Last night we enjoyed a splendid concert here in church – six organists playing a wonderfully varied programme to delight and entertain as only music can. But we’re having something of a musical weekend. Today is the birthday of Ralph Vaughan Williams he was born on this day 136 years ago and this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of his death. We are being encouraged to mark this significant anniversary in church and we do so by singing hymns at this service and at Evensong – hymns that are set to tunes by Vaughan Williams.

So what of the man? Well, thankfully, unlike some very early composers we know a fair amount about his life. He was born the son of a Vicar (poor man!) in Down Ampney in Gloucestershire and after the death of his father when he was only 3 Ralph moved with his mother to the North Downs in Surrey to live with her family. She was the granddaughter of Josiah Wedgwood, part of the Wedgwood pottery family and another distant relative, a great uncle to Ralph, was Charles Darwin.

After an education at Charterhouse, Ralph attended the Royal College of Music and studied under Charles Villiers Stanford before reading history and music at Trinity College, Cambridge. He returned to the RCM to study composition with Hubert Parry but his work of composition took time to bear fruit and he didn’t publish his first piece until he was 30. Later he was to compose, amongst other things, nine symphonies in a surprising range of different styles and yet, despite these variations, he has often been said to be characteristically English, in the same way as that of Holst, Butterworth, Delius and Walton.

One writer remarked “If that Englishness in music can be encapsulated in words at all, those words would probably be: ostensibly familiar and commonplace, yet deep and mystical as well as lyrical, melodic, melancholic, and nostalgic yet timeless.” It caused another commentator to observe that in Vaughan Williams’ s

style “one is never quite sure whether one is listening to something very old or very new.”

Nowhere is this more apparent than in his contribution to hymnody. Vaughan Williams was the musical editor of The English Hymnal which was first published in 1906 and has rightly be seen as a collection of some of the best hymns in the English language. The standard of both the arrangements and the original compositions made it one of the most influential hymnals of the twentieth century.

This was due, in no small part, to Vaughan Williams’ love of folk tunes. In 1904, he discovered that English folk tunes were fast becoming extinct because of the increase of literacy and printed music in rural areas, and so he set out travelling the countryside, transcribing and preserving many tunes himself. Later he incorporated many of them into his own music, being fascinated by the beauty of the music and its anonymous history in the working lives of ordinary people.

He would take the most gorgeous folk melodies and arrange them as memorable hymn tunes. Kingsfold – the tune for I heard the voice of Jesus say, Herongate for It is a thing most wonderful and Forest Green one of the tunes for O little town of Bethlehem being just three examples of many. They are lovely, lovely tunes that still live on today and are a joy to sing.

Well that’s all very interesting you might be kind enough to say, if you haven’t nodded off. But rather than this being a poor attempt at an entry in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians – you might be asking, where’s the sermon in all of this?

Well it’s right there in what Vaughan Williams does; taking old tunes that are in the hearts and heads of people and giving them new life and form and expression. For it’s just the same with God.

I love that idea of Vaughan Williams going around meeting people and hearing those tunes played and them becoming a part of him and his music. For that is

what the Gospel does to us. Those stories, that are much more than just stories, told to us and shared with us, that then start to resonate and find new expression inside us. Hearing the life of Jesus told to us by our Mothers and Fathers, our priest or Sunday school leader that starts to become part of our story, part of who we are. And not only that, but stories that continue to shape us and change us as we go on hearing them and reflecting on them now and into our future.

See I am making all things new. I am taking the old and it is having new expression, new meaning, new melody in and through you.

For we believe in a God of transformation, whose love never wavers and whose presence is constant, but yet still a God who changes us and calls us to new and exciting things. To make us more fully the people that God would have us be and the Church he would have us be.

Time and time again in the Christian story we hear again this refrain in the music of God’s love:

He has lifted up the lowly, he has filled the hungry with good things, a fisherman leaves his nets and follows, a persecutor becomes a pivotal and effective messenger and teacher, a tax collector is forgiven, swords are beaten into ploughshares, the lamb lies down with the lion, bread and wine become a foretaste of paradise.

I could go on. The old is made new and is transformed. Expectations are reversed, new hope is found, God speaks the same words of love into our hearts and our lives in new ways that we hear for the first time when we are still enough and listen.

God is working marvelous deeds in the old and the tired and bringing in his kingdom and we are a part of that, if we allow ourselves to be attuned to God’s melody.

Perhaps we come this morning a little tired, a little battle weary and a bit roughed up. I urge you to open up and let that music, God’s healing grace, into your hearts.

There’s a lovely 8th century prayer that I sometimes use when I’m leading Morning Prayer, as we give thank to God for the gift of that new day. I’d like to finish with that prayer and it goes like this:

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light,
look favourably on your whole Church,
that wonderful and sacred mystery,
and by the tranquil operation of your perpetual providence
carry out the work of our salvation:
and let the whole world feel and see
that things which were cast down are being raised up
and things which had grown old are being made new
and that all things are returning to perfection
through him from whom they took their origin,
even Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.