13 Theses – or what I’ve noticed since 2011
Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan, University Chaplain
Readings: Isaiah 40:3-5, 27-31; Psalm 98; John 15:9-17
Every visiting preacher this year was invited by me to return to this pulpit, some years after their previous visit. This is what I asked them to consider for their sermon: What has been significant in your faith, your ministry and your experience over recent years, perhaps since you last preached in St Salvator’s Chapel? How could God be speaking to us now, as a community largely of young people? I turn the question right back at me this morning. But I am not offering an answer in terms of my previous visit, but my first to this pulpit, on Sunday 18 September 2011. What has been significant in my faith, ministry and experience since 2011, 13 years ago. I couldn’t distill a response to that question to one particular thing – and so here are 13 Theses – or what I’ve noticed since 2011.
1. A hardening of the oughteries.
Yes, oughteries, not arteries. A hardening of the sense of the obligation to achieve, to be successful. Day after day, I encounter students and staff who are hard on themselves for what they feel they should have done but haven’t, what they feel they ought to have attained but somehow couldn’t. A 17 in that assignment. A high-status internship with a strong hint of a job after graduation, preferably in New York but the Paris office would do. The dishiest of partners. The swankiest of flats, this side of the Kinnessburn, obvs. The cutest of Instagram pix, liked by zillions. The most loyal set of amusing friends. For academics, publishing in the best journals, while being nominated for a teaching award, and taking more than a fair share of administration.
The truth is: for every superhuman who achieves all that, there are hundreds of wonderful people who won’t. But it can be so stressful trying to be that superhuman – I’ve listened to many people in my office who have reached a crisis trying to be that person. Maybe I have noticed at times my own unhealthy attempt to be the perfect chaplain. So, somewhere along the line, to flourish, we come to accept something less than stratospheric success; we learn a healthier balance in our obligations; we manage to soften those oughteries.
2. A century ago the less you worked, the more status you had. Now it’s flipped: the more you sit around and relax, the less status you have.
This thesis follows from the last one: we’re working too hard. The words are by John Mark Comer, a pastor in the US, but I recognise their truth in the UK and in the University. Many of my colleagues are working harder than when I arrived, starting the day earlier, finishing later, working in the evening and weekends, working on holidays, frightened of the hundreds of emails piling up in the inbox otherwise. Everyone always seems to be tired. There are students too who are in the library for extraordinary numbers of hours, and who seem to have less time than before for what they love – throwing some shapes at the Union, joining societies celebrating Tunnocks caramel wafers, or frogs, or sitcoms, or time for a walk on the Lade Braes, or reading for pleasure, or even volunteering as a Chapel usher or in interfaith activity.
Of course, work matters. There are sardonic words for the layabout in the Book of Proverbs. But for the Christian, status does not depend on our crazy work/life imbalance. It’s on our being loved, which leads us to love in response.
3. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted.
This line, from our reading from Isaiah refers to tiredness, but what I really mean by it is my experience over these years when students die. It is mercifully rare, but always of deep significance for the whole community. There are moments I wish had never happened but which I will never forget, where all I could do was be there among people in shock and grief. Breaking the news at a hall of residence dinner. Meeting parents in their beloved student’s flat. Scattering ashes from the end of the pier. Planning a memorial service with friends, the tears and laughter flowing as the stories tumbled out. These are the hardest times, yet I believe that God has been there, in those moments, those tears, those encounters, those gatherings to remember, express our loss and celebrate a life, often right here.
It’s been a rough first three theses, but no. 4 (and the last of this section) is much more cheerful.
4. The Thinking Allowed group has inspired me to be braver, more positive and faithful in exploring this PhD journey.
These words are from the acknowledgments page of a PhD thesis by a student who will graduate this summer. She came to the weekly student discussion group on faith and society, Thinking Allowed, during the second half of her degree. And as we’ve heard, the group made a profound impact on her life and her studies. I led it, and maybe the cats helped, the herbal teas, the chocolate biscuits, the fire crackling. But more than anything it was that community of students, trusting each other with their stories, able to share their belief and unbelief, growing together which made the difference. How could God be speaking to us now, as a community largely of young people? I asked the preachers. But in truth I don’t think preachers are the main answer. It’s in exploring together, teaching each other, sharing lives that God speaks to young people, and through young people.
5. Shew yourselves joyful unto the Lord, all ye lands : sing, rejoice, and give thanks.
St Salvator’s Chapel Choir just sang these words, obeying the very text they sang. And indeed singing is part of why I’ve chosen this thesis, part of showing ourselves joyful unto the Lord. My life in ministry here has been so richly blessed by music, expressing our feelings week by week, on Sunday morning, at Evensong and Compline, and making Christmas in St Andrews a season of delight.
But what I have also noticed since I began as Chaplain is the curious, joyful, eccentric nature of St Andrews traditions. One of the hardest aspects of Covid was missing these expressions, but they couldn’t be forgotten.
The making of academic families of variable numbers of parents, children, grandchildren, and assorted distant relatives – sometimes solemnised in far from solemn weddings in the cloisters outside the chapel.
Raisin – the indescribable joy of being told to get up at some unconscionable hour, being force-fed vodka jellies before being sent around the town in a bin bag and face-paint to make a human pyramid over the PH. Then the fragrant community-building exercise which is the foam fight, my own role as the wielder of the hose, rinsing hands and heads.
May Dip: that greeting of the first dawn of May with a collective plunging in sea, shrieking that, astonishingly, the North Sea is actually quite chilly, then the challenge of trying to appear semi-sober when the Chaplain is offering a reviving cup of coffee to you.
Soakings: the rite of passage that says, after three solid weeks in the library preparing for final exams, it’s time for a shower.
The Pier Walk – friends, let those words never be used for the time being. While the pier is closed, it is our role to convince incoming freshers that the Sunday tradition is the famous Harbour Walk.
We know how to show ourselves joyful here, and so we should. It is always good to give thanks – for life, for friendship, for family, for the turning of the seasons, for finishing our studies, for new beginnings, and for music.
6. The strange death of liberal Christianity
Death is too strong a word perhaps. But in these thirteen years, the mainstream churches have struggled. I’ve observed them reflecting on scripture in the light of reality, trying to find points of connection between culture and faith, open to truth wherever it’s found, alive to the Spirit beyond the church. And liberal Christianity has seen some successes. Same sex marriage. Significant solidarity with the vulnerable. Advocating for climate justice. And yet the Church of Scotland, which has moved in these directions, is seeing dwindling congregations, fewer ministers and other leaders, less money, and is disposing of church buildings including the peerless 14th Century auld kirk at St Monans in Fife where I ministered for a decade. Other denominations are not too far behind.
What’s growing in its place? On one side, a tolerant agnosticism, no longer exercised by Christianity because it has so little power. And on the other, popular evangelical communities or Catholic churches, with adherence to conservative interpretation of the Bible, and rejection of cultural shifts over sexuality, gender and more. There can be a wonderful sense of community in these churches – but how can we square an education which fosters critical thinking and a faith which suppresses it? Back to Thinking Allowed. Liberal Christianity isn’t dead – but it grows in secret perhaps, like a mustard seed.
7. Rumours of the loss of faith in young people have been greatly exaggerated
Of course there are atheists among our students, and people do lose their faith during their student years. But others gain it. And there are students in nearly every church in the town, and many are bursting with young life. The Chaplaincy plays host to Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Queer and Sikh students who pray, meditate, discuss and grow in their faith or philosophy of life. Some gather for interfaith exploration of texts from other traditions. The Chaplaincy Prize has uncovered students who tell stories, write poems, make videos, and ponder in prose the meaning of their faith. There was a view in Universities, in the 1960s and 70s, that religion would wither on the vine of science and reason. But our young people, aspiring to be the best scientists they can, to make arguments with utmost rationality, find that to be compatible with prayer, worship and sacraments.
And speaking of worship, you will recognise this mantra with which Sam and I begin chapel services:
8. All are welcome, whether you share the faith of this chapel or do not.
And we mean it. Nobody has to sign up to a creed to be an explorer of their human spirit, curious about God. Wedding guests can celebrate the commitment a couple is making here without becoming Christian. Funeral-goers are welcome to hear the words of prayer as prompts for their own meditations. I suppose I’ve also noticed, as Chaplain to the University, that while I remain committed to following Jesus, I’m increasingly less tethered to particular churches or denominations or even styles. Leading worship for 13 years in an ecumenical chapel has knocked a bit of the Presbyterian out of me, and injected a bit of the Anglican and Catholic, Baptist and Orthodox, Pentecostal and Quaker.
But is there a danger of going too far? What about the team I work in, with an Assistant Chaplain who’s a Jew, and honorary chaplains and faith society leaders from a world of faiths? Could it be right that, as our next thesis has it:
9. God is clearly not a Christian.
Well, I didn’t write this. It was Desmond Tutu, the late Archbishop of Cape Town, and Nobel Peace Prize winner. What did he mean? That God’s love extends far more broadly than those who call themselves Christian, that his concern is for people of every faith and philosophy of life, that he longs for all creation to flourish, beyond the human species. Perhaps this is the deepest area of change in moving from parish ministry to University Chaplaincy. In the 2001 census, out of 1500 people who lived in St Monans, precisely 7 declared they followed a faith other than Christianity. And one of them changed from Buddhism to Christianity precisely because, he told me, I hadn’t tried to convert him. Anyway, joining the University, I quickly had to become a bit more literate in other religions, open to interfaith encounter, and clear in my own mind how my Christian faith related to their approaches. In a nutshell, I think Christianity is the closest human expression we have of the reality of God and creation, of the human condition, of redemption and hope – but there is truth in many other paths around the mountain. And so I have supported Muslim students as they explore difficulties in their life in light of their trust in God. I have participated in an interfaith service following the death of the Queen. I have listened to deeply held views of some Jews and some Muslims over Israel and Palestine. And I’ve come to see that Tutu is right: God is in people and practices very different from me and mine.
10. Those who are unhappy have no need of anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention.
So said Simone Weil, the 20th Century French philosopher. As a parish minister I visited many people in their homes, when they were ill or recuperating, dying or grieving, in trouble at work, in trouble with the police. But there is a greater intensity to the listening I do, and all the chaplains do, among students and staff. There is plenty of unhappiness. People share with me all sorts of sources – loneliness, feeling abandoned by friends, relationships ending, damaging addictions, anger, fear of failure, pressure from family, the pain of guilt, traumatic experiences, disliking their body, the hardening of the oughteries, and many more reasons. I believe that God loves each person who comes to share in confidence, and that their lives are in his hands, regardless of their approach to the divine. I don’t come to our encounters with solutions very often. But there is power in being heard, in being taken seriously, and in the attention given to them as a human being worthy of the space and time. Sometimes, maybe often, they understand themselves better, and take steps which are helpful in navigating the present and future. And for the students, when I take a picture with them at graduation, I give thanks in the words of Isaiah that they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
run and not be weary,
walk and not faint.
Sometimes, as a pastor, it’s hard to remember that not every relationship ends badly. So it’s just as well that weddings come along. Indeed, since 2011, I’ve conducted 273 weddings, mainly here and in St Leonard’s Chapel, but also the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, the Isle of Harris, and Bangalore, in India. I have a list of desirable wedding destinations if anyone wants to book me later. But none was as significant perhaps in marking what has changed as the wedding I conducted here on Saturday 9 September last year, of Laura Fisher and Dana Sailor. For after 22 years in North East Fife, this was my first wedding between… a fisher and a sailor. For in Fife, Fishers are usually people who have lived for generations in these coastal communities, launching out in wooden boats for herring, haddock, cod and mackerel, and latterly for prawns, lobsters and crabs, risking life and limb to bring fish to shore, and give a livelihood to their families and communities.
Sailors, on the other hand, are often comfortably-off professionals from the cities who have a holiday cottage in a former fisherman’s home, and berth their fibre-glass yacht in the recently gentrified harbours of St Andrews and the East Neuk. Sailors may buy lobsters from fishers; fishers may grumble at inexperienced sailors crossing their path at sea. They rarely come together in friendship, let alone marriage.
But Laura and Dana were the exception:
as I said in my address,
11. You are an authentic and profound union.
And, as you may have guessed, it was the first wedding I had conducted of two people of the same sex, a particular delight to declare them wife and wife, and something unimaginable when I was an undergraduate.
12. We will: Furnish our students and staff with the knowledge and attributes that make their lives, as well as the communities around them, more sustainable.
Sometimes it takes a student to ask a question to change things. One day this undergraduate came into my office and said, I enjoy chapel services – but why do you never talk about climate change? I had no good answer, and so things changed. Prayers increasingly brought global heating and flooding before God; Thinking Allowed looked at faith and the environment; for a semester all the visiting preachers explored creation and climate change. It remains the overwhelming issue affecting human and non-human life across planet Earth today. And faith must reckon with it. What is the purpose of creation? How has religion contributed to the crisis? What can people of faith do in response? In our small way, then, the Chaplaincy is part of the University strategy on sustainability which is quoted in this thesis.
And finally,
13. Love one another as I have loved you.
These are Jesus’ words from our New Testament reading today – John 15:12. The meaning of the passage is simple but profound. God loves his Son Jesus. Jesus loves his followers. We should rest in that love, and be inspired to love others with Jesus’ love, giving generously, outrageously at times. And such a life of love will be fruitful.
In some ways these have been hard years to believe in love. Politics have become even more polarised: austerity normalised, division over independence, breaking away from the European Union. And anger has been increasingly close to the surface in this community – over issues of conflict and war, gender identity, relationships and communication. We can love a post on social media, but we can express our anger so freely there too. People are less tolerant now of different views, and of people who hold different views.
But what I’ve noticed since 2011 is love, flowing from God, changing lives, inspiring wonderfully unsparing, self-giving people among our students, staff and wider community, in the team I belong to in the Chaplaincy and beyond, in discussion groups which generate more questions than answers, in friends caring for the bereaved, in faith found in worship, across expressions of Christianity, in other cultures and traditions; in love and marriage for all who want to make their vows; in celebrating tradition, community and being young; in loving the earth and all for whom it’s home; in loving one’s self despite anxiety, the fear of missing out, the fear of letting go; in loving the human being who sits across from me and has the courage to answer the question, How do you think I can help you?
God is speaking to us now, is sharing his life with us now, is inviting us to love one another now. My first 13 years in this community have been a blast. I’m looking forward to more surprises to come.