King's College Chapel

I stood on holy ground the other day. The chapel of King’s College, Cambridge. It was stunning, simply stunning.

I’d heard about the place, for sure. Who hasn’t? I’ve seen the pictures, sometimes even watched the television broadcasts which are shown at Christmas time. And, yes, they’re always most impressive and create a sense of awe.

But I hadn’t ever been inside before: live, I mean – in person, instead of merely through the TV tubes. Until, that is, I had the chance last week.

The normal charge for adults is a cheap-at-the-price £4-50p: but I got in for free.

A circumstance, I have to say, which cheered the ingrained Scotsman in my psyche: and made the erstwhile preacher in me smile. To get to stand on holy ground for free! To get to go inside and savour all the splendours of this almost timeless place entirely free of charge! To get to be so warmly, keenly welcomed at the door and ushered in without a hint of payment on my part! Isn’t that good news?

Not because of who I was or anything I’d done. But simply on the basis of the guy I’m with. A student – and a son: relationship is everything, believe you me!

“You want to go inside?” he asked me, as his guided tour of Cambridge brought us right up to the threshold of the place.

Silly question! Of course I did!

But the question that he asked, I thought, that’s exactly it.

That’s the crucial question for us all – you want to go inside? That’s the crucial choice we all must make. To go inside. To get inside the chapel of the college of the King: to stand on holy ground: to sense first hand the stunning, soaring splendours in the worship of the Lord.

You’ve got to go inside!

It doesn’t do to take a stack of photos from across the well-kept lawns: it doesn’t do to walk your way around its ancient walls and gaze up past its towers to the sky. Yes, you’ll get good photos and you’ll find it all impressive and you’ll think that you were glad you got the chance to see it all.

But stuck there on the outside’s not the same. Nothing like. You’ll simply never get it, if you view it from the outside all the time.

You’ve got to go inside!

I’m painting a picture, you see: a picture of the followers of Christ: a picture of the ‘college’ of the King (we’re students, after all, learners who’re intent upon discovering how to live): and more than that, a picture of these learners in communion and relationship with God. The chapel of the college of the King.

And I repeat, you’ll simply never get it if you view it from the outside all the time.

I fear that’s what too many do. They’re camped outside. Full of admiration. Full of pious ‘cameras’ as it were, with photos labelled Me beside the Chapel to authenticate their claim to Christian faith. Enthusiastic patrons of a great medieval heritage.

But camped outside.

It’s safer on the outside, sure. You get to choose your vantage point – admiring from a distance, or the overwhelming grandeur closer in.

But stay outside (it doesn’t really matter that it’s far or near) – stay outside and all you ever get to be is an observer. You maybe Ooh! and Aah!, you maybe think Wow, this is something else!, but, hey, the bottom line is always this – you stay outside and all you ever get to be is an observer.

Well, let me say it clearly once for all. Knowing God is never a spectator sport. Never.

You want to know what following Christ is like? You’ve got to go inside. You want to know what meeting God can do within a person’s life? You’ve got to go inside.

You’ve got to get inside the Jesus story, you’ve got to enter in, be part of it – instead of merely sticking on the outside, admiring this great edifice of truth we call Good News.

You’ve got to go inside!

I did.

And two things in particular struck chords within my heart.

I discovered that the chapel of the college of the King is EPIC through and through. That’s the first thing.

It is an Experience in itself. Just being there. Just being on the inside. It’s an experience of the vastness and the beauty and the splendour and the greatness and the overpowering glory of the Lord. It is a hugely, almost wildly sensual sort of thing – the sense of size (it’s massive, absolutely massive), the sense of space (it’s high and long and wide and somehow pillarless as well – or so it seems), the sense of age (it was built some five or six long centuries ago), the sense of light (the sun shone through the towering stained glass windows all around and beamed in rainbow coloured brightness ‘til my soul was simply drenched in that effulgence from on high), the sense of music (the pure, fresh, echoing resonance which the lofty, vaulted ceilings sort of percolate right round the building brings the whispers of another world into the here and now – even in the silence: and the singing of the choristers must take you to an altogether different plane!). A total, all-engrossing, rapturous experience.

And every body there, in truth, Participants. You sit and stand and wander round: you look and pause and ponder all that’s going on: you turn and talk and take it in: you fall into reflective mode, and know that you’re being called to be reflective of the Lord in how you henceforth live your life: you find yourself exclaiming and you want to be proclaiming and you long to be reclaiming every moment of your life on earth for God. There simply isn’t scope for mere spectators in this place: each one becomes an integral participant in what is going on.

It’s well and truly Image-rich as well. The rich, resplendent windows with their elongated, stunning, stained-glass narrative of grace are a feast on which the eye of the beholder could be gorging for a lifetime – and then some. A sumptuous portrayal of the glories of eternal truths, a captivating, colour-filled, kaleidoscopic panoply the like of which I’ve never seen before. And all of that before I ever got to stand and view the massive Reubens masterpiece at the apex of the place. The Adoration of the Magi. How apt. That’s all I then desired to do: to bow, adore and let myself be steeped in all the splendour of that hour. As if I, too, had seen the King.

And somehow there, as well, a very real Connectedness. People. There were people there, a multitude of very different people, from the nations of the earth. And all of them connected and united and related in the wonder and the worship that they felt. The singing of the choristers expresses best of all the essence of this manifest ‘connectedness’. Their beauty-laden harmonies adorning simple melodies, reflecting that remarkable diversity which underlays the timeless, tireless unity of God and God’s creation, age on age. All of them involved, engaged and active in relation to the others all around.

EPIC. In every sense. The chapel of the college of the King: the worship of the followers of Christ today. It has to be, we have to make it EPIC in this way.

And the second thing to strike me?

Just five short words I noticed in the exhibition cloister up one side.

“Where the two worlds meet…” The exhibition spoke about the outlook that medieval people had upon their life: how they thought of the world above, the world of God and his heavens above – and this very earthy world below, the world of men and women in its down-to-earth mundaneness and its fallenness and sin.

And it spoke about the way medieval people were persuaded that the church of Jesus Christ was very much a place where these two worlds were joined.

The chapel of the college of the King. Where two worlds meet. Not just a point where that far-off medieval world impinges on the world that’s ours today. But, more staggering by far, the point where here and now we residents of earth, who struggle with the flawedness of this present, weary world, may nonetheless encounter all the glories, all the blessings of the world that is to come.

Where two worlds meet. Where God’s will is done, on earth as it is in heaven. Where God’s presence is known, on earth as it is in heaven. Where God’s power is seen, on earth as it is in heaven.

“Where the two worlds meet…” That said it all for me. That's the way it's meant to be. But, as I say, you’ve got to go inside!