Dear Friends
‘How can you celebrate Christmas in a place like this,’ the prisoner asked me? At the time I was a very part- time chaplain in Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow. It was the middle of December. It’s a refrain we are hearing just now in a different context as the COVID restrictions remain in place. How can we celebrate Christmas this year with all that is going on?

My answer to the prisoner is still relevant today I think. If you can’t celebrate Christmas in prison then you can’t celebrate it anywhere. The first Christmas was celebrated against a background of an occupying army, high taxes, despotic rulers and random acts of senseless slaughter. The background of Christmas highlights its meaning in sharp relief. The darker and blacker the sky the brighter the star shines.

How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land asked the Jews in exile in Babylon centuries before? Eventually they realised they could sing with even greater confidence and strength because God was with them. So with Christmas this year we will celebrate, if not in large family gatherings, then rather with the reminder that Christmas means Immanuel-God with us. In these strange times the message of Christmas stands as a wonderful reminder we are not alone and never have been. So it will be that with confidence and strength we will wish people this year a very happy Christmas, and we will mean it.

Our services in advent will take up some of the traditional themes of the second coming and John the Baptist. The on-line services will continue this month. There will be a short service for Christmas Day, but there will be no Watchnight Service this year. There is a special treat on 20 December when the choir will lead us in an on-line service of lessons and carols. It promises to be an uplifting occasion . We also look forward to the return of Rev John Smith as our locum later this month. It will be good to have him back.

I wish you all a very happy Christmas
With best wishes
David

Dear Friends
During the period of John Smith’s absence as locum I have been asked to lead the on-line worship. I have no idea, however, what you might call a partial locum for a locum; temporary, interim, short-term were all mentioned. No matter what, they all suggest this is not a permanent arrangement, and we all look forward to John returning to his duties once his treatment is completed and I would ask you to continue to remember him in your prayers..
But we do live in a rather interim world at present don’t we? Life as we know it is on hold to some extent or another. We wait with growing frustration for these times to pass, as pass they will, so that life can return to what we once knew, and we can return to church as we used to do as well.
We are in the process of discovering, however, that there is new way of being church. There is another way of having our faith encouraged and our commitment strengthened from that which we once knew. Had anybody suggested a wee while ago, that we could be seated at home sharing in worship, yet still feeling part of an unseen congregation we would have found it hard to comprehend. But it is happening.
A friend of mine for whom I preach on occasion asked me to take a service one Sunday while she had a well-deserved break. From the comfort of my living room I conducted a live Zoom service for a congregation just south of Glasgow.
These are exciting times for the church, exciting times for our congregations as we look forward to working out how the church will look in the new norm we are told to expect. So many good thigs have emerged recently, so much talent rising to the challenge. It would be a shame to lose sight of that.
The story of the Bible is the story of a people on the move from Egypt to the Promised Land, from Jerusalem to exile in Babylon and back again, and in the New Testament the movement of a gospel, and people, from Jerusalem to Rome and beyond. We belong to that tradition of a people who have to keep on the move to keep pace with the God who is out in front leading us.
With best wishes
David

Dear Friends

France is a favourite country of ours. Over the years there have been many excellent holidays in the country. Brittany, Paris, Chartres, Carcassonne, Bourges, Toulouse, Poitiers, Tours, Avignon, Annecy – each has provided (some more than once) the centre for touring surrounding towns and countryside. We have close friends who live in a small town outside Toulouse, so some of our visits have been close to living like locals – which is always a different experience.
Sadly, in many country villages visited, a visit to the local church has proved sad and depressing. The sense of emptiness and abandonment is sometimes very tangible. Like a rose well past its full bloom, gently decaying while still giving glimpses of its former glory, the church will stand in a village square, bypassed and feeling forgotten. An occasional funeral may come to the churchyard, and bring a crowd, but on a Sunday worshippers are few, and the interior seems always dark and musty.

Historians could sketch for us the reason why the Church in rural France has come to this. Why church attendance is dying out.

There are parts of Scotland, where there are similar concerns. Many of our rural Borders churches labour under the same sense of becoming meaningless to the general population. Not all of them by any means, but we do detect signs of disconnect. How many children and grandchildren no longer are to be found in the pews where their grandparents sit?

It’s part of the task ahead of us, looking towards days when Covid-19 is under some degree of control, to encourage people to take up again the habit of church going. After all, several months of no church for some will lead to a breakdown in a life-long habit. And yet, the congregation gathered in worship is a powerful factor in the nurturing of faith. Our religion has always recognised that worship is best done together. The cry of the people of Israel by the waters of Babylon could well be our cry – “how can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land”. In other words, can we really truly worship God in a society where church attendance is falling away?

The answer in ancient Babylon was the emergence of synagogue worship. Although far from the Temple in Jerusalem, the faithful could approach God in prayer and praise.

As you’ll read elsewhere, for the very best of reasons neither the Old Parish Church or Edddleston are likely to open for Sunday worship for a time yet. But as soon as it is wise and careful of the health of our people to reassemble we assuredly will.

If that is going to be a joyful moment, then think on these things. How can each one of you contribute to a good return? Think on that question. Pray about it. What can you say to your friends and neighbours to perhaps get them thinking about it too. We need a feeling of calling, and an intentionality about our return. Just to drift in and think that things will carry on as before, well that may be too weak a response as, together, we seek to reboot church! For the glory of God, and the spiritual sustenance of the people.

Grace and peace,

John