Dedication Festival
Sermon
6 October 2024
Br Sam, The Society of Saint Francis
‘At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem…..’ This was the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, which was and is (because still celebrated by Jews to this day) strictly speaking a festival of re-dedication as it celebrates the restoration and renewal of the Temple following its desecration in the year 165 BCE by the Greek King Antiochus Epiphanes. This power-crazed ruler had banned the Temple sacrifices, had taken the sacred vessels and had set up a statue of himself to be worshipped within the sanctuary. The statue didn’t stand long on its plinth because it provoked a national uprising which led to the expulsion of the Greeks and a century or so of Jewish independence. Hanukkah, the dedication of the Temple after its cleansing, repair and renovation, has been kept ever since as a joyous festival of national identity – with song and dance, food and lighting of lamps. It takes place over eight days during the months of November or December, hence the reference in today’s gospel to it being winter.
Buildings are important. They speak a language other than words; they are often symbols of religious or secular identity – think of The Houses of Parliament in Westminster; they may also be symbols of pride and of oppression – think of Versailles and the Bastille. They can be space for the sacred, a physical witness to what is beyond, inexpressible. Buildings hold memories; they tell a story.
A lot of this is true of St Bene’t’s. It’s a sacred space, prayed-in for over a thousand years. I’ve met people who have been keen to tell me that they were married at St Bene’t’s. Even though they have long moved away from Cambridge it remains an important place for them, and I know of one couple in London who are looking to buy a house in Cambridge so that they can come and worship here regularly. And like all buildings St Bene’t’s has often undergone repair and renewal. There’s quite a lot that’s happened here over just the past twenty or so years! The Ramsey Room, that prayer corner over by St Anne’s altar, the tower space, the wonderful entrance, the uncovering of the reredos mosaic, the redecoration. It’s a joy to see St Bene’t’s in such good shape, cared for, loved and standing as a continuing witness to the gospel.
The mission of Francis of Assisi, whose feast was celebrated this last Friday, began as a church repair project. As a wayward and rather aimless young man, the son of a wealthy cloth merchant, whose heart was definitely not in the family business, Francis had taken to visiting the little half-ruined church of San Damiano just below the city. Although the walls of the church were crumbling and there were holes in the roof there still hung there a large painted crucifix. Kneeling before the cross the young man sought guidance: ‘Lord, what do you want me to do’? The answer came to him, ‘Francis, repair my house which you see is in ruins’. Straightway he began to do just that, begging for stone and other materials. He even went as far as raiding his father’s warehouse for cloth to raise funds for the project – which caused something of a family hoo-ha. As he built, others came to join him in the task; a community gathered around him and when St Damians was restored they looked for other projects - further repair jobs. But there were only so many ruined churches around and so over the course of two or three years and through Francis continuing to pray, ‘Lord, what do you want me/us to do?’, the mission grew wider – to share the gospel of Jesus, to rekindle the love of Jesus in people’s hearts, to repair the life of the Body of Christ.
Before long Francis was heading up a renewal movement, backed by a Papacy that had previously been suspicious of such lay-led initiatives, which spread rapidly across Europe. Last month we celebrated the 800th anniversary of the arrival in England of the first Friars Minor (as Francis called his brothers). This was just seventeen years after that first building project at St Damian’s. Eight months later in April 1225 they arrived to preach the gospel of reconciliation here in Cambridge. Their first friary was just around the corner from here on the site of the Guildhall, in a house which had been confiscated from expelled Jews and was also serving as the town lock-up.
But Francis’ repair project didn’t stop there, confined within the life of the institution, for it was his particular charism to recognise the whole of creation as God’s house; everyone and everything that exists called into membership of the family household. So, he addressed both people and creatures as ‘brother’ or ‘sister’: Brother Sun and Sister Moon, Brother Fire and Sister Water, Sister Swallow and Br Wolf. The disfigured leper, the feared and hated Muslim, were all included in the rebuilding.
Francis’ mission of repair and renewal was grounded in the scriptural vision of creation redeemed and restored through the love of God revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ - Jesus himself being the place, the Temple, of repair. God is continually at work repairing his house. Francis saw that it was his vocation, the church’s vocation, our vocation, to join God’s repair shop; as ‘living stones’ to be re-dedicated to God’s task of reparation.
To repair something is an act of love. To mend what is broken, whether it be human or animal bone, or a watch or a piece of furniture, requires careful, sensitive, skilled attention. To repair a wounded person or broken relationship involves the patient untying of a knotted heart. Restoring a destroyed ecosystem demands generous hospitality, the slow business of making room for plants, animals, landscape, rivers and sea to recover. In the Judaic tradition, ‘tikkun’, repair is brought about by acts of human compassion.
What a huge and daunting task of repair there must be in Lebanon, Gaza, Israel; in Ukraine in Russia - to name just a few obvious places of destruction, desecration, and broken relationship. To repair such situations of desolation is a hugely costly business, costing not less than everything. Yet amazingly there are individuals and groups of people engaging in just that; for instance, Jewish and Arab women – and it is usually women – meeting together, marching together in solidarity of lament and protest. In this action and by countless other acts of kindness, compassion and mercy the seeds of peace are sown, memories can be healed, the universe is restored, the house is repaired and the Temple is rededicated.
But the dedication, the re-dedication of the sanctuary begins here within us and among us, in lives shaped by the architecture of God’s transforming repair job in Jesus Christ. In Jesus we see both the means of that repair and its completion in the heavenly Jerusalem.
Francis always held a reverence for church buildings. Being places where the saving mystery of Christ death and resurrection was celebrated, they were to be kept clean. He told his brothers to sweep a church if they found it to be neglected and unkempt; both the scriptures and the sacrament were to be carefully reverenced; the sanctuary was to be honoured. And he gave to his brothers a prayer to be said on entering a church. In our friaries we say it every day. Sometimes we sing it:
‘We adore you, most holy Lord Jesus Christ, here and in all your churches throughout the world. And we bless you because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world’.