Plenary, 22 Mar 2000

Meeting date: Wednesday, March 22, 2000

Official Report 406KB pdf

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Time for Reflection

To lead our time for reflection today, we welcome the Reverend Daniel McLoughlin, from Port Glasgow.

I am very happy to be with you today as we spend these few minutes in reflection and prayer. God is everywhere. God is here. Let us begin by acknowledging the presence of God in this place and in our hearts.

I would like to put before you today a short passage from St Mark's Gospel. Jesus was setting out on a journey when a man ran up to him, knelt before him and put this question to him: "Good Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: you must not kill; you must not commit adultery; you must not steal; you must not bring false witness; you must not defraud; you must honour your father and mother."

The young man said to him, "Master, I have kept all those since my earliest days." Jesus looked steadily at him and loved him, and he said, "There is one thing that you lack. Go and sell everything that you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." The young man's face fell at those words and he went away sad, for he was a man of great wealth.

I am always moved by that short story. Here we have a good young man who wants to be even better. Jesus sees that and loves him for it. However, Jesus also sees that there is something that this man puts before all else; his money and possessions. It is the one thing that the young man cannot give up, and it is the one thing that Jesus asks of him.

I am not a bad person. I like to think that I am basically a good and decent human being. However, in honesty, I, too, would have to own up to having areas of my life that come before God, which stops me becoming the person that I could be and the person that God wants me to be. I suspect that, in that regard, I am no different from most people.

It would be an interesting exercise to put ourselves in the position of that young man. What would be the one thing that Jesus would home in on in my life, or in your lives: pride, arrogance, racism, bigotry, closed minds, closed hearts? The list could become very detailed, very personal and very illuminating. Perhaps that is what I like so much about the story of the young man: he did not hear what he thought he would hear, but what he heard was true, and the truth is not always easy to face.

May God bless this Parliament and God be with all those who work here, and may God, who loves us in spite of our flaws, bless all the Scottish people.