Come and join us if you’re in Edinburgh this evening.

Renfield St Stephen’s Church, Bath Street, Glasgow

Sunday 29th November 2009, 7.00pm.

Part of the ‘Revised Standard Visions’ programme, 2008-09

In the lead up to Copenhagen, HOLY CITY gives over its diet of workshops and worship to issues around climate change and the prophetic responses demanded of humanity.

Workshops:

‘Politics & Copenhagen’:

ROSS LOVERIDGE, Energy Advisor to the Scottish Government gives us an overview of the issues that need to be addressed at Copenhagen.

‘A Green Bible & Incarnation’:

JOHN L. BELL draws on biblical insight to discern what’s demanded of us as stewards of God’s creation.

‘The End Of Suburbia’:

RAYMOND YOUNG shows a film and leads discussion on the implications for the way we live in spaces and places today.

‘Still the World’:

FIONA EVANS & MAGGIE LARKIN host a contemplative space with image and sound from humanity’s urban and rural habitats.

Worship: ‘A Reduced Creation?’:

participative liturgy of song, silence, word, image and symbolic action on a faithful response to the environmental challenges that face us.

Holy City is organised by the Wild Goose Worship Group and a motley assortment of Glaswegian citizens.

Have you given up on evening services but still long for that special evening thing? – but not necessarily on a Sunday?

Want to reach out to people for whom traditional morning services don’t seem to appeal?

Like to tackle spirituality in different ways?

At ‘Night Has Fallen’ Stewart Cutler and Jack Dyce will help you explore some fresh ways of doing evening worship.

Tuesday 3 November – unpacking some ideas

Tuesday 17 November – planning an Advent night service

Tuesday 1 December – the Advent service!

7.30 to 9.30pm

Giffnock United Reformed Church

Trains stop at Giffnock station nearby & 38 buses outside the door and ample parking at the church

Let us know you’re coming – phone Christine on 0141 332 7667 or email Scottishcollege [at] urcscotland [dot] org [dot] uk

Holy CITY 09-10
Revised Standard Visions: Imagining another world
25 Oct/ 29 Nov/ 20 Dec/ 31 Jan/ 28 Feb/ 28 Mar/ 25 Apr/ 30 May
@ 7pm, Renfield St Stephen’s, 260 Bath St., Glasgow. www.holycity-glasgow.co.uk

Climate change, the credit crunch, the still-unfulfilled demands of justice & peace… our generation faces a multitude of challenges…

The history of faith and culture speak of each generation facing similar critical times, when prophets and visionaries have re-framed and re-formed the way we think about our world. It’s said that ‘without a vision, the people perish’.  Holy City’s 2009-10 programme addresses this urgent need in all its facets, and seeks to explore the re-imagining and re-visioning of faith, our lives and our times.

Holy City is the Glasgow city-centre monthly, ecumenical workshop & worship event. It’s enabled by the Wild Goose Resource Group of the Iona Community, in collaboration with a motley crew of Glaswegian citizens.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a sermon for lots of reasons, mostly not being around much over the summer but today I preached at Lanark Greyfriars on the theme of ‘Courage for Community’ from today’s lectionary reading from Esther.

As usual, your thoughts, comments and suggestions (constructive please).

When is communion not communion?

While we were in Cuba we had a time of worship on Sunday night.  I blogged a little about it in my Cuba diary but I wanted to expand a though a little.

The worship focused on the strange nature of the revolution Jesus led.  No guns, no political parties, no fighting and no bid for power.

He used what was at hand to illustrate his upside down kingdom.  So, as part of our worship we had communion… with coke and crisps.

We didn’t have bread or wine.  And even if we did have it I wouldn’t have used it because that wouldn’t have been strange.  The liturgy was unusual but had all the bits and we set apart the coke and crisps from all common use.  It just seemed like the right thing to do.  And it caught the moment.  And it was worshipful and reverent and cast the Gospel in a different light for a group of people who were out of their comfort zone and experiencing a different culture.

We used the words:

As we share these crisps and juice together we symbolise our unity in Jesus the Christ, the one who calls us to follow him, who calls us from the safety of our traditions, from our comfort zones, to journey with him.

And so at this sacred moment we re-enact the events of the night before Jesus died, when, sitting with his friends at the table, he took the bread, gave thanks, blessed it and broke it.  So we take these crisps, the food that we have, the things we eat in celebration.

Jesus then shared it with them.  We now do the same, breaking the crisps as the symbol of his body broken by the sins of the world.

And after sharing the bread, Jesus took the cup of wine, blessed it and then shared it with all his friends.  So we take juice, the drink of daily living, the ordinary, the mundane and do the same, drinking it as the symbol of his lifeblood.  A symbol of something greater.  Something extra-ordinary.  Something subversive.  Something revolutionary.

Through the work of God the Divine Spirit, and as we offer our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, this coke and crisps are reminders of the sacred.  By sharing these crisp and juice with one another, we remember Jesus and what he was, and what he is, and what he always will be.

So come, all of you, the table is ready.

Come all of you who are burdened, and receive again these symbols, not the symbols of our tradition or our history, but symbols of our revolutionary eternity.

But I know that there will be some people who would be horrified.

So, was it communion? And if it was or was not, why?

I know what I think but I’m interested in hearing your views.

Sunday morning was the only time that the group would separate and experience something different.  We had decided to split into three groups and worship with the three churches we have spent time with here in Havana.

Rob, Alison ad Katie would go back to Guanabacoa with Dyana.  Matthew and Shona would stay at Luyano and Avril, Jen, Eilidh, Erik and I would return to First Havana with Anaitza.

Luis took us and dropped us off before taking the others out to Guanabacoa.  We arrived to find the congregation gathering, all in yellow t-shirts.

We ended up sitting at the back on extra chairs as the church was completely full.  The children from the holiday club were all there, swelling the congregation, but we were told that the church is often full.  It was great to sit at the back… that’s where the fans were!

Worship was full of music; an amazing tenor sang the introit followed by a quartet, and octet, all 90 children and a group from the Korean Presbyterian church in Miami all sang.

The preacher was from the Korean-American group and Frank (conducting the children’s choir in the photo) came and translated the sermon for us.  There was a funny moment when he and Jen (who speaks excellent Spanish) looked at each other… then Frank said ‘No, I don’t understand him either!’.

After worship we got a yellow taxi back to Luyano to find the rest of the group talking about their morning.  Matthew had sung at Luyano, Rob, Katie and Alison had a fantastic rockin’ time at Guanabacoa and we had been treated to some brilliant music.  All in all a great morning at church.

The rest of the day was free.  It was our first real chance to sit down and just relax and I’m glad we had the space.

We decided that after dinner we would gather on our own as a group to share in some worship which I would lead.

I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘revolution’ recently and this seemed the perfect topic for Cuba.  We began with ‘The Call To Prayer’, the Muslim-style call from Karl Jenkin’s The Armed Man (A Mass for Peace), a strange way to start a Christian worship.  We talked about Mark’s revolutionary Gospel and how it presents a different way, a revolution of peace and love and justice and grace.  We shared a communion of coke and pringles, a strange way to celebrate a sacrifice.  And we listened to revolutionary songs.  Martyn Joseph’s ‘Strange Way’ and Tracy Chapman’s ‘Talkin’ About A Revolution’.

I think tonight was probably my favourite moment.  It seemed real and right and good in all its strangeness.  A group of people sharing God and finding him in  the ordinary and the strange.