The Gray Monk

Feast of Dedication 2006-10-22

“So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on top of it.”

Since earliest times mankind has been moved to set aside places for religious activities. Our passage from Genesis this morning tells the story of Jacob and his dedication of the site of his dream to the worship of the God of Abraham, a site some now identify as the temple mount and others argue over different sites. Following in that tradition we have this great Abbey church, the nave and Presbytery very much the Norman structure that was first consecrated to the glory of God in 1121. At that time of course, the Abbey was to be the home of the men who had taken the tonsure and adopted the Benedictine Rule, dedicating their lives to the God they understood and followed.

As you entered the church this morning you will have passed by the mark carved in the stone of the door surround and anointed with oil during that service of consecration, and the nave would, in all likelihood have been thronged with the great and the good who had endowed its foundation and their retainers. Not much changes does it, for we would find the same sort of balance in any great act of dedication today.

Two things stand out. The first is the dedication of the place, the second, and more important, is the dedication of the people in their desire to love and serve the Lord. WE know that in 1178 a fire almost destroyed the new Abbey – the marks are still visible to this day if you know the signs. The community rebuilt it then. In 1471 where you are sitting was awash with blood and the corpses of the slain , the dying and the wounded following the desecration of the church by the King’s army pursuing the defeated Lancastrians. And the Church was rededicated in October after all had been repaired and restored.

Following the dissolution the building was bought by the town, again an act of dedication by those who committed a huge amount of money to saving it. In the 19th Century the great and ongoing restoration began, again by public subscription and in the face of huge opposition – and the result you see about you today. A building dedicated and consecrated to be a place in which we can and do offer our prayers, our praises and our worship to God. But it is nothing more than a rather beautiful pile of stones arranged rather artistically if the people who use it do not use it wisely, and for the purpose of growing the Kingdom of God.

St Peter speaks to us this morning of the stone rejected by the builders becoming the cornerstone of the new temple. His obvious reference is to our Saviour Jesus Christ, but it goes deeper and further than that. For, if Christ is the cornerstone, every one of us and every one of those who built this place, have worshipped in this place, who keep this place today are the very stones of its fabric. The building is the place dedicated to God, but the stones that make it live are you and I. It is what we carry out into the world from here that really brings this place and its dedication to the glory of God to life. That is what brings the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ out into the community we represent and the world. That is what we are dedicated to do and to be, the living stones of Christ’s church in the world.

This is the message of our Gospel reading this morning, we are both Christ’s sheep and his voice in the world. The Jews who challenged Him in the temple portico could see only the restoration of the Kingdom of David and the beauty of the Temple around them - a temple it must be said built by the Herodian family. The feast of the dedication of which our Gospel speaks is more than a feast commemorating the temple’s consecration, in Jewish tradition it is a rededication of every living Jew to their faith, and that is what we need to make our own feast of dedication today.

St Peter’s letter states, “See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

The stone laid in Zion is the cornerstone of our faith. We are called to be the stones of the living temple and church built upon it. We are, quite simply, called to hear his voice and to join him in our dedication to God.

This great Abbey Church has seen moments of great holiness, and a few of great human evil. We in our time face challenges perhaps less open and perhaps less obvious, but, if we are truly to see this church and its use as a place of worship, joy, prayer and calling pass to the next generation, it is incumbent upon us to renew our own dedication to the God to whose worship it was consecrated all those years ago.

In the words of our Collect let us pray again:

Almighty God,
To whose glory we celebrate the dedication of this house of prayer:
We praise thee for many blessings
Thou hast given to those who worship here:
And we pray that all who seek thee in this place may find thee,
And, being filled with the Holy Spirit,
May become a living temple acceptable to thee;
Through Jesus Christ, THY Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee,
In the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
Amen