A Celebration of our Christian  Heritage

A Sermon by the Archbishop of York, Dr  David Hope,
on Thursday, 16 September 2004, in St Hilda’s, Cross Green, Leeds

"Like living stones, be yourselves built into a spiritual house." (1  Pet: 2.5)

One of the fascinating aspects of the work and office of an Archbishop is the wide variety of people and places to which I am invited - such invitations as much secular as they are sacred.  Of course, all of them are hugely significant and special - significant and special for the small tiny rural parish church celebrating some new modest kitchen facility under the tower as much as the major celebrations say of a diocese, a hospital trust or a university.

In recent years perhaps one of the most significant events from my own personal point of view was the invitation some three or so years ago on Holy Saturday (Easter Saturday to them!) when I was invited by English Heritage formally to open their newly-restored and  refurbished Heritage Centre which encompasses the wild and craggy headland at  Whitby on which of course the major feature is the ruins of Whitby Abbey and the close association of Whitby and St Hilda.

Today is an occasion on which we celebrate our heritage and I would suggest that for these purposes we focus on three aspects of the particular heritage here in this place. St Hilda of course, but also the Oxford Movement the context in which this church itself was established and founded, and thirdly the heritage which is yours here at St Hilda’s as we reflect on the past and present in looking to the future.

So the heritage of St Hilda, about which a very great deal could be and indeed already has been said, and written. I suppose that quite rightly at the mention of her name our own minds spring quite naturally to the monastic community both at Hartlepool and at Whitby in which she was Abbess - interestingly at Whitby a community both of men and women with all the potential for scandal - but nevertheless a monastery which was renowned for its holiness and dedication of life.

Formidable person though she was, not one to suffer fools gladly, nevertheless she was remarkable by the way in which she sought to enable every member of her Community to be valued and honoured quite irrespective of who and what they were. It was she you will recall who so encouraged the ignorant and unlearned Caedmon that his name lives on even today as a remarkable song-man and poet.  It was she too who had the courage to bang together the heads of the bishops at the Synod of Whitby so that their conflict over the rites and usage of the English Church might be settled once and for all.I just wonder what she would make of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion today? A dose of Hilda might be a very good thing in bringing us to our senses about our present controversies! But her heritage and her legacy for us today is perhaps best summed up by Basil Hume in his "Footprints of the Northern Saints". St Hilda he writes "with other abbots and abbesses created the monasteries as centres not only of learning and of the faith, but of a central truth of that faith which can so easily be taken for granted today: the unconditional love of God for all men and women, regardless of social status or of cultural and ethnic origins". In other words, the Church not an exclusive club or sect, but rather a warm and welcoming community, its own arms open wide as the arms of the crucified Lord to each and every person who desires and dares to come among us.

And then there is the heritage of the Oxford Movement - a movement in the first place not about bells and smells, but rather with a deep and passionate concern about an understanding of the Church - the One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone.

The reason why worship became so important in and to this movement was the desires of its founders to see reflected in the life of the Church on earth something of the splendour, the beauty, the wonder of the life of the Church in heaven.  Heaven on earth is the Church’s worship. This Mass both a reflection and an anticipation of that which is yet to come in the consummation of the age. And if there is that inescapable link between the Church on earth and the Church in heaven then the inescapable conclusion is that the Church on earth is called to be both a sign of contradiction and a movement of protest - a protest for the things of God and for all who are created in His image and likeness not least the poorest and those most in need in our society and world.

 

How encouraging that only just very recently the Bishops both of the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church have been united in strongly reasserting the rights and dignity of every human person from the beginning of life to its end as the only basis for any civilized society - thus opposing the Assisted Suicide for the Terminally Ill Bill.

Sanctuary and social action cannot be separated - the one must inevitably issue in the other and this was the enormous strength of the Oxford Movement - a strength, a heritage for which today we give thanks and celebrate. "Like living stones, be yourselves built into a spiritual house."

So the heritage of St Hilda and the Oxford Movement both of which very happily cohere in our celebration of the heritage of this particular Church of St Hilda here in Leeds, the establishing of which was inspired personally by one of the leading luminaries of the Oxford Movement, Dr Pusey himself, whose stole I am privileged to be wearing this evening, and whose anniversary of death it is today.

For it was he who in the establishing of St Saviour’s had made a special appeal for the building of yet another church or chapel in Leeds in which there would be daily services. I wonder which services he meant? I think I know.

After all, as in so many other parts of the industrial north there was a burgeoning population and there was an increasing concern for their souls. Pusey himself had written to his brother: - There is a congregation of colliers living without God.

In other words, here was an initiative for mission and evangelisation - in the words of the Book of Common Prayer Ordination service it was the Church’s business and especially that of its ordained priests to teach, to feed and provide for the Lord’s family; to seek for Christ’s children that are dispersed abroad and for his children who are in the midst of this naughty world that they may be saved through Christ for ever.

And that challenge remains today throughout this city, this country and this land. It is above all a challenge to faithfulness - faithfulness like yourselves in staying with it and slogging it out for God’s sake. No doubt many of the earliest Tractarian priests, parishes and people could easily and readily have thrown in the towel - not least in times of oppression, suppression, even persecution.

 

Yet for the sake of the Gospel - for the sake of the souls among whom they were set - for the sake of the health and well-being of all the people of the neighbourhoods, parishes and communities in which they were set - above all for the sake of the mission entrusted to the Church by Christ in every age to make disciples and announce the kingdom they remained faithful as indeed must we, given the many issues and challenges before and ahead of us.

Here then at St Hilda’s you have the powerful heritage both of Hilda and the Oxford Movement - a heritage which not only gives us confidence for the present but hope for the future.  It is a heritage too which certainly we celebrate in worship and prayer - that which after all is at the very heart of the Church’s life as it seeks to live and be in the world yet at the same time reminding and recalling us to the fundamental fact of our existence - that it is in God alone that we live and move and have our being.

But our heritage also comprises other dimensions not only of Christian faith, life and culture but the treasures of the nation as a whole - a point at which both sacred and secular intersect - church buildings: the bare ruined choirs as they have been described, not only at Whitby but as well more locally at Kirkstall and Fountains, also Rievaulx and Byland. 

Then there are the great works of art, paintings, hangings, sculpture as well as music and song, poetry and literature, all of which combine in praise of the God who in Christ has come among us and who in this Mass is present in this most Holy Sacrament as with angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven we join our voices to the unending hymn of God’s glory.

And I can think of no better way of concluding this Homily than to leave you with some very apposite and timely words of St Hilda herself - spoken/written now some 1,350 years ago yet which have a remarkably striking and contemporary relevance. She writes - Trade with the gifts God has given you. Bend your mind to Holy learning that you may escape the fretting moth of littleness of mind that would wear out your souls, train your hearts and lips to song, which gives courage to the soul. Being buffeted by trials learn to laugh. Being reproved give thanks. Having failed determine to succeed.