Sermon: St Cuthbert-tide Eucharist

May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be now and always acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer.

At the conclusion of today’s service, I hope many of you will go, in your own time, into St Cuthbert’s feretory, and kneel down, and perhaps light a candle, and pray. But I invite you to pray with your eyes open. I invite you, in God’s presence, to look at that simple slab of marble inscribed with the word Cuthbertus. There were to be sure many grievously misguided things that were done at the time of the Reformation. But one happy issue, after the despoiling of the medieval shrine, was the decision to replace it with a decent place of burial, and later with the addition of a single inscribed name, Cuthbertus. There is a saying in the writings of the Desert Fathers, those pioneering monks and ascetics of the third and fourth centuries:

Go into your cell and your cell will teach you everything.

For the desert cell was the place of inward solitude, of the stripping away of externals, of divine encounter and engagement in spiritual conflict. It was the enemy of illusion

and the antidote to self-sufficiency.

Go into your cell and your cell will teach you everything.

But I might say, ‘Go into St Cuthbert’s Feretory, and his Feretory will teach you everything’.

Because it teaches us, first of all, about simplicity. Thank God that we remember this inspiring Saint without the trappings of gold, silver and precious jewels that once filled his shrine. One of the things that attracted people to Jesus was that he was unencumbered; I might say that he was free. He exhorted his disciples to imitate him by going out with the bare essentials, because the problem is that the rest can simply get in the way. ‘Seek first the Kingdom of God’, was Jesus’ teaching; because if we have that priority, then we will never lack the necessities. And we will simply have to trust God because we can’t be self-sufficient. For Cuthbert, Christ himself and his gospel are the treasure; knowledge of him is the key to life; union with him is the goal of our human existence. I well remember words said to those of us preparing for priesthood on our ordination retreat by Michael Ball, a former Bishop of Jarrow – ‘Travel light’, he said, ‘Take a staff and a good pair of pilgrim shoes, and don’t become weighed down’. But of course, simplicity is not just about outward trappings; Cuthbert, I believe, had an interior simplicity; he knew the one thing that is needful – loving attention to God and to his word and a daily walk with Christ Jesus his Lord.

Second, the Feretory teaches us about prayer. The feretory is a prayerful, still place. There is an atmosphere about it; it impacts upon us as a holy place. I could never imagine anyone being loud or uncouth in such a place. In a real sense, the Feretory brings us to our knees. Now there is much debate about the place of faith in our contemporary society; the forthcoming resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury will heighten this as we seek to discern a successor. Last evening, some of you may have seen a programme on BBC2 about a charismatic Jamaican Baptist Pastor who came to Gloucestershire, to seek to revive the oldest Baptist Church in that county with a small and elderly congregation. I was quite moved by the programme and his person- centred approach. But the programme did show how endemic apathy is in our society. It reminds me of the story in the Gospel, set as a healing story, when Jesus’ disciples failed to heal a young boy. ‘How long has it been like this’, said Jesus. And when his disciples asked why they could not heal him, the response, such healing can only come about by prayer. Because it is a matter of spiritual conflict. One of the reasons those early monks went out into the desert was that they discerned that the desert was the place of spiritual conflict where Christ was not enthroned as Lord. ‘How long has it been like this?’ is a question the Lord could ask his church in these islands. And he may well give us the same response; the sickness is so advanced that only the most costly engagement in prayer can begin to loosen up the demons of apathy and unbelief. The Feretory teaches us the priority of prayer.

Which leads me to my third point. In the Feretory we are arrested by the word Cuthbertus. It is as if he is still speaking to us. You may be aware that over the last decade we have begun a tradition that departing bishops lay down the diocesan crozier in solitude in the Feretory, and from there in solitude the succeeding bishop takes it up. When those moments happen at services of farewell and enthronement, I ask myself, ‘I wonder what Cuthbert is saying to him? Each month, the Chapter stands around the Shrine for our corporate communion. I sometimes wonder what Cuthbert is saying of us? One thing he might well be saying is, ‘Well, this Cathedral is a very impressive memorial to me, and yes, I’ve had to run a monastery and I’ve been a bishop so I know all about governance and organisation and the joys and the headaches’. But, he might add, ‘But let this place be first and foremost a place of human encounter’, and so a place of sharing the Christian story. There is certainly one thing that Cuthbert and Durham Cathedral have in common. Listen to what St Bede says:

Cuthbert had great numbers of people coming to him not just from Lindisfarne but even from the remote parts of Britain, attracted by his reputation for miracles.

We could say, ‘Durham Cathedral has great numbers of people coming to it not just from this locality but from all over Britain but indeed the world, attracted by the reputation, beauty and spirituality of this holy place’. For Cuthbert, the priority was human encounter. And he shares that with St Patrick whose day it is today and St Aidan before him. Because they devoted much of their time to preaching, teaching, sharing, evangelising. And the times of retreat and withdrawal were to enable the spiritual refreshment necessary to sustain them in this ministry of human encounter.

Go into your cell and your cell will teach you everything.

Go into St Cuthbert’s Feretory, and his feretory will teach you everything

Simplicity, prayer, human encounter. These things, enlivened by the grace of the Holy Spirit, established the Christian faith ancient Northumbria. It is these things that will enable us to begin to re-evangelise today.

I began by suggesting that you might, at the end of this eucharist, enter the Feretory to kneel and pray. Perhaps St Cuthbert will have a message for you. Whatever it is, receive it and obey it, for ‘the Feretory will teach you everything’.