The Rev Canon Bernard Gribbin
On his 60th anniversary of ordination to the priesthood
Welcome to all who have come from near and far to help me celebrate 60 years of being a priest. There is only one person here today, who was at the service in the vast spaciousness of Liverpool Cathedral and that is Betty. We were married just 18 months before in Bradford Cathedral, and settled into our new home in Maghull, about 10 miles from Liverpool for my first curacy, Prescot for the second one.
Anniversaries are full of memories and the 60th one has a lot! The long road to priesthood began 80 years ago, when I became a choir boy at our local parish church in Bradford at six and a half years old. The smallest cassock had to be hoisted up with string.
Unknown to me at the time, the seed was sown then. For my seventh birthday my father gave me a small Book of Common Prayer with hymns, ancient and modern. I used to read evening prayer and a hymn before I fell asleep.
A few years later, I was recruited to the Cathedral Choir where for many years as a treble, then later as a lay clerk whenever I was free. The words and music over all those years sunk in creating a growing knowledge and a true relationship with Jesus as my guide and Lord.
When I finished my National Service in the Army, I was at a crossroads career wise. Did I want to carry on where I've left off in the hotel industry titillating the pallets of the rich or was there something else?
Yes, there was. One of the clergy at the Cathedral, told me of a special college which assisted men who had worked in different careers to train for ordination. I was amazed and suddenly there was an opportunity that I didn't know existed. And I realised that was what I wanted to do. Within eight months, I had started training which was to last for four years, three of which were at St. Aidan's, Birkenhead. After two curacies, one in Maghull and the other in Prescot, we returned to our home Diocese of Bradford, where Michael Parker was Bishop. He offered me the parish of St. Paul's, Denholm, 1000 feet above sea level near Howarth. In that Parish, and later in the next one in Bradford, I made music and liturgy a priority. I recruited 18 boys and girls in each parish and I was the choir master in both. I trained then to the training scheme of the RSCM to a high standard were elected to the Guild of St, Cecelia. I hope in them God planted seeds of love.
What else does a parish priest do? The Church of England differs from most other churches who are mainly ministering to their own members. A parish church serves our parish. Not just those who come to church.
Residential homes, hospitals, schools in the parish all involve the priest assisted by church members. Anyone who lives in the parish is able to be baptised, married or have a funeral service in church. The church here is a favourite venue for frequent concerts, school, special services, etc. And the Parish Hall is used by the whole community and beyond, morning, afternoon and night every day.
So being a parish priest is a demanding role but usually very interesting and satisfying. It is also a teaching role exercised across a range of activities. Not just from the pulpit but through day to day contacts with people.
What have been my main themes?
I have found that people's ideas of God are vague and often quite wrong, and I try to convey the fact that God is love and is not remote from His creation but totally involved. Hymn 364 sums this up very well.
God is Love: and he enfoldeth
all the world in one embrace;
with unfailing grasp he holdeth
every child of every race.
And when human hearts are breaking
under sorrow's iron rod,
then they find that self same aching
deep within the heart of God.
God is Love: and though with blindness
sin afflicts the souls of men,
God's eternal loving-kindness
holds and guides us even then.
Sin and death and hell shall never
o'er us final triumph gain;
God is Love, so Love for ever
o'er the universe must reign.
Timothy Rees 1874 - 1939
I also like to emphasise especially at funerals, that death is not the end of our existence, and that we do live on but in new ways. St Paul illustrates this for us when he said "When a seed falls into the ground, if it dies, a new life starts. First the roots, then the stem, then the flower. This flower has no relation to the seed. So it is, with us. Our bodies die, but a totally new being emerges and we live on, in new ways, in our new worlds.”
Today I've been sharing some of my memories. Later on in the service we will be remembering again, The Last Supper, when Jesus was betrayed by one of his followers, Judas Iscariot and deserted and denied by the rest of them.
Now while the opposite of "remember" is to "forget", "re-member”, is also the opposite of "dis-member". To dismember means to take a person apart limb by limb. To re-member a person does what all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't do for Humpty Dumpty - to put him together again.
In the Eucharist today, this is what Jesus is doing for us - re-membering us, re-creating us, re-newing us but now in His likeness and as he has always intended us to be.
This is what every church on earth is destined to do. To bring us all into the Kingdom, damaged and dysfunctional as we are. Jesus would re-member, re-create us as His body in the world until the end of time.
"You are now to re-member me, to be my body in the world, your lives offered to God. Your lives lived in costly service of others. He has no body on earth but ours to do his work. Ours are his eyes to see, his ears to hear, his mouth to speak, his hands to touch and his feet to go.”
For God is love, for ever.