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In this section you can download copies of Cathedral Sermons in .pdf format. Over time we hope to build up a library of sermons on different themes from a wide variety of Cathedral Clergy and visiting preachers. The sermons are listed in date order. Scott Farrell Farewell Scott Farrell Farewell
6th July 2008 – Scott Farrell Farewell Music is one of the things Cathedrals do. It’s not the only thing they do; but without music, I doubt if most Cathedrals would attract anything like their present congregations. Across Britain as a whole, there’s a wide range of local circumstances that affect who attends particular Cathedrals. At York Minster, Sunday congregations average some three hundred. Of those three hundred, perhaps thirty are core members who come week by week. The rest are visitors, largely foreign, many of whom will come just once in a lifetime. At St Albans (the best attended Cathedral in Britain), numbers are even larger. The 9.15 Parish Eucharist averages some three hundred communicants, never mind the Solemn Eucharist at 11.00. Of those three hundred, the majority are core members: people who live in the area, and are committed to St Albans Abbey as their local church. Here at Newcastle, our core congregation may be smaller, but it outnumbers our visitors several times. That’s probably true for most of the ‘parish church’ Cathedrals. But – how many people would come here without the music? Yes, we know it’s a splendid building. And yes, there’s a ‘critical mass’ of worshippers that many people find reassuring – one of the reasons they come here, rather than join a small village congregation, where individuals can feel obliged to have a more prominent profile than they actually want. Without the music, I wonder how many of you would come here, week by week, struggling to find a parking place. I doubt that the few who did still come would be numerous enough to provide a critical mass to encourage others. Yet the music in our Cathedrals doesn’t just ‘happen’. Those who are not musicians don’t always understand just how much hard work goes into producing the music, produced at a consistently high standard we’ve grown to expect. After all, it’s so easy to hear good music these days. You just pop a disc into the machine and press a button. But singers are not CDs – nor are organists. You can’t just turn them on or off. They need to time to rehearse. They need nurturing. They need financial remuneration as does anyone providing a service. And let’s face it: there are some Sunday morning when even the most committed of us are tempted to stop in bed, or stay at home and plant geraniums. This great musical enterprise of Cathedral music needs structure and organisation – and a budget. The only survey of Cathedral music right across Britain, some nine years ago, revealed that, whatever a Cathedral’s financial turnover is, music always takes about the same slice of the total – on average, some 22%. If the actual cost of the music here at St Nicholas was turned into an admission charge, you’d each be asked to pay some £20 every Sunday – just for the music. So what are we doing, providing fabulous music week by week, at great cost of time and effort and money? We know the music is splendid – but occasionally we need to stop and ask why it’s worth all the resources that go into it. Some years ago, the religious journalist Andrew Brown suggested, that, for the British population as a whole, Cathedrals tend to be seen as islands of the numinous in the midst of a noisy, ruthlessly competitive, hard, materialistic world. Cathedrals – in the public mind – are beautiful ancient buildings filled with celestial music. They are not normal. They’re special. Yet Christianity is not in the business of providing magic. Our task, as Christians, is to proclaim the Gospel – ‘using words if we have to’. I, for one, believe Cathedrals themselves help to proclaim the Gospel to a suspicious, post-modernist generation. And music is central to this task, for it creates – not just atmosphere, but a deep inner space where the non-verbal, non-rational parts of our being can stretch and bask and make lateral connections in a way that equips us go out and live the Gospel in the real world. But Scott has inspired and cajoled and energized a whole generation of choristers, and adults, and children too young to join the choir. He’s helped incorporate them all in this great Cathedral enterprise. He’s also seized the opportunity of Government funding for creating musical outreach to schools. He has delighted (and sometimes astonished) us, by his vigorous organ playing. He’s been a larger than life sort of character, and it will not be easy to replace him. But nothing lasts for ever – in this world. It was inevitable that Scott should move on. He’s too good not to! He will bring his gifts to a new environment, and will (no doubt) find fresh energy there. And – hard though it seems to us now – we will (in due course) get something fresh new from a new Director of Music. It’s always sad to say goodbye; but today we celebrate the huge musical richness Scott has brought to us. And we pray that, for him (as for us), the next chapter will be as good as this one has been. This may seem more like a speech than a sermon; but it’s important to acknowledge the role of music is in the life of every Cathedral – and to note that it only happens through the skill and devotion of real people. That’s a reflection of the Incarnation. God loves us; but his love is only ever experienced in and through specific people, in specific situations, and at particular times. So thank you, Scott, for all you’ve given us – for helping us, in your own particular way, to be a place where God is experienced, and celebrated, and proclaimed. We wish you every blessing – and we ask you to pray for us, as we will pray for you. What will we pray for? For the coming of the Kingdom, and our part in that: that God’s love and mercy (which are universal) should be manifest in our lives; and that our lives (the specific) may be re-translated into the universal. That’s the dynamic of God’s kingdom. The kingdom of God is surely why we – any of us – are here. The kingdom is what Cathedrals are for – what the Church exists to bring to birth: a kingdom where all are citizens, but one King; to whom be ascribed all might, majesty, glory and praise, now and for ever. Amen.
Canon Robert Gage Harvest 2007 Harvest 2007
Giving thanks for the harvest used to be simple. The earth produces good things. We all need food. Most of us, here in the West, have enough to eat. It seems simple – and right – to thank God for arranging things so well.
Perhaps our thanks don’t have the same urgency as those of people struggling to grow food to survive. If there was a real chance we’d go hungry if the harvest failed, our thanks this morning might be more fervent! Of course, lots of people don’t have enough to eat. Remembering them might make us more grateful. Yet, for me at least, giving thanks for the harvest isn’t simple. Let me try and explain why.
When I was a child in America, people spoke of ‘exploiting’ natural resources as a praiseworthy thing to do. The earth was full of riches just waiting to used for the general good. If the people who exploited them made a profit – well, why not? They were doing something that would benefit many people. Everybody was a winner!
The population of the United States was then two thirds what it is today. Even now, the density of population in America is much less than here in Britain. I remember reading that there are, on average, some 450 people per square mile in Britain. In the United States, there are still just two! The first settlers from Europe saw the North American continent as an inexhaustible cornucopia of good things. However much they ‘exploited’ its resources, there would always be plenty. The idea of running out seemed impossible. Only now are some people starting to get nervous.
But those who attend to the latest information cannot fail to see that natural resources are running short. Whether or not human activity is causing climate change, this is happening. Agriculture is encroaching on the earth’s remaining woodlands, essential to the balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Each year, farmers and loggers destroy further huge areas of forest in the Amazon, South West Asia, and elsewhere. A new coal-fired power station opens in China every fortnight.
People are doing these things to meet the needs of world population, increasing faster than we can quite comprehend. More than twenty years ago, population crossed a threshold. The number of people currently alive exceeded the total of all those who had ever lived before. In the last twenty years, world population has more than doubled.
When the human family was much smaller, it could afford to treat the earth as a treasure house to be plundered without restraint. Today, that attitude is unsustainable – even suicidal. The scientist James Lovelock describes the situation as akin to that of a huge oil tanker steaming through dense fog. Suddenly, the fog lifts. The captain sees a rocky coastline just half a mile ahead.
Lovelock says that, so far, our response to the crisis of resources and climate change is like the skipper ordering the tanker’s engines back to half speed. Yet, even if the engines went to full speed in reverse, there is no chance of stopping or even turning the tanker before it runs aground.
People like Harvest Thanksgiving. It feels reassuring. We come to church and sing the familiar hymns, and we expect to be told that a kindly Creator is looking after us – that all is well. But it isn’t – and it seems to me nearly blasphemous to pretend that it is.
We live in a world where many people, both in the richer West and the poorer South and East, hope for – indeed, expect – a future where lots more of the world’s population will enjoy the kind of plenty that people like us enjoy now. But rising population and finite resources together mean that this is simply impossible. The longer we pretend it is possible, the worse the crisis will be for everyone, just a few years hence.
In Genesis, we read of God giving responsibility for his world into human hands. Many individuals are responsible in their consumption of food and fuel and other resources. But collectively, the human family is not acting responsibly. It isn’t that we’re been selfish, or greedy, or vicious. We just haven’t thought hard enough about the consequences of our attitudes and our actions.
The historian Barbara Tuchman defines ‘folly’ as seeing that you’re on a course that leads to disaster, and not deviating from it. She cites many historical cases of such folly which did lead to disaster – disaster caused by otherwise intelligent people who should have known better.
I think people like James Lovelock are right. The human race is on a disaster course with regard to the planet. If we don’t change, radically and quickly, we may all starve. Even if we pull back just a little, to soothe our consciences, we will still provoke disaster.
I cannot guess how we might change our ancient habits fast enough to make a real difference. There may have to be a cataclysm to create the political will to act on a global scale – something like the drowning of Bangladesh, no part of which is more than three feet above sea level.
There’s nothing wrong with our Harvest Festival. It is entirely right to thank God for the good things we enjoy. As Jesus said, our heavenly Father knows we need these things. But Jesus also said we shouldn’t make these things – what in the West we would call our ‘standard of living’ – our first priority. ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and his righteousness.’
Seeking the Kingdom is not escapism. It doesn’t mean turning away from the practical challenges we face. But it does include the charge to treat every human being as God’s beloved child. For Christians, there cannot be great chunks of the world’s population that somehow don’t count. And just as we don’t want to starve, or drown, or freeze, or kill the planet for our great-grandchildren, so we must seek thewell-being of all people with the same urgency as we seek our own.
I fear it’s beyond argument that this implies a lower standard of living for us all. If we want to survive, we cannot expect to go on heating our homes to twenty degrees, eating asparagus in January, and destroying irreplaceable rain forests for hardwood timber to make garden furniture. We must tighten our belts – and learn afresh that caring for other people, treating our planet responsibly, brings more satisfaction than compulsive shopping. Virtue has become necessity. There is nowhere to hide.
‘All good things around us are sent from heaven above.’ So runs the familiar Harvest hymn.
And it’s true; but those good things are not without limit. Be grateful, by all means. Give thanks. But, before it’s too late, pray and work that humanity may learn to exercise more intelligent corporate stewardship of the planet God has given us – the only one we will ever have.
Sermon Preached by the Archbishop of York Sermon Preached by the Archbishop of York
DIOCESE OF NEWCASTLE NEWCASTLE CATHEDRAL ST JAMES’ DAY 2007
‘Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?’ They said to him, ‘We are able’. What a blockbuster of a text. It’s one to make congregations sit up. And clergy. The occasion was the Consecration of the first Bishop of Newcastle, the Right Reverend Dr Roland Wilberforce. The unsuspecting burghers of Newcastle, dressed in their finery for that splendid occasion, along with bishops from many parts of the country and clergy from here and elsewhere, might have been hoping for something a bit more soothing than that disturbing question, addressed by Jesus to James and his brother John: ‘Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?’ James and John were two tough fishermen like their father, Zebedee. They were so compulsive, quarrelsome and quick-tempered that they were nicknamed ‘sons of thunder’. Why not? A disciple is a kind of apprentice: one who learns through the example of a master craftsman – and gets it wrong some of the time. James and John could get it spectacularly wrong. They looked on the other disciples the way the Magpies regard the Black Cats. They knew they should be in the Champions League, but didn’t want to share it. They wanted seats in the Directors’ Box of the Kingdom of Heaven. They thought Jesus would provide them. The Gospel according to Mark says they put in the request themselves. ‘Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?’ They said to him, ‘We are able’. The cost of a seat in heaven is far beyond the pocket of any human being. Places are allocated by God. They cost him dear. Christ gave his life as a ransom so that all disciples could join him there. That was the ‘cup’ that Jesus was about to drink. In the Old Testament ‘the cup’ is a container for both suffering and happiness. At every Passover meal, a cup of wine was left on the table in readiness for the return of the prophet Elijah. In the New Testament, at the Last Supper, it was probably that cup which Jesus took, saying, “This is my cup of blood. Take it and drink.” In the Garden of Gethsemane, where he prayed in agony, you recall he said, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.”(Lk 22:42). So the image of the cup is important. It’s an image of life and suffering and death. So, James and John, you want the best seats? ‘Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?’ In other words, do you realise what you are letting yourselves in for? They said to him, ‘We are able’. What a humbling, fantastic, dedicated answer. Apprentice-disciples are harder to come by. They keep close to Jesus so they can learn by what they see and experience. If you want to share my life, Jesus says, become a servant of humanity. It’s a challenge to all of us. Forget the status. Remember the vocation. Remember the calling to “Come and follow me”. “We are able”, said James and John. James was to become the first apostle to become a martyr. That was his cup. It will tell you that Christian schoolgirls have been beheaded in Indonesia. It will tell you that in Malaysia, Roman Catholic Irene Fernandez is in prison for exposing human rights abuses. The Christian Solidarity Worldwide website will take you to Sudan, where Malong, a boy of 12, was kidnapped by raiders who descended on his village, burning houses and seizing cattle, property and people. These are our brothers and sisters. With them we belong to the Communion of Saints, along with St James and all those children, women and men whose ‘cup’ has overflowed with suffering. We tend to prefer that. Of course. It would be daft to court disaster. Enjoy God’s blessings, bask in them, show them off, share them, be thankful for them – “count them one by one”. You are allowed to complain to God when things go wrong only if you praise Him as much when things go well. As a Christian, your cup may sometimes be half-full, it will never be half-empty. God has blessed the Diocese of Newcastle even before it was a diocese, with a wonderful history. Lindisfarne and Banburgh belong to you; Aidan, Oswald, Hilda and Cuthbert are among your spiritual ancestors. This diocese was launched on a tide of success and expansion. By 1882 coal mining and shipbuilding were major industries, fortunes were being made by chemical and salt production and much of Britain’s glass was made here. The population of Newcastle trebled in 60 years. Between here and the borders fine farmland was helping to support a hungry population. Workers needed to quench their thirst, so someone invented Newcastle Brown Ale! Newcay broon, as the locals call it. You might say the cup was pretty full. But the history of the last 1¼ centuries has also known terrible deprivation. Industries collapsed, unemployment was rife. Yet Northern grit and humour have survived. On my first visit to this Cathedral Church, a year ago, a gentleman said to me, “Why did London get the Millennium dome and the Eye, called the ‘London Eye’. One hundred and twenty five years old, eh? You don’t look 125. He died in a crash in 1981 while flying to Ndola, Northern Zimbabwe, to negotiate a cease-fire between the United Nations and Katanga forces in Congo. He wrote: “The night is drawing nigh. For all that has been, ‘Thanks’. For all that shall be, ‘Yes’” ‘Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?’ They said to him, ‘We are able’! That is: We will follow you in your foot-steps – in demonstrating, explaining and offering your new life to all. And our message is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord. This ministry gives us courage to carry it out, so that we don’t deceive or falsify.
The Apostle Paul in our Epistle reading recalls the constant opposition and persecution, recalling the Cross of Jesus where death is overcome by the resurrection life, which vindicates and renews the life of God’s faithful messengers. You know the story of a father who had three sons and seventeen camels. In his will he left a half of his seventeen camels to his elder son. One-third to his second son; and one-ninth to his youngest son. The father died and the children attempted to divide the camels according to their father’s will. They had great difficulty in dividing 17 camels into one-half, a third and one-ninth. So they went to consult a wise old man. He said, very simple. I will lend you my camel – it will be the eighteenth and you can each get what your father wanted you to have. Bingo! A half of 18 is 9; a third of 18 is 6; a ninth of 18 is 2 – making a total of 17. The wise old man then took away his camel. The remarkable thing about the eighteenth camel is that it’s volunteered and responds willingly. To be a servant in the Church of God, you too are volunteered. The call is addressed to those people who are not expecting to be invited – and not those who have become their own good cause! The Church of Jesus Christ is a community where earning your place is not on offer – buying your way in isn’t an option. As Bishop Frank Weston of Zanzibar said in 1923: “You have your Holy Communion, you have your altars …now go out into the highways and byways and look for Jesus in the ragged and the naked, the oppressed and the sweated, and in those who have lost hope and those who are struggling to make good. Please will you stand. Will you please say to the person on your left and on your right, And if you forget, I will be back.
Birth of John the Baptist – 2007 Birth of John the Baptist – 2007
Yet another anti-God book was published last week: God is Not Great: the case against religion, by Christopher Hitchens. The reviews I’ve read suggest it’s even weaker than Richard Dawkins’ recent book The God Delusion. Like Dawkins’ book, it asserts (rather than argues) that secularism is the only intelligent, moral, healthy way to a full and rewarding life. This morning, I want to challenge just one aspect of that assumption. Most people experience a sense of inadequacy from time to time. We all experience guilt and shame (whether justified or not). We all want things we haven’t got, and we may have things – a body, a personality, a history – that we’d rather not have. We look at other people. Many appear happier, more fulfilled, more relaxed, than we are. We start to think, if only we were free from the traditions and rules we’ve grown up with, we too might feel happy and fulfilled. We begin to wonder if religion is more of a problem than a solution. Secularism, with its lack of religious sanctions, starts to look quite attractive. Those who have grown up with religion usually feel the pull of secularism at some time or other. Some feel it all their lives. But what of those (and they are many) who have grown up with no religion? I guess they feel exactly the same disquietudes that we do – inadequacy, guilt, fear, and so forth. Yet in a society where secular assumptions are so strong, they are likely to view religion as an added complication they can well do without. So secularism can seem attractive to religious and non-religious alike. It can look like the road to freedom. ‘If only I can become (or can remain) untrammelled by all that religion stuff, I’ll have a better chance of being the person I want to be. I’d make my own decisions, live with my own mistakes. I wouldn’t have to consult an imaginary God about anything.’ What is the goal behind this impulse? What (if you will) is the secular idea of ‘salvation’? I don’t want to follow Richard Dawkins’ bad example, and set up unrepresentative straw men it’s all too easy to knock down; but I think the secularists’ idea of salvation is – learning to feel good about yourself: comfortable with the way things are, at ease with the world as it is. We know there is dreadful poverty in our world. There is war, and injustice, and cruelty. The secularist thinks these things are bad, not because God says so, but because we decide they are bad. But secularists also tend to say that these problems are so big that we cannot be held to account for them. We can try to address them, as far as we are able; but they aren’t something we need feel too guilty about. In practice, I fear, this works out as follows. We start to battle with life’s problems, but we get tired. We gradually decide that these larger issues are not, after all, our problem. Our job must surely be to make the most of life for ourselves. Little by little, we start to close our eyes and ears – and hearts – to the hurts of humanity, and try only to heal our own. But then – by lucky (the secularist’s interpretation) – or by divine grace (the religious perspective) – we hear a growl. What is it? Who is it? It’s the perennial voice of John the Baptist, heard somewhere (in one form or another) in every generation. That voice challenges us to see ourselves in a larger context. It reminds us that we cannot live in comfy isolation. We can never say, ‘I am not my brother’s keeper.’ I remember a brilliant surgeon, some thirty-five years ago, famous for his work with children. He worked fifteen hours a day – sometimes, seven days a week. He loved it. He knew he was an asset to society. He came to Church, but refused to join in the confession. He did not believe he was a miserable sinner; and would not say those words. I felt then that he was wrong, but today I have a better idea why. That’s because I have more experience of my own capacity for self-deception. We may occasionally fool the world; we can almost always fool ourselves. We say, ‘I know I’m not really bad.’ We see ourselves, not as others see us, but as we would like them to see us. Alas, we succeed! We know we make mistakes, but we rarely say, from the depth of our heart, ‘I have chosen to sin.’ Yet, as the BCP puts it, ‘If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.’ The greatest saints knew what failures they were, compared with Jesus Christ. They know there might be some health in us, but not much! But saints have the courage to face this hard reality. John the Baptist demanded that people face facts. From the clarity of a life pared down to absolute simplicity, he could see the depth of people’s self-deception. His challenged that self-deception – or rather, he helped people challenge it for themselves, and repent. The secular wisdom of our age seems to say, ‘Feel good about yourself. That’s much as you can hope for. Accept yourself – like yourself – as you are, and you’ll achieve all you can.’ The voice of the Baptist thunders, ‘No! You can do more than that! Much more! But you won’t do it until you accept that, here and now, all is not right! Until you can see just how much you deceive yourself, until you face up to reality as it is, you won’t move forward.’ The Gospels tell us that God accepts us as we are. Jesus accepted Matthew, and Zachaeus, and Mary Magdalene, and the woman taken in adultery, and the woman at the well of Samaria, and countless others – but, in every case, he challenged them to change. God does accept us as we are, but he is never content with us as we are. The Baptist demands that we own the pretences and deceptions we practice. And in fact, much of our community life, as well as our personal life, is based on pretence and deception. If, both as individuals and as a society, we decide to heed the Baptist’s cry, we must also accept the pain of the surgeon’s knife, which hurts to heal. To move forward, some aspects of our present reality simply have to go. The modern claim that religion enslaves people, while secularism sets them free, is (I believe) a dangerous myth. Secularists deceive themselves just as easily as religious people! Indeed, self-deception is a universal human mechanism for coping with unpleasant realities – an unfortunate mechanism, because it ultimately makes things worse, not better. The Baptist calls us to reject the straight-jacket of self-deception. If we refuse to see the gap between who we are, and who we might be, then (to quote again from the BCP) ‘we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.’ Hear the Baptist’s cry! Hear it, wherever it comes from: the pages of Scripture; the voice in the public square; the cry of the disposed and marginalised; the whisper of your dearest friend. Dare to see yourself as you actually are. Measure yourself by the stature of Christ. And then – repent! Not just emotionally, but in the way you organise your life. That’s the one sure way to become what you already are: a beloved child of God, a citizen in training for the Kingdom of Heaven, a co-inheritor with Christ of eternal life. |
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