What is in Kelvin's Head?

Scottish Shia Community shows us how to do interfaith work

31/07/2015

It was a great honour and privilege last night to be a guest of the Scottish Shia community at an Eid meal to celebrate the end of Ramadan. The photograph shows me with Sayed Ali Abbas Razawi, the Director General of the Scottish Ahlul Bayt Society.

There are many reasons why we need to have interfaith meetings and many ways of doing it. Last night, the Shia community in Scotland offered us a wonderfully relaxed and easy way to go to engage with one another – they took us out for a meal. Well, it was more of a banquet than a meal, in the Village Curry House in Tradeston which served us splendid food.

The good thing about eating over a meal is that you can dip in and out of conversations – mixing chatter about where people are going on holiday with theological questions and all the while you are learning about each others traditions. As I hear the Shia people talk about the universal search for justice that they are engaged in, inspired by Imam Hussein, there are obvious connections to be made with the work for human rights and human dignity that Christians and other people of goodwill are engaged in.

And so we found ourselves chatting away about how Muslims and Christians think of John the Baptist, how we think about Middle East politics, the Usual Topic (human sexuality) and the interesting ways that people are arguing about it within our communities. And we talked about Scotland too – how it is changing and how we are changing in it. There were folk there from different parts of Scottish society – charities like Breast Cancer research and Alzheimers Scotland who are helped by the Shia community and services like the Fire Service and Blood Transfusion Service and there was an MSP representing the Scottish Government. Bishop Idris was representing the Trades House of Glasgow and there were loads of us from the Christian communities in Scotland – the Moderator of the General Assembly and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Glasgow were tucking into the curry and naan with the rest of us.

I’m interested that sometimes these days the Christians meet best whilst engaging in conversation with people outwith Christianity. Ecumenism often doesn’t seem very exciting but Interfaith work sometimes makes it happen in a new and relaxed way that you don’t see coming. Last night, it was Muslims who brought the Christians together and that’s worth thinking about a very great deal.

So – thank you to the people who honoured us with their invitation last night. It was a wonderful example of religious generosity and a time when all kinds of relationships could be built.

23 responses to “What if this is the end of the Eucharist?”

Thomas Scott

06/05/2020

Just noticing here that DGD (of happy memory) seems to have left out of his catalogue of joyous, sad, perilous, and solemn occasions any instance of celebrating during a plague or pestilence. I’m not worried about the mass. The eucharist need not be celebrated as though it were a car battery, as if not offering it now would somehow allow the power to run down. It is not at risk, we are, which I think is your point. The questions asked are worth asking, of course.

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Mo Nicholson

06/05/2020

Mo Nicholson. This is an intriguing discussion and what I would like to add to it is the observation that I have had to learn the hard way that participation in the Eucharist being made impossible in no way diminishes an individual’s ability to worship God or be in fellowship with other believers. I am barred from receiving Holy Communion in the Catholic church because allergies make this impossible for me. The pain induced by this has little to do with feeling separation from God, in fact nothing at all as I do not feel that. It comes from feeling excluded from the community, different sections if which regard it as desirable or tolerable that a member of the community should be excluded in this way. This experience has made me understand as never before that if we place prime value on liturgical celebrations, ir indeed anything else, above charity, compassion, welcome and inclusivity, in other words love, then we have become the sounding gong which St Paul warned against. If we truly believe that God is love, as I do, then it is obvious that it is love for one another which makes us true children of God our Father, and in light of this we could begin to look at these present challenging circumstances as simply an opportunity to love more, to reach out to one another in whatever way possible in the knowledge that this is what actually matters and always did. Only perhaps we were tempted to almost make a fetish of our rituals, sacraments and so on. And perhaps this can show us a better way more adapted to the world we are supposed to serve.

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Lynsay Downs

06/05/2020

You and your conversation with Dave Roberts prompted me to write this. Does it resonate for you?

https://astonishing.community/2020/05/06/conversations-in-coronatide/

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1. Kelvin
  
  06/05/2020
  
  Thanks Lynsay – yes, it does resonate with me very much.
  
  I’ve shared it on facebook. I think it is really helpful.
  
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Fr Keith

06/05/2020

Thanks again for such a thoughtful piece. With the Eucharist central to much of, at least Anglican/Episcopalian, worship in recent generations, we perhaps forget that the Church in these islands was, between the Reformation and the liturgical revivals of the 19th and 20th centuries, sustained by Mattins and Evensong as the regular diet of worship on Sundays. I’m not advocating a return to such times, but there is, as you suggest, work to be done on non-Eucharistic worship (though not defining it as a negative). Thanks again.

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Fenland Boy

07/05/2020

For the record, I’m not in favour of lay presidency at the Eucharist. I believe, for better or worse, in an ordered church.

Why are you concerned about lay Presidency?

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Chuck

08/05/2020

May I say respectfully, lighten up. Many Anglicans/Episcopalians lived on the edges of civilization in the nascent U.S. and various elements of the British Empire. Priests to celebrate the Holy Eucharist and to baptize were seldom seen, at most twice a year in many areas. (Bishops, only every several years.) The Church carried on in this manner decade after decade. If circumstances require, the Church will carry on again despite our profound sense of loss.

I should add, to those who grew up under threat or reality of war, persecution, oppression, famine, other disease, etc, the present difficulty is not unfamiliar in many respects.

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Miriam MacCarthy

08/05/2020

Thank you! It is wonderful to read these serious, personal thoughts about the Eucharist. My feeling is that it has become celebrated to the point of boredom. Church, and what we do in it, is in danger of becoming simply a habit. It could just as well be crackerjack for a fast-asleep congregation. My heresy is that the direction Jesus gave is to “do this in remembrance of me”, and that means everything we eat at any time, whether alone or with others, in thanksgiving. If that is seriously done, it has vastly more meaning. It really gets ones attention and requires preparation. Would not become popular or usual, I predict!

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