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Please note:

This script cannot exactly reflect the transmission, as it was prepared before the service was broadcast. It may include editorial notes prepared by the producer, and minor spelling and other errors that were corrected before the radio broadcast.

It may contain gaps to be filled in at the time so that prayers may reflect the needs of the world, and changes may also be made at the last minute for timing reasons, or to reflect current events.

Opening Anno:
´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 and now Sunday Worship comes live from the Chapel of St. John’s College, Cambridge and explores the work of the 17th Century writer, John Bunyan.Ìý The service begins with the introit God be in my Head by Herbert Howells but first we hear an excerpt from The Pilgrim’s Progress read by actor Patrick Robinson.

Reading 1

As I walk’d through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a Denn; And I laid myself down in that place to sleep: And as I slept I dreamed a Dream. I dreamed, and behold I saw a Man cloathed with Raggs standing in a certainÌý place, with his face from his own House, a Book in his hand; and a great Burden upon his Back. I looked, and saw him open the Book, and Read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled; and not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying what shall I do?

MUSIC: God be in my Head – Herbert Howells

SPEECH: DUNCAN DORMOR (DD)

Good morning and welcome to St. John’s College Cambridge.

Today we are celebrating the work of John Bunyan and we’ll follow Christian, the hero of Bunyan’s most famous work, the Pilgrim’s Progress, as he makes his journey through swamps and cities, over steep mountains and through dark valleys until his eventual arrival at the Celestial City.

John Bunyan, a seventeenth century visionary and principled dissenting preacher, would be astonished, and perhaps displeased, to find himself commemorated in one of the Church of England’s prominent ‘steeple-houses’ (as Bunyan dismissively called churches).Ìý But the imaginative power of his pilgrim’s story, never out of print in the three-plus centuries since its publication, breaks across the boundaries of his own tradition; it has influenced people all over the world in their varying faith-journeys, and has even influenced the growth of that quintessentially modern secular literary form, the novel.

We are pleased to welcome the Rev. Dr. Jessica Martin as our preacher and the musicians of the Cambridge Choral Course directed by Ralph Allwood.Ìý We now join with them to sing the most famous of Bunyan’s hymns – He Who Would Valiant Be

MUSIC: Hymn – He Who Would Valiant Be

SPEECH: DD

In The Pilgrim’s Progress we follow Christian on his journey to salvation.Ìý This is not a walk in the park.Ìý He has to carry heavy burdens, he has to make his way over rough terrain, through raging rivers and over seemingly insurmountable mountains.Ìý He is challenged on the way by demons and he often thinks that he should just give up entirely.Ìý But, his companions bring him hope and encouragement, support and assurance.Ìý

Bunyan was writing over 300 years ago -Ìý there aren’t many Hobgoblins popping up today - but there are many messages we can take home from Christian’s journey. We too will face struggles and temptations, we too will be confused and bewildered, we too will have to find our way through the darkest times, grasping for support from our family, our friends and our faith.

We hear again from actor, Patrick Robinson, as he reads from The Pilgrim’s Progress. We find our hero as he attempts an ascent but is held back due to the heavy load on his back.

Reading 2

ÌýHe ran thus until he came at a place somewhat ascending, and upon that place stood a Cross, and a little below in the bottom, a Sepulcher. So I saw in my Dream, that just as Christian came up with the Cross, the Burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble; and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the Sepulcher, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.
ÌýThen was Christian glad and lightsom, and said with a merry heart; He hath given me rest, by his sorrow; and life, by his death.Ìý Then he stood still a while, to look and wonder; for it was very surprising to him, that the sight of the Cross should thus ease him of his burden.Ìý He looked therefore, and looked again, even till the springs that were in his head sent the waters down his cheeks.Ìý Now as he stood looking and weeping, behold three shining ones came to him, and saluted him, with Peace be to thee: so the first said to him, Thy sin is forgiven.Ìý The second stript him of his Rags, and cloathed him with change of Raiment.Ìý The third also set a mark in his fore-head, and gave him a Roll with a Seal upon it, which he bid him look on as he ran, and that he should give it in at the Celestial Gate: so they went their way.Ìý Then Christian gave three leaps for joy, and went on singing.

MUSIC: O For a Closer Walk with God

SPEECH: DD

Lord, be our guardian and our guide as we tread the paths of life. Send us hope, assurance and encouragement as we face times of trial.Ìý Enlighten the road ahead with your never changing love and bring us ever closer to you so that we might live in accordance with your will.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen

We’ve come to the end of August – so called Silly Season for the UK media. With Parliament in recess and many of us enjoying summer holidays, this is traditionally the time when the more frivolous and light hearted news stories emerge.Ìý

But it seems that the last four weeks have been anything but quiet for the press. In the last week alone we’ve seen the terrifying images of destruction at the Shoreham Airshow, witnessed the attack on two journalists in Virginia and heard of the 71 bodies of migrating people found in the back of a lorry in Austria (space for something else from Saturday or Sunday).Ìý These tragedies touch the hearts of the world.Ìý There are loved ones that are left behind who will now have to start on that well-trod road of grief.ÌýÌý

Whether caused by accident, by human hand or by natural forces, one of the greatest struggles in life is how we respond to the horrific events we see in the world.Ìý It seems that all that is left is despair.Ìý When tragedy hits, we’re left asking so many questions - Why us? Why now? And there are no easy answers.Ìý All too often we find ourselves in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Christianity takes a very realistic view of life. It doesn’t say that it’s going to be easy.Ìý It tells us that there will be struggles, there will be dark times, there will be pain. It tells us that there are no quick fix solutions to take us out of that place. But it also gives us hope, that God is with us in the midst of our suffering, because, in Jesus, He suffered too.Ìý

We meet Christian once more as he continues his journey through that dark valley.

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READING 3

Now at the end of this Valley, was another, called the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and Christian must needs go through it, because the way to the Celestial City lay through the midst of it.Ìý…Thus he went on a great while, yet still the flames would be reaching towards him: also he heard doleful voices, and rushings to and fro, so that sometimes he thought he shouldÌý be torn in pieces, or trodden down like mire in the Streets.Ìý This frightful sight was seen, and and these dreadful noises were heard by him for several miles together: and coming to a place, where he thought he heard a company of Fiends coming forward to meet him, he stopt; and began to muse what he had best to do.Ìý Somtimes he had half a thought to go back.
Ìý…One thing I would not let slip, I took notice that now poor Christian was so confounded, that he did not know his own voice: and thus I perceived it: Just when he was come over against the mouth of the burning Pit, one of the wicked ones got behind him, and stept up softly to him, and whisperingly suggested many grievous blasphemies to him, which he verily thought had proceeded from his own mind.
ÌýWhen Christian had travelled in this disconsolate condition some considerable time, he thought he heard the voice of a man, as going before him, saying, Though I walk through the valley of the shaddow of death, I will fear none ill, for thou art with me.

MUSIC: Psalm 23

SPEECH: DD

In a moment we will hear our Bible reading, from the Letter to the Hebrews, which looks towards the soul’s arrival at the joys of the heavenly city: ‘You are now come to Mount Zion’.Ìý This was a very important passage to Bunyan, and he echoes it in the conversation Christian has with the two ‘shining ones’ who meet him upon the farther shores of the river of mortality.Ìý They tell him of the ‘inexpressible’ beauty and glory of the Paradise of God at which he has arrived.Ìý

Like Christian, we look towards the Lord who waits beyond the clouds and darkness of judgment, evoked in Benjamin Britten’s setting of the hymn of St ColumbaÌý – sung by the Cambridge Choral Course directed by Ralph Allwood.Ìý St Columba’s words in translation….

King of kings and of lords most high,
Comes his day of judgement nigh:
Day of wrath and vengeance stark,
Day of shadows and cloudy dark.
King of kings and of lords most high.

READING: Hebrews 12:18-24

You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them. But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

MUSIC: Britten – Hymn to St Columba

Sermon: Revd Dr. Jessica Martin

‘You are not come to something that can be touched’.Ìý Today’s journey walks the landscapes of the heart: the fair slopes of its delectable mountains and its steep and winding hills of difficulty; the sucking mud of the soul’s discouragement and the prisons of the spirit’s despair. It traverses the valley of the shadow of death, place of unseen horrors and disembodied voices; ahead there is the deep river and the far, shining shore.Ìý

Once upon a time, God-touched men and women travelled across real, rough, terrain: the disputed landscape of the ancient middle eastern kingdoms, torn now, as it was then, with war and sorrow. Jacob, smooth con-man, deceiver of his brother Esau in the book of Genesis, found the stony vistas of his guilty journeys casually infested with great camps of angels. He slept by accident at the foot of the gate of heaven.Ìý Once he dislocated his hip coming hard up against the will of God in the dark, hand to hand and thigh to thigh.Ìý

John Bunyan wished he was like Jacob. He longed to be the one chosen by God, a bad man changed by constantly tripping over the divine presence; but his great fear was that he might be more like Jacob’s brother Esau, deaf and blind to the angels in the landscape, ready to sell his birthright for the sake of one good meal.Ìý Within him rebellion and obedience, comfort and terror, were at constant war; moments of assured peace were rare and precious, often unlooked-for and in dark times.

And in Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan’s hero, Christian, shares his author’s doubts and uncertainties. In crisis he is divided against himself and cannot always tell whether the voices he hears are his own. The adventure-landscape of his journey is fictional as well as scriptural; it owes a good deal to the cheap pamphlets about heroic punch-ups with giants and monsters which were sold to the labouring poor of Bunyan’s England by travelling pedlars.Ìý

The Pilgrim’s Progress offers its hearers excitement, change, the thrill of danger, the promise of fulfilment.Ìý Bunyan’s pilgrim travels the ancient road to God with a difference; it is the road through the landscape of a self divided in a constant struggle of competing desires.Ìý Perhaps Bunyan is more like Jacob than he realises: an agonised individual struggling with God in the dark, cut off from kin and community in a profoundly lonely place.

We modern listeners, inheritors of John Bunyan’s vivid inner world, also have the freedoms and the uncertainties, the temptations, addictions, dangers and desires which populate our own crowded heads. A lot of the reality we react to is virtual reality.Ìý We are in a world of devices competing for our attention: phones and screens and electronic boxes which set out to shock, titillate or seduce.Ìý They are marketing delight, adventure, horror, even moments of peace.Ìý

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And it’s not easy to tell what we are seeing. Fiction and fact collide together in our social media - particularly shockingly this weekend -Ìý so that human suffering isÌý bewilderingly mixed up with human entertainment, and we are hard put to it to know how to feel or grieve for others’ suffering.Ìý At the same time our personal spiritual needs and hungers are catered for by a hundred million images of the bestÌý holiday experience ever, or this or that version of the ultimate good meal.Ìý The trip of a lifetime. A meal worth selling your soul for.

On the Greek island where I holidayed with my family last week, SyrianÌý families, dropped by traffickers off the coast and left to flounder to the shore as best they could, slept on bedrolls in the school playground, washed their children’s clothes and hung them on the railings to dry, were matter-of-factly fed by local people, treated by the island’s doctor for their injuries on the rocks.Ìý We, with the other holidaymakers, walked past them to paddle in the sea which came so close to killing them.Ìý In the harbour rode sleek yachts owned by oligarchs,Ìý guarded by men in black uniforms. We were not on holiday from the troubles of the world.Ìý The troubles of the world were in front of us. The questionÌý a lawyer once asked Jesus, ’Who is my neighbour?’ was not a child’s story from an old book, but deeply urgent.
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The virtual voices which come at us from every side tell us that we can be happy with distraction, titillation, amusement. That our life journey is not particularly meaningful, but just a travelogue. This is not true. We are more like Christian than we know.Ìý Every travelogue can become a pilgrimage. Its songs can be redemption songs, the songs of freedom.Ìý (You hear some of them today, sung by young choristers near the beginnings of their own journeys.)Ìý On the wilderness road the voices we hear may be met by the chance of adventure but they are never meaningless: they invoke upon us danger, courage, blessing and promise.

As we each struggle with what it means to live a good life, as we walk through the dark places battered by voices in the shadows, there is a figureÌý just up ahead.Ìý He is mortal and fragile, just like us, but he trails immortality.Ìý He is Jesus, who went down into the deep waters of death so that humanity, made in the image of God, might find abundant life upon its other shore.Ìý If you listen, you can hear him speaking the words of comfort: Though I walk through the valley of the shaddow of death, I will fear none ill, for thou art with me.

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HYMN: Lead Kindly Light

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Bunyan Reading 4

Now I further saw, that betwixt them and the Gate was a River, but there was no Bridge to go over; the River was very deep; at the sight therefore of this River, the Pilgrims were much troubled, but the men that went with them said, You must go through, or you cannot come at the Gate.
Ìý…They then addressed themselves to the Water, and entring Christian began to sink, and crying out to his good friend Hopeful; he said, I sink in deep Waters, the Billows go over my head all his Waves go over me, Selah!
ÌýThen said the other, Be of good chear, myÌý Brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good. Then said Christian, Ah my friend, the sorrows of death have compassed me about, I shall not see the Land that flows with Milk and Honey.’Twas also observed, that he was troubled with apparitions of Hob-goblins and Evil Spirits, for ever and anon he would intimate so much by his words. HopefulÌý also would endeavour to comfort him, saying, Brother, I see the Gate, and men standing by it to receive us. Then they both took courage, and the enemy was after that as still as a stone, until they were gone over.Ìý Christian therefore presently found ground to stand upon; and so it followed that the rest of the River was but shallow. Thus they got over. Now upon the bank of the River, upon the other side, they saw the two shining men again, who waited for them.

SPEECH: Prayers

Lord, as we make our pilgrimage through life, help us to be always aware of those who are in need of our love. May we provide a shoulder for the weary to rest on, a hand for the lonely to hold and the strength to shoulder the burdens of others.Ìý
Lord in your Mercy
Hear our Prayer

We pray for those who walk through the valley of grief.Ìý May your spirit rest upon them to provide support and comfort. Bring them courage and strength to hope for a brighter future.Ìý
Lord in your Mercy
Hear our Prayer

We pray for those who live in fear, for those whose lives are torn apart by conflict, abuse or neglect.Ìý Be their protector and their stronghold, relieve them of anguish and torment, hide them under the shield of your wing so that they may feel the shelter of your love.
Lord in your Mercy
Hear our Prayer

We pray for world leaders and all those who hold positions of power.Ìý May they be valiant for truth and may they work for justice and peace.Ìý Help us to work towards a better world so that together we might bring about your kingdom of love here on earth.
Lord in your Mercy
Hear our Prayer

We now bring our prayers together as we say:
Our Father,
who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
Thy Kingdom come,
Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For Thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory
for ever and ever.
Amen
We end our service today with William Williams’ great hymn, Guide me O Thou Great Redeemer.

MUSIC: Guide me O Thou Great Redeemer

SPEECH: Blessing

We close with a prayer by Richard Baxter – a contemporary of John Bunyan.

Suffer us not to spend in strangeness to thee another day of our pilgrimage!
while we have a thought to think, let us not forget thee;
while we have a tongue to move, let us mention thee with delight;
while we have breath to breathe, let it be after thee and for thee;
while we have a knee to bend, let it bow daily at thy footstool,
that our souls may at the last be in the inheritance of the saints in light;
through the merits of Jesus Christ our Saviour.Ìý
Amen.

MUSIC: Organ Voluntary

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