2nd July 2006Anniversary of Dedication
Fr David Cherry
Genesis 28 : 11 – 18 : II Peter 2 : 1 – 10 ; John 10 : 22 – 29
“And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish” the words of Our Lord in today’s gospel.
The emperor Justinian at the Dedication of Hagia Sophia is meant to
have exclaimed: ‘Oh Solomon I have outdone thee!’
I’m not sure this was a spiritual sentiment.
At face value, there are lot of themes to keep together today. We give
thanks for this beautiful building; the altar the flame of the lantern
as Ninian Comper says; the delicate screen which doesn’t hide the
altar as in many monastic cathedrals but frames the view and gives open
access to all that is offered there.
They will not perish from hardness of heart, stunted aspirations.
We give thanks today also for the ministry of Fr Sean in this church
from 1999 until last year. We give thanks for Lizzie (and it must
be said Freddie too – for those who don’t know: Freddie is
a well behaved church-going black Labrador) I know they will hate being
mentioned from the pulpit, but there is a purpose.
And I personally give thanks for Fr Sean’s invitation to come and
help at St Cyprian’s and for both of their ongoing support,
friendship and kindness towards me.
Today we Renew our Stewardship, our financial giving to the church and
to charities. It is part of a spiritual audit or overhaul, if you
like, and for the sake of clarity can I say that it is never too
late. It can be done on any Sunday.
But where does all this thanksgiving come from in us?
Last week St Paul spoke about ‘being enlarged’. “O ye
Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is
enlarged…. be ye also enlarged.” We are
invited to see that our hearts are being enlarged, to notice that this
is what is happening to us. Hearts which are being enlarged are
the opposite of hearts that have become hardened: ‘Harden
not your hearts today as you did on the day of temptation in the
wilderness’ goes the Venite, the first Psalm (95) at Matins.
Renewing Stewardship, giving thanks is not some form of manipulation as
in ‘you ought to be more grateful- think of the starving!’
or to squeeze more money out of us, but to live and act from the true
disposition of our hearts. Giving thanks, doing it
habitually in every eucharist, makes us thankful, more grateful, makes
you and me into a Eucharistic people. We are invited to see that
the place from which we offer to God our thanksgiving is a heart that
God is producing in us, a heart that is magnified, enlarged. And
this must be the meaning of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
We are always being invited to a conversion of heart and to find our
hearts being enlarged, converted for love and service,
generosity. We all laughed last week when I said that it has
often been said that the last thing to be converted is our
pockets. We know it’s true.
But we are concerned here, not so much with pockets, but with
hearts. A thankful heart will issue in generosity in all
areas of human life.
In the recent 3 part BBC4 series ‘Line of Beauty’ we were
given a glimpse of life in the Thatcher years. I didn’t
find any of the characters attractive. There was a lot of love,
but mostly they were in love with themselves. Beautiful
people with nothing but their own happiness to think about are
stunted. We can see it every night on Big Brother too. The
arguments and paranoia of hearts that have somehow been trapped in
false aspirations and expectations; hearts that develop a carapace, a
hard shell of resentment and defence. Such hearts are set up for
constant disappointment, and let’s face it, neurosis and
bitterness; such hearts are set up to perish of hope and fulfilment.
RS Thomas, the Welsh Priest poet wrote, sometimes resentfully, of the hardness of heart in his parishes. He writes:
Priests have a long way to go.
The people wait for them to come
To them over the broken glass
Of their vows, making them pay
With their sweat’s coinage for their correction.
But turn over to BBC2, to The Convent, we see what it is like when
hearts are broken open by love, when hearts are being met, when hearts
are coming to their true realisation for what they truly long
for. It is painful for some. It is
transforming. And there is huge resistance from others.
There is one evangelical woman who cannot bear silence. She wants
to sing all the time, or laugh, do anything except be still and let God
do something. She is terrified of too much freedom, the freedom
of silence. None of them are spared the agonies of coming to
terms with the things that ate away their freedom. None are
spared the agonies of letting go, forgiveness. One beautiful woman says
to her mentor: But what’s the good in just crying?
What will it achieve? And the beautiful nun replies: it may
not do anybody else any good, but it may do you a lot of good.
Bravo girl!
These women in the Convent are finding what it is to have one’s
heart reached by God; they are finding what it is like to enter upon
eternity and experience what Jesus is saying in today’s
gospel: I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never
perish…. They will not perish from hardness of heart, stunted
aspirations.
And this is what Jacob, that fraudster is finding in the first
lesson. He whose heart was locked in fear finds the way to God
open, a stairway to heaven. Don’t you love those words of Yahweh, the God who is
for us, the God who is not locked away, hidden from earthly view; the
God who says: “And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in
all places whither thou goest” ?
And St Peter – yikes, I thought when I read this little tirade of
his; oh, for heaven sake, get a grip! Peter too is coming to the
realisation of God. He who received so much love and forgiveness
found it difficult to receive Gentiles into the church, but underwent a
change of heart.
Jacob and Peter both receive extraordinary promises from God –
they found the way to the heart of God open – as open as this
view of the sanctuary. And it took visions to do this to them.
So here we are on this Feast of the Anniversary of the Dedication of
the Church with hearts enlarged, magnified. We thrill at the
achievement of that devout and humble architect, Ninian Comper; and
thank God that he was able to produce such a magnificent work to the
glory of our God; and we give thanks for those who paid for it and have
kept it going – for you and me, the beneficiaries of their loving genrosity.
We praise and thank our brothers and sisters in years past – and
so find our own hearts enlarged - those who, as the hymn after
Holy Communion says “here sought and here found him” those
whose hearts were enlarged in imagination by its sheer beauty. And
we pledge our offerings from hearts that are being shaped here and set
free to love
We stand in thanksgiving like Jacob aghast : “How dreadful
– how awesome - is this place! this is none other than the house
of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
Here God meets us and draws us to himself. Here we receive
from God who says: I give unto you eternal life; and you shall never
perish. And here we ask him to Take and Receive all that we are.
As we find this church none other than the gate of heaven, may our
experience here at St Cyprians open our eyes to see the gate of heaven
in all things.
To our God, this Dedication Sunday, be the love and praise of our all
our hearts: Father Son and Holy Spirit, now and through all
eternity. Amen