Matthew 18: 1-5
Churches founded in the tradition of western monasticism, of which this Cathedral is one, were always defined by two spaces. The first, and most obvious, was the Oratory – the place of prayer and worship – in which we now sit. This was a place of clear and structured hierarchy. The members of the monastic foundation, with the Abbot at their head, would be ordered and seated in seniority. Beginning with the Abbot or Bishop all would know their place within a “great chain of being” with God at the top, then flowing through the officers of the monastery, through to the lowly novices, and beyond into the wider mass of people worship out of sight in the Nave of the church.
As we gather and worship in this oratory today, we can still see the echoes of the ordering of this monastic space. Not only in the ascriptions to the ancient stalls in which some of us are sitting, but also in the order through which we entered and will leave this service. An ordering which is finely calibrated to hold in tension the differing authorities of the Church, the state and the judiciary in this service of celebration.
The second space is dramatically and radically different. This is the space of the Chapter House. The Chapter House was traditionally a circular room, usually off the cloister on the south side of a monastery. Although the Chapter House here in Carlisle has been lost through this Cathedral's long and often violent history, we can still find fine examples of these spaces in, amongst other places, York and Lincoln.
Where the Oratory was a space of carefully managed order, the Chapter House was a space of equality and candour. In this space all the members of the monastic community, from the eminent Abbot to the lowliest monk, would sit in a circle as they discussed the life of that community. This was a space designed deliberately so that the mightiest might hear and recognise the wisdom of the lowliest. As St Benedict, the father of western monasticism, said in his rule:
The reason why we said all should be called for counsel is that the Lord often reveals what is better to the youngest.
Benedict’s great wisdom was that if these monastic communities were to live out God’s call to them, then they needed to live with the inherent tension of these two spaces. Between the ordering of experience and authority of the Oratory and the Chapter House where they could hear and recognise the youngest and most insignificant member of their community with the same clarity and the oldest and seemingly wisest.
In Benedict’s vision the community lived out its call not only in the highly ordered structures of prayer and worship, but also the patterns of community life where, as Jesus tells us in our reading today:
Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
This small digression into the history of western monasticism might seem a strange place to start as in this service to mark the beginning of the legal year. However, the instinct and wisdom revealed in our reading, and lived out in Benedict’s rule, motivates many of us who gather here today. As I have had chance to speak to Chris during his shrieval year it is clear what a premium he has placed on visiting and celebrating those organisations within our community which seek to put those who are so often overlooked and ignored in our society at the heart of everything they do.
Whether that is in the work of Youth Zone here in Carlisle, which Chris chaired for many years, or the groups he has championed and visited through this year, or those organisations represented here today, the one defining factor within them all is the transformative good which comes when, as Jesus reminds us, we allow ourselves to be changed by our encounter with the youngest in our society.
For some of us this call and challenge is motivated but a sense of faith and calling. For others this will come from a faint echo of this within our shared culture. For others still we do this because we simply see this to be right things to do.
Whatever the motivation we all can recognise the needs of society, and lives of children and young people in our communities are dramatically transformed when we seek to recognise and meet their needs. For instance a recent government report has shown what many of you already know intuitively. That a young life supported can be a whole life transformed. In the case of this report, it shows that early intervention in the lives of young people drawn into a life of crime reduces, by a factor of 3 or 4, the chances of reoffending and with that the vicious and life-long cycle that that creates.
The call which we hear in our reading today is not an easy one. As a representative of the church I can see that challenge played out in aspects of our Cathedral life on display here today. On one hand we are rightly proud of the way in which – through our choirs – the voices and skills of children are championed as much as adults. But at the same time we also, in the south-east corner of this Cathedral have our Safeguarding Season prayer space. Part of a time we are holding here where we might offer to God the ways in which we have failed those we have been called to protect.
This is not a challenge limited to the life of the church. As we find again and again, none of our public institutions are immune from the temptations, where of personal privilege and institutional power have too often trumped our call to stand with and for the least.
So what we might do?
Well one things is to ask ourselves, as we leave this Cathedral today and return to our place of work and speak with colleagues, members of senior teams or directors, and ask simply "where does our place of work sit on a scale between the Oratory and the Chapter House?" Are the physical and emotional spaces within which we work structured merely around experience and hierarchy alone or are they leavened by the voice and wisdom of the youngest in our midst? Do the public spaces and institutions of our common life – whether they are courts of law, or hospitals, or churches, or schools and beyond – not only build on the experience and wisdom gathered in this space, but also provide and champion that space and place where we not only notice, but allow ourselves to be transformed by, the wisdom and needs and voices of the youngest and most overlooked in our society.
Because we know that if we do this, we will stand with those too often ignored in our society and be transformed ourselves so that we might encounter again the one who came to serve, not to be served and through that glimpse a vision of the kingdom of heaven.
And Jesus said:
Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.
Amen.
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