It was 764 days between our whole school Cathedral services, perhaps the longest single absence since Bishop’s was founded. Increasingly confident forays for smaller services had been made by varying permutations of Year Groups this academic year, but little prepared me for the sight of the Cathedral on March 17 at near capacity and full of young people. It makes a Chaplain’s heart sing. The singing and music was actually my enduring memory, as our Organ Scholar, Joshua Samuel, playing for his final service, interrogated the structural stability of the Spire by using every organ stop at his disposal to thunder our final hymn, Lord of the Dance. Not to be outdone, the school belted out the words. Clearly one of BWS’s favourites.
The lyrics to Lord of the Dance are intriguing. Few other hymns are written in the voice of Jesus, in the first person. We do not know if Jesus ever danced, although we know he was up for a good evening of food and conversation. It wouldn’t surprise me if the melody of the pipe or strings enticed him to his feet to dance. I rather hope so.
It is another insight into the world of Jesus however that has been much on my mind since half-term. The people of Ukraine were on our hearts in the Cathedral as we prayed on March 17 and now, as we approach Easter, I look at the familiar Gospel stories through a new lens. I am struck afresh by the fact that Jesus lived his whole life under a foreign, sometimes cruel, and always unwanted occupying power. Simmering through some of his conversations, you can hear the hurt of the occupied people who yearned for their freedom and for their land to be theirs once more. I can hear their voices more clearly this year. It was that same occupying power that put Jesus, in his early 30s, to death, partly because of fears that he could be a catalyst for Jewish hopes of freedom. Power and the retention of power can become intoxicating and so obsessive that any action is contemplated that will secure it. In the First Century it was the Roman Empire that occupied. In the Twenty-first Century it is resurgent ambitions of a Russian Empire.
This term has shaken many long-held assumptions. We had thought that images of land wars in Europe belonged to History books. We had thought that our generations were different, that our sophistication and technology made us immune to such things. It was only those who came before us who could resort to siege tactics and indiscriminate attacks on cities. We were wrong. And maybe we were arrogant in that sense of superiority.
I have heard commentators during the conflict remark that we have learnt nothing from history, particularly in the collective failure to read the runes of what was approaching over the last decade. Perhaps that makes it all the more important that we remember our rootedness in the past as well as our hopes for the future. Perhaps we cannot have the latter without the former. Perhaps that is part of what our Cathedral services are about, even after 764 days away.
Stella Wood, Chaplain
