Sermon for 150th Anniversary of the Dedication of Christ Church Cathedral 1859
Feast of the reign of Christ November 22nd 2009
The Very Reverend Michael J. Pitts, Dean and Rector
Over the past years, from time to time I have led guided tours around the Cathedral, sometimes combined with a seminar on the history of the Anglican Church. If the groups have been French Roman Catholic, I have tried to surprise them by telling them that the Anglican Church did not begin with Henry VIII, but existed sometime already in the late second century. When the groups were from the United States I have tried to tease then by starting off my talk in welcoming them to a recent building of modern design. When they looked surprised, I told them that I was ordained deacon and priest in a cathedral which dated from 1093 CE, the mother church of the English diocese of Durham, founded in 995 CE. After my recent wanderings as part of my sabbatical leave, I could have added that I have stood in awe in the great Hagia Sophia of Istanbul which was built in 537CE.
This present building of Christ Church Cathedral was completed and dedicated on Advent Sunday in 1859 and so, on this our annual Feast of Dedication, we celebrate the 150th birthday of our Cathedral Church at the Feast of the Reign of Christ. 150 years is both a short time and a long time. It is short in comparison with the history of Christianity and the world wide church. It is short even in comparison with our own life spans. There are members of our regular congregation, some here today, who have been alive for over half the time this building has stood here.
Yet, if we reflect on the things which have happened in the world during that time, it begins to seem much longer. In those 150 years the theory of evolution has been developed. Aspirin, antiseptic and later antibiotic treatments have been discovered. The internal combustion engine and later the jet engine and rocket engines have been invented. The fundamental structures of the universe, the atom and the living being have been explored. Psychoanalysis and psychology have explored the inner workings of the mind. Telegraphy, radio, television and the computer have been invented. The splitting of the atom for both peaceful use and for warfare has been exploited. Intercontinental air travel and space exploration have become common place. Human beings have walked on the moon. Electric lighting heating and power, together with the personal motorcar have become universally available, at least in the west. More recently the cell phone, the internet and facebook, together with texting and twittering have become widely used. Digital technology has become widespread in everything from cameras to medical treatments. Two world wars and a cold war have been fought. Political, military and commercial empires have been created and dissolved. Revolutions have taken place. Some have gone and some still influence the world. Culture and philosophy have moved from Romantic through modern and existentialist to post-modern. Old barriers of religion, class, race, colour, age, gender and sexual orientation have been broken down, even though these processes are by no means completed and religious, social and political retrenchment remains a threat. The role of the church in the West and its membership have increased, declined and then, since the 1960's gone into free fall.
So is Christ Church Cathedral a recent building or an old building? I leave you to think through the significance of that question. But let me turn to the second part of my quip to American tourists. Is Christ Church Cathedral a building of modern design or ancient design? It is usually described as neo-Gothic. Let me try to put that into some kind of context. At the very beginning, before Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism began to separate themselves in the second century, the worship and meeting of the Christian church took place in the synagogue, supplemented by meeting in private houses. The fact that Christians had private houses in which to meet already shows how much the faith had shifted upmarket in the first hundred years. Jesus and the first followers, either by circumstances or choice were probably homeless peasants. But the synagogue and private home combination of the second century has left its mark right down to the present. The liturgy of the Word of our Sunday celebration and the daily offices Morning and Evening Prayer devolve from the worship of the synagogue. The liturgy of Bread and Wine comes to us from the common meal of the house church celebrating the meals of Jesus related in the Gospel stories, especially from the meal shared with the close disciples just before his arrest.
In the Christian Scriptures and the early theologians, the word church always refers to a community, never to a building. It was not until the fourth century, after Christianity became first a legal religion and later a privileged religion in the Roman Empire, that we see the first Christian buildings. Most took the form of the basilica; the typical social, political and legal meeting place in the Greco-Roman cities. Some churches took over existing buildings; other communities built their own. It is already significant that the secular basilica, not the religious temple, was the first model for church architecture. The basilica was a rectangular building often with a semi-circular apse at each end. When used as a church, one apse would have the font, and the other the altar and the sedilia for the bishop, presbyters and deacons. The sedilia would be behind the altar and the clergy would face the people. I have seen the 5th and 6th century remains of many churches of this pattern in North Africa and the Middle East. What was celebrated here continued to be the combination of the synagogue reading of the word, followed by the common meal. The whole was a dramatic re-enactment of the Jewish-Christian story by the community. In various varieties of style and scale, this remained for centuries the classical form of church architecture and of the liturgy, which was its major function.
But then during the middle ages in the West (a different but parallel change took place later in the East) something began to happen. Churches became longer and thinner. The altar was moved further and further from the people, finally to the far east wall and the celebrant now had his back to the people. The common meal of the people became the ceremonialized sacrifice by the priest for the people. The people took less and less part, not understanding the Latin liturgy, and usually taking the bread only and that only once or twice a year. This transformation became symbolised in Gothic architecture. The fundamental invention of the gothic architects was the pointed arch which, being stronger than the semi-circular Romanesque arch, could support greater weight with less masonry. Gothic churches could become larger, taller, and filled with light filtered through stained glass windows. At the same time, however, another gothic introduction was the rood screen, between the nave and the sanctuary, which totally separated the people from the priestly action at the altar. The screen carried a rood, statuary representing the crucifixion, upon which the people could gaze while the priest repeated Christ's sacrifice for their sins far away at the east end. With the coming of the rood screen, the separation of the priest and people and the hierarchializing of the church were complete.
The churches and movements of the Reformation attempted to return to an earlier pattern. Anglicans and Lutheran established regular communion, celebrated in the vernacular with regular reading of the scriptures as the central act of worship. Reformed and Baptist communities put less emphasis on the Eucharist. Anglican architecture, especially after the Wren churches replaced those destroyed in the Fire of London, returned to the Romanesque style. The sacrificial understanding of the Eucharist was replaced by the concept of the presence of Christ made known in the Eucharistic meal. Yet the whole remained an action by the priest for the people, even if they now understood more of it. However the pull of Puritan theology and of the evangelical revival meant that there was more and more emphasis on the Word. In many churches the Eucharist was celebrated only two or three times a year.
Then at the beginning of the nineteenth century there was a movement of catholic revival in the Anglican Church, usually known as the Oxford or Tractarian movement. This had many dimensions, but for us the most important was the reintroduction of gothic style, now known as neo-gothic. So here we are back to the story of Christ Church Cathedral. The catholic revival returned those churches who were favourable to it (including our own first Bishop Fulford), to a weekly celebration of the Eucharist. But it was a Eucharist celebrated in the medieval way, the priest with back to the people at the far east end.
I cannot here go into the long struggle in our community between the catholic tendencies of Bishop Fulford and many of the Deans and Rectors on the one hand and the more Puritan tendencies of many in the congregation on the other. I only point you to the flowery capitals around our pillars. Bishop Fulford wanted angels, but Samuel McCord, chairman of the building committee, wanted something less Catholic. As you see, he won.
I asked Canon Joyce Sanchez, our priest-in-charge, if I could preach for an hour and a half, but she said no. So I have to jump to the 1960's, when, after long liturgical study, many of the mainline churches began to produce revised liturgies, which more thoroughly than the Reformation moved away from the medieval paradigm, to more original understandings of the Eucharist. It was not merely a question of using more modern language and bringing the altar nearer to the people. It was a question of once again having the community celebrate the Christian Story in a dramatic way centered round the re-enactment of the Lord's supper. Many of you may remember these changes taking place here in our Cathedral.
So is Christ Church Cathedral a building of modern design? As neo-gothic, I think it is, particularly when I reflect that the neo-gothic movement represented a reinforcement of the medieval self understanding of the Church, which itself was an innovation. But what we have done since the sixties is to use our modern building in a more ancient and radical way, to rediscover the original meaning of our Eucharistic worship. For radical (a term which I have always favoured to describe my own understanding of the faith), speaks of a return to the roots, together with an attempt to interpret the roots of our faith in way which speaks to and with our post-modern secular world.
Post-modernism has many meanings, but for me it speaks of our drawing on many different areas and ages of our cultural traditions in a celebration of our present and our future. This, I believe is what we do in this building, in our worship, in our preaching, in our education and community life. Today is our opportunity to give thanks for this building and for what it has meant, for its century and a half, in the life of our community, our city and our society.
