Dedication Festival – 160 years
Dedication Sunday: 6th August, 2006
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
This is the second church I have served in that can trace its foundation back to the time of the first and only Bishop of Australia: William Grant Broughton. From the beginning of European settlement in this part of the country until early 1848, that Sydney based bishop was ours. We have included in our pew sheet the words he required to be associated with the foundation stone of this church and every church he saw founded. Charles Joseph Latrobe, Superintendent of the Port Philip District, benefactor of this church, read the absent bishop's words on June 18th 1846. They reflect Broughton's solid churchmanship, and Latrobe's own conviction and support. They ring as a continuing commission through the generations:
This stone is laid as the foundation and corner stone of a church to be built in this place; to be named St Peter's; and to be set apart for the preaching of the right Catholic Faith, which we believe and confess; in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
We are celebrating the first early beginnings in 1846 of a Church of England community of faith for this end of the village of Melbourne this morning. Week by week this group, this little community worshipped where and as it could. Trustees were elected, funds were raised, work was done. Within less than two years, this building would be the place on this Eastern Hill where the Letters Patent of Queen Victoria declaring Melbourne to be a city were to be read. On the first Sunday of August 1848, bishop Charles Perry, Bishop of Melbourne, presided at the formal ceremony of dedication. That day has been observed as our festival of dedication and our anniversary celebration ever since. Our commemoration in this coming year is then not the celebration of a building, so much as the honouring of the prior commitment and the hope of our founders and benefactors in that first generation. 160 years of Anglicans on this Eastern Hill.
That being said, this community of faith now continues to gather here not just as an expression of the faith that we profess, but because this beautiful place of worship means a very great deal to us. This church and the faith tradition it exemplifies is a gathering point from all over the city and beyond. 160 years is an opportunity to reflect.
All through yesterday there was a sense, for me at least, of a building anticipation. The church had already been set up and prepared for Sunday by sacristan and flower guild on Friday. It looked so lovely. Early in the morning as the sounds of our breakfast program filtered through the windows, the early sunshine was catching various angles with shafts of light. Somehow the shining surface of the newly polished nave floors sent new light into new places. The abundance of roses was breath taking in their simplicity. St Peter looked so very content to be home once more. The morning mass concluded with prayers for a much-loved fellow parishioner who had just died. There were some tears and some candles. Graham knows that the daffodils are all out to welcome him. An all day ISS seminar in the church on Transfiguration – for that is the time this is in the Church year – brought friends and strangers. Food was prepared and served, things were set up for tomorrow, the parish kitchen was scrubbed. Three wedding couples came through the day to continue their preparations. A subcommittee of vestry met with major planning for the year ahead. Visits were made, meals were shared, into the night distressed people at the vicarage door were helped and finally, very finally, a sermon was written. Another day. The community that is here connected in a dozen ways with the community that is around us. Our own extended parish community were here and very much at work. Many of us who gather in worship Sunday by Sunday also had been doing on Saturday some of those many things that are sure and certain signs of a vigorous and creative community life. It is good Lord to be here.
A Dedication Festival draws us particularly to the place of the church building itself. 160 years ago, the people of the eastern end of this growing town wanted a church of their own. What they got was a church, a place of worship, set apart and ultimately consecrated for that purpose. In the Anglo-catholic tradition that flowered and continues here, prayer and worship is something that is offered day in and day out. The church itself is very important to us. Our church is open and available; a place of quiet and beauty and peace, as well as a place to gather in good times and in bad. It is a place where many would want to say that we are helped to met God: where together we rejoice to offer worship simple or grand, where we hear the Scriptures preached and taught and grow in our faith; from where we base our service and our care.
The gospel for dedication is Matthew's version of the cleansing of the Temple. Powerful writing. A strong and dangerous turning point in the Lord's ministry that set many vested interest against him. A clear and burning zeal to ensure the places and circumstances where people would be able to be brought into right relationship with their God, and perhaps above all a fierce respect and care for what was in first century Jerusalem the central and most obvious House of God, dating back to Solomon. Things were not as they should be. The scene is violent, noisy and dramatic. We are told that Jesus 'drove out' all who were selling and buying, he 'overturned' the tables and stalls. He used Isaiah and Jeremiah to declare no doubt very loudly: "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer...'" (Mtt21:13) All the blind and the lame already gathering at the Temple came to him, the children present started to cry out 'Hosanna to the Son of David'. Upset and chaos, with the temple authorities and police trying to restore order and Jesus walking out to go to stay with his friends in Bethany, a short distance away. He had made a point, he had made some terminal enemies, he had offered an understanding of the appropriate use of key religious buildings.
This is not to take any easy shot at multiple use buildings where resources are few and needs are great. But a carefully loved and tended corner in a busy room or street can be a place and focus of prayer. It is to do with intentionality. Some churches with busy commercial enterprises helping their upkeep bring these texts to mind when we are travelling in Europe. But I'm not sure that what the Lord had in mind to overturn was the diversion of a souvenir shop so much as a whole system of expensive charges and sacrifices set between people and their God, as their religious duty. How much prayer, how much of a relationship with God was possible in such turmoil?
That is not our issue today. But even sadder than entrance charges and busy shops in historic cathedrals are those sad and neglected churches that it is possible to come across, that have transepts or former chapels that are just storerooms for tired and dusty stacked chairs. And they are the ones you can actually get into. What of the church building that is opened up once a week for what might be called a 'meeting', for just an hour or two? Is that the 'house of prayer' that the Lord had in mind?
Insofar as St Peter's Eastern Hill is looking particularly beautiful this morning, it is a reflection of what I would dare to say is the increasing beauty of the community that is caring for it. Our heart and our reason for being a community at all is to be found here. Our strength and our inspiration; our food for the journey, our encouragement and our absolute and ultimate hope, is here. The God who calls us together in Jesus Christ our Lord, through the unfolding gifts of the Spirit: that God is here.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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