Disaster or opportunity?

Past and Future – Reflection 2

A massive storm in 1656 washed away a large part of the church of St Andrew at North Berwick harbour.  The church was unusable. For God’s people it must have seemed like an unmitigated disaster. Where was God in all of this?

100 years earlier the Reformation had brought a massive change to Scotland. Prior to the Reformation church services were largely unintelligible and inaudible. They were conducted in Latin which only a few people understood. The Auld Kirk at North Berwick harbour was a bigger building than St Andrew Blackadder so few people could even hear the Latin words the priest spoke.

One of the main thrusts of the Reformation was to return worship to worshippers. The King James, or Authorized Version of the Bible, appeared in 1611. God’s people could now hear God speaking to them in the language they used every day. The public reading and exposition of God’s word became the focus of the post-Reformation church. People started learning to read so they could read the Bible themselves and check the preacher was accurately relaying it to them.

In 1664 the second church of St Andrew opened on Kirk Ports. A new church was an opportunity to create an entirely different worshipping experience. This was achieved by placing the pulpit on the middle of the side wall rather than at the front. Worshippers faced inwards with the result that everyone in the building heard the word of the Lord.

In Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones, he is instructed to Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord’ (Ezekiel 37:4). God’s word is declared, the Holy Spirit blows and the dry bones return to life.

This happened across Scotland in the 16^th and 17^th centuries as God’s word was declared in a language people could understand and in buildings designed so they could hear. The shape of St Andrew’s Church in Kirk Ports is a lasting reminder of this.

Like the collapse of the first St Andrew’s Church, the unexpected and the unwelcome keeps occurring. Mourning the loss we feel is natural. The challenge of following Jesus is, also, to seize the opportunity created. Moving the focal point of the church from the front to the middle is a very vivid symbol. Like those who went before us we too are called to speak the word of the Lord in ways ordinary people can relate to and make sense of.

Surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1)

Witness 1: St Andrew, who brought people to Jesus – Sermon 18/1/26

Witness 2: John Blackadder, who preached the word in season and out of season – All Age Talk 25/1/26

Witness 3: The people who founded the church of St Andrew in North Berwick.  ‘Make the most of every opportunity’ (Colossians 4:5).

Witness 4: St Andrew’s Church, Kirk Ports: ‘Hear the word of the Lord’ (Ezekiel 37:4)

 

Neil

Rev Dr Neil Dougall