Month: November 2018

I’ve mentioned before that I am doing a period as Interim Pastor at St Peter’s, Lutton Place, in Edinburgh. As a congregation, they have had some difficult times and feelings run high. I’ve been doing quite a bit of listening – but the time has come now to begin to shape future direction.

So this is the first of two sermons which I am preaching – one about faith and the other about growth.

I delivered this one this morning and we had some discussion afterwards – which in the way of these things barely touched on the sermon at all yet was positive and helpful

Here is the sermon

I was back in St Peter’s, Lutton Place, in Edinburgh this morning – as I am about two Sundays a month during my time as Interim Pastor.

We used Wilfred Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ as they did in the Festival of Remembrance in the Albert Hall last night. I am one of the most unmilitary people you could meet – but I find today always deeply moving.

Read the sermon and you’ll find out why

The picture – by Hector McDonnell – is of Her Majesty the Queen’s visit to Enniskillen. She comes out of the Church of Ireland Cathedral and crosses the road to the Catholic Church – a historic ‘first’. By a slight piece of artistic licence, a dove of peace hovers overhead.

I preached there last Sunday morning and worked in the ‘Love God and Cross the Road’ theme.

It was a remarkable day for me – meeting people whom I had known in early childhood in the ’50’s and not had contact with since. But now of course through the wonders of social media ….

This was the sermon

This is a kind of time travelling experience. I went back to St Macartin’s Cathedral, Enniskillen, to preach at the service which commemorated the 400th Anniversary of the Charter which established the Royal Schools in Ireland – as part of the Plantation Settlement. In this case, the school was Portora Royal School, Enniskillen. I became a Choirboy in the Cathedral in about 1957 but I hadn’t really been back since 1967 when we moved to Belfast.

Portora was a kind of Glenalmond, set in the beautiful lakeland scenery of Co Fermanagh. I have pretty mixed feelings about all the schools I attended. But I can’t get away from the fact that my grandfather, my father, my uncle and I were all pupils at Portora Royal School. My father and mother both taught there.

But as always this is a time of change. The boarding school that Portora was is no more and a merger has just taken place with the Girls Collegiate School at the other end of town. The merger has been something of a bumpy ride but it will sort itself out in time.

The picture is with Dean Kenny Hall of the Cathedral – and the sermon honours among others former pupils Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde and Henry Francis Lyte – whose hymns we sang yesterday.

I met old friends, more from my Primary School than from Portora – but it was extraordinary