A number of years ago, while I was still vicar at St Michael’s and over a characteristically generous and liquid lunch at Sonny’s, Basil and I had the funeral conversation. ‘Now dear Father Joe, you know I don’t generally have strong opnions about what happens in church…’ When I had recovered from the sheer audacity of this utterly inaccurate statement, I braced myself to listen. Of course, it transpired that, as in many areas, Basil had strong views about funerals in general, and his in particular. Not making too much fuss was important, (as was the sermon not going on too long), good music and the avoidance at all costs of that famous/infamous reading from the late Canon of St Paul’s Henry Scott Holland ‘Death is nothing at all...’

But most of all, that there could for Bas be only one scripture reading at his funeral, and that is the one we have just heard, and it delights my heart for it will also be read at mine. 

 

And as I have talked to not a few of Bas’s friends in preparation for this service, the themes of the story of the Prodigal son have come once more into sharp focus for me as I have reflected on the life of this remarkable man. 

 

The return of the prodigal is a story about facing up to yourself, about the infinite capacity of God to be so much larger than the poverty of our own imaginings, about the tendency of religious folk to subconsciously resent the tasteless overabundance of divine mercy, and perhaps most of all about the levelling effects of homecoming shorn of any of the false dignities with which we human beings tend to clothe ourselves. 

 

Time and again in the conversations of the past few days, testament has been paid to the work at the centre of Bas’s life: the St Paul’s Christian Union, through which he expressed his quiet but deep faith, into which he poured undemonstrative, unshowy, costly and generous love and from which he received friendship and the return of seeing young lives flourish, which was all he ever wanted. 

 

As has been said to me by so many, the Sunday meetings and House parties and boat trips were the greatest levelling experience. To arrive, perhaps sporty and brilliant and a bit of a show off, or nerdy and unsportsmanlike, and shy, cool or uncool, was to receive exactly the same warmth of welcome, the youngest squitty, the coolest upper eight, the most hard bitten officer who been there for years and seen it all before: from Bas, Puddy, a spirit of inclusiveness which took everyone seriously...and absolutely lightly. You saw the shy and nerdy come out of their shells and become apparent for the witty, sharp, quirky individuals they always were.

And the sporty and glamorous made to play that perfectly hideous French Cricket game, where the better you were, the harder it got, entirely deliberately. 

 

The prodigal returns home, shorn of the glamour of his years of excess, tattered, hungry and lost, and finds himself picked up off his knees, embraced, celebrated, a party thrown for him. His older brother, soured and weighed down by years of duty is gently chided, reminded how close he is to his father’s heart and bidden to put aside his pride and join the party. The great leveller.

 

I am grateful to Rob Stanier for paraphrasing wise words of Rowan Williams about true holiness in reference to Bas. 

To see him at the Sunday meetings, and the house parties, in his basement kitchen on a Sunday after Mass at St Michael’s was to see someone who was so utterly himself. 

Holiness is someone who is so utterly themselves that they help you to become more who you really are. By being who they truly are, they don’t need to make anyone else smaller, can make people bigger, make them aspire to be more who they are. The deep truth that everyone has spoken of was that although he was undoubtedly a big personality, it wasn’t all about Bas, not an ego trip. He genuinely was committed to the flourishing of others, particularly helping the boys to be who they could be. His gift of friendship was a quiet genius for helping young lives flourish.

 

The story of the prodigal though, doesn’t just invite us to place ourselves in the position of the returning son, part of its quiet genius is to ask us what it might feel like to be in the position of all the protagonists (although I did once hear a wealthy individual observe that being on the receiving end of a pitch from Bas to sponsor some element of the Jazz Dance made one feel somewhat like the fatted calf) 

 

So what might it feel like to be the Father, whose son has effectively said, ‘that money I’m going to get when you’re dead: can I have it now?’; shocking enough to us, but the most hideous form of disrespect to your parents for Jesus’ contemporaries. To be treated like that, and then to have the depth not only to say yes, hand it over, see him squander it all, then see him limping home, and genuinely, when he was still a long way off, run to meet him, not let him stammer out his excuses and apologies, but just welcome him home. How would it be to have a heart large enough to do that, naturally and without a second thought. 

 

I don’t know much about the two brothers who became embroiled in a cult in Thailand many years ago, but I do know to whom the parents made the phone call to go and bring them home, and without a second thought Basil went, because it was second nature. 

 

I never had the chance to ask him if he ever saw himself as the prodigal, but I bet he did. There was a thread of that obstinacy that will have your own way, come what may, whether it involved paying someone at dead of night to cut down an inconveniently protected tree because it was in the way of a new swimming pool at Colets.

 

Or sitting somewhat lightly to one’s tax return. ‘Times like this, you find out who your true friends are!’ 

 

Or charmingly, gently, implacably speaking to a vicar for his own good, if that vicar had somehow fallen short in some way. A perfectionist, whether that perfection was a Jazz dance seating plan, or Tom Honey not quite getting the perfect intonation of the risen Christ’s words to the Magdalen in the garden of Easter Day: ‘Mary’! Or an almost obsessive compulsion with, in his opinion, the perfect recording of the Ring Cycle...there was a sinewy determination and occasional signal mindedness that would brook no opposition. ‘Just get it done!’

 

But, unlike the elder brother, and despite having strong views about matters of faith, liturgy and order (I used to tease him that I was thinking of introducing liturgical dance at St Michael’s) there was nothing mean spirited or small minded in his faith. His loyalty, great heartedness, ability to capture a vision of what a true Christian community might look like meant that his passion was rooted and his instinct generous. 

 

And sometimes, like the devastating welcome home of the father of the prodigal, what he said cut straight through. 

 

Chris Darvill, newly ordained priest, celebrated mass for a group of friends on holiday on a balcony somewhere. Afterwards Bas said ‘Chris, can i ask you something?’ (You always knew you were for it when he said that): ‘by all means Bas...’ ‘Do you truly believe the words you have just said?’ ‘Of course I do’... ‘then why do you have to put on a vicar voice to say them? Why can’t you just talk as Chris, sound like Chris, be yourself?” Ouch. And yet Christ remembers that as one of the greatest gifts he received as a young priest. From anyone else, that might have sounded sharp, cutting, but with Bas, there genuinely was a sense that it was only intended to help you be who you really could be. 

 

Courtesy of his beloved friends Mark and Sarah Harrop, a quote from Ollie Bonavero which sort of sums it all up: 

“I’ve been trying – and failing – to put my finger on the magic. It’s an enigma. Nothing obvious: he wasn’t some spiritual leader or guru (which might be how the uninitiated think of him?) We didn’t worship or idolize him. He never tried to be cool or hip(!) I think it must have been that he somehow represented a sort of “safe-harbour” for so many of us. Warm, non-judgmental, empathetic, challenging, patient, interested, kind, good company. Now, looking back at those formative years, I think I always felt he was on my side.”

 

So, the party of the kingdom is in full swing, an unrestrained last quarter hour of the Jazz dance, the dance floor is packed. 

Bas, the prodigal who has welcomed so many prodigals himself stands at the door, and he recognises in the father who holds wide the door the best angels of his own nature, and steps through into the light and the celebration. And there is definitely a trumpet which sounds for him on the other side.

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