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T h e O l d S t a t i o n e r - N o 7 8
A TuRNiNG PoiNT
City New Year Service -St Michae1, Cornhill
Friday 10 January 2014
On this very day, in the year 1645, Archbishop William Laud,
then Archbishop of Canterbury fell victim to the executioner.
Laud was a complex and intelligent man but no politician, and
only four years later -not quite to the day -his Sovereign, King
Charles I would lose his head to the axe man, on a scaffold
outside the royal palace in Whitehall. It was the culmination of
seven years of bloody war between King and Parliament,
between Cavalier and Roundhead, between Charles and
Cromwell. Laud's death on this day in 1645 was a turning point.
This New Year will be but the beginning of five years of
commemorations of an even more ugly and brutal war. But I
would like to take to you back to a slightly less distant war
recalling an event which again came right at the year's end. On
the night of December 29th 1940, Tom Deakin, Edith Cooper
and her son George, emerged from a blazing building. It was the
headquarters of the Cellular Clothing Company which used to
make Aertex shirts, sportswear, blankets and all the rest. These
three had been on fire watch at the Aertex building on the corner
of Fore Street and Moor Lane, in what we now call the Barbican.
Tom said to Edith, his sister-in-law, "Come -let's go down
here," pointing to the right. Edith, as if by instinct, said, "No
we'll go left." Seconds after they moved away, immediately
behind them, a blazing building fell into the street. It was a
miraculous escape, and it was a turning point.
Edith was my grandmother, Tom my great-uncle and George
my father. Well into my childhood, looking out from a pockmarked
Moorgate Station towards St Paul's Cathedral, all that
could be seen were ruined basements with weeds and scrub
growing amongst them. Recalling my father telling that tale
always makes the City of London somehow assume an even
greater significance for me than it would have anyway. In so
many ways that story, that place and that event (in the midst of
what is often described as the second Great Fire of London)
seems to have been a true turning point. Indeed without my
grandmother's instinct I should not be here at all! There were, of
course, many turning points in Hitler's war. Churchill famously
remarked after the Battle of Britain had been won: 'This is not
the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is the end
of the beginning.'
Today's second reading from John's Gospel touches on just such
a turning point. Yet, despite this, the story of Jesus turning the
water into wine has almost become a cliche. You can imagine as
a clergyman I've often been
told: 'We need you to talk to
your boss and stretch your
hands over some water -this
wine tastes like gnat's pee.'
Clergy can themselves find
the tale an embarrassment.
One of my predecessors as
curate tried to explain the
miracle -or indeed explain it
away. 'It was not,' he said,
'that the water had been
changed into wine but
rather that the guests were
so drunk that they couldn't
tell water from wine.
As you can imagine this
caused uproar. The vicar
sacked the curate and was
then called in by the bishop
to say he couldn't do that
-he didn't employ him
anyway! The director of
training was brought in to
explain modern biblical
scholarship and biblical
criticism -and so it went on.
What was the curate's
mistake? His mistake was to
misunderstand the significance,
the point of the
story.
What is the story about
-why is it there? There are
two tell-tale sentences (in
what we heard) that give
clues to what the miracle is
about. They come at the
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