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This script does not exactly reflect the transmission, as it was prepared before the service was broadcast. It may include editorial notes prepared by the producer, and minor spelling and other errors that were corrected during the radio broadcast.

Sunday Worship
Radio 4 - Sunday 17 April, 2005

The National Cathedral of St. Patrick, Dublin
Presented by Canon Noel Battye
With the Dean, the Very Dr Robert McCarthy and Canon Maureen Ryan
Director of Music: Peter Barley
Organist: David Leigh

CANON BATTYE: Cead Mile Failte
a hundred thousand welcomes to this ancient place bearing the name of Patrick, one who in his youth was compelled to work as a shepherd boy in the hills of Co. Antrim and who later returned here as a missionary and Shepherd of Souls. And that, of course, combined with today's readings about shepherds and the Good Shepherd in particular leads me naturally to a pastoral theme as in this time of quiet reflection and meditation we focus on the Great Shepherd of our souls:

CHOIR/ ORGAN THE KING OF LOVE MY SHEPHERD IS

CANON BATTYE:
The King of Love my Shepherd is.
He still welcomes us back binding up our wounds and anointing us with the oils of forgiveness and inviting us now as in every act of worship to find a whole new beginning for ourselves as we confess our sins to Him.

CONGREGATION
Heavenly Father, we have sinned against you and against our neighbour in thought and word and deed, through negligence, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault; by what we have done and by what we have failed to do. We are truly sorry and repent of all our sins. For the sake, of your Son Jesus Christ who died for us, forgive us all that is past; and grant that we may serve you in newness of life to the glory of your name. Amen.

THE DEAN
Almighty God, who forgives all who truly repent, have mercy on you, pardon and deliver you from all your sins, confirm and strengthen you in all goodness and keep you in eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
ALL Amen

CHOIR: THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD

CANON RYAN
The Lord is my Pacesetter
I shall not rush He makes me to stop and rest for quiet intervals He provides me with images of stillness which restore my serenity
He leads me in the ways of efficiency through calmness of mind and His guidance is peace. Even though I have a great many things to accomplish each day I will not fret for His presence is here.
His timelessness,
His all importance will keep me in balance.
He prepares refreshment and renewal in the midst of my activity by anointing my mind with His oils of tranquillity
My cup of joyous energy overflows.
Truly harmony and effectiveness shall be the fruits of my hours for I shall walk in the pace of my Lord and dwell in His house forever.

CANON BATTYE: Words of what is known as 'The Japanese version of the 23rd Psalm'
'He makes me to lie down in green pastures
and leads me beside still waters' There is no doubt that despite being a largely urban society the countryside still has a fascination
for many in our part of the Western world.
We like to think that we are very close to nature.

The danger, of course, is that such sentimentality on our part is in fact a cloak which can hide a terrible callousness or at best a cold indifference:
A callousness where the desire for profit and high productivity
pushes us towards an ever more sterile natural world
lacking in all diversity.
Or an indifference towards the fate of species endangered
because we simply choose not to know
exactly what is happening around us.

Oh yes, our world is constantly evolving and changing
and that means gains and losses
but not on the scale on which they have been happening
in our most recent generations.
And the terrible thing in all of this
is the sheer hypocrisy of our attitude to it all.

If as Christians we profess a belief in a creator God
one who rejoices in all that is
one who sees within every inch of that creation
a message about life.
one who in His very commandment
made provision for the welfare
even of domestic animals
And every time we hear the words of this particular Psalm
we look to the one who makes provision
for our rest within green pastures
and leads us beside still waters.

CHOIR: LORD OF CREATION FORGIVE US WE PRAY

CANON BATTYE: "Sad and bereft O what beauty we lose
In seeking creation to own and abuse.
And then we move on - 'He restores my soul
He leads me in paths of righteousness.'
Despite the economic realities of our world.

it takes very little in fact for us simply to survive
a little food,
a little shelter
a little health
a little love
and a little more perhaps.

But try telling that to a consumer driven world
which has brain washed itself into believing that contentment is something that will always lie ahead somewhere in the future: A world where some. are sustained and driven
by their fantasies of a dream world
in which work is left behind forever
as they move to their villa in the sun
or their place in the country; while others remain along with the worriers of the world, their restless, fearful troubled souls living with an impending sense of loss
waking up each morning
not with a sense of hope, renewal and opportunity
but with a weight of anxiety and foreboding
about the burdens of their lives
and all that might possibly confront them in the future
worriers and fantasists.

And who is to give us a new perspective to all of this,

Those whose business are their souls perhaps -our spiritual leaders
But I'm afraid that those very shepherds
or should I say we shepherds
have let our people down quite badly in recent years.

And here I'm not talking scandals.
Stones are easy to throw
and few can afford to throw them.

No I am referring to a much deeper problem
which is to be found in all of our Churches no matter what they are, a much more serious one.
One which is related to the very essence of our calling
and that is a lack of spiritual vision
an earth bound mindset
whereby instead of being those
who seek earnestly to be representatives of the divine will
who ever look inwards and upwards for inspiration
and who wait upon their Lord each day
we have become little more than spokespeople
of the communities from which we come.
Yes there is a lack of spiritual vision
an earth-bound leadership
very often a second rate shepherding of souls.

It is a very deep rooted problem
but it's not a new one because all worldliness has always beset potential religious leaders. And shepherds have been known to stray
as well as sheep
causing prophets like Ezekiel to castigate them
in the most searing of terms.

THE DEAN: Ezekiel 34: VV 1-6

'The word of the Lord came to me
Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel.
Prophesy and say to the shepherds
Thus said the Lord God
Are you shepherds of Israel?
You have been feeding yourselves.
Should not shepherds feed the sheep?
You eat the fat
enclothe yourselves with the wool.
You slaughter the fatlings
but you do not feed the sheep.
You have not strengthened the weak.
You have not healed the sick.
You have not bound up the injured.
You have not brought back the strayed.
You have not sought the lost.
But with force and harshness
you have ruled them.
So they were scattered
because there was no shepherd. And scattered they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered they wandered over the mountains
and on every high hill.
My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth
with no one to search or seek for them.'

CHOIR MISERERE (Byrd)

CANON BATTYE:
A call for God's mercy and forgiveness in that
Miserere by Byrd and before that the words
Of Ezekiel the prophet.
'You have not fed the sheep
bound up the injured ...
brought back the strayed'

In other words what Ezekiel is saying
is that the shepherds have shown little evidence
of caring for God's flock.
No wonder his listeners smarted at his words.
And I must confess that when I look at the Church in many places today I wonder if the same thing might be said of us.
I wonder about our pastoral heart
Our willingness just to be there for our own people
- simply to sit alongside them at their hour of greatest need
and to show in practice
rather than in mere words
something of the love of God
of which we would speak to them.

People need to see Christianity and not just to hear of it.

Again I would wonder if the Church is too busy in the public arena
- too busy making statements,
upholding certain causes,
uttering the latest sound bite on the most relevant of topics in order to give it justification in the modern world. And again,
while I would not go so far as C.S. Lewis
whose reactionary attitude to certain forms of revised worship
caused him to write words to the effect that Jesus said
'Feed my sheep'
not to perform experiments on my pet rats.
I sometimes wonder
that if despite all our efforts
whether as renewers or traditionalists
we have lost something at the very heart of worship,
that sense of awe struck silence
which comes to those who are well aware
that they are in the presence of a Living God
One who comes to us
One whose awesome goodness and love
causes us to stand afar off and say
'God be merciful to me a sinner'

Listen to these words written over 80 years ago
by the religious correspondent of 'The Times'
who identified a similar failure
and put it in this way.

CANON RYAN: 'Plainly the great need of the Church of God
and of its members today
is quietness. The Church is too busy. It's organizations are elaborate, widespread and active.
Councils, Conferences, Conventions and Committees
follow fast one upon the other.
Leaders of the Church live in a whirl of engagements
and are seldom at home with their own people and are often strangers to themselves. Absorbed in religious issues
they find no time to gain personal experience of the realities of which they speak. And the attentive hearer can discern signs of effort on their part
as when men deal with subjects
of which they have only superficial
or second-hand information.
Whenever this happens
ineffectiveness is inevitable
and disaster is imminent'.

'Those who would help others
to respond to the claims of the Christian faith
and share its gracious energies
must first themselves bear the mysteries of God
and in their own hearts
build a sanctuary of the Divine presence
in which they can retire into that constant communion of the soul with God which brings true knowledge and power'.

CHOIR: 'LET ALL MORTAL FLESH KEEP SILENCE'

CANON BATTYE Well we have a little time to go before our Psalm invites us to join those hosts of heaven in everlasting Light.

Long before that there is a ..dark valley to be travelled
by each and everyone of us...
The Valley of the Shadow is what it's called here. Whether we relate that valley to the shades of death
or to those times of darkness and oppression
which face us all at one time or another
the fact is that sooner or later
we each go through periods
when the difficulties confronting us are such that they all but overwhelm us. The form which they take will vary
depending on our circumstance
but the effects are often similar. The loss of hope as fear invades the soul. The wakings from restless sleep
and the dread upon awakening.
The feeling of utter helplessness
because we know that in the face of what is happening
there is so little we can do.

The dark valley sides tower over us
like insurmountable cliffs
that block out all hope of light
and even when we turn to prayer
there can be a hopelessness about it
because we fear that the answer will be 'no'.

Sometimes in desperation we may batter the doors of heaven
demanding the one answer that we require
only to find those doors opened
by One with wounded hands
One whose experience and total comprehension of suffering
is such that He seems to draw us in and to absorb something of the very pain itself and we learn to accept His answer
whatever that might be
because we trust Him
and know it will be for the best.
Here is the Good Shepherd
the One who lays down His life for the sheep
the One who calls His own by name
who knows their individual needs and pains
who longs to protect them
even from themselves
from their own foolishness
and from the consequences of their own actions.
Here is the Gate of the sheep
in other words
the One who sleeps across the entrance of the sheep pen
so as to guard those who are inside
the One whose staff or crook draws them back to safety
and whose rod will be used
to ward off dangerous marauders.

THE DEAN: St John 15vv 1-6

Jesus said to the Pharisees, 'Very truly I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gate keeper opens the gate for Him and the sheep hear His voice. He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out, When He has brought out all His own, He goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow Him because theyknow His voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from Him because they do not know the voice of strangers. Jesus used this figure of speech with them but they did not understand what He was saying to them.

CANON BATTYE: I said earlier that there was a debate
as to whether the Valley of the Shadow
refers itself to death approaching
or simply to those times of deep deep darkness
which we all pass through at times.

What there is no debate about is the fact that a largely Godless world
cannot cope with the reality of death
- for death in a materialist world
must always be an embarrassment
a subject to be avoided at all costs.

We do not want to know of its existence.
It is a subject to be locked up
in the back rooms of our lives
and as I see it
one of the things which make it easier for us to do this
is something called retirement
which helps us to pretend that death isn't really there.

You see it doesn't matter what impact
a person has had during their working life,
because once they retire
it's almost as if they have died already
or partly so at least.

A rare few, however, defy the standard
and go on living publicly until they die
and in so doing, show us the whole picture of our lives
and shock us as they do so.

So it is that deaths of people like John Paul 11
and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother
confound all the pundits
as the public at large are mesmerized
and queue up endlessly to look upon death
and to see within it
not just this or that special person
but also a hidden part of themselves
as they become aware of their own mortality.

'Ask not for whom the bell tolls' wrote John Donne
'It tolls for thee'

Right now, however I am alive, or as the writer Peter De Rosa puts it

CANON RYAN

'Father I thank you for the immense surprise
of letting me be torn.
Fifty years ago I was nothing
Fifty years hence I will be nothing
It seems wonderful to me
and strange. that on this earth
I once did not exist, need not, will not.
But I do. exist.
If I were a stone, a bird, a blade of grass
It would be good to be in existence
for an hour under your wise and gentle providence But you have breathed into my heart,
Your own breath
The everlasting Spirit
and in my mind
is the prospect of things Eternal'

CANON BATTYE: And that about sums it up.
I do not know what the future holds
any more than you do,
except to say that the One who has brought me thus far
through the darkest stages of my journey
often despite myself
will always see me through
in whatever lies ahead.
And what I also know
is that I look forward with hope
to meeting again in His presence
all those who have lived and died in Him.

CANON RYAN Prayers

THE DEAN: Merciful Father,
you gave your son Jesus Christ to be the Good Shepherd, and in His love for us to lay down His life and rise again. Keep us always under His protection,
and give us grace to follow in His steps
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
The God of peace
who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus
that great shepherd of the sheep
make you perfect in every good work to do His will:
And may the Blessing of God Almighty,
the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit
be with you and remain with you always. Amen.

CHOIR: NOT FOR TOMORROW AND ITS NEEDS