St George's Cathedral, Cape Town

A sermon preached by The Revd Bruce W. B. Jenneker in the Cathedral Church of St George the Martyr, Cathedral Day, XXII Sunday of the Year, 2 September, 2007

A dedication festival is an invitation to focus our attention on our beginnings. In our case we remember Robert and Sophy Gray, who together played a primary role in the development of the Anglican Church Southern Africa. There were 10 Anglican Churches in South Africa when they arrived here in 1848. At the time of their deaths 25 years later there were 63 churches, 40 of which had been built to Sophy's architectural designs. The early years were marked by much controversy – about church government, episcopal authority, and the extent to which the Anglican Church in Southern Africa would be English or African in character. It is worth noting that 150 years later the same questions hold the attention of the whole Anglican Communion. The issues are same – governance, indigenization and enculturation – but the stakes are higher, the scope much more encompassing and the interpretations more complex.

Perhaps, on this dedication festival, there might be some benefit from a reflection on what motivated the bishop and his accomplished wife. What brought them here in the first place? What did they hope the lasting impact of their ministry would be? They were Victorians, part of imperial expansion, agents of a colonialism that was commercial and profiteering before anything else. No doubt their coming to Cape Town was part and parcel of that project. Along with the Gospel they brought Britannia with them – in the entourage of English-trained servants, the fine furniture, and the episcopal carriage that crossed the ocean with them. Civilized themselves, they brought civilization to civilize the savage natives they expected to encounter on these shores. Christian themselves, and Anglican, they brought Christianity and the right worship of God to the God-less whom God had forgotten and to whom they considered themselves divinely sent.

Be all that as it may – and there is much for reflection there, but for another time and place. Today is our dedication festival when we give thanks for our beginnings. And no matter what else Robert and Sophy Gray were about – consciously or subconsciously - they were impelled and empowered by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They were called to bring Christ to the sub-continent, and to invite those they met here to come to God through him. In this way their task was to invite those whom they encountered to holiness. For this is ever the purpose of religion – the sanctification of experience, the consecration of life, the hallowing of time and space. Naming everything as God's, from God and for God, and dedicating everything to God's purposes and for God's glory.

To make holy - that is, to dedicate a person, institution, place or thing to God's purposes and for God's glory – is first of all to understand its source in divine terms and next to dedicate it to the divine intention for it. It is in is connection that the epistle of St Peter is particularly apt. We are described as living stones to be built into a spiritual temple. Not any or ordinary stones, nor even beautiful stones, but 'living' stones – stones that are animated, empowered, spirited. What makes living stones different from all other stones is that they are stimulated, 'plugged in,' enlivened – and it is the purposes and power of God that enlivens them. It is this that consecrates them in the first place, their origin in and dependence on the power, purposes and glory of God.

The second phase of consecration is dedication, wholly and forever, to the source that makes and enlivens, calls and empowers. Living stones are made alive to serve as building bocks of the spiritual temple they are called to be. God makes and calls, enlivens and empowers – and this is the first phase of consecration. It is a gift, God-given in grace and mercy, the power of God alive in us, making us the holy people of God, living stones for a spiritual temple. Made to be what we are, we are then called to align ourselves with the divine purpose, dedicating ourselves to the life-long task of shaping our choices to match the divine initiative, of making our lives follow the contours of God's intention.

And this is where we get bogged-down in the holiness project isn't it? All down the history of our Judaeo-Christian tradition we have been reluctant to engage this life-long process hallowing. Too difficult by far, too subtle in any case, we have decided. Better we should have check-lists and codes, rules and anathemas, rather then this vast and ambiguous invitation to holiness. Eat this, but not that; wear this, but not that; sing this, but not that; these prayers but not those; keep Friday holy, or Saturday, or Sunday. We have built huge edifices of laws and restrictions, convinced that the way to holiness is best fenced in by proscription and circumscribed by taboos. Rather than engage the vocation to be holy, we have fallen back on holiness codes usually written in other times for other circumstances, and in the process we have become slaves of inadequately examined tradition rather than dedicated seekers after that which aligns us with the holiness we have been created to be.

In our own time our church's struggle with human sexuality, and with homosexuality in particular, is of a piece with our concern for holiness. Interpretations of the archetypes of relationships have shifted and changed in civilizations, religions and epochs. These shifts in attitudes have resulted in changes in patterns of belonging, models of intimacy and paradigms of life-long commitment. What has not changed about them is the universal understanding that they are given for the welfare, security, stability and fulfilment of individuals, partnerships and society at large. The real question before our age is not whether homosexuality is an intrinsic disorder or a given of creation, but how and to what extent our relationships participate in our commitment to being holy. The early church had no problem at all with marriage and implications of married sexual love for its clergy. However, soon a nervousness about sexuality – the same one that plagues our Communion today – raised second thoughts about sexual intimacy even in marriage and chose a celibate priesthood. So the ultimate concern in this struggle is whether one can be both sexual and also committed to being holy at the same time. But rather than ask and attempt to answer this question, we are trapped in the sticky web of our psycho-sexual origins and the literal interpretation of Scripture.

All of us are living stones, made to be holy and called to holiness. Congruence with the purposes of our creation and faithfulness to our vocation to be holy requires that we align our spirituality with God's purposes for us and then dedicate ourselves to be with God, for God, by God and through God in all we are and do.

It is in this connection that Matthew's account of the cleansing of the temple is helpful. Those who were buying and selling in the temple were doing so specifically to keep themselves pure and holy. By overturning the tables of the money changers, and driving our of the temple all involved in that unholy commerce, Jesus is declaring that no set of rules for scrupulosity, no code of prescriptions, not matter how sincerely kept, can guarantee holiness. Alignment with the divine power that makes anything holy and faithful commitment to living out that alignment – these and only these can constitute dedication, and participate in holiness

This Cathedral Church, and you and I no less than it, are called to be holy, living stones, built into a spiritual temple. As we celebrate this dedication festival, let us realign ourselves with God's purposes, recognizing that it is God who is alive in us, animating us, giving us breath and inspiring all we are and do. And then, alive to God and in God, let us shape our days, arrange our priorities and order our values so that, by God's grace, all we are and all that we do is holy.

Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine; glory to God from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever. Amen.

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