Memorial Service: David Shepherd
One of the many welcome breaths of fresh air that was let in by the Roman Catholic Church, when it abandoned its ‘fortress’ mentality after the Second Vatican Council in 1965, was its acceptance into its liturgy of post-reformation hymns by non-catholic authors.
Our monastery has been given, by the kindness of a member of the United Reformed Church, a set of hymn books containing rich pickings from Bunyan, Herbert, Milton, the Wesley family and Blake. How Firm a Foundation Ye Saints of the Lord was written by the less well known Richard Keen at the end of the 18th century. It is grounded in scripture and stanza 4 is based on Isaiah 43:2 – ‘When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.’ Isaiah is trying to reassure us: however great the catastrophe we are faced with, God is at our side and we can come to no harm.
Fire is a standard image for calamity and chaos in general and in particular carries overtones of the horrible trials by ordeal which were in use in Old Testament times. To the credit of Pope Innocent III, he forbade the clergy’s participation in such trials in 1215. They were finally and mercifully discontinued in the 16th century, only to be revived in the infamous witch hunts of the 17th century. Today, alas, we are benighted by terrorist torture and death by burning.
Keen, writing only 100 years after trial by ordeal had finally been abandoned, uses fire as a symbol in an odd way for a Protestant, in that it has a hint of purgatory in it:
The flame shall not hurt thee, his only design Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.
The implication is that fire is not punitive but purifying; just as the impurities in metals are dispersed at high temperatures, so our faults and failings are burnt away at the touch of God.
It is a painful idea rather than a comfortable one, but it is useful as it dispels any false notions we may have of God being cosy. There is, however, a cheering and reassuring concept in this. Somewhere in each of us there is hidden a particle of gold the size of which we can never ourselves know. This gold is indestructible; the good we have done in our lives is what ultimately matters and it will be everlasting.
The final stanza sets our minds at rest. Jesus is supporting us at all times:
The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose... He never will leave, he will never forsake.
One can get flustered sometimes, but there is no need to panic.