At Choral Evensong one Sunday afternoon in March 1977, the Choir of St Paul’s Cathedral sang, as the Anthem, words spoken by Jesus to his disciples on the night before he died and set to music by the Romantic German composer Johannes Brahms as part of his German Requiem: “Ye now are sorrowful, howbeit, ye shall again behold me, and your heart shall be joyful.” 

The hauntingly moving treble solo was sung by Robert Eaton, a thirteen-year-old chorister, who was known for his infectious laughter and for having incurred the wrath of the Master of the Choir for carving the name of his beloved football team – Brighton and Hove Albion – onto the lid of the Choir Practice Room piano. The preacher at Evensong that day was John Collins, who served as a Residentiary Canon of St Paul’s for some thirty-three years from 1948 to 1982, during which time he campaigned tirelessly against racial inequality, global poverty and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. He was a founding member of the charity “War on Want” and the first ever meeting of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was held in his home in Amen Court. What, you may ask, was the response of this radical cleric, never afraid to speak truth to power, to Robert Eaton’s singing? He ascended the pulpit, only to leave it a few moments later, having announced to a startled congregation that nothing he could possibly say could follow what they had just heard. In so doing he expressed what the congregation knew in their hearts, that they had experienced something extraordinary and life-changing though what, they did not know. What the Master of the Choir knew was that a private recording had been made of that performance to which he and others could listen, to recapture something of that beautiful moment.

In later life Robert Eaton moved to New York where he married and where, whilst working as a trader on the one hundredth and fifth floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Centre on 11th of September 2001, he was tragically killed in a wicked act of terror. As his family and friends mourned his death, the sound of his voice, preserved on that childhood recording, broke into their grief: “Ye now are sorrowful, howbeit, ye shall again behold me, and your heart shall be joyful. Yea, I will comfort you, as one whom his own mother comforteth. Look upon me; ye know that for a little time labour and sorrow were mine, but at the last I have found comfort.”

It is often suggested that when we worship time is bent. Both the past and the future break into the present and by so doing each is changed. For those present at Choral Evensong in St Paul’s Cathedral one Sunday in March 1977, the true meaning of that extraordinary moment finally became clear. It had been extraordinary, because Robert Eaton was singing his own Requiem and offering something by which his family and friends might in all their anguish and sorrow receive some small comfort and hope, as might many more besides for that recording survives to this day. You too can listen to it.

At Evensong last Sunday afternoon, the Sunday of the Passion, the Dean spoke powerfully of those who sing a love song for their beloved out of the deepest and most tragic grief and by so doing proclaim that love, not violence or terror, will have the final say. What song, I wonder, are we called to sing this Easter Day? Is it not the song of Isaiah fulfilled in Resurrection of Jesus: “Do not fear for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.” Is it not the song of St Paul the Apostle, a man only too aware of his need for grace and transformation: “To someone untimely born, he appeared also to me.”

As Easter People we are called to proclaim (with every waking breath) that through the death and resurrection of Jesus there is joy and new life even if, for a time, there is sorrow and despair. We proclaim this song, not that we might blot out or belittle the anguish and sorrow of our world, but because our faith teaches us that these songs of comfort and hope are never lost but, once uttered, remain for ever to bring light in moments of darkness and to transform our sorrow. If words spoken in anger and through hate can haunt us years after they were uttered, how much more can words of comfort and hope reach into our present from the past enabling us to embrace the future trusting that the death and violence of this world will never have the final say? “Ye now are sorrowful, howbeit, ye shall again behold me, and your heart shall be joyful. Look upon me; ye know that for a little time labour and sorrow were mine, but at the last I have found comfort.”

Our world, despite the many sorrows and challenges that beset it, is today being changed because our forebears, young and old, had the courage to be an Easter People proclaiming songs of comfort and hope. I pray that we may we have the courage to follow in their footsteps this Easter Day, for in so doing lies the transformation both of our present and of our future. Amen.