Plenary, 24 Jan 2001
Meeting date: Wednesday, January 24, 2001
Official Report
358KB pdf
Time for Reflection
Leading our time for reflection today is the Right Rev Dr Andrew McLellan, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. He has established a new tradition—everything we do in our first year is a new tradition—by making a two-day visit to the Parliament, meeting all the party leaders and spending some time in the gallery. This morning, he met members of the Education, Culture and Sport Committee. I offer Dr McLellan a warm welcome. Thank you for allowing us to use your premises.
Right Rev Dr Andrew McLellan (Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland):
I feel very much at home, Presiding Officer. To mark the new tradition, I present to the Parliament a tiny token of the continuing affection between our two institutions.
"In the service of the church," they said to me, "would you be prepared to spend January in the Caribbean?" I have a very high concept of public service, so I have just returned from three weeks in Cuba, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and the Bahamas.
A Church of Scotland missionary working in Jamaica told me a story. She was sitting on a beach with a bunch of Jamaican children and some Jamaican mothers. The question that people were to answer about the person sitting next to them was: "If you could give anything in the world to your neighbour, what would you give?" Nearly all the answers were along the lines of "thin lips" or "straight hair". Eventually they came to the girl sitting next to the missionary. "If you could give Jane anything in the world, what would you give her?" The child looked very puzzled and then said, "There is nothing that I could ever give to Jane." It was not because Jane was grown up, because there were other grown-ups on the beach who got different answers. It was because Jane was white.
That poignant story is a story about the destructive effects of racism. Two centuries ago, when the missionaries arrived in Jamaica—the first place Scottish missionaries ever went—they were detested by the English and Scottish people who were already there. The missionaries were detested because they hated the slave trade and were prepared to say so. I hope that the churches today are as brave in speaking out against racism as were our predecessors two centuries ago. This Saturday is Holocaust day. With that dark stain on the European spirit still spread around us, it is a good week to pledge ourselves again to oppose racism everywhere.
The most radical story Jesus ever told was the story of the good Samaritan: for the central figure in the story is one of the despised. Members may remember that the story ends with Jesus pointing to a member of the hated race and saying, "Now you go and behave in the same way."
In this very place a few months ago, I prayed at the General Assembly for
"a passionate church in a gentle Scotland".
I hope that you like the idea of a gentle Scotland: only a nation that sets its face against racism will ever be gentle.
Now a prayer:
Gather us in, O God, with him who is himself our peace with him who was never gathered in,
who was crucified on the outside of the city as he had lived on the boundaries of life.
So gather us in with him, that we be not truly gathered in until all are gathered in.
So that we may not fully belong until all belong.
Amen.