A message from the Dean - 20 November 2020
Dear Friends,
Will we or won’t we have a Christmas “just like the ones I used to know” as the words of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” have it and as Bing Crosby unforgettably crooned? I have to say the uncertainty of whether we’ll be locked down, severely restricted or allowed to be half-open for worship and visits is playing absolute havoc with the Cathedral’s Advent and Christmas planning. Nevertheless, we persevere. The whole Cathedral team is determined to try and host a range of services that capture the special quality of this most popular of seasons. We have contingency plans to ensure every service can be streamed and thus received by our on line congregations. If we are allowed to hold live worship distancing regulations will, I’m afraid, reduce seating capacity to a maximum of 357 for any service. Therefore, to comply with track and trace measures and offer fair access to these services places will be ticketed. Next week we will announce how online booking can take place. We will not be able to issue paper tickets. I appeal to all our regulars to check with friends in the congregation who don’t “do” computers to book on the digital “refuse-niks” behalf and so ensure no one is disadvantaged. I don’t like having to restrict admission to the Cathedral but in these strange and anxious times, ticketing is the best compromise we can think of. Believe me – we have thought about it! The Advent and Christmas programme will be circulated very soon and all the details will be online; we’ll have posters, leaflets and flyers and we’ll do our best to attract media interest.
For the last few years I have put together a day-by-day Advent Devotional calendar. You’ll find a copy on our website here. There’s an explanation on the reverse-side of the calendar about its rationale and how to use it. I’ll return to this subject at the end of this letter.
Yet, as we head into Advent (beginning on Sunday 29 November), there’s an important Sunday to observe this coming Sunday – 22 November. It’s the Feast of Christ the King, bringing to a conclusion all we have celebrated since Advent 2019. It’s a relatively recent innovation. After the ravages and suffering of World War I, the notorious Spanish flu of 1918-1920, and a world suddenly thrown into crisis by the rise of Bolshevism in Russia and Fascism in Italy, Pope Pius XI instituted the feast as an assertion of Christ’s reign and a reminder to faithful Christians that Christ, in the words of St John’s Gospel has “overcome the world”. Therefore we have nothing to fear about the final outcome of God’s reign of love. The Feast was adopted by Anglican and Lutheran churches and “Christ the King” has become a popular title for the dedication of churches in all traditions. It’s a good reminder too of our Easter faith. Before we come into Church in the dark before dawn on Easter morning, a new fire is kindled representing the quickening power of the Resurrection. From it we light the great paschal candle that will lead us into Church and, as the candle is marked, we hear: “Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, Alpha and Omega, all time belongs to him and all ages”. Our new icon in the nave has on its west-facing side an image of the risen Christ as Pantocrator, the risen Lord of all. By his resurrection Jesus Christ has gained dominion over the entire universe.
Naturally living at a time when we are alert to unthinking gender bias there have been objections to the masculine imagery of the King but a common substitute “the Reign of Christ” is neither accurate nor effective. Our Sovereign Lady, Elizabeth II reigns, but the people rule. In Christianity the authority rests not with a constitutional monarch with carefully limited powers, but with the one who has gone where only he can go to win us our salvation. Jesus Christ as Lord has received an authority mortals cannot give and a kingship not in our power to bestow. That authority undergirds the faith of the Church. This coming Sunday, Christ the King, also echoes the worship of heaven as it is portrayed and imagined in the Book of Revelation; “worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour” (Revelation 5:12). “To him be glory and dominion for ever and ever” (Revelation 1:6). Our King reigns from the throne of his cross.
Thomas Kelly (1769-1855) in his splendid hymn views Christ’s final triumph through the necessary remembrance of his passion.
“The head that once was crowned with thorns
Is crowned with glory now
A royal diadem adorns
The mighty Victor’s brow”.
Kelly attached to his hymn a quotation from the Epistle to the Hebrews 2:10 “It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering”. The suffering that Christ endured is also the experience of those who belong to him. Redemption is assured but it is costly and consuming.
The Feast of Christ the King as it ends one liturgical year leads seamlessly into Advent with its promise of the return of the King who comes to his people and sets them free. The very name “Advent” is from the Latin “Adventus” meaning “coming” or “approach”. It suggests not simply the coming of God into the world in Jesus but the approaching return of the Lord in all his heavenly splendour. It’s quite a lot more than a “getting ready for Christmas”.
Now we live at a time when generally we’re impatient. We’re used to communicating and consuming and getting what we want very quickly. Combine this with the big general assumption that Christmas begins on 1 December and ends on New Year’s Day, and you see how much of a struggle the church has to give Advent the space and significance it needs. I think the strict liturgical purists who won’t have a carol sung in Church until Christmas Eve are liturgically correct but pastorally inept. We have to meet people’s need to touch the beautiful mystery of Christmas. Once a year our society, that has largely turned away from faith, turns to the manger. However sentimental or wistful that turning is, the Church must help take hold of that opportunity and cherish it and enrich it. We can encourage deeper reflection by asking who were the people Jesus was born into? And what became of the baby in the Manger? Advent helps us anchor the story of Christ’s first coming in the story of God’s dealings with the people of his first love, the children of Abraham. Advent anchors us in the hope of what we shall all become at the end of time, to rouse in us the anticipation of that end, and to prepare for it.
That’s why Advent is like a repeating alarm clock through its four weeks. It’s a call to stay awake, to keep looking, hoping, longing. “Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (St Luke 21:28). It’s good for people in the Church to stand alongside everyone else who is looking, searching and hoping. It’s not for us to despise or discount that great human thirst for meaning or for joy and celebration in the face of all that limits, frustrates or often defeats what is the best in us. Advent, if we keep it well, points us to the goal of our pilgrimage, all our efforts to stay awake, keep watch, lead us to unending union with Jesus Christ “that he may evermore dwell in us and we in him”. The purpose of the Church - our living, serving, praying, worshipping, bearing with and supporting one another - has one meaning and end: to bring us and all humanity into the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. So the central prayer of Advent is the one word, the concluding prayer of the Bible, Maranatha, Come, Lord Jesus. Therefore, we wait, we hope, we look (sometimes with rising impatience, frustration and disappointment), but Christian witness is at its best in the waiting and searching. So I say, over to you brothers and sisters. Please use the devotional calendar and follow its suggestions to pray and read the Bible every day in Advent. The readings are all the ones chosen as the Gospel reading in Church each day. Reflect with me on what these scriptures say to us. I cannot give you anything better this Advent and I won’t take up your time by writing weekly letters until 2021. Our work from now until Christmas is to try and get (again) on God’s wave-length and to be attuned to the enveloping mystery of his love and purpose. Of course, if you’re hungry for Cathedral news, look at the Cathedral website and there you will find regular updates of all that is happening, but the real work is to pray, ponder, love, give.
To cheer us on, here’s U.A. Fanthorpe’s poem about Joseph, husband of Mary, a fine Advent character if ever there was one.
I am Joseph, carpenter
Of David’s kingly line,
I wanted an heir; discovered
My wife’s son, wasn’t mine.
I am an obstinate lover,
Loved Mary for better or worse.
Wouldn’t stop loving when I found
Someone Else came first.
Mine was the likeness I hoped for
When the first-born man-child came.
But nothing of him was me. I couldn’t
Even choose his name.
I am Joseph, who wanted
To teach my own boy how to live.
My lesson for my foster son:
Endure. Love. Give.
With my love, prayers and blessing.
Adrian