Stirring us up to Sing: Sermon at the Consecration of Nicholas Chamberlain as Bishop of Grantham

Honour comes into things today. We are here to celebrate the consecration of a new bishop. We are glad for him, for the diocese of Lincoln and for the whole church. And it is not wrong to say that we honour him as we give thanks for Nick, this man of God, this friend, this priest whom we surround today with our love, our affection and our prayers.

Why do I use that word ‘honour’? Because it’s found in the gospel reading for this holy day, the feast of St Hild. (Two things to say here in parentheses. First, you’ll forgive me for preferring to speak of her by her Saxon name Hild rather than the Latin Hilda despite Nick’s honourable role as incumbent of St Hilda’s Church Jesmond. The second is that she died not on the 19th but the 17th of November 680. But as Lincoln people know, that day is also the anniversary of Hugh of Lincoln who died in 1200. To my mind Hugh, who was not only five hundred years Hild’s junior but also a gentleman, would not have hesitated to concede the 17th to the senior lady and taken the 19th himself. But the Church calendar has a wisdom of its own.)

But back to this word honour. In the gospel, Jesus has a lesson about good behaviour at a party. Be careful. Don’t grab the place of honour for yourself. Wait to be invited. It’s a pertinent reading at an episcopal service, for diocesan bishops as we know have seats. Cathedrals are named after these seats of honour, these cathedra; pretty grand some of them are too, if Durham’s is anything to go by. But, Jesus says, be properly reluctant about occupying a place of primacy and taking honour. Once, bishops-designate had to be dragged to their consecrations, so fearful were they to take up this awesome office. Nolo episcopari! they would cry, ‘I don’t want to be a bishop.’ Quite right. That should be an essential quality in the person spec of every episcopal appointment.

It’s so characteristic of Jesus’ teaching. Doxa, honour, is only to be had by those who begin by sitting in the lowest place and are invited to take a privileged seat. Why? Because his rule is a kingdom of nobodies where the greatest are least and the last first. Jesus himself is the example of this way of being: he who was rich became poor so that we might become rich, who took the form of a slave and was obedient unto death. All of Christianity is about this. But public ministry in particular, and episcopal ministry most of all. To be ‘grand’ is to subvert the very thing a priest or bishop embodies as-Christ. To be a ‘dignitary’, as we call it, is to embody true Christian ‘worth’, dignitas; and this means above all else, evangelical poverty of spirit, the virtue of humility we heard about in Ephesians, the grace to be as nobody and become one of God’s poor.

Hild was born into the royal house of Northumbria. But her vocation did not lie in being a princess but an abbess pledged to religious poverty. She had the oversight of a double monastery of women and men like her given as God’s poor in imitation of the humble Son of Man and in response to his call to follow. Like others inspired by gentle Aidan, she is depicted by Bede as a woman who embodied the spirit of the gospel herself by noticing and honouring those of little account. One of those to whom she said, in effect, ‘friend, come up higher’ was Caedmon. He was a nobody in that community. While the brothers and sisters were at prayer in quire or dining in hall, he would be outside in the stables caring for the animals and sleeping among them. Once in a dream, someone came to him and asked him to sing about the origin of created things. ‘How can I sing?’ he replied helplessly, 'how shall I sing that Majesty?' Yet in his dream, he composed a poem and sang the praise of the Creator. Next day he remembered the song. Hild heard about it and summoned him. Testing and recognising his gift, she called him to take vows and enter the monastery as its poet and singer in residence, one of the earliest poets to write in English. 

I love that story because of what it says to me about Christian vocation and ministry. For one thing, it underlines the Bible’s insistence that God’s humble poor are his special treasure. This is always a privilege of public ministry as deacon, priest or bishop, to notice and care about those in the stable no less than those in quire. But to go on, this ‘noticing’ is about paying attention to what God is doing in the lives of others, even when they are the most unlikely of others. We should learn from this story not to think we can ever predict or know where God is going to be at work. All ministry is to do the work of God, indeed, but part of this is the difficult and exacting task of discernment: understanding that God is at work in the world before we ever get to see it or know about it. Only then are we in a position to bring about reconciliation and healing, one of the gifts Hild was especially remembered for in the Saxon church. This is where we look to bishops to lead. I don’t simply mean that the recognition and calling out of gifts and ministries belongs to episcope as your act of loving oversight of the church. I mean something altogether larger than this: teaching the church to pay attention to creation, to all of life in its flourishing and in its brokenness, to listen and discern so that we do not miss the often hidden stirrings of the Spirit of God. Hild, we can safely say, always acted in an episcopal way as Abbess, and the story of how Caedmon was brought to her and her eyes and ears were opened gives us a clue about the leadership style of this remarkable woman.

And then there is the nature of the gift itself. To compose poetry and to sing songs in praise of God: this was the charism Hild discerned in Caedmon and brought out to flourish. Isn’t it the vocation of a bishop to help the whole church find our voice as poets and singers? When it comes to worshipping God and speaking about him, poetry and song are far closer to the truth of things than prose can ever be. In Bruce Chatwin’s book Songlines, he traces the footsteps of native peoples who sing as they walk and bring worlds into being, echoing the primordial song by which the universe was made. ‘The trade route is the Songline because songs, not things, are the principal medium of exchange.’ Oscar Wilde says that Christ was a poet who makes poets out of all of us. I have a hunch that if bishops and all of us who are Christian leaders could worry about the prose a little less, and trade in song a little more, our church might breathe a great sigh of relief. For with the lightness of spirit and quickness of step that poetry and song bring, who knows how our worship could begin to dance, and our mission glow with gratitude, and our service of God and humanity, and our pursuit of all that is just and right be transformed from Pelagian duty into gospel joy?

This story of Hild and Caedmon fits so well with our gospel reading. Here is the man who knew his place but was called to a new role because his gift was discovered and recognised. I doubt if Hild ever forgot the day she first heard Caedmon sing. To him, like so many in the Saxon church of Northumbria, ‘she was known as mother because of her outstanding devotion and grace’ says Bede. To be a father or a mother in God, like every act of parenting, is to recognise the giftedness of those who are as children to us, and raise them to the place of honour where their God-given potential is realised, and where the base metal of prosody is transmuted into the shining gold of song.

'We need each other's voice to sing the songs our hearts would raise.' Nick, you are among us as God’s bishop to stir us up to sing even in dark and evil times, especially in dark and evil times*. So find your own voice, and help us to find ours so that we may be a church of joy and hope as together we learn how to 'sing that Majesty which angels do admire.'

*A reference to the bombings in Beirut and Paris by Daesh a few days before, and heightened security in the UK.

Southwark Cathedral, St Hild’s Day 2015.
At the consecration of The Right Reverend Dr Nicholas Chamberlain as Bishop of Grantham. (Ephesians 4.1-6, Luke 14.7-14)

 

Finding a Voice: a sermon on St Hild's Day

What’s your recurring nightmare? Falling off a cliff? Taking that exam? Having a tooth out?  One of mine is a dream quite common among clergy, apparently, being strangled by my own priestly vestments as I try to get out of them after a service.  Today’s gospel reading reminds me of another of my nightmares. When I hear Jesus’ parables about great feasts, I imagine myself at a party finding that I’m expected to do a ‘turn’.  There are two kinds of people: those who seize the main chance glimpsing celebrity just minutes away; and those who shrink from the awful certainty of public failure, embarrassment and shame. They know how to take the lowest place. We all know which class we belong to.  And even if there is some chance of faking it, you still feel in your heart of hearts that everyone is seeing through you. 

The Venerable Bede wrote about just such a shrinking violet in his History of the English Church and People.  It was late in the 7th century.  He says that when the guests at a feast were asked to entertain the gathering, a lay brother saw the harp coming his way, and got out as fast as he could, fleeing outside to a stable to sleep.  And his worst dream came back to haunt him: someone standing beside him telling him to sing something.  ‘I can’t sing’ he replied, ‘that’s why I left the party and came out here’.  ‘But you shall sing’ persisted his visitant.  ‘What about?’ asked Caedmon. ‘Sing about the creation of all things’.  And this untutored man who had never written or sung a verse in his life broke into the purest song of praise.  Next morning, he was brought to the abbess of the double monastery where there were both women and men.  She saw at once that divine inspiration had taken hold of him.  She had him admitted as a monk, and taught him the scriptures which he turned into verse and, says Bede, through his gift, inspired his hearers ‘to love and do good’ and prepare for the joys of heaven.  We sang about this in Canon Brown’s hymn.

Caedmon was the earliest English Christian poet.  I am telling you about him because of that abbess who recognised his gift: Hild, as the Saxons called her; Hilda in Bede’s Latin.  She was one of the great leaders of the Saxon church in the 7^th century, born 1400 years ago next year, a princess called back to Northumbria by St Aidan, admitted to the religious life and associated since then with three places in the North East commemorated on the kneelers executed by our broderers at the Hild altar in this Cathedral. The first is South Shields where the parish church in the town centre plausibly stands on an ancient Saxon place of worship. Next comes Hartlepool where one of the North East’s great churches, the grand gothic pile of St Hilda, stands on the numinous windy headland near the medieval sea wall where a plaque tells you that you are not far from the monastery where she was abbess.

Finally comes Whitby which is properly Yorkshire but for today an honorary part of North East England and definitely Northumbria.  The marvellous abbey ruins on the cliffs above the town stand on the original Saxon site. Here too, Hild was abbess and hosted the Synod of 664 AD at which the Northumbrian church made the difficult choice to follow continental Roman customs for calculating the date of Easter rather than the Irish traditions of Lindisfarne in which she herself had been schooled.  I see her trying to find reconciliation between those two ways of being Christian, for unlike others, she did not abandon England when the decision went against Lindisfarne. 

I love the story of Hild taking in the unknown Caedmon as the midwife of his gift so as to bring it out into the open.  There is always a risk in this, discerning and nurturing what perplexes other people, recognising the work of God in the life of another human being.  In the gospel reading, Jesus speaks of the importance of invitation: it is the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind who should be welcomed to the banquet.  And this is what Hild did for Caedmon, recognising his gift of poetry and song, a gift not only of versification but of interpretation: understanding the ways and works of the Creator and speaking about them. It’s a lovely picture of how human beings grow and flourish when they are, so to speak, brought inside and their gifts and talents are celebrated.

Some of you have recently seen the film Little Voice. Jane Horrocks plays an ultra-timid daughter who is so dominated by her overbearing mother that she can’t speak above a stage-whisper.  She spends her days in her bedroom listening to LPs of songs from the shows: Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe and Shirley Bassey.  And she sings along with them, sings as them, for she can sing – not just hum or whistle but really sing.  One evening Little Voice is overheard by a seedy, dead-end talent scout, Michael Caine, who recognises her gift and realises this is his last big chance for a big prize. So he puts her on the stage.  It’s not a straightforward rags to riches story.  But it is a picture of finding one’s voice, and through it, finding herself. Through Hild, Caedmon, a 7^th century Little Voice, found his gift, found his voice, found his God, and found himself.

I see in this a metaphor of Christian ministry.  I don’t mean what the clergy do, but what we all do for one another as the people of God, our companions in the church. Isn’t the task of ministry to try to recognise what God is doing in the world and in those around us, and help make it conscious, articulate, so that they find their God, their voice and their gifts?  That is much harder than baldly stating the truths of Christianity or pressing home moral certainties. As I read the gospels, I find Jesus gong about his work in a way that brings out the possibilities inherent in ordinary men and women, enticing them into responding more fully to the love and grace of God: piping so that people not only listen but dance. It’s suggestive rather than insistent.  It offers people the freedom to say yes, or no, or maybe, or it’s hard, or I wish I could; but this is how to draw out of them the song they alone can sing.  Oscar Wilde said that what makes Jesus a poet is that he makes poets of us all.  Precisely this gift of opening the lips of others to proclaim the words and works of God is how I read Hild’s act in bringing another person to life. 

There are few things more important than to do this for one another.  We can never know how much a little word of encouragement can mean to someone else: ‘thank you’, ‘that touched me’, ‘God spoke to me through what you did for me’.  Words and gestures like these are so often how God gives us the gifts and the strength to carry on serving him as followers of Jesus.  It means being open to other people, responsive to them in their tentativeness and lack of confidence, glimpsing what God is doing and could do through them, as Hild discerned with Caedmon. There are those who have done this for us.  We must do it for others. 

 

This is how the church is built up as we respond together the to ‘one hope of our calling’.  Who knows whether there is a Caedmon somewhere waiting for us to prompt them, nudge them, encourage them to find their voice, open their mouths and sing?

Durham Cathedral, St Hild’s Day, 17 November 2013

Luke 14.7-14