I must confess that there are times when, despite being uncomfortably seated in church my attention wanders, and I may not hear clearly what is being said. However when the Reader announced the “first letter sent by St. Paul to the brethren in the Philippines” well, I came awake! At first I thought I might have misheard, then my mind recalled the occasion when an excited and breathless BBC News Reporter told us that; “Fourteen rioting Turds have just been arrested outside the Kurkish Embassy.”
These things happen, and speakers do say the wrong things when they transpose words and alliterative sounds. This is not a modern thing and during Victorian times the Reverend W. A. Spooner of Oxford gave his name to the phenomenon of transposing initial sounds of spoken words. A favourite of his congregation was to hear him speak on the theme of “Jesus our Shoving Leopard,” and even today undergraduates still speak of Marston Ferry Road as the ‘Fast and Merry Road.’
Quite often as I sit in church I find that the Preacher is competing with my own thoughts, but every now and again the preacher grabs my attention. This happened a few weeks ago as the congregation knelt in prayer. In suitable tones the Lord was exhorted to “Make us ashamed for the poverty and famine in Africa.”
As the words echoed around my head, I realised that I was being asked to feel guilty about the situation in Africa. Furthermore God was being invited to reinforce that guilt. As my mind got into gear I wondered, was I really being asked to take personal responsibility for the poverty, violence, corruption and famine in Africa? Africa is a big place, in fact a whole continent, and a lot is going on there so why, I wondered, would God want me to feel guilty about all the nasty things in Africa?
Still on my knees the truth hit me! God does not want me to feel guilty about Africa at all! I am not personally responsible for Africa’s ills. It is not guilt God wants me to feel, it is gratitude. Gratitude for the love of family and friends, gratitude for the beautiful countryside and community in which I live. Gratitude for intellect and reason, and for freedom from fear and need.
It is Gratitude that makes me respond to the needs of others not Guilt. Like the Good Samaritan, whose name we do not know, when I am motivated by gratitude there is no doubt as to my motives. When however, my actions are motivated by guilt, doubt will always persist. Surely a message of prayer is that God would rather we be grateful than guilty?
View from the Pew 