FAREWELL SERMON PREACHED BY THE REVD ANDREW ANDERSON, SUNDAY 30th OCTOBER 2011

‘CHRIST CRUCIFIED’
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
I wonder how many of you, as you entered the church this morning, noticed the words on the back wall of the vestibule? As you come through the front doors on the wall facing you there is a memorial to Greenside’s first minister, the Revd William Glover, minister from the foundation of the congregation in 1837 until his death in 1871, a ministry of 33 years. As part of his memorial there are these words, ‘I am determined not to know any thing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified.’ They are words taken from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, and which we read earlier.
I don’t know how appropriate these words were for William Glover. But this is a text that I think is appropriate for this service today, and want to reflect on it for a few minutes at the close of my own 30 years here at Greenside.
‘I am determined not to know any thing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified.’
Two things strike me about this text, and the first is this. Here, in the death of Christ upon the cross we are at the very heart of our Christian faith. This, Christ crucified and risen, was the core of the message, the Good News, which those first Christians proclaimed. It has been said that it is an indisputable historical fact that those first followers of Jesus who had heard him, and had seen him, believed that he was the Son of God, believed that he was crucified for our sins, and raised to life for our justification. This belief, this faith, utterly transformed them and they went out to proclaim it to all the world at the cost, for some, even of their lives. The New Testament resounds with this claim: in Paul, in Peter, in John, in the four gospels.
It is possible to read the four gospels as different biographies of Jesus, beginning with his birth, telling the story of his life and public ministry, and ending with his death and resurrection. But it is, I believe, better to read the gospels as primarily accounts of his death and resurrection, with the earlier parts of his life set down so that we might better understand who it was who was crucified and then raised to life. For example, in John almost half of the gospel, 10 chapters out of 21, deals with what we call our Lord’s Passion, his suffering and his death. It is that important.
So it is that the cross became the universal symbol of the Christian faith that has spread throughout the world. And it is the cross that is the substance of the Sacrament we celebrate here today. Will we not together, in a few minutes, eat a small piece of bread and take a sip of wine to remember, and to feast upon, the broken body and spilt blood of our crucified and risen Lord and Saviour?
‘I am determined not to know any thing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified.’
A second thing strikes me about this text. It may be the heart of our Christian faith, and reflect the glory of God, but it is not an easy text. It is not easy really to understand the relevance of it, it is not easy really to understand what it means. It is not popular. In a word, it is rejected. We live in a world, a culture where the message of Christ crucified is largely rejected.
As a consequence of this, in part at least, we in the Church fall into temptation. We are tempted to minimise the cross, to privatise it, to confine it to the walls of our churches, a ‘Church Within Walls’, if you like. And the message of Jesus which we take out into the world – out there, so to speak – we make easier, more acceptable. Jesus is less the Saviour, and more the Teacher, the example of how we should live, the moral pattern for our behaviour. He is the Jesus of the parables, exhorting us to love one another, to forgive one another, to be reconciled, and to live in peace. Nothing wrong with this, of course. Except in not speaking of the cross we have taken away the power of the gospel. It is much easier to preach Christmas than Easter, people are much happier with the story of Bethlehem, than with the account of Calvary.
‘I am determined not to know any thing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified.’
Paul knew this, and the challenge it posed. In a passage that I love because it is so relevant to us here this morning he puts it like this. Let me read it again.
‘Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.’
The ancient classical world of Paul was not entirely unlike our own. The cross of Christ, which Paul calls here the power and the wisdom of God, was to many in those days a stumbling-block, and foolishness. The cross and Christ crucified seemed nonsense then, and for many it is nonsense today.
I have lived with this tension, this challenge, between the truth of Christ crucified, and what the world can accept, for all the 30 years of my ministry. Let me touch on three areas where I felt I faced this challenge particularly. The first is my work with children.
Greenside 30 years ago was a large, mostly elderly, inner-city church, the product of three unions, in 1973 with Hopetoun Church, in 1974 with Abbey Church, and in 1978 with Hillside Church. From the start I greatly valued my work with older folk, so many of whom were wonderful saints of God, and from whom I learnt so much. Memory of them is particularly precious to me as I recall them today. But, for the sake of balance, I was keen also to spend time with children. We had a Sunday School, of course. And I am glad to say that our children’s ministry in these last five years, with a new structure and new way of working, is meeting a need, and growing. As I retire this is a ‘green shoot’ for the future here at Greenside. But the real challenge lay in the schools.
For ten years I was chaplain at Leith Walk Primary School, one of the two primary schools in the parish, where I took traditional, weekly assemblies. For the last twenty years I have been chaplain at the other parish primary, Abbeyhill, initially taking assemblies, then, when they stopped, taking classes instead. I also served for eleven years as what was called a ‘visiting minister’ – effectively chaplain – at the Edinburgh Academy Junior School, and then I was for nine years a governor at George Heriot’s, appointed by the Presbytery. I have seen quite a lot of Edinburgh schools.
Allowing for the real differences between the local authority and the independent schools, not least in matters of religion, I faced the challenge of saying something of the truth and relevance of the Christian faith to children growing up in a world of smart phones, computer games and multi-channel tv. Here again was temptation. To speak of Jesus as a teacher, a moral pattern and example, was so much easier than speaking of Christ as Saviour. What do you say to the children of this generation of the atonement, of Christ’s cross, and his dying in our place for our sins?
I was very moved at the farewell the children of Abbeyhill gave me the week before last. They and the staff had clearly gone to a lot of trouble, and they gave me a special farewell lunch, a farewell assembly, and some lovely gifts. The children had all made cards to wish me well in my retirement. I quote. ‘Good luck, Mr Anderson, in your retirement.’ ‘Thank you for all the Bible stories and telling us about Christianity.’ ‘Hope you have fun with your grandchildren.’ And there were many in a similar vein. One Primary 5 girl was very specific: ‘Happy retirement, Mr Anderson. Just relax. Have fun. Take a nap. Chat with your friends.’ And then at the bottom of her card, and clearly thinking that I needed this advice, ‘Read your Bible, and visit the church.’ But best of all I was given a beautiful certificate telling me that I had won a Headteacher’s Award. That was something! I have waited 67 years for a Headteacher’s Award, and now I have one. Better late than never, I say!
A second, and quite different, challenge in my ministry came from my long association with the retail and industrial company John Menzies. While a student at New College I had done two summer jobs at their head office, and the link was maintained. Shortly after being ordained and inducted here at Greenside I was appointed convener of the Kirk’s Bookshops Committee, responsible for a business of eight shops, forty staff, and a turnover of two million pounds. John Menzies were very helpful to me and my committee with training, advice and support of various kinds. In 1991, when Robert Maxwell, the boss of the Daily Mirror, died in mysterious circumstances and was found to have raided his company’s pension funds, I was approached by John Menzies and invited to become the independent trustee of their pension funds. I have done this ever since. And being someone whom they knew I was quickly asked to perform some ministerial functions. I took two funeral services of two Company employees, one of which, for a senior manager killed in a road accident, included a memorial service here at Greenside when the church was packed. This led to a further invitation, this time to be Company chaplain. I was taken entirely by surprise, having never considered industrial, or what is now call workplace, chaplaincy. But I said yes, and I did this for eleven years.
Let me tell you this chaplaincy was as difficult and taxing as anything in my ministry. Going into the shops and offices and distribution depots, going into the Company canteen at lunch and sitting with staff, telling them who I was, trying to find some common ground, trying to build a bridge of friendship across which I could go to share something about the Gospel – all this was challenging indeed. The world of business, the life and work of an office, these are secular, even godless, places, and I knew that some people, including senior people in the Company, wondered what on earth I was doing. It was a stumbling-block, foolishness, nonsense. The temptation to be the Company’s social worker, or welfare officer, rather than a minister of Word and Sacrament, was very great. But surprisingly I was often well received. A number of staff commented appreciatively on the Company’s vision in having a chaplain. In addition to the funerals there were also, more happily, some weddings, and the opportunity for genuine pastoral work.
How do we share our faith, then, in Christ crucified in the world beyond the local church, in the school or college or university, or in the world of business, the shop or supermarket, the office, the factory, the depot? These are things I have wrestled with all my years.
‘I am determined not to know any thing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified.’
The third and last of the areas of my ministry I want to touch on relates to links overseas and the international or World Church.
In 1994, under the Presbytery’s excellent sabbatical scheme, Hazel and I had the opportunity to visit Asia for the first time. We spent two months in south India at Madras Christian College, founded by the Church of Scotland in the same year that Greenside opened its doors, 1839. This was followed by a third month, this time in Pakistan, at Murree Christian School, 8,000 feet up in the Himalayas north of Islamabad. This was where the children of missionaries were educated, and where Greenside’s mission partners, Ian and Isabel Murray, had given all their working lives.
We had a wonderful time in both India and Pakistan, and have been back several times since. To say that this was a life-changing experience for us is an overstatement, but it did make a huge impact. We had begun to learn something about Hindu theology and culture, and about Islam. But, more importantly, we had begun to experience something of that vitality and vigour of the World Church, with a readiness to evangelise and proclaim the saving work of Christ which seems to me to be lacking in the Church here in Scotland. So on returning to Edinburgh we began to get involved in outreach to the Asian community. In the years since this has centred on Asian Concern, a charity founded in 1989 and based here at Greenside, and which has a well-developed programme of activities and events – ‘friendship evangelism’ I like to call it – for our Asian neighbours. Through all this, and the diligence of our fieldworkers, we have touched Hindus, Moslems and Sikhs with the Gospel. It has promoted good community relations, but, more importantly, it has had as its focus and motive Jesus Christ and him crucified.
This work took a further step in 2005 when here at Greenside we held our first All Nations Service one Sunday evening in Advent involving some of the minority or international churches here in Edinburgh. It was an unexpected success, a two-hour service with about 300 attending. One colleague said to me afterwards, ‘Andrew, next year it’s the Usher Hall!’ Well, we haven’t taken the Usher Hall – at least, not yet – but we have had this service annually ever since, enjoying a window into the World Church, with contributors from the local Chinese, Korean, Fijian, African, Afro-Caribbean, Japanese, Polish, German, Indian, Iranian and Egyptian fellowships. Again, it has been the vitality and vigour of the worship, reflecting a deep and joyful Christian faith, that has impressed and encouraged us. I could say that this is today’s world in all its multi-cultural character. I could say that this is what the World Church is now like, growing so rapidly in Asia, Africa and South America. I could even say that this is a taste of heaven.
Three years ago the New Life Christian Fellowship, a Pentecostal church based on south Indian families and worshipping in English, came to Greenside and now worships every Sunday afternoon in our halls. This has given us the vision of growing a truly international church based in this building. I am convinced that such a thing, were it ever to come to pass, would be a huge blessing for our whole Presbytery and our city. Indeed this might prove the very vehicle for that revival of the Church for which surely we all hope and work and pray. Here is another ‘green shoot’ as I retire.
‘I am determined not to know any thing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified.’
Let me summarise what I am trying to say. Paul here in this text pointed to Christ crucified as the very power and wisdom of God, power to save to the uttermost those who put their trust in him, power to change lives and to transform communities and nations, power to confront the cruelty and injustice and selfishness of our world, and make it a better place. But he knew the challenge even in his own day. For many this was a stumbling-block, mere foolishness, nonsense – and they did not believe him.
Ministers come, and ministers go, but the Church goes on, the body of Christ in the world. As we part today we look back with huge gratitude for all God’s blessings on us here at Greenside. And we look forward with the promise that ‘we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.’ We encourage and strengthen ourselves with the bread and wine of Communion, the spiritual food to which we now turn. And I close with the worlds from Hebrews with which we began our service. I commend them to each and every one of you here today, as I commend them to myself:
‘Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.’
And may God add his blessing to this preaching of his holy word. Amen.