Services at Camus by D.S.Stiven

Extracts from Sunday Service Talks delivered by The Reverend D. S. Stiven M.C., D.D., between 1976 and 1980 at Camus House, a High Dependency Care Facility in Carnoustie, Angus. (Years in which he matured from age 80 to 84).

D.S.S. Services at Camus I976

I August 1976.
Today is Lammas, the day on which it was the practice of an older generation of Christians, the Anglo-Saxons, to offer the first fruits of the earth and acknowledge them in their public worship as the gifts of God whom they worshipped and praised.

Long ago when I was in school, I was taught that the words Lord and Lady were both of them derived from an Anglo-Saxon word which means a loaf of bread. The Anglo-Saxon hlaford or Lord meant breadwinner (or loaf keeper)
and hlaefdige or Lady loaf maker. And in like manner hlaef-mass or Lammas was the day on which the first loaf of the year’s harvest was offered in the House of The Lord, the giver of all, to whom we pray “Give us our daily bread.”

When a minister is in the Pulpit he preaches to his congregation: when a minister is on his visits he often finds his congregation preaching to him. Up a stair in an Aberdeen [1928-1937] tenement I called to see an old widow woman who, at the age of 84, was laid up with a broken leg. I expected to see her in great uneasiness, discomfort and even pain: instead there she lay perfectly content as happy as a lark. And she told me her secret. When her husband, the bread winner, died many years before, she was left with a large family “’a steps and stairs and hardly a penny in the hoose." She was not only bereaved, she was at her wits’ end. “So”, she said,” I gaed ben the hoose an’ got on my knees an’ telt HIM a’ aboot it - An’ my! He’s never left me without twa siccies tae run thegither since!” It was a like experience the Hebrews were taught to celebrate in
Deut: 26: 1-11 and in the Hymn “O God of Bethel.”
That thou shalt take of the first of all the fruit of the earth, which thou shalt bring of thy land that the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt put it in a basket, and shalt go unto the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to place his name there. And thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the Lord thy God hath given unto thee, and unto thine house, thou, and the Levite, and the stranger that is among you.

It seems strange to think that 60 years ago I was able to keep myself at University for 50 pounds a year. Our midday meal was what was called the Common Dines eaten in the Students’ Union. A 3-course meal cost 10d (not 10p) a day and before and after we sang a Latin Grace. Funnily my liveliest memory of the Dines was of what happened after the meal when on wet days Prof. Scot Lang set us going on a singsong and the chorus I remember best was that of a Scotch song he tried to teach us. It went something like this:
Sae Will We Yet
“Sit doon here my cronies, and gie us your crack,
Let the wind tak' the weight of this world on its back.
Oor hearts tae despondency we ne’er will submit
For we've aye been provided for, and sae will we yet.

And sae will we yet, and sae will we yet
For we've aye been provided for, and sae will we yet.”
(Walter Watson/Tony Cuffe (ca. 1854)
[It was actually published on Saturday morning, 27th November, 1869, by the Poet's Box of 80 London Street, Glasgow.]

It was a song which had come down to him from his Border Ancestry and he had himself learned from St. Matt 7:7 that we are bound to be thankful:....
“Ask, and it shall be given you; For every one that asketh receiveth....”
and Acts 14:15 : “We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein: Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.”

5 September 1976

Worship is a constant part of life and death.
Since my stroke 3 years ago (3 July 1973) I have frequently found it difficult to bring out the words I would say. But never has it been so difficult as I found it on 3 September 1939 to pronounce one little word of three letters - WAR, when my senior elder who had been listening to his wireless at home just fornent Inveresk Kirk brought me word of the P.M.’s Declaration. Three vivid memories are with me of the subsequent six years.

The first was of the Sunday evenings of that September as I climbed the 59 steps up Inveresk Hill to take evening service: their beautiful serenity the stillness and gentleness of the peace unfolding us there.
Isaiah 25:4 For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat.... He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces;

A second vivid memory is the night of the climax of The battle of Britain. I was in the Home Guard then and the code word CROMWELL had come through warning that danger was imminent. Inveresk Kirk bell was NOT rung nor did we call out the Battalion. Instead, a few of us kept watch all through the night and when on the Sunday morning Divine Service had to be taken the minister of Inveresk entered the pulpit in his heavy Home Guard boots and with his gown covering his Home Guard Uniform.
Romans 8:35 “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
 
“Holy Father, in thy mercy,
Hear our anxious prayer;
Keep our loved ones, now far distant,
‘Neath thy care.”
This was one of the hymns we sang every Sunday Evening in the Kirk ‘O The Jocks. The Kirk ‘O The Jocks was the Church of Scotland Canteen which was under the Huts and Canteens Committee.
I served (my 3rd vivid memory) from Spring 1945 to September. An average day during those six months began at 6:30 a.m. and ended about 2 a.m. (and when I went I thought I’d just be pouring out a cup of hot tea in the name of the Lord). The Sunday evening service always ended with a Hymn called “Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah” which some of the Canteen workers brought back from North Africa sung to a tune learned from some Welshman who worshipped with them - Cwm Rhondda. [John Hughes (1873-1932)].

24 October 1976

What can we pack in? What can God help us to pack in to this short half hour of Divine Service? I remember how I once went off all alone on holiday and found myself one weekend in a remote Highland Glen. As usual at Kirk time on Sunday I went to Kirk, but, although the Kirk door was open, the Parish Minister wasn't there to conduct the service (he came to that Kirk Tomdoun, Glengarry, only once a month). Although I was the only one in the Kirk I wasn't to be done out of a service. Punctual at 11 I sat me down in the front pew, opened my Bible at one of the Metrical Psalms and under my breath sang it through to its appropriate tune: then a quiet Prayer of Confession and plea for Pardon and strength and the prayer our Master had taught us to say: then a Hymn: then a passage from the Old Testament: then another Hymn followed by a passage from the New Testament: then I gave God thanks and asked Him to bless other people and peoples.

After another Hymn I preached myself a sermon. It was from the Ist Chapter of the last letter St. Peter wrote to Christian people and I wasn't long at it before I realised why I had been enjoying that lonely service so intensely. It became abundantly clear that the prime reason for the Church's existence was to praise God who had raised Jesus from the dead and that, though the only worshipper in that Kirk, I wasn't really alone but was taking part in the worship given by the Universal Church; that I was one of hundreds and thousands and millions of Christ's people even then praising and blessing the God of our Salvation and of course such a sermon on such a theme could only go on and shew me further what sort of life I ought to be living when I belonged to so glorious a fellowship and worshipped such a God. After sermon I gave glory to God and then came the closing Hymn and the Blessing. As I rose to leave I couldn't help feeling that something was missing. Have you guessed what it was? Right you are! It was the collection and there were the collection ladles on a shelf at the side of the church and when I went to put in my collection what was my surprise to see that some people must have put theirs in before me - another sign that in worshipping God I could never be alone if I really BELONGED to His Church. We belonged sufficiently to give to it. I have never been more deeply aware of my membership in One Holy Catholic Church at Worship than I was during that Blessed Hour. We worship God in the Fellowship of His Holy Church this afternoon so let us sing “All People that on Earth do Dwell, Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice; Him serve with mirth!”

In this sure faith and in Union with all God’s people praising Him on Earth and in Heaven let us pray:
O Lord God, who hast called Thy Church to be a people of Thy very own to serve and worship Thee in time and through eternity, enable us by Thy Spirit to keep Holy this short hour of fellowship one with another in Thy Divine Service. Help us to know Thee better and to love Thee better and to serve Thee better, and in Thy Pardoning Love remove from us anything that would hinder us from this knowledge and love and service. Here may we rejoice in thy Goodness and trust Thy Providence and have a brighter vision of what Thou wouldst have us be. Through Jesus Christ in whose words we pray .... Our Father....

One of the happiest Christians I ever knew was an elder in St. Cuthberts, Edinburgh the church in which I served my ‘apprenticeship’. He made himself into an unofficial committee of welcome getting himself to Church and establishing himself in the vestibule a good quarter hour before service in order that he might ‘spot’ any strangers and make them feel at home during the service giving them a Hymn Book and shewing them to a pew where they might offer to God the Worship of His Holy Church. He was the man who told me that in act of Divine Service there were TWO ESSENTIAL PARTS, The OFFERING and The BENEDICTION (try for yourself to see what exactly he meant by that!).

The only occasion during my ministry of 21 years at Inveresk on which I can remember giving the congregation a telling off was once during the War. When the Church was rebuilt in the year of Trafalgar (1805), the Lighthouse Commissioners contributed handsomely to the building of the tower and spire, long a guide to the shipping in the Firth of Forth. A quarter way up that tower was my vestry from whose window I could have a very good view of the congregation on its way up to the Kirk. One morning I saw a girl in the Polish Forces being escorted to the kirk by 3 Polish soldiers who left her there to come to a strange Kirk on her own. Later I saw her in the Kirk in quite a densely packed part of the Congregation and I saw her again from the vestry when I was half way out of my cassock and again, leaving the Kirk, she was all on her own. I wonder if she had had in Inveresk Kirk as intense a feeling as I had experienced in the kirk at Tomdoun [Glengarry]. In any case next Sunday I told my people what I thought of them! Who is my neighbour?
Hebrews 13: Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Also Luke 10 :25 ff Good Samaritan story.

14 Nov. 1976

“Stiven. Did you really mean what you said in that letter?” so said our old Padre at a Battalion Dinner years after I had written to him at the time of my ordination [Feb. 1925] to thank him for all he had done to make that possible. And he went on to tell me that just about the time he had got my letter Calderwood had written him from the heart of Africa where he had just become a missionary to thank him for keeping him true to the faith of his fathers. Maclean had been our Padre in the 32nd Division. Physically weak, obviously distressed at all the men of war, by no means brave but taking himself by the shoulders and forcing himself up to the front line. Simple in thought and speech when he was on Church Parade his Highland accent made us smell the heather, his words made home seem very near and then it wasn’t very long till he had brought us to the very gates of heaven. The Eternal Mystery of the Ministry of the Church is that by Christ’s power the Word is made Flesh.
Isaiah 43: But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour:

David and Ella were members of the Young Communicants’ Class and how gladly I welcomed them to full membership in the Church: they made it so plain that they loved and trusted their Savior. In due time I made them husband and wife. David went off to join Monty in Africa. Ella did her bit by working in a local munitions factory. The blackout made the factory very stuffy and ill ventilated and Ella went down with T.B. and just about that time word came through that David was missing believed killed in Alamein. As the months went by Ella grew weaker and weaker and I could see that she accepted her increasing weakness as a blessing but how sorry I was for her mother a gardener’s widow whose only child she was when she went to join David.
John 10: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father:

There’s very little of the mystic about me. I am very prosaic but Iona worked its will even on me. On two occasions in the very depth of winter I was conscious that in separate places on the islands I was breathing a fragrance almost paradisal for which there was no known natural explanation.

We have a marching song for our earthly journey (Courage Brother do not stumble.)
Let the road be rough and dreary,
And its end far out of sight,
Foot it bravely; strong or weary,
Trust in God and do the right.
Norman Macleod, 1857

One dark night as I trudged alone along the road leading East from the Machair to the West of the Island, near the place where Columba was reputed to have had a vision of angels, I had to pass a place called “The Angel’s Hill” where men of St. Columba’s time had visions of angels. As I trudged along I had no vision of Angels but I was keenly aware that, pressing eagerly along with me, was a crowd - a happy crowd of my old friends. Not angels, but men, with whom I fell into step to march forward in a right gallant company. Some of them, who 40 years before ‘had toiled and wrought and fought with me when we breathed free air and bivouacked under the starry sky’, now again marched in step. Some were still in this world. Some slain in war had already climbed the steep ascent to heaven through peril toil and pain.

What I’ve been trying to say is just a hint of what may have been in the mind of Sabine Baring-Gould (1834 -1924) when he wrote ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, and what we mean when we say we believe in the Communion of Saints - a belief strengthened by what we read in Romans 8: 35 (Who shall separate us from the love of God.?)

Hebrews 11: For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barac, Samson, Jephthe, David, Samuel, and the prophets: Who by faith conquered kingdoms, wrought justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions... Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down. And let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from start to finish.

Prayer: Lord we thank Thee for companions now parted from us who helped us happily on life’s way. Enable us.....