The last sermon that Richard preached was just two months ago at a wedding, for the marriage of Henrietta and Hugh which took place here in St Bene’t’s. It was a wonderful sermon based on the reading that they had chosen from 1 Corinthians, chapter 13 – Paul’s great passage on love. It could almost be the sermon for this funeral today for Richard was a person who loved greatly and who was much loved. In it he shared how St Bene’t’s was for him a place of love, where he and Katherine and their family had worshipped in the 1970’s and where he had found his vocation to the priesthood, and of course where he has assisted in ministry since he and Katherine moved back to Cambridge in 2009. It was a carefully crafted sermon, as all his sermons were – deeply scriptural, shaped simply and clearly – for before ordination Richard had trained and practiced as an architect. Someone said of him that ‘he drew like an angel’. He had an eye for design and beauty.
It was also a Franciscan eye. For over forty years Richard was a member of the Franciscan Third Order, having glimpsed the inspiration of St Francis through contact with the friars here at St Bene’t’s and over a number of years by the annual experience of the Hilfield Families’ Camp when Eleanor, Caroline and Jonathan were growing up. He came to see the world through St Francis’ lens of love and beauty.
Francis was someone who saw love, goodness and beauty all around him – in the most unexpected places. In the wild-flowers of the field but also in a broken-down building; not only in the swallows but in the crows; not only in his friends and companions, but also in the wounded and distorted face of a leper or that of the Muslim infidel. Above all, despite the sinful brokenness of the world, Francis recognised the love, the goodness and the beauty of God, most especially in the words of the scriptures and in the gift of the sacrament. He was amazed that we are able to receive the Lord in a ‘tiny piece of bread’. ‘You are good, all good, supremely good,’ runs one of his prayers. The Greek word ‘kalos’ can mean either good or beauty. For Francis God was both - good and beautiful. Francis was someone head-over-heels in love with the love, beauty and goodness of God. ‘May your love, fiery and sweet as honey’, runs another of his prayers, ‘so absorb my heart as to withdraw it from all that is under heaven. May I be ready to die for the love of your love as you have died for the love of my love.’
Something of Francis’ vision of the world and of God has shaped Richard’s life and ministry. We have been blessed by it – as have the people of St Mark’s Bromley where he served his curacy, the parishes of Edenbridge, Barnes and East Dereham where he was Vicar and here at St Bene’t’s. So too have Catherine, Eleanor, Caroline and Jonathan, and a huge number of others along the way. Like Francis, Richard knew himself to be a sinner, ‘a person not-yet-complete’, and therefore someone always in need of the grace and mercy of God. He knew that the Lord had still work to do in and through him. Like us all he has experienced the tears of this world. - but like Francis he knew that the abundance of God’s love, goodness and beauty was more than sufficient for healing and forgiveness in any and every situation. As the great Franciscan preacher, St Anthony of Padua, has said, ‘You can’t kill love; you can crucify it but it will only rise again’
In that wedding sermon two months ago Richard reminded us that the love we experience and share in this life is a preparation, a training ground to make room for the love that is found in God alone. The world’s beauties are God’s engagement ring for us – drawing us, enticing us, and shaping our desire for God. They are to be enjoyed, savoured and shared rather than owned or possessed lest they become an end in themselves. For ‘if you can conceive of anything more beautiful than God’, said St Augustine, ‘so much the worse for you’. Richard’s life has been a ‘school of the Lord’s service’, a preparation entering into the fullness of God’s beauty. Through it others have been prepared, shaped for God, pointed towards the source of all goodness.
In all three readings of this requiem Eucharist there has been a reference to tears: the passage from Isaiah has given us the image of a great mountain-top banquet for all peoples when God will ‘wipe away the tears from all faces’. From the Revelation to John we’ve heard of the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down as a bride adorned for her husband - a nice architectural image for Richard - a city in which tears have been wiped away. And in the reading from John’s gospel, we hear of Mary Magdalen’s weeping in the garden of the resurrection, her tears initially blinding her to the presence of the love, goodness and beauty which has not been extinguished or overcome by the cross and, which instead has been glorified through Jesus offering of himself for the world and for us. We too weep today for Richard; we grieve his death as we weep and grieve over so much that is happening in our world, but we commend him to the life for which his life has been a preparation, for union with the goodness, love and beauty which is God himself.
As we’ve heard from Jonathan, Richard loved music, both playing the violin and singing; he would go about the house singing. So like Francis, Richard was a ‘troubadour for the Lord’, singing and living God’s praises. In this his funeral requiem we join Francis and Richard’s song of joy. ‘Let us bless the Lord God, living and true; let us give him praise, glory, honour, blessing and all good – Amen, Amen. Alleluia, Alleluia