Sir David Suchet in conversation with the Very Reverend Dr David Hoyle

welcome david how lovely to have you here not just uh in the dinner in westminster abbey but in the jerusalem chamber you've been here reading john's gospel for us and so in preparing for that and in reading the gospel you have just been steeped in this gospel and i'm intrigued to know what kind of an experience that is but let's let's begin with with why john why this gospel well i i think this gospel is for me well well i think it is generally speaking utterly unique but let me just take you right back to 1986 when my own conversion to christianity began i mean i didn't know anything about the bible or religion except school religion for exams and i didn't believe most of it but somehow i was driven to the bible and i started reading paul's letter to the romans because i knew that was real by the end of that letter uh i thought well i have to find out more about this person called jesus christ my brother's name is john so i thought i'll keep it in the family so i went to john's gospel and it blew me away in a completely different experience from romans because here john writing this gospel introduced me in a completely unique way and by the end of it i knew one thing if i didn't believe in jesus then there was there was not really much future and it's only recently have i found out that the word believe actually occurs 98 times in this gospel so that's what it's about but doing it here in vision speaking out loud i was very aware and had to approach it in a slightly different way i had to immerse myself and get into it if you like dive into a very fast flowing river and you have to stay in that current i was overwhelmed by the power of john's message and realizing in my research of course that this is written by an old man and it's been a long time since the last gospel was written and why is he doing it he's not doing it to any particular people like mark matthew luke it's not a biography of jesus every single miracle in this gospel cannot be done by magic tricks these are there to prove from john's point of view that jesus christ is the messiah is the son of god they're all totally divine he's doing it for all believers who may be in trouble who may be asking questions who may be doubting uh even those who are who are not necessarily christians introducing them to this person jesus there are bits of john that just leap off the page for me it's the phrase come and see years ago i was a parish priest in in north london i went to uh to visit someone i knew fairly well who was now dying uh he came to the door when i uh when i rang the bell uh but instead of a conventional greeting he simply said come and see with enormous energy because he wanted to take me off to see a picture he was a curator at one of the big london museums and of course what i heard uh was the beginning of john's gospel these are pretty well the first words we hear jesus speak come and see and those are just such electric words such an invitation one of the things that bizarrely didn't westminster have to do is to get a coat of arms um and my coat of arms has to have a motto and it's venite vedete come and see right because i think john's determination that um we're being invited to look at this and to believe is just absolutely central but what stood out for you as as you've been reading it you've talked to me for instance about the intimacy well yes this is one of the most intimate gospels and i believe that the last part of the gospel where you have this unique it's only in john's gospel do you really get this at all jesus talking gently to his disciples after the last supper and he just gently informs them about the coming of the holy spirit about why he must die that they're not going to be left alone and we often think of gospels to crowds of people no he's speaking to his 11 and it is unique and every time i read it i just feel that i'm a fly on the wall but there's one other thing that the phrase that you've just mentioned come and see there's one that that sticks out for me in a particular way greater love has no one than this to lay down one's life for one's friends well i want to show you something this was given to my wife and i two three years ago on the 100th anniversary at the end of world war one because this was standard issue to all the soldiers ah yes indeed and this is uh the gospel of saint john active service 1914-1918 please carry this in your pocket and at the very bottom it says read it every day i i didn't know you were going to show me that my grandfather fought at paschendale where in fact he was captured and he carried in his breast pocket a full bible in fact uh he was shot at passchendaele mike and the the bible had slowed the bullet down enough to save his life good yes it's an extraordinary story so you've talked about the reassurance the encouragement of john's gospel but it is interesting isn't it that uh it's it's in the act of reading that that the text takes on a different kind of vitality one of things we haven't talked about yet uh is the fact that we're sitting here uh not just uh in the dinner in westminster abbey but in the jerusalem chamber part of what was the abbots lodging but also and this is a particular resonance given what we're talking about one of my predecessors lancelot andrews was one of the translators of the authorized version the king james version he chaired one of the committees when that bible was finally completed when the translation was done he brought the translators here to westminster abbey and in this room they read the the king james bible right through because it was critical to them to test it not by reading it from the on the page but by reading it aloud the bible was tested by ear because it's so important that you hear this i well i i really like the fact that you've said that because i have recorded the whole bible myself and i am aware that in the bible it never says read the word of the lord it always says hear the word of the lord so what you're saying is absolutely right and the strange thing is that now at home when i read the bible as i'm reading it i speak it out loud softly but as i'm speaking it out loud it allows me to hear it so it's coming out of the mouth but going into the ear and that is a very intimate relationship that you have with what you're reading and i think how often do we read the gospel in its entirety rather than sit down and just pick out little pieces that you're trying to remember or you may wish to use for some some reason or to to remind yourself to read the whole thing it's only two and a half hours and you get the full message that john wishes you to have yeah absolutely uh john particularly but it would be true of mark and certainly true of luke there's um there's a studied approach to the way this story is assembled so uh i mean for example uh we we read right at the beginning of the gospel uh that um here is is light shining in the darkness uh when jesus is finally betrayed judas goes out and it is night so we're we're being deliberately encouraged to think about light and darkness all the way through the gospel about seeing and not seeing if you remember come and see right at the beginning of the gospel thomas right at the end of the gospel unless i see i will not believe so by reading a gospel right through you begin to pick up uh those those resonances uh those themes that run through the gospel and that that has a very particular kind of power yes so that's why this gospel is unique and it was extraordinary filming it here in the jerusalem chamber the jerusalem chamber of course is important uh to you for another reason there's another association here isn't there yes well when i first came in this room and saw the bust of henry iv and discovered that he actually died in this room and i think his son henry v was present at his death which is extraordinary to me because i was with the royal shakespeare company for 13 years and um i'd seen henry v i played bollingbrook in richard ii at the end of that play my character becomes henry iv and in shakespeare's play henry iv says that he will die in jerusalem in his own uh vision it was the holy land but in fact he died here in the jerusalem chamber and coming in here always gives me the goosebumps now to revisit that experience it's an extraordinary room and and if i may say so to thank you an extraordinary privilege for me to be able to read this gospel of saint john in westminster abbey in the jerusalem chamber i can't think of anything that i would feel more privileged at this point well we think it's uh it's been our privilege and we're so thrilled that john's gospel is going to come alive again in a very particular way so thank you david thank you very much you

Channel: Westminster Abbey

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Length: 11min 43sec (703 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 01 2021