Plenary,

Meeting date: Wednesday, May 23, 2001

Official Report 232KB pdf

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Time for Reflection

To lead time for reflection today, I welcome Rev Alan Paterson of the United Reformed Church in East Kilbride.

In the Christian calendar, tomorrow is Ascension day which, along with all other Christian feasts, is encrusted with 2000 years of theology and tradition. Fundamentally, however, the ascension paints a powerful word picture of the early believers' recognition that they had shared not only in the efforts and achievements of a man's life, but in the presence and action of God. The ascension draws a line under Christ's resurrection appearances and affirms a picture of Christ in glory.

The corollary of the ascension is that Christ's disciples now have their job to do. They and their successors are charged to be his witnesses—to speak for him—proclaiming a revolutionary kingdom where justice, peace and love rule. They have to teach and nurture, to respond to human need by loving service, to seek to transform unjust structures of society, to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and to sustain and renew the life of the earth. Those are not desperately original aims, nor are they exclusively Christian. We make no claim that Christ's followers are better, wiser or abler at doing those things than anyone else: we just reckon that we have no excuse for not doing them.

When climbers are asked why they climb mountains, they almost inevitably fall back on the glorious answer that was offered by Mallory, the Himalayan pioneer, when he said, "Because they're there." By contrast, I recently read a poet's answer to the question of why poems are written. It was, "Because they need to be there." It seems that much of society's challenge in community, church, parliament or nation is encapsulated in these two questions: what do we do with what is there, and are we creating what needs to be there?

Let us pray.

Christ, who taught about justice, who demonstrated forgiveness and who offered a new kind of living,
Teach us to live.

Christ, who liberates minds, who changes attitudes, and who challenges motives,
Teach us to love.

Christ, who elevated the humble, whose authority was in serving, and whose victory was a cross,
Teach us to serve.

Amen.