St George's Cathedral, Cape Town

A sermon preached by the Reverend Terry Lester on Fauré's Requiem at the All Souls' Mass on Sunday, 4 November 2006

Wisdom 3: 1 – 5
John 6: 37 – 40.

Words from the Funeral Service in our prayer book from Job: "Man born of a woman has but a short time to live. Like a flower he blossoms and then withers; like a shadow he flees and never stays. In the midst of life we are in death: to whom can we turn for help, but to you, Lord."

These are well known words which some have heard far too often sometimes while attending a funeral or memorial service of someone close or even of an acquaintance. More and more we find ourselves having to reflect on life, its meaning and purpose in the face of yet another, sometimes even meaningless, death. This type of reflection on life while death stares you in the face has become commonplace.

The one minute you are here and the next you are gone. "I remember talking to the person just yesterday," you hear people say, "and look, now they are gone!" It is becoming an all too familiar pattern, so much so that you have hardly digested one dollop of bad news and you already begin to wonder – sometimes out loud - who will be next. We are growing all too accustomed to news about death to the point that it is distracting us from life.

We consider ourselves lucky when we have not been directly affected, but it is as though it is just a matter of time before it will and we wonder how we will respond when confronted when we touch death's icy hand.

In the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke (also known as the Synoptic Gospels) the reader is made aware that there is a countdown happening – a countdown to death, the death of Jesus – and that the death of Jesus is an inevitable certainty even though the disciples seem to remain blissfully unaware of this inevitability – despite the many hints by Jesus from halfway through Jesus' ministry. We are told that Jesus sets his face to Jerusalem (the place of death), almost loses his nerve as its impending intensity begins to drain his resolve in the face of it – "let this cup pass from me". Death, his own death, is the last great battle Jesus has to face.

In the Gospel of John, from which tonight's gospel was read, though, this is not the case. In it Jesus almost dances with death from the outset. The eternal word becomes a finite being and from the first few chapters eternity and mortality are engaged in a drama where the one sets about unmasking the other and stripping it of its fearful hold on life.

Here are some examples. At the wedding at Cana in Galilee the wine runs out. It comes to an end. But in the gospel of John, earthly, every day things become the instruments which introduce onto the stage of life, things eternal. A woman asking for water points to her real need, a thirst for God – that the divine refresh the ordinary things of life - it is not just about water! A gate,which holds in the flock and keeps out danger is not just a gate, it becomes a symbol for the good shepherd who is the door to the sheepfold. And bread and wine become the food of heaven!

John introduces his hearers to heavenly things in the midst of the ordinary, for to him, divinity and eternity are engaged in every sphere of our life and existence because the word became flesh and dwells among us.

So, wine runs out, a few chapters on Lazarus's life will run out - it will come to an end. But neither event is the overwhelming, calamity which the Jews had believed it would be and which through their conditioning they expected. It is masterful writing because in showing how Jesus takes these in his stride, John is building confidence in the faithful – opening them to possibilities they had not considered.

They get to see with their own eyes that when that which is finite runs out (which it was bound to do because of its very nature) it is brought into the presence of that which is 'from the beginning' and eternal, that which when it runs out is transformed, it is given grace for joy and light and life, eternal life!

"Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes, has eternal life." John 6: 47.

What makes John unique is that he invites the reader into a personal and intimate encounter with eternity right there – in the midst of life, this life. Nothing that happens to Jesus in this gospel comes as a surprise to Jesus. Life doesn't throw him off-course even at the point when one in his inner circle betrays him. It is as though Judas is given his cue by Jesus to go and do what he has to and to do it quickly.

It is said of this Requiem by Gabriel Fauré that unlike many composers, Fauré was not drawn to compose a Requiem because of the death of a loved one - although during the early stages of the composition his mother did pass away. It seemed to have concerned commentators that someone would write a Requiem without having experienced the devastating force of death that rushes through life and leaves destruction in its wake.

Maurice Emmanuel wrote to Gabriel Fauré in 1910 asking what his motivation was for writing the Requiem, to which he replied, "My Requiem was composed for nothing… for fun, if I may be permitted to say so!"

To another he replied, "Everything I managed to entertain in the way of religious illusion I put into my Requiem, which moreover is dominated from beginning to end by a very human feeling of faith in eternal rest."

Like John the gospel writer, Gabriel Fauré opens us up to the possibility of matters eternal through human feelings in a finite body. This he does by moving us away from the outsized, large-scale Germanic Romantic style which was popular in Paris at the time and which dominated the rest of Europe. Fauré thought on a smaller, more intimate scale than many of his contemporaries.

Only 30 bars of the Requiem are sung fortissimo and most of it doesn't rise above mezzoforte. He uses subtle gradations in dynamic, colour and harmony to achieve the effects he wants. In John, Jesus gently calls Lazarus out of the tomb – no dramatic gestures, no booming noise, just the gently spoken words are enough. In the garden when he encounters Mary Magdala, just speaking her name is enough! The relationship with both was already there, gentle, intimately spoken words bring new life!

On one occasion Fauré said, "It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an inspiration towards happiness above, rather than a painful experience. Perhaps I have also instinctively sought to escape from what is thought right and proper, after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different."

What both Fauré and St. John are saying is: When you are drowning, it is not the ideal time to go for swimming lessons!!!

In the midst of life is where eternal life meets us; where the finite runs out is where we experience the best as having been kept for last.

It is because immortality has taken on mortality that mortality now makes sense only in the light of immortality and why we can say with such conviction and confidence that the souls of the faithful rest and peace and rise in glory, AMEN.

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