Welcome...
This is the website and blog of Rev. Dr. Stewart Weaver.
I am the minister at St Philip's Church Joppa. We are a dynamic church in the Portobello and Joppa area of Edinburgh.
This website is designed to give you a flavour of my thoughts and musings and to provide some further reading on my sermons and other ideas.
I update the website around once a week, usually with a newsletter, a sermon or a prayer, and sometimes some photos.
You should also find lots of news and comment on events and happenings in and around the church.
You can find out a bit more about me by clicking this link.
ST. PHILIP’S E-NEWSLETTER
21 MAY 2010
COMMENTS FROM THE EDITOR
Your editor caught a few bits of the opening ceremony of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.
Lots of pomp and circumstance.
Now that that’s over, there’s some work to do.
And lots of decisions to be made about ministers and buildings.
Perhaps we should combine the two: sell the ministers?
But who would buy them?
THOUGHT
Whilst visiting the General Assembly your editor succumbed to the clarion call of the book shop.
However, your editor managed to limit purchases (retail therapy?) to one book. It’s a new one by Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopalian priest in the US known for excellent sermons, and it caught… click here to read more
Can we balance Genesis and Darwin?
We continue our series in which the congregation poses questions for the minister and the minister attempts to respond. The congregation quite clearly enjoy hearing the gears in the minister’s brain grinding. Not to a halt, I hope.
However, the question posed above is merely the shorthand for the actual question posed by a member of St. Philip’s. The actual question was this:
Could you marry the first Genesis with Darwin’s theory and second Genesis when God entered the hearts and souls and lives of his people?
‘Genre’ comes to mind immediately. In what sense does Genesis pretend that it is scientific in the sense that we would define it? Certainly those who wrote… click here to read more
ST. PHILIP’S E-NEWSLETTER
14 MAY 2010
COMMENTS FROM THE EDITOR
Your editor wondered if this e-newsletter should be coloured red, yellow or blue this week. What do you get when you mix a bit of yellow with blue? Apart from a coalition cabinet, something a bit green.
A green revolution?
THOUGHT
Your editor read something recently by a woman named Grace Davie, a sociologist who has done extensive work on religion in the contemporary European and North American context. Within her work are such useful concepts as ‘believing without belonging’ (and for our Scandinavian friends, ‘belonging without believing’); vicarious religion, felt by many in Europe; and the shift from a culture of obligation to a culture of consumption. Within a… click here to read more
The question posed by a member of the congregation this week:
What relevance does Christianity have in 2010?
Worldwide: one could suggest that worldwide it has huge relevance. Christianity is the largest religion with the most adherents. It is prominent in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the US. World leaders have Christian backgrounds: Obama, Gordon Brown (son of the manse) and Tony Blair as immediate examples. Charities such as Christian Aid, TearFund or Cafod do fantastic work around the world. We could point to present day saints: Tutu, Bishop Romero to name a couple.
Let’s focus the question a bit more:
What relevance does Christianity have in Scotland and Western Europe in 2010?
A very fair question. Recently the Church… click here to read more
ST. PHILIP’S E-NEWSLETTER
COMMENTS FROM THE EDITOR
Your editor was up late collating the election results, cheering for the Liberal Conservative Democrats Labouring in Green Scottish Nationalist Socialist Fields, and though it was tempting to rest, it was thought best to send.
After all, it is better to send than receive.
Who voted this editor into office?
THOUGHT
Politics and religion are often uneasy partners. And so it should be: part of our faith is speaking truth to power. One of the most articulate exponents is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and your editor has always appreciated his comments. Even if questioned or, more likely, only partially understood, they require thought. Because education is an essential part of this… click here to read more
Click the thumbnail images below to enlarge.
Should we as Christians commit ourselves 100% to living and spreading the Gospel message? That is, give up our jobs, stop worrying about money and spend all our time helping others?
Our season of questions continues with the question offered above.
It reminds me firstly of some comments offered by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his book To Heal a Fractured World.
He mentions some thoughts provided by the great Jewish thinker Maimonedes. He draws a distinction between a sage and a saint. ‘Walking in God’s ways’ means involvement in society and that is why the sage is actually greater than the saint. ‘The sage is concerned with the perfection of society. The saint is concerned with the perfection of
… click here to read more
The set text for the Second Sunday of Easter is the story of doubting Thomas (John 20.19ff). Thomas, who would not believe until he had seen and touched the risen Christ.
A couple of weeks ago I went to see the new Tim Burton movie ‘Alice in Wonderland’. It was a fantastic romp of the imagination. Alice is poised on a gazebo of a lovely, rambling English country house and, with many family and friends about, receives a proposal of marriage from a person who is emphatically portrayed as an upper class twit. She sees a rabbit in the hedges, follows and disappears down a rabbit hole. Thus begins a bizarre series of adventures that culminates in her defeat of the… click here to read more
A few weeks ago a question was posed: why should we pray if God already knows what we’re thinking? It was humbly suggested that perhaps we are the ones who need prayer, not God. In the act of prayer we articulate worries, hopes, dreams and ideas under the eyes of God. We so often address issues not just with a skittery mind but with the entirety of our hearts and minds and our souls. That may be why we pray.
But, what is prayer?
A roundabout sort of response.
When I first arrived at St. Philip’s I was a good little boy. Here I was, a squeaky clean new minister and I was going to do my prayers once a… click here to read more
This is the latest of the questions posed by the congregation. How do we know it’s God’s love that touches us when in fact it could be so much else, such as simple, straightforward human love?
One text comes to mind. From 1 John the classic passage that God is love and those who dwell in love dwell in God and God in them. John is encouraging his brothers and sisters in Christ to love one another in very difficult circumstances. Tension with the outside world and with the synagogue were not insignificant. But he encourages love as the ideal, the principle.
Is there any possibility of God’s love outwith the community of faith or the community of humans?
When I… click here to read more
