Sermon: Michaelmas Music

Today we honour choristers from parishes around the diocese: singers who have reached the level of Dean's and Bishop's Awards. I was a chorister myself once. I wouldn't be here now as a dean if it had not been for that experience. It gave me a love of choral music that has lasted all my life. So I know a bit about the effort and discipline it takes to reach this standard. On behalf us all, warmest congratulations.

Today is Michaelmas Day. Because of my name, this feast of St Michael and all Angels has always been important to me. In the Bible, Michael is the great warrior-angel who fights for right against all that is evil and wrong. His name means ‘who is like God?' - for he stands for the presence of Almighty God himself, and if God is for us, says St Paul, who can be against us? But our reading from the Book of Revelation tonight reminds us of what their supreme task is. In John's vision, he hears the angels who surround God's throne singing his praise: ‘To the one seated on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honour and glory and might forever and ever!' The worship of the Eternal One - that is the angels' everlasting joy. So in the paintings, poetry and stained-glass of the middle ages, they have harps and trumpets in their hands; they sing in the heavenly choir and conduct the music of the spheres.

The wonderful truth of Christian worship is that when we praise God, we join in that heavenly music. Recall what we say at every eucharist: ‘Therefore with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven we laud and magnify thy glorious name, evermore praising thee and saying, holy, holy, holy, Lord God of sabaoth: heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Glory be to thee O Lord most high!' Heaven and earth meet in the liturgy. Angels join with us, and we with them. It's as if the solid, thick boundaries of what we can see and touch begin to dissolve. When we worship, we enter a ‘thin' place. We glimpse the glory angels gaze upon and hear their songs of praise.

Your privilege as musicians is to help us enter that thin place. Music gives our worship wings. It soars and flies, it beckons heaven come down to us. Music touches parts of us nothing else can quite reach. It enlarges our imaginations, it moves our spirits, it coaxes us to love in a new and deeper way. I could tell you how I first came to Christian faith through singing a piece of Bach's music as boy treble more than 40 years ago. We could all tell stories about how a hymn or a psalm, a song, a motet or a symphony had a profound effect on us. That's why we in cathedrals invest so much in our music. It's why parishes should never resent the cost of achieving the very best in music, whatever their style of worship. It's an investment in mission. It has converting power. Above all, it's for the praise of God. Worshipping God is the most important thing we can do in this life. It's the only thing we shall do in the next, when we are like the angels, and their song and ours are joined ‘in perfect diapason', forever in tune with heaven.

Michael Sadgrove

At an RSCM Awards Ceremony

Revelation 5