Sunday was our harvest thanksgiving service, and as part of the 'front end' I asked people what they knew about the work of Glasgow City Mission.  Even allowing for the fact that people are shy and reluctant to risk looking daft if the answer is factually incorrect, it struck me, quite forcibly, that I had probably assumed a far greater degree of knowledge than existed.  I didn't expect people to know everything the charity does but I assumed they would have an idea why we support tham at harvest.  Maybe they do, and were just not given the right opportunity to share.

A large chunk of my sermon was didactic - historical backgrounds to BMS and Operation Agri work in Sri Lanka and historical background on Glasgow City Mission.  It's not my 'normal' style of sermon, because it isn't exactly 'preaching' but it did strike me that maybe there is a greater place for 'didache' alongside 'kerygma' in adult worship than I tend to assume.  Way back I wrote an essay on kerygma and didache in child faith development, noting that what we offer children often tends to be 'learning about faith' rather than 'growing, or learning how to express, nascent faith'.  Maybe with adults I tend too far the other way.

Either way, I learned a lot about holy tenacity from reading the accounts of the pioneers who began work in Glasgow and Colombo, and more grist to the mill for my exploration of 'hope' that will weave through all of November.

This afternoon I was visiting one of my folk who is in hospital, and had a very pleasant half hour chatting with her and her husband.  As I was leaving she asked me to say 'hello' to one of the other patients, a piskie who worships on the edge of our patch.  Soon I was drawn into a conversation with her, realised that she, too is English (turned out we were born a few streets and a few decades apart) and she shared her life story.  As she told me about her father's wartime service the song 'Tonight' by Fun was blaring out of the radio in the bay where she and three other older ladies were patients...

Tonight, we are young

So let's set the world on fire

We can burn brighter than the sun

Whilst the song is not exactly my cuppa char, the chorus is very catchy

It just seemed a very odd juxtaposition of someone singing about hedonisim whilst an 80-something told me her father's involvement in the D-Day landings.  He was, evidently just turned forty at the time, and she knows the number of DUKW he was on, carrying munitions.

Once all these older people were young.  Once they dreamed of burning brighter than the sun. And because of them others are free to sing about nights of hedonism... hmmm.

As I looked at the next issue of Roots to begin thinking about the November preaching series, I was struck by the cover image and looked to see where it had originated.  The name of the website - stushieart.com - intrigued me, with stushie being a Scots word.  Sure enough this is a Scottish artist whose images are striking and thought provoking.  Well worth a look if, like me, you had not previously been aware of them.

Today's PAYG was a familiar New Testament story - Jesus healing a man of a spirit that had rendered him mute, and those who saw this accusing Jesus of driving out evil spirits in the power of Satan/Beelzebub.  What struck me was not the idea of literally muteness but rather that of metaphorical muteness - of having no voice, of being unable to speak up or out.

One possible understanding of the man's condition would be what is nowadays called 'selective mutism' whereby a person ceases to speak, usually as a result of trauma.  And that was what sparked my train of thought really.  Not just people who literally cease to speak, but people and groups who cease to speak up or speak out, who cease to particpate in the 'dialogue' of life or society because it has proved too traumatic, too painful, too costly.

It made me think about the contexts where I fall silent and fail to speak the truths that matter to me, and why that is - insecurity, lack of confidence, fear of rejection and so on.

In the story, Jesus gave the man back his voice, he was able to speak.  It is a story of liberation as much, if not more, than one of healing.  It is not necessarily the case that the man's vocal chords were repaired or his larynx renewed, maybe he was just released from being extremely tongue-tied, given permission and confidence to articulate his thoughts, freed from the binding of fear, anixety, guilt or trauma that had silenced him.

So, if we as the church are meant to continue the work of Jesus, how do we give voice to those who cannot speak?  Not, how can we speak on their behalf, though that is valauble as a step along the way, but how can we free them, empower them, to speak for themselves?

I guess if we did that the 'powers that be' might not be so keen, might think that we are involved in some kind of 'dark arts' giving speech to 'those people'.  Maybe afterall, we need first to be set free ourselves, healed of our own selective mutism, and only then can we do the same for others.

PAYG posed the question, 'what do you think the first thing you would say might be if you were the man?'  I think that's a REALLY good question to mull over, and as i discover my own anwer, it may shape the way I relate to other people.

I have long known that the story of missionaries wives, largely unknown or unheard, is one of huge personal sacrifice, often unto to death in far away places.  The romantic tales of derring-do (however that is meant to be spelled) of Dr Livingstone, Mr Carey and others overshadow the often tragic reality faced by the wives they took with them and the children they fathered.

This morning, digging a little deeper into the story of the first BMS missionary to Sri Lanka, James Chater, whose wife, Anne gets passing mention in BMS's necessarily brief history on their website, I came across two obituaries to her.  She ran a school on Sri Lanka and had already given birth to ten children and was again pregnant at the time physicians ordered her to return to the UK for the sake of her health.  Two of her sons had already died on their journey to the UK to be educated at boarding school, and seven children travelled with her towards the UK (I don't know what happened to the tenth child).  During the journey it became clear she would give birith imminently, so she was landed, with her two youngest children, gave birth to twins and died a dew days later.  Her surviving children ranged from nine years old downwards - the poor woman must have permanently pregant, no wonder she died from exhaustion.

I haven't found an obituary for Rev Chalmers, all I know is that when he left Sri Lanka to return to the UK a few years alter, he too died en route.  Of their children I know nothing.

In 2013 there is an established Baptist work in Sri Lanka, and the one remaining Baptist school appears to be highly regarded - this is the 'good treasure' handed on to our generation by those who went to take the Good news to Sri Lanka.

I am glad that there are extended obituaries for Anne Chater (here and here) which give us just the tiniest glimspe into the reality of what it meant to be a missionary wife.  Having just last week remidned ourselves of the call to sacrificial living, there stories are epseically challenging to our lives of middle class ease.