Sermon: Volunteers Sunday 2011

 

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

Preacher:
Victor Stock
Date:
Sunday 16th October 2011
Service:
Evensong
Readings:
1 John 3: 16 to 4: 6

Tonight’s second lesson comes from the early ‘90s of the Common Era, the end of the first century, and the key themes of the first three letters of John (the second and third being only one chapter each), the key themes are the fundamental truths of the Christian faith – walking in the light, following God not the world, living as God’s children, loving one another and having confidence before God.  They’re encouragements to the early Church when, so sadly, but inevitably, the Church began to divide, and different interpretations of truth rubbed up against each other, causing friction, dissention and disunity.

The author of the first letter of John had John’s Gospel before him and had absorbed much of that great theologian’s teaching.  He saw it as his duty to remind that part of the Church over which he had influence of the Gospel’s fundamental truths, the truths of the Christian faith.  There is an immediacy and an attractiveness here.  Chapter 3, verse 2: ‘Here and now, dear friends, we are God’s children.  What we shall be has not yet been disclosed, but we know that when it is disclosed, we shall be like him’.  It’s all very encouraging.

During this 50th Anniversary year of Guildford Cathedral we’ve been asking ourselves, ‘What is a cathedral for?’  There are two pictures of cathedrals generally held.  One is, it’s a big parish church, like a local community, but a bigger community.  That’s the easiest to understand of the two pictures.  But a different picture is that a cathedral is a place where things can be done that a parish church cannot so easily do.  A cathedral can be a place for the focus of unity and also diversity.  So, here in Guildford Cathedral we welcome St Saviour’s each year for a great Evangelical service, and we welcome the Catholic tradition of Anglicanism for the Procession of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction on Corpus Christi.  We are, above all, the Bishop’s church, the place where the Bishop’s chair is, his cathedra, from which he teaches, so the Cathedral is here to support and pray for the Bishop’s ministry, and by extension, to pray each day for the parishes and communities of the Diocese, hence our Cathedral Links and the parishes and priests mentioned every day in the prayers, and all of you who are our so valued volunteers.

So, a cathedral, and this is difficult to put into words, does what the writer of the letters of John does: the cathedral witnesses to the fundamental truths of the Christian faith, but does so in a number of different ways at a number of different levels.  For example, in the parish church, by and large, more or less, the same group of people worship every Sunday.  Priests and people are building up a recognisable and identifiable community.  Hence, even in a cathedral, the importance of the Community Committee, the importance of the pastoral work of a Canon who has responsibility especially for that aspect of cathedral life, the caring for Community.  But a cathedral does something else.  Our group of faithful worshippers and volunteers tonight, but last Sunday the Cathedral filled with men and women from far beyond the locality, represented not only by members of the Royal British Legion and its officers, but also by the Queen’s representatives of East and West Sussex, as well as the County of Surrey – three Lord Lieutenants present at Evensong.

Then, the other week in co-operation with a parish church, the parish church, to which we are by history and affection closely bound, Holy Trinity, the lecture from the Regus Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Oxford, Professor Sarah Foot, commemorating the 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible; an act of co-operation between Cathedral and parish, using the town as its venue.  The Golden Jubilee lectures early in the year on Faith in Community drew people together from a wide area to listen to such as Frank Field or the Archbishop of Westminster.  A place of ecumenical encounter with the Roman Catholic Church and of political encounter with a distinguished Member of Parliament.  And more modestly, the year draws towards its close with the current series of lectures on the Gospel in the Gallery, what we can understand of religion and how we can be deepened in our faith by what we can see and learn about through the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection.

Then, there are celebrations like Messy Cathedral, more than 500 children and parents from all over the Diocese and from parishes which have little or no experience of the distinctive daily ethos of cathedral life.  And beneath all this, the distinctive daily ethos, the Benedictine pattern inherited from the Medieval Church and the early Church beyond that, faithfully maintained in the Cathedral with the public recitation of the Divine Office, said in the morning and sung in the evening, something that so impresses and encourages our new member of Chapter, Canon Andrew Bishop.

But the fundamental truths of the Christian faith that the letters of John dealt with in the ‘90s of the first century, have to be dealt with in new and imaginative ways today, hence the growing relationship for good between a secular university, Surrey, and this Cathedral Church of the Holy Spirit, exemplified by the friendships which have grown between a group of atheist scientists and the present Dean, and the presence in the Cathedral at Andrew Bishop’s Installation as a Canon of Orthodox Rabbi, Buddhist Chaplain, as well as Roman Catholic and Free Church Chaplains.  A cathedral is a centre of diversity, which is an illustration of an underlying unity of what we are becoming here and now.  ‘Dear friends, we are God’s children’, writes the author of this evening’s lesson, ‘What we shall be has not yet been disclosed, but we know that when it is disclosed, we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is’. 

Those of us working on developing a financial base for the Cathedral’s operations and worship have been identifying three areas of concern: Fabric, the bricks and mortar, Music, which we’ve so enjoyed this evening, and Mission.   The Mission of the Cathedral is perhaps, for it embraces the other two, Fabric and Music, the most complex but also the most exciting.  Everyone who comes through the door here, by the quality of the welcome they receive (this is especially the vocation of the volunteers, in the nave, in the shop, and wherever we help each other) is touched by something of our core purpose, and through worship, study and service is drawn more deeply into the Christ life, and yet like a museum, whilst we honour and value the insights, discoveries and glories of the past, we’re also on the move towards God’s future, and ‘what we shall be has not yet been disclosed’.