The Sheldonian Theatre, located in Oxford, England, was built from 1664 to 1669 after a design by Christopher Wren for the University of Oxford. The building is named after Gilbert Sheldon, chancellor of the University at the time and the project’s main financial backer. It is used for music concerts, lectures and University ceremonies, but not for drama until 2015 when the Christ Church Dramatic Society staged a production of The Crucible by Arthur Miller.
Chapel Address at Evensong, St Stephen’s House, Oxford, 4 November 2019
Gerry Lynch
“When you talk to God, it’s called prayer. When God talks to you, it’s called insanity.”
That bon mot came to mind as I pondered today’s readings from the first chapters of Daniel and Revelation, two of the most misunderstood and misused books of the Bible, yet also among the most transcendent.
Prophecy has always been a tricky topic in the Church – St Paul admonished the Corinthian Church about it. The soldiers who beat up the blindfolded Jesus demanded he guess which of them had struck him. They were confusing prophecy and fortune-telling. It is still a common mistake, and made as much within the Church, or at last at its fringes, as it is outside it. The YouTube fanatics who drop random texts from Revelation to confidently predict the arrival of doomsday next Wednesday have done tremendous damage to the Church.
The Belfast of my boyhood was thick with these chancers. There was even a BBC children’s TV drama of the early 1980s, set in Belfast, about one of these street corner Jeremiahs, entitled The End of the World Man. Of course the title character was nothing but a hypocrite, setting himself up in self-righteous judgement while using his political connections to facilitate a corrupt land deal to destroy a patch of urban wilderness much loved by our televisual child heroes. If you want to lampoon the Church, these self-proclaimed prophets are an easy way to do it. And they are terribly unbiblical. The end will come like a thief in the night; it is not ours to know when and how it will come; Jesus says this very directly in St Matthew’s Gospel.
Sermon Preached at Sung Mass at St Mary Magdalen, Oxford, 3 November 2019 (All Saints’ Day transferred) Gerry Lynch
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. (Revelation 7:9)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
That was a great hymn we started with this morning, wasn’t it, For All The Saints? And there’s more to come later. All the same, the hymn that I’ve always found most appropriate for this season of All Saintstide isn’t in the hymnbook used in this church, the New English Hymnal. At the moment, the New English Hymnal is being revised and I hope they might make space for my favourite All Saintstide hymn in the revision. Can you guess what it is? You’ll all know it. It’s the one that goes:
♪ Oh, when the saints! ♫
♫ Oh, when the saints! ♪
♪ Oh, when the saints come marching in! ♫
♫ I want to be in that number, when the saints come marching in! ♪
[Yes, I did break into song from the pulpit… and even had a wee dance.]
Now, the reason for that – that performance – from the trainee preacher from vicar school was to ask you all a question: do you want to be in that number when the saints come marching in? Do you think you have it in you to become a saint? Is saintliness something that we should aspire to? Or does sainthood instead represent an impossibly high standard, and the attempt to achieve it leave us doomed to failure at best, and at worst arrogantly claiming to be far better than we could possibly be, smugly looking down on the rest of humanity from a pedestal so high that it gives everyone else a clear view of our many and obvious faults?
