The following address was given by the Dean of St Edmundsbury, the Very Revd Dr Frances Ward

St Mary, Helmingham October 15th 2011

I Corinthians 13; John 3: 1-21

When the long tired years of the Peninsular War came to an end with the victory at the battle of Waterloo, England as a nation saw fit to celebrate in an imaginative way. Throughout this realm bell towers were built, old towers rehung with bells. And Helmingham was no exception. In June 1816 people gathered here from all over East Anglia to hear for the first time a new ring of eight bells cast at the Whitechapel Foundry. And so they have rung out throughout the decades since over this beautiful part of the country. Today, work has been completed to restore them to their former glory, and we celebrate today, on this wonderful occasion. A day so many have worked towards: Well done and thank you – particularly to those individuals, charities and trusts who have been so generous. It is an honour to be with you this day.

Bell-ringing has a vibrant history. It dates back to the 17th Century; a tradition peculiar to the Church of England. Yes, bells are rung throughout the world, but the particular pursuit of change or method ringing belongs here, in the English countryside, village, town and city. Bells have celebrated God’s love through the centuries, and summoned people to church: they are one of the glories of our land. A glory celebrated in prose and poetry.

John Betjeman loved Suffolk, but here he is in London as a boy, summoned by bells on a dark Sunday evening

I used to stand by intersecting lanes
Among the silent offices, and wait,
Choosing which bell to follow; not a peal,
For that was too well-known, I liked things dim –
…
A single bell would tinkle down a lane:
My echoing steps would track the source of sound –
A cassocked verger, bell-rope in his hands,
Called me to high box pews, to cedar wood
…
And so once more, as for three hundred years,
This carven wood, these grey memorial’d walls
Heard once again the Book of Common Prayer,
While somewhere at the back the verger, now
Turned Parish Clerk, would rumble out “Amen”.

Summoned by bells. John Betjeman, who did so much to reinvigorate a love of parish churches through England; who argued cogently and powerfully that our churches are our best mission tool. Elsewhere he celebrates the City of London's "steepled forest of churches" and evokes the sounds of bells breaking the "Sunday silence". We hear of the "tingle tang" of "the bell of St Mildred's Bread Street", and "the roaring flood of a twelve-voiced peal from Paul's". Betjeman wrote of such wonderful variety, calling people to our churches, to these lovely places that speak so eloquently of God.

Bell ringing remains popular; indeed many say it is drawing increasing numbers to towers throughout the country. Perhaps it is one way in which people express a hunger for something different in a world of haste, of utility, of spiritual malaise. As bells ring out, they remind the world of different values. Of truth and love at the heart of life. Of a different pace of life – slower, steadier, marking the seasons of our brief span.

The world is hungry today as Nicodemus was hungry, coming by night to question Jesus, curious to hear this new Rabbi. And Jesus tells him of God’s love: That

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish by have eternal life.

As Nicodemus heard these words so long ago, so again today we hear them. God does love the world. And so that we may know the self-sacrificial love of God, which pours out its abundant grace on all, God gave his son to live, to die, to rise again. To show us all that love is stronger than death.

In the darkness of that night, Jesus tells Nicodemus that this is the light, that those who do what is true come into the light. Jesus teaches Nicodemus that the light has come into the world, into a world where people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. Like Nicodemus, we, the Church today, are called to follow Christ in the light of goodness and justice. It’s one of the things that the Church stands for: that moral leadership. However difficult or unpopular it is to discern the right thing to do, we must continue to offer prayerful challenge when things go wrong.

Again, our literary tradition can help. I think of the continuing popularity of detective fiction. What makes the murder mystery so successful is the moral world it illustrates; its insistence that truth will out. The detective – Lord Peter Wimsey, Father Brown, Hercule Poirot, Albert Campion, Miss Marple – their job is to discover the truth. The truth is pursued so that justice may be done; so that the good may come to light.

The truth will out. We can hear the bells ring out over St Mary Mead, Midsomer Common, and other fictional settings for detective stories, as our favorite sleuths unravel the mysteries of crime. None more so than in the fictional parish of Fenland St Paul. Here, one cold dark night, the death of a villager is marked by nine rings of the great bell, Tailor Paul, in the tower of the church. And so Lord Peter Wimsey is drawn into a mystery of the theft of jewels and murder that centres on the bell tower. A mystery solved only by his knowledge of campanology as he deciphers a code that follows the change ringing sequence. A wonderful story, The Nine Tailors, by Dorothy L Sayers: a must for anyone who loves the church bells of England, and a good murder mystery to boot.

Bells ring out; a reminder of our Christian duty to witness to the truth, to goodness and honesty, integrity and character.

But bells tell the truth in other ways too. Bells tell out the truth of our lives; our passing years. They are rung on many occasions; times of joy as people are married; times of sadness, as we lay to rest those we love. The bells have a deeper resonance than perhaps we realize; sounding joy and grief, reminding us that in the midst of life we are in death. And so as we baptise a baby it is through the deep waters of death that she or he passes into new life; in marriage we vow that we will remain joined till death do us part, and as we die, we remember that it is into eternal life that we joyfully go.  Life and death belong together, as the bells ring out.

Ask not to know for whom the bell tolls, warns John Donne from his sick bed. It tolls for thee, he says: it tolls for thee because you are one with all humanity. When someone dies, you too share in that person’s death. We are all one, we belong together, all one body we.

Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard begins as ‘The curfew tolls the knell of parting day’ and so our times and seasons are marked, the pattern of our life and death is rung out, with a pace and rhythm that reminds us of a different time. Within our joy is life eternal; within our grief is hope.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in deep mourning for his friend Arthur Henry Hallam, hears church bells ring out across the Lincolnshire snow at Christmas, lifting the poet from the gloom and pain that have engulfed him. The bells herald a new year, a new beginning, the letting go of grief and sorrow; the stirring of new life.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

These bells too will ring out over the centuries to come, reminding us of God’s love and truth through all the changing scenes of life. They will ring to mark the passing years; to mark the passing of members of this community. To herald good tidings; to celebrate; on high days, and ordinary days, events of communal joy.

And so to ring the bells is to offer a wonderful gift that draws community together. Let us encourage young people to learn this ancient art. For as these bells ring out into future years, you continue, as a parish, to witness to a continuity and constancy that speaks out the love of God. The love of God that undergirds our life together. So ring out, bells of St Mary’s, ring out God’s love!

For the world needs that love. That love that never ends, that love which is patient and kind, the love that is never envious or boastful or rude. This is the love that does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. Love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Without that love, we are nothing. Without that love we are not a wonderful peal of bells, but only a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal – an empty hollow sound, signifying nothing.

These bells signify much. They signify the love of God as they summon to worship. They signify the passing of time and seasons, the years of our lives. A life that is bigger than any of us, a life that spans humanity through the ages, as we respond to God. Generations who have lived and worked in the place; generations to come. They signify joy and grief, all human emotion and life. They do so because they speak out God’s love to the world, for it is God’s love that gives our lives meaning.

Today we celebrate God’s love. We are summoned by bells.

We began with Betjeman; let us end with him, on this Autumnal day:

The yellowing elm shows yet some green,
The mellowing bells exultant sound:
Never have light and colour been
So prodigally thrown around;
And in the bells the promise tells
Of greater light where Love is found.