14.11.2013
Evening of Celebration for Cathedral’s First Foundation Day
This evening (Thursday November 14) saw the first Cathedral Foundation Day in Christ Church Cathedral. The celebration of cathedral life took place on the feast of St Laurence O’Toole , the patron of the diocese of Dublin.
Traditionally the dean and chapter of the cathedral meet to mark St Laurence tide. Members discuss the affairs of the cathedral along with arranging the canon in residence schedule for the coming year. The chapter has faithfully fulfilled this function ever since the Reformation.
This year, Dean Dermot Dunne arranged for a shorter meeting to take place making way for foundation day, an occasion which was aimed at allowing everyone connected to the cathedral to meet.
The evening was a great success with the regular cathedral family joined by Friends, the cathedral board and chapter, celebrants, occasional preachers, volunteers, all the staff, the choir and anyone with a connection to the cathedral.
Choral evensong was sung by the cathedral choir. The sermon was preached by Archbishop Michael Jackson.
Following the service everyone repaired to the Crypt for a wine and buffet reception.
The Archbishop’s sermon is reproduced in full below:
Christ Church Cathedral, Eve of St Laurence O’Toole November 14th 2013
Readings: 1 Samuel 28.3–19; Romans 1.18–25
A sermon preached by the Archbishop
1 Samuel 28.8: … Saul put on different clothes and went in disguise with two of his men. He came to the woman by night and said, Tell me my fortune by consulting the dead, and call up the man I name to you.
In his Letter to the Romans, St Paul begins by making an apology for not having visited this community, in order to give and to share the Gospel with them. He goes on to make the stark and electrical contrast between the Creator and the creature. His main point quite clearly is that for those who receive, through the Gospel, the fullness of who God is in the incarnate Son and in the energizing Spirit, there is no credible substitute for this God. It is, therefore, rank folly, in the logic of his argument, to be: exchanging the glory of the immortal God for an image shaped like mortal man … (Romans 1.23)He is, of course, drawing together thoughts and responses which he has had to make to disparate and dispersed and disgruntled communities right round the Mediterranean coastline in order to make a coherent theology for these new churches. Disparate, dispersed and disgruntled communities still exist in churches worldwide to this day. Such communities in St Paul’s day comprise people new to Christianity who bring with them ideas and practices from their own cultural contexts. Today we might, or might not, be more accommodating. Who really can tell? In his day, Paul was urgent to press on with the magnum opus which is: The Epistle to the Romans and therefore: The Epistle to the Roman Empire. He gives us his most forceful conviction and we are the better for having the broad sweep of his confidence and his genius in this nuanced letter. Please admit at least that he is honest in his own terms and in offering his own ministry back to God.
Saul, in 1 Samuel 28, is in a very bad state. Not only is he playing with fire; he is playing with the dead – and it is clear that the God of 1 Samuel is far from pleased with him and with his necromancy. At the heart of the abuse of God by Saul there is also, as is so often the case with abuse, the abuse of a fellow human being. He compromises The Witch of Endor by having her ply her profession of witchcraft when he, the same Saul, has expressly banished from the land all who trafficked with ghosts and spirits. (1 Samuel 28.3b) His own corruption manifests itself in fatally contravening his own orders and instructions to others and in implicating other people in his deceit. Is it any wonder that the woman, when Samuel appeared: shrieked and said to Saul, Why have you deceived me? You are Saul! (1 Samuel 28.12) We know what happens; Samuel warns Saul that the game is up; the Philistines are in the ascendant; the kingdom is being given directly by God to David. However the message has a wider application in terms of self–care, patronage, responsibility in leadership and use and abuse of others and of oneself. Saul is not a lone voice in playing with spiritual fire; many in the contemporary church do so.
And so, on the Eve of St Laurence, Holy Scripture gives us a precautionary and a cautionary tale. The precaution is to cherish the gift of God which God gives us in the Gospel. The caution is not to deceive God and others while you’re at it. None of this is attractive to a contemporary generation because we are so naively clear that there is no such thing as spiritual evil and we have so comprehensively convinced ourselves that we can handle it even if it existed. The same still goes for the broad sweep of setting ourselves up as in the place of the Creator and not sufficiently respecting the distinction between creature and creator. Both of these are very modern dilemmas, illustrated for us this evening in very ancient Scriptures. The pressures to conform to the idea of what we observe as being the sum total of what exists, along with the pervasive despiritualising of the human person in contemporary life make the most innocent of affectionate outreaching almost impossible. If only we were willing to be obedient to Scripture and tradition, in the light of reason, we would understand that the argument of Romans 1.18–25 is the plea to take seriously the statement in Genesis 1.26, 27 that humankind is created in the image and likeness of God and that it is the longing of God to re–integrate this image and likeness in the offering of self which humankind gives back to God through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.
And so the language of healing, the talk of mercy, the beauty of place, the voice of liturgy and indeed the community of friendship do not happen and do not work – for more and more people in a self–congratulatory, self–secularizing society. We here may take them for granted – in the best of senses – in a cathedral church such as this where God is tangibly present to those who are humble enough to be touched; where beauty is a given, however hard we struggle sometimes to engage with it; where prayer is daily offered and we are conscious that the loving discipline and domestic familiarity of chatting with God, as St Augustine calls it (garrire). But for many this is a rational and logical impossibility.
Entering a cathedral church is what is rightly called a liminal experience. We cross the threshold (limen). We bring the world with us and, at the same time, leave the world outside, caught between two worlds, conscious of the refreshment and the curiosity which will equip us, if we will accept it, to go out again into the world which lives and breathes to give praise and glory to God the Creator. It is at points such as this that we need to take to our own heart the privilege afforded us of such a relationship between creator and creature. In its own way, again as St Augustine would argue, it is a sacrament, not so much in our sense of a Dominical sacrament, like Baptism and The Lord’s Supper, but as an outward, visible and tangible thing which points us to an invisible and spiritual reality and one which takes us beyond the horizon of our own ego. It is a sacrament because God is seen and handled by us in real things and in real activities and in real people and yet remains God beyond us and still with us.
The ministry of this cathedral is itself a mission. The mission of this cathedral is itself a message. In saying this I draw your attention to the affection and loyalty of The Friends; I lead you to the outreach of Mendicity in which many from the community of this cathedral are involved; I invite you to acquaint yourselves with the new and exciting Ministry among Young Adults which is developing in the creative hands of Greg Fromholz, once again made possible in and through the elasticity of welcome and outreach of this mother church of the diocese. As each of you reviews the year past, you will have specific memories of how the cathedral has touched you and how this quiet memory sustains and empowers you as you go about daily life and work.
We today rush to the internet for more information in order to solve our problems. In medieval times people of God sought and honoured patronage. It was and remained first and foremost the patronage of God the Creator but, creatures that we are, we need the tangible patronage of a human person. The ways in which history and politics have played out, we in Christ Church are today the custodians of the Patronage of St Laurence with and for the city of Dublin and this is a weighty privilege in a post–Reformation and a post–Christian age. It requires both nerve and generosity.
What can Laurence, our medieval inheritance and our contemporary patron teach us on this Eve? As we face into the indulgence of Christmas and the wilful forgetfulness of the Season of Advent which precedes us we see in Laurence both asceticism and generosity; he deprived his guests of nothing yet, legend tells us, he simply coloured red the water that he drank. In Dublin he modelled care for the poor of the city. Abbot of Glendalough aged 25 and archbishop of Dublin aged 32, he was the first Irish person to occupy the see. Interestingly and importantly he introduced Augustinian canons to the main churches of the diocese. Equally interestingly he exercised a strong strain of political activity and, if contemporary experience is anything by which to go, received little approbation for it. On his deathbed in the Abbey of St Victor at Eu, in Normandy, Laurence replied to the person who encouraged him to make his will that he had not a penny to give to anyone. Forty–five years after his death he was canonized by Honorius iii in 1225.
The Scriptural Readings for the Eve of St Laurence advise us strongly against the personal idolatry which encourages us to pursue our one–item Agendas as if they were the totality of Scripture as we live it out. The same readings plead with us to give true recognition to God the Creator in our custodianship of ourselves, of others and of the creation. In this spirit Laurence inspires us to be generous in hospitality while being aware of our own limitations and, furthermore, to be surprized by any form of greatness if it comes our way.
Romans 1.22: They boast of their wisdom, but they have made fools of themselves…..