Today is 1 August and that is a traditional day in Scotland which has a name and a heritage and a series of traditions around it.

And I bet most people these days don’t know what it is.

Today, 1 August is Lammas Day – one of the Scottish Term Days, similar to the English Quarter Days. These were the days on which rents were paid and servants were hired, and the day on which the clergy stipends were due.

In old fashioned terms, it was a day of reckoning. A day when the tabs were all added up. The balance sheets balanced. Debts were settled. And a line was drawn under what had gone before in order to provide for a clean sheet to begin business again.

I’ll come back to the idea of a day of reckoning in a bit, for Jesus certainly seemed in the gospel to be speaking about the day of reckoning that comes of each of us and about the nature of the balance sheet that we are left with at the end of life. I’ll come back to that in a minute, but first I want to stay with this image of Lammastide for a moment for there is a bit more that I want to draw out of it.
[Read more…]