Sermon: The Choral Offices of the Church

Dedicated in absentia to the Choristers

Ad­am's tho­ughts of Hetty did not de­afen him to the service; they rat­her ble­nded with all the other deep fee­lings for which the ch­urch service was a ch­annel to him this after­noon, as a certain consciousness of our entire past and our imagined future blends itself with all our moments of keen sensibility. And to Adam the church service was the best channel he could have found for his mingled regret, yearn­ing and resignation; its interchange of beseeching cries for help, with outbursts of faith and praise - its recur­rent responses and the familiar rhythm of its collects, seemed to speak for him as no other form of worship could have done.

George Eliot's Adam Bede was not attending cathedral choral matins, but he might have been. It is nearly half a century that I attended my first choral service. I had hardly stepped foot inside a church. My parents had little time for religion. But they did love music. To help me develop musically, I was drafted into a church choir that sang to cathedral standard, where things were done properly and well. My first service was evensong. No-one took much notice of probationers then. I was left to make what sense of it I could. All of it was utterly new to me. The canticles that autumn evening were Walmisley in D minor. I have had a soft spot for that setting ever since.

I remember feeling awed and moved by what I was experiencing, this tapestry of words and music that seemed to be enveloping me. It was strange, and yet familiar, as if I had known it all along, but had not known that I known. When an author whose books we had admired but had never met came and stayed with us, he wrote in our visitors' book: ‘old friends whom I've met for the first time'. That evensong as like that for me: recognising something familiar and reassuring at the same time as it was unknown and new. I realised that in an important way I had come home.

These reminiscences are prompted by a little phrase in this morning's first lesson. That text, one of the most ancient in the Old Testament, is introduced as the ‘last words of David', his final utterance at the end of a long and eventful career as the great king who would forever represent Israel's golden age. ‘The oracle of David, son of Jesse, the oracle of the man whom God exalted, the anointed of the God of Jacob, the favourite of the Strong One of Israel'. That last phrase is the new translation's desperate stab at some admittedly difficult Hebrew. Literally, it is ‘the sweet one, or favourite, of the chants of Israel'. It's a musical reference: David is the one everybody loves to sing about. But the old translation has much to be said for it: David the ‘sweet psalmist of Israel', if you like, the one through whom God not only speaks, as the next line goes on to say, but sings.

Many of the Psalms are ascribed to David, or dedicated to him - the text can mean either. It's as if psalmody, the singing of sacred songs, was placed under the patronage of David, just as law was placed under the patronage of Moses and wisdom of Solomon. So what we are about here in this choral foundation looks back over a long tradition of more than 3000 years. At the heart of it lies the daily chanting of the Psalms. I always say to the choristers that the measure of any cathedral choir is not that they can master the motets of Palestrina or the canticle settings of Purcell, but that they can undertake to perfection the hardest part of the choral office, which is also the heart of the service, the singing of the Psalms. It is this discipline, akin to a pianist knowing inside out the 48 Preludes and Fugues of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier, that makes for excellence.

But to come back to the choral services of matins and evensong. What do they mean to us? I mean not only as liturgy or as music, but as a total experience, as a vehicle for God to be present to us and us to him. First, we need to realise that these services are part of our cultural inheritance. It is as much a part of England as the stones and glass and monuments of our cathedrals and churches. Its ancient Benedictine stability, its poignant blend of words and music, the measured rhythm of its Anglican chant, the gentle rises and falls of the liturgy, these all create a whole infinitely greater than the parts. It is to me something of a miracle. It is unique to the English speaking world. We should cherish it.

Second, the choral offices touch us in very deep places. Beauty can remain just an aesthetic experience, or like Beatrice in Dante's vision, it can be the handmaid who leads us to God. For many people, I suspect the beauty of Prayer Book morning and evening offices resonates with our own experience of being human: of having just risen for the day, of soon going to sleep, of being born, and of dying one day. Each Te Deum is a celebration of being alive and having been brought ‘safely to the beginning of this day'. Each Nunc Dimittis or ‘lighten our darkness' is one less till eternity. It haunts you, but heals you as well, for it helps you face your own mortality.

Third, these services offer a gentle, non-threatening approach to God. They entice rather than cajole. You do not have to say or sing very much. You can come in or out at will, find your own level, sit near the back in the half light where no-one will notice you. I don't underestimate the part cathedral offices can play in the mission of a place such as this. The music, liturgy, silence and architecture work their own alchemy on people. Perhaps this style of evangelism is important when people are suspicious of the hard sell, and respond to a more oblique approach. ‘Tell all the truth but tell it slant'.

And fourth, matins and evensong train us to become what we will all one day be in heaven: contemplatives. It is wrong to say that you do not ‘join in' choral services, because the choir does it all for you. We join in, in the most demanding way: by listening in word and in music, by praying the liturgy while others perform it on our behalf. When the voice called out to the infant Samuel, he was told to say, not ‘Hear Lord, for thy servant speaketh' but ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth'. The choral offices sharpen our God-given faculty for stillness, for paying attention, for contemplation. We learn that we do not need to be busy saying or singing or doing things, but can sit at the feet of Jesus.

I share these thoughts with you on the day the BBC are in Durham to broadcast choral evensong. Through the broadcast, a window will be opened on to the daily rhythm of common prayer in this ancient and beautiful place. Here in this Cathedral, we are never so true to ourselves as when we celebrate the opus dei as our Benedictine forebears did. To offer the prayer and praise that is God's due and our joy is the most humanising activity we can ever angage in, for it heals the spirit, exalts the mind and touches the heart. It's to follow in the steps of King David of old, touchingly remembered as the ‘sweet psalmist of Israel'. As we praise our Maker, what would please God more than that something like this might one day be said of us?

Michael Sadgrove, Durham Cathedral, at Matins, Sunday 4 May 2008 (Easter VII)

2 Samuel 23.1-7