I will open doors before you.

I will open doors before you

22nd October 2023 – 20th Sunday after Trinity 

This week I have been getting to grips with my set of cathedral keys and when I came to unlock the cathedral for the first time this week, I spent at least 10 minutes trying to get past the first hurdle – which was opening the North door. In the half light of the early morning and not yet being familiar with the keys and the locks, it was quite a challenge!

But as I came in, opening the doors, tuning on the lights, and getting ready for morning prayer, I was struck by what a privilege it is to be here, to be part of this community of faith, a community which is in the business of opening doors – both literally and metaphorically – as we work every-day to make this cathedral a place of welcome.

Those of you who take a turn during the week at volunteering to welcome people at the cathedral entrance will know first-hand just how many people come here because the doors are open. Some come because they know the cathedral as a place of worship, somewhere they will be able to be quiet, perhaps take some time to pray; others come as tourists and visitors, interested in the history and the architecture; others are drawn by motives they can’t express so clearly: longing, desire, a search for peace, for relief, for solace in a world which is being torn apart by war, for a new perspective on something that is troubling them.

 The cathedral offers an opportunity for people to step into a space where they will not be asked to do something, to buy something, or to be something other than who they are.  And as the people who welcome them, we never know what lies behind a person’s visit – what circumstances might have brought them to this place.

 But very often it is God who leads them here.  The Lord has a tendency to be a part of someone’s life-story long before they notice it themselves. We see it in our first reading from the prophet Isaiah, where the Lord says to Cyrus, a king – ‘I will open doors before you, I will level the mountains, I will give you treasures and riches, I will call you by name’ – though you do not know me. The Lord is with us long before we know him to be a part of our story.  Even before we were born, we were not hidden from the Lord.

 And it is because God often works so very slowly and gently in a person’s life, and through the particular and unique circumstances of their story, that we need places like this cathedral – places where, when the time is right, people may come and discover more about the God who calls them.  Places where there is time and space and the freedom to ask questions, to work through problems, to be healed of wounds, and to grow in grace and understanding.

 Philip Larkin put it beautifully when he wrote of the church as the place where our longings and desires and compulsions are taken seriously as the raw material for our growth in wisdom.

 A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in…

 Christian faith is too often diminished to the idea that you’ve either got it or you haven’t; faith is too often framed in facile terms, as if it’s a simple matter of subscribing to a set of beliefs or disregarding them completely. We see it in today’s Gospel, when the pharisees come to Jesus intent on trapping him and pinning him down, forcing him to respond to a banal question about money – should we pay our taxes to Caesar or not? Whose side are you on, they want to ask him; whatever you say, we’ll catch you out. But Jesus refuses to engage at this level, giving them instead an answer that puzzles more than satisfies…

 Faith in God isn’t a case of saying yes I’ve got it or no I haven’t, rather it comes through a growing desire to know and trust the One who already knows us through and through. And as we come to know God, we begin to discover that all our longings and searchings are valid, and true, and will lead us, if we let them, to the Holy One.

 I spoke about the cathedral being a place for discovery and encounter – a place where many come because they feel drawn in some way to step through the door into this holy place, a place that is set aside like no other building in this community.

 But our open doors are not just a way into a holy space. Our open doors also invite people to enter a new community.  And today’s collect gives us a beautiful description of that community – it describes the church as the community in which the Holy Spirit is constantly welling up, and overflowing, making the church eager to do God’s will and to share the joys of eternal life with the whole creation.

 This is the community of which we are a part – this is our community – here and now – gathered round Jesus Christ. A body of people from all walks of life, drawn together by Christ to share – not just in his work - but in his joy!

It’s the same joy that St Paul sees characterises the church in Thessalonica – joy inspired by the Holy Spirit – a gift from God for us and for the world.

 This is the community into which we welcome the people who come through our doors. There will be many reasons why we may not talk to them explicitly about our Sunday services or about God, or about the church – it simply wouldn’t be appropriate to be overbearing in that way. But when someone walks through our door – it should be in the back of our mind that God may well be calling them closer to himself, and even calling them to join his community of joy in this place, gathered around Jesus Christ.

 The Lord said to Cyrus:

I will open doors before you, the gates shall not be closed,

I will go before you, I call you by name.