Cathedal Sermons
Sunday 18th October 2009
The Friends of the Cathedral gathered for their annual dinner and many of them attended Evensong beforehand. His Worship the Mayor of Auckland was present and read one of the lessons.
I add my own welcome to those with us from the Friends tonight and am glad that you are able to worship with us before you gather for your annual dinner. A special welcome also to Mayor John Banks who will address the Friends tonight at the dinner. Mayor John is a strong supporter of our Cathedral’s life and so likewise we are glad that you have been able to worship with us tonight.
A couple of months ago, the Parnell business district rebranded itself as “The Creative Quarter”. We were glad to get on board and fly the new brand and logo on our forecourt flag poles, given the nature of our site as a gateway into Parnell and thus a first and significant stop for people to begin to explore the Creative Quarter. Benjamin Mountfort’s gothic revival church of St Mary where we worship tonight is one of the most impressive timber churches in the world. The very design of the Cathedral’s nave speaks of bold creativity as Anglican Christianity gives expression to its place in the South Pacific here in Aotearoa. Within the nave the stunning windows bear testament to the creativity of New Zealand artists Nigel Brown, Shane Cotton and XXXXX, telling the story of our faith through the Judeo-Christian tradition, with its great focus in the Resurrection of Christ.
And it has not stopped with the construction of the nave. Last week a long-standing project came to fulfilment with the installation and dedication of the Cathedral’s font. Weighing around a tonne it is an impressive piece by the glass artist Ann Robinson. Four large glass pillars come together to form the bowl shape of the font. It stands as a constant symbol of the sacrament which unites us together in Christ as members of the Church.
The grounds around St Mary’s are being landscaped to become a place of contemplation and memory known as the Trinity Garden, Te Mara o te Tokutoru, and will be dedicated as such in a fortnight’s time. We remain quietly hopeful that the Cathedral forecourt will be the preferred site for the relocation of Terry Stringer’s mountain fountain from Aotea Square, and the indicators are hopeful about that. All of it provides a further focus for visitors to this gateway into the Creative Quarter of Parnell.
But none of this is just about our connection with our local Parnell community, neither is this simply an end in itself as if the Cathedral precincts are merely another place of beauty or some quasi gallery to visit in Auckland. These things speak of the uniqueness of the Cathedral as a place of worship and a house of God. They speak of the particular focus which cathedrals attract among the many churches of a city. And so tonight I invite you to allow them to cause you to think with me about the unique nature and place of a cathedral within the life of a city and a diocese.
We often talk about this Cathedral having three foci in its ministry and mission. One is as a parish church, the local place of worship for the Parnell community. The second is as the mother church of the diocese, the place where Anglicans identify that they have a common home and can express their shared belonging beyond their own parish churches. The third is the city, the wider society of Auckland and the nation and the ways in which the cathedral can be both a place of hospitality for others and a voice to them.
The first of those we largely understand with most being part of a parish community somewhere, and so we know what our expectations are of Sunday worship, education, pastoral care, fellowship, and so on.
The second of them we have a pretty good handle on as well, recognising this as the place where the Bishop’s cathedral or seat resides, and having gathered here for ordinations, or synod, or the blessing of oils, or other diocesan occasions.
Our relationship with wider society and our role of hospitality and of being a voice for the Church, at times provides us with challenge and uncertainty. We are no longer always so sure what our place within the life of wider society is. Cast your minds back a little over 50 years ago to the laying of the foundation stone for the Cathedral – June 13th 1957, on the centenary of the signing of the Anglican Church’s first constitution. The Cathedral site was packed with Aucklanders. A thousand seats had to be borrowed (from the army?); the Mayor and PM and GG were all present. It was a momentous occasion for Auckland and the Diocese.
Could we imagine it happening again? Remember not for the opening of a grand building, but for the laying of a stone? In 50 years the changes in society have been so dramatic and the changes in people’s thinking and religious worldview have been so fundamental that such a moment may attract a dignitary or two, an enthusiastic group of committed supporters, and a by-line in the local Courier or perhaps on a slow day in the Herald.
I do not say that to denigrate ourselves and certainly not to suggest some archaic irrelevance about who we are and what we do. Rather it is to throw into relief the impacts of secularisation, of technology, and of the patterns of human individualism that have gripped NZ society in these past decades and especially so the life of our larger urban centres. Of course it has not been a uniquely NZ phenomenon but one which swept across the Western or developed nations. It is a new context into which God calls us to undertake mission and one in which I believe the ministry of Cathedrals has much to offer. I say that because of this facet of the Cathedral’s life that allows it to bridge the borders which diverge between church life and public life.
We sometimes talk of public theology, meaning the way in which Christian belief finds a point of interaction with societal life. Public theology is an artificial idea in a way, because theology should be all about that. Our belief should not be about developing esoteric ideas that allow us to make sense of God as if our faith is reduced to some kind of philosophical thought form. Sadly though that is exactly what too many have turned Christianity into. But Christian faith and belief (theology) is all about interpreting the activity of God in the world which God made and loves, maintaining the vision of what God seeks this world and its peoples to yet become, and working to make that real. And Cathedrals, with their natural interaction in the life of wider society, are well placed to allow public theology to be worked out and to do so in a credible way.
An acquaintance of mine who is on the editorial staff of the NZ Herald has said to me that in spite of the fact that he is not a church goer and is reluctant even to call himself a believer, he wants to hear the Church have something to say about the issues which we face as a society; he wants to see the Church engaging credibly with those issues and contributing to them from a faith perspective.
You see people have not stopped believing. They may believe in a different way; they may believe without necessarily wanting to belong. But people do believe. They maintain a faith that allows them to make sense of their lives and their world. They are open to God and the spiritual. They hunger for words and symbols that will challenge and reassure. They yearn for signs of hope for this world. Our cathedrals as places of hospitality to the wider community, and places from where we can speak in a way that others are open to listen to, offer us the chance to do this public theology well.
This Cathedral then finds itself in the Creative Quarter of the City, and has much to attract people to it as they find expressions of creativity in the beauty of architecture, of art and of music. Those things are symbols for us all of that which lies beyond calling us on; Godself, the divine, the very Creator, who does not call us from this world and its affairs, but ever more deeply into them that we might speak and act for the One who seeks with us to transform this world so that once again God might look upon it and say “It is good”.