Casting, Tuning, Ringing
Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan, University Chaplain
Readings: 1 Corinthians 13; John 13:31-35
I love the sound of the bells from St Salvator’s Tower. I hear them – as we all do in St Andrews – on Sunday mornings, or on wedding days reminding me I need to get to the church on time, or floating through the evening air on Tuesdays as they practise. And right as I begin this reflection on Bell-Ringing Sunday, on behalf of all who love the sound of our bells, I want to record our gratitude to the bell-ringers – staff, students and others – who give of their time and share their expertise, almost always as volunteers, for the pleasure of ringing and to bless us all.
We have six bells in the tower, with different histories. One is original, called Katharine, first cast around 1460 for the founding of St Salvator’s College and Chapel, and which for centuries was the single college bell. It was joined in 1761 by Elizabeth, but that bell cast in Ghent in Belgium was originally hung in St Leonard’s Chapel, before being moved when St Leonard’s and St Salvator’s Colleges became the United College. These two were only joined by a further four bells in 2010, to celebrate the 550th anniversary of the Chapel – three 20th century bells, Agnes and Margaret which came from Greenock, and George which came from Cradley Heath near Birmingham, and one brand new bell, Annie, cast in 2010.
Why have church bells at all?
Before homes had clocks, watches and of course mobile phones, they were an effective way of letting people know the time for worship was approaching, not unlike the Call to Prayer that many people will have heard coming from mosques. But when there is a peal of bells I cannot help but feel it is a form of praising God. In Psalm 148, our choir sang of God being praised by angels, sun, moon and stars, heavens and waters, dragons and deeps, weather, nature and animals, and people of every sort. It is hardly a stretch to add a peal of bells to that litany of praise-givers. Indeed, in the anthem that will follow this sermon, we hear of people clapping their hands in praise of God – as within a bell, the clapper strikes the bell to make it sound.
Bells also strike a celebratory note – in St Andrews for weddings, for graduations, for the installation of a new Principal, and for the Kate Kennedy Procession. National events also call forth our bells in celebration, such as royal jubilees, the coronation of King Charles, and the beginning of Cop 26 in Glasgow, bells rung that day as a symbol of warning, but also of hope.
They can also express a more solemn note, when half-muffled by leather around the clapper, such as Remembrance Day, or after the funeral of a bell-ringer, or following the fire which so badly damaged Notre Dame Cathedral in France. Very occasionally they are fully muffled such as for the death of the Queen, when only the tenor bell is half-muffled. I remember the effect that day – a tolling, mournful and moving.
There are more unconventional requests for marking losses. We were asked, when David Bowie died, if the bell-ringers would ring the melody of Space Oddity from our tower. I don’t think our tuning made it possible.
Bells marked our passage through the Covid pandemic. The Chapel was closed for about four months. On the first Sunday it was closed, I sent a service out to the Chaplaincy mailing list including a video of our ringers with the sound of our bells. One professor wrote back to me to say he had been moved to tears by the sound. Later social distancing only allowed four people in the ringing-chamber. Finally, on a National Day of Reflection a year after the first lockdown began, our bells rang to mark the anniversary.
In short, bell-ringing is part of the musical life of the chapel, expressing a broad range of human feelings and faith in sound.
Bell-ringing was not part of Hebrew or early Christian culture so there are few mentions in the Bible. But one, which is read at many weddings after bells have rung merrily as the guests gather, is found in the first verse of chapter 13 of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
It’s not the most flattering of depictions, suggesting that a loveless voice is like a harsh sound, unpleasant, even painful to the ear. Mind you, we did once receive a complaint from a student that the bellringing on Sunday mornings was preventing them from working on their deadlines and so causing them stress. I wrote back sympathetically, but did not end the practice of ringing for worship.
The rest of the chapter in 1 Corinthians is a meditation on love, which is why it is so often chosen for weddings. What is life like without love, asks Paul. What are the qualities of love which make it so significant for any community? And as love never ends, what will the fulfilment of life mean alongside that love? It makes me wonder – how do church bells and bell-ringing capture something of that love which is at the heart of community, the centre of faith?
One connection is that bells are cast – they are formed, created by a craftsman, made from bell metal, a bronze alloy approximately 77% copper and 23% tin. And they are created with care so that they sound true, pure to the note. Annie, for example, the newest bell, rings an F#. Could I suggest that we too are cast by God, our maker? In Isaiah chapter 64, the prophet says to God
We are the clay and you are our potter;
we are all the work of your hand.
Not bell-metal, but still an image of our being formed and shaped by divine hands, hands of love.
And this is developed. The prophet Jeremiah visits a potter and sees him reworking the clay of a spoiled vessel into a new vessel, and so sees that God can rework our clay into a new vessel. Now, Katharine and Elizabeth, our oldest bells, have been melted down and recast many times. This seems an intriguing image for own lives – that we too can be melted down and recast. God can gently heal us when we have experienced loss and suffering; God can help us see our wrong paths and guide us into new ones; God can forgive us and help us act differently; God can shape us around the life and death and resurrection of his Son, forming our character to be one of love – and so our lives ring true and clear. The third verse of our closing hymn catches this:
Spirit divine, recast our faulty ways,
Make them ring true and echo to Thy praise.
So we are cast, even re-cast by God’s love. We are also tuned by God. Our bells here are tuned to F#, E, D, C#, B and A, which give the possibility of melody. Each bell has a unique sound, but it’s their note alongside others that brings beauty. In a similar way, are we not also a sort of single note, infinitely more complicated than a bell, but nevertheless recognisably ourselves, with a more or less coherent character, personality, and set of attitudes? And isn’t life really about the relationship, the balance, the harmony between our note and those of others. And of course when disagreement becomes conflict, it’s like dissonance, two notes which sound together like noisy gongs or clanging cymbals.
Love is found in harmony, in the beautiful relationship of notes with others. For Paul, love is patient and kind and does not insist on its own way, as bell-ringers too await their turn, and pull the rope in rhythm with others. Indeed, the chapter concludes with these well-known words: And now faith, hope and love abide. Three notes – a chord, the beautiful chord sounding through every human life open to God, open to each other. Faith, hope and love.
Which leads us to a third and final theme – ringing.
Our note is not for ourselves alone. We are cast and tuned to be heard, by others, and by the world. Love is gift to be unwrapped.
Anna Crowe, a local poet, wrote the lovely poem about our bells and bell-ringers which is on the back of the order of service. Let me read it:
The Bell Ringers
They stand in a ring of six, feet planted,
facing each other. Arms raised
to the great ropes with their sallies, they wait
like a still tree, its branches spread
to catch the quickening wind.
Which comes, as clapper hits bronze,
and the ringers let the pattern go hunting: Annie,
the treble, changes places with Agnes, with
Elizabeth, Katharine, Margaret, George:
Each bell sings out in turn, gives tongue
as the branches thresh, their music taking flight –
clamouring, tumbling, ecstatic – flung
from the top of the tower and out, out
over the roofs and spires of the town.
The ringers are compared to a tree, and the sound of the bells to birds, taking flight, perhaps like swallows at dusk, or to birdsong flowing out in these fine early mornings.
Human life, and most definitely Christian life, is a life of love, bearing witness to God’s love. As Jesus says in the Gospel reading: Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. We are invited to care for our neighbour, listening to our anxious flatmate, supporting our friend stressed about exams, giving time to someone different from us, generous with our resources to those who are vulnerable. And if leaving St Andrews soon at the end of our time here, we are called to take that love with us and shar it wherever we go. We ring out with love.
To conclude: we are cast and re-cast throughout our lives – shaped, fashioned, re-moulded by our Maker and Redeemer. We are tuned, in concert with others of a different pitch, making a beautiful harmony from our diversity. And in ringing, we share God’s love through our love, making a profound difference to other lives, in St Andrews and beyond. As we sang earlier:
As the ringers pull their rope
in St Salvator’s steeple,
let the chimes proclaim our hope
in God who loves all people.
END