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Click on the link below to see this month's Cathedral Notes.

Cathedral Notes February/March 2011

As usual, Lavinia has done a marvellous job. I think this is one of her best ever. Leonie's report of the tour is also terrific.

And Jenny's Sermon from Sunday...

In the name of God, creating, redeeming, sanctifying, … Amen.

There were seven cases of choir robes. Each case contained the cassock and surplice and ruffs and medals for five or six of the choristers who travelled on our choir’s tour to England and Rome. Each case was named after a composer – Bruckner, Palestrina, Howells and so on - and one chorister was deemed the “case captain” for each case. Before each service, every chorister would go to their case captain to collect their robes, and after each service, to the case captain, their robes would be returned. Those robes travelled on the bus that carried the choir all around England, sometimes the robes were in their cases, but more often they were wrapped in their groups in black plastic garbage bags. The bags hung right near the back of the bus. And the choristers who sat at the back of the bus – the trebles usually – were said to be going to Narnia, as it was just as if they were pushing their way through a wardrobe, full of choir robes, to get there.

 You are the salt of the earth;but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. (Matthew 5:13)

“You are the salt of the earth”, Jesus said to his disciples, standing on a mountain at the beginning of his ministry in Galilee, encouraging them to maintain the essence of who they were, to inspire those around them. What he didn’t say, was how much work it would take ….

There were seven boxes of music. The choir sang Evensong in seven English cathedrals, at the Eucharist in England and Rome, wonderfully at St Peter’s Basilica, as well as at two concerts. Each night before the choir was to sing, a small group gathered to organize the music. Each chorister had a black folder that they used for services and plastic folder in which their music was stored. The small group would remove music from the previous service and place, in the black folder, the music for the next service. Night after night, before each service, this band of music librarians beavered away.

You are the light of the world …No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lamp-stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Jesus said. ¹⁶In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.(Matthew 5:14-16)

“Let your light shine before others”, Jesus said. What he didn’t say, was that there may be hours, days, years of preparation for every moment when that light shines.

The Choir Tour was in the planning for more than eighteen months. A group met early in the year 2009 and the emails began. Choristers and parents and the Director of Music embarked on the task of negotiating with Cathedrals and Churches where the choir might sing, hotels in which the choir and their tag-a-long team of parents and partners might stay, restaurants for meals and of course flights to get us there and buses to transport us when we had arrived. There were 56 of us in the main group, and many other parents and people who knew the choir and the Cathedral community came close to the tour for pieces of time.

“Let your light shine before others”, Jesus said. Never letting on as he said it, just how much work it would be. When he talked about bushels and lamp-stands, one might have imagined that it was simply a matter of having the courage to step out from under that bushel, blinking in the sun that helps us shine. And courage is often a significant part of what it takes. But often too so is hard work, and work over such a long period of time.

I guess if we reflect on the source of our light’s human life we would have realized. We would have realized that to shine in a way that brings glory to God sometimes needs years of work and struggle. Jesus, after all, faced the rejection of those near to him and confrontation with the leaders of the faith that was the source of his life. He faced terror and torture and a shameful death before God revealed through him the light that shone beyond his death in the resurrection. We might have known, if we reflected on Jesus’ life, that stepping out from under a bushel to let our light shine before others would not be easy.

“Let your light shine before others”, Jesus said. And our choir did shine. They sang Howells canticles at Peterborough and Canterbury cathedrals, they sang the Darke in F mass setting at a Eucharist in Wells in Somerset, they sang anthems by Vaughan Williams and Walton as midnight struck on New Year’s Eve at the Watchnight service in Salisbury, and they sang Palestrina’s Missa Brevis at the Papal basilicas of Santa Maria Maggiore and St Peter at the Vatican in Rome. And their music was woven with the beautiful organ playing of Josh who was an organ scholar and chorister here a number of years ago.

We are not all singers or members of a choir. And the way in which we are to shine if different for each one of us and at different times of our lives. For the people of Queensland facing now the aftermath of cyclone as well as the devastating floods of a few weeks ago, one might wonder what it is to be salt and light in such circumstances and what extraordinary courage and determination it might take. For members of a Cathedral community like ours, we are each called to be light at the time and place in which we find ourselves. In the ordinary times. When we are working, raising children, facing the joy and struggle of getting older. In light times, when life seems to have a gentle tread, and in darker times when we walk the path of a grief that we know will never leave us and in which we wonder if can possibly imagine shining and giving glory to God. Jesus’ words on that mountain are surely for us all and for each moment of our lives.

During the tour on which our choir travelled to England and Rome, they did sing in a number of cathedrals and churches. And they sang in other places as well. They sang a version of Waltzing Mathilda – “Time for a Matilda,” Mrs Hempton would say – in Adelaide Airport before they flew out, in the Angel Spice, an Indian Restaurant near Peterborough to the delight of the restaurant’s owner Jack, and in the Square in front of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. And they also sang what is really their party piece, “Locus iste” by Bruckner. The words of “Locus iste”, roughly translated, mean ‘this is the place’. And the choir sang “Locus iste” underground in the catacombs near Rome in the company of the Australian Salesian priest who given a tour there.

But they sang “Locus iste” somewhere else as well. On New Years’ Day, a tired choir, who had sung the Watch-night Service at the Cathedral in Salisbury the night before, found themselves on the bus being driven to see the sights in the county of Wiltshire near Salisbury. After paying homage to Stonehenge, the bus drove the group to Old Sarum, a site of some ancient ruins high up on a hill. I stood away from the group looking at the view for a while. As I turned around, I noticed that the choir was gathering around Leonie, almost by instinct, it seemed. And there, on a hill in Wiltshire, the choir sang “Locus iste”, by Anton Bruckner, and there in that place, as in many others during their tour of England and Rome, they shone and gave glory to their father who is in heaven.