In the meantime
Sermon preached at Evensong and a celebration of new ministries, at Saint Deiniol’s Cathedral in Bangor
Order of service here; Psalms 133, 134; Isaiah 62:1–5, 10–12; John 4:1–30, 39–42
“For the Father seeks such as these. Oherwydd rhai felly y mae’r Tad yn eu ceisio.”
It’s a Saturday night a few weeks ago. It’s quite late. I’m on my way back from Chester to Bangor, and I’m sitting on the train at the platform at Chester Station.
There’s been some sort of incident on the line at Flint, so everything’s delayed.
The carriage starts filling up with guys who’ve been watching the football somewhere.
Unusually for me, I’m not in a dog collar. I’m sat there, rather grumpily, trying to finish my sermon for the following morning on my laptop.
A large, young guy sits next to me; initially he’s in a boisterous conversation with his friends.
Then he turns to me.
“You look like a clever guy. What time we getting to Bangor then?”
I estimate the time best I can based on the delay.
Him: “Who do you support then?”
Me: “Football? Well, Liverpool, when I was growing up,; but that was kind of because I liked their away kit one year.”
Him: “But you don’t support them any more, no?” (He’s wearing a Manchester City shirt).
Me: “No. I’m not a big football person, really.”
“What you do then? Lawyer?”
“No.”
“Uni Lecturer.”
“No. Um. Actually, I’m a vicar.” (Vicar’s easier than anything else. Goodness knows what he’d have made of Sub-Dean.)
“Vicar! No! Guys, he’s a vicar! Where you vicar then?”
Me: “Actually, I’m about to start at the Cathedral.”
Him: “Cathedral? Where’s that?”
“You know, on the High Street.”
“Oh, that big place, by The Castle pub?”
“Yeah. Yeah, the big place by the Castle. Come see us sometime.”
We’ll have done well, you and me, come 2025, and we celebrate a millennium and a half since Deiniol first arrived here, and established his community here, and built his hazel fence here… we’ll have done well, you and me, if by 2025 that young man describes the Castle as “that pub by the Cathedral.”
“For the Father seeks such as these. Oherwydd rhai felly y mae’r Tad yn eu ceisio.”
But why should we care that my young man can locate this place; why should we want his life to be orientated in some way around this place? Why should we want part of his heart to be here?
I have nightmares about Jesus’s words to the woman by the well. Here the two of them are: him a Judean, whose lineage held that true worship took place amid the awesome formality of the Temple in Jerusalem; her a Samaritan, her people worshipping outdoors, on the land, on the mountaintop. And to his own people and to hers, Jesus says, “you have your ways; we have ours; but they are all preparatory, elementary, dancing in the shadows. The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.”
It’s a hard teaching: These religious things you cling to, these traditions, these sacred, pious ways, these buildings, these services, these Cathedrals — they’re second best, the fruit of your weakness. The hour is coming when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth alone.
It’s a hard teaching. A reminder that our ways are not God’s ways; or, perhaps, that God does not require our ways; we were not created because God had need of us. It is all gift; we exist at God’s mercy; and beatitude awaits, out of reach, without God’s grace.
“For the Father seeks such as these. Oherwydd rhai felly y mae’r Tad yn eu ceisio.”
And yet, we know that we’re saved in our skin, not in our heads. We’re know forgiveness in lived relationships, not in theory. We’re redeemed, not in our perfection, but in our weakness.
We know this because Jesus shows us. Jesus is never not in his body — at the beginning of our reading this evening, he is tired — physically tired by his journey, emotionally fed up at the jealousy and gossip of his followers. He’s thirsty; “give me a drink,” says the body of God. Elsewhere in the Gospel, he weeps when his friend, Lazarus, dies; when he meets the disciples by the lake after his Resurrection, he sits down to eat breakfast with them. When the woman who has been bleeding comes to him, to touch him, the hem of his cloak, he does not tell her to go worship in spirit and in truth. He has mercy upon her broken body and its pain. When Isaiah wants to describe what it’s like to know in time something of what God is in eternity, he says it’s like the young man rejoicing over the young woman; and if you think that isn’t physical, then you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be young.
I want my young man from the train in Chester to be able to find this place, because this place, in its physicality — wood, stone, metal, glass, voice, song, language, sacrament — those things in this place give us a glimpse in time of God in eternity and of Christ the Saviour of the world.
“For the Father seeks such as these. Oherwydd rhai felly y mae’r Tad yn eu ceisio.”
A Cathedral is a Cathedral because of a physical thing, a seat; this place is a Cathedral because the Bishop’s throne is here. Or, perhaps more accurately, a Cathedral is a Cathedral because of a person and because of relationships. A Cathedral is a Cathedral because it is the place where, around the seated Bishop, the people of God in this corner of creation, gather as the Church, as the Body of Christ, in relationship, in Communion, with their Bishop and with one another.
It is striking, it is liberating, and it is important, that we define ourselves as the people of God in this place, as the Body of Christ in this place, not by what I believe to true, or by what virtues I believe I possess, or by what worthy deeds I perform. We define ourselves as the Body of Christ in this place not by some individual, abstracted, disembodied understanding of the word, but because of our relationship with the Bishop and with one another, gathered around him in this physical place, as generations in time have done before us.
“For the Father seeks such as these. Oherwydd rhai felly y mae’r Tad yn eu ceisio.”
Next to the Bishop, members of the Cathedral Chapter sit in Quire, not facing forward, but facing one another. It’s an attempt to enact here what will be, when in heaven, when we are fully ourselves, when there are tears no more to blur our vision, when we no longer see through a glass darkly, we will see one another face to face, as we truly are, and we will worship then in spirit and in truth.
The time will come when we will have no need of churches, or bishops, or sacraments, or even Sub-Deans for that matter; the time will come when we will see one another face to face and worship in spirit and in truth, and our participation in God will be without limit. But in the meantime, in history, in time, in this vale of hope and tears, we have need of things, of this place, and of one another. “So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them,” in person, in relationship; and they heard for themselves, and knew that this was truly the Saviour of the world.
