Thoughts for Tuesday 21st July 2020

Psalm 139:13-18; Genesis 33:1-17; Galatians 4:21-5:1

Tuesday 21 July

I have a problem with our Old and New Testament readings today, and its their uncritical description of the favouritism that characterised both Abraham and Jacob’s attitudes towards their children. In the story we have in Genesis, Jacob’s ‘sin’ (and it’s one which almost leads later on to Joseph’s death) is to consider his concubines (who are even unnamed here, their status is so low) and their children as more expendable than Leah and her children than Rachel and her son, Joseph. It reminds me of the British Army officer, James Wolfe, sending the Scots in first at the ‘Battle of the Plains of Abraham’ in 1759 just outside Quebec, because he said it would be, ‘no great mischief if they fall.’

Thankfully, Jacob’s encounter with his brother, Esau, was one of reconciliation rather than retribution. But the point is that Jacob didn’t know what would happen, and was well prepared to lose some of his partners and children before others. Paul’s interpretation of the story we also have in Genesis of Hagar and Sarah is very similar. For, although this time it’s the slave/concubine Hagar who is mentioned when Sarah is not, the whole point of Galatians 4:21-31 is the superiority of Sarah over Hagar.

I much prefer (and believe we could argue this Biblically) the tradition we have here in Scotland that we are all Jock Tamson’s bairns instead.

One explanation of this saying is that it’s based on the forgiveness and inclusiveness practised by Rev John Thomson (1778-1840) who for 35 years until his death was minister of Duddingston Church in Edinburgh.

At a time when communion tokens were required for entrance to the Lord’s Supper, he was very reluctant to ever exclude anyone. And when it came to his family, the story is that he had fourteen children who he treated all equally. Five of them were born to his first wife, Isabella. She then died, and John married a widow called Frances, who had five children as well. John and Frances then had four themselves. And whenever anyone tried to explain all this, he would always stop them by telling people that, ‘they were a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns’.

A noted landscape painter, another of Rev John Thomson’s claims to fame is that one of his paintings now hangs in the Tate Gallery.

Let us pray:

Prayer for Artists (Herbert Whittaker, adapted)

Lord, remember your artists. Have mercy upon them and remember with compassion all those that reflect the good, the ill, the strengths and the weaknesses of the human spirit.

Remember those who raise their voices in unending song, those who pour their souls into music loud and soft.

Remember those who put pigment to surface, carve wood and stone and marble, who work base metals into beauty, those building upwards from the earth toward heaven.

Remember those who put thought to paper by computer and by pen; the poets who delve, the playwrights who analyze and proclaim, the dreamers-up of narrative, all those who work with the light and shadows of film.

Remember the actors moved by Spirit and dancers moving through space.

Remember all these artists whom you have placed among us, for are they not, O Lord, the fellows of your inspiration? Do they not, Lord God, bring to your people great proof of your divinity and our part in it?

Remember your artists and show them mercy and compassion that they may do the same and so uplift all your people. That they may cry forth your praises, as we do here.

Amen! Amen! Amen!

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