Start:Stop - Clothed in Christ - The Chester Mystery Plays

The actors who played Adam and Eve return as the criminals crucified with Christ

Start:Stop offers the chance for busy commuters to Start their day by Stopping to reflect for ten minutes. Starting every quarter hour between 7.45am and 9.00am on Tuesday mornings at St Stephen Walbrook, in the heart of the City of London, we invite people to drop in for as long as they can to hear a sequence of bible readings, reflections and prayers or simply to sit and reflect. For more information visit our website. This reflection is from Tuesday 17th July 2018.

Thank you for joining us for Start:Stop. My name is Phillip Dawson. This reflection will last ten minutes. We begin with a bible reading, which can be found on page 216 in the New Testament section of the Bible.

Bible Reading - Colossians 3.12-17

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Reflection

I have just come back from Chester Cathedral which, for the past month has been staging the Chester Mystery Plays. My goddaughter Emily was the youngest member of the cast and she was excellent! In the Mystery Plays the cast, formed by local people from the city, literally clothe themselves in Christ and live the story of his Passion. In watching the plays, I was fascinated by the way the designers had used clothing symbolically and how this enhanced the dialogue between past and present, bringing these bible stories to life.

Dating back to the fourteenth century, the plays started life as a series of tableaux devised by the monks of the abbey (as it then was), to help local people understand stories from the bible, at a time when few people spoke Latin.  The popularity of the plays grew to such an extent that they became disruptive to the workings of the Abbey; so they were moved outside into the city, where their organisation became the responsibility of the Freeman and Guilds. As here in the City of London, each guild represented a group of shopkeepers, tradespeople and professionals. They each took responsibility for one of the twenty four plays, which described scenes from the Old and New Testament, from The Creation to the Last Judgement.

The plays drew not only on scripture but also apocryphal texts. The Stanzaic Life of Christ, an Early English poem, is thought to be one source for the Chester cycle. This collection of scripts is one of only a small number that have survived into modern times. The poem provides the inspiration for many of the more unusual scenes in the plays, including the Doubting Midwives who are present at the birth of Christ and the scene in which Noah’s wife is seen as an argumentative gossip, who initially refuses to board the ark – only finally doing so by force.

Under the control of the Guilds, local people were involved in the production of the plays, which were originally performed on carts that were wheeled around the city; embedding the stories within the beating heart of daily life each Whitsuntide. With each Guild taking responsibility for a different biblical story, the opportunity was presented to showcase local skills and talents – for instance the Guild of Waterleaders (the Boatmen) were responsible for the story of Noah and his Ark; the Mercers and Spicers were responsible for The Three Kings and their gifts.

Banned from public performance by the Archbishop of York in 1575, the legacy of the Mystery Plays lived on through the golden age of theatre in Elizabethan England which they inspired. After a 400 year gap, the original scripts were resurrected during the Festival of Britain in 1951 and are now performed in five-yearly intervals in the City under the direction of a charitable Board which retains connections to the Guilds.  

The Three Mary's weep over the body of Jesus after it is brought down from the cross

In the latest cycle the writer, Deborah McAndrew, edited nineteen of the original plays into a single narrative in modern vernacular language. Once more set inside the cathedral nave, the company comprises nearly 200 local people in the cast, choir and orchestra, performing a score by Matt Baker, a local musician. In keeping with medieval tradition, the production incorporates contemporary imagery and often involves the same actors playing multiple parts. The designer Dawn Allsopp and Artistic Director Peter Leslie Wild have used simple but effective costumes to great effect, to layer each scene with meaning.

Clothing is used to help us see connections between the past and the present. Cain, the first murderer, returns after his exile clothed in the dress of a suicide bomber, his rucksack overflowing with weapons from every age of humankind. He hands these out to the soldiers at the Slaughter of the Innocents – a horrific but moving scene, which concludes the first half of the production. The Mark of Cain – used to justify racial segregation and slavery by some Christians for so many years – is shown as a smudge on his forehead; reminiscent of marks used by other religions but also the sign of repentance we use on Ash Wednesday. Cain (or rather the actor Sam Backer) later returns as the Antichrist, within a raucous jazz-funeral scene which precedes the Last Judgement; clothed in sinister leather boots and a long leather jacket. 

Sam Backer as the Antichrist, clothed in sinister leather boots and a long leather jacket.

 Noah (played by Nicholas Fry) is clothed as a street-sweeper and makes his first, somewhat unassuming, appearance on stage in a high-vis bib, picking up litter after a rock festival which symbolises mankind’s reckless mistreatment of the planet before the Great Flood. The theme of our current ecological catastrophe caused by plastic waste in our oceans is present throughout the other plays in the cycle; the props used by the cast, including the elaborate plants and creatures in the Garden of Eden and the animals which board the Ark, are all made from recycled objects. 

Noah originally appears on stage clothed in a high-vis jacket, collecting rubbish.

Clothing is also used to great effect to help us see connections within the cycle of plays. The actors playing Adam and Eve, clothed in robes to protect their modesty after eating from the Tree of Knowledge, return later in the same costumes as the criminals crucified alongside Christ.

The Disciples wear a blue stole or orarium around their necks, representing baptism with water

Clothes also have a symbolic function within the plays. John the Baptist places a blue stole or orarium around the neck of Jesus (played by Nick Sherratt) and the other early converts to symbolise their baptism. The stole is later removed from the necks of the disciples and used by Christ to wash their feet, before the Last Supper.  

In his book Bread for the Journey, the Dutch Catholic priest & philosopher Henri Nouwen writes;

“Being a believer means being clothed in Christ…Being “clothed in Christ” is much more than wearing a cloak that covers our misery. It refers to a total transformation that allows us to say with Paul: “I have been crucified with Christ and yet I am alive; yet it is no longer I, but Christ living in me” (Galatians 2:20). Thus, we are the living Christ in the world. Jesus, who is God-made-flesh, continues to reveal himself in our own flesh. Indeed, true salvation is becoming Christ.”

In the Mystery Plays of Chester, we see ordinary working people literally ‘clothed in Christ’ – living as the first followers of Jesus, following the story of his life, death and resurrection. The outward appearance of their clothing may have changed since the first performances in medieval times, but, as St Paul says, we are all clothed in Christ at our baptism, when we receive the same Holy Spirit as Jesus, so that we might also go out to transform the world.

In a few moments of silence, let us contemplate the image of being clothed in Christ. How might this guide our thoughts and actions today?  

Prayers

Let us pray, using the response on the service sheet.

May our every act and every day be lived through your love,

and used for your glory.

Lord of all,

Clothe us with compassion.

Help us to step back from the drama of our self-concern

and consider those in need.
As we rest in your presence,

enliven our desire to act as agents of peace and justice in this world.

May our every act and every day be lived through your love,

and used for your glory.

Lord of all,

Clothe us with humility.

Help us to acknowledge our interdependence.
Enable us to live our lives in conversation, not soliloquy; in dialogue with all creation.

Grant us the grace to admit our faults, to say sorry for those we have hurt;
and to forgive those who have wronged us.

May our every act and every day be lived through your love,

and used for your glory.

Lord of all,

Clothe us with your Word.

Help us to set aside our prepared scripts for daily life.

Free us to be bold and out of character;

to step out into the unknown and start new conversations,
forever praising you in thought and word and deed.

May our every act and every day be lived through your love,

and used for your glory.

Lord of all,

Clothe us with patience.
Help us to learn from the people we find hard to love and the situations which frustrate us;

to see with the eyes of our heart against the backdrop of your glorious inheritance;
to judge with understanding and act with wisdom.
May we be slow to anger and swift to bless.

May our every act and every day be lived through your love,

and used for your glory.

Lord of all,

Clothe us with thankfulness.

May we celebrate the diversity of life which dances around us;

Enable us to be effective stewards of your wondrous creation;

Help us to see your love at work in the world;

and to share the joy of knowing you with our families, friends and neighbours;

May our every act and every day be lived through your love,

and used for your glory.

Blessing

Let us now go out, clothed in Christ, not to serve ourselves,
but to serve others;
Not for personal glory,
but to the glory of God the Father.
so that all we are and all we do makes Him known in the world.

Let us bless the Lord!

Thanks be to God.

Thank you for joining us for Start:Stop today. Please join us tomorrow at 6pm if you are able, for our Parish Party, which starts with a service of Choral Evensong. We would love to see you. I hope you have a wonderful day and week ahead.

The next reflection will begin in a few minutes.

Links
Chester Mystery Plays 2018