A message from the Dean - 29 May 2020
Dear Friends,
This time of the year holds memories. For many, the darling buds of May aren't so much signs of bucolic pleasure but nature's rebuke: if it's May, exams aren't far away. Even now, whenever I see hawthorns in bloom I remember that dread feeling: "don't waste time, get back to revision". But before the terrors of public exams struck me from the ages of 16 to 26, I had much more pleasant memories.
I was born and raised in Salford, Greater Manchester, and through my childhood and teens I was nurtured in the faith by the original Coronation Street Parish of St. Clement's, Ordsall. In common with thirty other parishes within walking distance (3 miles?) of Manchester City Centre, we joined in a great procession of witness into, around, and out of the city. It took place on the old Whit Monday Bank Holiday which morphed into the 'Spring Bank Holiday' in the 1960s, but it used to be tied as firmly to the Church calendar as Easter Monday is to Easter Day.
'Whitsuntide' is an old English term for Pentecost which we celebrate this coming Sunday, the fiftieth day of Easter, the festival which remembers the anointing of the first apostles with the wind and flame of the Holy Spirit. The was the moment when the Church went public and found the language and confidence to tell the world the good news of Jesus Christ, to preach the forgiveness of sins, the healing of minds and bodies, the hope of eternal life, and union with Christ through baptism. It's a very important day. Sometimes it's called the 'birthday of the Church'. Traditionally, it was a day when converts were baptised (christened), and as they wore white robes to signify their new dignity as Christians, 'Whitsun' became a familiar, homely term for Pentecost. So, on Whit Monday, Church of England parishes in Manchester got out of church and walked as a demonstration of faith (in theory!)
In the nineteenth century, with the rise of the great industrial cities in the North and Midlands, part of the Church's response was to build huge numbers of churches, chapels and schools, and the century also saw the rise of Sunday School. Thousands of children received some kind of religious education and Christian formation through good-hearted women (almost without exception) telling Bible stories to children uncomfortable in their 'Sunday best'. Whitsuntide with these big processions of witness become the time when everybody who 'walked' got new clothes. And the hidden catch was that if you didn't go to Sunday School or sing in the choir or serve at the altar, you didn't walk. Think of the shame!
At its height the Manchester whit walks had between 20-25,000 taking part in the Church of England processions and, not to be outdone, the Catholics, who walked on Whit Friday, regularly fielded 25-30,000. If it rained on us, the Catholics would say "God knows his own". If it rained on the Catholics, we would say "you weren't praying hard enough". (It was cheerfully sectarian.) Every Church of England parish hired a marching brass band pumping out the 'Standard of St. George', 'Onward Christian Soldiers', 'The Church's One Foundation'. We used to stop outside Salford Royal Hospital and sing 'Nearer My God to Thee', which cannot have been easy for the patients. Our parish would field its crack team of altar servers in red cassocks and starched cottas, with the processional cross, followed by the robed choir, the clergy in full fig escorted by church wardens, with staves of office glowing with polish. Then the great glory - the parish banner escorted with children (dressed in white!) holding banner ribbons. Then came the ranks of the Sunday School, the Mothers' Union, the Ladies Guild, the Men's Society. Uniformed organisations, Guides, Scouts, Brownies, Cubs, another band brought up the rear with two burly policemen making sure no one got lost. We had a Rose Queen and her retinue, rows of small children in their Sunday best. We carried round an open Bible on a pedestal and rows of children carried flower baskets with carnation arrangements spelling out 'GOD IS LOVE', 'ONE FAITH', 'ONE CHURCH', 'ONE LORD'. My parents thought it was all very vulgar and common, but being an inveterate show-off I loved every minute.
Those processions were a mixture of folk religion, swagger and a demonstration that the Church wasn't perfect; it had room in it for all sorts of people with all sorts of motivation - saints and rogues alike; it was fun to be together and however inarticulate we were about our faith it was, as one of my boyhood friends put it, "saying three cheers for Jesus'. It got me thinking and wondering about how I should follow Jesus. (Now this June I celebrate 40 years as a Priest).
The Whit walks still continue in Manchester but as a pale ghost of the past. Most of the inner-city communities were demolished and redeveloped in the late 60s and early 70s and the parishes never regained their old strength and many closed. There were very new and very diverse human communities to serve. It's the same rather salutatory tale of decline and new beginnings repeated all over the country. Should we be down-hearted by great things getting radically reshaped? At one level, yes, it's right to mourn people, places and customs that are no longer here. It's equally right to be thankful for every step of our faith journey and the people who are or were with us. But it's sentimental to wallow in nostalgia. We have to use the past as a prelude to what will be.
Look at the Gospel and you see wistfulness and fear in the attitude of Jesus's disciples as he foretells his death. He promises them a glory that will come with Resurrection and an abiding sense of his presence through the Holy Spirit. More than that, the Spirit will be everywhere, constantly beckoning, empowering, opening possibilities, warming the heart, strengthening, consoling, bringing to mind the truth and presence of Jesus. This last week the Church calendar makes us remember how the early Church gathered behind closed doors in Jerusalem and waited for the gift of the Holy Spirit. On Sunday, we celebrate all that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit made possible and continues to make possible.
There's a great hymn in praise of the Holy Spirit written by Archbishop Stephen Langton of Canterbury, a courageous man who brokered peace between King John and the Barons with the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. Now and then we have sung the beautiful plainsong version of it known as the 'Golden Sequence'. It's better known in its paraphrased version 'Come though Holy Spirit, Come' (Hymn 180 in Common Praise). Look it up and pray it. Here's one verse as a taster:
Heal our wounds; our strength renew / on our dryness pour thy dew;
wash the stains of guilt away; / bend the stubborn heart and will;
melt the frozen, warm the chill; / guide the steps that go astray.
That hymn originated at a time when Lichfield Cathedral was being built in its Gothic splendour. Permit me to share another Pentecost 'gem'. It is the closing paragraphs of Bishop John V. Taylor's lovely book The Go Between God. Bishop John makes us aware that the role of the Holy Spirit is always to make Christ present and establish communion between us and God. The spirit, "the beloved Go-Between, the opener of eyes and giver of life". Here is his Pentecost parable.
"A colleague has recently described to me an occasion when a West Indian woman in a London flat was told of her husband's death in a street accident. The shock of grief stunned her like a blow, she sank into a corner of the sofa and sat there rigid and unhearing. For a long time her terrible tranced look continued to embarrass the family, friends and officials who came and went. Then the school teacher of one of her children, an English woman, called and seeing how things were, went and sat beside her. Without a word she threw an arm around her the tight shoulder, clasping them with all her strength. The white cheek was thrust hard against brown. Then as the unrelenting pain seeped through to her, the newcomer's tears began to flow, falling on their two hands linked on the woman's lap. For a long time that was all that was happening. And then at last the West Indian woman started to sob. Still not a word was spoken, and after a little while the visitor got up and left, leaving her contribution to help the family meet its immediate needs.
That is the embrace of God, his kiss of life. This is the embrace of his mission and of our intercession. And the Holy Spirit is the force in the straining muscles of the arm, the film of sweat between pressed cheeks, the mingled wetness on the back of clasped hands. He is as close and unobtrusive as that, and as irresistibly strong."
Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your people and kindle in us the fire of your love. Come Holy Spirit and renew the face of the Earth!
With my love, prayers and blessings,
Adrian