Homily for St Mark's 170th Dedication Festival

The Homily Delivered in Saint Mark’s Fitzroy 2 July 2023
by The Reverend Dr Stephen Ames
marking the
170th Anniversary of the Laying of the Foundation Stone

Remembering the laying of St Mark’s foundation stone takes us to a key matter for our times, when so much is disturbed, old certainties are not certain, because everything seems open to change and what it means for us and our world.

For any building, the laying of a foundation stone is a mark of hope and trust that what is going forward will stand, not only the building to be raised up, but also the community, which is raising it will stand, and so too the purpose for which the building is created.

From the beauty and the scale of this church we can see something of what the hopes and trust were of the people who raised this blue stone church.

I would like you to know that I have personally been part of this parish community for 70 years, since the early 1950’s when Rose, my mother rented a small room in Napier Street, and after a little while decided I needed some religion and brought me to St Mark’s for Sunday School.

To see the significance of here decision you need to know that my mother was baptized a Catholic and had a falling out with the Catholic Church when she was ten, she asked too many questions. I am sure that when this happened Thomas Aquinas who died in 1244, who is the greatest Catholic theologian who proceeded in his theology by asking and answer questions, actually wept in heaven.

My mother was wary of the church, though she did believe in God, which was strongly connected to her sense of justice. How then did she bring me to St Mark’s? It came from the fact that during the depression this parish was very good to my mother’s family. So, my mother trusted this parish and entrusted me to this parish.

This story shows something of the foundations on which this church was built and more importantly the foundations on which the St Mark’s community lived.

These foundations were a living reality which concretely met my mother and through her met me in the people who cared and in the beaty and spacious scale of this church, which contrasted wonderfully to the little room in which I lived.

This living reality, the foundation on which this parish lives, is the living God, who has met us and claimed us, the living God whom this community worships, to whom it bears witness.

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer asks that through receiving the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ we may evermore dwell in Christ and he in us. Openness to this mutual indwelling is kept open by our openness to one another and to loving our neighbours, the strangers we meet, and even the enemies that cross our path.

Now this is costly taking our time and energy, and so I would like to recall an old hymn, that says,

O love that will not let me go
I rest my weary soul in thee
I give thee back the life I owe
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be

God’s ocean depths will not implode us, but rather carry us and infuse in us richer fuller life, so we may be life giving people.

Staying in touch with the living foundation of our lives, is life giving, and calls for us to direct our attention and not lose the plot, especially in troubled times.

This is not a new thought. Some of you may recall this song,

The radio and the telephone
And the movies that we know
May just be passing fancies
And in time may go!
But, oh my dear
Our love is here to stay
Together we're
Going a long, long way
In time the Rockies may crumble
Gibraltar may tumble
There're only made of clay
But our love is here to stay

The song comes from 1938, the year that Hitler grabbed Austria and Czechoslovakia, only months before his invasion of Poland and so started the horror of the Second World War.

It was a time for people to recall a love that was here to stay, that was going a long, long way, forever and a day.

Human love may evoke such a vision of love and long to find such love, but it is only God who can meet this longing of which it sings, only God who can be here to stay and go on forever and a day, who will outlast everything, a love they could trust and in which they could hope.

Now you might think this is where the Church comes in to tell the good news of Jesus the son of God. Well, some do I am sure, but I don’t nor did St Mark our patron.

The reason is that we can tell the story of human love as Gershwin does, and it does intimate divine love, but is not a large enough story for the story of God’s love. On the other hand, the story of God’s love is large enough so that the story of human life and love will find its true home.

Let me explain. For twenty years I lectured at Melbourne University in a subject called ‘God and the natural sciences’, a second-year subject in History and Philosophy of Science, which I co-designed and co-lectured with my atheist colleagues, engaging students from across the university: 40% were religious and 60% atheist or agnostic. Each year, during the lectures, a student would ask me, “Stephen, why are you a Christian?” I replied that there is no neutral position from which that kind of question can be answered. I said I am a Christian because I could not believe in a God who created the world in which there was so much suffering and death but was a God who could not suffer. It is only the Christian gospel that tells of the suffering God, in Jesus, the crucified God. So much so Mark even tells us that Jesus the divine Son endured being forsaken by God his Father. He cried out on the cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’.

In ‘A Truth that Comes from Love’, Stan Grant has shown how powerful this word from the cross is in his life as a Christian.

Download ‘A Truth that Comes from Love’ [PDF]

One year when I explained to the students why I was a Christian because only the gospel of Jesus told me of the God who suffered even to death. a student in the front row shouted out ‘Why should God suffer?’ I quietly prayed ‘Kyrie Eleison’ and this is what fell out of my mouth:

Jesus the divine Son made flesh has come into the world and here God establishes in the world an opening into the life of God. Everyone is invited into this opening. It is for everyone. But amazingly this provokes very different reactions. His disciples don’t understand what he is about, nor do the adoring crowds, nor do the authorities, who want to get rid of him. But Jesus keeps on; he keeps on keeping the opening open, right up to when he is crucified, when we slammed shut the door God had opened. But then God raised him from the dead.Thereby, the opening remains open but is transformed and expanded by his resurrection because the whole created universe is going to be drawn into this opening. Everyone is called and invited to enter and live their life in this opening, now in anticipation, finally in glory. God suffered to keep the opening open, showing God’s love for this universe and every creature within it.

The student’s face lit up at this answer.

God created a life-producing universe, a world worth God dying for, a universe created from love and for love.

This is the living foundation of this community of St Mark.

We live in a world threatening mass destruction and practicing mass distraction with so much promoted to us for the profit of the capitalist promoters, with our lives dominated the golden rule, those who have the gold make the rules, which rule us by screen time and the models of relating to others that this offers.

The old Gershwin song was right – the iPhone, and the internet, and the Netflix that we know are passing fancies that in time will go. Only, 85 years after Gershwin’s song we know they will be replaced by so many more innovations, gadgets, and thousands and thousands of movies that distract but do not and cannot feed our heart and soul.

This is where we as the community of St Mark have something to offer if we are up for it.

Every preacher knows that their sermon may not make it out the front door of the church, let alone make it to Monday morning.

So, I want to finish by offering you a daily practice about getting up in the morning and going to bed at night. In the morning when you are up and compusmentus, you stand in front of a crucifix or an icon of Christ and make the sign of the cross, and you pray the words ‘Glory to you Lord Jesus Christ’ . At the end of the day when everything is done and your ready for bed, you stand still perhaps in front of that crucifix, make the sign of the cross, and you say, ‘Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ.’

You may recall these words from the opening and closing of the reading of the Gospel which we all said today. So, you thereby frame your day as you performing the gospel in everything you do; with you being in touch with the living foundations of God’s love.

In answering this daily prayer, what secrets of your hearts God will not only cleanse but also draw out; those secrets long hidden, waiting to come into the world for your greater well-being, for the still greater good of the world, and for God’s glory? To not miss the answer you will need to be attentive to what is going on within you and around you. Kyrie Eleison!

Let us pray. O ever living God, Father and Mother of all, we praise you, for when we were still far off, you met us in your Son and brought us home. Dying and living he proclaimed your love, gave us grace, and opened the gate of glory. May we who eat Christ’s body, live his risen life; we who drink his cup give life others; we whom the Spirit lights give light to the world. Keep us in this hope that we have grasped; so we and all your children shall be free, and the whole earth live to praise your Name.

Amen.