Tartan Sunday - Identity and Struggle

Reading: Psalm 148, Revelation 21:1-6, John 13:31-35, Deuteronomy 26; 1-11
Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY, April 28th, 2013

A printable PDF file can be found here

Our lives are as much defined by where we have been (our heritage) as they are by where we are right now. Even though I’ve been in Baldwin for a while, people still say, “Where are you from?”

Looking back for my own roots is a complicated process. Because I moved here from the same land as Tom Jones, Catherine Zeta-Jones (as she was once known), Anthony Hopkins and Richard Burton, when I lived in West Virginia, some referred to me as ‘The Welsh Guy'. But though my children were born in Wales, and I lived in Wales, because I wasn’t born in Wales any self-respecting Welshman would remind you that I was not Welsh.

Because I was born near the River Mersey and have been known to strum the occasional Beatles song, some people say, “He came from Liverpool”. Actually, I worked in Liverpool, shopped in Liverpool, love to visit Liverpool. even ministered for 3 years in Liverpool, but I was born in a little town called Wallasey (Anglo-Saxon term for 'Isle-of the Welsh') and raised in a town called Moreton on the tip of the Wirral Peninsular, a part then of the County Borough of Cheshire.

Of course that’s not where my parents were from. My late father was very proud of his Scottish heritage. His middle name signified his relation to the ‘Morrison’ clan and my Grandma was just about as Scottish as Scottish can be. I feel very connected to Tartan Sunday. However my Uncle John, who has done a lot of family history, will tell you that on one side of my family there were roots in Southern England.

So what can I say? At best my heritage is broadly British. I’m always disappointed on American governmental forms where you have to specify ethnic origins that they lump all the Caucasians together. African-Americans and Native-Americans and Latin Americans often get to check their own little box. I want a new box added for those of “Broadly-British West-Virginian living on Long Island” heritage. It’s a rather small ethnic group but we are here and in your midst.

I’m sure that if you have done any work on your own families heritage that you will have discovered a fascinating story that may even have a few passages you’d rather not know about and others that really have shaped the person you are today. Our heritage, rather like our genetic make up, is something that shapes whom we are.

What applies to our historical heritage also applies to our spiritual heritage. Presbyterians in the United States have a heritage that has been shaped in part by Scots/Irish Presbyterians who came to the United States, seeking to make a life for themselves in a New Land. Whilst I don't think they believed for a moment it would be a land flowing in milk and honey, it was their prayer that they would find here greater freedom and opportunity to live a life shaped by their Presbyterian values and beliefs.

Those beliefs hadn't come easy. When you think about the word 'Protestant' it is mostly made up of the word 'Protest'. Whenever there are protests then it means that a power struggle is going on. In 16th century Scotland there was a huge power struggle between Catholicism, English Protestantism and Scottish Calvinism. Those labels were not limited to religious belief but also spoke volumes about political allegiances.

In 1560 the Protestant nobility of Scotland sought to win England’s recognition of Scottish sovereignty by obtaining the 'Treaty of Edinburgh'. The Scottish Parliament declared Scotland a Protestant nation. They asked the clergy of the land, including John Knox, to frame a confession of faith, known as the 'Scots Confession'. This was approved by the Scottish Parliament, and the Scottish National Church became (and still is) Presbyterian. They became the forefathers of American Presbyterianism and the Scots Confession appears in our PC(USA) Book of Confessions.

Two hundred years after the Treaty of Edinburgh, fighting between the English and Scottish continued. The English defeated the Scottish at the Battle of Culloden. In a misguided attempt to break the Scottish spirit an 'Act of Proscription' was passed that outlawed the wearing of kilts or any other tartan garment representing Scottish heritage. It also forbade any speaking in Gaelic, outlawed Scottish music, Scottish dancing, and the playing of the bagpipes.

The Scottish people protested. On a given Sunday every year they would secretly carry or wear a piece of their tartan as they went to Church, or 'Kirk' as they called it. The minister would slip in a blessing as a defiant way of honoring the clans and their tartans. Tartan Sundays back then had an extremely subversive theme.

Struggles continued and in the centuries that followed many Scottish people were forced into emigration. Some sought a home in Ireland, many sought new lands in the USA and Canada and greatly influenced the developing life of both nations.

The 'Kirkin’ o’ the Tartans' service was  revived during World War II by Rev. Peter Marshall, who was originally from southwest Scotland and at one time pastor of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. In 1947 he served as Chaplain of the U.S. Senate. Partly as an effort to encourage Scottish-Americans to sign up to fight on behalf of Great Britain, he recreated a 'Kirkin’ o’ the Tartans' ceremony.

The ceremony was at that time held in Presbyterian Churches of Scottish heritage across the USA. Today, the celebration is not limited to Presbyterian churches, but is found in Episcopalian, Methodist, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and other denominations across the world. Though it has lost much of its political implications, it remains a celebration of the independent spirit of the Scottish people who refused to allow themselves to be defined by any other culture and sought to establish for themselves a life based on their religious convictions.

It is here that we can maybe find a connection with our Old Testament reading from Deuteronomy. In our passage the Israelites define who they are on the basis of what God had done for them in the past. Beginning what was a creed or affirmation of faith that runs from verses 5-10 are the words “My father was a wandering Aramean”. The passage then relates the great saving acts of God in their peoples history, their deliverance from Egypt, the signs and wonders that God worked on their behalf, and their coming to a land flowing with milk and honey.

As with the Scottish Presbyterians, the Israelites were a people who knew great struggle and suffered tremendous threats to their livelihood and religious identity, circumstances that caused them to be, for a time, a people without a home.

The setting of our Old Testament reading is that they are being instructed on what to do when they reach the Promised Land. As the very first verse explains, “Then it shall be, when you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance”. The instructions for worship and the Creed they are to speak are both in the future tense. At the time they are being taught these things they are still wandering in the wilderness.

That’s the way it often seems to be with the Kingdom of God. It’s an already arrived, here and now, but yet to come, sort of thing. Yes, in Jesus Christ the Kingdom has arrived, yes, we can experience the blessings and promises of God in our lives today, but  there is still more to come, and so we pray “Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven”.  They were to worship. They were to make offerings. They were to re-tell the story of their faith and recommit their lives to being faithful to God in the present.

These days I fear we often forget that the freedoms we enjoy to be able to worship in the way that we please and when and where we please are things that only came about through long and sometimes deadly times of struggle. We don't have to hide our tartans under our garments and are not threatened with persecution simply because of who we are. We no longer see worship as being an act of protest. We don't think of Tartan Sunday  as something subversive which calls into question the powers and authorities of our times.

St Paul, when he writes about the communion service says; “As often as you do this, you  proclaim the Lord's death until He come.” This was fighting talk. This is saying to the world, “Look this is what we believe. Christ Died and Christ is Risen and Christ will come again” And if you don't get it now, then one day you will. We would rather die than deny our Lord.”

As we read the struggles of the faithful in the Old Testament and the early history of the Church and, yes, even the struggles that church has had within itself at times of Reformation, we see that being faithful has never been easy.

Could be we need to recapture that sense. Because the church is under attack in our day, and often losing the battle. Individualism, consumerism, materialism, all sorts of  'isms'  declare a message that has very little room for the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. We do not respond well to these, somewhat insidious, influences but tend to have become so enmeshed within them that we don't even see the problem.

We do not seem to have the depth of commitment that both our Israelite and Scottish fathers and mothers in the faith had. I suspect that our apathy would probably offend them. Our failure to commit to religious duties such as Sabbath observance and prayer and disciplined study of scripture, our inability to memorize the catechism, would cause them to question whether our beliefs had any reality to them at all!

But … that was then and this is now. And for better or for worse, we are who we are! My challenge is as to whether we can catch a vision of what we could yet become. My challenge is as to whether we can be so inspired by our heritage that we resolve not to allow the apathy and individualism of the current times to steal our very souls.

I began by talking about my own heritage, which as I've gone through my life has taken on a number of different streams.  The same can be said for each of us as individuals and for us corporately as church communities. That is not a negative thing, unless we allow it to be. I believe we actually grow and flourish and can be enriched, not by enshrining our past, but by taking what is best of our heritage and allowing it to lead us to new lands that flow with milk and honey.

For in the midst of all this change we find our true identity in Jesus Christ, who is the Lord of yesterday, today and tomorrow. His Kingdom transcends all other Kingdoms. His love transforms and heals past feuds and tribal conflicts. His love calls us to a new way and a new day.

So on this Tartan Sunday it is good to reflect on our heritage. It is good to remind ourselves that faith was never meant to be easy and that worship can be radical, subversive and a way of declaring to the world that there are more important things in life than the shallow obsessions that often consume us.

Let us be thankful for all those, who for the sake of independence and freedom have refused to shut up, refused to bow down, refused to go quietly. And because of them, and their like, we today can sing 'Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me”

And let us thank God for bagpipes. Because one thing you cannot do with bagpipes is ignore them. They are a call to action. A call to make a stand.   A call to declare your allegiance.  And on this Tartan Sunday, I invite to declare your allegiance, not to Presbyterianism, not even to nationalism, but to the One who gave his life for us all, Our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be all honor, power and glory, Amen.

Rev. Adrian J. Pratt B.D.