Sermon: Patrons of Lichfield Cathedral

 

The Very Revd Victor Stock is Dean of Guildford Photograph of Victor Stock

Preacher:
Victor Stock
Date:
Friday 1st October 2010
Venue:
Lichfield Cathedral

The last time I spoke at a dinner was two weeks’ ago for the Bishops of the Church of England, the Church of Ireland, the Church in Wales and the Episcopal Church in Scotland in Oxford and at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury.  I began my speech by saying that we all know that what goes wrong in the world, and particularly the Anglican Communion, is the fault of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to illustrate this perfectly he’d invited me to address the Bishops - a sign of lack of grip, if ever there was one.  Some Bishops laughed uproariously, one or two laughed nervously, one or two didn’t laugh at all.

The point of my address to the Bishops was talking about projection and fantasy, particularly the kind of projection we put onto Bishops.  They’re there to make everything come right, and as they obviously don’t, they’re failures, none more so than the Archbishop of Canterbury.  My tease was almost ruined by the fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury at the very last moment wasn’t there, and standing next to the Archbishop of York, slagging off the Archbishop of Canterbury, really wasn’t quite so funny.  I said to the Bishops that someone at Lambeth had realised rather late in the day that the Archbishop of Canterbury had made a terrible error in inviting the Dean of Guildford to speak to the Bishops about any subject he wanted, and had therefore asked the Queen to invite the Archbishop of Canterbury to Holyrood House on the Wednesday evening, so as to be ready early in the morning to meet the Pope in Scotland.  This was a bit of a one in the eye for the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, whose territory Holyrood House is, and the fact that he got pushed into a different room and left out of proceedings altogether was another oversight, none of which would have happened, of course, if the Queen had been able to remain calm and not, adding to her various other duties, pluck the Archbishop of Canterbury away from the error he’d made in inviting the Dean of Guildford to speak to the Bishops in Oxford.  Well, there you go - such is history.

The difference tonight is that my host, the Dean of Lichfield, is still here (I hope) and there is no greater honour, in fact, than to be asked into the territory of another Dean.  Before I was Dean of Guildford, where I’ve been for eight years, I was the Rector of St Mary-le-Bow in the City of London - a perfect job because it didn’t have Sunday services, Christmas or Easter.  Why did I leave it, you ask!  Anyway, while I was there I sat on the Fabric Advisory Committees of Salisbury, Winchester and Southwark, and greatly enjoyed doing so.  When the Prime Minister wrote to me asking if he could give my name to the Sovereign as the next Dean of Guildford (that’s how it was done till Mr Brown spoilt it all in the first heady days of his short Premiership), I thought, well, if I say yes I suppose I’ll have to resign from other people’s FAC’s, so I did, fully expecting them to say, ‘Oh no, we still enormously value your presence with us, pray continue’, but the Deans of Southwark, Winchester and Salisbury leapt at the opportunity to prevent the new Dean of Guildford, as he then was, interfering with their cathedrals.

So, Mr Dean, thank you for your kind invitation tonight.  I thought I might share with you a few more thoughts about projection and fantasy.  Cathedrals are regarded as a mixture of National History Museum (a cathedral being the only other place you’re likely to find dinosaurs today) and a department of English Heritage.  But the Church of England during the last forty years of my ministry has changed, from a moderately Catholic, peculiarly English, slightly reticent, a bit scholarly, form of dignified Christianity, where some Bishops were even Doctors of Divinity and most clergy had been to universities, into something different, not only floppier and less defined, but hugely influenced by a resurgent and confident Evangelicalism, with its emphasis on doctrinal orthodoxy on the one hand and liturgical unorthodoxy on the other; the English Hymnal, Ancient and Modern and Songs of Praise swept away in favour of Worship Songs.  Where once low Church people worried about having crosses in church, let alone candles, all are now agreed on the immense amount of electronic wiring needed.  As my Evangelical friend at St Saviour’s Guildford said, ‘To be a real Evangelical now you need enough electric power in the Church to light a small town’.

But cathedrals, well, there they are: ancient, beautiful but, so the projection goes, out of touch with the more intimate, easier, more American Revivalist kind of Christianity that attracts the young.  Cathedrals are all a bit, frankly, Barchester Towers.  Indeed, when I moved to Guildford I re-read Barchester Towers and found it immensely depressing because the reality was worse, and I came with relief to the point at which the Dean dies.  At least one day I shall die, I thought hopefully.  But in fact, what is a cathedral for?  It is, as in Lichfield, to be the mother church of the diocese.  Being a mother is difficult, we go through awkward developments in our relationship with our mothers, hoping to move from child-like dependency to adult friendship.  But, oh gosh, how we miss them - our mothers, I mean - when they die.  Guildford’s a bit different.  We were carved out of the Diocese of Winchester in 1927 and for the oldest generation I’ve come across, Winchester is still mother and Guildford Cathedral the wicked stepmother, not such an easy relationship for a Dean to manage.

But back to cathedrals in general.  They embody Classical Anglicanism, the daily round of Choral Worship, with the daily celebration of the Eucharist, a timetable you can follow (unlike those churches which change their services every week in that maddening way, so that you do everything you can to avoid the ‘Children’s  Service’ or ‘All Age Worship’ or ‘Sung Mattins, whichever is your particular bugbear, and if you make a slip and get the date wrong , you end up with exactly what you don’t want.  Generally speaking, cathedrals are more reliable: the daily round of prayer and praise, the beauties of Choral Evensong, the fabulous and uplifting language of the Book of Common Prayer, a place where the converting as well as uplifting liturgies of Holy Week can be played out with splendour and prayerfulness.  And hospitality.  The Church of England is a hospitable church, indeed, in any Church of England congregation you’ll find quite a sprinkling of ex-Baptists, ex-Roman Catholics, ex-Presbyterians, ex-All Sorts, and also practising Roman Catholics, practising Baptists and practising All Sorts, for we have an open table policy and are proud of it, welcoming to our altars all those who are communicants of their own churches.

One of the blessings of the Papal visit the other day was the sense that the Pope may have gone home having learned something, as well as said something.  He may have begun to think of the Church of England in a different way, not as a church from which to poach, but a church with an ancient, prayerful, Benedictine spirituality, as exemplified by Choral Evensong at Westminster Abbey and by the hospitality given by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth, a first visit from a Bishop of Rome in the entire history of Lambeth Palace, pre or post-Reformation.

So, cathedrals need ‘bigging up’.  We’re not a department of English Heritage and we’re not part of the National History Museum; we are the living embodiment of Classical Anglicanism.  The beauty of holiness can be experienced, questions can be asked.  Why does Christianity matter? Because it shows us in Jesus what God is really like, proclaimed with subtlety as well as with conviction.  For cathedrals to thrive we need you, we need patronage, and there’s nothing dishonourable in patronage.  Look at the honour boards of the Royal Opera House, or any great gallery or theatre.  Government funding, of which cathedrals receive absolutely no part, is not itself sufficient for the great cultural institutions of this country, so patronage and to be a patron is an honourable thing.  Indeed, in the development of the saints in the early days of Christianity, the pattern of the Roman patron, who spoke for, protected and looked after his client, was looked to as people began to understand how the Church could be powerful as intercessor and advocate in the heavenly places.

Back to Oxford the other day.  Why I chose to tease the Archbishop of Canterbury was precisely because I have such enormous respect for him.  He’s trying to hold together things, which have their own internal mechanism switched on to flying a pass as fast as possible.  But perhaps through symbol we can hold together things that can’t be held together by logic.  Look at the Pope embracing the Archbishop of Canterbury and speaking of Newman by using Newman’s Anglican sermons, and greeting a woman priest, a Canon of Westminster, and when he was embraced by the Archbishop, the Archbishop was wearing the ring Pope Paul VI gave to Michael Ramsey.  With words the Roman Church has denounced Anglican orders as absolutely nul and void, and said extraordinarily unhelpful and inappropriate things about women’s Ordination, but in fact the other day in Westminster Hall, in Lambeth Palace, Westminster Cathedral and Westminster Abbey a new kind of friendship was developing, a new kind of mutual support, where symbols spoke louder than words.  That’s what cathedrals do, they are symbols that speak, and because you’ve heard their music you’re going to sacrificially and imaginatively support this great shrine to St Chad.