Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Only days ago, I returned from a journey to the UK that included our weeklong choral residency at Wells Cathedral.

Today, with the memories of this marvelous week of singing so freshly in mind, I would like to say something about unity. As Christians, we hold on to passages in the Gospels, like today’s lesson from John 17:20-26, as a guide for our identity. Jesus, speaking to God the Father, prayed that his followers would ‘all be one’ (v. 21) and that their unity would be as the unity of the Father and the Son.

Who are the people for whom Jesus prayed? These are ‘those who believe in me through their word’. Christians have always taken these words to heart. It is why we have a number of historic creeds, and why we take the pains to recite a creed in every Eucharistic liturgy or Evensong. These are by no means historical ‘relics’ or negotiated legal documents. They are essential! They are a shared expression, an individual acceptance of a common belief in the triune God, an expression that is manifested in a lived experience. Both elements are needed: the faith of the individual, but a faith that embraces the depth and breadth of belief expressed by the community ‘in every place and in every time’.

This unity can be discerned quite clearly in worship. At Wells, I felt it as the choir walked through the cloister into the cathedral each day, as they stood in formation and greeted the officiating priest, and as the virger led us in procession to the Quire, walking over the worn medieval floor stones. But even more poignantly, the unity was expressed as these choristers, both young and old alike, stood in the Quire stalls and proclaimed the biblical words of the prayer book:

‘O Lord, open thou our lips.’
‘And our mouth shall show forth thy praise.’

As the director, I was profoundly moved to see this community of laypeople offer praise and prayer together, in the same fashion and incorporating the same language as choirs have for hundreds of years. As a father and a fellow pilgrim, I was deeply grateful to see my own children sharing this experience with the rest of the choir, as they learned to integrate their individual faith and contribution into several larger circles of community: choral, parish, cathedral, and historical. That integration, I believe, is what we aspire to in this formative work.

Yours in Christ,
Justin