Living stones

Sermon preached at 11am Eucharist at St Alphege Church, Solihull
Sunday 18th October 2009 – Dedication Festival – Guardians Sunday

Readings: Genesis 28: 11-18 1 Peter 2: 1-10 John 10: 22-29


Today is Dedication Sunday, when we give thanks to God for our church buildings, and pray that we might use them ever better, so as to take forward God’s kingdom. We are of course especially fortunate here at St Alphege in that we have a particularly beautiful and ancient church building. Let’s briefly remind ourselves about its history.
There has been a church building on this site since about 1190, when the village of Solihull first started to develop. In 1242 Solihull received a royal charter for an annual three day fair, around St Alphege Day. The village grew and needed a bigger church. The first part to be redeveloped was the channel and side chapels from about 1277. Later the nave was pulled down and rebuilt on a larger scale. We can still see the outline of the old nave on the side of the tower. The side aisles were added and the spire. The only part of the original church to have survived is the stonework in the tower. The main structures of the church have changed little since the sixteenth century, although the spire famously fell down and was rebuilt in the eighteenth century and some major structural strengthening took place in the 1940s and 50s.
So as we worship in this church building we follow in a tradition that has continued on this site for about 800 years. The church building provides us with an extraordinary link back through the ages to all those worshippers of old; the people who laid the foundations for the Solihull of today. Many of those people are buried in the church yard. Some of them are commemorated on the walls. There is a sense in which the church, the people of God, is united through time by this church building.
This is a wonderful heritage, that serves our Christian development today, and into the future. We are very fortunate at St Alphege that we have a special organisation dedicated to preserve and take forward that heritage. The Guardians of St. Alphege Church, Solihull was established in 1981. It is a registered charity with the object of raising funds to assist with the maintenance and preservation of the fabric of the church,
for the benefit of all the inhabitants of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull and to stimulate interest in the beauty, history and character of St Alphege Church as one of the oldest and finest medieval buildings in the Borough. We are very grateful for their work and for the funds that they make available for the church building. You may remember that in 2007 a significant repair was required at the top of the spire, and for several months the spire had a “flying scaffold” over the top of it. All this, some £35,000, was paid for by the Guardians, and it is an extraordinary gift.
Now I would like to go back to our epistle reading, in which St Peter makes comparisons between the way that God builds up the Church, the people of God, and the way a builder might build a church building. This is a powerful way of thinking about the Church, and similar thinking is expressed by St Paul in Ephesians 2 and by St John in Revelation 21. Peter says, “like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” In this comparison we can think of Christ as the chief corner stone from which the whole building is laid out. We can think of the apostles as the foundations. And we are the living stones from which the building is built.
So let’s think of ourselves as “living stones”, all of which make a distinctive contribution to the whole church. Take a look around this church building and look at the stones from which it is made. Some are big and some are small. Some are set high up in the structure, some are low down. Some are highly visible and seen by everyone. Some are hidden away in obscure corners and tend to go unnoticed. Some stones are internal to the wall and can never be seen by anyone. Some stones are highly carved and have been cut into very precise shapes, either for decoration, or to fit precisely alongside other stones.
God calls us to be living stones. What kind of stone are you called to be? Are you big or small? Are you called to be high up in the wall or tower, as though to give glory to God. Or are you called to be lower down, supporting many other stones above you? Are you very visible, or is you contribution to be made in a more low profile way. Are you highly carved? Does it sometime feel as though God is painfully chilling away at you to get you into the precise shape that he wants? And what about the other stones around you? How are you connected to them? What are the relationships that bind you into the life of the church? Those relationships can be a bit like the mortar that binds stones together. Is the mortar strong? Does it need re-pointing? What is the specific contribution that your stone is to make to the life of the church? How does it relate to the contribution of the stones around you?
I said that this is a powerful way of thinking about the church, and so it is, but I think we need some words of caution. This way of thinking about the life of the church emphasises the solidity and institutional aspects of church life. And whilst the church certainly has a solid and institutional aspect we must not lose sight of the fact that the church is a living, breathing, moving, evolving organism as well. We are called to be living stones, not dead weights! Like blood that circulates round the body, so news and joys and sorrows, hopes and sufferings must circulate around the church. We must not depend too much on our structures. Remember that over time most of this church building has been pulled down and rebuilt. So it is that God sometimes pulls down and rebuilds his church.
So let’s try to be the living stones that God wants us to be, whether big or small, visible or invisible. Let’s seek our fulfilment not within ourselves but in our service to the living stones around us, and to the whole Church. And as God builds us into a spiritual house let us be conscious of the very high calling that God gives us. We are called to be a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. And let’s live out this vocation for our own benefit, for the benefit of the whole Church and for the benefit of all of humanity.