Plenary, 28 Jan 2009

Meeting date: Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Official Report 376KB pdf

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Time for Reflection

Good afternoon. As always on a Wednesday afternoon, the first item of business is time for reflection. I am delighted that our time for reflection leader today is the Right Rev David Lunan, the moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

St John, after a lifetime of reflection, tried to explain for a wider audience, using the language of Greek philosophy, the universal significance of the Christ event—God coming to earth, God becoming human. It is all about becoming human. He wrote:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth."

St Irenaeus later wrote:

"The glory of God is a human being fully alive."

And it is words, more than anything else, that shape our lives and define our humanity. You and I use words a lot. They are our stock-in-trade. We need them to describe, explain, persuade and inspire. Words are powerful, for good or ill, and words are precious.

It would be an interesting lunch conversation to recall the words, the verses, the songs and the proverbs that we learned long ago from our parents and teachers but which still influence our thinking. Scotland is rich in such sayings: "What's for you will no go by you"; "We're all Jock Tamson's bairns"; "He's got a good conceit of himself"; "Keep a calm souch"; "It'll all be the same in a hundred years." There is also, "Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves." [Laughter.] I wrote this three weeks ago.

Those are not just couthy old saws; they are words that have shaped our psyche. They have a wisdom worth returning to, coming home to, worth telling our children about—"I don't care who writes their laws, but let me write their ballads."

And in this week, and in this year, we remember Robert Burns, who captures in words our love of nature, our spirit of romance and adventure and patriotism, our disdain for sham in church and nation—

"an honest man's the noblest work of God"—

and expresses the universal vision of what we hope for, and God intends, for ourselves and for everyone.

"For a' that, and a' that,
It's comin yet for a' that,
That Man to Man the warld o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that."

The glory of God is a human being fully alive.

Let us pray.

God bless Scotland,
Guard her children,
Guide her leaders,
And grant us peace.

Amen.