Chichester Cathedral: Evensong for Candlemas and Dean s Farewell: 2 February 2014

Transcription

1 Chichester Cathedral: Evensong for Candlemas and Dean s Farewell: 2 February 2014 My first words must be to thank you for being here: my family and a wide circle of friends from far and near; our dear European partners from France and Germany; Bishop Kieran and our other ecumenical friends; our civic leaders, High Sheriffs and Lords Lieutenant; our Cathedral congregation and lay staff; the College of Canons and members of parishes throughout our huge diocese, ordained and lay; and yourselves, especially if you just happened to call in, expecting a quiet and swift service of Evensong! To all of you, let me add my own welcome to that of Canon Tim Schofield, and my heartfelt appreciation. The temptation today is to give way to nostalgia: nostalgia is not a vice, and it can be helpful if it has been part of a process of learning, so perhaps I may be allowed just a little. In this congregation are people who have touched my life, as perhaps I have touched theirs, from Pentonville to Paradise. For the benefit of our overseas guests and the more law-abiding among you, Pentonville is a prison in north London, where I worked in the 1960s as a Welfare Officer; and Paradise is not a description of this Cathedral, or indeed the Diocese of Chichester, though both do contain blissful features: Paradise is the grass lawn, an ancient burial ground, within the Cloisters of the Cathedral. Three priests are here, who helped to nurture my vocation to the priesthood: Peter, John and Michael, all still ministering energetically in their eighties; and Bernard who, to my consternation, asked me on a July evening in 1963 in the saloon bar of The Gladstone in Plough Road, Battersea, Have you ever thought of becoming a priest? Through such people, and many other candid friends, God has spoken and can speak to us. So my thoughts today are of Wimbledon, Hassocks, Repton, Harrods, HMV, Pentonville, Peckham, Tooting, Toxteth, Liverpool, Chichester, with diversions in France; and Ireland and Germany, which also happened to be the countries of origin of 3 of my great-grandparents. The content of this service is special, too: My good friend and former Churchwarden Elizabeth Cosnett s Hymn for Candlemas Day; Harwood in A flat the favourite setting of Mervyn Williams, the Director of Music at Repton School who taught me the organ, made me Head Chorister, and believed in me at a time when that mattered very much. And James MacMillan s wonderful anthem: James has become a good friend as a result of his commission and time spent here last summer. And the final hymn, To God be the Glory, puts me in mind of the Ransom Church of God of Prophecy, an Afro-Caribbean church in Tooting which worshipped in our hall; and Pastor Douse, who used to get me to play it on the piano, with the words, Reverend Frayling, he play that song like David play his harp! Great days special people: many memories, and so many, too, from this diocese: the Cathedral community, our lay staff, present and former members of Chapter, and our vergers and musicians; even the lady who declared, 11 ½ years ago, that the 1

2 new Dean was coming from Oxford with his family, and who, when told he was a bachelor from Liverpool, uttered the memorable prayer, O God! And last but not least, members of the British Nuclear Tests Veterans Association, whose National Chaplain I have had the privilege to be for 25 years. I have thought long and hard about this sermon. I am reminded of the priest who mounted the pulpit and said, I don t know what to say to you this morning, so I ll have to rely on the Holy Spirit, but don t worry, we ll be back to normal next week. The words from Scripture which most struck me are in the form of a question an awesome one, at that - from our first Lesson, the Prophet Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament: But who can endure the day of his coming? The day of the Lord is a common theme in the Old Testament. The people of Israel believed that YAHWEH, their God, would intervene decisively against their enemies; but the prophets turned this in on their own people, as a warning that God s anger would be directed against them, for their failure to uphold the demands of the Covenant, and to carry out their religious obligations - above all, the imperative of justice and mercy. Their expectation was of a messenger associated with judgement perhaps like Elijah: indeed, some early Christians identified this prophecy with John the Baptist and even Jesus Himself. What matters, though, is not who or what the prophet had in mind, so much as the unfolding of events of which the New Testament is the primary record: the day of the Lord, made explicit in the Incarnation of Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, who came, in strange humility but who was, at the same time, full of grace and truth. The first Christians became aware of an entirely new vision of personal and communal life, and this was expressed beautifully by Paul in our 2 nd Lesson, written to the Colossian Christians: theirs was to be a new way of life, encompassing humility, forgiveness, compassion. These qualities were not simply the result of the social circumstances in which the young Christian community found itself, but sprang from dependence on Christ. Everything was to be done in his name, and because of this, Christian priorities were shaped by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus was the source and the power behind the new pattern of life which the Church was establishing and was soon to find so difficult to maintain. Does this curious Feast of Candlemas the presentation of the infant Christ in the Temple add to our understanding? Well, surely it does. The story was well summarised in Elizabeth Cosnett s hymn, which reminded us that Candlemas is all of a piece with Christmas and the Epiphany. The shepherds and the wise men had gone their ways, and Jesus s family had come to perform their obligation under the Jewish Law. There is nothing particularly special about that, but then we learn that two people glimpsed the deeper significance of the occasion, and the destinies of the new baby 2

3 and of his mother. Simeon recognised that Jesus was the Christ, the promised Messiah, the hope of Israel. Simeon was not a priest, nor an eminent person. Now, he says, he can die in peace. This Jesus will see into the innermost thoughts of people, and will become a focus for resistance and rejection; and Mary his mother will experience heart-piercing grief. Anna seems to represent the faithful elderly, the praying and doing heart of every Christian community, and certainly of this one. Like Simeon, she had trust, and saw Jesus as the source of eternal life and peace which, as Paul reminds us, is to rule in the hearts of all believers. So, what could be more appropriate as a theme for such a time as this - persistence in faith? I have often mentioned the worshippers perhaps in this Cathedral who would while away the time during sermons by playing a game of cricket which they had devised. Every time the preacher said I he would score a run, and every time he mentioned God there would be a wicket. His average was 96 for 2! Well, get your scorebooks out, and bad luck to those members of the Choir who I heard laying bets on the length of this sermon, because I it is! I am put in mind of a life-changing experience which I had in Richmond, Virginia, in 1993, when I gave a lecture at a large international conference, convened by the first African-American Mayor of that divided city, on the theme Healing the Heart of America. It was there that I discovered these words of Maya Angelou, which changed the course of my ministry: History despite its wrenching pain Cannot be unlived, but if faced With courage need not be lived again. Facing the past with courage We ended that conference, all 700 of us, by quietly singing Amazing Grace: Tis Grace hath brought me safe thus far Grace: not some vague abstraction; rather, as it became clear to me, God s constant presence in my life. To be sure, this was not on the road to Damascus; there has never been a blinding light; but in the game of Snakes and Ladders which has characterised my Christian journey to date and, I know, many of yours as well. Tis Grace hath brought me safe thus far Grace; that mysterious source of inspiration for the mind; love for the heart; courage (just occasionally at least) for the will, through many dangers, toils and snares... For me, that has included cancer, and opportunities to try to redeem many mistakes and hurts advertent or inadvertent caused during more than 40 years of ministry. There have been a lot of those 3

4 There has been the Grace experienced in worship day by day in this place, to which people have come with their joys and their sorrows for 900 years; the singing of the songs of Mary and Simeon each evening to remind us of Gospel truth, and those Kingdom values of which Paul wrote so movingly; and all taking place within these walls, amid these stones, which do not forget. Above all, there is the Offered Christ, distributed among us day by day in the Eucharist, our spiritual food for our onward journey. All this has led us to draw on the inspiration, and the prayers, of St Richard of Chichester, who taught us to know Jesus more clearly, to love Him more dearly and to follow Him more nearly; and of Bishop George Bell, whose House in the Close stands as a reminder of his courage, and his passion for Vocation, Education and Reconciliation in his and every age. All of this must lead us to hold fast to all that is most precious in our Anglican tradition, which was so movingly identified by Bishop Dorothea Greiner during her visit here last October. Stephen Sykes reminds us that the great Anglican divine, Richard Hooker, argued for two vitally important propositions: One, the fact that something was ordained by God did not of itself imply that it was ordained for all time; and two, that you had to use God-given and God-inspired reason in order to tell what parts of Scripture had what kind of authority. We must hold together all that is best in Catholic and Evangelical theology. The future of the Anglican Church, which I continue to believe is a distinctive gift of God to the world, depends on our getting this balance right; and this is especially important in this far from uniform diocese. We are too ready to rail against all sorts of isms and their excesses: Islamism, Zionism, Catholicism, Evangelicalism, Fundamentalism, whilst remaining strangely unwilling to recognise what Jesus called the plank in our own eyes. This is uncomfortable but true. But there should be nothing here for fear. The day of the Lord is a day of promise and new life. Truth emerges when we look for it, and when we remember that History despite its wrenching pain Cannot be unlived but if faced With courage need not be lived again. If we yield to fear, we are burying our heads in the sand, and placing ourselves in moral and spiritual danger. The great issues of faith and daily living are seldom solved by a simple Yes or No. They require thought, common sense and compassion, borne of patient and listening prayer. We must never lose sight of the simple truth, that love alone can open the way. Simeon and Anna perceived that the way of Jesus invites risk, and leads along the way of the Cross. If we can follow courageously the way Jesus took, or at least borrow a little of his courage, we shall be ready to be crucified with him, and hopeful 4

5 of rising again in his resurrection; for, as Jesus himself said (John 12:32) I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. In the sermon I preached at my Installation here on Michaelmas Day 2002, I quoted some words of the martyred Bishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero. Here, to conclude, are some more: It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the Kingdom lies beyond us. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realising that. This enables us to do something, and do it very well. It is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord s grace to enter and do the rest. Well, scorebooks away: I must draw stumps, as my mentor, the cricketing Bishop David Sheppard would have said, but not before returning one more time to Richmond, where twenty years ago, before we left for our respective countries, we joined hands to sing: Tis Grace hath brought me safe thus far, And Grace will lead me home. To which I dare to add, not just yet, I hope. Amen. 5