Sermon: Visiting Time

Last Sunday evening I sat down to watch a new situation comedy on BBC 3. Called ‘The Visit', it is based on a visitor's centre in a prison. Given that one of the most successful sit coms in British TV (Porridge) was set in a prison, and given that many people who know about these things have told me that this is very true to life, it seemed to me that ‘The Visit' might be worth half an hour of my time towards the end of the day.

My conclusion, having watched the whole programme, was that I would not be watching it again. [Not only was the situation absurdly unrealistic but the jokes were both weak and came lumbering across the script to hit you with all the force of a damp feather. And then to make it worse they were all repeated over and again. The characters were mostly shadows of properly funny characters from other shows - notably the Royale Family and The Office.]

I was sad about this because I thought that there was real potential for a very absorbing drama set in a prison visitor centre. For here is a space where relationships are tested, where there is no privacy so everything said is public, and where the worlds of the prisoners, the visitors and the prison staff all overlap. The problem I suppose is in thinking that this is potential for comedy, and situation comedy at that, rather than tragedy. For the truth about prison, as far as I can see, is that it is far more about containing the sadness of society than the badness. Indeed I once asked a Judge about the people who came up before him how many are bad and how many are sad. ‘Almost all of them', he said, ‘are sad.' And it is very tricky to find good laughter in the midst of genuine sadness. Not impossible, but there are lots of ways of getting it worse and only aggravating the sadness.

However my reason for raising this issue today is not to engage in questions about criminal justice but about visiting. In the second lesson there was a brief reference to Paul's intention to visit that did not work out. A non-visit I suppose. And thinking back across my own life, not least my time as a parish priest, I could put together quite a long list of ‘non-visits'. Visits that I would like to have made, perhaps should have made, but for some reason or other never got around to.

There are lots of reasons why an intention to make a visit might not be followed up. But one of them is potentially illuminating. When we visit we put ourselves into a slightly vulnerable position. When we visit we are in someone else's territory, we have to follow someone else's house rules - and if the visit is to someone's home we might not know what they are. Should shoes be removed and left by the door? Is there a chair that really should, or perhaps should not be sat in? Often when conducting a pre-funeral visit I have realised part way through that I am sitting in the deceased person's chair. This might be the right thing to do, but equally not everyone in the family might be comfortable with it. The same thing can happen when we visit a parish church. Few of them have reserved notices. And while such things can seem unfriendly they can actually help everyone to relax. The implication of some seats being reserved is that every other one is free. But if no seat is reserved... You might well find yourself feeling like Goldilocks after the return of the three bears when someone turns up just as the service starts. This happened to me in a catholic church in County Kerry one Sunday morning. I was more or less alone at the back of a church and then just as the M ass was starting one very large family turned up and squeezed themselves into the same pew, leaving the neighbouring pews quite empty.

Last Monday was the feast of the transfiguration. That strange occasion when Jesus leads Peter, James and John up a mountain, the cloud comes down and he shines with what came to be thought of as ‘uncreated light'. While this was going on he was joined by Moses and Elijah. I have this week been reading a new book on the transfiguration written by the Bishop of Portsmouth, Kenneth Stevenson, who, as you may know, has been suffering from Leukaemia. (Rooted in Detachment DLT 2007) He talks about Moses and Elijah as ‘visitors' in this situation and takes the opportunity to reflect on some of his own experience of being visited in hospital.

As he says, ‘Visitors can make or break an occasion. But one thing they do is to change things on their arrival.' Every visit makes a difference. This is quite a difficult point for us to grasp in a cathedral that has half a million visits per year. How can each and every visitor make any kind of difference? Surely things here just roll on regardless. Well, part of what cathedrals do is pretend that they are rolling on regardless. They need to do that in order to make the space and the peace that those visitors need if their visit is going to have any chance of being of a worthwhile experience. It is not our role at the host community to get in the way of visitors, not to get between them and the building or the worship, or between them and God. Nor is it our job to judge them or evaluate the integrity of their visit. No, the host community in a cathedral, as in a church is there to make the space live, to make the space hospitable. And this is mostly modest, humble, patient and rather repetitive work.

Some of our visitors come to the cathedral on a regular basis during a short stay in Durham - a week or month or a University term. It is not unusual for people to fall in love with the place and its worship during this visit. That can sound romantic and sentimental to those of us who are here day in - day out but in the last week I have had not less than three conversations which I think add up to people saying that their visit here has been life changing at a real and deep level.

Bishop Stevenson talks about the different visitors who came into his hospital space, regular and professional ones, very welcome ones and then some surprise ones. Some of these had, as he put it, a kind of ‘reconciliation element' and if you think of it a great deal of reconciliation takes place in the context of a visit. That is to say it can only happen because someone takes the trouble to visit the person that they are at odds with in a place where that person is ‘at home'. There is a lot of talk about finding neutral or safe space to allow reconciliation to happen. But I still think that you may be more than half way there if you take the trouble to visit. Not that it always works. I remember goi ng to visit a lady who was really cross with me when I was a vicar. It was the right thing to do and it cooled things a bit but it would be stretching a point to say that reconciliation happened.

But Stevenson also observes that while there are some people who know how to visit well, there are others who don't. I am sure that he is right about this. Hospital visiting involves a complex set of skills and virtues. The easiest way to get it wrong is to talk too much and to stay for too long. Less is more in visiting, as in many other areas of life. But I think you do have to give something. Not a bunch of grapes or a magazine, however. Nor a load of gossip - though some news about other people can help to stimulate interest in the wider world and get people out of themselves. What a good visitor brings with them is the gift of warm and intelligent attentiveness to the person they are visiting. The good visitor notices when it is helpful to pass the tissues or go to the shop to get something. The good visitor notices when the friend is getting tired. Notices when the person wants a bit of light entertainment - distraction. Notices when they want the opportunity to talk about something deep or get something off their chest. It sounds like a pun but what a good visit needs most of all is patience. Not the kind of dull half asleep quasi-patience which has someone sit for hours at a bedside making the poor trapped friend uncomfortable. But the kind of patience needed to go at the other's pace. The kind of confident patience that accepts that you are adding something of inestimable value just by being there. And patience enough to endure the traffic and the parking and all that hassle for the briefest of visits.

Visiting then is about adding value, meaning, and significance to a situation. This is what Moses and Elijah were adding to the Transfiguration of Jesus. They were affirming that this man Jesus is already in communion with heaven, that in him the kingdom of heaven has already arrived.

Our own purposes in visiting, whether it is pastoral visiting of the bereaved or sick or visiting a church or cathedral or a Christian community going through hard times, can be put in the same way. The visit is about adding the specific value that one person can bring by attending carefully and generously and patiently to what is going on. If that sounds pretty humble - it is. If it sounds modest - it is. If it sounds easy - it is not. But it makes all the difference. For it is the one sure way that we announce that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. You can also write letters or preach sermons. But a good visit is always better.

Stephen Cherry