Read the new Dean of Norwich's first sermon

Welcome and hospitality were the defining themes of the Very Revd Andrew Braddock's first sermon as the 40th Dean of Norwich.

Below is the full text of the sermon given at the Dean's Installation Service on Saturday 28 January.

"Thanksgiving is a characteristic of the Christian life. So let me start with thanks.

Thank you for being here, whether from near or far away, or watching online. It is wonderful that you’ve all come to see how I am managing on the first day in the new job!

I also give thanks for Dean Jane’s ministry here. Hers is a wonderful legacy on which to build.

I give thanks for this Cathedral community, including the ministry of the acting deans, Canon Peter, and, in the last month, Canon Aidan, who have ensured that Norwich Cathedral continues to flourish.

Not least, I give thanks for the wonderful welcome that I and my family have received here. To come back as Dean to the Cathedral in which I was ordained nearly twenty-five years ago is a joy and privilege indeed.

That theme of welcome and hospitality, is, alongside learning and worship, a defining mark of this Cathedral in its role as bishop’s seat, centre of worship and mission, and a focus of community life.

Reflecting on the nature of hospitality, Donald Coggan, one of the more overlooked archbishops of the last century, said this: ‘hospitality is the art of making your guests feel at home, when you wish they were at home.’

Coggan’s point is that hospitality isn’t always easy. It involves creating a place where others can not only be, but also belong and contribute. It’s about the creation of community.

This city and county have a long history of such hospitality. This is a place not only of spacious land and spacious skies, but of rivers and coasts which have always linked Norwich and Norfolk to a wider world.

Particularly from the mid-sixteenth century, those fleeing religious persecution in Europe were welcomed here. They in turn shared their gifts and culture, leaving their mark in everything from Dutch gables to the yellow canaries that now adorn the stands at Carrow Road.

That history reminds us that hospitality is about far more than sharing a place. It also involves the hospitality of the mind, and the hospitality of the heart.

The hospitality of the mind in learning from the experience and insights of others.

The hospitality of the heart in giving and receiving love and care in a spirit of mutual service.

During our last year in Gloucester, my family and I were privileged to experience just that kind of generous hospitality from our new neighbours: Danish, his wife and their four young children.

Fleeing Afghanistan with nothing, and accepting the accommodation we could provide as a Cathedral community, they in turn opened their home and their hearts to us. We learnt and were inspired by them. Joys and sorrows were shared. Community grew. Difference was held with dignity. Hospitality was mutual.

The theme of hospitality runs through our readings this afternoon.

In the first reading, Jacob’s dream of the angels ascending and descending between heaven and earth is an encounter with the hospitality of God. The door of heaven stands open.

But as Jacob receives this gift so he is also to share it. ‘All the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring’ declares God.

‘All the families of the earth.’ This is an astonishing statement in a time, not so unlike today, when people easily slipped into exclusively identifying their God, with their tribe and their view of the world.

Not so, says God. The threshold of heaven stands open for Jacob in order that it may stand open for all. The site of Jacob’s dream turns out to be common space as well as holy ground.

In our second reading, Jesus evokes the story of Jacob, telling Nathaniel that he will see the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. In other words, Christ himself is now the one in whom the gate of heaven stands open; the one in whom heaven and earth meet and are reconciled; the one through whom the hospitality of God is open to all, as Christ calls us home.

It is this pattern of generous, spacious and transformative hospitality that we are called to follow. ‘In my Father’s house’, says Jesus, ‘are many mansions’. Thank goodness. It means there is a place in God’s community of grace for someone like you and someone like me. And there is space for those not like you and those not like me.

In a fractious world, cathedrals have a vital role to play in providing both common space and holy ground.

Preaching at the consecration of Coventry Cathedral in 1962, Albert Van Den Heuvel spoke of cathedrals as signs of Christ’s radical hospitality. They are, he said, ‘symbols of diversity in unity; theatres of basic drama; Pentecostal laboratories; temples of dialogue; centres of creativity; ….; places of international exchange; broadcasting stations for the voice of the poor; towers of reconciliation; motels for pilgrims and houses of vicarious feasts’.

He concluded ‘a Cathedral is the hut of the Shepherd; and so the House of Christ.’

He was right.

Such spacious hospitality is about more than architecture. It is an attitude.

This year we celebrate the 650th anniversary of the revelations given to Julian of Norwich. At some point following the series of ‘shewings’ she received in May 1373, Julian entered her anchorite’s cell.

At first sight it would seem a constricted and constraining place. Yet from it, Julian inhabited the world in a generous, hospitable and spacious way.

She offered the hospitality of place – being pastorally attentive to all who called on her for council.

She exemplified the hospitality of the mind – open to prophetic new insights and learning as she pondered the meanings of the shewings and shared them through her writing.

She lived out the hospitality of the heart – prayerfully loving Jesus and loving the world, affirming that ‘love was and is God’s meaning’.

Julian reminds us that all places, from cathedral to cell, can be a ‘hut of the shepherd’.

This place is a rather large and beautiful hut.

But it is the way we inhabit it that will allow Norwich Cathedral to continue deepening its vocation as a place that provides both common space and holy ground; a place that enables us to deepen our encounter with God and with each other; a house of spacious hospitality with the worship of Christ at its heart.

For it is in Christ that the gate of heaven stands open wide, inviting all to receive the hospitality of God."