Pastoral Care, of Public Worship and Daily Witness in Our Everyday Lives
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March/April 2018 Issue 233 Scottish Charity SC000785 GMayfield SRalisburAy ParisPh (EdEinburgVh) Ch urcNh of ScotE land CROSSREACH PERINATAL SERVICES SERMON: CELEBRATING DARWIN DAY YOUTH WORSHIP NIGHT www.mayfieldsalisbury.org THE MANSE Revd Scott S. McKenna Dear Friends, At Mayfield Salisbury, we have so much to give thanks for. At its best, the church is a community of prayer and pastoral care, of public worship and daily witness in our everyday lives. As a community, we are at our best when we appreciate and encourage each other, when we celebrate the gifts of others as well as our own, and when we live out mercy and forgiveness when things are not all that they might be. In a world at times harsh, lonely and unloving, it is of immeasurable value to be part of a community defined by love. We may not always get things right, but to embody love, understanding and compassion is a true sign of God’s presence, of the Spirit’s influence within us and among us. Inclusion has always been part of our story at Mayfield Salisbury. I have watched people with physical disability I am proud of our efforts to support the struggle to climb or descend our steps at work of Christian Aid and, more recently, the West Door and for some the risk of the perinatal project at CrossReach. Over falling is high. At a funeral I watched a and above this, Mayfield Salisbury is a single mourner progress to the West Door substantial contributor to ‘aid-receiving’ to greet the bereaved family and, having churches across Scotland, which enables done so, slowly proceed all the way back churches to have a minister which would to the West Mayfield door; the sole not otherwise be able to afford one. mourner to leave by that door. In creating step-free access to the sanctuary Be assured of my prayers and very good at the main door of the church, I believe wishes. we have taken the right decision and together we show our members and others beyond the community the Every blessing, importance we attach to inclusion. Scott 2 YOUTH WORSHIP NIGHT Hillary Leslie On 25 February, we held our first Youth toward the teens, but Worship Night - a night for ‘the young and structured so that all the young at heart.’ This worship service ages can benefit from took place during the evening service the service. The hope worship slot and will happen on the last is that this service Sunday evening of every month at will be a space for 7.00pm. Mayfield Salisbury’s youth to have We had a good attendance of folk from another opportunity the first and second Sunday morning to explore and reflect on their faith, in services at Mayfield Salisbury, totaling addition to developing leadership skills by around 30 people. There were moments helping to run the service. Another aim of of scripture, song and various ways of the evening is to see inter-generational praying which included ‘praying in colour’ relationships formed within Mayfield and prayer stations throughout the Salisbury by offering an additional chance sanctuary. The service’s theme focused on for members from both morning services Lent and the various stages of ‘letting go,’ to interact more with our youth. ‘welcoming in,’ and ‘going out’ that encompass our individual and collective All members of the congregation are Lenten journeys. encouraged and welcome to join in this service and we look forward to seeing you The contemporary service style is geared next time! 3 SERMON Revd Scott S. McKenna CELEBRATING DARWIN DAY THE BATTLE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION IS FAKE NEWS Sunday, 11 February, 2018 Genesis 1: 1 – 5, 24 - 27 Proverbs 8: 22 – 31 St John 1: 1 – 5 Wisdom of God, Creative Spirit, Life- Weekend. The Clergy Letter Project Giver, at home among the stars, in the suggests that the Sunday nearest to 12th seas’ depths and the darkness of the February should be Evolution Sunday. human soul, inspire us afresh, fill us anew. Among other things, the Project states: May we walk the Earth with the spiritual heart of Jesus. Amen. Religious people from many diverse faith traditions and locations around the world 12 February is Darwin Day. Darwin Day understand that evolution is quite simply marks the anniversary of the birth of the sound science; and for them, it does not in English naturalist, geologist and biologist any way threaten, demean, or diminish their Charles Darwin. Celebrations are held faith in God. In fact, for many, the around the world. The celebrations not wonders of science often Enhance and deepen only recall the contribution of Darwin’s their awe and gratitude towards God. work to science but promote science generally. Born on 12 February 1809, Part of the motivation for The Clergy tributes have been made sporadically since Letter Project was to counter creationism, his death in 1882. As time has gone on, which is a religious belief that God created the celebrations are typically supported by the universe and everything in it by specific Humanist and secular societies. These and individual divine acts. While societies promote themselves as people creationism is popular in parts of the who value science and reason. I often feel United States, in my twenty-four years that the implication is that people of faith, experience of full-time ministry I have met like you and me, are unscientific and only one creationist in Scotland. Is there a irrational: one can’t be a scientist (or, at case for the Church of Scotland to adopt least, not a real scientist) and also a today as Evolution Sunday? One the one Christian. Today we celebrate Darwin hand it may be a bit twee; on the other Day. hand, it would give every parish church an excuse to reflect on and think about Alongside Darwin Day, in 2004 in the science, scientific discoveries and the United States, the American biologist nature of the universe. Such a Sunday Michael Zimmerman initiated The Clergy might also go some way to counter the Letter Project which encourages clergy and erroneous myth that science and religion congregations to participate in Evolution are mutually exclusive. 4 Science and religion are not at odds with each other. None of us would challenge the theory of the ‘Big Bang’, the scientific view that the entire cosmos, including finite time, came into existence with a big bang. The theory of the expanding universe was first proposed in 1927 by the Belgian priest and astronomer Georges Lemaître. The first insights into the genetic mechanisms driving evolution, arguably a discovery as important as that of Darwin himself, came from the experiments with pea plants carried out by the Moravian scientist and Augustinian friar, Gregor Mendel. Known as the ‘father of modern genetics’, Fr Mendel had Charles Robert Darwin by John Collier (1883) no difficulty in writing of the law of genetic inheritance and rising haunt the Church is that of the amateur each day at 5am to offer praise to the astronomer Galileo. We know that in Maker of heaven and earth. A Belgian 1623 the Pope, Urban VIII, demanded that priest, an Augustinian friar and in the late Galileo recant. Galileo was following the 20th century, Francis Collins, an theory of Copernicus, the first Christian evangelical Christian, was the project theorist explicitly to argue for a director of the international Human heliocentric cosmos. The competing Genome Project. The project was set up scientific view was that the planets did with the aim of reading the entire indeed revolve around the sun but that the sequence of three billion DNA pairs that sun revolved around the earth. There was make up the genetic blueprint of one no religious trump card being played at this person. early stage: it was astronomers wrestling with mathematics and their observations One story which keeps coming back to of the stars and planets. 5 that the Copernican theory be described as yet unproven. History records that Galileo was a frequently unpleasant and dominating man. Galileo published the book as a dialogue and included the statement which Urban had requested, but the statement was put on the lips of a clown, an obtuse character called Simplicio. The Pope was right: the Copernican theory was unproven but he was in no mood to tolerate Galileo’s insolence. A better pope might have stepped back from the insult, but Urban did not. The story of Galileo is not a battle between science and religion. Atheists are as prone to fundamentalism as people of faith. The American philosopher, Daniel Dennett says, ‘At least in the eyes of academics science has won and religion has lost. Darwin’s idea has banished the Book of Genesis to the Pope Urban VIII by Pietro da Cortona (1596–1669) limbo of quaint mythology.’ The Harvard In 1613, Galileo’s most important zoologist, Ernst Mayr, describes neo- supporter was Cardinal Maffeo Barberini. Darwinian science as the ‘ultimate What is significant about that is that, ten explanation of life’. More worrying still, years later, Barberini had become Pope the evolutionary embryologist, the late Urban VIII. Why would Galileo’s most Gavin de Beer, writing in the Encyclopaedia important supporter later demand that Britannica , said: Galileo recant? The Pope was under enormous pressure because of the Darwin did two things: He showed that Protestant Reformation, and that took its evolution was a fact contradicting scriptural toll. But, crucially, the scientific legends of creation and that its cause, community which existed entirely within natural selection, was automatic with no the Church, was not of one mind of these room for divine guidance or design.