As I write this, we are awaiting the imminent arrival of Pickfords Removals, ready to uplift (as they say in Scotland) our effects and transport them to Switzerland. The move has been an occasion to have a major clear-out and we also took a stall at the church car boot sale - a new experience for us. In addition, I have been going through my old sermons and magazine articles - not for the car-boot stall, you understand!
They go back over twenty years and it has been an instructive exercise to look at them, deciding which could stand another outing and which are best consigned to history. It has led to some hard decisions. After all, the sermons did take quite some time to produce. In fact, I calculate that, on a 40-hour week basis (I wish!), they add up to a whole working year.
It is said that if a sermon was worth preaching once, it is worth preaching again. In spite of that, though, the bulk of them have gone to the skip. Not because I thought they were rubbish (although the congregations who heard them may disagree) but because so many of them were tailored to a particular situation. As I read them, I could picture the congregations to which they had been preached and some of the things that were in our minds at the time - whether events going on in the world, happenings closer to home or issues facing the congregation.
Some of them also showed me how I had changed - how I had needed to focus on different things at different times in my ministry; how the scripture readings set for a particular Sunday had spoken to me in different ways through the years; how one's faith develops as it encounters different situations during one's life time. Quite a number contained little anecdotes about things that had happened or people I had met during the course of my ministry. It showed that ministry is a two-way process. The clergy may be in a teaching role for their congregation but they also learn from their life together with their flock. We each become part of each other's stories and we each influence the way we perceive God's Word as living and active in our lives.
It is only after you have been away from a place for a while that these stories come to mind. So - what will Bern and Neuchâtel learn about the good folk of Largs?
See you soon.
Peter