On Sunday afternoon, between the two services, I went to Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum to see one of my all time favourite paintings - a kind of homage/pilgrimage visit I guess - to see Dali's Christ of St John of the Cross.  As a child it was the first religious painting that captured my imagination, almost chanced upon as,on a rare visit to Glasgow to see my grandparents, we visited the museum and there it hung, splendid and awe inspiring.  I last saw it a few years back when it was temporarily housed at the St Mungo museum of religious art.  On Sunday I was very disappointed to discover it relegated to a dingy corner, poorly lit and missed by many people on their way to see other things.  Only in Britain...

Other more amusing and curiously British aspects of the experience were some of the curious and crazy juxtapositions.  Seemingly inches above the heads of stuffed African animals hung a Spitfire - something really bizarre about a giraffe able to eye-ball the (invisible) pilot of a war plane.  In the main atrium children built daleks from k'nex whilst overhead the mighty organ boomed out a free recital to people sipping coffee from paper cups in the coffee shop bit.  There was something delightfully irreverent and comical and curious and fun about the whole experience.  Something that you probably have to be British to 'get.'

I wish the Dali was better located, but maybe, just maybe, there is an important irony that on a Sunday afternoon when people enjoy the melee of music and natural history and science fiction and valuable art that Jesus sneaks into a corner almost unobserved...?

After Sunday's service I was chatting to someone about the sermon (something I haven't really done for many years) who commented to the effect that 'your said this, well you didn't but you did.'  I knew what she meant.  Part of the mystery of preaching is that we carefully (or carelessly!) prepare something and hope that somehow through it God will speak to people.  What they hear may or may not be what we think we are saying, but often what is heard is pertinent for them.  When I was a student, I used sometimes to ask for feedback from members of the congregation including 'what do you think the sermon was about?' I would usually get one fairly accurate precis of what I'd said along with three or four interesting, intriguing synopses of something else, conected to what I intended but not what I thought I was saying.  This is the mystery of preaching, I think.  And it is part of what makes it both privlege and responsibility to do it the best I can.

This week I think I'm preaching on being a prophetic community - but afterwards I'll find out what it really was!!