Time to Reflect
Reflections from The Rt Revd Jan McFarlane, Canon Custos
Six months on, friends and former colleagues are asking, “So are you settling in to your new life in Lichfield?” When I pause and look a bit bemused it isn’t because we’re not settling in - we are! Andrew and I love being here in Lichfield and are very grateful indeed for the warmth of your welcome. I pause simply because every month has been so different. Arriving in a new house and city and ministry just as we all went into lockdown means that our arrival was ‘interesting’ to say the least.
There in the ground His body lay
Easter 2020 will remain seared in my heart, as I know it will in yours. On Easter Eve I found myself standing in a dark Cathedral Close staring at an empty, unlit building, doors locked, silent as the grave. I felt the sense of loss so acutely and imagined myself standing with Mary Magdalene staring at the stone cold tomb that first Holy Saturday, her dearest friend and teacher who had turned her life around and given her a new life and a new hope, defeated, dead and buried. In the words of the worship song, ‘In Christ Alone’ :-
'There in the ground His body lay / Light of the world by darkness slain'
That feeling of profound loss was amplified on Easter Day when the doors of the Cathedral had to remain locked. But thanks to our Precentor and Director of Music, we were able to worship together through YouTube - and I sang my little heart out in the silence of our living room, conscious once again that when we worship we are never alone, for we join in the worship of the Church in heaven as well as on earth; and that even though we are living still in the strangest of times, the Easter message that even death itself has been defeated provides for us an anchor in the storm. All our Good Fridays are always, always followed by Easter Day
'Then bursting forth in glorious day / Up from the grave He rose again'
Sing choirs of angels
As the lockdown continued we were fed spiritually by our on-line worship. I made it through the services in one piece, until the choir sang. And then I was floored. Listening to the choir, each member singing from their own homes but somehow, in what felt like a modern day miracle (though our Director of Music would remind me it was more like sheer hard work and a very quick assimilation of lots of new technology) their voices blending in the most beautiful harmony, I would find tears streaming down my face, and a profound longing for us to worship together, sing together, in person once more. I know from conversations with many of you that I was not the only one who found regularly that I had something in my eye….
Perhaps it’s one of the tragedies of being human that its only when we lose something that we realise just how much it’s valued. That ‘something’ for me has been our singing together, and a new realisation that music reaches the parts that words often can’t; and that, ‘the one who sings prays twice’.
It has been a huge joy to hear first the organ singing out in the Cathedral, and then a lone cantor, followed eventually by the lay clerks and then the choristers too. The one missing piece - congregational singing - is still absent. What a careful choice of hymn we will need to make for the first time we can all sing together again! Maybe one that can be carried even when half of us are choked up with pent up emotion, finally released.
Love one another as I have loved you
My special area of responsibility in the cathedral is pastoral care. I have now met with the pastoral lay ministry team - with deckchairs spaced two metres apart in my garden - and we have tried to make sure that between us, we are in contact with those who are in any kind of need. This is complicated when we are still properly hesitant to visit the homes of those who are most vulnerable to Covid-19 and much of our contact must continue to be, for the time being, by telephone rather than in person.
The new ‘Rule of 6’ which is now in force can cause us to ask questions such as ‘does a small baby count as one of the six?’ - or it can lead to us look not just at the letter of the law but at the thinking behind it. The rate at which the virus is spreading is rising again. So the law is telling us that we should look after one another by limiting our contact. Not a lockdown - yet. But a call to meet only when necessary and then not in big groups. Worship is exempt from the rule. As the Archbishop of Canterbury reminded us, when we meet in worship we are working - we are doing the work of God.
But although I have special responsibility for pastoral care in the Cathedral, and I am so grateful for the ongoing work of the lay ministry team, we are all called to look out for one another. We are all members of the priesthood of believers (1 Peter 2: 5-9) and so we are all responsible for the well-being of the members of our church family. There will be occasions when perhaps ‘specialist’ ministry is needed, but we can never estimate the power of picking up the phone and simply checking in with someone.
Sometimes God nudges us. Have you ever found yourself thinking of someone more than usual and wondering how they are? Maybe that’s God nudging us to make contact with them. It can’t do any harm and may even do some good! You might just be the answer to someone’s prayer.
Lift up your hearts
Perhaps what has struck me most this past six months is the power of our cathedral building to speak to us - regular worshipper and stranger alike - lifting our hearts and our eyes and our minds and reminding us that our God is a big, big God, all too often limited by the smallness of our minds and our imaginations.
I often risk the wrath of the stewards (sorry!) by sneaking a visitor into the back of the cathedral for a few minutes just as we are closing the doors. They may never pass by this way again. And when they stand in silence and awe, gazing at the soaring building and that magnificent icon at its heart, I just know that God has touched them and that one day - if perhaps not for many years - they will remember that moment and perhaps long to know more of our God who loves them - and us - with an unconditional love which is beyond our wildest imagining.