I suppose I must be one of the last people still alive who was taught how to ride a penny-farthing bicycle by a veteran of the Boer War. It was a bruising experience because he taught me how to get on but not how to get off. He was a veteran of Mafeking, and he once he showed me a scar on his arm and said, “I look at that each night and I remember my friends who died.”

 

And is that what Remembrance Sunday is about — the remembering of friends who might otherwise be forgotten? Edith Sitwell’s brother told her how, when he was an officer in France in the First World War, he had to censor letters, and how therefore he opened one which simply said, “Do not forget me, do not forget me, do not forget me.”

 

And we do not forget.  There are still some for whom Remembrance Sunday is a matter of personal memory, a “staring through smoky time,” as Ronald Blythe once put it, “at some face which only I can recognise and remember. “A friend of mine, a year ahead of me in the sixth form at school, was killed in Korea, and I can see him still.

 

We do not forget.  But for many the remembering will not be personal in that way.  It will be an act of participation, of belonging to a particular society with its own history, its own distinct character which generations before us have brought into being and have when necessary defended.

 

And that is why we have occasions of deliberate commemoration — most obviously of those who died in two World Wars, but also of those who died in conflicts much more distant in space and time than that. Two weeks ago we  commemorated the battle of Agincourt, and earlier this year we had “a national service of commemoration” on the 200th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo — and none of us are likely to have personal memories of those battles — though oddly I do have an indirect connection even with Waterloo.

 

In 1940, when it seemed inevitable that the Germans would attempt an invasion, I was taken to see my great-grandmother who was then 90 years old.  She was very much of the Victorian age, and after the death of her husband she had draped herself and her room entirely in black. I was told to go and kiss my great-grandmother, but I was not too sure what a great-grandmother was.  Apparently I walked up to an aspidistra draped in black and gave it a hug. When we’d got that sorted out, she told me how, as a girl, she had been taught how to ride a horse by her uncle, my great-uncle, who had been at the battle of Waterloo as a young farrier.  When all his horses had been killed, he had been used to carry messages — including maybe to Lord Uffington; and if we remember nothing much about Waterloo, we are likely to remember Lord Uffington’s leg.  Indeed, when I was in the Army and I was stabbed in the leg by a bayonet, I turned to the man beside me and said, “By God, sir…”, and he immediately replied, “You’ ve lost your right leg.”

 

But Remembrance Sunday is about much more than personal memories.  It is a part of what has been called by sociologists, “the covenant of mutual loyalty between the living and the dead”. That covenant affects and gives a particular character to every kind of society, whether it’s large, as in the case of a nation, or small, as in the case of a College.  That is why the national service in St Paul’s commemorating Waterloo began with these words:

 

“We are gathered here to reflect on past conflict, to acknowledge human struggle and sacrifice known and unknown, to pray for peace between nations, and to respond with generosity and humanity. We pray that, from the lessons of history, we may learn and foster a new vision for God’s earth, for its people and for its future, as we strive to do God’s will and not our own.”

 

I’m not too sure about learning lessons from history.  If there is any lesson to be learned from history, it is that each generation faces its own momentous challenges and threats. That was certainly true of my generation. When I arrived here in this Michaelmas term exactly 60 years ago, the Second World War had ended only a few years earlier, and we were already engaged, not just in the Cold War but in actual wars in Korea, Malaya, Cyprus and East Africa.  Almost all of us had done National Service, and those who had been sent to zones of conflict had not particularly expected to return.  We were even trained what to do if an atomic weapon was exploded near us.  We were told to put a hand over our eyes, hold our nose, cover our mouth, and put fingers in our ears: try to do that some time and you will see that why you are unlikely to survive an atomic war.

 

So certainly we faced challenges, not just of war, but of trying to rebuild a shattered world.  But I reckon that you in your generation face immeasurably greater challenges and disasters and threats than we did. I cannot even begin to imagine how you will respond or what you will do.  But I am absolutely certain that you will respond.  And why am I so certain? Because you are here on this Remembrance Sunday keeping your covenant of mutual loyalty with the dead.

 

One of the truly great poems to emerge from the Second World War was Alan Bold’s ‘Buchenwald’:

 

“This is the way in.  The words

Wrought in iron on the gate:

Jedem das seine.  Everybody

Gets what he deserves

The bare drab rubble of the place.

The dull damp stone.  The rain.

The emptiness.  The human lack.

Jedem das seine. Jedem das seine.

Everybody gets what he deserves.

And it could happen again

And they could hang like broken carcasses

And they could scream in terror without light

And they could count the strokes that split their skin

And they could smoulder under cigarettes

And they could suffer and bear every blow

And it could happen again.

Everybody gets what he deserves.”

 

And it does happen again, and it is happening again, even at this moment, as you know only too well.  The realities of evil do not disappear.

And how do we respond? Alan Bold answers,

 

“We turn away.  We always do.

But it’s what we turn into that matters.”

 

That is the issue that lies before you in this place. Turn away? Yes, too often, sadly, we do

 

But: ‘Turn again’. That is a command issued, not just to Dick Whittington in a pantomime, but to us all. That is why, in the Bible, the verbs shubh in Hebrew and strefo/epistrefo in Greek are so important:

 

“Turn away from your evil ways,” pleads Ezekiel, “Turn back that you may live.” Or Paul arguing his case before Agrippa:

“I have been sent to open people’s eyes that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God.”

 

It is what we turn into that matters. Of course when you are young your choices and options will be limited – not least because you will be struggling to achieve what Antony Trollope called in Orley Farm, “that beautiful result of British perseverance, a credit balance at your bank”.

 

Equally when you are old your options will again certainly be limited: “Why should the agéd eagle stretch its wings?”, as Eliot asked. “Because I do not hope to turn again… Because these wings are no longer wings to fly.”

 

Even so, to continue with Eliot, you can still choose to turn to prayer: ‘Pray to God to have mercy upon us, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.” And pray also, therefore, for those whom we remember today.

 

We are always, young or old, hemmed in by our own circumstance, but the fact remains that we always do have choices to make. And those choices create over time what it is that we turn into. To go back to Alan Bold’s poem:

“In a cosmic context

Human life is short.  The future

Is not made, but waits to be created.

We are not helpless creatures

Crashing onwards irresistibly to doom.

There is time for everything and time to choose

For everything.  We are that time, that choice.”

 

“This is the time of tension between dying and birth.” And that is why you are wise to take seriously what this place, this Chapel, is, and why it is, and why also it is here as part of a College. We need the help of God if we are to turn from dull clay into a work of God’s art, as Paul put it, a living work of beauty. But we need the friendship of each other in the proper and fundamental meaning of a College.

 

That word ‘college’ comes from the Latin word collegium, and that word ended up being used of people living together in community under common rules and authority.  But collegium originally was a translation of a Greek word έταιρια, and that word placed a much greater emphasis on friendship, on communities constituted by friends who together are seeking the common good.

 

That is exactly what this College has been and I am sure still is in your hands. For you are here in this Chapel and on this day, not just in a covenant of mutual loyalty with the dead, but also in a covenant of mutual loyalty with each other. “By this will all people know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  (John 13.35).

 

George Richmond, the great Victorian portrait painter, was once asked whether, in his portraits, he tried to tell the truth, and he replied, “The truth, yes; but the truth lovingly told.” It is what we turn into that matters: the truth, yes, but the truth lovingly lived.

 

That is why a chapel, with its life in this College, has so much to offer you. But you have much more to offer to it. We need each other in this place to receive from God the resource and the encouragement — yes, and sometimes the correction and judgement — that will turn us into a resource of goodness for others.  ‘Do this in remembrance of him’ who in this enacted way brings the dynamic and the love of God directly into your life, your being, your character.  Often, yes, we turn away, but it is what we turn into that matters.  May he who gave his own life for the redemption of the world give you the grace and courage to become a gift of goodness to others.  Amen.

 

Sunday 15 November: Worcester College Chapel

Faith and Words

 

I’m sure most of you will remember the encounter between Alice and Humpty Dumpty in Alice through the Looking Glass, where Lewis Carroll shows the problems and possibilities of communicating in words.   Alice becomes increasingly confused with Humpty’s questions, and then he uses  a word she doesn’t understand:-  ‘glory’.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less.”

“You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir”, said Alice. “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem ‘Jabberwocky’?”

“Let’s hear it”, said Humpty Dumpty. “I can explain all the poems that ever were invented–and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.”

This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse:

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

“That’s enough to begin with”, Humpty Dumpty interrupted: “there are plenty of hard words there. ‘Brillig‘ means four o’clock in the afternoon–the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.”

“That’ll do very well”, said Alice: “and ‘slithy‘?”

“Well, ‘slithy‘ means ‘lithe and slimy’. ‘Lithe’ is the same as ‘active’. You see it’s like a portmanteau–there are two meanings packed up into one word.”

“And what’s to ‘gyre‘ and to ‘gimble‘?”

“To ‘gyre‘ is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To ‘gimble‘ is to make holes like a gimlet.”…

“And what does ‘outgrabe‘ mean?”

“Well, ‘outgribing‘ is something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle.  Who’s been repeating all that hard stuff to you?”

“I read it in a book”, said Alice.

 

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less.”

It’s almost two years ago since I preached here on the theme of ‘Theology and Poetry’, when I spoke of how Poetry enables us to view words not only as an intellectual discourse  but also as vehicles which touch our imagination.   Poetry is a ‘raid on the inarticulate’, offering us images, through words, which both ‘conceal and reveal’ the truth within.   I remember speaking of the poet as a ‘wordsmith’, but as one who can only use words.  I argued that the theologian, by contrast, has an additional freedom,  because they can move  beyond  the constraints of words –  not least through art, architecture, and music.

Today I’d like to add some further reflections on that theme, but on a more personal level. Rather than focussing on the relationship between Theology and Poetry, I’ll want us to reflect on the relationship between Faith and Words.   For if Theology is more than a verbal exercise,  how much more so is our Faith:  of course it is important that we can articulate some of the things we believe, but just as important is learning how to exercise our faith  beyond using words.

I’d like to share with you a book I read over the summer.  It is about St. Augustine,  one of the ‘Fathers’ of our Western Church.  (Augustine is actually represented on the mosaic floor of our chapel, with the three other Fathers of the Latin Church: I’m  almost standing on his image  as I speak.)   Augustine is probably best known for his lengthy work called Confessions, which he wrote between 397 and 400 when he  was Bishop of Hippo, in the Roman Province  of Numidia, North Africa.  I have often struggled with some of Augustine’s views,  so it  was most refreshing   to read this succinct,  humane and scholarly work by Henry Chadwick, for he presents Augustine’s theology as it intertwines  with his life. The Very Revd. Professor Henry Chadwick, himself a churchman and theologian of extraordinary stature, died in 2008: some of you may remember that he was Dean of Christ Church throughout the 1970s,  then Regius Professor of Divinity in Cambridge,  and, just after retirement,  Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge.   He was an unsurpassed expositor of the early Christian thinkers.  This little book, called Augustine of Hippo: A Life , was published a year after Chadwick’s  death. Earlier this year I was given a copy of it by his widow, Peggy, and as you can see, it’s been well read.

So I want to share you some of Augustine’s thoughts,  interpreted by Henry Chadwick.  These are found in The Teacher,  which  Augustine wrote in 388, when he was living with a small Christian community in Thagaste (in present-day Algeria),  just after  he had heard of the death of his son, Adeodatus.  This work –  in Latin, De Magistro – was widely read in the medieval schools of Theology and Philosophy,  so, given that this chapel was designed to imitate  the art and architecture of the Middle Ages,  it seems appropriate to look at what Augustine says, partly  in memory of a son he so infrequently saw.

Much of The Teacher argues that language alone cannot convey the fullness of our faith.  Augustine observes how meaning is understood not so much by individual words as by sentences, paragraphs, long units of discourse – so that the meaning of a single word is dependent upon its context, as well as on presuppositions not articulated at all.    Furthermore, Augustine observes, some of our most profound communication is without words –   by gestures, by the rise and fall of our voice as we speak, by our facial expression.  There is a wide gap, therefore, between thought and language.  This is because thought moves faster than speech.   Often we are saying one thing whilst our minds have moved on and we are thinking of another.   So we sing a familiar hymn,  but our thoughts wander away from the words on our lips.  So, Augustine argues, words, for all their importance and utility,  are not the principle thing in communication.   This is an extraordinary statement from someone who had spent so much of his life teaching Grammar, Rhetoric, Greek Philosophy and Logic.   But in this short piece Augustine observes that we communicate best not by verbal but by non-verbal signs –  what he calls  ‘an interior sharing of minds’.

Henry Chadwick breaks into this engagement with Augustine’s reflections with his own observations about the inadequacy of word to thought,  and about how thoughts lie much deeper than the upper levels of that part of our mind called ‘intellect’.   Chadwick recalls a sermon preached by Augustine when he was Bishop of Hippo:  ‘Man can say nothing of what he is unable to feel, but he can feel what he is unable to say’ (S 117.5. 7-8).   It is as if we ‘know something we do not know that we know’.  ‘Man can say nothing of what he is unable to feel, but he can feel what he is unable to say.’

If the most profound communication takes place at the interpersonal level, beyond words, this has  several implications for the way think about our faith, for it suggests  that faith is both constrained by but also liberated from ‘mere words’.

First, this idea of ‘interpersonal communication’  should help those of us who struggle with private prayer.  So often we use words in prayer,  even though we know  words can never inform God of anything he does not already know or might have forgotten.   Augustine observes that Jesus taught us the Lord’s Prayer not so much to serve as a formulaic exercise but as a communication with God in which the words are simply signs to nurture our relationship the divine.  Prayer often starts with words –  words given to us by others, such as in the Lord’s Prayer,  and also with words voiced privately in our heads –  but the words are not the end in themselves:  they are an imperfect means to another end.   The essence of prayer is an interpersonal relationship with God:  and just as in other relationships, whether of lovers, friends and family, words are, so often, an inadequate expression of how we think and feel.  To cite Augustine, ‘True prayer is in the silent depths of the soul’.

Secondly, this assent to the limitations of words in expressing our faith should explain why Christians throughout the ages have sought to express their faith not only through creeds, liturgies, sermons, and books,  but also through art, architecture, symbolism and sacraments.  Each of these enacts visually and dramatically what cannot be contained in words.  As for art and architecture, this chapel is such an expressive medium in illustrating this for us: each fresco and window, and each sculpture, whether in marble or wood, is a ‘non-verbal sign’, allowing us to hear God speaking to us without words.   What of symbols in worship, and sacraments?   These are what Augustine calls  ‘visible words’.   And so we take ordinary things  from nature,  such as water, wine, bread, oil and light,  and allow them to point us to a reality at a deeper  level than words alone.   So whether it is in the light of the candles we use at our Advent Services,  or  in the anointing of oil used for those who  are ill or dying,  or in the bread and wine which sustains our faith at the Eucharist,  or in the water used at our Baptism and for our continual cleansing – all these communicate to us God’s presence in Christ, through His Spirit, at that deep and inner interpersonal level; these are sighs too deep for words’;  the psalmist speaks of it as  ‘deep calling to deep at the thunder of the cataracts’.

Thirdly, this understanding of our faith consisting of non-verbal signs explains why music is so important in the life of the church.  Henry Chadwick was a man who loved music,  and in the Foreword to this little book his friend, Peter Brown,  speaks of him as  ‘following through’ the theology of great Christian thinkers in the way in which he might also  ‘follow through’  a piece of great music;  to use  Chadwick’s own words,  is it like ‘hearing even familiar music for the first time… continually wondering where the music will go next’.  Augustine, too, described persons as miserable when music was lacking in their lives.   Now obviously music is sometimes communicated through words – in anthems, plainsong, hymns, and great oratorios – but it is the music which gives life to the words, not the other way round. (The fact that so often the medium is in Latin or in a language other than English should make this clear.)

One example of  the primacy of music over words is in the way we use the psalms.   Tonight we started our service with the hymn ‘All People that on Earth do Dwell’.  Some of you might know this is not just a hymn but a metrical version of Psalm 100, originally composed in French  for John Calvin’s church in Geneva.  We may also know of Psalm 100 through the doxology composed by Thomas Ken, with the opening lines ‘Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow…’  Psalm 100 is also known as the ‘Jubilate’, from the first word in the Latin, and countless musical arrangements have been set to it:   the sheer variety illustrates so well how the words become subordinate to the music.  I think of compositions by Christopher Tye, Heinrich Schütz, and Giovanni Gabrieli;  by J.S. Bach, and Handel; by Haydn, Mendelssohn and Rachmaninov;  and, more recently, by Bernstein, Britten, and Walton. In each case we remember the music first, and then the words that accompany it. This is part of that ‘interpersonal communication’ between performer and listener, and it can take us closer to the presence of God. Those of us who listen to the introits and canticles and psalms and anthems Sunday by Sunday  know this is the case.

 

Fourthly, seeing the limitations of words has implications for the way we view theology and  doctrine.   The word ‘theology’ means ‘words about God’, and  it is inevitably partly enshrined in sermons, creeds,  synodical debates,  liturgical reforms, and  tomes of learning.  I am in no way abrogating the importance of words in any of these activities,  but I am want to encourage us to see this dependency on words in its rightful place.   There was once a very popular Fellow and Tutor in History at this College who, in the days before the REF,  hardly wrote any books or papers at all.  His rationale was:  ‘My students are my books’.   He would have understood what  Augustine emphasised in  The Teacher, about  the interpersonal value of words. I think this is what Pope Francis meant when, two weeks ago, closing the contentious Vatican Synod on the Family,  he said ‘…true defenders of doctrine are not those who uphold its letter, but its spirit;  not ideas, but people;  not formulae, but the gratuitousness of God’s love and forgiveness.’

                This  emphasis on faith as interpersonal,  and therefore both constrained by words yet also liberated from them, was a  theme  in  both of our readings tonight.  In our first reading,  God addresses Job by asking,  ‘Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? ‘   When faced with innocent suffering,  as was Job,  no volume of words could resolve his soul-searching. Job is asked by God to look instead to the created order and the greatness of the universe:  ‘Were you there when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding…’ At the end of the book, Job comes to terms with his suffering by realising the need for silence:  ‘…I have uttered things that I did not understand,  things too wonderful for me, which I did not know…’

Some five centuries  after Job,  as we read in our second lesson,  God communicated with his people again without using words –  through  the Word made Flesh. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was  with God, and the Word was God.   All things were made through him… and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.’  God’s ultimate word comes to us through  a human life –  the life of God, made manifest in Jesus Christ,  encountering us through  his Spirit in the life of the Church.  Nothing can reveal the interpersonal, non-verbal essence of faith more than the ‘Word-Made-Flesh’.  This should be a great assurance to us:  whenever we feel incapable of expressing our faith in words,  we need to remember that ultimately what matters is that we know the mystery of our faith rests upon the life of God once Incarnate in the world –  as the Word beyond all words.

I close with a third century Hymn, first composed in Greek –  and I like to think that Augustine might have known a version of it in Latin.  The language does not matter;  the meaning is what we need to reflect upon.  We shall sing this together shortly:

Let all mortal flesh keep silence, And with fear and trembling stand; Ponder nothing earthly minded, For with blessing in His hand, Christ our God to earth descending Comes our homage to demand.
                                                                Let all mortal flesh keep silence.    Amen.

All Saints 2015.

 

We are all still reeling from the news of the terrible tragedy in Aberdeen last week, when a 16 year old was stabbed to death by a fellow pupil in front of classmates and teachers. A child psychotherapist, Dr Belinda Harris, was interviewed the next morning on the radio. She said that she could quite understand the immediate reaction of deciding to close the school for a few days following this terrible experience, but that she had concerns about the wisdom of doing so. She worried about how it would leave individual children at home to try and deal with what had happened – and that what they really needed was to come together as a school community and share the collective grief – that counsellors coming in to help would need to think about a group based approach, because although of course children and staff would need support and help as individuals, there would also be the need to address the collective shock and grief of the community of the school – a need to work with them together, rather than fragmenting the community at such a time.

And of course what happened in reality was that children made the decision for themselves – they gathered together at the closed school gate – bringing flowers, but also talking and weeping together, sharing the memory, remembering the boy who died, trying to make some sense of what had happened – to come to terms with the reality, however hard that was. And the headteacher was able then to come out to meet  with them all and talk with them and be alongside them – all of them sharing the shock and grief as a close and loving community.

 

And in the weeks and months and years to come, this story – tragic as it is – will necessarily become part of the shared experience of that school, together with an honouring of the boy who died.

 

All communities need to share the stories of their past – good and bad – happy and sad – by which to make sense of their present, and on which to build their futures. We know that this is true for individuals – we see the rising popularity of family history research – the very name of the television programme “who do you think you are?” gives a clue to how our own identity is necessarily linked to what we know of our ancestry – the stories of our own family’s past. And we hear of those who, however happily brought up by adoptive parents, still feel a real need to know the facts of their origins.

 

And just as this is true of individuals, it is true too of communities – a need to share stories of collective experience. In some cultures, the shared stores are inextricably linked with the land and the natural world in which the community has grown up. Bruce Chatwin’s book “The Songlines” describes how in the Aboriginal culture, there are ancient, invisible tracks all over Australia, made of songs which tell of creation. The Aboriginal religious duty is to ritually travel the land, singing the songs of their Ancestors – “singing the world into being again” with the stories of their past.

 

The North American Indian belief too links the land itself with the shared experience of the people, and with the honoured memory of their ancestors:  in 1885, Chief Seattle expressed this very eloquently when replying to the American President’s request to buy their land from them…

“Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as they swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people…

“If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father.”

 

So the shared remembered experience of the ancestors – the people of the past – serves to inform the present and give hope for the future.

And today -as we watch the horrifying actions of ISIS – the brutal killing of so many who oppose their ideology, we may wonder why they would spend time and effort on the destruction of ancient stones and temples that have survived for centuries and which they are now reducing to rubble. But this, they know, is a deadly weapon too – because, of course, it is more than stones that are being destroyed – it is the story and remembrance of a people that is being obliterated with the stones.

 

Today is All Saints Day – and the Saints are the living stones of our faith – theirs are the stories we celebrate and remember – those who have gone before us in faith, and who inform our present and give us hope for our future. Many are known by name, and their stories have been passed down through the generations – others are unnamed and their stories are unrecorded, but they are remembered collectively by us as a faith community – remembered as a “cloud of witnesses” to the faith we proclaim.

At the beginning of the 11th century, Symeon, the Abbot of a monastery in Constantinople described the Saints as providing a golden chain linking past, present and future faith, rather like the songlines of the Aborigines.

“The saints in each generation, joined to those who have gone before and filled like them with light, become a golden chain, in which each saint is a separate link, united to the next by faith and works and love. So in the one God they form a single chain which cannot quickly be broken.”

 

The Church has always believed it is important to remember and celebrate the Saints. Our Festival of All Saints has its origin in the Feast of All Martyrs which formed a part of the liturgical cycle from the fifth century onwards – but which was then celebrated during the Easter season – giving it a real connection with the victory of Christ over death. All Souls too was celebrated in Easter week until the middle of the ninth century when both feasts were moved to the beginning of November. And so the Paschal connection has been rather lost, as the two feasts, together with Remembrance Sunday, have turned into a season of remembering the past, with perhaps less obvious emphasis on future hope.

So how important is it to remember the Saints today? Do we, the Church, as a faith community still need to remember and honour those whose stories are often obscured and challenged by time and by our new understanding of history and theology? Do we need the memory of the stories of the Saints for our community to flourish? In this age of celebrity it is the people of the present who are celebrated – those whose success and popularity is there before our eyes. Do we really need to be constantly looking back?……….

There have been challenges in the past of course….

During the reign of Oliver Cromwell, Parliament ran low on the silver used to make coins. So Cromwell sent his men to a local cathedral to search for some.

They reported back to him that the only silver they could find was in the statues of the Saints standing in the corners.

Cromwell sent back word, “Good; let’s melt down the saints and put them back into circulation.”

 

Pam Hathorn suggests that we are again at a time for meltdown. I leave you with her suggestion:

In times past

Saints were worth their weight in gold.

Their deeds were applauded,

Their faith was esteemed,

Their deaths honoured…..

In our times

Sinners luxuriate under the weight of other people’s gold.

The deeds of self-centred entrepreneurs are applauded,

The many-faceted faiths of conmen and charlatans are esteemed,

The deaths of unworthy celebrities are honoured…..

Now is the time

For meltdown;

Saints putting themselves back into circulation;

Fool’s gold

Exchanged for gold from the refiner’s fire.

 

Last Sunday after Trinity (B) Evensong

Worcester College, Oxford

 

Lessons: Ecclesiastes 12; Luke 18: 9-14

 

That greatest of wordsmiths of the last century, in my estimation, T S Eliot, much loved by Anglican clergy looking for a handy quote, wrote in one of his Four Quartets ‘Burnt Norton’

 

“Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still.”

 

One of the things that I imagine we have in common is that we all have to produce a lot of words.  I Tweet and blog and write sermons, and articles and welcomes and papers for this that and the other, not learned papers, I hasten to add, but the kind of papers that organisations consume.  And whether they make it on to paper or are accessed on one kind of screen or another, the words have to be produced.  And they remain powerful.

 

Today, as you well know, is the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, for this is Crispin’s Day.  When I was doing my O level history we had to concentrate on critical things like the repeal of the Corn Laws rather than anything as exciting as that battle and the routing of the French.  So like many people my knowledge of that day is drawn from Shakespeare’s retelling of the events in ‘Henry V’.

 

At ceremonies all over the place this weekend that most famous of speeches, that cannot fail to stir the heart, will be declaimed.

 

This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be rememberèd; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile This day shall gentle his condition: And gentlemen in England, now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

 

Oh that I could deliver it like Olivier or Branagh or like Alex Hassel in his final performance this evening at the RSC.  But whether I have their gravitas or not, the words have a life of their own, the most amazing power to stir the heart and make you believe them.  And Shakespeare, whose 400^th anniversary of death we’ll celebrate next year, is a real person to me.  I live next to the Globe Theatre and his brother Edmund is buried in the choir in front of my stall and there in the nave is a memorial to the Bard and a window above it, with all the characters and Henry V among them.

 

The book Ecclesiastes, from which our first lesson was the final Chapter, was probably written two thousand years before Shakespeare was doing his work.  The passage we heard is sublime poetry – a meditation on what it means to get old.  The speaker is in Hebrew known as the ‘Gatherer’ although in our translations ‘the Preacher’ or ‘the Teacher’ are more common titles.  But I like ‘Gatherer’ as here’s someone expert at gathering words, gathering allusions and using them to terrific effect.

 

Before the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher; all is vanity.

 

Of course the verse that makes every undergraduate snigger and nod their head comes towards the very end

 

Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

 

But these words, these images, these descriptors are as crisp and real and relevant as when they were written.  They haven’t ‘cracked or broken’ as Eliot says words can but like reeds in the wind have bent over time to the eyes of the reader and the ears of the hearer.  And that’s the beauty of words that are so inspired.

 

Jesus was of course a great employer of language, not of the written kind, as far as we know, though that would be a find beyond all finds.  But how he spoke then, how he speaks through scriptures now is powerful.  It was so powerful that when people heard him they passed on what he’d said until someone like – well let’s call him for the sake of argument ‘Luke’ – wrote it down.

 

The parable that we heard as the Second Lesson is a memorable one because of the language used and the immediacy of the characters.  With just a few words they’re drawn for us – the self important arrogance of the Pharisee, the self knowing humility of the tax collector; the easy ability to compare ourselves favourably alongside others, the rareness of the ability to see ourselves as God sees us.  And the beauty of the story is that we’re there, in that space, in the Temple, witnessing what’s going on and seeing ourselves somewhere between the two.

 

‘For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’

 

Perhaps we feel that the words we use ‘Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish’ – perhaps they become as ephemeral as some of the means of communication that we use today. I suspect Henry V would not have been as effective with a Tweet to his troops even if he did use every one of the 140 characters available to him!

 

There’s of course a difference between the Gatherer and Eliot, between Luke and Shakespeare and that has to be about what we understand divine inspiration to be but even more than that about that deep inhabiting of word that’s part of our understanding of the divine.

 

I’m fast approaching my first carol service – we keep that until 1 December but it now looks frighteningly near and you’ll soon be at the end of the term before you know it.  And I, in our 36 carol services, will hear the readings again and again.  But if I tire of hearing of shepherds and angels and magi I won’t tire of hearing what St John says of God at the end of almost all our services.  In the first chapter of his Gospel John writes

 

And the Word became flesh and lived among us.

 

The Word for God is not something written on a page, the word is not something heard on the wind, the word is not something received and then quickly forgotten, for God, the word is living, inhabited and the carrier of the divine nature.  The Word is God, Jesus is the Living Word, the incarnate Word, the visible, knowable manifestation of the Word that when it was first spoken brought all things into being; Jesus is the Word that sounds throughout the universe sounding in the particular, in history, in time, for time.  Jesus is the word that will not crack, will not break, will not slip, slide, perish or decay.

 

The incarnate Word is written on human hearts and inspires us to make that word known because we know that it’s a word that when spoken gives life, that when heard and received, gives life.  It’s a word more powerful than that spoken to troops awaiting to enter a battle, a word that moves us more deeply than any actor’s oration can, it’s a word that makes us desire to live the only life, live for Christ, in the now, in the here, in this present moment.

 

The Teacher, the Gatherer, ends by saying to his readers

 

‘The end of the matter; all has been heard.’

 

Enough has been said; you’ve heard these words.  But never allow the words that God speaks to you be like any of the others you hear.  Other words may inspire for the moment but when God speaks to you through his incarnate Word he speaks words of eternity.  And in whatever words you use follow that sacred teaching

 

‘find pleasing words, and [write] words of truth plainly’ for this is Crispin’s Day and God is speaking to us.

 

Andrew Nunn

Sermon Freshers 2015: Joshua 5: 13-6:20; Matthew 11: 20-end

 

‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

 

Thursday was national poetry day, so I thought I would share with you one of the nation’s favourite poems. If you can guess the poet you win a prize. The Provost is banned from answering:

 

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

William Butler Yeats

 

Can any of the children tell me the author of this poem?

 

‘Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

Your ring?” Said the Piggy, “I will.”

So they took it away, and were married next day

By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

They danced by the light of the moon,

The moon,

The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

 

 

Edward Lear

 

When I had the chance to listen to radio 4 on Thursday I heard lots of wonderful poetry, but there has been another vote concerning rhyming verse.

Des’ree’s hit song Life has been voted the worst ever pop lyric according to BBC 6 Music listeners. According to the radio station:III

‘Des’ree, a highly successful UK solo artist, became popular in the mid-Nineties with uplifting songs full of self-help tips and self-esteem makeovers for the love sick and downhearted.

 

But according to 6 Music listeners she’s also responsible for penning the worst pop lyric:

 

I don’t want to see a ghost

It’s the sight that I fear most

I’d rather have a piece of toast

Watch the evening news’

 

It’s an understandable sentiment. I think I too would rather eat toast than see a ghost, but it’s not good poetry. Here’s another less-than-perfect, lyric.

 

And I met a girl

She asked me my name

I told her what it was

(Razorlight – Somewhere Else)

 

No cliff hanger there. It’s true that not all pop or rock music lyrics are great. Oasis’s ‘Slowly walking down the hall, Faster than a cannonball’ isn’t the greatest rhyming couplet in the world, but in the context of the song, with the rhythm, harmony, melody and feel of the song, we might really enjoy it. My point is that perfection is not always an indicator of how much we enjoy something or, indeed, how much it is worth to us. Indeed, there is a traditional song about our first reading tonight:

 

Joshua fit the battle of Jericho Jericho, Jericho Joshua fit the battle of Jericho The walls come tumblin’ down,

 

The words themselves are not a product of genius, but put them to the music and perform them in the right context and they become powerful.

 

So why do I mention all these good and not-so-good words. At the beginning of this new academic year we come together in Chapel, and in this College, once again as a community that is re-formed with undergraduate and graduate freshers, new choristers, choral scholars, parents, fellows and staff. Some have returned after a period away and we welcome them back as part of the Worcester family. In order for all of us to flourish and grow in this community over the next year there are many aspects of behaviour that we might adopt, such as respect, kindness, friendliness, understanding, for instance, but perfection, I propose, is not one of them. In this college, at school or in our work we might strive to be the best we can possibly be, and enjoy the challenge, but perfectionism is a different matter and can lead to a counter-productive result. The problem with perfectionism is that, because it is unachievable in all areas of life, it can lead to giving up completely. At this time of year there are many pressures to be perfect in all areas: academically, at school or work, socially, domestically and, dare I say it, even in our online, social media presence. In the midst of this busy life, Jesus says to all of us: ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

 

Here’s an example of where perfectionism can lead:

 

I don’t want the Great British Bake Off normally, but my daughter and I did manage to see an extraordinary incident on TV. Not so much ‘incident’ as ‘bincident’. It involved a highly-talented contestant, Iain Watters. The task was to make a Baked Alaska. The dish is made of ice cream placed in a pie dish lined with slices of sponge cake and topped with meringue. The entire dessert is then placed in an extremely hot oven for a brief time, long enough to firm the meringue. The meringue is an effective insulator, and the short cooking time prevents the heat from getting through to the ice cream. However, on this day the temperature outside the oven was so hot that the ice cream began to melt and the contestants had to quickly find freezer space so that their ice cream didn’t melt. After Iain’s Alaska had been temporarily removed from a rival contestant’s his ice cream was melting all over the table and it was time to present it to the judges. Sue Perkins was just beginning to suggest how the situation might be rescued when Iain pick up the whole concoction and put it in the bin. It was the bin that he presented to the judges, Paul Holywood and Mary Berry, but they couldn’t give him any marks and he was sent home.

 

What struck me about this episode was not just that he gave up but how the judges reacted, saying ‘was your sponge alright?’, ‘Yes’, said Iain, ‘was your meringue alright?’, ‘Yes’, said Iain. ‘Well we could have tasted those.’ The point was that there was some work to try, and even enjoy, had not the perfectionist in Iain literally thrown it all away. Moreoever, if Iain had raised his head from his own problem for a moment, he might have seen that everyone else had exactly the same problem. Everybody’s ice cream was melting. He was not alone.

 

During this coming year we might find that things do not always go our way, that there are bigger mountains to clime than you thought, the work is harder than we thought or that people are not always as pleasant as we expect. But remember, that we are a family and in any family there are ups and downs, but also remember this: you are not alone – for there is always someone you can talk to, and whatever you are going through, you will not be the first to go through it and there are probably several other people experiencing the same thing. Also remember that you do not have to make perfect work, for it is through our mistakes more than our successes that we learn. Tenacity, not giving up, is a great gift and one to be practised. It was Albert Einstein who said: ‘It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I just stay with problems longer.’

 

Anyway, enough of this advice. This Chapel is your Chapel and you are welcome in it at any time, and the community, the family, is here for you too. May this place remind you of Jesus’s words from our Gospel and may these words stay with you throughout the year to remind you that you are not alone: ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’

Amen.