St James’ Church of Scotland

This is the text of Rev. Graham Crawford’s sermon for 13 September 2015:

One of my favourite quotes is this: “Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so!”

It is of course harking back to a time when executives and directors used to have lavish, all expenses paid, fairly liquid lunches, which would stretch into the afternoon – which would often accomplish an agreement or a contract, but those involved were rarely capable of doing much else afterwards.

You would just pop out for lunch and often simply not come back to the office that day.

And yet, while lunchtime may be an illusion for some, whether because they barely get time to eat or their lunchtime spreads until teatime, time is a very important concept in life and in the Bible. [Read more…]

This is the text of Rev. Graham Crawford’s sermon for Sunday 06 September 2015:

Today, quite rightly is a day of celebration here at St. James.

We are celebrating with two people who have stepped forward to profess and confess their faith. We are celebrating with yet another who has agreed to work as a leader (Elder) in this congregation. It is a great day for our church.

Yet in the heart of our celebration there is a hint of sadness, a hint of confusion, a hint even of disillusionment.

After all, most of us grew up with the great hymns of conquest on our lips: “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun”; “Soldiers of Christ arise”: “Ye armies of the living God”. The Billy Graham mid-century campaign had a tremendous effect on our churches, even through the Sixties, and there was a genuine belief that nothing could stop Christianity conquering the world by the year 2000.

Now, of course nothing could be further from the truth. [Read more…]

The sermon on Sunday 23 August 2015 from Rev. Graham Crawford: 

Over the last few weeks, in our Old Testament scriptures, we have been building and building to the climax of Solomon’s temple, somewhere permanent for the Ark of the Covenant, and as a result, God, will dwell.

From the joyful procession of David bringing the Ark home up until this point, it has all been building up to this when the temple is completed and finally dedicated to God.

This is one of the most important passages in all of the Jewish writings, for the Temple – and their beliefs concerning the temple – in many ways defines the Jewish people from this point on. The fact that an Islamic mosque now sits on that site is also one of the causes of all the unrest in the Middle east. So it is important to understand this Temple and the worship therein for us to understand much modern conflict while asking ourselves questions about our own place of worship as well as the place of worship in our lives. [Read more…]