St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh
Midweek Devotion 4th May 2023
Led by Rev Professor Kenneth Boyd
Welcome to online devotion with St Giles’ Cathedral, today, Thursday the 4th of May 2023.
Scripture Reading
Our reading today is from the 12th chapter of the Gospel of St John, verses 20 to 26.
20 Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ 22 Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23 Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour. AMEN
Reflection
It’s commonly said that ‘knowledge is power’, and for many practical purposes there’s obvious truth in that: knowing how to drive or cycle for example and knowing about the rules of the road gives you power to travel more speedily and safely than without that knowledge. Knowing things about other people – their circumstances, their character – may also empower us in our interactions with them, if only not to offend them or rub them up the wrong way. Yet our knowledge about other people in most cases is usually second-hand, filtered through the prejudices of others again, and as a result it can be unreliable or even untrue. Unless we know the other person personally, any empowerment derived from such knowledge may be more illusory than real.
To get to know another person personally, moreover, we need to be open and vulnerable to them; and to be thus open and vulnerable is incompatible with clinging to the power of the knowledge we think we might have about them, or indeed about ourselves. Something like this, I think, is what Jesus meant when he spoke in this and the other Gospels about losing your life to find it. The ‘life’ Jesus says we need to lose is the premature certainty about ourselves (the old Scots’ ‘conceit’ of ourselves) that far from empowering us, can lead us either to the follies of pride or to the depths of despair. Just as to get to know another person personally we need to be open and vulnerable to them, so it is with God, who - as the 14th century author of the Cloud of Unknowing wrote - ‘cannot be thought. By love he can be grasped and held, but by thought, neither grasped nor held.’ AMEN
In peace let us pray to the Lord.
Our prayers are from A Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie.
Almighty and eternal God,
You are hidden from my sight;
You are beyond the understanding of my mind;
Your thoughts are not my thoughts;
Your ways are past finding out.
Yet you have breathed your Spirit into my spirit;
You have formed my mind to seek you;
You have turned my heart to love you;
You have made me restless for the rest that can be found in you;
You have planted within me a hunger and a thirst that make me long for the satisfaction of heaven.
O Lord, you alone know what lies before me today;
grant that in every hour I may stay close to you.
Let me be in the world but not of it.
Let me use this world without abusing it.
Do not let me embark on anything today that is not in line with your will for my life,
nor shrink from any sacrifice that your will demands.
Suggest, direct and guide every movement of my mind;
for my Lord Jesus Christ’s sake
AMEN
The Lord’s Prayer
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom the power and the glory, for ever and ever.
AMEN
Blessing
And now may the love of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
bless, preserve and keep us and all God’s children,
in the joy, simplicity, and compassion of the gospel.
AMEN
Organ Music
G.F.Handel Organ Concert Op 4 No 6 in B flat – 4th movement