All Souls Day Solemn Requiem

All Souls Day

Duruflé Requiem

“I will raise them up on the last day.” John 6.40

I fell into conversation with a woman while I was on holiday this time last week. When she discovered I was a priest, she started asking me questions about the recent death of her young mother and about her miscarriage a few months later.

Why had this happened? Was it punishment for something she had done wrong? Was her premature baby in heaven? What age were people in heaven?

All Souls and All Saints tide is one of the times in the church calendar when we are encouraged to ponder these questions which affect us al.

‘Why did this happen?’ the woman asked. We can answer that question. We don’t know. Bad things happen. It’s the experience of life we all share in one way or another. And some people, for no apparent reason, endure more than their share of bad things – and we don’t know why.

What about the other question: what happens after death? Here, we don’t know all that we’d like to know, but as Christians we share a hope that has been given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ himself.

Because we believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus - what we celebrate at this mass tonight - we believe in the resurrection of the dead.

We do not believe in re-incarnation or the transmigration of souls;
We do not believe in the absorption of the soul into the great soul of the universe, like a drop of water returning to the ocean;
We do not believe in existential oblivion – in Sartre’s words: “There is darkness without, and when I die, there will be darkness within."

These are all respectable beliefs, held by many people, but they are not Christian beliefs.

Jesus said to his disciples and to all of us who follow in their footsteps: “I will raise you up on the last day”. He has already blazed the way for this.

Jesus appeared in a resurrection body; there was continuity with his old body and he was still the same Jesus – not a disembodied spirit, recognizable to his disciples.

I was listening to some tapes of my father the other day. He died five years ago. He was a radio ham and one of my earliest memories is of my father sitting in his ‘shack’ – in fact the larder of our little terraced house – surrounded by huge radios with glowing valves, tapping out in Morse code ‘This is G2DPY – George, two delta, Peter, yoke. The handle is Stan, the location is Sussex…’

50 years on, when he was in his 80s, and I in my 50s, he sat with his compact little solid state transmitter, sending out the same message, only by voice now rather than Morse (although he still used Morse with his old friends as it was quicker than talking!): ‘This is G2DPY – golf, two, delta, papa, Yankee (the new politically correct phonics). The handle is Stan the location is Sussex…’

It was the same message, the same Stan, but expressed through different media – a new transmitter, and the body of an old man.

Now, as they say in the world of Amateur Radio, he is a ‘silent key’.

Although there is much we cannot grasp about heaven, and much we cannot understand about the meaning of our lives here on earth…

Jesus shows us that there will be personhood; there will be recognition of one another; we will be raised up and not simply absorbed back into some universal life force.

From the point of view of our loved ones who have already died, many of whom we shall remember in a few moments, it is already the last day and they are raised up: a little sleep and then the dawn.

From our perspective, we still await the last day.

But the assurance is that whether we are alive, or as St Paul puts it, asleep in Christ; we shall all be raised up.

This is the Christian hope in the face of the death of our mortal body; what the former Dean of Westminster, Michael Mayne in the title of his book calls ‘The Enduring Melody’, the cantus firmus of our lives, the tune that weaves through all the changing scenes of life, and eventually, of death and new life.

Here is John Donne using different imagery, but making the same point. (It’s earlier on in that passage with the familiar words, ‘no man is an island’ and ‘ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’)

All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another.

Or in the words of our Lord:

“I will raise them up on the last day.” John 6.40

Faire is the Heaven

Faire is the Heaven

The second sermon in a series on communion motets.

Faire is the heaven
Edmund Spenser (1552-99)
William Henry Harris (1883-1973)

Faire is the heaven where happy soules have place
In full enjoyment of felicitie;
Whence they do still behold the glorious face
Of the Divine, Eternall Majestie;

Yet farre more faire be those bright Cherubins
Which all with golden wings are overdight.
And those eternall burning Seraphins
Which from their faces dart out fiery light;

Yet fairer than they both and much more bright
Be the Angels and Archangels
Which attend on God's owne person without rest or end.
These then in faire each other farre excelling
As to the Highest they approach more neare,
Yet is that Highest farre beyond all telling

Fairer than all the rest which there appeare
Though all their beauties joynd together were;
How then can mortal tongue hope to expresse
The image of such endlesse perfectnesse?

“One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” Ps 27:4

I’m glad I’m old enough now to be a grumpy old man – I miss buses you can jump on and off; you can’t get fish and chips in newspaper anymore; there’s no snow at Christmas; kids are too noisy; and worst of all, worst of all – when you ring a company you don’t talk to a real person anymore!

It’s that annoying electronic lady, who gives us a menu of buttons to push for services which are not quite what we want. And we know that our conversation may be recorded for training purposes. And we know that after we have push-buttoned our way through several layers of menus, we will eventually hear that, our call is very important to them, but all their operators are currently busy and we will be held in a queue.

And we will listen to Eine kleine Nacht music played on a Woolworths music centre or worse, the Spice Girls. And if we’re lucky enough not to be cut off after 30 minutes then we’ll probably end up back at the original menu again.

Which brings us on to Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. These were writings, probably from the early 6th century, which claimed to have originated with the first century Christian bishop, Dionysius of Athens. (Acts 17.34)

It’s a mystical strand of theology which, in one aspect, resembles our infuriating telephone exchange. You never get straight through to God.

God is mediated to humanity through three orders of Angelic beings, each divided into three choirs. So from the top, next to God, we have Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; then Dominations, Virtues and Powers; and finally Principalities, Archangels and Angels - and only these last two, Archangels and Angels, have a direct mission to men and women.

This sort of neo-Platonic theology had great influence in the Western church, but after the Reformation by the late 16th century, it began to lose its unspoken authority. This is the era of Edmund Spenser who wrote the words of our offertory motet, Faire is the heaven, towards the end of his life in 1596. This is the era of Richard Hooker, one of the first great Anglican theologians. It is the era of a Reformed Protestant Catholicism.

Spenser is most famously remembered for his epic work, The Faerie Queene, his great allegory of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth who ruled from when he was six until after his death. He’s buried here in Westminster Abbey.

Spenser’s Hymnes of Heavenly Love and Heavenly Beautie are a poetic reflection on what was happening in theology at this time. Heavenly Love begins in the Divine Trinity and moves toward creation, embracing humanity and drawing them into the motionless motion of the everloving Trinity.

The contemplation of Heavenly Beautie starts from the opposite end of the cosmos and through stages takes us from the earthly realm, through the heavenly spheres to arrive at the very Godhead. It is from this work, An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie, that William Harris selected these words for his motet.

Now Spenser seems deliberately to have reversed the Dionysian order of the Angelic choirs. This can be no accident, or a lapse of memory.

The Seraphim and Cherubim are furthest from God, and ‘fairer than they both and much more bright’ are the Angels and Archangels, ‘Which attend on God’s own person without rest or end.’ This was an outrageous thought to a church schooled in Dionysian thinking.

Later on in the poem (beyond the words that will be sung today) we see the thinking behind this reversal.

You see, Spenser was also deeply influenced by the Reformation rediscovery of Augustine’s theology. It is by grace that we are saved. We have immediate access to God through the mediation of Christ alone. Immediate means ‘nothing in the middle’.

Further on in the poem Spenser writes that we must
lowly fall before his mercie seate,
Close covered with the Lambes integrity

It is the Lamb who was slain, it is Christ who allows us to approach the beauty and perfection of God.

This motet expounds that great biblical truth of our faith: all may approach God through the finished work of Christ.

It is not for those who discover hidden knowledge and mystical ways. It is not for those who persevere up rungs of the celestial ladder of powers. It is not for the top of the hierarchy of Cherubim and Seraphim, of aristocracy or intelligentsia, of clerics or prelates.

It is a direct spiritual transaction: Emmanuel, God with us. This is reflected in today’s communion motet, Wherever you go.

But of course there is much more to a poem than a theological treatise, or an exposition of doctrine.

And this is why William Harris picked up these words for his motet.

Harris was born in 1883 and studied at the Royal College of Music, where he later became a professor. He was organist of New College, Oxford, Christ Church Cathedral and St. George's Chapel, Windsor, where he gave piano lessons to the young princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret.

He composed this in 1925, recovering from the horrors of the First World War and nostalgically musing on his privileged Edwardian boyhood, surrounded by beauty and optimism. The motet is full of yearning, for lost innocence and the beauty of youth; for the release of death and the ascent to Beauty beyond compare - ‘that Highest’... ‘endless perfectness’.

And here we see that Augustinian immediacy does not completely negate Dionysian hierarchy, because there is a hierarchy of longing; of longing for God. The Christian soul who seeks the Beloved, is drawn ever higher and nearer to the Cloud of Unknowing, to Dionysius’ ‘dark ray’.

Spenser wrote at great length on human beauty and love, but this was as a prelude to that consummation of beauty and love found in Christ and echoed in these words.

Harris’s setting, for double choir - perhaps reflecting the choirs of Angels & Archangels - is deliberately romantic and evocative, drawing us into the very presence of God.

It does what music and poetry is supposed to do in Christian worship: it gives voice to what is inexpressible. It takes us far beyond the rational arguments about the existence of God or the nature of the incarnation. It resonates with that deeply implanted image of God within every human being.

All sorts of music and poetry are able to rekindle our longings for God. They express our immortal longings for him who is Love, who is Beauty, whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent. (Wittgenstein)

Let all the music and words this morning remind you of your deepest longings for God, and as you eat bread and drink wine, let his love enfold you in the embrace of Christ.

No wonder King David was glad to go to the temple and to linger in the presence of God:

“One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” Ps 27:4

All Saints Day 2007

“Rejoice and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven.” Matt 5.12

I’ve been in Berlin all week with our link churches in the Diocese of Berlin-Brandenburg. They keep Reformation Day (October 31st) there in a big way – I attended two full services, one in Berlin Cathedral and one at St Nicolai Kirche in Potsdam – the Bundespräsident Horst Köhler was present there – although it was most memorable for the Reception that followed...

The Lutherans were somewhat surprised that we as Anglican ‘protestants’ do not make more of Reformation Day. And they were mildly horrified that we kept All Saints Day and completely scandalised that we observed All Souls Day. But then the Church of England arguably owes its theology more to a shrewd Queen (ERI) and a Book of Common Prayer than to Luther.

Personally, I always loved Luther’s earthy sense of humour, most of which was far too scatological for a Knightsbridge pulpit. I’m encouraged by one of his famous quotes: “If I am not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don't want to go there.”

In popular culture heaven is full of clouds, harps and halos; angels peeling grapes, chubby little cherubim. Each age has represented Heaven as the best of their own geography, cuisine and music, although they have often done so with a little tongue in cheek.

Here’s Alan Bennett, presumably calling on childhood holiday memories, in Habeas Corpus:

“My life I squandered waiting, Then let my chance go by.
One day we’ll meet in Heaven. That Matlock in the sky.”

Today we keep the solemnity of All Saints, transferred from November 1st on which it has been celebrated in the Western Church since the 8th Century. (In the 4th Century All Saints were remembered on the Sunday after Pentecost and still are in the Eastern Church.) It is a day when we think about the men and women of God who have gone before us in the faith and who surround us now, represented as they are in the statues and angels around us here - the great cloud of witnesses in heaven.

All Souls day, which follows on November 2nd, was a day set aside to pray for those lesser mortals who have preceded us but whose final destination is thought to be a little less certain. The Church of England abolished this observance during the Reformation, but with typical ambivalence has continued to make provision for it in its liturgies.

On both days we look to the promise of heaven: those unspeakable joys which God has prepared for those that unfeignedly love him.

Is the concept of heaven just whistling in the dark, keeping ourselves cheerful in the fearsome face of death? This is what bare-fact atheists such as Richard Dawkins or Ludovic Kennedy would have us believe.

No, death itself points any reasonable person to the continuity of personhood in the life to come. The natural inclination of all humankind has been to suppose that there is yet more.

Who has not lost a friend, a family member - perhaps someone vibrant with life, loving and much loved; or perhaps at the end, weak and frail. And is not the sense that they are still ‘here’ overwhelming and almost tangible at times?

This is how that great rationalist CS Lewis felt about the death of his friend Charles Williams:

“No event has so corroborated my belief in the next world as Williams did simply in dying. When the idea of death and the idea of Williams thus met in my mind, it was the idea of death which changed.”

It is only simplistic ‘nothing buttery’ - human life is ‘nothing but’ this or that - which says, that because there is no scientific evidence for the life to come, then there is none.

It is only simplistic ‘nothing buttery’ which says, that because there are psychological reasons why we should fool ourselves into believing in the life to come, any such belief is naïve and misguided.

No, we are those who dare to believe that as we sit here, we are already part of the innumerable but unseen host of heaven, which is not somewhere else; a journey distant; a far country. Here we are mystically caught up in the communion of the saints.

Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, puts into words a valuable and common insight of Christian thinkers:

“A proper Christian understanding of heaven is not as a place remote from the present world, but rather as a dimension, normally kept secret, of present reality… ‘Heaven’ is God’s dimension of present reality.”

Religions are still divided in what they believs to be the nature of life after death.

Re-incarnation has a long and honourable history both among Hindus and Buddhists. And recently in the West it has become fashionable to remember a past life in which you were a consort to the Pharaoh or a Lady in Waiting to Elizabeth I. Less frequently, I find, do people remember their life as a goose or as a wretched medieval serf. But that is to trivialise beliefs which in our western culture we find difficult.

However, there is no place for reincarnation within the Judaeo-Christian tradition, for it is neither in the Scriptures, nor does it sit easily with the view that every person is of infinite value to God; loved by Christ; the temple of the Holy Spirit.

More popular in recent years is the idea that we will be absorbed into nothingness. This again has come from the East. Here is the Hindu Upanishad:

“ My friend, welcome the joy of impersonal nothingness - nothing, this is the end, the supreme goal.”

For the Buddhist, Nirvana is a similar concept. And of course it has had its adherents within the Christian church.

Historic Christianity has used art and music to paint a picture which emphasises the relational aspects of the world to come: a place of completion, but not dull stasis.

Heaven is the place where the object of our worship can be viewed with unveiled face. Where we will gaze on the Lamb that was slain, who yet lives. Where we will no longer peer anxiously through a glass darkly, but see and know, even as we are seen and known. Where our thirst for knowledge will be satisfied by the eternal wisdom of God.

We will be the people we have, at our best, always wanted to be. We will be free at last from the restlessness that drives us and the whole human race towards great beauty and ingenuity and deep love, and towards madness and self-destruction.

And we will be with the saints, and the angels, and with those whom we have loved in this life, now made perfect in Christ. Heaven is a social concourse, for there can be no being, no personality in isolation from others. God is Trinity and we are bound up in the loving circle of his relationships.

Dear Michael Mayne, Dean of Westminster till 1996, died two Sundays ago. He kept a diary of his dying, and towards the end he quoted his old friend John Austin Baker:

‘He who holds me in existence now can and will hold me in it still, through and beyond the dissolution of my mortal frame. For this is the essence of love, to affirm the right of the beloved to exist. And what God affirms, nothing and no one can contradict.’

And here in the bread and the wine, at this altar where the veil is thin, the dimensions of heaven break through into our own dimensions.

The mystical Body of Christ, lifted towards heaven, is viewed by another innumerable company, on another unseen shore, and we are knit together with the saints, who remind us of the reward of abiding love.

“Rejoice and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven.” Matt 5.12

Heaven, Advent 3

Advent - heaven

“But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Phil 3.20

Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal, and says to the first man he meets, "Do you want to go to heaven?"
The man said, "I do Father."
The priest says, "Then leave this pub right now!"
He approaches a second man. "Do you want to go to heaven?"
"Certainly, Father."
"Then leave this den of Satan," says the priest.
He walks up to O'Toole. "Do you want to go to heaven?"
"No thank you very much Father.”
The priest looks him right in the eye, and says, "You mean to tell me that when you die you don't want to go to heaven?"
"Oh, when I die? Yes, Father! I thought you were getting a group together to go right now."

Most of us like the concept of heaven. We’re just not keen to leave right now.

In popular culture heaven is full of clouds, harps and halos; angels peeling grapes, chubby little cherubim. Each age has represented Heaven as the best of their own geography, cuisine and music, although they have often done so with a little tongue in cheek.

Here’s Alan Bennett, presumably calling on childhood holiday memories, in Habeas Corpus:

My life I squandered waiting,
Then let my chance go by.
One day we’ll meet in Heaven.
That Matlock in the sky.”

The Koran describes heaven beautifully, albeit in very earthy terms which would comfort many a priest on a Sunday morning after one of those Saturday evenings: “It is the garden in which there are rivers of water, flowing springs, branching vines with all kinds of fruits. There the saints shall recline… no headache shall they feel there from wine, nor shall their wits be dimmed. They shall be served by large-eyed damsels of modest glance.”

I had the misfortune to be in Oxford Street yesterday. There you had all the traditional advent themes in tableaux: heaven, hell, judgement and death.

And today we look to the promise of heaven: those unspeakable joys which God has prepared for those that unfeignedly love him.

Is the concept of heaven just whistling in the dark, keeping ourselves cheerful in the fearsome face of death? This is what bare-fact atheists such as Richard Dawkins or Ludovic Kennedy would have us believe.

No, death itself points any reasonable person to the continuity of personhood in the life to come. The natural inclination of all humankind has been to suppose that there is yet more.
Who has not lost a friend, a family member - perhaps someone vibrant with life, loving and much loved; or perhaps at the end, weak and frail. And is not the sense that they are still ‘here’ overwhelming and almost tangible at times?

This is how that great rationalist CS Lewis felt about the death of his friend Charles Williams:

“No event has so corroborated my belief in the next world as Williams did simply in dying. When the idea of death and the idea of Williams thus met in my mind, it was the idea of death which changed.”

It is only simplistic ‘nothing buttery’ - human life is ‘nothing but’ this or that - which says, that because there is no scientific evidence for the life to come, then there is none.

It is only simplistic ‘nothing buttery’ which says, that because there are psychological reasons why we should fool ourselves into believing in the life to come, then there is none.

Obviously we no longer believe that heaven is in any sense ‘up there’. We have moved beyond the Ancient Near Eastern inverted colander that separates the waters above from the waters below. And we no longer adhere to the Greek view of layered heavens - God being beyond the seventh heaven.

Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, puts into words a valuable and common insight of Christian thinkers:

“A proper Christian understanding of heaven is not as a place remote from the present world, but rather as a dimension, normally kept secret, of present reality… ‘Heaven’ is God’s dimension of present reality.”

CS Lewis again hints at this in his science fiction novels. The hero, Ransom, questions an angel who appears to be shimmering as he stands before him. The angel explains that in heaven, he is usually still, but he has to perform amazing contortions to appear stationary in front of a human.

For we are on a spinning planet in a spinning solar system, within a whirling Milky Way, within an exploding group of galaxies, within a rapidly expanding universe. As we are sitting in church this morning, we are in fact spinning around at dizzying speeds of thousands of miles per second.

Religions are still divided in what they believe to be the nature of life after death.

Re-incarnation has a long and honourable history both among Hindus and Buddhists. And recently in the West it has become fashionable to remember a past life in which you were a consort to the Pharaoh or a Lady in Waiting to Elizabeth I. Less frequently, I find, do people remember their life as a goose or as a wretched medieval serf.

There is no place for reincarnation within the Judaeo-Christian tradition, for it is neither in the Scriptures, nor does it sit easily with the view that every person is of infinite value to God; loved by Christ; the temple of the Holy Spirit.

More popular in recent years is the idea that we will be absorbed into nothingness. This again has come from the East. Here is the Hindu Upanishad: “ My friend, welcome the joy of impersonal nothingness - nothing, this is the end, the supreme goal.”

For the Buddhist, Nirvana is a similar concept. And of course it has had its adherents within the Christian church.

This is the great Methodist preacher and writer Leslie Weatherhead:
“Would it really matter if I were lost like a drop of water in the ocean, if I could be one shining particle in some glorious wave that broke in utter splendour and in perfect beauty on the shores of an eternal sea?”

Well yes, Lesley, it really would matter.

Historic Christianity has used art and music to paint a picture which emphasises the relational aspects of the world to come: a place of completion, but not dull stasis.

Heaven is the place where the object of our worship can be viewed with unveiled face. Where we will gaze on the Lamb that was slain, who yet lives. Where we will no longer peer anxiously through a glass darkly, but see and know, even as we are seen and known.

Where our thirst for knowledge will be satisfied by the eternal wisdom of God.

We will be the people we have always really wanted to be. We will be free at last from the restlessness that drives us and the whole human race towards great beauty and ingenuity, and towards madness and self-destruction.

And we will be with the saints, and the angels, and with those whom we have loved in this life, now made perfect in Christ. Heaven is a social concourse, for there can be no being, no personality in isolation from others.

But even when we have painted our pictures, Scripture reminds us that, ‘no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, no mind has conceived’ what God has in store for those who love him.

And here in the bread and the wine, at this altar where the veil is thin, the dimensions of heaven break through into our own dimensions.

The mystical Body of Christ, lifted towards heaven, is viewed by another innumerable company, on another shore, and we are knit together with the saints.

And we are reminded again that

“…our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Phil 3.20

Mary's Birthday

Birthday of Mary

“Those he justified, he also glorified.” Romans 8.30

There are only two saints whose birthdays we celebrate: John the Baptist and Mary. For most others we remember them in their death; and so Mary is also remembered at her Assumption.

The Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary has been kept in the Church in various ways since at least the 6th century. (In fact today our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters at Walsingham are keeping the Feast by remembering England as Mary’s Dowry.)

September the 8th was chosen as the Octave of the Byzantine New Year on September 1st. (And December 8th was then nominated as the Conception of our Lady, nine calendar months previously.)

Nothing, of course, is known of Mary’s birth at all. But the theology of Mary the God Bearer, meant that her conception and birth portayed the preparation of the human Temple that would receive the Incarnate God.

Martin Travers draws on this tradition and the words from Revelation 12 (which we will hear at Evensong this afternoon) in his 1920s sketch for St Mary’s Bourne Street.

It depicts Our Lady Queen of Heaven (Moon beneath her feet, crown of 12 stars, with the sun behind her) cradling St Mary’s Bourne Street, another human temple, in her arms.
This image reminds us that those whom God justifies, he also glorifies. Mary is the archetypal Christian.

Mary reminds us that we all hold dual citizenship. We live here on earth, but our home country, whither we shall all return, is heaven. We are second generation immigrants, sons and daughters of Adam & Eve. But Jesus, the second Adam, our true brother, has laid open through his passion a way to our true homeland.

Mary, the faithful Eve, was received into that heavenly homeland by her Son, and as a type of the church, she has made the journey and holds us in her prayers until we too make the final journey - “in the hour of our death”.

Now there is a real tension involved in holding this dual citizenship of earth and heaven, for often we are too comfortable and content here on earth to be troubled overmuch by thoughts of heaven.

Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal, and says to the first man he meets, "Do you want to go to heaven?"
The man said, "I do Father."
The priest says, "Then leave this pub right now!"
He approaches a second man. "Do you want to go to heaven?"
"Certainly, Father."
"Then leave this den of Satan," says the priest.
He walks up to O'Toole. "Do you want to go to heaven?"
"No thank you very much Father.”
The priest looks him right in the eye, and says, "You mean to tell me that when you die you don't want to go to heaven?"
"Oh, when I die? Yes, Father! I thought you were getting a group together to go right now."

Most of us like the concept of heaven. We’re just not keen to leave right now.

All the Marian feasts, like the Martin Travers drawing, force us to contemplate heaven.

In popular culture heaven is full of clouds, harps and halos; angels peeling grapes, chubby little cherubim, so beloved by Martin Travers, (and there in the two upper corners of the picture I described, scattering flowers and petals before our lady.)

Each age has represented Heaven as the best of their own geography, cuisine and music. Although they have often done so with a little tongue in cheek.

Here’s Alan Bennett, presumably calling on childhood holiday memories in Derbyshire, in Habeas Corpus:

My life I squandered waiting,
Then let my chance go by.
One day we’ll meet in Heaven,
That Matlock in the sky.

The Koran describes heaven beautifully, albeit in very earthy terms, similar to those in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. It says:

“It is the garden in which there are rivers of water, flowing springs, branching vines with all kinds of fruits. There the saints shall recline… no headache shall they feel there from wine, nor shall their wits be dimmed. They shall be served by large-eyed damsels of modest glance.”

The natural inclination of all humankind has been to suppose there is yet more.

Who has not lost a friend, a family member - perhaps someone vibrant with life, loving and much loved; or perhaps at the end, weak and frail? And is not the sense that they are still ‘present’ overwhelming and almost tangible at times?

This is how that great rationalist CS Lewis felt about the death of his friend Charles Williams:

“No event has so corroborated my belief in the next world as Williams did simply in dying. When the idea of death and the idea of Williams thus met in my mind, it was the idea of death which changed.”

It is only simplistic ‘nothing buttery’ - human life is ‘nothing but’ this - which says that because there is no scientific evidence for continuation, there is no more.

It is only simplistic ‘nothing buttery’ which says that, because there are psychological reasons why we should fool ourselves into believing that there is continuation, that there is none.

Bishop Tom Wright of Durham, puts into words a valuable and common insight of Christian thinkers:

“A proper Christian understanding of heaven is not as a place remote from the present world, but rather as a dimension, normally kept secret, of present reality… ‘Heaven’ is God’s dimension of present reality.”

Historic Christianity has used art and music to paint a picture which emphasises the relational aspects of the world to come: a place of completion, but not dull stasis. Mary stands resplendent in heaven, but is concerned for us, here on earth. In the imagery of Martin Travers, she cradles the Church in her arms.

Heaven is the place where the object of our worship, and of Mary’s worship, her Son, can be viewed with unveiled face. Where we will gaze on the Lamb that was slain, who yet lives. Where we will no longer peer anxiously through a glass darkly, but see and know, even as we are seen and known. Where our thirst for knowledge will be satisfied by the eternal wisdom of God.

We will be the people we have always really wanted to be - the people that God intended us to be. We will be free at last from the restlessness that drives us and the whole human race towards great beauty and ingenuity, and towards madness and self-destruction.

And we will be with Mary, the saints, and the angels, and with those whom we have loved in this life, now made perfect in Christ. Heaven is a social concourse, for there can be no being, no personality in isolation from others.

But even when we have painted our pictures, Scripture reminds us that, ‘no eye has seen, nor ear has heard, no mind has conceived’ what God has in store for those who love him.’

And whenever we take the bread and the wine, at this altar where the veil is thin, the dimensions of heaven break through into our own dimensions.

The mystical Body of Christ lifted towards heaven is viewed by another innumerable company on another shore, led by Mary our Mother. And we glimpse our true homeland, and remember

"Those whom he justified, he will also glorify."

Resurrection - Easter 2003

The Gate of Heaven

“Jacob was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven."” Genesis 28.17

So Father Murphy walks into a notorious pub in Donegal, and says to the first man he meets, "Do you want to go to heaven?"
The man said, "I do Father."
The priest says, "Then leave this pub right now!"
He approaches a second man. "Do you want to go to heaven?"
"Certainly, Father."
"Then leave this den of Satan," says Father Murphy.
He walks up to O'Toole. "Do you want to go to heaven?"
"No thank you very much Father.”
Father Murphy looks him right in the eye, and says, "You mean to tell me that when you die you don't want to go to heaven?"
O'Toole smiles, "Oh, when I die, yes, Father. I thought you were getting a group together to go right now."

Today’s collect reminds us that ‘Jesus Christ has overcome death and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life’ - the gate of heaven.

The opening chapters of the Bible describe an open and ungated Garden of Eden. But after the Fall, an angel is set as a gate to keep humankind out and away from the Tree of Life - of everlasting life.

“God drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.” Genesis 3.24

At one level the Fall is an aetiology of fears that run deeply within the human psyche.

There is the fear of exclusion, being shut out; of alienation and of being alone; and the ultimate fear, the old enemy, death, and oblivion - being cut off forever from the tree of life.

Gates and doors are potent mythic symbols common in most religions and folk tales. They are often hidden, or guarded or require a key or an ‘open sesame’ to admit the seeker. In Christian folk religion they are the familiar pearly gates, guarded by St Peter with his book of life, with all the overtones of exclusion and judgement.

They are symbols used powerfully by Jesus, who describes himself as the door, the gate to the sheepfold.

In the Old Testament and into the time of the New, the City Gate is the place of discussion, of welcome and business; where the elders sit and offer advice; where the judges make pronouncements; where the guilty are executed.

So the writer to the Hebrews takes up this rich vein of imagery and reminds his readers: “Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood.” (13.11)

In a positive light, the gates becomes the symbol of security and safety. So for the suburban English family, the garden gate is the drawbridge into the castle. My mother’s instructions still ring loud and clear on any trip to the neighbours:

“Have you got a clean handkerchief? Remember to say thank you. And close the gate when you leave.”

I love Alan Bennett’s line in A Cream Cracker under the Settee, when Thora Heard has been visited by the Christian sect who push tracts through the door and call through the letterbox that Jesus loves her. She remarks with fine British bathos: “Shouting about Jesus and leaving the gate open - it’s hypocrisy is that!”

Our Lord emphasises this sense of security that a gate brings by describing himself as the gate of the sheepfold. The Good Shepherd is the door of the pen, as he lies across the opening protecting the sheep from robbers and wolves.

But he goes on to take the imagery further, providing the basis for today’s 1549 collect. “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.” (John 10.9)

However, we must always remember that metaphors are just that - metaphors. There is no literal gate, nor key, nor mystical password.

When Christ says he is the gate to eternal life, it is because of the way Christ lived and all that he accomplished: his life, his death and his glorious hope-inspiring resurrection.

And for us the ‘narrow gate’ that we are commanded by our Lord to enter, is similarly about a way of life. There is no such thing as a death-bed conversion. There may appear to be, but it could not have happened without a process that went before.

Jacob’s encounter with God (our text this morning) through the dream at Bethel was a sort of conversion, as was his wrestling with the angel 14 years later. But it was all part of a divine process which had been going on in Jacob since before his first self-conscious thoughts.

I think this is what CS Lewis is getting at in his wonderful little fantasy, The Great Divorce, where he describes heaven, not so much as a place, but as a process– the process of becoming fully alive, fully real.

“I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. Evil can be undone, but it cannot "develop" into good... If we insist on keeping Hell (or even earth), we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell... But what, you ask, of earth? Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning, a part of Heaven itself.”

Lewis is right, I believe. Heaven's gate is narrow, and the meaning of our lives is to be found by engaging in the quest to find it and enter it. And that means paying attention, living mindfully rather than mindlessly, never trying to live on the energy of past religious experiences, but always being open to the new promptings of the Spirit: to renewed conversions.

It takes discipline, it takes much prayer, and a great deal of courage and faith to be a pilgrim.

But the journey of faith and hope and love is its own reward, and a precursor of its destination. And if we walk it faithfully, we shall not have to wonder fearfully if anything or anyone awaits us beyond death's door; we will discover that our pilgrim journey itself was, in fact, that very gate of heaven, which Christ at his resurrection flung wide open.

Now as it’s Easter Sunday, and you can never have too much risus paschalis (Easter laughter), I’ll finish with another joke.

A church member who was a devout golfer came to talk to his priest one day. "Tell me, Father," he demanded, "are there going to be golf courses in heaven? I have to know."

"Well," said his priest, "I'm not really sure, but tonight I'll say a special prayer and see if God will tell me the answer."

The next Sunday, when the service ended and the congregation was shaking hands with the priest on the way out, the golfer cornered him again. "Did you get the answer, Father? Are there going to be golf courses in heaven?"

Well, George," the priest replied, "I've got good news and bad news. Which do you want to hear first?"

"Tell me the good news first," George said.

"The good news is that, yes, there are golf courses in heaven. Beautiful courses, where the sun is always shining, the rough is not too deep, there are no sand traps, and you never have to wait to tee off."
"Hey, that's great!" exclaimed the golfer excitedly. "But what's the bad news?"

"Well, the bad news is that St Peter has you down to tee off this coming Tuesday morning at 8."

On this Easter Sunday as we celebrate Christ’s resurrection, we have a foretaste of heaven and if we will be open to his Holy Spirit, this place becomes for us the gate of heaven.

“Jacob was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven."” Genesis 28.17

Faire is the Heaven - Spenser

Faire is the Heaven

“One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” Ps 27:4

I think I have discovered the worst automated telephone exchange in the world.

We are all used to the annoying electronic lady, with a transatlantic voice, who gives us a menu of buttons to push for services which are not quite what we want. And we know that our conversation may be recorded for training purposes. And we know that after we have push-buttoned our way through several layers of menus, and more than several pence of phone bill, we will eventually hear that, our call is very important to them, but all their operatives are currently busy and we will be held in a queue. And we will listen to Eine kleine Nacht music played on a Woolworths music centre.

Until we hear with dismay that we are talking to a stranger in Gallowshields called Tracey, and despite what she says, in such a heavy accent that we hardly understand a word, we suspect that she will not be able to assist us.

But on my nightmare exchange, whatever combination of buttons you pressed, you eventually came in at the beginning again.

Which brings us on to Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. These were writings, probably from the early 6th century, which claimed to have originated with the first century Christian bishop, Dionysius of Athens. (Acts 17.34)

It’s a mystical strand of theology which, in one aspect, resembles our infuriating telephone exchange. You never get straight through to God.

Indeed God is mediated to humanity through three orders of Angelic beings, each divided into three choirs. So from the top, next to God, we have Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; then Dominations, Virtues and Powers; and finally Principalities, Archangels and Angels - and only these last two, Archangels and Angels, have a direct mission to men and women.

This sort of neo-Platonic theology had great influence in the Western church, but after the Reformation by the late 16th century, it was beginning to be doubted and freely modified. This is the era of Edmund Spenser who wrote the words of our communion motet, Faire is the heaven, towards the end of his life in 1596. This is the era of Richard Hooker, one of the first great Anglican theologians. It is the era of a Reformed Protestant Catholicism.

Spenser is most famously remembered for his epic work, The Faerie Queene, his great allegory of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth who ruled from when he was six until after his death. He’s buried here in Westminster Abbey.

Spenser’s Hymnes of Heavenly Love and Heavenly Beautie are a poetic reflection on what was happening in theology at this time.

Heavenly Love begins in the Divine Trinity and moves toward creation, embracing humanity and drawing them into the motionless motion of the everloving Trinity.

The contemplation of Heavenly Beautie starts from the opposite end of the cosmos and through stages takes us from the earthly realm, through the heavenly spheres to arrive at the very Godhead. It is from this work, An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie, that William Harris selected these words for his motet.

Now Spenser seems deliberately to have reversed the Dionysian order of the Angelic choirs. This can be no accident, or a lapse of memory.

The Seraphim and Cherubim are furthest from God, and ‘fairer than they both and much more bright’ are the Angels and Archangels, ‘Which attend on God’s own person without rest or end.’ This was an outrageous thought to a church schooled in Dionysian thinking.

Later on in the poem (beyond the words that will be sung here) we see the thinking behind this reversal.

You see, Spenser was also deeply influenced by the Reformation rediscovery of Augustine. It is by grace that we are saved. We have immediate access to God through the mediation of Christ alone. Immediate means ‘nothing in the middle’.

Further on in the poem Spenser writes that we must

lowly fall before his mercie seate,
Close covered with the Lambes integrity

It is the Lamb who was slain, it is Christ who allows us to approach the beauty and perfection of God.

This motet expounds that great biblical truth of our faith: all may approach God through the finished work of Christ.

It is not for those who discover hidden knowledge and mystical ways. It is not for those who persevere up rungs of the celestial ladder of powers. It is not for the top of the hierarchy of Cherubim and Seraphim, of aristocracy or intelligentsia, of clerics or prelates.

It is a direct spiritual transaction: Emmanuel, God with us.

But of course there is much more to a poem than a theological treatise, or an exposition of doctrine.

And this is why William Harris picked up these words for his motet.

Harris was born in 1883 and studied at the Royal College of Music, where he later became a professor. He was organist of New College, Oxford, Christ Church Cathedral and St. George's Chapel, Windsor, where he gave piano lessons to the young princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret.

He composed this in 1925, recovering from the horrors of the First World War and nostalgically musing on his privileged Edwardian boyhood, surrounded by beauty and optimism.

The motet is full of yearning, for lost innocence and the beauty of youth; for the release of death and the ascent to Beauty beyond compare - ‘that Highest’... ‘endless perfectness’.

And here we see that Augustinian immediacy does not completely negate Dionysian hierarchy, because there is a hierarchy of longing; of longing for God. The Christian soul who seeks the Beloved, is drawn ever higher and nearer to the Cloud of Unknowing, to Dionysius’ ‘dark ray’.
Spenser wrote at great length on human beauty and love, but this was as a prelude to that consummation of beauty and love found in Christ and echoed in these words.

And Harris’s setting, for double choir - perhaps reflecting the choirs of Angels & Archangels - is also richly romantic and evocative, drawing us into the very presence of God.

It does what music and poetry is supposed to do in Christian worship: it gives voice to what is inexpressible. It takes us far beyond the rational arguments about the existence of God or the nature of the incarnation. It resonates with that deeply implanted image of God within every human being. Perhaps as a Lenten discipline some of you need to make time to sit down and listen to music, that it may rekindle your longings for God.

Music and poetry express our immortal longings for him who is Love, who is Beauty, whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent. (Wittgenstein)

And after we have received these earnests of his love, the bread and the wine, and listened to those closing words:
How then can mortal tongue hope to express
The image of such endless perfectnesse?
we too will fall into speechless silence.

And the silence will be permeated with the presence of God, because of what has gone before.

“One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” Ps 27:4


LENT 2 March 16
Faire is the heaven
Edmund Spenser (1552-99)
William Henry Harris (1883-1973)


Faire is the heaven where happy soules have place
In full enjoyment of felicitie;
Whence they do still behold the glorious face
Of the Divine, Eternall Majestie;

Yet farre more faire be those bright Cherubins
Which all with golden wings are overdight.
And those eternall burning Seraphins
Which from their faces dart out fiery light;

Yet fairer than they both and much more bright
Be the Angels and Archangels
Which attend on God's owne person without rest or end.
These then in faire each other farre excelling
As to the Highest they approach more neare,
Yet is that Highest farre beyond all telling

Fairer than all the rest which there appeare
Though all their beauties joynd together were;
How then can mortal tongue hope to expresse
The image of such endlesse perfectnesse?