Dedication Evensong
Evensong, I’ve always felt, is the last refuge of the spiritual. Everyone who goes to church has the things about church that drive them bonkers. I got to a point in my 20s when I couldn’t bear sermons. It was the sheer tediousness of them. I could have lived with heresy. I’d at least have had something to think, or write to the bishop about. But, no, it was the sheer irrelevance and dullness of them. You may have heard me mention this morning that sermons were struck from services here because of Air raids during the war. It’s worth remembering that at that time sermons may well have been 45 minutes long. A blessed relief I imagine to crawl into an air raid shelter. Anyway, I found the most creative solution to the problem of putting up with sermons, which is of course to give them myself. Few people, I find, are bored by the sound of their own voice.
But the thing I found hardest was other Christians. The demon Screwtape advises a young demon that when his victim goes to church ‘he will see just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided’ and urges him to draw his attention to when they sing out of tune, or their boots squeak, their double chins or odd clothes. There is a heroic element to the life of faith – buoyed up by stories of saints and the exploits of Jesus and the apostles – which is brought down to the ground sharply by other Christians. And faith may carry a sense of the sublime, of transcendence, which is sharply disconnected when the person next to you develops a sharp cough, intermittent snoring, or, worst of all… a baby.
Evensong takes us back to a monastic beauty, There is very little room for the congregation to do anything. It is a meditative swirl and in Exeter cathedral at tea time I did quite often fall asleep, or that semi-sleep which is very pleasant and restful, provided you have adequate neck support.
So Evensong creates a sense of peace in its beauty and through resonance in its timelessness – what one hymn calls the beauty of holiness – Or perhaps the holiness of beauty. And there is something highly personal in it as a service because very little is forced on you, so you actually have time to yourself, free from distraction. There are the words that resonate with the weight of 4 to 5 hundred years, in the knowledge they have been said and sung across this land throughout that time, And before in its antecedents in the Latin monastic offices of Vespers and Compline. It’s a form of worship that leaves you largely to your own thoughts – But immersed in Scripture and the music of previous generations. That is unless you’re in the choir, in which case the wholes service is usually a desperate scramble through your folder to find the right piece of music at the right time.
It is especially resonant on a Sunday like today when we are remembering 110 years of this service being read or sung most days in this parish, and with music and hymns from the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries; all of what we have heard today will very likely have been heard by our former generations.
With so much change and decay in all around – With the passing away of earth’s proud empires, which was largely accomplished in the last century, but even those shifts in gravity these last years have seen – Stepping out of the European Union, the death of our Queen, a high turnover of Prime Ministers, And a world seemingly staggering from one disaster to another – There is something very stilling about evensong, And reassuring that as we shall shortly sing – ‘As o’er each continent and island/ the dawn leads on another day,/ the voice of prayer is never silent/ nor dies the strain of praise away.’
And the truth is that through wars, famines, crises, the hot grief of individuals seeking solace, the joy of new parents proclaiming thanksgiving, the parish church continues in its cycles of morning and evening prayer, Of births, marriages and deaths; And if we can find in that a beauty, a harmony and a peace amid the noise and gloom of the world, then perhaps we can still hear the still small voice of our creator.
So apologies for the sermon. I’ve kept it short at least. I won’t apologise for your fellow Christians; We are none of us without fault, but given time we are all loveable. And if some are more difficult than others, or if the vicar’s not to your taste, that’s what the sherry’s for. But I hope that in this service, in this place where prayer has been valid for 150 years and evensong sung for 110, you know the reassurance of eternity, in a form that will outlast even tonight’s prayers and ring forever in the everlasting halls of our God and saviour. Amen.