St James Leith Updates

2026-10-11 Geoffrey Stevenson. Invited to a feast.  Psalm 23 ; Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14 Have you ever been invited to a party and you just did not want to go? – Too tired, too far away, or you don’t like the people – or you think they don’t like you, Or maybe – and this is probably going back to teenage years, when things like this mattered, maybe you weren’t cool enough – or you thought you were too cool, or you just knew that you wouldn’t fit in. Or perhaps, a bit like Groucho Marx said, I wouldn’t join any club that would have me as a member. This parable may remind you of some of that stuff. Except that it’s a wedding banquet. And the person giving it is, like royalty. And if you don’t go you could get arrested. Do you have a problem with this parable we have just heard? Because I have some problems. There’s a version in Luke that is simpler, but here in Matthew there’s some weird stuff going on. You have repeated waves of slaves going out to remind people of the save...

Creationtide 3 (20/09/26) Iain L: Hard times require furious dancing Our reflections over Creationtide are part of a series: we started with the wow of wild things and an invitation to reforest our minds, beginning with the understanding that we are part of creation and that creation is part of us. Then we moved to the shoreline of the invisible where there was the invitation to beautify our gaze - to not take life for granted but to savour, to notice, to appreciate, to be amazed, to see the sacred (invisible) in the material (visible) world. This week, we move to Hard Times Require Furious Dancing, where I want to touch on how we might move us from a sense of hopelessness and passivity to action and resistance to what many consider to be an inevitable slide into global warming, the destruction of natural environments and associated crises like the genocides in Gaza and the Sudan, using the metaphor of dance. Alice Walker describes how enslaved Black Americans, at the end of a hard da...

Creationtide 2 (13/09/26): The shoreline of the invisible - Beauty will save the world - Iain Lothian Today’s reflection follows on from last week’s reflection on the Wow of Wild Things, inviting us to reforest our minds by regaining our sense of awe, wonder and radical amazement at the world around us; and we began our collective journey by compiling a wonderful collection of St. James Wows of Wild Things, which Brie has put on the boards - and my invitation again is to keep the wows going - and to each day reflect on at least one wow of that day. I also talked about us being made of mud and spirit: The mud life grounding us, linking us to our fellow creatures, achieving outcomes, whereas the spirit life has us dreaming, sensing something more, intuiting and surrendering to the divine. A full life lives on the threshold of mud and spirit. (For this to make sense you might need to listen to the podcast on the website or even read it) John O Donohue describes this mud/spirit dichotom...

Creationtide 1 (6/09/26): The Wow of Wild Things - Revd Iain Lothian I want to start by showing a short trailer of a film, which I think illustrates 2 contrasting ways of looking at creation and the Natural world. Show video clip of Indigenous people from the Rainforest called Flowers of the Earth Just take away with us that final phrase that, ‘We need to reforest the mind, by reforesting the mind we will then reforest many territories in our world.’ So the invitation to you all is to put some intention, this creationtide season, to reforest the mind. A reforesting of the mind involves spending time in nature and changing of our worldview from being separate to the natural world to one of being a part of it.. Much of Western Christianity has and is built on an anthropocentric worldview which has, in part, enabled the despoiling of our natural world leading to the present climate crises.. John McArthur, a pastor of a mega church in America, recently said: God intended us to use this pl...

Reflection 30 August 2026. Matthew 16, 21 -28 Romans 12 9-21 Psalm 26, 1 – 8 Well, I am beginning to wonder, is it a complete coincidence that I have been given this passage today, or is the rector trying to get a message across to me personally! Or is there some other force that has engineered a situation when I find myself reflecting on almost the same words as I did when I spoke just a few weeks ago. Two months ago I spoke on Matthew 10 where we read that Jesus says to his disciples ‘ whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. ‘ And today, again, in Matthew 16 we read, ‘for whoever wants to save his life, will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.’ So why does Matthew have Jesus repeating these words? Why are they so important for Matthew’s readers? Perhaps Jesus did repeat these words. Perhaps he said them again and again and again. The point is, why….and what do they mean for us today? And once again I ...

9/8/26 Peter walks on water too: Invitation not Command - Iain L I want to explore this morning the difference between command and invitation, a contrast which is evident in our two passages. In the wonderful story of God speaking to Elijah, not in the wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire but in the silence - there’s a whole sermon right there - God, as he often does with the OT prophets commands Elijah what to do - Go to Damascus, Anoint so and so, and this is what will happen. But Jesus seems to invite people rather than command. Our Gospel starts with Jesus wanting time alone, going up the mountain to pray, and sending the disciples across the lake. Whenever Jesus sends the disciples across the sea of Galilee it is a sign that he wants them to cross a threshold to a new level of consciousness and thinking, to teach something important. The nature miracles, like the walking on the water, the miraculous catch of fishes and so forth, are stories for insiders, for the disciple...

2nd August 2026: Everybody has a broken heart but not every heart breaks open: Building Communities of Compassion I was asked in my selection interview what my vision for the churches I may one day lead was, and my answer was brief: ‘To build communities of compassion.’ It became clear they wanted me to embellish my answer but I repeated - ‘to build communities of compassion.’ They continued to probe so I added: ‘To build Eucharistic Communities of Compassion’. Adding the word Eucharistic seemed to work and they seemed satisfied and moved on. I wasn’t trying to be clever because I believe Jesus’ life’s work boiled down to constantly teaching his disciples and followers how to be a community of compassion and the feeding of the 5000 is a superb example of this: So what does this mean in practice? Love is not a feeling, a sentiment, or even an emoji, I’m afraid to say. Love is something you do, you live love through acts of kindness and embody it in our lives - this is the trans format...

July 19th 2026: A Mixed Bag Our Gospel reading today is one of the most contested passages in the Gospels because we have an interpretation of a parable by Jesus which on a number of levels is so out of tune with the parable itself that most scholars argue that it is added later by Matthew and the early church. Consequently we can approach it in 3 ways, all potentially leading to different outcomes: Take the interpretation as a later addition, and ditch it, but be accused of avoiding some of the difficult imagery concerning judgment. Take the interpretation seriously with the danger of negating the power of the original parable, and be accused of domesticating Jesus original teaching. Simply ask what does it all mean for us today, with the danger of being accused of fitting the text to our own needs without really honouring the text and context. I want to start at the beginning and ask why Jesus’ used parables to communicate his message, to give us clues to what the message might ...

5th July 2026: Surrendering to our closeness Our Gospel has some of the most familiar and comforting words in the bible: Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Beautiful words about a gentle and humble Jesus which are easy to take for granted and miss how revolutionary this would have been to his hearers, where the large majority of the Jewish population were living under an oppressive Roman colonial power, weighed down by heavy taxation, many close to financial destitution and just surviving from day to day. On top of this their religion added an extra burden of hundreds of rules and obligations they were required to fulfill, in order to please and placate God, creating a terrible extra weight for the poor to carry. And here Jesus is offering an alternate understan...

Reflection 21st June Matthew 10, 24 – 39 Genesis 21 8 – 21 Psalm 86, 1- 10, 16 – 17 This isn’t an easy passage, the one we have just read from Matthew, but I think there are two main points that we can think about. The first is that following Jesus is dangerous, and not one of us knows what tomorrow may bring. The second is that we don’t need to fear because in each one of us our God given strength is far greater than we can imagine. I think what I hear from Jesus here in this passage, is a man who is deeply concerned about what is going to happen to his friends. The whole of this chapter, chapter 10, is instructions and warnings for his disciples. He can see all around him the mounting anger towards him and his teaching. Rome sees him as politically dangerous; the religious leaders see him as spiritually subversive. And as I have mentioned in a previous reflection, the invading Romans had replaced all the religious leaders and Jewish temple authorities with Jews w...