Some weeks ago a churchman offered the view that the world’s current distresses, including the Coronavirus pandemic, the droughts, floods, fires, earthquakes and swarms of locusts, not to mention its wars and insurgencies, were the just judgment of God arising from the adoption by the west of homosexuality in a now institutional form and was…
Articles by Rev Sydney Maitland, appearing in our monthly magazine and commenting on life at All Saints and in the world at large.
Commentary: The end of the beginning
As we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus we are also confronting what must be the most persistent and intractable of fears: death. Today it is the great taboo, writes Rev Sydney Maitland, to be laughed off like a trifle if anyone were so indelicate as to mention it out of place. Yes, we meet it…
Commentary: Death holds no horrors
In my notes for the magazine for February I commented that we were living in a lull and while I felt that something was coming, I had no idea what it would be, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. Now we know – at least in part. Whereas war is violent, noisy and dramatic, this Covid-19 is…
Commentary: Watching and waiting…
I suppose that this is the lull before whatever comes next, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. In our lessons in church this is the period after the Epiphany and before Lent. In the diocese we have a bishop-elect whose translation to the diocese is expected to be in May and who will have the summer to…
Commentary: God with us
A world of venal rulers and corrupt officials, self-interested religious leaders and an occupying army seemingly at liberty to do what it liked, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. No authentic voice of faith for 400 years and believers a beleaguered minority, easy meat for any and all kinds of abuse. This was the Holy Land in…
Commentary: Reconciliation in a fractured nation
“WE WON, YOU LOST, SO *?#@ OFF’. This sentiment is not unique to our politics but is very much in evidence today, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. But then much of our national life is fractured, with divisions between left and right, north and south, town and country, as well as between different nations in the…
Commentary: Mercy and the pursuit of justice
The claims of justice reach ever further into our lives, and this is a multi-faced kind of justice, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. There is social justice, racial justice, economic justice, environmental justice, sexual justice and so on and so on. All are about establishing some kind of claim on the rest of society – and…
Commentary: Transfiguration and the atomic bomb
August 6 is memorable for two quite different reasons, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. In the church we celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration, when Jesus took Peter, James and John up the mountain and there met Moses and Elijah where they discussed Jesus’ coming crucifixion in Jerusalem. In this, Jesus’ robes where transformed into a…
Commentary: In the eyes of the world, Jesus was definitely a loser
The idea of equality has become more and more prominent in discussing public affairs, but it is not always set out just what we mean by it, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. In the bible all are equally created by God, and all equally die, even though the manner and circumstances of birth and death greatly…
Commentary: The appliance of science
We are all familiar with the idea of evolution, which in our culture seems to have the standing of holy writ rather than a theory of science, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. As a theory of science it is subject to proof and if that proof is not sufficiently robust, it may be falsified or at…
Commentary: The only unforgivable sin
There seems to be noting so dear to our media as a scandal, especially a sexual one and especially a sexual scandal in the church, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. It certainly feeds the market demand for prurient voyeurism, as readers and viewers get their fill of satisfaction from seeing another person fall apart, and especially…
Commentary: A more balanced story of humanity
The diet of films offered to a boy growing up in the 1950s and 1960s included a large number of items concerning WW2, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. The allies were shown as heroic and the enemy – especially the Nazis – were shown as robotically evil. Of course their uniforms were smarter and their equipment…
Commentary: Part of the baying mob
The assault was truly shocking and it was carried out with utter callousness and viciousness, leaving the victim maimed and traumatized, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. It was well publicized for the victim was well-known and much respected. And then a suspect was identified, interviewed and charged. He is now in the dock of the criminal…
Commentary: A renewal of our sense of purpose and of mission
During a recent Tuesday evening Eucharist, the gospel lesson was taken from Mark 1: 14-20. It tells how Jesus called His first disciples when walking along the shore of the sea of Galilee. First He called Peter and Andrew who were in their boat, casting their fishing net and they came. Then He found James…
Commentary: These are alarming times, but our security is in the assurances of Jesus Christ
The headlines seem to become ever more violent and not just because of the events of the day, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. The emotions become ever more extreme, the mood swings more pronounced and the personalities vie with one another for prominence and coverage. No criticism is too slight to be ignored or to be…
Commentary: the state of Israel
This month will mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, writes Rev Sydney Maitland, and despite the traumas of regathering the remnants of European Jewry from the charnel houses of the Holocaust, (as well as those dwelling in but expelled from North African and other Arab lands), and then in…
Easter message from All Saints
At Easter we are celebrating life in many aspects, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. Supremely, it is the life that Jesus assumed at His conception and which was made visible at His birth; but it is also the life that He lived, both the hidden years before His baptism in the Jordan, and the few years…
Commentary: Judge not that ye be not judged
‘Absolutely outrageous!’ – ‘Totally unacceptable!’ – ‘Utterly scandalous!’ The cries of disapproval resonate throughout the public space, whether in print, broadcast or on the net, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. And they do indeed protest very vigorously against a crime, an offence against decency or women, or a spectacularly poor explanation of some exercise in political…
Commentary: Money is a fine servant but a dreadful master
I have commented before on the way our money is founded on our confidence in the authorities that issue and regulate it, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. Much of our money has no physical existence as it is comprised of accounting entries in a computer rather than notes or coin, and there are people who would…
Commentary: The peace that shapes and moves us
It is called the Kingdom Season, writes Rev Sydney Maitland, when thoughts are directed to the Kingdom of God, and it normally begins with All Saints Day, concluding on the last Saturday before Advent. Christ the King is the focus, and in writing this, we will have almost completed the Kingdom Season before this issue…
Commentary: Beware a sense of grievance
The hymn ‘Love Unknown’ has the line ‘O who am I that for my sake my Lord should take frail flesh and die?’ We have all had those ‘Who am I?’ moments when we questioned almost everything about ourselves. And in some ways these questions are still with us but in a more powerful and…
Commentary: Pray for those with whom we disagree
The calling of the general election definitely caught me on the hop and the thoughts I had hoped to explore now would be out of place. As governments extend themselves into ever more intimate and personal aspects of our lives, so more and more aspects of our lives have become political. Yet Jesus had a…
Commentary: Be ready to be Good Friday People
We are certainly living within a strange time of uncertainty, and this extends from the future of Scotland to that of the UK, Europe and indeed the whole concept of Western culture. It is there in our politics as new movements arise and generate much interest – possibly, more heat than light – and which…
Commentary: Look in Lent towards the joy and glory of God in Jesus
It is interesting to find that while our festival of All Saints rejoices in the gathering of those who have died in the faith, and is a festival of and for the church as a whole, our observation of All Souls is far more personal and reflective as we remember those who were close to…
Commentary: Godless, evil and self-determined lifestyles
When working in the planning office, I was regularly asked what was going to happen to a particular development proposal. I had to answer that I was a planner and not a fortune-teller and that I could not make predictions. I could indicate whether there were particular concerns regarding a proposal, and whether I thought…
Commentary: Jesus comes to us in Himself and for ourselves
I used to think of November as a non-month in which nothing happened except the cold, the damp and the dark. These are the days in which we would think of death – whether in observing All Saints, All Souls or Remembrance-tide. The month would climax at Christ the King and then we would be…
Commentary: We find, to our astonishment, that God has taken the blame
The question goes back at least to the Book of Psalms: “Why do the nations rage? And the people imagine a vain thing?” (Ps 2: 1) and probably a lot further than that as well, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. And there are (at least) two questions – one is about why politics is so violent,…
Commentary: Paris desacré
For most of us, French was the first foreign language we learned and our history lessons were full of our – often robust – relations with the French, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. In our own lives, we have visited France and of course have met French people. In our own church life, we are honoured…
Commentary: What endures to eternity
There is an aspect of our media that definitely likes to play on the dramatic, writes Rev Sydney Maitland. If it is not dramatic then it is not really news. So: crime figures are discussed with far more animation than data on the balance of payments. The disaster, especially if there are pictures, will draw…
Commentary: The power of positive faith
It must be some 40 or 50 years since the “Power of Positive Thinking” was published, writes Rev Sydney Maitland, and since then there has been a veritable flood of books and courses on self-improvement, positive thinking/being/ action and so on. “Spirituality” has become an exercise in self-improvement, and essentially inward-looking. Advertising has developed themes…