Wednesday 24th September at 7pm

Readings:

1 Kings 8:22-30

2 Corinthians 3:2-6

John 10:7-10

Minsters in old times were centres of Christian mission and ministry.  The title has been revived in recent years for churches in a significant part of a diocese, for example Sunderland in County Durham.  Newport is therefore a prime candidate in the Portsmouth diocese, as the county town of the Island, with a church that contributes so much to the life of the Island as a whole. 

Minsters, like any other building, whether a house, a school, or a meeting place, have their own collection of memories. One of the many memories here is the burial on this day in 1650 of Princess Elizabeth, second daughter of Charles I.  She had died earlier that month as a prisoner in Carisbrooke Castle at the age of 24, having caught a bad cold which turned into pneumonia.  Overall, you could say that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Her early death was one of the many casualties of the Civil War, which was not just about the monarchy, but about what sort of church we should have in this country.  That debate began long before and has gone on  ever since.  It says something about the healing of some of those wounds that among the church leaders whom I consulted about naming this church a Minster were the Roman Catholic Bishop, the Methodist District Chairman and the United Reformed Church Moderator; and they all replied in the affirmative, partly because of what they could see as the ecumenical potential of the project.

But there is another side to Princess Elizabeth which has a contemporary significance.  She was a great scholar, and by the age of nineteen she could read and write in Hebrew, Greek, Italian, Latin and French.  Education at this sort of level and depth for women in the seventeenth century was very rare indeed. It was part of a process that has helped to create a more enlightened society, which (for example) enabled the Isle of Wight to have the first woman Archdeacon in this diocese two years ago.

At Princess Elizabeth’s funeral, apart from this pulpit and the font over there, there was no visible trace of the rest of this building.  For this church was built in 1854 to replace the original St Thomas’s, which was constructed in the 1180’s.  And that brings me to another significant memory.  It is always a bit of a tongue twister to refer to St. Thomas’s (in the plural), because it refers not only to St. Thomas the Apostle, but Thomas à Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom Henry II had had murdered in 1170, and who was very soon afterwards venerated as a saint.  He seems to have had some popularity in these parts: Portsmouth Cathedral is dedicated to him, and we have another Thomas à Becket church across the water at Warblington – and both originally date like Thomas’s Newport from the 1180’s  Henry II  thought that he could turn the English Church into an extension of the State, but he was wrong it all shows that the sometimes nervous relationship between Church and Government is nothing new.  We mustn’t get too cosy with each other, because our roles and identities are different but it is important that the relationship is real, and involves mutual respect.  To take two examples, Stephen Palmer serves as Chaplain to the Isle of Wight Council, and the churches  run some of the Island’s schools. 

These are the memories that stand out particularly strongly, because they reflect ongoing questions that don’t seem to go away.  We are still working out what sort of a church we should be, and I expect we always shall, and against a backdrop of valued traditions and new ideas and attitudes.  We are still struggling with the issue of equality in our society, which history never appears entirely to settle, with every generation awakening us to new challenges, such as today’s concern with the disabled,  And we are still reconstructing and renewing relationships between religious groups and central and local government, as well as other areas of influence in our world. Increasing importance is given nowadays increasing importance is given to the place of the faith communities in our society in a way that would have been unthinkable even ten years ago.

Part of the Church’s job is to live at these points of tension, as areas of mission and exploration, and not in some rarified existence of its own; and a Minister can provide a focus for some of this work, alongside other parishes and communities, and not go it alone. This evening’s readings provide some gentle warnings against letting the title of Minster – go to our heads, which is not about status, but service.   First there is Solomon’s prayer of dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem, offering a magnificent building to the glory of God, and not our own. So this church may become more of a base for new kinds of activities, but it is at heart a centre of prayer, with all its beauty and history -  along with its sister Church of St. John’s, with its story of worship and mission, and a distinguished track-record of producing ordinands. Then St. Paul tells us that the Spirit gives life – we cannot expect to do everything on our own, as if life was some never ending ego-trip, because our abilities, our creativity, our imagination are gifts from God. And in John’s gospel, we have that marvellous image of Jesus as the gate, which is about opportunity, risk, faith, and the future – and about hearing his voice as the good shepherd. 

It is in that dedication to prayer, in that power of the life giving Spirit, and in that trust in the opportunities yet to come that we can commend ourselves, one another, and this Minster into the hands of the living God.