Sermon: Installation of Virgers

The Very Revd Victor Stock is Dean of Guildford

Preacher:: Victor Stock
Date:: Sunday 10th October 2010
Service:: Evensong
Readings:: Psalm 144

‘Benedictus Dominus’ - words from Psalm 144: ‘Lord, what is man that Thou hast such respect unto him, or the Son of Man that Thou so regardest him’.

Monks and nuns practised lectio divina, that is, reading a biblical passage slowly, in a way that Susan Hill, the novelist, has been advising us recently to re-read old favourites and re-read them slowly, as the monk or nun puts aside time each day to re-read Scripture slowly, letting it sink in. Doing this produces unexpected resonances and encouragements. Those who work in a virgers’ department need to know their place, their place in the hierarchy of cathedral life, and hierarchy exists for the discharge of responsibility. How marvellous it is for the head of a foundation, a college or cathedral, to know that the place is running well, that micro-management is absolutely unnecessary, that departments are doing their job. So, the Dean’s Virger in a cathedral, and those who work with him or her, are of the highest importance in the well ordering of cathedral life. This means management of people and management of place.

At first sight, some of the ancient texts we say or sing seem remote. Verse 14 of Benedictus Dominus: ‘that our oxen may be strong to labour, let there be no decay, no leading into captivity and no complaining in our streets’. In an agricultural world that depended upon the possession of healthy oxen and a political world which knew the horrors of exile, the Babylonian captivity branded on the consciousness of the biblical world, verse 14 of Psalm 144 spoke truth to experience. But if you’re doing lectio divina on this scriptural passage, here’s something that virgers have to deal with: ‘no complaining in our streets’. How often the virger is called upon to deal with complaint, even when couched in the ritual form so often used by the Dean himself. ‘ I wonder if you have a moment you might be able to …’ etc, which is code, of course, but a code that leads to demand.

In the running of a large institution there’s quite a lot that can go wrong, and a virgers’ department is the stage manager’s department in the theatre, and stage managers have to make sure that the props are provided and that they’re in good repair so that the play can go on, hence the amount of time given to the care of textiles and plate. Laying out large vestments in a drawer requires attention, dealing with sometimes ancient, much more ancient than this Cathedral, vestments from the 18^th and 19^th centuries, where gold or silver gallon must be protected from sunlight, not scrunched up, but always laid flat. The care of the altar linen, making sure it doesn’t become threadbare or stained, the correct starching of the purificators, neither too limp nor too stiff, the adequate provision of linen for altars and sacred vessels, and making sure that at festivals the albs and amices have been washed and starched. Why? Because no pains taken are wasted in the service of the Sacred Liturgy.

There are less glamorous things: dealing with vandalism, graffiti, the gratuitous throwing down of litter, and all this before we get onto the complexities of processional order: knowing who’s who in the hierarchy, where they’re to walk, and how to deal with vast numbers of clergy and self-important laity, clergy who don’t listen or read their instructions, and laity who believe that because they’re the Mayor of X, they surely taken precedence over the Mayor of Y. A great deal of the life of the virger is behind the scenes, so you only know about the virger’s life when things go wrong. When the machine operates smoothly, the virgers are almost invisible, indeed, time and again in the Diocese this Dean has had to explain what virgers do. They are up late at night on a Saturday dismantling chairs after an orchestral or choral performance, keeping the Cathedral clean when it’s used by vast numbers of people, many of them children, all of them bringing the outside with them into the nave, or quire, or Lady Chapel, or ambulatory.

So, here’s a bit of lectio divina for Paul and Fiona to meditate upon from the fourteenth verse of Benedictus Dominus: ‘no complaining in our streets’. Well, that won’t happen in this life. There’ll be complaining, it’s how we deal with it that matters. How we deal with it is prayerfully - is this something I can immediately respond to, say sorry about, get right or, when necessary, share with the Precentor or Dean?

It’s a fascinating thing, working for an institution like a cathedral with its inherited hierarchy, its inherited sense of necessary but complex cohesion, and an old psalm can be surprisingly helpful, as can this evening’s passage from St John’s Gospel, the fifteenth chapter: ‘Remember what I said, a servant is not greater than his master’. The Christ of St John, in these passages in the middle of the Gospel, speaks of relationships, Christ to the Father and Christ to the Church. The most striking image in St John, which you will remember Michael Ramsey said is the most important image of all is that of Christ, himself a servant. In a Christian community focused on Christ, no-one is too important or too grand to pick up litter, to be patient with an irritating visitor or inattentive priest, no-one is too important for the service of the one who came among as the slave of all.

So, Paul and Fiona, and also Steven and Andrew, and Tim, John and Richard, you play an enormously important part in the life of this Foundation, and like the Guides at the door, but for longer hours and at more complex levels, you are at the front line of both welcome and stage management. When we look at the Cathedral on Easter morning or a Good Friday liturgy, or Midnight Mass, or Royal Maundy, or the 125^th Anniversary of St Catherine’s School, Bramley, or the 500^th Anniversary of the Royal Grammar School, and on and on the list runs, we’re looking at sacred theatre and a ministry of welcome in order to bring people into the house of God. To help in that work can be no greater vocation. The Virgers are no ancillary adornments, they are fundamental building blocks in this house of prayer and praise. Perhaps verse 15 of Benedictus Dominus is an encouragement: ‘Happy are the people that are in such a case, yea, blessed are the people who have the Lord for their God’.