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SOUNDS OF EDINBURGH FESTIVAL ON ROYAL MILE

FR JOHN McLUCKIE
Good morning and welcome to Sunday Worship.听 I鈥檓 Father John McLuckie, I鈥檓 Rector of Old St Paul鈥檚 Church in the centre of Edinburgh, and I鈥檓 standing here on the High Street, the Royal Mile.听 I walked just a few minutes from my home and on the way to where I鈥檓 standing I passed an opera singer, a piper, a magician, an acrobat, a contortionist, two caricaturists and even a pirate.听 听Everywhere you go in the city centre there are performers, leafleters and visitors drawn to the annual spectacle of the world鈥檚 biggest arts festival. It鈥檚 a familiar sight to those of us who live here and those who make an annual visit to the International Festival and the Festival Fringe. Except, of course, that this familiar sight was all but absent two years ago and present only in a much-reduced form last year. The global pandemic brought silence to this festival city and this year, the silence has, once more, given way to a full-throated celebration of human creativity and artistic skill. Perhaps that silence still has something to reveal to us about the arts that we might too easily take for granted.

This morning, I want to invite you to join the celebration, but also to pause for a while and reflect on this universal human impulse to interpret the world around us through word, music and movement.

First, a hymn that celebrates creativity and directs our song to the Creator of all things; Angel voices ever singing.

HYMN:听 ANGEL VOICES EVERY SINGING (Tune: Angel Voices)
The London Fox Choir,听 Album: Then Sings My Soul 鈥� Pam Rhodes,听 Label: Elevation

JOHN
Now in the tranquillity of Old St Paul鈥檚 Church a few yards from the Royal Mile, I鈥檓 joined by our Curate, Mother Jaime Wright, who leads us in prayer.

JAIME 鈥� PRAYER
O God, whose Spirit in our hearts teaches us to desire your perfection, to seek for truth and to rejoice in beauty; enlighten and inspire all artists and performers in whatever is true, life-giving and lovely so that our lives together may be enriched and deepened. We make our prayer in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

JOHN
The poet, George Mackay Brown, was not much given to introspection in his work 鈥� his poems turn our eyes outwards to the world around us through a sustained reflection on the landscape, history, daily labours and religious festivals of his native Orkney. However, he did write a couple of poems about the work of the poet, and he very much saw his craft as labour rather than leisure. Here鈥檚 one of them, simply called The Poet.听 I can picture the figure he describes, moving around the streets of this city.听 In fact, I think I see him often.

POEM 鈥� GEORGE MACKAY BROWN
鈥淭herefore he no more troubled the pool of silence 鈥︹�� [Copyright material]
Publisher:听 Hodder & Stoughton

MUSIC:听 FAREWELL TO STROMNESS (Composer: Sir Peter Maxwell Davies)
From Album Made Famous by Classic FM 听(CD1)

JOHN
These words seem to contrast the serious business of poetry with the frivolity of entertainment, but I don鈥檛 think George Mackay Brown intended to draw too sharp a distinction. I am sure that many performers can identify with the need to adopt a persona when taking to the stage 鈥� it鈥檚 part of the imaginative process of seeing the world through different eyes for a time. And none of us would deny the importance of taking a break from our cares and toils and simply enjoying ourselves. Indeed, I think there is a deep spiritual value in the kind of self-forgetting that comes with such joyfulness. It鈥檚 what Thomas Merton meant when he invited us to 鈥榝orget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.鈥� Us Scots are well-known for being somewhat undemonstrative, but once I鈥檓 on the ceilidh dance floor鈥�. It seems to me that too much self-consciousness can make it difficult for us to relate freely to others.

At the same time, George Mackay Brown is surely right to remind us of the serious business of the artist who is willing to explore the deeper reaches of the human condition, to ask the difficult questions and to reflect on the mysteries of life. When he writes of the interrogation of silence, perhaps he has in mind the silence of contemplative wonder; or maybe the silence which is our only honest response to the problem of suffering; or the open, boundless silence we find in prayer. And he is also surely right in seeing that it is from this silence that a poem, a song, a play or a symphony arises.

We now hear Jonathan Dove鈥檚 setting of that great song of praise, the Gloria, which erupts from the stillness as Christians gather to worship God.

MUSIC:听 GLORIA (Composer: Jonathan Dove)
Choir of Canterbury Cathedral directed by David Flood
Album: The Canterbury Voice,听 Label: The Dean and Chapter of Canterbury

JOHN
Our artistic impulses, which arise from our silence in the face of life鈥檚 mysteries, give expression to those mysteries and allow us to bear them with something akin to joy. Christian tradition articulates this paradox in the text we know as the Beatitudes. Jesus identifies several conditions and dispositions that we would not normally associate with happiness and dares to call those who experience these things blessed.

ALEX ANDERSON听 听Matthew 5:1-12

5When Jesus听saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him.听2Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

3听鈥楤lessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4听鈥楤lessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5听鈥楤lessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6听鈥楤lessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
7听鈥楤lessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
8听鈥楤lessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9听鈥楤lessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
10听鈥楤lessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness鈥� sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11听鈥楤lessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely听on my account.听12Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

JOHN
鈥楻ejoice and be glad鈥� even in the face of persecution! I wonder what it is that allows us to do that. What is it that can lift our eyes beyond forces that limit, diminish and even destroy life and deliver us from the despair that can immobilise us?

Jesus calls us blessed not when we manage to evade grief, poverty of spirit or persecution, but when we are sustained through them. Perhaps some of the things that can sustain us are the imagination to see that we are sharing in the common experience of humanity, the willingness to respond compassionately and the faith to see that the things that matter most endure: love, mercy, simplicity. And that imagination can be fed by the arts. I was very touched during the long, anxious days at the height of the pandemic, by the resilience of artists I know who turned their attention to supporting those most affected: online choirs to support young carers or refugee women far from home; weekly broadcasts of music to keep children in good mental health; church choirs bringing comfort and connection to isolated older people.

We鈥檙e going to hear the words of the Beatitudes again, this time sung in a setting by Arvo P盲rt.

MUSIC:听听 BEATITUDES (Composer: Arvo P盲rt)
Choir of King鈥檚 College, Cambridge, directed by David Goode
Album: The Best of Arvo P盲rt,听 Label: Warner Classics

JOHN
Just as Jesus identified blessedness in the midst of suffering, human creativity is often found in places where we might least expect it, not as a distraction from what is going on, but as an act of defiance or hope even when the spirit is completely broken and all seems lost. Just think of that haunting Quartet for the End of Time composed by Messiaen in a POW camp with the few instruments that were available to him.

In a programme recorded in 2005, the late Ian Mackenzie, a brilliant musician himself, as well as a theologian and broadcaster, reflected on his experience of that first ever Edinburgh International Festival, held in the shadow of the Second World War.

CLIP FROM RADIO 4 SUNDAY WORSHIP 2005; PRESENTER:听 IAN MACKENZIE

The first Festival was still in the wake of the Holocaust, the Second World War, and the atom bombs.听 The problem of evil had not been solved, in fact it was more intractable than ever.听 The human spirit had faced, but not resolved, the enigmas of beauty versus obscenity, truth versus distortion.听 One form of the enigma was caught in a unique fusion of form and reality in the Usher Hall on the final Saturday of the first Festival.听

I was there, sitting in the organ gallery, facing the conductor.听 His was a noble face, but at this moment etched in anguish.听 As he unfurled melodies which stole into our ears and round the hall the walls seemed to fade and give way to the woods round Vienna and the Danube river flowing through the Europe which had just savaged itself.听 The conductor was the great maestro Bruno Walter who had been a friend of Mahler and disciple of Brahms.听 And the orchestra spread before him, from which I was only a few feet away, was his beloved Vienna Philharmonic.听 Hitler had cut a swathe through the Jews in the orchestra.听 Bruno Walter had escaped, to spend the war years in America.听 In an inspired move, those who midwifed the Festival into existence had invited the Vienna Philharmonic to reunite with their maestro as the climactic act of Edinburgh鈥檚 three weeks of spiritual healing.

That concert crossed the boundary of the bitter-sweet, then the boundary of the poignant, and finally the boundary of the unbearable, before metamorphosing into the sublime.听 Not because of tragic music.听 There was no Brahms鈥� tragic overture or Mahler鈥檚 despairing 9th Symphony.听 The music took wing on a whirl of Strauss Waltzes.听 As the tunes poised and pounced and soared, tears poured down the players鈥� faces.听 I watched one ancient cellist sway to the rhythms while gulps of grief shook his body.听 Tread softly, for you tread on my nightmares.听 I had a fleeting vision of the kind of God who has entrusted our species with such fathomless dilemmas of free will, and a Middle East carpenter who decided to dance with the human race into the dark.

MUSIC: THE BLUE DANUBE (Composer: Johann Strauss)

Album: Music on a Summer Evening, 听Label: Teldec 0630 11383-2

JOHN
I find that juxtaposition of grief and celebration deeply moving.

It鈥檚 difficult to imagine the depths from which the artistic spirits of those musicians had to struggle to offer that music, so redolent of luxury, frivolity and light.听 And how powerful for the audience to hear the familiar, joyful melody after the shattering experiences of the war.

For me this lays bare that dual experience of our own joys and lightness of heart alongside our knowledge of the darkness being suffered by so many people in the same moments.听 It sets us on the painful end of the tussle between selfishness and altruism.

Many of us experience discomfort or even guilt when confronted with this juxtaposition, which is so sharpened by the constant availability of devastating stories we hear reported.

But perhaps giving in to that discomfort and guilt is the easy way out.听 It risks allowing us to give in to cynicism and fatalism.听

It can, at times, take much more effort to respond positively, and to summon our energy to create or receive something beautiful. And that is what we are called by God to do.

JAIME
Our next hymn repeats many of these themes, reminding us of that extraordinary moment recounted by both Matthew and Mark when Jesus and his disciples sang a hymn just as he was about to face his betrayal and arrest; When in our music God is glorified.

HYMN:听 WHEN IN OUR MUSIC GOD IS GLORIFIED (Tune: Engelberg)
Winchester College Chapel Choir directed by Malcolm Archer.
Album: Stanford Choral Works,听 Label: Convivium Records

JOHN
One of the thousands of international visitors here in Edinburgh is Kiki, whose full name is Odile Gakire Katese.听 听

Kiki has spent years accumulating letters written by survivors and perpetrators of Rwanda鈥檚 1994 genocide 鈥� letters by ordinary people addressing those who are gone.听 Kiki鈥檚 play is woven through with song and drumming by the Women Drummers of Rwanda. I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Kiki shortly after she arrived in the city.

JOHN CONVERSATION WITH KIKI, RWANDAN RECONCILIATION ACTIVIST;
DRUMMING AND SONG BY WOMEN DRUMMERS OF RWANDA

JAIME:
The responses to our prayers this morning, composed by Sir James Macmillan, are given by Edinburgh singer and harpist, Anna McLuckie.

ANNA:听 KYRIE (James Macmillan)

[Harp continues under prayers]

JAIME
We give you thanks, O God our Creator, for the gift of human creativity to inspire, sustain and restore us. We give thanks for those whose words and music help us to make sense of the world and to see things we would not otherwise see. Bless all those who work in the arts, especially those whose livelihoods have been affected during the pandemic.
听
We pray for those whose lives are overshadowed by current or past conflicts, those whose bodies and minds bear the scars of human violence, and those who have been driven far from their homes and families. Bring your peace to Ukraine, to Israel and Palestine, to Afghanistan and all the troubled places of the world, and bless all peacemakers.

We pray for all whose lives are marked by suffering, who face illness or loss, who are troubled by their past or fearful for their future. May they know peace and healing, strength and comfort, and may all those who care for others be sustained by your love.

ANNA:听 KYRIE

JAIME
Hear us, O God, as we offer our prayer to you in the words our Saviour taught us:

JAIME AND JOHN:听
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory,
For ever and ever, Amen.

JOHN
We close our worship with that great hymn of praise and gratitude, Now thank we all our God.

But first, the blessing;

May the Lord bless you and watch over you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord look kindly on you and give you his peace; and the blessing of God almighty, the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit, be upon you this day and always.听 Amen.

MUSIC:听 NOW THANK WE ALL OUR GOD (Tune:听 Nun Danket)
Saint Michael鈥檚 Singers, Coventry Cathedral, directed by Paul Leddington Wright
Album: Royal Coventry,听 Label: Classic Fox Records