The Cathedral’s Historic Foundation
The Cathedral’s Historic Foundation
Sunday 13th October
A sermon by The Very Reverend Nicholas Papadopulos
Of course, putting a person into the foundation used to be the speciality of East End villains: there’s not a concrete bridge or flyover within the M25 about which dark rumours have not circulated. I hope, Mrs Moulton, that the experience of being put into our Foundation has been altogether more benign.
So what is this mysterious entity in which you have been enrolled? The Foundation has no legal persona, no Memorandum and Articles, and no website. The Cathedral’s constitution describes it as a group of persons holding offices necessary to the Cathedral’s life. Our Foundation gives visible expression to our historic mission and recalls us to its unchanging nature. You are now part of that visible expression – as is our Chapter Clerk; as is our Archivist; as is our Clerk of Works; as are our clergy, musicians and vergers. In the offices we hold we articulate what this place has always been about, and what it continues to be about.
The Archivist represents our acknowledgement of our past. Not our worship of it, but our understanding that all this did not all begin with us. We have received an inheritance from the countless men and women who have lived, worked, and worshipped on this site for 800 years, and at Old Sarum before that. History does not hold us captive, but it may have much to teach us.
The Chapter Clerk represents our concern for the present: our honest stewardship of what we have received and our responsible management of it. This is not the sort of activity that the allegedly high-minded affect to despise – the oft-derided pushing of pens – but a deeply faithful task. In his act of creation God brings order to chaos. The Chapter Clerk must often feel that she faces a similar challenge – working to ensure that we care properly for what we have – for buildings, resources, and people.
The Clerk of Works represents our provision for the future. This building is one of the glories of England. If we do nothing else we must ensure that it is handed on to our successors in even better order than it came to us. The Clerk oversees the craftsmen and craftswomen whose skills are themselves part of our heritage, and he ensures that their work is directed to the sustainability of our fabric for the long term.
Archivist, Chapter Clerk, and Clerk of Works together make it possible for the core activities of the place to be delivered. Worship and prayer are the principal responsibility of the clergy – of Dean, Precentor, Chancellor, and Treasurer – and of the musicians and vergers. Prayer is said and worship is offered morning and night every day of the year; the great feasts and fasts of the Church’s year are observed; the place is hourly put to work for the purpose for which it was built.
And then there’s the Head Teacher of the School: and you, Mrs Moulton, represent our other core activity: learning. Not in the narrow sense of absorbing information or in the technical sense of mugging up on quick-fix solutions to presenting problems – but in the broadest and best possible sense of growing in wisdom and in the love of God. You lead the Cathedral School, and the Cathedral School is a sign of this larger Christian imperative and Christian enterprise – the enlarging of our hearts and minds that we might better know God.
The walls of Jericho surrounded a city which had idolatry (what the book Joshua calls ‘the things devoted to destruction’) at its heart: idolatry was its foundation. The towns of Chorazin and Bethsaida were impervious to the presence of God’s Holy One in their midst; their pride was their foundation. But ours is respect for the past, concern for the present, provision for the future; it is worship, prayer, and Godly learning.
Those East End villains put their enemies into the foundations in order that they might disappear without a trace and never be found again. It’s a reminder to us that it’s the offices we hold that constitute our Foundation. Each of us brings to our offices what we have known and experienced and received, and we know that the Cathedral School will have a secure and exciting future under your leadership. But the offices we hold are bigger than any of us who hold them. They point us to the mission we share, which is the very mission of God – in which each of us is called, for a very short time, to play a part. Amen.