It's Complicated

DOUG 
Good Morning from Glasgow. In Sunday worship today we’re exploring how faith responds to the tensions and complications we all meet in our lives – how worship and belief cope with mixed feelings.

We begin with a lovely 19th C Baptist Hymn from the USA – How Can I Keep from Singing - it’s a hymn which draws together themes of trouble and hope – while also speaking to the sadness many of us feel in this moment about not being able to sing together in churches or choirs.

We hear it this morning in a newly recorded, physically-distanced version, sung by members of Glasgow University Chapel Choir, directed by Katy Lavinia Cooper.

HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING – CHOIR OF GLASGOW UNIVERSITY MEMORIAL CHAPEL DIRECTED BY KATY LAVINIA COOPER 

CAROLYN Prayer of Approach

Now we pray

Loving God, as we approach you this morning,
we wonder - how can we worship in such a time?

These past months have unsettled our certainties;
they have messed with our heads

What we have seen and heard
has chipped away at our courage.

Words of prayer and praise often seem to miss the mark
And our need to protect each other keeps us from singing,
together at least;

So we come with mixed feelings. 

Yet you come out to meet us – when we are still far away
To welcome us home!

And you are present, with those we love and with those who suffer –
even when we cannot be

And even when we bring so very little
you say to us: ‘a mustard seed of faith will do’

So, met by you, just as we are,
We ask that by your Spirit
your grace would lead us

your faith would grow in us
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

DOUG

As a Kirk minister and someone who teaches theology here at the University of Glasgow, I’ve often come across the view that religion in general – and Christianity in particular – is a kind of consolation for the simple minded.

That has something in common, I think, with Karl Marx’s lament that religion was the opium of the people – It’s the view that faith tends to dumb down the complexities of human life – offering us easy answers, reducing things to black and white. I sometimes hear people say wistfully – “O I wish I had your faith – it would make things so much easier…”

In recent years Facebook has famously etched new meaning onto the phrase ‘it’s complicated’ – in their case with our love lives in view – but I can’t help thinking that long before that, Augustine would have said that our attempts to love God are also complicated – both personally and politically.

And he was building on the legacy of Paul the Apostle, who wrote about how we are pulled in different directions by our own hearts and let down by our own wills – even when we want to do the right thing, we are not always able to do it.

This wistful but also hopeful hymn by John Bell expresses poignantly the truth that there is no perfect version of ourselves we can bring to God
It’s always only our complicated, mixed up selves that we bring, to God and to each other, because that is all we ever have to work with.

His hymn, Were I The Perfect Child of God – is accompanied here by the band Macappella and sung by Ian Galloway, minister of Gorbals Parish Church here in Glasgow.

WERE I THE PERFECT CHILD OF GOD Track 4 from CD ‘I Will Not Sing Alone’ (The Wild Goose Collective & Macappella)Performed by Ian Galloway and Macappella / Words: John L Bell; Music: Trad arranged by MacappellaCD Label & Number: Wild Goose Publications IC/WGP 034

CAROLYN

Most of us know that sense of dissonance: between the good, true and beautiful, and the realities we inhabit. As a university chaplain I have many conversations in that space.

Some of these are more abstract discussions, about providence, free will and such like: how do we trust in a good God, when we experience pain, or are so keenly aware of injustice? And yes, they can seem like attempts to avoid mess, and pain – to find simple answers and consolation.

But the most memorable conversations are with people in the midst of disruption, who have experienced something unnerving or deeply distressing. They want to talk about what faith actually means: what happens – or not – when we pray? And: why does God not seem to prevent harm to those who are innocent?

This might have been the experience of childhood abuse. Or their close friend has been caught up in a manipulative religious cult. Or perhaps they accidentally saw the video of a gunman opening fire on people praying in a Christchurch mosque, and witnessed mass murder.

Or, they are about one person’s sadness, the loss of hopes and dreams.

Sometimes the conversation pauses, allowing silence, prayer.

Sometimes a ray of hope, or insight, breaks through the darkness and chaos, opening, just a chink, to possibilities of trust and healing.

Always, these conversations feel like they take place on holy ground.

Yet often, they need to end before things are tidied up or resolved.

The Bible holds that tension as well. Especially in wisdom texts like ‘Ecclesiastes’ (whose Hebrew name is Kohelet), which broods over ‘all the oppressions under the sun’ – over the power of the oppressors and the tears of the oppressed. Its author is troubled by the fear that there is no plot, or purpose to human life; that it is all too hard to make sense of.

In his composition ‘Again’ - the composer David Lang offers a hauntingly beautiful setting of words from Ecclesiastes - It explores what he calls ‘the preacher Kohelet’s strange equilibrium of hope and futility’; people and the days they live in come and go, the sun rises and sets, the winds blow, the rivers run – this happens again and again – exhausting our senses – overwriting our memories

‘Again’ is sung here by the Choir of Merton College Oxford, directed by Benjamin Nicholas.

AGAIN BY DAVID LANG Track 2 from CD ‘Sleeper’s Prayer – Choral Music from North America
Performed by Choir of Merton College, Oxford, directed by Benjamin Nicholas
Words: After Ecclesiastes 1: 4–11 / Composer: David Lang
CD Label & Number: Delphian DCD 34232

DOUG

In these times when we are all counting the weeks left under various kinds of lockdown – today’s Psalm, Psalm 90, with its appeal for God to teach us to number our days, speaks to our sense of mortality but also to the persistence of our hope.

READER

1 Lord, you have been our dwelling-place

in all generations.
2 Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

3 You turn us back to dust,
and say, ‘Turn back, you mortals.’
4 For a thousand years in your sight
are like yesterday when it is past,
or like a watch in the night.

5 You sweep them away; they are like a dream,
like grass that is renewed in the morning;
6 in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;
in the evening it fades and withers.
9 For all our days pass away under your wrath;
our years come to an end like a sigh.
10 The days of our life are seventy years,
or perhaps eighty, if we are strong;
even then their span is only toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away.

11 Who considers the power of your anger?
Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due to you.
12 So teach us to count our days
that we may gain a wise heart.
13 Turn, O Lord! How long?
Have compassion on your servants!
14 Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
and for as many years as we have seen evil.

CAROLYN

Like so many Psalms, this one carries some deep tensions – God is our eternal home, but our lives are fragile – God endures forever, but we soon fade away – God is there for all time – but we are not.
Our experiences of trouble and suffering can make it seem as if there is no bigger story in which the days of our lives are held. But the Psalm also speaks of a new morning – one in which we feel our story lit up by God’s love – in which joy and gladness overtake pain and disappointment. 

LORD, FROM THE DEPTHS TO THEE I CRIED (Psalm 130) Tune: Martyrdom
Track 12 from CD ‘The Psalms of Scotland’ – Scottish Philharmonic Singers directed by Ian McCrorie; Organist: John Langdon
CD Label & Number: Abbey SCSCD 2830

CAROLYN

In this striking song, which feels like a psalm for our times, Californian songwriter Andy Squyres – who comes from an evangelical and Pentecostal tradition – wrestles with his own mixed feelings about the presence and absence of God in his life. ‘Before You God’ brings together a raw honesty with a stubborn refusal to give up hope.

BEFORE YOU GOD – ANDY SQUYRES
Single (Available on music distribution platforms)

DOUG
In a key insight for my own Scottish reformed tradition - the 16th C French theologian John Calvin stressed how knowledge of God and of ourselves are always closely bound up with one another.

It’s notable that the bible gives us examples of those who complain that God is hiding from them - but it also holds alongside those, examples of folk who are hiding from God.

The poetic Genesis story of Adam and Eve hiding from their Maker in Eden offers a haunting picture of how awareness of God’s presence can provoke feelings of shame and vulnerability.

In his remarkable memoir of faith, Unapologetic, Francis Spufford writes movingly about sitting in a café – in anguish about a personal failure – when he felt he might have screwed up irreparably - as he sat there nursing his coffee, on the radio he heard something – it was Mozart – but it sounded, he says, like Mercy:

MOZART CLARINET CONCERTO in A Major K 622: II – Adagio: From CD The Very Best of Mozart CD2 Track 2
CD Label: Naxos

CAROLYN

What happens when that distance between the ideal and the reality is within ourselves? When that wrestling is what American writer Anne Lamott calls ‘an inside job’? When it is a voice within us which won’t let us rest? 

The Christian practice of confession rests on the hope – that Mercy has the last word.

This prayer from the Iona Community reworks the ancient words ‘Kyrie Eleison, Lord have mercy’ into a mutual call and response. The traditional roles of confessor and absolver are dissolved here - as worshippers hear one another’s confession, they also speak in turn to ‘minister’ forgiveness to each other:

DOUG AND CAROLYN Confession & Words of Forgiveness 

Lead Almighty God, maker of all

ALL LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US

Lead Jesus Christ, Son of God

ALL CHRIST, HAVE MERCY UPON US

Lead Holy Spirit, breath of life,

ALL LORD HAVE MERCY UPON US

Lead Let us in silence remember our own faults and failings......

(silence)

I confess to God and in the company of all God's people, that my life and the life of the world are broken by my sin

ALL MAY GOD FORGIVE YOU, CHRIST RENEW YOU AND THE SPIRIT ENABLE YOU TO GROW IN LOVE, AMEN…

WE CONFESS TO GOD AND IN THE COMPANY OF ALL GOD'S PEOPLE, THAT OUR LIVES AND THE LIFE OF THE WORLD ARE BROKEN BY OUR SIN

Lead May God forgive you, Christ renew you and the Spirit enable you to grow in love, Amen.

DOUG

After the tragic death of his son in a climbing accident, the philosopher theologian Nicholas Wolterstorff wrote a memoir of his grief which he called A Lament For My Son. For me it stands alongside C.S. Lewis’s A Grief Observed as a searingly honest account of a person of faith coping with loss – at one point as he faces the ongoing worship life of the church, Wolterstorff asks in bewilderment – “are there songs for singing when you feel like this?”

When ‘in the midst of life we are in death’ – then we face the most draining and demanding work of holding things together – and this not least in the face of the current global pandemic – as we try to hold a complicated mix of grief and anger, fear and faith - and to hold each other through them. 

We hear this in William Croft’s cherished setting of the funeral sentences – which draws on Job and on Paul’s first letter to Timothy – the beauty of the choral setting belies the extreme difficulty of what we are being called to do – to bless the name of God even as what was given, has been ‘taken away’.

WILLIAM CROFT FUNERAL SENTENCES from CD The World of King’s
Performed by Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, directed by Sir David Willcocks
CD Label: Decca

CAROLYN

Now we pray:
God of Life, your mercies are often tender, but sometimes they are also fierce and strange
In the mystery of faith, we meet you both in what is given and in what is taken away
Before you God, we are opening our hearts -
We pray for our cities, towns and villages, that in our communities we may find common ground and work together to sustain healthy bodies and meaningful lives as citizens, both in and through this pandemic. We pray for goodness.

Lord, have mercy upon us

KYRIE ELEISON (Taizé version) Choir of Glasgow University Memorial Chapel directed by Katy Lavinia Cooper

We pray for what we have seen and heard and what we now know; for lost innocence and the wisdom of experience; for the healing of minds, as well as bodies.

we pray for humility in the light of truthfulness.

Christ have mercy upon us

KYRIE ELEISON 

We pray that you will strengthen our faith and renew our spirits.

Pour out your Spirit on all people. We pray that fresh possibilities may ignite the hopes of the young and that the old may dream peaceful dreams. As we face an uncertain future, we pray that you would be our vision – our dignity, our delight and our true word

Lord have mercy upon us 

KYRIE ELEISON

DOUG AND CAROLYN LORD’S PRAYER TOGETHER

DOUG

When people tell me (and they do) that faith is a false consolation for those who can’t face reality - I try not to get too defensive about it. As a Christian I need my critics – But to be honest that doesn’t really fit with my own experience.

Over the years my conviction has deepened that Faith involves our finding a way to hold in balance and in tension, feelings which are often mixed. When Anselm of Canterbury said ‘I believe in order to understand’ – maybe he was saying that faith always has to reckon with how hard it is to figure out what’s going on.
Walking by faith, as the New Testament puts it, is not just a consolation for the simple minded – it’s also, in its own way, a complication for the open minded – or that would be my own testimony, in a world when I am sometimes tempted to give up on God, that the faith I profess offers me a way of living with complications, of holding mixed feelings – of walking with the tensions we have explored in this service - it’s the work of faith to reckon with both suffering and joy, futility and hope, absence and presence, guilt and mercy, grief and consolation. And it’s complicated. And it’s often not easy. But for me thecall to faith is a call to face life as honestly as I can and to believe that God will be with me as I do that.

In this year in which the affirmation that Black Lives Matter has rung around the world, we close with this glorious gospel witness to walking by faith – ‘I don’t feel no ways tired’.

It’s a song of trust and of protest, of lament and hope, sung here by the choir of First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn – nobody told me that the road would be easy, I don’t believe God brought me this far to leave me. 

I DON’T FEEL NO WAYS TIRED First Presbyterian Church Of Brooklyn;
From Album ‘Guide My Feet – The Brooklyn Live Sessions
Released by Conception Productions

DOUG

So go now to walk by faith – go to walk with God who holds you in trouble, who calls you to joy and who has promised never to leave you.

CAROLYN

And the blessing of One God in Holy Trinity rest upon you and remain with you, now and always, AMEN.