we here at St John's walked through the book of Jonah and challenged the church and society to repent from its unfaithfulness to God's plan on matters environmental. And? Did we listen? Are we -- like the Jews in the book of Esther -- fasting and praying for God's salvation and liberation both for us personally and for the planet? Are you?

And then there is Esther herself. Initially at court, she does not reveal her true identity for fear of rejection. And when she is faced with Mordechai's charge in today’s reading, she fears her own death.

There is that little word: "Fear". Fear of being known. Fear of confronting the powers of this earth. Fear of upsetting the applecart. Fear of being rejected. Fear of disappearing in the midst of strife. Fear seems to be everywhere.

I know what I am talking about, I have been afraid. I have feared the consequences. I have been so scared I could neither move, nor act, nor think, not pray, nor sleep. Richard Holloway once said: "Fear is the greatest enemy of the Gospel." It is indeed a darkness that needs to be pierced.

When Esther reclaims who she is, when she embraces, who God made her to be as a woman and as a Jew in the midst of a misogynist and anti-Semitic environment, then God’s light is revealed. Identity is not a threat to our society, regardless of what that identity might be. What will eat up and destroy who and what God made us to be is fear:

• Fear of the other, especially when the other is different.
• Fear of losing comfort in order to support those, who have less.
• Fear of having to give up something in order to save the planet.
• Fear of looking like silly lunatics, when witnessing to the Gospel of Jesus Christ in prayer, in action, and in word.
• Fear of celebrating our identity.

Fear is a powerful foe.

We are in the middle of Advent. And during Advent, we hear prophets raising difficult and provocative and maybe even fear-inciting questions. But the church must be faithful: she must be faithful to this prophetic tradition and continue to raise questions. And sometimes this might cause a stooshie.

We are in the middle of Advent. And in Advent we wait for that divine light that came into the world and that still pierces the darkness, the darkness of fear and any other kind of darkness -- even the darkness of death. Our true, God-given identity is connected to embracing this light. And our identity is not connected to labels we throw at each other, nor to names by which we incite fear or exclusion -- and this goes for all of us.

Our Jewish siblings commemorate the events of the book of Esther with the annual festival of Purim. And according to Jewish tradition, one should drink on Purim until you can no more make a distinction between arur Haman, which means "cursed be Haman", and baruch Mordechai, which means "blessed be Mordechai". Quite an alcoholic feat!

In the heavenly banquet we will also be drunk. We will be drunk with God’s love, so drunk indeed that we will longer distinguish between Greek or Jew, Male or Female, Slave or Free, young or old, outsider nor insider, gay or straight, believer or doubter.

All will be children of God -- even supposed godless clergy.

 

Markus Dünzkofer is the Rector of St John's Princes Street and is on twitter @homouusian.

You can find out more about the global interfaith initiative to "fast for the climate" at fastfortheclimate.org

Meterology, Alan Hemming, and Forgiveness

This guest post by medical ethicist and Church of Scotland minister Professor Kenneth Boyd was delivered as a sermon at Evensong last night. I have heard him preach many times before but this one seemed particularly worthy of a wider audience. I hope you agree.

'Abundant rain', promised by the prophet Joel in our first reading tonight, 'poured down' on Friday and much of yesterday, right on time, exactly as promised by the weather forecast on the BBC News website. The accuracy of modern weather forecasting, at least for the next few days, never ceases to amaze me. The science of weather forecasting, pioneered in 19th century Edinburgh by Alexander Buchan, Secretary of the Scottish Meteorological Society, has been of great benefit to humanity: it has saved countless lives by its warnings and it has assisted better planning of all sorts of future projects. It has of course limitations, as the forecasters themselves also warn: better and more accurate systems still need development to avoid tragedies like that on the Japanese volcano last week, or the fatal consequences of many of the extreme weather events increasingly related to climate change; but the scientific precision of modern meteorology is undoubtedly something to be grateful for; and an enormous advance, some might say, on the vague promises of 'the early and the later rain as before' uttered by the prophet Joel in our first reading tonight.

That said, it cannot escape notice that the scientific precision found in meteorology is also to be found in the science of ballistics, which is concerned with the launching, flight and exact landing of projectiles, and which at present therefore is of great relevance to the armed forces of our own and other nations who are pouring down a different kind of rain as they attack from the air the IS militants in Iraq and Syria. The historical and political reasons for this conflict are greatly complex and in their effects deeply tragic -- not least this last week, in the murder of that truly good man Alan Hemming from Salford. But even deeper than the historical and political reasons for this conflict, is that darker side of human nature, against which the human goodness of Alan Hemming stands out in such contrast. The goodness of this ordinary man, simply desiring to help others in need, as he travelled with his Muslim friends, to convoy medical and food aid to refugees in Syrian camps -- that goodness stands in stark contrast to the near madness of the desire at all costs to dominate and subjugate others, so cruelly and callously demonstrated by the words and actions of the IS militants. And that near madness in turn also stands in stark contrast to the rationality of the sciences which provide the weapons with which the rest of the world may be able, at least on the most optimistic scenario, to geographically contain that madness.

What these current events remind us of then, is what we still lack: a science of human nature and relationships, a science with which to guide the ballistics of the human heart into the ways of peace, justice and the gladness of which the prophet Joel spoke in our first reading, when the inhabitants of the land ’shall eat in plenty and be satisfied’. How long ago was that written? Nearly two thousand five hundred years ago; and yet after all that time, and even with the more recently rapid advance of so many sciences, the land of Israel and Palestine of which Joel spoke seems no nearer, and perhaps even farther away from that long deferred peace and plenty. Even now, we have no science of human nature and relationships, to put all these things right.

But is that correct? We do, of course, have what are called the human sciences, of psychology and social science for example, and also of historical research and political science; and all of these have important insights to contribute to our understanding of human nature and relationships, insights based on non-partisan analyses, which if we attend to them may help us see through the more extravagant and unsubstantiated claims of politics, the market, ideologies and religions. But of themselves these analytic insights may not be enough to guide us and the world to a better place of peace and justice. As well as these scientific insights, we need a science of a deeper and less academic sort: the word 'science' at root simply means knowledge, and the kind of knowledge we need is self-knowledge – which is precisely what our second reading tonight tells us about.

'Do not worry about your life' Jesus says, but 'strive first for the kingdom of God'. What does this mean and is it even possible? To get a sense of what Jesus meant, I think, we need to remember that he also is quoted as saying that the kingdom he spoke of was not a visible earthly kingdom, and that it was 'within you' and 'among you'. The kingdom of God, in other words, is a way of living with and relating to one another and ourselves. It is a way of living and relating that is not disturbed and disfigured by fears and anxieties, especially those fears and anxieties that derive from seeing and valuing everything and everyone mainly or even only from our own point of view. Defending at all costs our own interests as we conceive them, and maintaining at all costs our own self-image, can lead to a very untruthful view of the world, since clearly there are other people in it. And if we find means of power over others, either as petty domestic or workplace tyrants, or as IS militants, we may become infected in different degrees by that near madness I mentioned earlier – the near madness of a secret desire to assuage our own fears and compensate for our own inadequacies by trying at all costs to dominate and subjugate others.

How is the kingdom of God different? Above all because it is the kingdom of forgiveness -- a way of living with and relating to one another and ourselves that frees us from the need to maintain those appearances that can lead us into the absurdities of pride or the depths of despair -- a way of living and relating that humbly and happily accepts that we are all in this together: God-forgiven first, and then slowly self-forgiven sinners, but thereby also given strength enough and courage enough to get through and wherever possible get over whatever causes our current fears and anxieties.

To strive for the kingdom of God is to strive against all those self-deluding and defensive reactions, moods and habits which render our view of the world untruthful -- to strive against them, above all by holding fast to a deeply felt conviction that living goodness is at the heart of all things, including the human heart of each one of us, and that even our smallest efforts to love our neighbour as ourselves contribute to the coming of the kingdom, on earth as in heaven.

That may still seem a small thing in the great scheme of things, on the war-torn littered beaches of the world, where ignorant armies clash by night. And it will still be the task of generations well beyond our own to enter more deeply into that conversation and communion of faiths which also is needed to contribute, in global terms, to the coming of the kingdom, on earth as in heaven. But the kingdom of God and forgiveness, Jesus says, always is now open to us to strive for; and if we do that, striving for the kingdom of God each in our own different and particular way, as Alan Hemming from Salford did in his, with his Muslim friends, that will be our best way of paying tribute to him and to all the saints of God, who have fallen, fighting the good fight of faith and forgiveness. May they rest in peace, and rise in glory.

Professor Kenneth Boyd. Sermon delivered at Evensong in St John's Episcopal Church Edinburgh on the 16th after Trinity. Readings Joel 2, 21-27; Matthew 6, 25-33.

The First Clergy of St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral Edinburgh

St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, Palmerston Place, Edinburgh was designed by George Gilbert Scott and consecrated in 1879. St Mary's was funded by the bequest of two sisters, Mary and Barbara Walker, whose fortune as landowners had been made by the housing and railway development of the West End of Edinburgh. How did this new Cathedral understand itself? What identity did its architect provide? Who were its congregation? How did it belong in a Presbyterian industrial city? I begin with a group of eleven clergy who were closely connected with its foundation, and who provided its spiritual vision.

The Clergy

Bishop Charles Terrot and Dean Edward Ramsay of Edinburgh, and John Sinclair were older clergy who had known the Walker sisters, and were appointed by them as Trustees to plann the Cathedral.

In March 1871 Mary Walker died and the will came into effect, but the project was launched amidst a complete change in clerical personnel. Henry Cotterill became coadjutor in 1871 then Bishop on Terrot's death in 1872. The energetic Dean Ramsay also died in 1872. Cotterill appointed James Montgomery Dean in 1873. Finally Sinclair, last of the old guard, died in 1875.

In 1878 the Cathedral chapter was appointed. Montgomery was made Dean of the Cathedral (an office later re-named Provost) as well as of the Diocese. Sub-Dean John Cazenove and Chaplains William Meredith and Reginald Mitchell-Innes comprised the other full-time staff, while Incumbent Canons Daniel Fox Sandford of St John's Princes Street, Gildart Jackson of St James' Leith and William Bird Bushby of the Duke of Buccleuch's chapel at Dalkeith were senior clergy in the diocese of Edinburgh.

Scottish or English?

The question usually first asked of a Scottish Episcopalian's identity is, 'were they Scottish or English?', but the answers for this group were far from straightforward.

Bishop Terrot's parents, who met in India where Terrot was born, were both from French Hugenot families. When his father was killed in action his family invited his mother to live with them in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Terrot was educated in Cambridge but holidayed with his uncle, incumbent of the Episcopal Chapel at Haddington, succeeding him in that post and spending his entire career in the diocese of Edinburgh.

John Sinclair, son of the editor of the Statistical Account of Scotland, grew up in Edinburgh, studied in Oxford and became Rector of Sutterby in Lincolnshire, but aged 25 returned to the diocese of Edinburgh for seventeen years, before heading in 1839 for an ecclesiastical-political career in London.
Ramsay, son of the Sheriff of Kincardineshire, was largely educated in England: at Durham and Cambridge, with his uncle in Yorkshire, and as a curate in Somerset where, in charge in the absence of the rector, he was remembered for befriending the local Methodists. He returned to the Scottish Episcopal Church in 1824 and was distinguished by his energy and intelligence, playing an important role in removing barriers between the Scottish Episcopal and Anglican church, and shining as a national literary figure.

Bishop Cotterill was the son of the evangelical Rector of Blakeney in Norfolk and educated at Cambridge. He came to Scotland as Bishop of Edinburgh late in his career, after serving for thirty-five years in Madras, Brighton and Grahamstown in South Africa. Montgomery, grandson of the Baronet of Stobo, made his career in the land of his birth, although he received his theological training in Durham and spent two years as a curate in Dorset before Terrot recruited him as curate for St Paul's York Place.

Cazenove, from London, had a British Tractarian formation as curate at St Peter's, Leeds, followed by twenty years as Vice-Provost then Provost of the Cathedral of the Isles on Cumbrae in Argyll, before settling in Edinburgh where he developed a distinguished educational career.

Sandford was a Scot by birth, education, and career. However, he was the grandson of a prominent English immigrant in whose diocese the elder clergy had grown up,  Bishop Daniel Sandford (d.1830), the first Englishman to become a bishop in the Scottish Episcopal Church, assisting it to emerge from post-Jacobite obscurity and into communion with the Church of England. The migrant missionary gene emerged late in his grandson's life: he became Bishop of Tasmania in 1883.

Jackson and Bushby were English immigrants, as were the young chaplains, Meredith and Mitchell-Innes, who were at the start of careers that would lead both of them further north: Meredith after a period as Vice-Principal of Chichester Theological College returned to Scotland as Rector of Muthill and then Crieff in Fife, while Mitchell-Innes held various diocesan posts in Edinburgh, Glasgow and finally Inverness.

To categorise any individual in this group as Scottish, English or even British would be misleading: collectively, they were Episcopalians of the British Empire. What did they think about theology, Scottish identity, church establishment, social action? What shape did the teaching in the new church take? To find out you'll have to read my full article. All I need to do is write it.

Gothic Revival in Westminster

I was invited to St Matthew's Westminster to give a talk on religion and environmental issues at the inaugural Just Festival Westminster, and unexpectedly found myself in a George Gilbert Scott church.

St Matthew's, begun in 1849, was a high-church mission in a notorious slum area of Westminster known as the Devil's Acre. I dread to think what the price of these flats might be now, but the narrow lanes and names like "Perkin's Rents" and "Old Pye Street" recall a time when bare food and shelter were foremost in people's minds. A church and, as so often in these missions more importantly a school, represented a great leap forward in civilization.

St Matthew's is a strange church, because it burn down in the 1970s, so is a now a collection of rescued George Gilbert Scott fragments juxtaposed with unashamedly modern additions and reconstructions. There is still a sense of how the weary and heavy laden of Devil's Acre might have come there to find rest amongst the beauty:

And been raised above the squalor of the lanes outside by the combined splendour and homeliness of George Gilbert Scott's gilded reredos, depicting the nativity:

The fact that the original stained glass consists of rescued fragments makes one look at them with fresh appreciation, perhaps more as the original beholders saw them, perhaps feeling that they were rescued fragments of humanity themselves.

St Matthew's is like a beautiful patchwork casket for new works of religious art. I particularly like this Mary and child, with her brazen nudity and all the stroppiness of the Magnificat. She isn't just talking about God showing strength with his arm, scattering the proud and exalting the humble and meek, she's jolly well doing it herself:

The Just Festival in which I was participating included a new piece of art showing different faces of God: much bigger and more spectacular than it appears in my picture. My friend Raymond, whose organisation of the Festival included procuring the enormous exhibition panel to display it on, was worried it would be a bit controversial but it seemed to meet with general acclaim.

Apparently the naked Mary had caused a bit of a stooshie. So did my "Earth be Glad" talk about religion and the environmental crisis. I feel I'm in good company. Whether you're a nineteenth-century Tractarian missionary, or a twenty-first century environmental campaigner, it's difficult to sing Mary's song at choral evensong every week without becoming a bit revolutionary:

He hath showed strength with his arm;
He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts;
He hath put down the mighty from their seat,
And hath exalted the humble and meek;
He hath filled the hungry with good things,
And the rich he hath sent empty away.

So what are you actually asking us to do?

This seems to be the most frequently asked question at the talks I give on religion and the environmental crisis. I'm always slightly put out by it, because the whole talk is about what I think people ought to do. I agree people deserve more help than I give them in the talk: I'm just not sure I'm equipped to do it: the talk itself was my contribution and now it's over to you. However, here is an attempt at a framework based on my talk which might form a useful programme for a group wishing to pursue the idea of looking for hope in the middle of mass extinction.

I think you need to learn, speak, and act.

LEARN

My talk is challenging and fresh not because I'm on the pulse of the zeitgeist, but because I hunt obscure things in dusty archives -- in news that doesn't make headlines, in ancient wisdom our culture neglects. As I argued in my talk, in the face of mass extinction maybe outdated religious concepts might turn out to be useful after all. The first law of history is 'we ain't no smarter than our ancestors'. If you agree we need a change in discourse, the first thing I'm asking you to do is to learn with me. Your brains are as big as mine. If I'm ahead in my thinking it's only because I've been puzzling over this for the past ten years. There's only one of me and there are many of you. The world needs your brains. Your first task is, get learning.

"When people know what they are facing, that's when they dig deep, and find that miraculous hope and courage. That's when they stop being afraid."

Learn about prophets

"You are Jonah. You must be thrown into the sea. You must find the courage that's only found when you've sunk to the very bottom. You must be vomited up on the beach, and you must go and deliver the message. You must turn into the hope."

A prophet in Christian tradition is not someone who foretells the future by reading entrails. It is someone whose insights about the present are so clear that they can understand the probability of future consequences. This is what climate scientists do today, as well as those involved in equally important and less controversial environmental research. However, what makes a prophet different from most scientists is the scientist must retain a detached and objective perspective, whereas the prophet commits his or her whole physical life to becoming the message. This often involves great personal sacrifice, but this is the secret of the prophet's influence: their actions tend to speak louder than their words. A valuable study exercise for a group would to each take one of the prophets in the Bible and see how they go about this, and to do what I did with Jonah. You might be surprised. Try it for Micah, Amos, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Elijah, and Christianity's greatest prophet (alongside his other roles), Jesus. Have each person report back and then discuss them. What would it mean for you to take these prophets as your role models today?

- We have an environmental crisis going on, and you're asking us to sit around doing bible study?

- How can a discourse change, can thought patterns change, without thinking and learning? The problem is, you have been used to fruitless, theoretical discussions about the bible, about theories of theology or morality that can never be put to the test or be other than subjective. I'm asking you to read it as a book of practical wisdom that's relevant for real life now. Oh and quit the fruitless religious discussions.

"Whether you believe in God, or not, or don't know, today it doesn't matter, because the situation of Jonah stays the same, and our situation, so spookily similar to Jonah's, stays the same."  

Learn about the environmental crisis

"Ecosystems are good at recovering, but faced with increasingly violent assaults from climate change, pollution and exploitation, they cannot recover, and eventually collapse. Not decline gradually: collapse. If this is new to you, I urge you to go and find out about it. The picture has got spectacularly worse over the past few years, and the science has not been widely reported."

Find out what scientists are saying about the environment: global deforestation, the Pacific rubbish dump, Himalayan glacier melt, what mass extinction means. Read the report on the state of the oceans (stateoftheocean.org). I do commend Twitter not because it's trendy but because it's useful for getting at the right information quickly: many scientists use it to provide ongoing succinct updates of what they regard as their most important findings. Find a teenager to show you how to use it, then get in touch with me (@eleanormharris) and I'll point you in the direction of useful resources.

- But Twitter sounds difficult and strange and scary!

- You asked me for hope. I've looked for hope and found it in you. Do you expect it to be easy? If you think Twitter sounds difficult and scary, I think you will have difficulty being the hope of the world. As Jesus said (when he wasn't saying 'don't be afraid'), if you can't be trusted with trivial things, whose going to put you in charge of more important ones?

ACT

"Either we transform our eating, or we starve. Either we transform our travelling, or we stop forever. Either we transform our living, or we die. Not modify: not reduce a bit: not next year: totally transform, now."

I didn't mean this metaphorically, and I wasn't exaggerating.

It is often objected that your individual effort won't make any difference. This is true of the individual who is merely doing things to salve their conscience, or as the result of an individual advertising campaign. But it is not true in your case, because you are prophets, and an essential part of being a prophet (as you discovered earlier) is that they are completely personally committed to their message.

"Get out of this church and demonstrate that humanity can be more than just a rogue species"

Here are two suggestions:

First suggestion:

1. Go through the gospels and find all the passages where people ask Jesus what they should do.
2. Make a list of his advice.
3. Take it.

Second suggestion:
1. Make one list of all the things you do which contribute to mass extinction, by using unsustainably produced resources, polluting, or damaging ecosystems. Do this in discussion with a group and with the help of on-line resources.
2. Make a second list of all the ways you can think of to create an environmental handprint, that is, to increase biodiversity and counter mass extinction.

3. Which do you think is currently bigger, your handprint or your footprint? Challenge yourselves and one another to live so your handprint is bigger than your footprint, to leave the world more biodiverse than you found it.

Try both. How do they compare?

Handprint Ideas

tree planting and reforestation
wildlife gardening, window boxes for bees, green roofs and 'no mow' grass areas
using consumer power to persuade producers of food or wood to encourage biodiversity
install solar panels to generate electricity without contributing to climate change
find out about biodiversity and land use (grazing, crops, housing, recreation like golf courses and grouse moor), and support policies that improve biodiversity
give to charities and invest in projects that conserve or restore biodiversity (for example, money saved reducing your environmental footprint, or you might consider your pension and other investments)
support the global education of women: it's the quickest, cheapest and fairest way to slow population growth and increase sustainable practices locally

SPEAK

"You have to be the prophets, who proclaim the message."

Prophets speak. I got your interest by speaking. Discourse change leads policy change and happens, sometimes quite quickly, when the message of a few voices is taken up by many. My talk used the model of Jonah's message spreading around Nineveh then being taken up as policy by the king. You think I'm naturally good at speaking: I'm not. I'm naturally inarticulate and prefer hiding in history archives, which is why I wrote my talk out word-for-word and spent much time rehearsing it. If you think what I said is right and important, it's up to you to find ways to tell other people: not just in talks, but in conversation, by letter, by postcard, in sermons, in ten-foot-high letters on a wall, on Twitter (scary!!). I can send you the text of my talk if you like, but it would be much better to write your own. In your group, make a list of practical ways you could be prophets, and speak to the powerful.

- But speaking out is not my thing: it's difficult and scary!

- Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of looking a fool. The only fear allowed round here is `fear of the Lord'.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Proverbs 1.7

"You'll realise as the story unfolds that `the Lord' represents everything that happens which isn't human decision or will: objective scientific knowledge; the tugging voice of conscience; the uncontrollable forces of nature."

FINALLY

Use your initiatives. I don't know much and I'm not in charge of anything. I only have one brain and you have many.


If you're reading this without having heard the talk, do invite me to come and give it. I'm told it's thought-provoking. Clergy and non-churchgoers seem to find it most interesting, which is interesting!

And do keep in touch. Comment on this blog. My email is eleanormharris@gmail.com. Do that scary Twitter thing.

There's a discourse that needs changed. You are the prophets. Go and make more.

Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others. 2 Corinthians 5:11

"Nothing will ever be the same. Don't be afraid. Turn into the hope."