Feature

The Shadow of Death
by William Holman Hunt

Some sermons and talks I have given:

Brief thoughts on:

Advent
Pentecost
The Ascension

The Challenge of Stem Cell Research

Lenten Talk on "Pride"

Bigotry: The Woman at the Well

The Wedding at Cana

Be Born Again

Healing the Centurion's Servant

Good Friday Meditation

The End of the World

The Annunciation

The Centrality of the Eucharist to a School Chapel

A school chapel is a special place, a holy place: the generations of past pupils who return and visit to pray and reminisce in silence or at services are a testimony to its power. It forms and confirms Christians in their discipleship journey. For some it begins as a routine chore, for some it seems irrelevant at first, but it soon becomes a spiritual refuge and refectory.

Having had the privilege of preparing school pupils for Confirmation, I am acutely aware of how embarrassing they find it to talk openly in groups about their spiritual journeys as opposed to their favourite team’s performance, or which film actress they fancy most. However, individually, they all relate different, but no less real experiences of fear, inadequacy, joy, and hope which are healed and nurtured in the school chapel, where they are reminded that they are not just pupils, but the living Body of Christ.

I will never forget the sight of hundreds and hundreds of candles being lit on the Altar at the evening service our school Chaplain and I led in response to the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. In those precious minutes boys were not too embarrassed to cry, to pray fervently, to thank God and to struggle with the tragedy of natural disasters. It was perhaps the most overt expression of a school’s corporate Christian faith I have experienced for many years: quiet, candlelit, prayerful and dignified liturgy followed by the most rousing hymn-singing.

God has a long history of revealing himself in the most unexpected places: Moses met him in the burning bush; the Wise Men worshipped him as a new born baby in a stable; Old Simeon, in words familiar as the Nunc Dimittis, proclaimed that his eyes had seen God’s Salvation in the infant brought to the Temple; Mary Magdalene initially thought Jesus was a gardener when she went to visit his Tomb on the first Easter morning; the disciples did not even recognize him in the stranger who walked with them on the road to Emmaus until he made himself known to them in the Breaking of Bread.

Pupils in a boarding school are like sailors away at sea, prisoners in gaol, or novices in a monastery. They are removed from their own families and are vulnerable. They are thus ready and need to meet God. While those around them become their surrogate family, with all the tensions and strains that family life brings, they need to have a deeper sense of belonging and being loved. The Church as Christ’s Body provides these for them.

We all bemoan the loss of the centrality of the family meal that once defined and bound together the family unit. Perhaps Christmas Day lunch is the last bastion of the traditional family meal, now that teenagers graze on TV suppers, parents snatch sandwiches where they can, and our canteen culture reduces mealtimes to little more than battery-farm trough feeding. It is for this very reason that the Eucharist has become the essential service in the Christian Church at large, and should be celebrated within a boarding school every Sunday and Feast Day: we are one body because we all share in one bread.

There is a point during the Eucharist when each person has to come forward as an individual and receive the Sacrament or a blessing. The fact that this is not an entirely passive act, but requires us to step forward immediately gives us the opportunity to receive Christ into our lives freely in Holy Communion. When I administer the Host or the Chalice, I am not aware of the ‘bed-head’, the loosened shirt, the telltale stubble or the reddened eyes of my pupils. No. Instead, I sense the intimacy of the Sacrament, and the sadness, happiness and exhaustion of those coming to receive it. I witness the grace it provides.

The institution of the Holy Eucharist by Jesus at the Last Supper is thus his continuing gift to his Church binding us together as his Body. Its power to evangelise is extraordinary. My father, who was a Jewish refugee in 1933, spent his life attending Christian services with his family, but, like Nicodemus, he never seemed to ‘get it’ and so was never baptized. That is, not until Easter Day 2000 when for some inexplicable reason he got up from his pew and took Communion, and has since been baptised and confirmed. Like Nicodemus, he did not believe until he held the Body of Christ in his hands.