When the first Edinburgh International Festival took place in 1947, it was “to heal the wounds of war through the language of the arts” by providing “a platform for the flowering of the human spirit”. The brief looked for a city with a distinguished setting and townscape that would embrace the opportunity “to make the festival a major preoccupation not only in the City Chambers but in the heart and home of every citizen, however modest”. That’s an aspiration to admire, not least for its idea that the arts need to find a place in our healing and flourishing, and that they belong to everyone, not only the wealthy or well-educated or privileged. An event that was any less generous or inclusive would not be the Edinburgh Festival we cherish.
Among possible festival locations, Salzburg was mentioned as the kind of city to emulate. So how apt to have the city of Mozart represented at this mass through his sublime Ave Verum, and indeed eighteenth century Austria, the homeland also of Joseph Haydn whose Little Organ Mass we are enjoying this morning. In its way, our music from the German-speaking world (including a Bach organ voluntary) affirms a confident Europeanism, our belonging to this continent that has enriched Scotland in so many ways and to which (setting a fine example to England) it remains sturdily committed. Brexit is not a word that’s understood in the world of music, theatre, film, letters or art.
The Haydn brothers Joseph and Michael, both great composers, were deeply religious men. Of Joseph’s Little Organ Mass one of the experts* has said: “in this music, Haydn’s religious character becomes glowingly apparent: instinctive and unquestioning in faith, yet celebratory and reverent, seeking devotion through the contemplation of beauty.” Near the end of his life he was taken to a performance of his Creation to celebrate his birthday. When they reached that glorious C major chord that bursts out of the representation of chaos at the start of the score, “And there was light”, Haydn, it is said, “raised his trembling arms to Heaven, as if in prayer to the Father of Harmony”.
He spoke to his biographer about composing an Agnus Dei for one of his late masses. “I prayed, not like a miserable sinner in despair but calmly, slowly. I felt that an Infinite God would surely have mercy on his finite creature, pardoning dust for being dust. I experienced a joy so confident that as I composed to the words of the prayer, I could not suppress my joy but gave vent to my happy spirits and wrote above the miserere, Allegro.” Not at all like the more reflective adagios we are used to at this point in the liturgy. But that is Haydn, always taking us by surprise, not least spiritually. My daughter and I once went to his mausoleum at Eisenstadt in Lower Austria, near the Palace of the Esterhazys he’d served so loyally. Inside they were playing a cd of one of his masses. I needed to honour the great man and thank him for all that he’d meant to me. It was most moving.
Why am I telling you this? Because I want to go back to that phrase I quoted, seeking devotion through the contemplation of beauty. This seems to me to be one of the functions of music and the arts for people of faith. Perhaps a hint of this lies behind the vision of those who created the Edinburgh Festival, a belief in the power of art to bring life back into some kind of beautiful order and ordered beauty. Making contemplatives of us means learning how to see, to pay attention, to be present to our experience and glimpse its inner meaning, what Gerard Manley Hopkins called inscape. And as we are doing the work of God at this eucharist today, we should celebrate the capacity of liturgy to achieve this, help us live in a more contemplative way so that we “see into the life of things” as Wordsworth put it.
So let’s ponder the juxtapositions within our worship today. Into the words of the mass and the music of Haydn and Mozart, the lectionary inserts readings that ask questions that are among the most fundamental we can face. Where does meaning lie, asks the preacher in Ecclesiastes, exhausted by the ever-circling years that bring no age of gold, only vanity and ennui. Psalm 49 examines the futility of living only for your power or wealth or fame or reputation, for death is the great leveller that will bring us all down to the grave like the beasts that perish. The gospel reading about the rich fool warns that there is no gospel of prosperity and we can take nothing with us when we die. Even Colossians, so radiant with the spirit of Easter, warns that we must put to death our self-serving behaviours and “set our minds on things that are above”.
I wonder whether we can set up a spiritual conversation between these readings and the Viennese mass we are enjoying. On the one hand the readings underline the realities of living and dying. They belong to the world of a series of medieval paintings in Hexham Abbey where we often worship, that show the “Dance of Death”. A skeleton brandishing a scythe comes up to different kinds of people and engages them in deadly waltz that tells them that their time has come. These sombre readings call on us to face our mortality and ask what it means to become wise in the light of our human condition.
On the other hand, Haydn’s music is shot through with a God-given happiness. Not I think because “Papa Haydn” was cheerful by temperament (though he was remembered for it), but rather that his music evokes the confident faith in which it was composed. The gospel reading ends with a striking turn of phrase. It speaks of those “who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God”. Might we experience the liturgy, enriched by the arts of the church and especially Haydn’s music, as one of the ways in which we might become “rich towards God”? Seeking devotion through the contemplation of beauty we said. That seems to me to be one of the God-given paths to wisdom because it enables us to see ourselves as we truly are, “frail and feeble, doomed to die”, yet in Christ raised from the dead, given back our lives, put together again, transformed, discovering the wisdom that teaches us how to be “rich towards God”.
The sixth century writer Boethius authored a famous book called The Consolations of Philosophy. He wrote it in prison as he faced death at the hands of his political enemies. It calmed his spirit and brought him peace at the last. Medieval theologians loved his writings because of their message that through wisdom, the soul attains to the vision of God. I believe music and the arts bring consolations too when they find their place in liturgy, prayer and a contemplative outlook. In this sacred space, in the environment of the holy, Haydn’s music is a source of grace and wisdom that strengthens us, steadies our gaze, comforts us and gives us confidence at the grave and gate of death. We lift up our hearts in gratitude, and find ourselves once again caught up in the movement of God’s everlasting love towards creation. And here’s the miracle, that we are risen with Christ, learning to seek the things that are above, discovering how to be rich towards God.
Old St Paul’s Church, Edinburgh, 4 August 2019
Ecclesiastes 1.2, 12-14, 18-23; Psalm 49.1-11, Colossians 3.1-11, Luke 12.13-21
*H.C. Robbins Landon & David Wyn Jones, Haydn: his life and music, 1988
I have loved this church for many years.
It is one of the region's finest, and I don’t say that lightly, as I was once
vicar of another great Northumberland church north of here. I brought the
friends of Durham Cathedral to Corbridge a couple of years ago, and they loved
it too. You feel here a story that speaks of centuries, not just the middle
ages but long before that, even earlier than Saxon times. For here in the Roman
town of Corstopitum on the ancient road called Dere Street, now better known as
the A68, there are visible traces of life and faith that take us back for as
long as there has been a Christian gospel and a church. There is so much to
enjoy here at St Andrew’s, both inside and out. And best of all, because I am
an inveterate church-crawler, I have always found it open. An open church says
so much about hospitality, not just yours but God’s. It says that this is
God's place and all may freely come and taste that the Lord is good.
And this weekend you have created a wonderful
flower festival. That seems to me to sum up three aspects of the life of this
church: beauty,
welcome and memory. Let
me try to say how. Beauty first.
This flower festival is a feast for the senses. Flowers give us so much
to see and enjoy: shapes, patterns, colours, textures. Some are brilliant
and draw the eye at once; others are more muted, playing in a minor key.
The interplay of light and shadow in this church is the richer because of the
flowers: they affect how we read the colours and textures of our native
sandstone. And then there are the more subtle enjoyments offered to other
senses too: the church has a scent that is different from every day, the
exquisite mingling of flowery and leafy smells with those of old stone and
woodwork and fabrics. This flower festival opens up our capacity to
respond to all that is lovely in our world.
But beauty, famously, is in the eye of the
beholder. To respond to it we need to love the person or thing before us.
And that at once draws in our capacity to create, and to give ourselves to what
we create. The story of creation in Genesis shows how completely
committed God is to every stage of his work: he not only gives himself totally
to what he does, but he loves what he fashions and shapes. So it is with
us who are his image. This festival is a true work of art because it is
an act of self-giving and love on your part. At one level, it shows your
love for this church, and I guess that there can be few people in this village
who do not care about this ancient and beautiful place. At a deeper
level, it shows your love for God that you would want to go to this degree of
care in making this church what it is for these few days. What matters about beauty
is where it leads us. It isn’t an end in itself: it’s a gift to lead us to God.
Its message today is: look around you at all this. Let it teach you about
trusting the God who cares for you even more than he cares for the passing
beauty of a bird or a flower. Because the hard truth is that once cut, a
flower is no longer a living thing. Its beauty passes, soon to be
consigned to the compost heap or bonfire. Yet the loveliness of the human
soul and the loveliness of God are eternal. So it is the beauty of
holiness that we need to nurture in ourselves and one another. And by offering
what we are to him in the worship of this church, we are being true to where
lasting beauty and joy are to be found: in the heart of God himself.
My second word for this festival was welcome. I
believe this flows straight out of beauty, because it invites everyone in to
enjoy it. It asks, no it demands, to be
shared with as many people as possible: the beauty of this festival, this
church, our life together as a community, the beauty of God himself.
Beauty is evidence of God’s love, even if we don’t always recognise it. “Love
bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back / Guilty of dust and sin” wrote George
Herbert in his most famous poem. So this festival is our way of showing love.
We do this by welcoming and being hospitable to others: our friends and
neighbours in this village, across Tynedale and many others from far and wide.
I said at the beginning how good it is to find this church open whenever I come.
But this weekend has, I’m sure, underlined the joy of hospitality, being an
open church that welcomes everybody to enjoy it and - who knows - to find here
a living, working church that offers a friendship and care that reflect nothing
less than the love of God himself.
But then there’s the third word, memory. The theme
of this festival is “A Backward Glance”. And that’s about our story here in
this ancient place, a story that spans the whole of what we call Anno Domini from
Roman times to the present. Looking back is vitally important for all of us in
our communities, and for each of us personally. My mother died this summer, and
now I am having to go through her home, the house I was brought up in from the
1950s until I left to go to university. So many memories are evoked by the
sights and smell and feel of that house and what it contains, not least in my
own letters to her which, it turns out, she lovingly kept and cherished all her
life. Of course, memories can be a painful as well as thankful, but they have
formed and shaped us, made us what we are today and what we hope to become
tomorrow. So it is in our village community and in the community of this
church. Here at this festival, our heritage of memories both ancient and modern
is laid out for us to enjoy, to reflect on, and perhaps be challenged by as
well.
I hear the author of our epistle reading
reminding Timothy of the importance of remembering. He tells of his past life
as a persecutor and man of violence; but then he goes on to remember how God in
his mercy has come to him, how his grace has “overflowed for me with the faith
and love that are in Christ Jesus” – not just overflowed but overflowed for me. That’s
how personal he makes it. Here at the eucharist, we obey the command to “do
this in memory of me”, which means keeping the events of Jesus’ life, death,
resurrection and glory alive in our present experience “until he comes again”.
Remembering, looking back, is at the heart of our Christian faith, because it
is memory that has the power to transform us in the present and give us hope
for the future. At this altar, we enfold our own memories in the memory we have
of Jesus that draws us together in him and makes us what we are as his
household, his people, his body.
So an open church and a beautiful festival
and a warm, hospitable community and a celebration of memories from the distant
and nearer past are the best possible symbol of how God embraces us and the
stories we tell. welcome us back into his friendship. Call it mission if
you like: what is important is that we do what we do in God’s name, and for his
sake, because he is an outward-facing God for whom the world and its concerns,
its joy and its pain, are always on his heart. By throwing open the doors
of our church this weekend, we are saying that they are on our hearts too.
If the spirit of this festival has touched us in some deep way, then we shall
keep its spirit alive in our common life long after the flowers have become a
thing of the past. This is what God looks for us as we celebrate the life
of the Jesus among us, and treasure the memories of our lives gathered up in
his so that we live out his beauty and welcome in his world.
St Andrew, Corbridge, 11 September 2016. 1 Timothy 1.12-17, Luke 15.1-10
