On Sunday 9 October, Rev Neil Summers stepped down as Richmond Team Ministry Vicar after twenty two years of ordained ministry in the parish, eight of them as full-time priest at St John the Divine.

His final service was a Team Eucharist at St John’s on Sunday 9 October: A service filled with love, more people than the building could hold, and a wonderful sermon by Neil. Thank you, Neil. And thank you, God!

Before his final service, Neil wrote:

On Tuesday evening I sat in the Lady Chapel at St John’s, as I’ve done so many times, for half an hour of quiet contemplation with the Blessed Sacrament as the focal point.  This week was especially poignant because it was the last time I would do this as Vicar of the church.  It happened to be the feast day of Francis of Assisi, one of the four saints whose statues stand in the niches in the Chapel’s magnificent gilded reredos.  He is accompanied by Saints Agnes, Etheldreda and Martin – a somewhat eclectic gathering!

During these very special half-hours (the highlight of my liturgical week), I often recall the more recent saints I have met here over the past 37 years, both before and since my ordination.  As the hymn puts it: ‘These stones that have echoed their praises are holy, and dear is the ground where their feet have once trod.’  It wasn’t fame or perfection that made these people part of the community of saints at St John the Divine, and they will never be immortalised in a statue.  I remember them chiefly because of their very humanity – each of them in many ways quite ordinary, yet each one unique, as we all are.  They made their contribution to keeping the flame of faith alight in their time, sharing the spiritual and life journey with one another, and with me. 

Christians believe that God is to be found everywhere, but a church building has a special significance.  It is where people may experience the divine in particular ways, inspired by art, architecture, music, flowers, incense, candles, colour, vestments and, supremely, through liturgy and sacrament.  We call our churches ‘holy ground’ – and they are.  TS Eliot, an Anglican convert, wrote, ‘You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid’, reminding us of our links with preceding generations.  And even sceptics and agnostics recognise at least something of the importance; the poet Philip Larkin said a church is ‘a serious house on serious earth’.

In the Christian understanding, though, it is in you and me, not in bricks and stone, that God chooses to locate the divine dwelling place.  That is what Incarnation – God sharing our humanity in Jesus – is all about.  Yes, God is certainly to be encountered in the beauty of the church building, but what also makes our churches holy is that they are the meeting place of today’s community of very human saints whose prayers, whether spoken or silent, fill the air and soak into the very fabric, mingling with those of the generations who have gone before us.  In his celebrated sermon, ‘The Weight of Glory’, CS Lewis said, ‘There are no ordinary people.  You have never talked to a mere mortal….. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses’.

My colleagues and I quite often turn to the contemporary priest/poet, Malcom Guite, and I end my final RTM e-newsletter contribution with this reflection from him:

And now we turn our eyes from wood and paint
to contemplate the saints in flesh and blood,
the ones who’ve seen these pictures with us.  Faint
traces of God’s image, and his glad
presence in humanity, have shone
awhile for us in paintings on a wall,
the dark glass brightened, and the shadows gone.
How shall we know each other now?  Will all
that we have seen recede to memory?
Or is our sight restored, and having gazed
on icons in this place, will clarity
transfigure all of us?  We turn, amazed,
to see the ones beside us, face to face,
as living icons, sacraments of grace.

To the saints of the Church in Richmond, my thanks for the great privilege of serving in this parish.