Homily - Fulfilled in our ears

Walls have ears. Street art by El Jerrino, Chrisp Street Market, Poplar

A homily given at Choral Evensong at Holy Sepulchre London on Wednesday 26th October 2022 based on Romans 15.1-6 and Luke 4.16-24. The service marked the 400th anniversary of the death of the Spanish priest and composer Sebastian de Vivanco. A recording of the service can be found at this link. 

After reading verses from the prophet Isaiah, Jesus sat down in the synagogue and gave a sermon - which has rather fewer words than mine! He said :

 

“This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.”

 

An astonishing statement! Jesus outs himself as God’s Word made flesh. And, as the beautiful language of the Authorised version helps us to see - this word enters our own bodies, through our senses and transforms us. 

 

The verses which follow suggest that, at least at first, those present in the synagogue did indeed hear him.

 

The question for us is - do we? 

 

Today marks the four hundredth anniversary of the death of the Spanish priest and composer Sebastian de Vivanco. A master at setting words of scripture to music - surviving scores include eighteen settings of the Magnificat, ten masses and dozens of motets; from which our choir are singing just a small selection today. Vivanco’s skillful command of harmony and our choir’s masterful performance of his score transforms these words - in our hearing - into a divine song of praise. And, if for a moment you felt that ‘tingly’ feeling or the urge to tap your finger to the rhythms of the Magnificat - you will have felt the transforming power of these words of song.

 

Another anniversary takes place this month. October marks one hundred years since the foundation of the British Broadcasting Company, as it was then known.

 

Set up in the shadow of the First World War, its Managing Director, John Reith, firmly believed that the spoken word had the power to transform the world - that broadcasting had the potential to unite people like social cement, ‘making the nation as one man’, as he put it;

 

Echoes perhaps of St Paul’s letter to the Romans which implores us, God’s faithful: 

 

“that ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God.”

 

One hundred years later, referencing the power of the BBC’s World Service to inform, educate and entertain in over forty different languages, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, described the Corporation as “Britains greatest gift to the world.”

 

Saint Oscar Romero described God’s greatest gift to the world - Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh - as “God’s best microphone.” He went on to remind us that our calling is not just to hear the Word but share it. 

The question for us is – do we?

 

Romero said “God’s best microphone is Christ, and Christ’s best microphone is the Church, and the Church is all of you. Let each one of you, in your own job, in your own vocation... live the faith intensely and feel that in your surroundings you are a true microphone of God our Lord.”

 

Over the last few years of lockdown there’s a sense in which we have all become broadcasters of a sort. Many of us have had to get to grips with new technology to help us communicate when we cannot gather in person. We’ve become aware of the impediments to speaking and listening brought about through dodgy sound engineering and lax microphone control. 

 

“You’re on mute!” is no doubt a strong contender as a new entry in the next edition of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 

 

We’ve become used to talking about “hot mic” moments  - no longer the preserve of unfortunate politicians or celebrities - when speakers unwittingly share their most private, candid thoughts with everyone via their open mics. The result of which is sometimes devastatingly funny but can also be disastrously destructive.

 

 

Can this experience help us become more effective communicators of the Good News of the gospel?

 

Perhaps we can use scripture as the soundcheck for our baptismal promises - to see if our microphones are working - whether we are effectively broadcasting God’s Word through our lives?

 

Using scripture as our soundcheck, we might find we’ve been on permanent mute - either speaking so loudly and inattentively that we are unaware of the poor, the broken-hearted and the captives crying in our face that they can’t hear us. Or maybe we feel we haven’t found our own voice and have been too afraid to turn on our microphones at all. 

 

Are we suffering from a dodgy connection - not properly attuned to those with whom we are speaking, so they hear only every other word of the Good News we are preaching; or not properly attuned to the Word of God so we fail to hear it in the first place? 

 

It may be there is so much going on around us that all anyone can hear is the background noise of our lives; the Word of God present but drowned out. 

 

Or perhaps people are put off by our “hot mic” moments; when after proclaiming the gospel outwardly we are overheard in private doing quite the reverse. 

 

Whether we are called to communicate his word through beautiful music like Vivanco, or through the airwaves like the journalists and entertainers on the BBC. Using the bible as our soundcheck may we, who have received the Spirit of the Lord, become more effective microphones of God, each in our own way. Proclaiming His Word of justice and peace so that scripture may be fulfilled in the ears of all the world.  

Amen.


Image : Walls have ears. Street art by El Jerrino, Chrisp Street Market underpass, Poplar.