Tag Archives: Lockerbie

An Echo from Lockerbie

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Pan_Am_Flight_103._Crashed_Lockerbie,_Scotland,_21_December_1988With the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in the news yesterday, we share this excerpt from James Whyte’s sermon for the mourners at the Lockerbie Memorial Service 1988.
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That such carnage of the young and of the innocent should have been willed by men in cold and calculated evil, is horror upon horror. What is our response to that?

The desire, the determination, that those who did this should be detected and, if possible, brought to justice, is natural and is right. The uncovering of the truth will not be easy, and evidence that would stand up in a court of law may be hard to obtain.

Justice is one thing. But already one hears in the media the word ‘retaliation’. As far as I know, no responsible politician has used that word, and I hope none ever will, except to disown it. For that way lies the endless cycle of violence upon violence, horror upon horror. And we may be tempted, indeed urged by some, to flex our muscles in response, to show that we are men. To show that we are what? To show that we are prepared to let more young and more innocent die, to let more rescue workers labour in more wreckage to find the grisly proof, not of our virility, but of our inhumanity. That is what retaliation means.

The  Right Rev. James Whyte was the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, still suffering from grief and physical fatigue following his wife’s death. He had recently retired as Principal and Professor of Practical Theology at the University of St. Andrews’ divinity school, St. Mary’s. The full text of the Lockerbie Memorial  sermon was published in Laughter and Tears: Thoughs on Faith (Reflections), pp. 92–5.

Every Thursday afternoon in the summer of 1991 the Right Rev. Professor James (“Jim”) Whyte brewed a pot of tea and served scones to the complete stranger he’d welcomed to St. Andrews, an American Presbyterian minister seeking his tutelage in practical theology during a sabbatical from pastoral duties at Knox Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati. His hand-written prayers delivered at Hope Park Church in St. Andrews remain a priceless treasure.

  • Gordon C. Stewart, Chaska, MN, July 5, 2017.

 

God wounded in Paris

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Today’s news from Paris is chilling. Still reeling from the Charlie Hebdo attack, hostages are taken in a Kosher (Jewish) market in Paris. Fear of extremist Islamic terrorism spreads across France.

During a gathering of twelve of us at The Reformed Roundtable in Indianapolis two days ago, South African anti-Apartheid leader  the Rev. Dr. Allan Boesak quoted none other than John Calvin, according to whom whenever a human being wounds another, God is wounded.

The killers and hostage-takers in Paris claim the name of Allah. Their abuse of the name is an affront to faithful Muslims who reject violence and terror as much as adherents of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Religion itself, whatever its form and doctrine, is to be measured by its compassion.

Events in Paris remind me of Dr. Boesak’s statement and the Very Rev. James A. Whyte‘s sermon at the January 9, 1989 memorial service after Pan Am flight 103 carrying 259 passengers exploded over Lockerbie December 22, 1988. Eleven more were killed on the ground in the small town of Lockerbie.  The Church of Scotland reluctantly called it’s Moderator, James Whyte, out of mourning his wife’s death for his to preach at the memorial service for the victims of the terror at Lockerbie.

In that sermon he proposed a vexing answer to the vexing question: Where was God when the plane went down? “God,” he said, “was on the plane.” 

“Justice, yes; retaliation no,” he declared. “For if we move in the way of retaliation we move right outside of the fellowship of Christ’s suffering, outside of the Divine consolation. There is nothing that way but bitterness and the destruction of our own humanity.”

Four hundred years after Calvin’s statement and decades before James Whyte’s sermon at Lockerbie, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote the following from his prison cell before he was hanged by the Nazi’s whose “God” was without compassion. Bonhoeffer wrote as a disciple of Jesus, the Crucified, but his picture of God as suffering and the call to stand with God in God’s suffering int he world of human cruelty represents the compassionate faith shared by compassionate people of every stripe.

Christians range themselves with God in his suffering; that is what distinguishes them…. As Jesus asked in Gethsemane, “Could ye not watch with me one hour?” That is the exact opposite of what the religious man expects from God. Man is challenged to participate in the sufferings of God at the hands of a godless world. He must therefore plunge himself into the life of a godless world, without attempting to gloss over its ungodliness with a veneer of religion or try to transfigure it. He must live a ‘worldly” life and so participate in the suffering of God. He may live a worldly life as one emancipated from all false religions and obligations. To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way, to cultivate some particular form of asceticism (as a sinner, a penitent or a saint), but to he a man. It is not some religious act which makes a Christian what he is, but participation in the suffering of God in the life of the world.  [Bolded type added]

– Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

Today God is wounded again…in Paris, and we participate in the suffering of God at the hands of a cruel world.

 

God the Stranger

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I “know” less and less of what I thought I knew. The world has driven me into the unknowing silence out of which James A. Whyte spoke at the funeral in Lockerbie, Scotland in 1989.

During his term as Moderator of the Church of Scotland, The Right Rev. Dr. Professor James A. Whyte , still grieving the death of his wife, was called upon to lead the memorial service after Pan Am Flight 103 was blown out of the sky over Lockerbie. Among the most quoted parts of the sermon is this excerpt:

“That such carnage of the young and of the innocent should have been willed by men in cold and calculated evil, is horror upon horror. What is our response to that?

The desire, the determination, that those who did this should be detected and, if possible, brought to justice, is natural and is right. The uncovering of the truth will not be easy, and evidence that would stand up in a court of law may be hard to obtain.

Justice is one thing. But already one hears in the media the word ‘retaliation’. As far as I know, no responsible politician has used that word, and I hope none ever will, except to disown it. For that way lies the endless cycle of violence upon violence, horror upon horror. And we may be tempted, indeed urged by some, to flex our muscles in response, to show that we are men. To show that we are what? To show that we are prepared to let more young and more innocent die, to let more rescue workers labour in more wreckage to find the grisly proof, not of our virility, but of our inhumanity. That is what retaliation means.”

For James Whyte God is often silent. We are called to enter the space of God’s silence, the silence of the cross, the confusion and horror of the suffering of God at the hands of a world filled with man-made gods: security, freedom, nationalism, religion, muscle, revenge and self-righteousness, cultural supremacy. In the Jesus of the cross, Whyte’s eyes saw not only a naked man but God’s nakedness – a naked God stripped of all power, his arms roped to a cross-beam paradoxically spread wide to embrace the whole world of human suffering and folly.

James Whyte took time out of his busy life in 1991 to act as a conversation partner and mentor for an American pastor whose congregation had granted its pastor a sabbatical leave in St. Andrews. They met twice weekly for two months in his flat over tea and scones, the young American absorbed in the vexations of Christian claims to Christ’s uniqueness and universality, on the one hand, and religious pluralism, on the other, the good Right Rev. Dr. Professor listening attentively, maintaining a poignant silence that respected his mentee’s process. When the pastor left Scotland, he asked his mentor for a copy of prayers James Whyte had offered during worship at the Hope Park Church in St. Andrews. Each of the prayers was as thing of beauty. Each began with a quotation from the Book of Psalms.

James Whyte’s spirituality echoes that of an old Hasidic Rabbi (Barukh of Medzebozh [1757-1811]) reflecting on Psalm 119.

“I live as an alien in the land;
do not hide your commandments from me”
– Psalm 119:19

Rabbi Barukh of Medzebozh said of this psalm:

“The one who life drives into exile and who comes to an alien land has nothing in common with the people there and has no one to talk to. But if a second stranger appears, even though that person may come from quite a different place, the two can confide in each other. And had they not both been strangers, they would never have known such a close relationship. That is what the psalmist means: ‘You, even as I, are a sojourner on earth and have no abiding place for your glory. So do not withdraw from me, but reveal your commandments, that I may become your friend.”
– Martin Buber, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Hasidim-Early-Masters-Later/dp/0805209956(

” title=”Link to information on Tales of the Hassidim”>Tales of Hassidim – the Early Masters.

Thanks you, James Whyte, good and faithful servant and friend of God the Stranger. RIP.