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“The Hope of the Highlands”
Matthew 5: 5-13
A Sermon from St. Andrews Presbyterian Church
By the Rev. Dr. Ned W. Edwards
July 13, 2008
What a joy to return to the tent after 7 years. For those who are more recent to St. Andrews, you should know that this is the way it was every Sunday in the summer from 1997 to 2000, when the building was completed for worship. The benches and this pulpit were hand made for the tent by Darrel Blackett. This Clavenova was purchased for the tent. I announced one Sunday 10 years ago that we were renting the instrument and needed $2000 to purchase it for regular use. A check was passed down the benches to me for that amount from a visiting family. And how beautiful it is that I can tell you that this cross was carved for the tent by commission from Ronnie Lewis. She is indeed here in the spirit of God, the spirit of hope, which is why we have gathered here today.
I was talking with Dick Heglin this week about today’s service, and he said to me: “Do you know who invented the bagpipes and why?” On confessing my ignorance, he continued: “They were invented by the Irish and given to the Scotts as a joke. But the Scotts never got it.”
Aren’t we glad they didn’t, and we are grateful to Jack Fellows and Ernie Abel and the other members of the pipe band for their excellent music today.
A number of people have said to me this morning that their grandparents or great grandparents were Scotch. I had to explain to them that people are Scots or Scottish, and Scotch is whiskey. (It would be like a person of German ancestry saying: “My grandparents were beer.”) But the important thing is what it meant that the ancestors of some of us and the roots of the Presbyterian Church were Scottish. Why is that we are called “St. Andrews” and invite the pipes to celebrate God’s love with us today?
It’s in the history of the Scotts and the Highlands. The Scotts may not have invented the bagpipes, but they did invent democracy. John Knox, founder of the Presbyterian Church, was the first to declare that political power did not rest in Kings and Lords, but in the people.
You see, the highlanders, like so many indigenous people, were left behind by the political and economic developments of the 18th and 19th century. They loved their land, their clans, and their freedom. Yet they were the very people Jesus was speaking about in the scripture this morning: those who are pure in the spirit of freedom, but who mourn the loss of their past; those who hunger and thirst for what is right, but who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. Their freedom, their land and their sheep were taken from them, but their hope never seemed to die.
Even after Bonnie Prince Charlie’s defeat in 1745, when thousands of Scotts were killed by the English army, people waited patiently for years and years for freedom to return to Scotland.
These are people who were truly blessed, and that means happy, because after all the defeats, the persecution, the mourning, they never lost their love for family. Do you know what “clan” means in Gaelic? It means “children”, who are the future of the family, the hope of the family.
So today when we bring our clan tartan to be blessed, we are blessing our children, our future, our hope.
The hopeful legend of St. Andrew, who never stopped preaching the good new of Christ in the three days of his painful crucifixion, was carried on when a Greek monk, by the name of Regulus (Rule or Regulation in English) thought it was his mission to protect the bones of Andrew the Apostle from the Turkish Muslims by taking them to distant land. Sailing west across the North Sea, he was shipwrecked and landed by chance in Fife, Scotland, where King Angus MacFergus received him and his treasure. Rule’s Tower can still be seen in St. Andrews, the steeple of an ancient church that served also as a lighthouse to guide pilgrims to St. Andrews in the 10th and 11th Centuries.
Shortly thereafter, in 730 A.D., King Angus led his Pictish troops with a contingent of Scots into the Edinburgh area to fight the English troops under Athelstane, an army which greatly outnumbered him. Fearful of loosing the battle, King Angus invoked God’s favor in the name of St. Andrews. The story goes that overhead in the blue sky on the very morning of the battle, a great white diagonal cross appeared, and was seen by both armies, the cross of St. Andrew. When the English charged the Scots, the English leader was dilled and the day was easily won by the smaller army of Scots. King Angus thanked God and took St. Andrew for his patron Saint. When the Picts and Scots were united in 847 A.D., the Saint became the patron of Scotland, and the cry of the Scottish army became: “God and St. Andrew. St. Andrew for Scotland.” And the white diagonal cross in the blue field became their flag, the earliest national flag still in existence today, and known as the “Saltire.”
Do you see in that story the foundation for the hope of the highlands? The hope was a faith in God who overcame massive armies. The hope was in a Saint known for honesty and overcoming persecution with trust in God. Until this day, those who cannot read or write can legally sign their name with an X, the symbol of St. Andrew. It means: I swear that this is true.
Over 1100 years later, when Pope Paul VI visited Scotland (in 1969) he brought more relics of St. Andews and presented them in Edinburgh with the words: “St. Peter gives you his brother.”
This hope, born of history and founded in faith, has led the Scottish people to amazing feats throughout history. Look at the victories of William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, John Knox, King James (the producer of our first authorized English Bible) and the army of the Potomac, led by Scots. In each case, against overwhelming odds, the hope of freedom and reform became reality. Those mourned were blessed. Those who were persecuted were blessed. Those who sought righteousness and peace were blessed—not without suffering, but always with hope.
Friends, today there is hope in these highlands overlooking the lakes. It is demonstrated by your presence here. The Psalmist said it: “Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.” Those generations that went before you, whose Tartans you bring today, trusted in God to overcome poverty and persecution in a hostile world. But more than that, they went into the world with the conviction to change it and make it a better world. The Scots themselves became a part of our life and our hope.
While I Scotland I came across this fact sheet of Scottish ingenuity. It reads:
The average Englishman, in the home he calls his castle, slips into his national costume: a raincoat patented by chemist Charles MacIntosh from Glasgow, Scotland.
En route to his office, he strides along the English lane, surfaced by John MacAdam of Ayr, Scotland.
He drives an English car fitted with tires invented by John Boyd Dunlop of Dreghorn, Scotland.
At the office he receives the mail bearing adhesive stamps invented by James Chalmers of Dundee, Scotland.
During the day he uses the telephone invented by Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh, Scotland.
At home in the evening, his daughter pedals her bicycle invented by Kirkpatrick MacMillan of Dumfries, Scotland.
He watches the news on a television set invented by John Logie Baird of Helensburgh, Scotland, and hears an item about the U.S. Navy, founded by John Paul Jones of Kirkbean, Scotland.
He has by now been reminded too much of Scotland, and in desperation, picks up the Bible, only to find that the first man mentioned in the good book is a Scot: King James VI of Scotland, who authorized its translation.
Nowhere can the Englishman turn to escape the ingenuity of the Scots. He could take to drink, but the Scots make the best in the world.
He could take a rifle and end it all, but the breech loading rifle was invented by Captain Patrick Ferguson of Pitfours, Scotland.
Having escaped death, he finds himself on an operating table, injected with penicillin, discovered by Alexander Fleming of Darvel, Scotland, and given and anesthetic, discovered by Sir James Young Simpson of Bathgate, Scotland.
Out of the anesthetic, he would find no comfort in learning that he was as safe as the Bank of England, founded by William Paterson, of Dumfries, Scotland. Perhaps his only remaining hope would be to get a transfusion of “guid Scottish blood.”
My friends, we are here to get such a transfusion today. Our hope is in the name of the Lord and in all those who give us the courage and inspiration to lead the world out of pain, poverty and despair. The hope of the Highlands is in you. Let us ask God’s blessing on the blood that flows through our veins, and leads us from the Highlands to share its hope with all humanity.
Amen.
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