Installation Service of the Master Barber, 14th August, By Fr Jack

The three hymns that the Master and Mistress have chosen for us to sing tonight are from their wedding. It is lovely to sing them with you now, Master and Mistress, to rejoice in your love, but also because it shows just what magnificent hymns these are. Hymns, truly, for all occasions. 

 Look again at them… (Praise my soul the king of heaven. Lord of all hopefulness. All my hope on God is founded) 

There is not a day in anyone’s life that is not expressed and enriched, cleansed and calibrated by words and music like these. Sing more hymns!

 On days of joy, sadness, weariness, worry, boredom or nothing much. Hymns like these are treasures that speak into every part of life.

 And the reason I say all that, is because we Barbers share a similar God-given vocation. Like these hymns, we are called to be evergreen, to speak blessing into the realities of life, and to be stewards and sharers of God-given treasures. Let me explain.

 Firstly.

Another year turns, another Master is installed. It is the same as it has always been, and yet tradition (at least as the Christian tradition bids us understand it) is alive. Tradition is alive with lives and stories of the people who have received it, who live it, and who pass it on. This is the story of the Church. This is the story of the Livery. 

This is the human story. We here proclaim that we are not self-creating independent units, but treasuries of relationship and connectedness. People and God together.

 Secondly. 

As a Company, we bring the hodge-podge mixture of our lives (all those joys, sadnesses, weariness, worries, boredom or nothing much-es) and we quite literally embody together that reality, that mixture. The very fabric of our lives (and through us the whole human family) is hallowed by being brought through us now to church in prayer and worship, and hallowed too in the fellowship of our common table. We are guests of the Lord at dinner, as well as in church.

 Thirdly.

We also see our hymn-like vocation in what we come together to do. The Court met this afternoon in an act of trust. To entrust the life and story of our Company to a new Master and set of Wardens. We come to Church now to entrust the Master, Wardens, our Company, and the whole human family to God: recognising quite deliberately that the really important things of this life are not ours to possess. The wisdom, skill, love and imagination we need (in professional life, at home and in the Company) are not, honestly, ours. They are gifts, from God, just as St Paul tells us in the third reading this evening.

 The Master has spent many years using his gifts to treasure life, specifically the lives of the children he has served as a paediatric oncologist. Our company also expresses its vocation by celebrating you Master and your work. You have done just as Jesus says in tonight’s second reading, by treasuring the little ones the Lord loves, and bids us all become like.

 Let me draw these threads together and finish. In the first reading, Jesus speaks the beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount. These words, like those of our hymns are evergreen. If you were to speak them every day of your life they would never grow stale and never be out of place. They honour the messy reality of the human experience, and they speak of a courageous hope. Not a pipe dream, not naivety or fairy stories, but courageous hope. They speak into the story that is our story, of people and God - through love and service, worship and prayer, community and every gift that God gives us - living more and more towards the Kingdom of God, here and now, and in the hereafter. 

 Pray that these realties of the evergreen vocation of our Company will flourish in us, for our good and the good of all. 

Pray that the Master will have a wonderful year, as he and we fulfil our vocation to steward and share the treasures and gifts with which we have been entrusted. 

Pray that our life together - by who we are, what we do, and how we do it - will speak of the courageous hope, healing and life of God’s Kingdom.

 Panis Angelicus, Bread of Angels. St Thomas Aquinas’ great hymn to Holy Communion - the Daily and Heavenly Bread Sunday by Sunday and day by day that gives us all we need for life’s pilgrimage. 

 The second verse is a fitting prayer for us now:

 Thee, therefore, we implore,
O Godhead, One in Three,
so may Thou visit us
as we now worship Thee;
and lead us on Thy way,

and lead us on Thy way,
That we at last may see
the light wherein Thou dwellest aye.
Amen.