Tenth Century Church Planting

A Sermon preached at the church of S Sepulchre without Newgate, at the Institution of The Rev’d David Ingall

Titus 2:1-14; Luke 17:7-10

Titus 2:13 
Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

Why are we doing all this? Pomp and circumstance, celebration and legal formularies; all to mark the beginning of something which began some time ago. It is not, David, because of you. Do not get me wrong, you have done an absolutely brilliant job, and we are all really grateful to you for all the work that you have put in. It has been wonderful that the Patrons have agreed with all of us locally that there is no one else more suited to carrying forward the work here at S Sepulchre’s. But actually, we would not mark that with all of this. The Lord is clear with a message almost harsh in its austerity: “when you have done everything you were told to do, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”

This is a new step forward in the life of the parish, when we mark something that Jesus has been doing amongst us. We are marking and giving thanks for the fact that He here at S Seps He has been redeeming us from all wickedness and purifying for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good. This is about the life and work of this church, the living stones who form the people of God here. This is about the work to which we are all called; the work of serving Christ who makes us eager to do what is good.

S Sepulchre without Newgate

We have seen here at St Sepulchres a new beginning, one of many new beginnings which in the long history of the church in this place have reflected the eagerness which comes from Jesus Christ; the eagerness which is given where the people are humble enough to turn away from wickedness and to receive from him the purification which he brings by the washing of our souls by His blood on the cross.

David, your predecessors number among them those who led the church in the vicissitudes of the Reformation, (one of whom was martyred); those who had to rebuild after the great Fire, and others who served in the wake of war and blitz. S Paul wrote to Titus that he should teach teach teach. If you made a word cloud of our first lesson that would be the word that would be enormous and in the middle of the cloud. One of the great teachers of the faith who has a place here is S Stephen Harding. Like John Rogers who was martyred in part for translating the Bible, Stephen Harding was a translator of the scriptures. He died in 1134, just about the time of the foundation of this church and it was to him that the Chapel now known as the Musicians Chapel was first dedicated. The story of his life has a remarkable resonance with the new beginning which today we celebrate.

Stephen Harding was an English Benedictine monk at Molesme. Unlike the servants described by Jesus in our first reading, the monks there really rather thought that they deserved their reward, and luxuriated in worldly things. Abbot Robert thought he could do nothing with them, and Stephen was one of those who went with him to a new foundation at Citeaux. In effect they set off to plant a new church. After a few years Stephen became Abbot, but the plant did not thrive. He did not help matters by upsetting the major funder of the enterprise by refusing him entrance to the cloister with his family. After four years the monks were starving, funding had run out, and it all looked as though everything was going to come to a sticky end.

Abbots of Citeaux - Stephen Harding on the left

There was no Archdeacon in view to sort it all out, but instead S Bernard arrived with 30 monks, in a kind of church graft. From that moment everything changed. Citeaux grew and planted, and planted, and the plants planted and planted and within 50 years or so there were more than 900 Cistercian houses all across Western Europe including the great foundations of Fountains, Clairvaux, and Rievaulx. In some ways the Cistercians were the HTB of their age. Indeed S Stephen was upbraided by Abelard who wrote to S Bernard complaining that in the Cistercian rite there was a scandalous omission of the traditional hymns in favour of new ones, a terrible reduction of the liturgy by the omission of processions and other liturgical complexities, and a wanton rejection of the liturgical year with the singing of alleluias even during Lent. But of course you have not been like that here: in your teaching and corporate life you have been eager to do what is good and have taken the best of the heritage of the past and made it thrive along with the planting of what is new.

Stephen Harding taught his monks to be self-controlled, and live upright and godly lives in this present age,while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ In the chapel of S Stephen Harding in this church there is an Easter Sepulchre, used in the Easter rites to exemplify the entombment and resurrection of Christ. Here at S Sepulchre’s we are eager to do what is good. The Easter Sepulchre is a sign of what that means. All our activity, all our church work is to help us live godly lives while we wait for the appearing of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Our social outreach, our music, - our music so important that the very chapel of S Stephen is now the musicians’ chapel - our ringing of the bells, our teaching of prayer, study of the scriptures, Evensong and morning service, our association with our liveries and our regiment, the learning programmes such as God in the City, our Discipleship Groups, the partnerships we form and the community we serve, all of this eager activity looks forward in hope to Jesus Christ.

In all of this we are thoroughly embedded not in the interesting history of the past, but in the mission of the church today. The church which has replaced in its Chapel the memory of S Stephen Harding with a stained glass window in memory of Dame Nelly Melba has demonstrated how it has moved to new mission fields in previous generations, and how it will do so again. We are always eager to do what is good to redeem new generations from wickedness and bring them to the hope which we have in Jesus Christ

And this is what is expressed in what we do tonight. David, you are to be instituted into the cure of souls of the parish. Everyone is your care, and you are to be eager for all, great and small, it rich and poor, important and insignificant, old and young, nice and nasty, easy and difficult. Be eager for us all. Feed us with good teaching, bring to us the Lord’s Supper before you sit down for your own meal; minister to us the other sacraments of the church. This is not about you, it is about us, and all of us are called with you to be eager in this work. From it may great things flow, for Jesus Christ, gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.