Minister's Letter - September 2010

Dear friends,

What is a letter for? Nowadays it is more fashionable to “blog” or to text or simply to phone. The art of letter-writing is something that maybe fewer and fewer young people take up at all. Communication can be so much more instant.
This suggests then that to write a letter should be about more than just communication. There are other ways to get news out, and indeed the Kirk Session is shortly to have an extended discussion about this. Thanks to John Grieve and various others, we should have a sense by now of at least how some of you feel that news gets across – or not! By the way, do continue to feed in thoughts on that. We would like to have as good as possible ways of passing news on.

However, back on the subject of letters, maybe the beauty of the letter is that it can be re-read. There’s something here to look back on. That’s certainly true as we read the letters which found their way into the New Testament. These letters, written for the most part by this man called Paul, and addressed of course for particular audiences at a particular time, bear re-reading. We know that this was done when they were first received – copies were made, even commentaries were offered – and they continue to be a source of food for thought.

We have begun a short series now of reading the letter to the Galatians. Galatia was a region in modern-day Turkey, though that name “Galatians” was a variant to describe people who elsewhere were known as “Gauls” or, in our own islands, as “Celts”. For the Celtic fringe – with everything from the playing of bagpipes to men wearing what look like skirts – had come to stretch from the Highlands of Scotland to southern Turkey.

Paul’s letter to the Galatians argued that if people were ever going to learn that there is a gospel to break down all the barriers that we as human beings put up one against the other, it was the gospel of Jesus Christ. By “gospel” he meant both the good news that told of Jesus Christ, and the good news that was shown and taught by Jesus Christ. The man was the message.

There’s the thought for this letter to you: what message do you carry, being who you are? Do you carry a message of grace and forgiveness, or do you carry a message that is quick to condemn others and to complain? Do you carry a message of peace and goodwill or do you carry a message of grudges and (suppressed or overt) anger? Does what you say bear out who you are? How does your life mirror your beliefs? For all of this, the letter to the Galatians gives us food for thought. Do listen in if you can, one of these Sunday evenings.

Yours,