Recent Sermons
A sermon preached for Trinity Sunday on 30 May 2010 by Canon Jeremy Davies, Precentor
"STAN'S CAFE"
This sermon was preached during the 2010 Salisbury International Arts Festival and related to an exhibition in the Cathedral called ‘Of All the People in All the World’, produced by a group of artists called Stan’s Café, which involved creating mounds of rice representing populations, interest groups and demographic variations.
“To see a world in a grain of sand”
wrote William Blake in his Auguries of Innocence:
“To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.”
But for the fact that one cannot improve on the genius of William Blake, I was tempted this morning to rewrite his verse to read something like
“To see our world in a mound of rice”
confronted as we have been this weekend with the amazing spectacle (produced here for us by Stan’s Café as part of this year’s Salisbury Festival) of mounds of rice, large and small, which have got under the skin of our world and under the skin of our imagination. I met Maria Bota, the festival director, in town yesterday and she and I enthused together about the ‘rice show’ and she said: “You know that rice gets everywhere: don’t tell anyone but it does”. Well I am telling you because that rice does get everywhere, and most of all it gets into our imagination. For these mounds of rice stop us in our tracks and make us think afresh with curiosity, amazement, amusement (as we contemplate the idea of thirteen people crammed into a Smart car!) or with solidarity as we sympathise with the one person who left their glasses behind in the Cathedral last year, who could so easily have been one of us. But most of all, we see our world made not out of continental land masses divided by oceans but out of islands of rice, which are more revealing than any statistics or economic forecasts. And they are more revealing perhaps because these mounds of rice bring the anonymous and distant world home to us, right here where we are. And we, of course, although standing and looking and wondering or laughing, are grains of rice. We may not be Nick Clegg or David Cameron but we are grains of rice in the UK’s population, illustrated by the mound of rice here at the spire crossing. We have been part of the mound who make up McDonalds customers and we are amongst those who were stranded abroad during the volcano induced flight ban.
In one respect this fascinating exhibition has been arranged with no comment – simply an accurate as can be factual label to accompany each mound. But these rice mounds have not been arranged randomly. There may be no analysis or moral judgement: but the juxtapositions of, for example, the numbers of refugees in the world next to the almost equal number of millionaires in the world, and the fluctuating number of children who died from curable diseases in 1988, 2001 and 2008 invite us to make our own judgement and come to our own conclusions. As Blake suggested, we can see a world in a grain of sand.
Those of us who came to the Monteverdi Vespers last Wednesday in the Cathedral may ask what this exhibition of rice mounds has to do with art. But art, surely, emerges from a creative idea, that reveals our world in new and sometimes shocking or startling ways and kindles our imagination and transforms our perceptions, so that somehow in our moral or spiritual being we are changed. If that is the meaning and purpose of art, then this exhibition Of All the People in All the World must be in the same boat of human endeavour as the Monteverdi Vespers.
Having mounds of rice in the Cathedral today provides a wonderful diversion for any preacher. Because today is Trinity Sunday, when we are confronted with the ineffable mystery, which brings us to the heart of our Christian faith, and which preacher after preacher has tried to explain but which, because the doctrine of the Trinity is both ineffable and a mystery, cannot be explained.
It cannot be explained – even though at every service here, as we shall do shortly, we affirm our belief in the Trinitarian God who reveals himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit; it cannot be explained but it can be grasped, or more accurately we can be grasped by it. Like so much doctrine which cannot merely be learned and assented to, the reality of the Trinity is like a penny dropping in our imagination and our consciousness. We may describe the Holy Trinity as best we may in doctrinal formulations but our words are useless in grasping its profound simplicity. Perhaps the penny drops most of all when at some point of grief or pain or shame or transforming love or happiness or achievement that humbles us, we are reduced to silence – or rather raised to silence – and in our contemplation of the God who is love, we know that we are loved. Then the Trinity grasps us and becomes a reality not a doctrine.
Having said what I truly believe about Christian doctrine, that it is not something to be learned and assented to, or recited in a formulaic way, it is something to be experienced, lived out, discovered and recognised as true, as the words of Christian belief dissolve into the silence of Christian belonging. Having said that, I should be true to my word and shut up and sit down.
But I can’t quite resist the temptation to make some connection between Stan’s Café’s exhibition and this Feast of the Holy Trinity. Perhaps God is Stan: and Stan, though having one name, is in fact three people who work hard together to make a living from offering hospitality to anyone who comes through the door. The only qualification for entry to Stan’s Café is that they are hungry: hungry for bread and hungry for companionship – which after all simply means others to break bread with.
Stan, Stan and Stan, who run the café, provide just that: a warm welcome, bread on the table, a glass of wine, and their companionship. The hungry traveller is refreshed and feels he or she could stay longer. He is told he can stay forever: this is his home if he wants it. And then, as he finishes his food and wipes his mouth on his sleeve, the traveller sees there are others sitting at other tables, and others coming in at the door. They are all different – all completely different – which makes our traveller by turns suspicious, frightened, jealous, resentful: perhaps this “home” which seemed so idyllic isn’t so congenial after all. But the three Stans introduce our traveller to other travellers and get some newcomers to sit at his table. They get them talking together by telling them the story of their own lives: The Life of Stan they call it. It’s an amazing story - of passion and love, of friendships made and broken, of unspeakable cruelty and tear-jerking heroism, of wrongs forgiven and lives re-made. At one point, the three Stans show the marks of some terrible injustice on their hands and feet: and yet through it all they have stayed together and afterwards decided to make their home a home for all – a home for all the people in all the world, you might say.
The Stans’ storytelling at first reduced everyone to silence: it was so moving: suddenly everyone felt they were really in the same place, not just physically but emotionally. And then the Stans said: “Now it’s your turn: you all have stories: tell them. We will give you each a mound of rice, take one grain and put it on your plate – that’s you, each one of you a single grain of rice, and as you tell your stories, add a grain of rice every time you mention someone who is part of your story. And so they did. All night long, in small groups and large, they told their stories to each other and made their mounds of rice out of the people they had met as the story of the world unfolded.
As dawn broke, they were talked out. There were hundreds if not thousands of mounds of rice representing the whole of humanity. No one was fearful or suspicious or resentful any more, as they had heard such wonderful stories about how to be human. Tired though they were, they were ready to eat: “Come and have breakfast” said Stan. And the three Stans took the mounds of rice from each of the travellers and put the rice into a vast cauldron full of spices and herbs. The rice when it was cooked was able to feed them all deliciously, but they had learned from their storytelling that those who were nearest to the cauldron of food needed to provide first of all for those who were furthest away at the back of the queue.
“The first shall be last and the last shall be first”:
Stan quipped, and he winked at the two other Stans.
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“To see a world in a grain of sand”
wrote William Blake in his Auguries of Innocence:
“To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.”
But for the fact that one cannot improve on the genius of William Blake, I was tempted this morning to rewrite his verse to read something like
“To see our world in a mound of rice”
confronted as we have been this weekend with the amazing spectacle (produced here for us by Stan’s Café as part of this year’s Salisbury Festival) of mounds of rice, large and small, which have got under the skin of our world and under the skin of our imagination. I met Maria Bota, the festival director, in town yesterday and she and I enthused together about the ‘rice show’ and she said: “You know that rice gets everywhere: don’t tell anyone but it does”. Well I am telling you because that rice does get everywhere, and most of all it gets into our imagination. For these mounds of rice stop us in our tracks and make us think afresh with curiosity, amazement, amusement (as we contemplate the idea of thirteen people crammed into a Smart car!) or with solidarity as we sympathise with the one person who left their glasses behind in the Cathedral last year, who could so easily have been one of us. But most of all, we see our world made not out of continental land masses divided by oceans but out of islands of rice, which are more revealing than any statistics or economic forecasts. And they are more revealing perhaps because these mounds of rice bring the anonymous and distant world home to us, right here where we are. And we, of course, although standing and looking and wondering or laughing, are grains of rice. We may not be Nick Clegg or David Cameron but we are grains of rice in the UK’s population, illustrated by the mound of rice here at the spire crossing. We have been part of the mound who make up McDonalds customers and we are amongst those who were stranded abroad during the volcano induced flight ban.
In one respect this fascinating exhibition has been arranged with no comment – simply an accurate as can be factual label to accompany each mound. But these rice mounds have not been arranged randomly. There may be no analysis or moral judgement: but the juxtapositions of, for example, the numbers of refugees in the world next to the almost equal number of millionaires in the world, and the fluctuating number of children who died from curable diseases in 1988, 2001 and 2008 invite us to make our own judgement and come to our own conclusions. As Blake suggested, we can see a world in a grain of sand.
Those of us who came to the Monteverdi Vespers last Wednesday in the Cathedral may ask what this exhibition of rice mounds has to do with art. But art, surely, emerges from a creative idea, that reveals our world in new and sometimes shocking or startling ways and kindles our imagination and transforms our perceptions, so that somehow in our moral or spiritual being we are changed. If that is the meaning and purpose of art, then this exhibition Of All the People in All the World must be in the same boat of human endeavour as the Monteverdi Vespers.
Having mounds of rice in the Cathedral today provides a wonderful diversion for any preacher. Because today is Trinity Sunday, when we are confronted with the ineffable mystery, which brings us to the heart of our Christian faith, and which preacher after preacher has tried to explain but which, because the doctrine of the Trinity is both ineffable and a mystery, cannot be explained.
It cannot be explained – even though at every service here, as we shall do shortly, we affirm our belief in the Trinitarian God who reveals himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit; it cannot be explained but it can be grasped, or more accurately we can be grasped by it. Like so much doctrine which cannot merely be learned and assented to, the reality of the Trinity is like a penny dropping in our imagination and our consciousness. We may describe the Holy Trinity as best we may in doctrinal formulations but our words are useless in grasping its profound simplicity. Perhaps the penny drops most of all when at some point of grief or pain or shame or transforming love or happiness or achievement that humbles us, we are reduced to silence – or rather raised to silence – and in our contemplation of the God who is love, we know that we are loved. Then the Trinity grasps us and becomes a reality not a doctrine.
Having said what I truly believe about Christian doctrine, that it is not something to be learned and assented to, or recited in a formulaic way, it is something to be experienced, lived out, discovered and recognised as true, as the words of Christian belief dissolve into the silence of Christian belonging. Having said that, I should be true to my word and shut up and sit down.
But I can’t quite resist the temptation to make some connection between Stan’s Café’s exhibition and this Feast of the Holy Trinity. Perhaps God is Stan: and Stan, though having one name, is in fact three people who work hard together to make a living from offering hospitality to anyone who comes through the door. The only qualification for entry to Stan’s Café is that they are hungry: hungry for bread and hungry for companionship – which after all simply means others to break bread with.
Stan, Stan and Stan, who run the café, provide just that: a warm welcome, bread on the table, a glass of wine, and their companionship. The hungry traveller is refreshed and feels he or she could stay longer. He is told he can stay forever: this is his home if he wants it. And then, as he finishes his food and wipes his mouth on his sleeve, the traveller sees there are others sitting at other tables, and others coming in at the door. They are all different – all completely different – which makes our traveller by turns suspicious, frightened, jealous, resentful: perhaps this “home” which seemed so idyllic isn’t so congenial after all. But the three Stans introduce our traveller to other travellers and get some newcomers to sit at his table. They get them talking together by telling them the story of their own lives: The Life of Stan they call it. It’s an amazing story - of passion and love, of friendships made and broken, of unspeakable cruelty and tear-jerking heroism, of wrongs forgiven and lives re-made. At one point, the three Stans show the marks of some terrible injustice on their hands and feet: and yet through it all they have stayed together and afterwards decided to make their home a home for all – a home for all the people in all the world, you might say.
The Stans’ storytelling at first reduced everyone to silence: it was so moving: suddenly everyone felt they were really in the same place, not just physically but emotionally. And then the Stans said: “Now it’s your turn: you all have stories: tell them. We will give you each a mound of rice, take one grain and put it on your plate – that’s you, each one of you a single grain of rice, and as you tell your stories, add a grain of rice every time you mention someone who is part of your story. And so they did. All night long, in small groups and large, they told their stories to each other and made their mounds of rice out of the people they had met as the story of the world unfolded.
As dawn broke, they were talked out. There were hundreds if not thousands of mounds of rice representing the whole of humanity. No one was fearful or suspicious or resentful any more, as they had heard such wonderful stories about how to be human. Tired though they were, they were ready to eat: “Come and have breakfast” said Stan. And the three Stans took the mounds of rice from each of the travellers and put the rice into a vast cauldron full of spices and herbs. The rice when it was cooked was able to feed them all deliciously, but they had learned from their storytelling that those who were nearest to the cauldron of food needed to provide first of all for those who were furthest away at the back of the queue.
“The first shall be last and the last shall be first”:
Stan quipped, and he winked at the two other Stans.