“Faith without works is dead” (James 2.17). Nothing subtle about it!
George MacLeod (1895-1991) served churches in poor sections of Glasgow, Scotland. He was troubled by how little the church addressed the plight of working people. He embarked on an imaginative venture in 1938 to rebuild the Iona Abbey off the coast of Scotland. Columba founded this island monastery in 565, which served as the vital nerve center of Christianity in Scotland for centuries. Viking raids and years of neglect during the Reformation contributed to its ruined state. George recruited ministers in training and unemployed artisans in Glasgow to restore the abbey to prominence for worship and service.
Today, members of the community commit to a rule of life that includes daily prayer, Scripture meditation, and working for justice in the world. What George said in a sermon expresses his passion to wed vital spirituality with active social engagement, “I simply argue that the cross be raised again, at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles but on a cross between two thieves; on a town garbage heap; at the crossroads of politics so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew and Latin and Greek…and at the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. Because this is where He died, and that is what He cared about. And that is where Christ’s own ought to be, and that is what church people ought to be about.”
George leads us in praying to see God in daily life and serve him there: