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A sermon preached in Salisbury Cathedral by The Rt Revd Martin Shaw, Bishop of Argyll and the Isles on Friday 17 July 2009
"LET IT BE KNOWN IN ALL THE EARTH - THE LORD IN NEAR! - HOSANNA TO THE SON OF DAVID"
There he was on a Metro Station platform in Washington DC. Forty five minutes worth, he gave on his violin, playing the six Bach sonatas and partitas, with delicate skill. Some threw into his yawning violin-case, a coin or two. Some listened for seconds at a safe distance. Most ignored the violin case and the violinist. All moved on quickly because of, yes, that pressing schedule. All, except a three year old boy. He pulled on his mother to stop, watch and listen, only to be dragged off, disconsolate. But the little boy kept turning around, as fascinated little boys do, to take in the mystery of this musical revelation. The violin was a Gibson Stradivarius worth about £1.5 million. The violinist collected only $32, but in the evening, he appeared in a concert hall, where his audience paid $100 a ticket. This was the renowned violinist, Joshua Bell. The Washington Post had asked him to play in the Metro to test out a theory about perception. In an unexpected place, we do not stop and listen even to outstanding musical talent. And so, if I pass by a great violinist on a pavement or platform, what else am I missing? The gift, after all, of this Festival is precisely to open the ears and heart to the resonances of God, the rumours of God, that abound in unexpected places – and we miss. But more than that, there is an imperative – to spread the rumour, as Isaiah puts it: ‘Let it be known in all the earth!’ And the ‘it’ that we are making known is ‘The Lord is near!’
Well, what’s stopping us? One obstacle is that erosion of courage, coupled with a crushing sense of failure that seems to afflict many of us who had hoped to lead a Christ-like life. And in failure’s slip-stream, we are blinded by the desire to be someone else, somewhere else where we can live that Christ-like life.
In Graham Greene’s early novel The Power and the Glory, a priest is hunted down and captured by the Mexican authorities, anxious to eradicate the Christian Church’s influence. He has achieved little, if anything. He, like many who look into themselves with self-loathing, has become a whisky priest. On the morning of his execution, he reflects (and I quote):
“…Soon he wouldn’t even be a memory. He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed with nothing done at all. It seemed to him, at that moment, that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted – to be a saint.” [‘The Power and The Glory’. Graham Greene. Penguin. P210]
I’m truly silenced by the harsh beauty of this sense of failure, that is so often described as weakness, and yet reverberates as the very weakness of God! For me, it is only in such weakness, that numbing distance from God, that I can get anywhere close to understanding Paul as he writes in the letter to the Philippians and immortalised in the music of Purcell: ‘Rejoice in the Lord always. The Lord is near!’ [The Letter to the Philippians Ch 4 vv 1,4] In God’s distance is his nearness.
Perhaps worse still, is what Richard Holloway describes as ‘the disease of misplaced significance’. The uncomfortable truth is that I would rather see Joshua Bell play his violin in an exclusive gathering than in the incognito banality of a Metro platform. There is always something else more significant that I should be doing; always somebody else more significant I should be. And… somewhere else more significant that I should be at. The right books to be seen reading, the prestigious concert, the job that will give me kudos, to be a member of the church which is a centre of excellence, the finest retreat to sign up for, There’s that religious neurosis: the lust for authenticity, whether it is of biblical soundness or liberal flexibility. The tragedy is that we are in danger of a corrosive sectarianism: the thinly disguised despising of those who disagree with us, with that inclination to surround ourselves with the like-minded. And the resulting tragedy of all this is - the privatising of the rumour of God! Meanwhile the unpredictability of the Holy Spirit, always at a tangent to the desire for power, demands that where I am now, who I am now is where ‘The Lord is near’.
And there in the Gospel, as if to rub salt in the wound: Jesus drives out all those buying and selling in the Temple. I feel myself break into a cold sweat every time I hear it. My hankering for the exclusive is blown wide open as the blind and the lame come pouring into the temple to be healed by Jesus. You in these Southern Cathedrals know only too well the tension between financing them and the proclaiming the disturbance of the Gospel. What’s more, Matthew goes on to tell us that it’s children who then spread the rumour: ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ ‘The Lord is near’!
But there is a cost. For much of his life, Francis Poulenc, whose music you are hearing in his setting of the Mass, struggled with the tension between his Roman Catholicism and his sexuality, which, of course, threatened to take him outside the strictures of the Church. That tension is there in the music. Poulenc never shrank from living with that tension and using it creatively.
Maria Yudina, the great Russian pianist, strengthened by her Orthodox faith, had the courage to stand out against the Stalinist Musical establishment. As Stalin lay dying, he listened on the Radio to a Mozart Piano Concerto, with Maria Yudina as the soloist. She was asked to make a special recording for the Dictator. She knew that if she refused, her fate would be sealed. Stalin wrote to Yudina to thank her. And this was her response:
“I thank you, Josif Vissarionovich…. I will pray for you day and night and ask the Lord to forgive your great sins before the people and the country.” [‘Triumphs of the Spirit in Russia’ Donald Nicholl. DLT p230]
Few of us live in circumstances of such agonising tension. Nevertheless, the Church that feeds us and irritates us, lives and breathes in that tension. This is the tension of God, who loves the Church but also loves those who are excluded by it.
Perhaps there are a few here who are bound for the heroism of displaying their gift, whatever it may be, on a station platform. Even fewer perhaps, who will be prepared to live the courageous and often lonely life of the saint. But maybe, just maybe, the gift that you receive at this Festival in this Holy Temple, you will share somewhere that will cause another boy to drag on his mother’s hand. Perhaps he will listen to and hear the rumour of the Gospel of Jesus in you: ‘The Lord is near’. Let the music which you make or which you are given, lead you to be the rumour of God, the nearness of God.
[Martin Shaw. Oban. July 2009]
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Well, what’s stopping us? One obstacle is that erosion of courage, coupled with a crushing sense of failure that seems to afflict many of us who had hoped to lead a Christ-like life. And in failure’s slip-stream, we are blinded by the desire to be someone else, somewhere else where we can live that Christ-like life.
In Graham Greene’s early novel The Power and the Glory, a priest is hunted down and captured by the Mexican authorities, anxious to eradicate the Christian Church’s influence. He has achieved little, if anything. He, like many who look into themselves with self-loathing, has become a whisky priest. On the morning of his execution, he reflects (and I quote):
“…Soon he wouldn’t even be a memory. He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed with nothing done at all. It seemed to him, at that moment, that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted – to be a saint.” [‘The Power and The Glory’. Graham Greene. Penguin. P210]
I’m truly silenced by the harsh beauty of this sense of failure, that is so often described as weakness, and yet reverberates as the very weakness of God! For me, it is only in such weakness, that numbing distance from God, that I can get anywhere close to understanding Paul as he writes in the letter to the Philippians and immortalised in the music of Purcell: ‘Rejoice in the Lord always. The Lord is near!’ [The Letter to the Philippians Ch 4 vv 1,4] In God’s distance is his nearness.
Perhaps worse still, is what Richard Holloway describes as ‘the disease of misplaced significance’. The uncomfortable truth is that I would rather see Joshua Bell play his violin in an exclusive gathering than in the incognito banality of a Metro platform. There is always something else more significant that I should be doing; always somebody else more significant I should be. And… somewhere else more significant that I should be at. The right books to be seen reading, the prestigious concert, the job that will give me kudos, to be a member of the church which is a centre of excellence, the finest retreat to sign up for, There’s that religious neurosis: the lust for authenticity, whether it is of biblical soundness or liberal flexibility. The tragedy is that we are in danger of a corrosive sectarianism: the thinly disguised despising of those who disagree with us, with that inclination to surround ourselves with the like-minded. And the resulting tragedy of all this is - the privatising of the rumour of God! Meanwhile the unpredictability of the Holy Spirit, always at a tangent to the desire for power, demands that where I am now, who I am now is where ‘The Lord is near’.
And there in the Gospel, as if to rub salt in the wound: Jesus drives out all those buying and selling in the Temple. I feel myself break into a cold sweat every time I hear it. My hankering for the exclusive is blown wide open as the blind and the lame come pouring into the temple to be healed by Jesus. You in these Southern Cathedrals know only too well the tension between financing them and the proclaiming the disturbance of the Gospel. What’s more, Matthew goes on to tell us that it’s children who then spread the rumour: ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ ‘The Lord is near’!
But there is a cost. For much of his life, Francis Poulenc, whose music you are hearing in his setting of the Mass, struggled with the tension between his Roman Catholicism and his sexuality, which, of course, threatened to take him outside the strictures of the Church. That tension is there in the music. Poulenc never shrank from living with that tension and using it creatively.
Maria Yudina, the great Russian pianist, strengthened by her Orthodox faith, had the courage to stand out against the Stalinist Musical establishment. As Stalin lay dying, he listened on the Radio to a Mozart Piano Concerto, with Maria Yudina as the soloist. She was asked to make a special recording for the Dictator. She knew that if she refused, her fate would be sealed. Stalin wrote to Yudina to thank her. And this was her response:
“I thank you, Josif Vissarionovich…. I will pray for you day and night and ask the Lord to forgive your great sins before the people and the country.” [‘Triumphs of the Spirit in Russia’ Donald Nicholl. DLT p230]
Few of us live in circumstances of such agonising tension. Nevertheless, the Church that feeds us and irritates us, lives and breathes in that tension. This is the tension of God, who loves the Church but also loves those who are excluded by it.
Perhaps there are a few here who are bound for the heroism of displaying their gift, whatever it may be, on a station platform. Even fewer perhaps, who will be prepared to live the courageous and often lonely life of the saint. But maybe, just maybe, the gift that you receive at this Festival in this Holy Temple, you will share somewhere that will cause another boy to drag on his mother’s hand. Perhaps he will listen to and hear the rumour of the Gospel of Jesus in you: ‘The Lord is near’. Let the music which you make or which you are given, lead you to be the rumour of God, the nearness of God.
[Martin Shaw. Oban. July 2009]