It’s lovely of you to ask me to preach at the 30th anniversary of your Christian Study Centre.
Some of you know I had my 80th birthday 10 days ago.
Several of my clerical brethren have been quick to draw my attention to the verse in Psalm 90 which simply says that “though men be so strong that they come to fourscore years: yet is their strength then but labour an sorrow; so soon passeth it away and we are gone.”
I’ve said to such Job’s comforters that the psalm was written well over 2,000 years ago; and we live longer now – though admittedly not all that longer; but there’s another verse in the psalm which says: “So teach us to number our days: that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” And I’d really like to discuss with you this evening the form that wisdom should take. That seems to me an appropriate subject for a Christian Study Centre.
In 1942 I gave my mother, for her birthday, a copy of John Buchan’s autobiographical book Memory Hold-the-Door – which had already been reprinted a score of times since it was published in 1940. I knew she would love it – and she did. And when she died, I took it back from her shelves. And I could not do better than read you part of the preface Buchan wrote to his book as a preface to our thinking together this evening. “As we age”, Buchan wrote “the mystery of Time more and more dominates the mind. We live less in the present, which no longer has the solidity that it had in youth; less in the future, for the future every day narrows its span. The abiding things lie in the past.”
“I have no new theory of Time to propound” Buchan continues “but I would declare my belief that it preserves and quickens rather than destroys. An experience, especially in youth, is quickly overlaid by others, and is not, at the moment, fully comprehended. But it is overlaid, not lost. Time hurries it from us, but also keeps it in store, and it can later be recaptured and amplified by memory, so that at leisure we can interpret its meaning and enjoy its savour.” What marvellous perceptive writing.
I hope the Hampstead Christian Study Centre reserves a special place for recapturing and sharing your memories. And the fact that you are keeping your 30th anniversary inclines me to believe you do.
So I wondered what memories I should share with you this evening – what memories of mine. My childhood? Out at work on the riverside in war-time? Studying for ordination? My curacy in Westminster? My years as Chaplain of Trinity College, Cambridge – then Warden of its Mission in Camberwell and Vicar of St George’s? Then Canon, first at Southwark, then at St Alban’s? My years as Preacher to Gray’s Inn and as Director of the Charity ‘Christian Action’? Oh yes, and Chaplain to H M The Queen? What memories should I share with you?
Well, perhaps I should begin with my time as a curate in Westminster. My vicar – later Bishop of Guildford and of Salisbury – was renowned as a trainer of curates. He soon said to me “I’m sending you to someone who will get rid of your Cockney accent. He’s an expert at teaching people to speak in public.” I never knew I had a Cockney accent, so, let us say, I was a little “hurt”. But my speech trainer was a marvel. As soon as I arrived where he did his training sessions – off Victoria Street – he gave me a Prayer Book, opened at the Holy Communion service – 1662 – and said to “Will you read the Collect for Purity”. I began “Almighty God” , but in seconds he stopped me. “You weren’t thinking of ‘Almighty God’ when you said those two marvellous words, were you?” he asked – with a kindly smile. “Remember”, he said “You’ve not only to think of the meaning of the words yourself, you’ve to say them in such a way that will enable your hearers to think of their meaning”….. “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid;” I suspect that speech trainer eventually enabled me to broadcast!
I was very surprised to be asked to be Chaplain of Trinity College, Cambridge. I knew nothing of that world, and I was socially and intellectually terrified. There’s no other word for it. In my second term, Dr Billy Graham conducted a Mission in Great St Mary’s, the University Church. I was asked to have Billy to lunch – with my fellow chaplain, Simon Phipps; with the Regius Professor of Divinity, Dr Burnaby; with Mervyn Stockwood, then Vicar of the University Church, and Harry Williams, then lecturer in Divinity and a much loved priest. I’d never given a lunch party in my life. Mercifully the meal was brought over from the college kitchens, and all went well. A steady stream of undergraduates who’d ‘given their life to the Lord’ at the Mission came to see me. But, soon, many of that stream came to see me again. After a few weeks, they had discovered they were still the same as before – with the same temptations. And so on. I decided to give a talk in my rooms on ‘How to receive Forgiveness’. By chance, that evening, a publisher was dining in Hall and asked if he might come to the talk. I saw no reason why he should not. After the talk, to my great surprise, the publisher asked: “May I publish that?” “But it’s only a half-hour talk” I said. “Oh, you’ve no idea what publishers can do!” he replied. “I’ll do it in large print.”
So my first book came to be published. I called it The Double Cure – “Be of sin the double cure: Cleanse me from its guilt and power” – from the hymn Rock of Ages. Bishop Cuthbert Bardsley wrote a preface to it, and Professor Charlie Moule wrote a commendation for the back cover. The book – or booklet – published first in 1957, has been reprinted many times and was eventually published as a tract-case pamphlet.
I include this memory today because part of the Christian ‘wisdom’ is that our memories sometimes need to be purged. This is part of what forgiveness involves and is an important part of the ‘wisdom’ to which the Psalmist says we need to ‘apply our hearts’. It is the wisdom, not least of sacramental confession, with its Anglican rule “All may; some should; none must.”
I first heard of Dietrich Bonhoeffer from a refugee pastor, Heinz Helmut Arnold, who was given safe lodging in our vicarage in 1938 when I was a teenager. Pastor Arnold had been in Buchenwald concentration camp. He knew, and was cared for, by George Bell, Bishop of Chichester, as was Bonhoeffer. It was John Robinson, later Bishop John Robinson, who, in Cambridge, introduced me to the thought of Bonhoeffer – who was executed in Flossenburg concentration camp on 9th April 1945 – sixty years ago this very month. Only three weeks after Bonhoeffer was executed, Adolf Hitler committed suicide. Four Sundays ago I stood in front of the statue of Bonhoeffer which now is one of the statues on the facade of Westminster Abbey. In his Ethics, for instance, he wrote “In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things, the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger and is at best the object of pity. The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.” There is wisdom for you!
Over the years I became convinced that the friendship between Bonhoeffer and his eventual biographer Eberhard Bethge was one of the greatest friendships of Christian history and that I ought to go and see Bethge in Germany and suggest he wrote a book simply about their friendship.
With this thought in mind I was just about to phone Bishop John Robinson one day when my phone rang. To my astonishment it was Bishop John. “Eric” he said “could you do something for me? I was meant to go tomorrow evening to the German Embassy – for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the German church at Forest Hill – where Bonhoeffer was the minister for three years in the thirties. But I’ve got to take a funeral. Could you go instead of me?” “Yes, I’ll go” I said. “But curiously I was just about to phone you” and I told him for what purpose. John Robinson said he’d love to write a letter to Eberhard Bethge – in Dusseldorf – backing up what I wanted to write and say to him.
The next evening I went along – somewhat timidly – to the German embassy. I’d never been there before – I don’t often go to embassies. There was quite a crowd of people who were slowly ascending a lovely staircase – about five or six abreast – under chandeliers. At the top of the stairs was the German Ambassador, who happened to be a relative of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
I made for the bottom stair and stood next to a rather portly German. He smiled and said “Why are you here?” I told him I had really no right to be there, but was standing in for Bishop John Robinson. “Dear John”, said the German. I asked him his name and why he was there. “My name” he said “is Eberhard Bethge”! When I had got over my astonishment I was able to tell him why I had made up my mind to come and see him. He was silent for a while. Then he said “You are quite right. It was a marvellous friendship. But if I were to write a book directly about our friendship, I think it would be destroyed by those with psychological hatchets.”
Eherhard Bethge died last year. John Robinson, Eberhard Bethge, and of course Dietrich Bonhoeffer are all dead. But their memory is vivid.
When I was vicar of St George’s Camberwell I had a housekeeper and a ‘daily’ – not least to look after the students I had living with me. The ‘daily’ had a young son, Roy. Roy is now in late middle age. Not long age, Roy phoned me and said “Oi, Vicar – who’s this geyser Dietrich Bonhoeffer? They’ve gone and put a blue plate on the side of my flat in Forest Hill to say DIETRICH BONHOEFFER lived here.” I was very glad to tell Roy all about him! About his life and death, his ethics and his theology. It was quite a demanding task – one which, I think Bonhoeffer himself would have relished.
A fourth memory – from a very different period of my life.
When I was Director of Christian Action, in May 1981, I received a postcard from my good friend Robert Runcie, then Archbishop of Canterbury, posted from Santiago de Compostela. It said “Bought a Times today and saw Clifford Longley on ‘The Church of England and the inner cities’ .” It calls for a substantial letter from you.” I did as I was told and wrote the letter – published in The Times on 27 May 1981 – in which I suggested the immediate appointment of an Archbishop’s commission on Urban Priority Areas – which in due course came to pass. After two years, its Report Faith in the City was published.
It meant for me visiting, with the commission, many of the inner city areas of Britain!
I remember particularly our visit to Bradford. We were received by the Muslim mayor of Bradford , who was very impressive. At lunch he asked me whether I would be willing to meet a group of Muslim teenagers in the afternoon – all of them, he said, unemployed, and angry. At 2.30pm I went to see them. They were very angry. They hardly listened to a word I had to say; but I felt they were at least getting something off their chest. At 4 o’clock I looked at my watch – the Commission was meant to be getting a train back to London about that time. “You’re not going” one of them said angrily. “We’ve got a meal ready for you.” I hastily said “If you want me to stay, of course I’ll stay.” Over the meal there was quite a different atmosphere. We became friends. I caught the last train back to London. They came and saw me off.
How often I’ve learnt – but had to learn again, and again – that meeting round a meal table is altogether different from merely talking. It can be a kind of holy communion.
On the train back to London I could hardly believe the people I’d met after lunch – and the friends I’d shared a meal with – were the same people.
I hope in the Study Centre you have meals together from time to time – as well as meetings – and sermons!
I’ve shared four memories with you this evening; but I don’t want to suggest that our memories are the only gateway to the wisdom to which the psalmist suggests we apply our hearts.
For some there will be the gateway of music or of art.
I was greatly privileged to celebrate my 80th birthday with a performance of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius at St Paul’s Cathedral and it astonished me how many wrote to me about their first memories of performances of Gerontius and how much the performance at St Paul’s meant to them.
John Richmond – who writes poetry and who lives not far from here – kindly sent me a poem he’d written; as a kind of birthday present to me.
The poem reminded me – if I needed reminding – what different gifts we all have – what different gateways there are to our memory and to wisdom.
You may be surprised by the titles of the poem; but I think you’ll see that it’s about both memory and wisdom, and numbering our days.. It’s called
BICYCLES
It’s spring of 1962, a Saturday.
I’m with my father on an empty-at-the-weekend train, and full of joy. We’re on our way to buy a bicycle, my first.
We come back on the same suburban train.
[I know; I checked the number; I am in that phase.]
The bike I chose is blue, and in the guard’s van.
I suggest we get off one stop earlier than planned
so I can try it on the road.
My father is unsure, and then consents.
The hill from Beckenham to Shortlands,
in the valley of the Ravensbourne, is steep.
We’re at the top. He holds the bike.
I mount, and wobble, then shoot off and leave him standing.
A the bottom, I turn round
And watch him running down the hill
And when he’s close enough to see
Fear clearing from his eyes.
But I’m all right.
And 43 years pass.
And we are in a shop in Bedford, buying him a bicycle.
He’s 80, and the old one is beyond repair.
He mounts outside the shop,
Adjusts the saddle height.
Then says he’ll ride the five miles home
And will I take the car? He’ll see me there.
I follow at a distance, not to seem concerned.
I stop in driveways, watch him wobble on the new machine,
Then overtake by half a mile, and stop and wait again. Each time Fear has its hand round my heart.
These roads which once were country now are chock-a-block with metal And the bends are blind. Each time
he reappears. He is all right.
Great chapters of our lives have opened, closed.
A zero interim. Where but from the man ahead
have I inherited
This instinct of protectiveness for him?
“The instinct of protectiveness” – I will call it Love
for children
for parent
for the incapacities, in one way or another.
Newman calls it the “loving wisdom of our God”
“So teach us to number our days that we many apply our hearts unto wisdom”.
Eric James