Univ Record 2017

From the Chaplain
Old Members are always welcome at all services in chapel,
not just at the Advent Carol Services, and there have been
a number of occasions this year when they have helped to
lead out worship. Two took place at Old Members’ events:
at our 1966 Golden Reunion Weekend, when the Revd
Robert Bracegirdle (Univ 1966) preached in the course of
term time Sunday worship, and at our 2007-2009 Gaudy
when former choir members sang. Others took place in
the course of Choral Evensong during term. One was
our annual service of thanksgiving for our Founder and
Benefactors, when the Revd Dr Janet Williams (Univ
1979) was our preacher, and a second was a special service
of Choral Evensong in May when former and current members of the chapel choir
combined forces and compared notes about their respective experiences of life at Univ.
The text that follows is an abbreviated version of the Chaplain’s sermon this occasion,
and retains some the style of a piece that was written to be spoken rather than read.
Not all of us who are here would identify ourselves as people of Christian faith, or
of any religious faith whatsoever. For sometimes it is music, not religious commitment
or belief, that is the common ground that allows so many people to come together in
a context like Choral Evensong in a college chapel, to make or to appreciate music of
the highest standard that we can. No musician or choir member, whether a person of
faith or not, wants to perform or to sing any less well than he or she can. And no one
who worships God wants to give any less than their best, whatever that might mean in
the circumstances or context in which they find themselves. So that gives us a common
purpose, whether or not we confess a common faith. And it is why the Church has long
been a patron of music and other art, and why musicians and other artists have long
found a valued place in the Church regardless of what they might, or might not, believe.
For some of us, music contributes to an experience that we may describe in terms of an
encounter with God, the transcendent, or the divine. For others, the explanation may not
be theological, but expressed in terms of an aesthetic experience, or an encounter with
something sublime. But for all of us, music may play an important and transformative
part in our lives. One that takes us beyond ourselves, and helps us to feel part of a greater
whole.
But what is it about Evensong in particular, whether here or elsewhere, that might
draw us to it? One of its strengths, from a musical perspective, is that the core of the
service is very short. You can say it in 20 minutes, or sing it in 35, so the short core of
the service allows lots of music to be added, without distorting its form. ‘Its script, as it
were,’ writes one historian of church music, ‘is light enough in weight to permit plenty of
musical embellishment without a sense of disproportion’. To put it rather crudely, you can
pack a lot of music in without making the service too long or unwieldy. Or, in a college
context, without making anyone late for dinner.
Closely tied to this is the balance between familiarity and change. The structure
or script is quite simple, so we can get to know it and inhabit it in a way that becomes
natural and relaxed. A way that means that we don’t need always to be thinking about
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what happens next. But the music to which familiar words are set is always changing, as
are the words of the reading and the words and music of the psalm and the hymns. So
within the familiar there is always scope for something that is fresh and new, yet stands
within a tradition that goes back not just to the origins of Evensong in the English
reformation, or even to the medieval monastic liturgies on which it draws, but back to
the more ancient words of Scripture of which it is almost entirely composed. So the script
allows us, through changing words and music, to focus and to reflect on different themes
at different points in the year. And to reflect or express different needs and emotions and
hope and fear in response to different life events and to situations as they arise.
Tonight, for example, the theme that runs through our texts is the theme of Jerusalem,
whether as historical site, contemporary city, or heavenly vision. And it does so in a way
that invites us to look beyond ourselves, and through the bubble in which it is so easy
to live here in Oxford, to the reality of the world beyond, as well as to what Christians
believe to be the reality beyond this world itself.
Some of us may have seen images of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chief
Rabbi praying together earlier this month at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. It was an
image of hope, in a divided city, and a divided world. But in addressing the press, and
the public, neither leader minced his words about the ways in which religious divisions
have played a terrible part in human history, even as they work to overcome them today.
Jerusalem is a city that has known and still knows violence and conflict on a scale that we
may struggle to imagine, and Choral Evensong invites us to reflect on that. Not to ignore
it, but to bring it in to the heart of our worship and therefore of our lives.
For some of us, simply being reminded of the different lives of others may be all
the motivation that we need to act. And I know that many of us here, and many of our
friends, give our time as volunteers or advocates for causes that we believe in, and that we
give our money too. But if we are people of faith, that gives us further reasons to work
for the common good. Because of gratitude for all that we believe that God has done for
us, and because of the vision of the new Jerusalem, coming down to earth, when God’s
will is done here as it is in heaven. When all people of all nations will see and know the
reality of God’s presence and light and rest in our lives.
Choral Evensong, to quote another historian of church music, is ‘a kind of emotionally
rich theatrical spectacle’. Like musical theatre elsewhere, it can help us to empathise with
other people whose lives may be very different from our own, and to understand better
who we are ourselves. But more than that, claim Christians, it sets out to proclaim the
ways of God in the world, and especially in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ, his Son, our Lord. When we join in its rhythms we are invited to engage with a
story that is greater than our own. To participate in a conversation that began long before
we were born, and will continue long after we are gone.
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Dr Andrew Gregory