LETTERS

Very many thanks to all who wrote about the “Big Question” this month (August 2021) and the question: “What has been the most inspiring sacred place you have visited?”

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All were most moving.

David Lacy reminded me of a Communion that Elinor Gordon shared with us near the Sea of Galilee, when the local cat was deeply present! But for me Eddie Enslin struck a very deep chord, as if reading

Jesus’ mind. He described a room where a death bed showed the presence of a love within the family and the presence of God.

The love of God was there in all the tragedy, courage and heartbreak. The sanctity was in the person and family and made me realise that there can be a coming together of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in each human being.

Thank you Eddie for showing us this in your moving description.

John Kusel, Cumbernauld

Welcome the stranger

The Five Marks of Mission (originally from the Church of England) adopted by the General Assembly are a very useful tool in shaping the life the Church. However, the list is not exhaustive.

One other vital Mark of Mission is “to welcome the stranger”.

In the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25) Jesus says to the sheep as He welcomes them into the kingdom: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me”. The “stranger” today may be the person who lives across the road, perhaps a newcomer in the community, or they may have come as an asylum seeker from another country where they are persecuted for their faith.

My own congregation has had the joy of welcoming three people who have come as asylum seekers from Iran. Their journeys to the point of being granted leave to remain have been long and difficult, but they greatly value the new home and welcome they have found in Scotland and in the Church. Other people have not had long geographical journeys or legal hurdles to face, but they too have found warmth and welcome in the Church.

It is often said that people must feel they belong before they will believe. Before we can fulfil the second Mark of Mission – to teach, baptise and nurture new believers – we must first “welcome the stranger”.

Marnie Johnston (Rev), Glasgow

Livingstone link

I was interested in the letter from the Rev Bruce in the July issue. My mother, Sister Garden, worked with Dr Shepherd in Molepolole from 1935 to 1941 under the auspices of the United Free Church. In her photographs she had a picture of an elderly patient who was said to have remembered Dr Livingstone. Could this be the same person as was referred to by Rev Bruce?

My mother died in 1977, so all information has long gone. I also knew Dr Shepherd when he lived in the UF Manse in Craigie, Perth. So, it was a delight to be able to visit Molepolole in 2010, visiting the old buildings which still stand in the grounds of the new hospital. Jeanette Kinloch, Perth

Hymn debate

I am not surprised that two of your contributors to “The Big Question” in the July issue found inspiration in Kendrick’s powerful hymn The Servant King. Nevertheless the words present great difficulty, particularly in the chorus:

“This is our God, the Servant King, he calls us ... to bring our lives an offering of worship to the Servant King”.

This is not scriptural, although it could perhaps be justified by appeal to the creeds and practice of the Church hundreds of years later. The New Testament writers are far more nuanced in their encounter with the mystery of God’s presence in Jesus. In speaking of the “son of God” or in describing Jesus as “the image of the invisible God”, they are safeguarding vital elements which are missing from Kendrick’s bald assertion: “This is our God”.

Cartoon: Bill McArthur

After all, he himself includes the line “Yet not my will but yours”, which, like the cry of desolation from the Cross, depends on a measure of separation between Jesus and God.

The picture given by the hymn might suggest that Jesus is simply inserted into our world, without human heritage or history – making the genealogies meaningless. He appears utterly unlike us, making it impossible for us to see him as the first in a family of brothers and sisters. Above all, it becomes difficult to find common ground with other faiths and to recognise the many ways in which humankind knows God’s revelation of himself.

As for offering our worship: the Gospels suggest that Jesus deflected any attempts to worship him. The evidence of the early Church is that Christians saw themselves as worshipping God through Jesus as the Way.

None of this undermines the hymn’s emphasis on Jesus as Servant, which rightly attracts your correspondents, but we need to beware of putting Christian teaching into a straitjacket that diminishes the breadth of God’s work in the world.

Graham Hellier (Rev), Marden, Hereford.

Hub questions

The Home Office proposal that migrants may in future be held in an offshore hub smacks to me of the old ‘Less Eligibility’ principle of the 19th century Poor Law. This, of course, was the idea that you put people off applying for help except as a last resort by making that assistance more unpleasant than any other form of support.

While a considered response to the issue of ‘illegal’ migration to Britain is quite reasonable it is hard to see how the idea of transferring people from the Channel or Dover to some far flung location assists. Surely there would be considerable extra expense in transporting the migrants to these new venues?

How could government officials and lawyers communicate in any proper way with the people concerned if they are on a different continent?

The whole proposition seems an unpleasant extension of the climate of xenophobia which has grown in the UK in recent years.

Andrew McLuskey (Rev), Ashford, Middlesex