May I speak in the name of the Blessed and Holy Trinity One God in three persons.

Recently I was in the city of Tromso, in Norway. During our stay we decided to go to a concert we’d seen advertised.

It wasn’t surprising that the concert was to be performed in Tromso’s cathedral – but it was a little unusual that it didn’t start until 11 pm. As I did, you might wonder why the starting time was quite so late. Well, it seemed to me that it was kind of the opposite of a midnight mass. Once a year we have a service in the Minster that starts very late in the evening, which whilst inside is full of light, outside we’re in the depths of winter.

In Tromso, at this time of year, the sun never sets, because Tromso is well inside the Arctic Circle, which means that for several months, the sun never goes down. It seems that the citizens like to celebrate this special time of endless light by holding some events late into the night and so when you emerge from the cathedral, after midnight, the sun is still shinning.

Of course, the opposite is also true.

For months of the year the sun never rises. I can’t quite imagine what it must be like living with that experience. When the first sunrise of the new year is weeks and weeks away, and only a brief twilight marks the place where the sun should be.

All this reminded me that the Bible, based in the experiences of a particular place, draws a lot on the imagery of light and darkness; the sun at noon; dusk and dawn. Scripture takes the experiences people have of the natural world and uses these in different ways to communicate divine truths. So, for example, when Jesus dies on the cross on Good Friday, an unexpected darkness appears at noon and lasts for three hours.

In our first reading, when Jacob was at a crucial juncture in his life, and wrestled with a stranger all night, the conflict endured “until daybreak”. It is as the sun rises that Jacob becomes Israel and is blessed by God. A new day; a new name; and a new purpose.

We’ve just heard our fabulous choir sing Parry’s setting of Milton’s ‘Blest Pair of Sirens’. It ends with that vision of heaven which draws on so many Biblical references about the life to come, where one day we will all: “sing in endless morn of light”. If “endless morn” is heaven, then we can all probably guess what the Bible associates with perpetual darkness. It’s not good. Either it is an image for hell, or a state that arrives in advance of the apocalypse.

In the book of Revelation, depicted in the centre of our Great East Window, the darkness of human folly and failure is contrasted with the Son of Man whose “face was like the sun shining with full force”.

The text of the hymn we are going to sing in a few moments was written by a vicar who was very preoccupied by the “end times”. John Mason was alive in the 17th century and might seem an unusual source for a hymn we sing at this Evensong each year. He was a Calvanistic Anglican, suggesting he was both very earnest and rather severe. Mason suffered pains in the head and became so sensitive to sound that even the noise of his own footsteps caused him pain. He experienced terrifying dreams and hallucinations and became convinced that the personal reign of God on earth was about to begin.

And yet, despite this, throughout all his suffering and unusual religious beliefs, Mason has left us a poem of profound verse and theological depth. Perhaps it’s a good reminder that when God chooses an instrument, no matter how humble the vessel, words and music of sublime quality can be the result. In his poem Mason reflects on the brightness of heaven and the human longing for just one glimpse of celestial light. Whatever Mason had to give, he feels it is ‘cold and dark’ compared with the brilliance of God’s presence. Nevertheless, he offers what he has, and that’s all any of us are asked to do.

In his own way, like Jacob, Mason wrestled with God in his prayers; in his preaching; and in his writing. He certainly wasn’t perfect, and neither are we. But when we let God into our lives there’s no telling what God will do. In Jesus Christ we see the pattern and character of God’s fulness – at once surprising and improbable. All because, as Mason puts it, this is a Being beyond the limit of our imagination. This is a God who is like “a sea without a shore”. A brilliance of sunlight that never sets; and cannot be contained.

I want to end by giving thanks for the voices and dedication of our choir. Their music has carried us through seasons of celebration and contemplation, offering a foretaste of that “endless morn of light” which, in faith, we anticipate.

Each anthem, psalm, and hymn they have shared has enriched our worship, lifting our thoughts beyond the everyday and reminding us of the beauty and hope at the heart of our faith.

As some move on and others remain, may all who have sung here know the deep gratitude of this community. Wherever you go, may you each find the same glimpses of divine brilliance that their singing has brought to us. For it is through such gifts, humbly and joyfully offered, that we experience echoes of that endless light which no darkness can overcome.

Amen.