Candlemas St Paul's Cathedral

Sermon at Evensong on the Feast of Candlemas with the Licensing of The Rev'd Paula Hollingsworth as Chaplain

I will fill this house with splendour: Haggai 2:7

The disciples were tourists, visiting the temple and wowed by it all – much as we are by St Paul’s. When they went to visit the temple was still being built. The original had been destroyed – not by fire like old St Paul’s, but by invasion; it had been rebuilt and destroyed again, and now was being raised on a grander and more wonderful scale. They were awed to see it.

It was not just physically unfinished; it was spiritually incomplete. The Prophet Ezekiel saw in his visions the removal of the Shekeniah, the cloud of the presence of the Lord, and through all the rebuilding the House was not now filled with His splendour as of old.

The hope grew with years of yearning expectation that the presence of the Lord would last return and fill the house with His splendour. But it did not come.

So when the strangely mismatched couple from Nazareth paid the entrance fee and climbed up the steps to the Temple to do for their child what the law required – the sacrifice for the firstborn – it was not that no one expected the Lord to come to his Temple, they did. But they did not expect Him to come like that. They expected the glory of the shining cloud. But He came in the hidden glory of a child – the wonder of dependence, the miracle of the Word made Flesh, Emmanuel, God with us.

Expected, veiled, but not unrecognised. Simeon and Anna knew him for Who and What He was. The Light to lighten the Gentiles and the One set for the falling and rising of many in Israel. Recognising Him they proclaimed Him to His parents and to all who would listen.

Paula your job as chaplain in the Cathedral is to recognise and proclaim the Lord when he shall come.

John Milton remarked: “Bishops and Presbyters we know, but what are Chaplains?” (1)

Originally chaplains were the clergy who had custody at Tours of the Capella – the cloak that S Martin famously cut in half to clothe the freezing beggar – the incident is shown in Hugie O Donoghue’s painting here in the crypt.

The legend goes on that on the following day Martin saw in a vision Christ clothed in the half cloak.

Like Simeon and Anna, Martin greeted the Lord who was expected, but unseen because veiled in a lowly form.

This is the role of the chaplain. To greet the Lord in those who come. In the great and small, the rich and poor, the well-balanced and the bonkers, those who pay the entrance fee and those who come in free, those who work here and those who worship here. To greet in them all the Lord who comes to His temple.

We sometimes wear cloaks – copes -  here in the Cathedral. As being a reminder of the cloak cut in half in the service of the hidden Christ, they are a reminder also of that great outdoor garment and a call to go outside.

Anna was a Prophet. She did not keep the message to herself but told all who would listen. Tell us all, Paula, tell us all about Jesus who is revealed in his temple. Help those who come into His Temple to recognise the splendour of what they bear in their arms: The God who is come to his house.

And brothers and sisters, know this, the Lord is filling His house with splendour.

He will do that one day with such a blaze of glory that no one will fail to know him. But already He comes. He comes in your lives and hearts.

None of you, none of us, would be here unless, like Mary and Joseph, we had not been drawn by grace. Whether like them we come as paying guests or we come as staff or as family or as worshippers or visitors or tourists he has drawn us here tonight.

What else is he doing in your lives as He comes, expected but hidden, hidden as he was when He came to Simeon and to Anna and to Martin.

The chaplain will help you to follow His call – that is her duty and work for which tonight she is installed. But what wonders will He work in you? No one – baby or beggar, coped cleric or anointed King is not invited to be among those disciples who wondered at the greatness of the Temple and were told by their Lord that the sign of splendour would be another pulling down and a final rising again.

Be assured that He will fill His house with splendour; that house is your heart, and that Temple is your life and His call is for you. Respond now to Him, and depart in peace.

(1) Milton, Eikonoklastes: 

Bishops or presbyters we know and deacons we know, but what are chaplains? In state perhaps they may be listed among the upper serving men of some great household and be admitted to some such place as may style them the sewers or the yeomen ushers of devotion where the master is too resty or too rich to say his own prayers or to serve his own table