27/05/2012 General Assembly

In the 21st-century, does it matter what happens behind these doors?

This assembly is, I know,

one of the great historic councils of the British Isles.

Which has, for centuries, been a forum for a nation's reflection

on the most serious ethical and public questions facing Scotland.

If there is no other such forum in the shape of the Scottish Parliament,

that does not take away the solemnity of this meeting.

Seeking, as it does, to bring the light of Christ to bare

not only on its own business, but on the concerns of this society.

800 people from all over Scotland and beyond have gathered

in Edinburgh this week for the General Assembly

of the Church of Scotland.

All of the reports considered and debated by the Assembly

are contained in this, it is called the Blue Book.

The working group on human sexuality has produced a report,

it is called Believing in Marriage.

Last time there was a report on marriage in 1994,

they made specific recommendations that actually split the committee

which produced the report, resulting in a dissenting minority report.

They do not want that to happen this year,

so they have not made any recommendations.

But they do ask questions.

They list some possibilities the Kirk might want to think about. For instance,

"fewer and fewer couples marry as virgins and all

"but if you are sexually experienced with one another.

"Should a marriage service state that only now do the cleave together and become one?"

And, does that question imply that the Kirk

may have to face up to reality and abandon the traditional view

that marriage is the gateway to sexual behaviour?

If there was division in 1994, it was also very evident in 2010.

There was a whirlwind romance, we were engaged within weeks.

And, Moderator, we had sex before we were married.

Moderator, what I do remember was that it was great.

It was the full physical, fluffy expression

of the love that we had for one another.

A love that has sustained 26 years of married life

and a love that has enriched my life and, I believe, my ministry.

Moderator, I do not believe that we were setting a precedent.

LAUGHTER

I have seen my dad's birth certificate.

So I know that may granny and grandad where at it, too.

Moderator, sex runs in our family.

APPLAUSE AND LAUGHTER

We have talked about sex such a lot over these past days,

sex as a problem.

We have said very little about it that was joyful or

thankful for this great gift that God has given us.

Young and old.

If I had my three teenage daughters in this auditorium when such

a degree of laughter was engaged in and such levity was applauded I would

have been highly embarrassed for my daughters and I just don't think...

APPLAUSE

..the kind of message that we were sending out even by

engaging in such levity and laughter was one which I would want to commend

to my 19-year-old daughter who gets married in two months' time.

And I think that if we want to give our young people a biblical

lead on sexuality then we must return to the Scriptures,

we must come back with a report that honours the Scriptures.

In the New Testament book First Corinthians,

Paul sings the praises of celibacy.

But, he says, it is better to marry than burn with desire,

which could be interpreted to mean

that sex outside marriage is not an option.

I was brought up in a Christian home,

brought up within the church,

and at no point was I ever told that the Bible was a rulebook.

But it was something through which I could learn about Jesus

and learn about the love of God.

But that is not how everyone sees it.

Lynn McChlery is Minister of Eaglesham Church of Scotland.

I certainly think we have to face facts,

because as Christians we have to address society as it is

and certainly, society looks at sexual relationships

in a very different way nowadays than we did before.

As Christians, we believe that the Bible is given to us by God,

that it has a certain kind of authority,

and that we disregard those principles, authorities at our peril.

So...it is really a question of taking the Bible, the Word of God,

and looking and society today and saying,

"What is God saying to us about the way we live?"

And how does God want us to live as sexual beings?

I have tried to live my life according to Christian principles,

and to see that the most important thing in my life

and the most important thing in terms of the world, is love.

And to see that as being, and the physical expression of love,

to see those things as being positives, and so,

when I felt that I was in a relationship that was loving

and good and I felt was going to be the relationship of my life,

that it was quite natural that it had a sexual expression.

So, does Lynn McChlery think that Christians should maintain the rule

that until the day of the wedding, a couple should remain celibate?

I think Christians are obliged to stay within that message.

We can make that sound as if it is a prison sentence, and that depends,

I suppose on how you see the message, the laws of the Bible.

Do be seen as being restrictive, is God a killjoy?

Or are we dealing with a God who gives us guidelines,

strong guidelines for human conduct

because, in fact, that is the best way to live.

A God who has our wholeness, our well-being fundamentally at heart.

Folk of my background and my generation have to ask themselves,

have we learned nothing about human sexuality

and gender in the 2,000 years since most of the Scripture was written?

And the answer is that we know things today

that folk back then did not know.

And therefore, we make decisions based not just on an ancient book,

but on the lived experience of Christians and others

in the intervening years,

and we make that call within our own personal relationships.

And that is what I did.

Someone once said that in marriage

you are ordained to the Sacrament of Sex.

I have never used that expression in a marriage service

I am probably not going to use it any time soon, but I think it

expresses something core, that the sexual act is supposed to express

a spiritual, emotional, legal, social union between these two people.

And that is the sexual act at its fullest expression.

That is primarily, ideally what it was designed for.

-# Let's get married

-I love you

# And I want to stay with you

-# Let's get married

-Have kids

# Grow old and grey with you

-# Let's get married

-Holds hands

# Walk in the park

# Let's get married. #

Weddings are still popular in Scotland,

with are around 30,000 ceremonies a year.

That figure has remained steady for the last 20 years,

although couples are now marrying at an older age, and many are avoiding

church weddings in favour of humanist ceremonies.

But according to historian Dr Lesley Orr, married to Peter McDonald,

marriage has always been evolving.

It is not something that is fixed,

it is not something that is a given, it is a diverse institution that has

depended very much on the context of time and place and circumstance

and the norms of gender relationships and so on,

which is why, you know, to look

back to the ancient culture out of which Christianity emerged and expect

to find in that the kind of social relationships and organisations

that are appropriate for our time and place is, to me, a bit bizarre.

So, would she no longer expect marriage to be

the gateway to a sexual relationship?

No, that is just a statement of fact.

No, it clearly is not for the vast majority of people who get married.

So much of the symbolism and the ritual around marriage

still is reflected in that whole idea, wearing white.

The idea of a bride being given away by her father,

there's a whole lot of stuff in there that we really need to change

and that people do and have started to change.

And stay much more kind of personal involvement and...responsibility

for shaping what is going to be meaningful to them

while placing it in the context of this loving commitment.

There is something profound about the way in which human love can

reflect what makes life sacred.

Mr Donald, thank you.

We do believe in marriage, despite there being clear voices, whether

in newspapers, literature or philosophy who would not stand there.

And we believe in marriage

because it may be seen to have a place within Christian discipleship,

not to mention well beyond the bounds of the Christian church.

To be Christian is not only for those who marry, of course.

Certainly not.

But for those who do,

the joys and trials of faith in God feed into married life.

Amongst the more general population, we would be inclined to

uphold marriage in related terms.

That is, as well as providing a solid foundation for human relationships,

it points any and all towards the love of God.

Sadly, we hear more regularly about dramas

and crises in marriage, rather than about daily negotiations

and lifelong transformations.

And again, church perhaps has been rather too obvious in its participation around weddings.

And rather too silent about sustaining

and healing relationships and new starts.

It is always time for us to ask, how, with God's help, can we do it?

The report provoked very little discussion,

but there was one lighter moment.

Moderator, I seem to have...

-Could you give us your number, please.

-Do I have to?

-Yes.

-666.

LAUGHTER

The Church of Scotland sends men and women to all three armed services to act as chaplains.

And on Thursday, some of them were at the assembly the report of

the Chaplains Committee presented by its somewhat modest convenor, Neil Gardner.

Neil Gardner. 006.

The story of my life.

As often happens, in the discussion which followed,

there was a contribution from the floor based on personal experience.

Moderator, between the years 1981 to 1998

I spent eight years in HMP Saughton as a prison chaplain.

LAUGHTER

I served as a part-time prison chaplain for eight years,

I still have a constant stream of men coming to my door at the mance in Rosslyn

through a prison connection. And they are men who are broken,

they are men who are exhausted, nobody wants to know them,

they cannot access, I say to them, "Do you have a doctor?"

They do not have a permanent address, many of them,

so they cannot have a doctor.

So they cannot go and access health care, medical healthcare,

and through a doctor,

perhaps be channelled to some of the charities that exist.

My feeling is that there is, yes, governmental money given in a

drip feed system to charities, but it is not consistent and I

would like the Assembly to urge the government to be more consistent

and to provide for men and women who have put their lives on the line.

And, yes, have watched some of their colleagues die before their eyes,

and have come away traumatised by that experience.

Please, commissioners, they do not just step

out of their uniform after a wee debriefing and go, "I am OK."

Their lives continue and then months, years, decades later,

the lives fall apart.

On the closing day of last year's Assembly,

the principal clerk, John Chalmers, received news that his son,

also John, and been badly injured in Afghanistan.

Throughout the year, members were able to follow the slow

but steady process of treatment and recovery.

Young John was well enough to attend the assembly last Saturday.

On Thursday, his father had a chance to thank the Assembly for their support.

We have been with soldiers who were there in theatre,

who saw things, and experienced things that you would hope that

young men and women would never have to experience.

But because they come home without the visible signs of being wounded,

there is less inclination for them to seek the help and support

they might need, and less inclination for us to seek them out.

And so anything that can be done in this way,

I am sure would be valuable.

I would want to take this moment to record, appropriately or inappropriately,

thanks to people in this hall and beyond who have supported us

and to encourage you to think more and more of the hinterland of people

who need continued support having come back from these theatres of war.

This last year has been a significant journey for us,

in fact it was one year ago today that the journey began.

In some ways, this closes the circle of the year

of a journey that no one would want to travel,

but when you travel it you are glad

that there are those who are prepared to travel it with you. Thank you.

APPLAUSE

Major General Andrew Graham, a colonel of the Royal Scottish Regiment,

was in the gallery as a guest of the Lord High Commissioner.

He gave the Assembly a sense of how the Army values its chaplains,

quoting the First World War chaplain Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy.

He wrote, "When a chaplain joins a battalion,

"no one says a word to him about God.

"But everyone asks him in a thousand different ways, 'What is God like?'

"His success or failure as a chaplain depends on the answer

"he gives by word and by deed.

"But the answer by deed is much more important."

Moderator, it is impossible to underestimate the importance

of a good Padre to the morale, sense of well-being, confidence and effectiveness of a unit,

a ship, a station. And of a good team or body of Padres to

a formation or institution like a brigade or a division.

Wherever I have served,

whether it is a battalion, on the staff, in the training organisation

or on operations, I have seen time and again that military chaplains

play a pivotal and essential role in

sustaining what is colloquially called the moral component of fighting power,

the character of the organisation and the ability to know what right looks like

and to do the difficult thing, the right thing on a difficult day.

On or off operations, every commander on every service will testify that

a trusted chaplain is as invaluable as a critical friend and comrade.

Always available to those who need him,

sensing where help and a strong shoulder is needed, providing gentle, purposeful, principled

and disinterested in the true sense of the word, support and insurance.

He or she is someone with time just to give time.

The services are really grateful that high-calibre men and women

of the Church of Scotland and its associated churches see fit to step forward

and offer themselves for service in one capacity or another.

One of the distinctive things about this year's Assembly has been

the worship led by the moderator.

# It is God's word for saving us... #

He is, as we saw on Wednesday, a singer.

# Come, Holy spirit and teach us of all things

# Remind us of how Jesus

# The word of life he brings

# Listen for the gospel

# Hallelujah

# It is God's way of healing us

# Hallelujah. #

On Wednesday, the committee on Ecumenical Relations delivered its report.

Dr Williams, you are most welcome among others, we look forward to you

addressing the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

And appropriately enough, the Archbishop of Canterbury headed

the Anglican Communion, Rowan Williams addressed the Assembly.

Moderator, brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ,

if our task as a Church is to hear the call of God

and if that call is to witness to the open door set before us

by Jesus, there are some of the challenges it may entail.

To rethink what it is to be present in every community.

To embody the possibilities of transformation

and joy that our society, deliberately or not, tries to extinguish.

To show that society that it lives in the midst of glory, judgement,

mystery and beauty.

The new world on the other side of the door.

No one church can be adequate for these tasks,

here in Scotland or anywhere else.

My prayer is that we shall learn with

and from one another as we seek to hold that door open.

Rejoicing together that we are ourselves invited in

to be at home with Christ.

APPLAUSE

I believe your parents were originally Presbyterians.

APPLAUSE AND LAUGHTER

And my parents were Anglicans.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

The Archbishop's reception aptly illustrated the Assembly's view on Ecumenical partnership.

It has been a lively General Assembly.

Perhaps the flavour was set on day one when the World Mission Council Report

was delivered by its convenor, the very Reverend Andrew McLellan,

who declared the year ahead to be the year of China,

where the Presbyterian Church is growing apace.

A few months ago in Shenyang, an old man wept when he held my hand

and said it meant everything to him

to meet somebody from the Church of Scotland.

Because it was from Scotland.

That Dr John Ross came to bring the gospel of God to China.

Under John Ross, God had called this man's grandfather to Christian faith.

And as this dear old man asked me how today we venerated the name of

John Ross in Scotland, I shrank from telling him that the seminary that

John Ross attended in Queen Street in Edinburgh was now Jools Holland's night club.

The church of which that old man is a member, which owed under God its life to a Scottish missionary

has 30,000 members.

That congregation has, every Sunday, 10,000 people at public worship.

The colleagues who advised Ross as a young man to leave his native Rossshire

with the words, "Better to be a spark in China

"than a flame in the Black Isle."

He could scarcely have guessed what a harvest would come from his words.

Vice-convenor Iain Cunningham has written a hymn.

Moderator, as we begin to start our journey of living and working and worshipping

with the Christian people of China, I hope you will invite the General Assembly

to stand and sing the world premiere of this new hymn, Love Never Ends.

# Lord of the universe

# Lord of the years

# Love that is boundless And knows no frontiers

# Through all creation Your spirit extends

# Tangible signs that Your love never ends. #

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