Readings:
1 Kings 8 22:30
Hebrews 12 18:24 
Matthew 21: 12-16

I like legends, because – like gossip – they are not always entirely true.  I remember on my first visit here some years ago, I was told that the name Bonchurch was given to this village because of the old church dedicated to St. Boniface, the missionary monk who began his life in Devon, and who ended up being martyred in 754 near Dokkum, in what is now north-east Holland.  So far, so likely.  But there’s another piece of legend that I’ve heard, which is that the name Bonchurch was given to this place because Boniface himself actually spent some time here as a young missionary, on what we nowadays call a theological training placement.  It’s certainly a nice thought, and places him among some of the earliest missionaries on the Isle of Wight.  It may not be true, but it’s not entirely unlikely.  And it means that on an occasion like tonight, when we are celebrating the 160th anniversary of the dedication of this particular church, we can’t get away from one of the most remarkable men of his age. 

The journey from Devon to the Dutch coast wouldn’t have been all that far by 8th century standards because some people did travel.  But it’s what happened in between birth in Devon and death in Holland that I find so amazing.  Boniface and his colleagues spread the Christian mission and organised the Christian Church in several significant parts of central and southern Germany – what we nowadays call Thuringia, Hesse, Franconia, and Nordgau.  As Archbishop of Mainz, he had special responsibilities for what was at the time essentially a missionary Church.  And the fact of the matter is that he seems to have been killed by some sort of unfortunate mistake.  As an old man in his eighties, he’d grown tired of church administration, perhaps ground down by the eighth century equivalent of e-mails, letters, personnel issues, and the other constant demands.  His last few years were spent as an ordinary missionary right in the north, on the Friesian coast, among people who had not accepted Christianity, where he was attacked by some of the locals, while  waiting to conduct a confirmation.  I am not sure if I would be regarded as worth murdering before I did one of my confirmations. 

So much for the memory of Boniface.  It’s important, definitive, because it’s not just about a name plucked from the past to add a bit of heritage to what we are doing tonight.  I am always interested in the Saints to which the Churches of the diocese are dedicated.  They were ordinary people whom God used in special ways.  They weren’t perfect, and not all of them did spectacular things either.  They followed the call of God, and it was quite different in each case.  Boniface lived at a time when there was a bit of a travel bug around among the young people who joined religious communities, hence his achievements in Germany, where he is still venerated today.  But behind the big names that history has recorded for us, there are millions of others, whose ordinary lives of struggling faith have provided, and continue to provide, a living witness to the reality of God, and the truth of the Christian gospel.  When I pray each day in my chapel, as I do, for the parishes of this diocese, I am only too well aware of the living saints, whose down to earth holiness that helps make the Christian witness visible, tangible, and known in our local communities.  This is where the young are nurtured and encouraged, the bereaved are cared for and comforted, where the enquirers are made to feel at home, and taken seriously, and where the broken and the battered are helped and healed.

So we have a kind of transition, from a possible visit by Boniface himself in about the year 700, and from there on to what we know, the old medieval church, built 500 years later in the thirteenth century, and added to subsequently, down to the year 1848, when this new and much larger church was opened, reflecting the expanding population of this part of the island at the time.

But church buildings are never intended to be ends in themselves, and that is why the readings chosen for a dedication festival are not so much about the buildings for which we are giving thanks, as about our attitudes to them, why we think that they are important, and how we use them.  What should those attitudes be?  Well, you can’t do much better than the extract from Solomon’s prayer of dedication of the Jerusalem temple in tonight’s first lesson: everything belongs to God, and we ask for the blessing of his presence, and his forgiveness.  And why is it all so important?  Turn to tonight’s second reading, where we are reminded that we are part of a much bigger community, Mount Zion, where the whole company of heaven are destined to gather.  And how are we to use these buildings?  Tonight’s gospel provides a warning to us all, in that dramatic scene where Jesus cleanses the temple, because it must be a place of prayer, a holy place where healing can be known and felt.

It’s a very different world today from the one in which Boniface was born, and a very different world from the one in which the two churches of this parish were built.  We live in a world that’s much more critical of history, traditional authority structures, and perhaps a bit too cynical about the possibility that things can really change.  But it’s the same gospel none the less, and the same call from God to worship him in his holy place and to serve him among all his people.

+ Kenneth Portsmouth