In Memory of Robert Willis
Choral Evensong for Candlemas: In Memory of Robert Willis
Sunday 2 February 2025
Sermon Preached by The Rt Revd and Rt Hon the Lord Williams of Oystermouth
Haggai 2: 1–9
John 2: 18–22
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
It seems appropriate to begin a thanksgiving for this particular beloved friend by quoting another brilliantly gifted, theologically imaginative hymnwriter, the first writer of Christian hymns whose name we know, Ephrem the Syrian, in the fourth century, in a hymn which takes as its starting point the feast we celebrate today.
Simeon lifts up the child Jesus in his arms, and in that moment he is lifted by Christ to Heaven. St Ephrem uses this as an image for the Eucharist. At the Mass we take up and lift the bread of heaven and in that moment, we are lifted. It’s a paradox that has already been referenced in more than one of the texts we’ve heard during this service, and it’s a powerful reminder of what the Church is, and what the Church is not. The Church does not exist to lift human beings to heaven. It exists so that there may be a space where human beings let themselves be lifted. And those who lead the Church, who minister in the Church, who nourish the spirit and the imagination of the Church, need above all to be those who are capable of letting people be lifted.
Part of Robert’s genius as a priest was to let people be lifted. His personal grace and dignity, the reticence he displayed, the natural modesty combined with an equally natural firmness: these things made space, and that is why he was such a profoundly successful animator of sacred space. And the last hymn we shall sing this afternoon is his own celebration of a vision of sacred space. He stood back so that the waters of God’s loving presence could flow into the space and lift us not by effort, by struggle, by battle – but by the steady expansion of love.
We will all remember the way in which Robert would greet people in the Cathedral again and again and again, by telling them ‘This is your place’. Whether it was leading one of his celebrated night-time candlelit pilgrimages around the building, whether it was welcoming bishops for a Lambeth Conference, whether it was addressing a baffled group of students from the Netherlands on a wet afternoon in November the same thing was said: ‘This is your place, your space, you are here to let that lift you, and my job is to step back and let it happen’.
And of course in the years of the pandemic this was something which he did with yet more imagination and originality. The creation of a virtual space, a virtual and global cathedral, which he and Fletcher put together with such wit and such beauty, day after day after day. A space in which we could be lifted, a space orchestrated, and – as people like to say these days ‘curated’ by a presence that allowed people to see things coming together. And not only things coming together, but Heaven and Earth coming together.
We shan’t readily forget that Edenic image which imprinted Robert’s likeness on so many minds across the world: the priest curating a new Garden of Eden with birds and flowers and, perhaps most unforgettably, cats. Making space for God to lift. Not lifting by effort, not scrambling up to a distant heaven, but stepping back – to let the waters of the well rise.
Robert’s grace and reticence in ministry are in evidence in so many ways, many of which we’ve already heard about this afternoon. The very first time I met him was, improbably, in Ebbw Vale, when I was Bishop of Monmouth and Robert was Dean of Hereford, and a former Minor Canon of Herford was being installed in a very bleak valley parish on a very wet evening. It struck me forcefully that Robert was a person of sufficient generosity and collegiality to make the trip to the unfashionable end of the Ebbw Fach Valley (I’m not sure if there’s a fashionable end) to support a risky and costly ministry undertaken by a junior colleague. But I learned over the years how deeply characteristic that was.
But the other image that stays with me most forcefully from the years in Canterbury, is of a particular St Nicholas’ Day procession. Those familiar with Canterbury in Robert’s time will know how that annual event developed and became enriched year by year; and one of the enrichments was the result of a particularly cold and wet procession where a rather bedraggled group of local school children were gathered outside the cathedral for what was then the traditional climax of the procession – singing carols at the crib outside the door. Nobody was in much of a mood to hang around singing carols with freezing rain coming down. Robert simply said ‘We’ll go into the Nave’ and, mysteriously, biscuits and hot chocolate appeared for the children, and the rest of us, and, less mysteriously, that became an annual part of the celebration because ‘this is your place, this is your space’.
That deep generosity, that imaginative willingness to step back, that readiness to let God do the heavy lifting, requires not a passive or a detached attitude – paradoxically, it requires profound discipline, deep rootedness and plain hard work as most Christians discover at some point in their lives. Stepping back to let God do the work is extremely hard labour. Robert was willing to put in that hard labour, that discipline of prayer, that discipline of steady welcome, that discipline of standing by the open door whatever the weather (inside or out). And that is what we give thanks for today: a ministry of letting people be lifted.
As we were planning the 2008 Lambeth Conference and thinking about the retreat for the bishops which opened that event, one thing we agreed on very deeply was that when the bishops arrived in Canterbury, the Cathedral should do the work. And that meant, of course, that Robert would do a great deal of the work, the work that allowed the Cathedral to work. And that’s a large part of what we remember today: the work that allowed the Cathedral to do the work. Just like the work that allowed the garden and the cat and the birds to do their work: a curation, a steady animation of what was deeply given and only needed the space to come alive. And it’s in that light, perhaps, that we can today renew our prayers for the renewal of our Church.
What is it that people ask of the Church? Space to come alive. Freedom to be lifted. The enlargement of the world they live in. They don’t ask – whatever some may think they want – they don’t ask for authoritarian leadership; they don’t ask for ceaseless entertainment; they don’t ask for interesting opinions – they ask for room to grow and room to rejoice. At its best our Church remains a place that gives room for growing and rejoicing. Room for people to be lifted. Not simply to feel that they are being nagged into more and more heavy lifting for less and less result. God help us as a Church (or as a society), if we forget that priority, if we lose the gift of standing back and letting the waters rise, standing back and letting Christ take hold of us and lift us to the Father. That paradoxical mystery that we remember today – the Feast of Christ’s Presentation in the Temple – is an apt metaphor for ministry working fruitfully: a ministry centred indeed on the Eucharist, where we are lifted more than we lift, but at work in everything that we do as a priestly people in the Church. Outside its doors, in our involvement in our world, what we are seeking to do is making space for that growing and that rejoicing which is the presence of the Kingdom. In word and in action and in prayer, Robert made room for the Kingdom.
Can the church that he loved – that he loves – do the same? Can we recover that revolutionary confidence in God that allows us to open the doors when the freezing rain is coming down, to make sure that the hot chocolate is made, to extend the welcome to the unlikely and the suspicious so that the waters may rise and we with them? The living waters that Christ promises – the well that he digs into the depths of the human heart, so that life may rise to all eternity.
Amen