Bringing hidden features to life
The sermon preached by The Revd Canon Ralph Godsall, Priest Vicar of Westminster Abbey and a Canon Emeritus of Rochester, at Choral Evensong on Sunday 17 October 2010, marked the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Association of Friends in 1935.
I begin with a text.
From the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel according to St Luke: "Which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, This fellow began to build and was not able to finish." (14: 28-29)
I have a confession to make. I have a slight anorak-fondness for obscure statistics and trivia. For example, did you know that the city of Venice, with a population of only 80,000, generates $1 billion dollars a year in tourist revenue? That statistic means that every Venetian raises $12,500 dollars a year in revenue for the city of Venice. Mind you, if you have ever bought a coke in a café there - at four Euros a can - you'll know why this figure is perhaps so easy to reach! Or did you know that the average man utters 2,000 words a day, compared to the average woman, who speaks over 7,000?
Gentlemen, that means for every word you speak, your wife speaks 3.5. Some of you don't look very surprised by that statistic. I think it is roughly true in our household, although you will have to square this with the fact that my wife, Ellen, thinks my sermons are 15% too long. However, I would venture to suggest that this perfectly demonstrates how in touch I am with my feminine side!
So the Friends of Rochester Cathedral may be surprised to discover this afternoon that there are some apparently sound statistics in St Luke's Gospel. Who would consider building a tower that costs 500 shekels when they only have 200? Most wouldn't.
You'd be pragmatic and attend to the bottom line of the balance sheet: the figures don't add up. This aspect of Christian pragmatism will resonate with those who share responsibility with the Dean and Chapter for the care and development of cathedral buildings. It also resonates with one of the most abiding images we have from the Old Testament - the potter's wheel from Jeremiah. In Jeremiah's parable, he suggests that the people of God have forgotten that they are fashioned by God. They are not self-made. They have not become what they are by their own efforts. This is a sobering parable. It's tempting to imagine on an occasion such as this that cathedrals are maintained and refurbished by stalwarts like the Friends, or by especially gifted and entrepreneurial Deans. And without a shadow of doubt, such contributions have been, and still are, a vital part of God's economy here in Rochester!
But the lesson of the parable of the potter is a simple one: God is crafting the pot. God is creating something that the clay cannot and should not seek to control. The only thing to be done is not to cling to the shape you inherit or prefer, but rather to offer yourselves as malleable material in the hands of God. To be obedient to the parable, we hand ourselves over to the hands of God; we pray for his shaping and crafting.
To be made into the vessels he wants and needs, rather than the shapes that meet our expectations. There is also a further way in which the parable of Jeremiah can be taken. It is tempting to read the potter and the clay as a rather passive-active parable.
But anyone who has ever made a pot will tell you that this is not quite right. There is, in fact, a more dynamic relationship between the clay and the crafter. The clay - like all artistic materials - also changes the one who moulds it.
Which brings me to a poem about cathedrals that is attributed to Anne Ridler. It's called "Open House"
It begins with the words "Churches are best for prayer that have least light"; and continues:
"But then, why build a church at all or dream of glory, when to crawl into a hole could serve us better?
Cathedrals take another way: Like plants, and phototropic, they spire towards heaven, learn from trees the branching vault, and canopies of fretted space. The ecstasy of power is here, coiled like a spring, a god's mysterious gaiety, and peace that passes understanding.
And this is home to us, although our numbers break its calm, we pry with flaccid curiosity and stray about on weary feet.
We are not much to boast of, yet thinking of God men built this home and signed the work with man's own name.
Bracing their word is, and austere, admonishing our weak despair:
'Renew all hope, who enter here'
I warm to the poet's description of a cathedral as "phototropic" - "bending or turning under the influence of light", stretching out, like plants, as a living organism under the influence of the light of Christ. This insight was fundamental to the Association formed by the Friends in 1935 when they undertook to hand on this Cathedral to future generations by 'bringing to light its hidden features'. The good thing about bringing to light things hidden in darkness is that this is what cathedrals often do best or rather what God does best in cathedrals. Like God himself, cathedrals are 'open houses' and are very likely to surprise you. Whether by chance or design, the Friends stumbled upon an important insight. In wanting to hand on this church with its beauty unimpaired by 'bringing to light its hidden features, they have responded generously to the changing landscape in which this and every cathedral finds itself today: as a place of pilgrimage and spiritual discovery, a place where growing numbers of visitors and tourists can explore and interpret serious issues honestly, safely and hopefully; a place where, in an age of unbelief, 'facts can be seen to be friendly'; where light shines in the darkness, and where joy and peace are often found to lie on the other side of dark things.
There is an old story about the first church that was built on the site of Westminster Abbey, where I now worship, long before the time of Edward the Confessor. Legend has it that on the night before it was consecrated it was visited by St Peter, who was rowed across the Thames and then filled it with light - so that when the people came the next day for the consecration they found that the church had already been filled with light. Clearly, those who built that church and its successors on that site wanted something like that to be the experience of everyone who came to pray there, whether a king or a queen or the humblest pilgrim in the land. They wanted them to find in that place the light of Christ. They wanted that church and the lives of all who prayed there to be filled with the light and hope of Christ.
Like Westminster Abbey, cathedrals wear many masks, and mean many things to visitors and pilgrims alike, when observed through the dark prism of human experience.
However, there is one mask that cathedrals do not have to hide behind - the mask of Christian commitment - since their daily liturgy sheds light on their character and identity. It is the practice of prayer and worship that leads to belief and commitment, not the other way round; prayer and worship are the consequence of belief, not the means by which we find that we believe. And that is why the uncommitted and the searching often find the undomesticated space of cathedrals and great churches easier places in which to be and even pray today.
"Bringing to light its hidden features" continues to be the Friends' mantra in this place - perhaps to their surprise, in an age of unbelief, God has made them clay in his hands and has stamped the hallmark of mission on their work - enabling this great church to be the place of exploration and pilgrimage that it is, filled with the light of Christ: "Thinking of God men built this home and signed the work with man's own name.
Bracing their word is, and austere, admonishing our weak despair: 'Renew all hope, who enter here'."
May it continue to be so. God sets this hope before us today, and, even now, spins the wheel - yet not of fate or fortune (as depicted on the north wall of this Cathedral quire) but of the potter - and looks to fashion us afresh, ever moulding us into the vessels that he wants and needs for the care and crafting of this Cathedral church, that it, and we, may be "phototropic", ever bending and turning towards heaven under the influence of the light of Christ; to whom be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and for ever.
Amen.
The Revd Canon Ralph Godsall
Featured in The Friends of Rochester Cathedral Annual Report for 2018/2019.
Friends of Rochester Cathedral Annual Reports
The Friends of Rochester Cathedral were founded to help finance the maintenance of the fabric and grounds. The Friends’ annual reports have become a trove of articles on the fabric and history of the cathedral.
The Friends of Rochester Cathedral were founded to help finance the maintenance of the fabric and grounds. The Friends’ annual reports have become a trove of articles on the fabric and history of the cathedral.
Canons, colleagues, volunteers and staff have shared their memories and reflections in many forms over the years.