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Bells are ringing in Paris today, as always on Sunday. As always, and yet, it still feels new and remarkable that services are once again taking place in the cathedral at the heart of the city. The newly reopened Notre-Dame is once again gathering people for worship and wonder – though of course even during its rebuilding, many still came to see its exterior, and the careful, patient, loving work of restoration was a work of worship in its own way.

Music: Sainte nuit pour les bergers (Anonymous, arr. Christian Villeneuve)
Cécile Dalmon, Laurence Esquieu, Christophe Gautier, Maîtrise Notre-Dame de Paris, Lionel Sow, Yves Castagne
CD: A la venue de Noël (Hortus)

It is easy, today, in a day of global travel and beauty spot consumerism to become blasé about one of so many beautiful buildings from a bygone era. We come, we visit, maybe pray a little prayer, and go. The fire of Notre-Dame somehow interrupted the relentless wave of interwoven secular tourism and religious consumerism. Somehow, a deeply secular nation realised that spirituality and transcendence were still part of its story, and its soul.

Insert: Rector of Notre-Dame de Paris

Gracious God,
Help us today to stop and interrupt our busyness
with stillness and attention,
that we may hear you,
notice your presence with us this Christmastide,
among us and on the margins of our world,
and learn to love our world and our neighbours
as you have shown us.
Amen.

²Ñ³Ü²õ¾±³¦:ÌýIl est né le divin enfant (Anonymous)
Maîtrise Notre-Dame de Paris, Lionel Sow, Yves Castagnet
CD: A la venue de Noël (Hortus) 

Somehow there was something permanent about Notre-Dame that cut through the transience and frenetic pace of modern life. Somehow a nation realised that it was losing something precious it did not know it valued.

How often do we take for granted those places where we live, where we worship, where we meet and pray? Places that have shaped our lives and relationships?

Human beings are inevitably tethered to place – whether we recognise it or not. We occupy one place in the world at any one time. Physical space has shaped the history of tribes and nations, the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the dwellings we build. And in return – we shape place to speak of our hopes and dreams. We build houses and monuments, and we speak of God and love and grace through art and music and architecture. The people of God have remembered the stories of God not just through Scripture and stories and sermons, but in the sculptures and paintings and windows of the buildings they worshipped in. The loss of parts of Notre-Dame in a fire were not just the loss of a great building, but of memory inscribed on stone, the memory of God’s faithfulness throughout time, and the memory of how time weathers and erodes our human constructions.

²Ñ³Ü²õ¾±³¦:ÌýUne vierge feconde (Anonymous)
Maîtrise Notre-Dame de Paris, Lionel Sow, Yves Castagnet
CD: A la venue de Noël (Hortus)

Reading: Exodus 35.30-35

Exodus recognises the part that art and craft play in worship. The builders and artists were working for God just as much as Moses or Aaron and those offering word and ritual-based worship. More important than that – this passage is set within the story of wandering in the desert. In many ways, one could argue that instructions about beautiful craft, and cloth and gold were a little pointless. Irrigation or animal husbandry or map-making would have been more appropriate crafts to value and celebrate!

Yet this is part of the worship of the people of God. It is not useful in human terms; it is not utilitarian, or pragmatic, or reducible to market value or contribution to physical survival. It is something that is both profoundly human and earthly, and profoundly transcendent. It is an offer of the best of ourselves for God, and a refusal to reduce human life to mere survival – in the same way that human being wherever they are still look for beauty, sing songs and write poetry, out of the most desperate of materials. We reflect the beauty and care of the creator in our offering of beauty and skill and craft.

Notre-Dame was this kind of effort too. A human love letter to the God who gave himself in Jesus Christ. A human attempt to express their desire to communicate with God, and reflect God’s beauty and transcendence. A human invitation to others who enter this space to let their eyes be drawn upwards towards heaven. Long before our days of drones and helicopters and long-range cameras, the roofs of Notre-Dame were unseen. As the roof burnt, audiences were reminded of the sculptures and beauty of the roofs – which until recently, no-one would have seen or noticed. Builders and stone carvers from of old did not do the minimum, did not keep budgets to the barest margins, but offered their art and skills for God only, regardless of whether their work would be seen, let alone be marked as useful. Just as Jesus instructed his disciples not to pray on street corners where everyone could see them, but go to their room and lock the door, these medieval men simply took their worship to the skies and built beauty for God’s eyes only, not knowing that centuries later, their burning tribute would remind us to ask ourselves whether we build and pray for profit and status, or for God’s eyes only. What do we do in secret, with no hope of reward, just because it is good, and right, and gives glory to the God who loves us?

²Ñ³Ü²õ¾±³¦:ÌýO magnum mysterium – Lauridsen
Maîtrise Notre-Dame de Paris feat. Henri Chalet
CD: Notre-Dame - Cathédrale d'émotions (Parlophone)

God of all creation,
who created the beauty of earth and heaven,
and human beings in your image,
we thank you for artists, poets, musicians,
and builders of dreams
who help us remember that life is more than survival,
and labour more than just useful.
Open our eyes to see the wonders of your love,
and our hearts to cherish every small moment of beauty
that we may reflect your glory
and rejoice in the world you have made.
In Christ our Lord,
Amen.

The stone story of Notre-Dame has haunted French minds for many years – and given French literature one of its masterpieces: Notre-Dame de Paris, better known in English as The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo. The story of a disabled young man, Quasimodo, attuned to the bells and stones of the great cathedral, hopelessly in love with a young traveller woman who does not notice him, has the cathedral as its theatre – as a place of refuge and asylum, a place of retreat from a cruel world. Esmeralda, the traveller girl, claims refuge there. Quasimodo finds the cathedral a refuge, because its stones speak of God’s love for the world far more powerfully than the cruel, oppressive people of his time:

“He therefore turned to mankind only with regret. His cathedral was enough for him. It was peopled with marble figures of kings, saints and bishops who at least did not laugh in his face and looked at him with only tranquillity and benevolence. The other statues, those of monsters and demons, had no hatred for him – he resembled them too closely for that. It was rather the rest of mankind that they jeered at. The saints were his friends and blessed him; the monsters were his friends and kept watch over him."

The story of Quasimodo pointedly reminds us that our best prayers – be they words or works of stone – are worth little unless they are matched in action and compassion. That is the ambiguous witness of any human tribute: that we are often better in thoughts than in our deeds, in our intentions than our actions. Monuments to our faith are nothing unless they are animated by the God who meets us there, and redeems our feeble efforts. It is the God who is with-us, Immanuel, the Christ who came to bridge the gap between heaven and earth that human efforts can never fill, it is this God who ultimately speaks through the witness of faith throughout the ages. It is only through this God’s action that a cathedral can be more than stone and whispered prayers, and speak of love, and grace, and redemption.

²Ñ³Ü²õ¾±³¦:ÌýA la venue de Noël (Anonymous arr. Christian Villeneuve)
Christophe Gautier, Maîtrise Notre-Dame de Paris, Lionel Sow, Yves Castagnet
CD: A la venue de Noël (Hortus)

Reading: Revelation 21.1-5

²Ñ³Ü²õ¾±³¦:ÌýLes anges dans nos campagnes (Anonymous)
Maîtrise Notre-Dame de Paris, Lionel Sow, Yves Castagnet
CD: A la venue de Noël (Hortus)

God of all people, past and present,
We thank you for the worship that has taken place for many years
In our cities and villages, in churches and in homes,
And we pray for places in the world where worship is at risk,
Where your people are under threat,
And their places of gathering closed or forbidden;
May you comfort and strengthen them,
And bring them to new life
Beyond what can be imagined today.

Lord, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.

²Ñ³Ü²õ¾±³¦:ÌýCantique de Noel (O Holy Night)
Eaken Piano Trio
CD: Home for the Holidays (Naxos)

God of the created world, who crafted the beauty of nature
And the mind of humanity,
We thank you for artists and engineers,
For those who put their crafts and skills at your service,
Bring beauty out of ashes,
And help us get a glimpse of your greatness and beauty.

Lord, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.

God of new life and resurrection,
We pray for places and situations
That only seem to speak of death today.
For places of war and conflict,
For places of disaster and destruction,
For all those facing death and its finality,
In a thousand small ways;
May the promise of new life be heard,
Whispered or shouted,
Believed whole-heartedly
Or doubted because hope is just too hard;
May your Spirit comfort and strengthen,
And may hope spring up in the most unexpected places,
And bloom into vibrant new life.

Lord, in your mercy,
Hear our prayer.

As our Saviour taught us, so we pray:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.
For the kingdom, the power,
and the glory are yours
now and for ever.
Amen.

²Ñ³Ü²õ¾±³¦:ÌýVoisins et voisine (Anonymous arr. Christian Villeneuve)
Maîtrise Notre-Dame de Paris, Lionel Sow, Yves Castagnet
CD: A la venue de Noël (Hortus)

The Notre-Dame fire reminded the people of France that no matter how great their history, no matter how important their heritage, no matter how beautiful their tribute, the human world is small, and fragile, and subject to the vagaries of history and the natural world. In the cushioned corners of Europe, it is easy to forget quite how small human beings are. How fragile. We have modern medicine, rockets and satellites, AI that never sleep and the internet that connects us everywhere. And yet none of this can finally conquer our fragility and finitude. We are small, mortal and vulnerable.

There is much talk of Notre-Dame’s rebirth. But rebirth is not guaranteed, nor is it pain free. There is no recovering what is lost, and the future will always bear the scars of the past. The story of Notre-Dame is very human story: of dreams and ambitions, of new times that yield new architects, extensions and modifications, the march of time that leads to decay, and the life of the world, with rebellions, revolutions and restorations. If there is one thing that this new era for Notre-Dame can tell us, it is that even solid stone has its fragility, and yet hope can transform the most desperate of moments. Notre-Dame bears witness to the possibility of hope, the possibility of rebirth, the possibility of redemption. It points towards heaven, through its new spire, and the God of hope, the God of new birth.

And so it is fitting, in this Christmas tide, that we remember that new birth happened, not among princes and riches, but in the quiet simplicity of an occupied country, in the far riches of the world, and through a life that led to a cross. The new life that God promises rarely takes us to easy or expected places, and is always fragile, often costly, and at risk – yet on offer even at the most threatened of times.

The love of the Lord Jesus
draw you to himself,
the power of the Lord Jesus
strengthen you in his service,
the joy of the Lord Jesus fill your hearts;
and the blessing …

²Ñ³Ü²õ¾±³¦:ÌýAdeste fideles arr. David Willcocks
Maîtrise Notre-Dame de Paris, Lionel Sow, Yves Castagnet
CD: A la venue de Noël (Hortus)