From the Festival City of Edinburgh

PHILIP:

Good morning and welcome to Sunday Worship, from the Edinburgh Festival. My name’s Philip Blackledge, and I’m a priest in the Scottish Episcopal church.

As you can hear, Edinburgh gets busy at this time of year… 

Festival sounds

I’m on the Royal Mile, and I love the buzz of this City. I came to Edinburgh as a University student almost thirty five years ago, and I came during the festival, to sing in St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral. And as I walk these streets now, it feels just like it did back then. Full of all ethnicities and nationalities, folk in fancy dress trying to press fliers into your hand, the laughter of crowds as they see the street performers, the echo of music from bands and choirs.

When I got to the Cathedral as a rather naive country boy, the Cathedral services themselves felt a bit like a grand theatre production. To me they are all bound up in a common memory of the festival.

 And although, then as now, the offerings of the Festival are incredibly varied, they feel bound up in a common aim, where ordinary people become something extraordinary, and where people take on roles and personas, where they become someone different, and in doing that, they find themselves in touch with something deep about human nature. And the joy of a festival is that is communal. We do that together.

And it’s a great gathering of voices that united in Reid Memorial Church, Edinburgh, to sing for Sunday Worship this morning – members of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus.

 Psalm 100 says “Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.” It’s something we are all invited to do.

EDINBURGH FESTIVAL CHORUS: HYMN ALL PEOPLE THAT ON EARTH DO DWELL (OLD 100TH)

PHILIP: 
Members of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus conducted by James Grossmith. And they’ll be singing for us throughout the service, accompanied by Imogen Morgan and Stuart Hope.

I've now come out of the crowds into the cool and peaceful haven of Old St Paul’s Church, near Waverley Station, and I’m joined today by Fiona Stewart, a broadcaster and podcaster who has been involved in the Christian arts in Scotland for many years.

INTERVIEW WITH FIONA

PHILIP: Could you lead us in our prayers?

FIONA: I'd love to.

God of feasts and abundance, as we find the divine in earthly things, give us the grace to seek you wherever you may be found. 

We thank you for the gift of imagination, which enables us to see the world from a perspective different from our own. 

May art and music help us find you in new and unexpected places, that we may see you anew in ourselves, and in the faces of friends and strangers. Amen. 

PHILIP:

One of the most striking things about a festival of the arts is that art is, literally, artifice. It is something constructed. We find our truths through becoming other people.

One of the great traditions in the arts is that of the storyteller. In the parable of the Prodigal son, Jesus tells us a vivid story about a young man who thinks of himself as one thing, and becomes another, and then finds his true self, not in his own self-understanding, but in the robes his father puts on him. 

FIONA: READING: Luke 15:11-32

 Jesus said: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them.

“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. 1He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

“The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

“But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let us have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’

MUSIC: THE ROAD HOME (Stephen Paulus)

PHILIP:
The parable of the prodigal son is a rich one, and one thing that really comes through to me about that story is when the father puts robes and a ring on his son. It’s strikingly similar to what we do in church.

Now joining me is John McLuckie, who is a colleague of mine in the Edinburgh diocese. His church here, Old Saint Paul’s is a venue for many fringe concerts, and the Anglo-Catholic style of worship here, involves quite a lot of dressing up!

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN

MUSIC: JESUS CALLS US HERE TO MEET HIM (Lewis Folk Melody)

PHILIP:

Well we’re now out in the Queen’s Park beside Arthur’s Seat, this huge hill right in the middle of the city. And my goodness, it’s beautiful.

RAIN SHOWER

PHILIP:

It’s not just in art and worship that we create roles and personas, for ourselves. It happens in life too. 

We sometimes literally wear costumes – we might have a job which requires a certain uniform, whether that’s a police uniform, or a high viz jacket, or a business suit, or a dog collar, but we’re not likely to wear the same clothes when we’re in the pub with our friends. We can sometimes become different versions of ourselves in different situations, and that’s normally, and probably healthy. 

But sometimes the images that other people have of us, feel like a barrier to communicating our true selves rather than a means of truth. 

Sarah Adedeji was brought up Christian, and her show “Pray For Me” explores what it was like growing up as a deaf black woman, in a context where many people felt she was someone to be fixed, or healed, rather than being a beloved child of God exactly as she was. Earlier I went to speak with Sarah at her festival venue.

INTERVIEW WITH SARAH

PHILIP:

The world can impose roles on us all. We can lose a sense of who we are. I used to do that a lot. It is easy to be a people pleaser, and I had a desire to be, to quote St Paul, all things to all people, in order to try and stop people being angry at me, or disappointed with me. But it resulted in me wearing so many masks, I wasn’t even sure who the real me was any more.

Until one day I sat in the church of Old Saint Paul’s, and spoke to God in the silence. I said “There’s only you and me here, God and I don’t know who either of those people is”.

I think it was perhaps my first honest prayer. And I stayed in the silence of that place, and slowly, I began to feel, that even though I didn’t know who I was, and even though I didn’t know who God was, he knew me.

MUSIC: I HEARD THE VOICE OF JESUS SAY (The Rowan Tree)

PHILIP: The parable of the prodigal son is one which has accompanied me through my journey of faith, and in and out of doubt too. Sometimes I feel I’m the prodigal, sometimes I feel as though I’m the rather jealous, dutiful other son, and in later life, I sometimes feel that I am the father. It is a vast, compelling story. The plot is the stuff of grand opera.

Being a Dad terrified me when I became one. What sort of father should I be? I tried them all out, patient, wise, stern, indulgent. Being a parent isn’t easy, and it certainly wasn’t for the Dad in this story.

The son remembers his Dad as wise, kind, but still of that traditional father mold. That’s who he thinks his father is. And he’s so wrong.

Imagine being that Dad, knowing nothing about your son, perhaps other than some troubling rumours. Imagine when the famine came, wondering whether you would ever see your son again. Imagine walking down that lane, yearning for a glimpse of the son who has abandoned you. And then, he sees a figure coming towards him – a figure in rags, covered in filth and pig dirt, barefoot and as unclean as anyone can be.

That’s what everyone else would have seen. If they knew the son, perhaps they would have seen a broken arrogant brat, coming home with his tail between his legs.

But that father doesn’t see the dirt, and the pig filth. He doesn’t see the ragged clothes and the lost property and the squandered wealth and the wasted life. He sees his son.

And that father does something a dignified respectable man in his culture would never do. He runs. He runs to his son, towards this pile of stench and mess and embraces him, becomes unclean, takes on his uncleanness. Everything about his status in the world has been over-ridden because he has seen his son and his one desire is to hold him. And his kisses his soiled face.

And before his son can come out with his silly prepared speech, the father says “quick!” and puts sandals on his feet, and dresses him in the best robes he has, and puts a ring on his finger – a symbol of belonging to the family.

And there the son stands, gloriously arrayed. Still stinking, with dirty hands and face. Not restored, but redeemed. He is different now.

For the rest of his life, that prodigal son will have about him what Pope Francis described as an embarrassed dignity. An embarrassed dignity. And that is us.

Here, the one who knows us better than anyone else, puts a robe upon us which we know we do not deserve, and yet we know that this persona, the beloved of the father, is the one which will enable us to uncover the truth about ourselves and about God.

It would not be right to say that we are not good enough – because that would be rejecting the father all over again. It is not right to pretend that we are not filthy with our own mistakes, because that is denying who we are. We need to live with that embarrassed dignity, because anything less diminishes the father and denies part of our true selves.

These are the robes we are called to wear. This is the theatre we are called to play. Sometimes we put on masks, our robes, and we become diminished. But sometimes we are given our roles and through them, we become the fullness of what we can be.

And when the Father gives us fine clothing, and tells us that we are worthy, even when we feel, we know, that we are not, out of love of him, we might just begin to believe it. 

MUSIC: SURE ON THIS SHINING NIGHT (Morten Lauridsen)

JOHN: God of the prodigal and of the faithful, give us the grace to know you are with us, that your love for us never changes, and even if we do not know ourselves, you know us, are with us and hear us.

FIONA: We pray for openness of hearts and minds, that we can learn from one another, share and trust one another, in the knowledge that in finding each other, we draw closer to you.

JOHN: We pray for those who feel weighed down by their past mistakes, and yearn for new beginnings. We pray for the parents who yearn for their children, and children you feel the ache of loss. Gracious God come and renew us, give us the knowledge that all can be made new.

FIONA: We pray for those who do not feel seen, or understood. Those who are judged, or disregarded, because of the colour of their skin, their culture or creed, their, gender or sexuality, or any of the other many ways we find to divide ourselves from one another. May we feel the father’s yearning for his son as we gaze upon all of your children, Amen.

PHILIP: BLESSING

May God the father run towards us in joyful love, may God the son welcome us with open arms, may God the Holy spirit bring us back to ourselves when we are far off. And the blessing of God Almighty, the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit be with us now and for ever more. Amen.

MUSIC: SING FOR GOD’S GLORY (Lobe den Herren)