Address given by the Rev’d Prof. William Whyte at the Diamond Jubilee Choral Evensong in Christ Church Cathedral on May 11th, 2024
I am faced this evening with two very real challenges. The first, and most obvious, is logistical. I am acutely conscious that I am standing in the way of your Eurovision viewing and that if I speak too long I will prevent you from witnessing Britain gain nul points. The second challenge is more purely theological. The service is a celebration of the wonderful work done by the Oxfordshire Historic Churches Trust. It is something I am only too willing to do. The Trust is a fantastic organisation that has helped preserve and enhance a priceless collection of important buildings throughout the county. I came here prepared to extol their past work, to celebrate their current work, and to wish them every strength and success in the future.
But then I looked at the readings – and I confess that my spirits fell. It’s not only that there is not a single building to be seen in either of them (unless you count the tent in the first of them, which I’m not inclined to do). It’s also, more importantly, that on first reading the very force of the two passages seems to be quite the reverse of helpful for my purposes.
Our text from the Hebrew Bible (Numbers 11 16-17, 24-29) takes us back to the Exodus and to that long period of wandering in the desert that followed the miraculous escape from slavery in Egypt. The people are hungry, the people are tried, the people are fed up with eating manna and hoping for the Promised Land. So God tells Moses to summon 70 elders in a tent and he comes among them and they prophesy. This – you have to admit – sounds hopeful for my theme. True, it’s a tent, not a church (and I’ve already admitted that isn’t really a building); but it is at least a place: one in which people gather to encounter God.
The key point of the passage, however, is not this. It concerns Eldad and Medad: two men who do not join the elders, who do not enter the tent, who do not leave the camp and yet who also come to prophesy (and, at least according to rabbinic tradition, prophesy the most powerfully and most importantly, as they prophesy the coming Messiah). Joshua is furious at this unexpected development and urges Moses to stop it. But Moses won’t; indeed, he is quite clear in his approval of the two men: ‘Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets’ he exclaims, ‘and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!’ In this text, God is accessible to all, no matter where you are.
And, not for the first time, St Paul proves to be unhelpful too (1 Corinthians 2). Our passage from the first letter to the Corinthians is not about buildings but about wisdom; not about the material, but about the spiritual. Drawing on the wisdom tradition of the Hebrew Bible and quoting the prophet Isaiah, he does not seek God in things or places, in art or architecture, in synagogue or temple, but searches instead for:
What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the human heart conceived,
what God has prepared for those who love him.
It’s a beautiful idea and profoundly powerful – a message of liberation and hope for those who felt excluded from the religious settlement, the religious hierarchies of their age. But for my purposes – well, I could have hoped for more.
And of course this apparent emphasis on the placelessness of God, on spiritual experience rather physical worship is one that speaks to a lot of contemporary concerns. We live in an age when church-buildings are acutely vulnerable – and often openly dismissed by those who are responsible for them. Even as the Oxfordshire Historic Churches Trust was being established, there were insistent voices from other quarters that the future of religion was one without buildings. It is a call that has only grown since then. ‘If there is one simple method of saving the Church’s mission,’ observed a commentator in the 1970s, ‘it is probably the decision to abandon church buildings.’ If I had my way’, one Anglican priest declared in the early 1990s, ‘I’d pull the lot down! All of them, from York Minster downwards…I’d flatten every single one.’ It was revealing, as well as well as disturbing, just how eagerly the Anglican hierarchy embraced a move to on-line churches at the start of the pandemic. For many, bishops and archbishops, it was clear that this crisis was too good to waste. Now was the chance to abandon buildings and pursue a purer, more spiritual worship.
We now know what a mistake that was. Many congregations have simply never recovered. And it was mistaken in more ways than one. Our churches are the single greatest art gallery this country possesses. Some contain works of international importance. Some are works of genuinely global significance. And unlike most art galleries, they are here, on our doorsteps, down the road: accessible and (ideally) open to all. They tell the stories of our communities and our country – of the lives and deaths, the hopes and fears of our forebears. Even the simplest memorial opens up the possibility of entering another world, of being drawn in to the past in the present.
And this is not just a secular thing – not only a matter of artistic or historical importance. There’s a profound spiritual significance to these experiences and to our churches as a whole. They bear witness to centuries of people – ordinary people just like us – who tried (and doubtless often failed) to sustain a relationship with God. That is obvious in the great and glorious works of art – in the paintings and stained glass and sculpture that attest to faith in so many places. But it is also apparent in quieter ways: in small memorials, in homely, hand-made embroidery, in the noticeboards and parish magazines that reveal people’s often halting attempts to articulate something important: to describe their sense of the divine. In this way, ordinary people ordinary things and ordinary places become genuinely prophetic: showing us a way to God and challenging us to follow in that way.
Just like Eldad and Medad, in other words; just like Paul as he left the comfort and security of Temple worship: the simple parish church provides an opportunity for all of us to become prophets. We don’t need to travel far, we don’t need to dress up or make special preparations. Eldad and Medad stayed in their camp. We too can remain within our communities and nonetheless still find a way – a place – that will take us out of the everyday and bring us closer to God.
But that is only possible if there are still churches there for us to enter. It is only possible if the buildings are open and the opportunity for this encounter is available to all. For 60 years the Oxfordshire Historic Churches Trust has worked and fought and campaigned to do just that. They have helped preserve some of the great works of art in England. They have also enabled people to catch a glimpse of God. It is a truly important and profoundly prophetic work. Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets too.
Amen