Alarm bells sound!
Sunday 16 February 2025 Choral Evensong with the Licensing of The Revd Jules A. Barnes as Vicar of the Close 4.30pm
‘Alarm bells sound!’ Preached by The Very Reverend Nicholas Papadopulos, Dean of Salisbury
Wisdom 11: 21-12: 11
Galatians 4: 8-20
One of the things that Jules and I have in common is that we are both alumni of an august body known to its members as The Slope Society. For the uninitiated, The Slope Society is the network of priests who have been called to serve as bishops’ chaplains. It takes its name from Obadiah Slope, of Barchester fame (unforgettably portrayed by Alan Rickman) and its members engage in a variety of infinitely rewarding tasks – taking minutes, drafting speeches, offering a sounding-board, and fending off banana skins, lest the episcopal foot should slip. The Society’s motto derives from a well-known hymn popular on All Saints Day: ‘We feebly struggle; they in glory shine’.
Jules will know that in any bishop’s staff meeting there are names which – when they arise – cause the bishop’s eyebrows to rise and his or her pulse to increase. The incumbent of X; the Lay Chair of Y; the councillor for Z: names which set alarm bells off. And Jules: I hate to tell you this – but in the Close of which you are now Vicar, yours is already such a name, a name which sets alarm bells off.
Let me explain. We interviewed you on a sunny day in September last year. As we were preparing to usher you into the Conference Room the fire alarm sounded throughout the Chapter Office. It kept on sounding. We thought we might have to redeploy to Sarum College. But, thank Heaven, the code was found, the bell stopped ringing, and in we went for your interview. Then – you will be unaware of this – on the day you moved into the Close last month the rest of us were lining up for Evensong in the South Quire Aisle when… the fire alarm sounded. We evacuated the Cathedral and stood in the wintry dark outside the North Porch (the choristers have never had such fun) until the vergers gave us the all-clear. I refuse to believe that this is coincidence: you are plainly someone who sets alarm bells ringing.
So: what an asset you are going to be to your new colleagues. Every decent priest needs access to alarm bells – to at least three peals of well-tuned alarm bells:
The first peal sounds when priests fail to take responsibility for their own walk with God, a responsibility that they must take seriously if they are going to be of any use to others in theirs. There is no one in ministry who I’ve met who is a stranger to such failure. The daily round of meetings, emails, personal encounters and even preparation time exerts its pressure on the diary, and the time for personal formation – prayer, study, retreat, spiritual direction, whatever form it takes – reduces. Rest days get encroached upon, holidays are squeezed, friends are shortchanged, and families bear an ever-greater burden. The easy delusion that a priest can keep going in their own strength rather that in reliance on Christ’s living presence in them is a dangerous vanity – a dangerous vanity – and when it looms alarm bells need to sound.
The second peal sounds when a person or situation needs attention. When the bishop for whom I worked was appointing a new archdeacon he wanted to include in the role description that a successful candidate would always have a pair of Wellington boots in the car. What he meant by that was that a new archdeacon would always be ready, on a wet and windy Dorset evening, to splash through tempest, hail and flood to see a colleague who was struggling or sick. It’s a disposition that remains essential in a Church which can be both stupefyingly bureaucratic and tediously managerial. Christ’s call and the Church’s vocation – to visit the sick, feed the hungry, and sit alongside the prisoner – has not changed. So, Jules, I hope you’ve packed your Wellington boots. When human need is present in this community then alarm bells need to sound.
But the third peal is the subtlest. My predecessor, Bishop June Osborne, often claimed that the Close had hospitality in its bones. She was right. You’ll hear me say – if you haven’t already – that hospitality is the greatest Christian virtue. Cathedral clergy are required to drink their bodyweight in tea or Prosecco, and eat it in cake or canapés. Regularly. It is an inestimable privilege to do so in this most beautiful of places, and to enjoy the company of those among whom they live as they do so. But the laudable imperative to be good neighbours and the pastoral instinct to reassure cannot detract from the Church’s vocation to seek the truth of God and the justice of God. Priests cannot always be liked; priests cannot always be popular, and when their integrity and their independence are at risk in this most convivial of environments then alarm bells need to sound.
Welcome, Jules. Please, sound alarm bells for all of us. We will do the same for you. And together we will grow in the knowledge and love of God and of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.