Two things. First, those children's talks that start with some weird or banal object, or some far fetched quirky story and change key with the phrase, "and that's a bit like Jesus."
Second, I remember a friend telling me of the day Martin Niemoller preached in their church, and when he shook his hand he said, "It was like shaking Jesus' hand - you could feel the holiness." This was a Paisley, West of Scotland working man, who knew holiness because he saw often enough its opposite.
Keep those two phrase in mind - "that's a bit like Jesus" and "it was like shaking Jesus hand..."
Yesterday at Summer School we had the privilege of listening to the Very Rev John Miller, formerly Moderator of the Church of Scotland and more imprtantly, former minister of Castlemilk Parish Church from 1971-2008. I have rarely listened to a more inspiring piece of Christian storytelling, a testimony of one man's determined vocation to take seriously and compassionately the people among whom he had chosen to live. The details of the story can be found over here in an article published in The Herald. I want to mention a few personal responses to what John told us.
This is a man who chose to live in a Glasgow Corporation house rather than the manse in the leafy suburbs of Rutherglen, and declined to use a church car paid for by members most of whom stood in the rain at bus stops. Who with others persuaded changes in Government policy on how benefits were paid in order to deal with indebtedness, rent arrears, eevictions and family homelessness. Mary Miller was a founder of the Jeelies, the children's provision after school which gave birth the the Jeely piece song - listen to the authentic Matt McGinn version over here. When John discovered young people who died 'before their time' had no annual memorial service he called a meeting of the folk, and they arranged to have a day when flowers could be tied to the steel railing fences approaching the big roundabout in Castlemilk, remembering those who had died from drug overdose, alcohol misuse, suicide, murder, and other young lives ended too soon. The result was the formation of the Lost Lives Project. He took any funeral he was asked to take sometimes 4 a week, and for over 30 years wrote a personal obituary of each one, printed it and gave it to the closest relative - and this started before the advent of computers, printers and email.
None of these commitments are core to the organisational and institutional life of the church; each of them is core to a life which, for anyone watching, seemed to replicate in the humanity, compassion and determined goodness of the doer, the way of Jesus with people. John still has no real persuasion that what he did was all that special, or indeed was in any obvious way, 'participating in the ministry of Christ'. I think the real witnesses who could convict him of his own goodness are those mums and dads of children who died before their time, some of whom frame what the minister wrote about their boy or lass; those children many middle aged now who were in the Jeely Piece Clubs; two generations of Christians who witnessed a minister doing stuff that was not the done thing till it was done often enough to convince them it should be the done thing.
Those of us who heard John tell the story of Castlemilk community will never forget those few hours of testimony, from a man humble and genuinely puzzled that others should find it remarkable. Personally, listening to John, and having time to talk with him over coffee and a meal, and thinking of how to interpret a ministry so bespoke to a community, I can think of no better phrase than "and that's a bit like Jesus." We've been working through Ephesians led by Professor Tom Greggs at this Summer School and one of the big themes is holiness, that we are called to be "holy and blameless in love." Whatever else John Miller's ministry has demonstrated, and whatever else 'holiness in love' might look like, it may be that unselfconscious goodness, patient love written in words and actions over decades, and seeing ways of making life less hard and lives less broken, that too "is a bit like Jesus."
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