TO THE GLORY OF GOD AND COMMEMORATION OF THE

CORONATION OF KING EDWARD VII AND THE RESTORATION

OF PEACE AFTER THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR 1899 – 1902

THE FOUNDATION STONE OF THIS TOWER WAS LAID ON

THE 20^th DAY OF JULY 1904 BY CANON THE HONORABLE

ALAN BRODRICK MA MASTER OF ST CROSS HOSPITAL

WINCHESTER AND FORMER RECTOR OF THIS PARISH 1888-1901

ADAM KEIR                                                     RECTOR

LT COLONEL  L. C. RODNEY  RMLI            CHURCH   

J. S. MOORE CB.,                                               WARDENS

The above tablet is located on the north face of the tower of St Mary’s Church, commemorating not only the Coronation of King Edward VII, of itself a very interesting record of history, but the laying of the foundation stone of the tower which now rises as majestically to the Glory of God at the West end of the church.

 About a year ago, it was thought that to celebrate the start of the construction of the tower would be an important part of our continuous acts of worship and that the celebrations should cover a period of one year starting on the 20^th July 2004 and continuing through to July 2005.

The Parochial Church Council were of the opinion that a series of events and activities which reflected the whole church and congregation should provide the foundation of celebratory year and that the considerable number of groups operating in and in conjunction with the church should be invited to participate in any way suitable to their particular purposes.

EVENSONG: ST MARY’S, ALVERSTOKE

TUESDAY 20^TH JULY 2004 AT 7.30 PM

CENTENARY OF LAYING FOUNDATION-STONE OF THE TOWER

Readings:  Micah 7 : 14-14 and 18-20

                   Matthew 12: 46 to end

For over eight years now, I have been making the journey on the car-ferry across the Solent.  Every time, usually on the way back, I look over to the Gosport Peninsula, and catch sight of its various landmarks, the principle feature of which is the tower of St Mary’s, the centenary of the laying of whose foundation-stone we are celebrating tonight.  From a distance it all looks quintessentially traditional and English.  One could even think that it has been here for ever.

But, of course, life is not as simple as that, and not just because you have a vicar from South Africa, a curate from Australia, and a Viking bishop!  The farmstead dependent on a manor (the meaning of ‘Stoke’), given by the Saxon lady ‘Alwara’ (providing us with ‘Alwarastoke’), to St Swithin’s, Winchester, at the head of Haslar Creek: this is the soil on which we – representing so many facets of the local community - are gathered now.  The Doomsday Book tells us of a church on this site, whose later medieval successor was gradually replaced in the latter part of the nineteenth century because it was inadequate to meet the needs of a growing population.  Exactly the same process resulted in the building of an even larger Church of St Mary’s, on Portsea Island.

All this history needs to be recalled.  It serves the double function of making us feel at the same time no more than a small part of something much larger, and a different generation with different needs and questions.  One hundred years ago, Church life was different.  Like much else, it was more accepted.  The scars of the twentieth century’s two World Wars were yet to make themselves felt, not only in the lives of the millions who suffered and those who died, but in the collective memory of Europe itself, where nowadays authority of any kind is often sharply questioned in a way far distant from the more deferential Edwardian era of 1904.  Unlike so many of these kinds of occasions. the Church here in Alverstoke is not marking this particular centenary by softening up the local community in order to prepare for a fund-raising venture of some sort!  I am told that this really is a festival, a celebration, which will lead into all sorts of other events: involvement of the nine schools in the parish; organ recitals, and other musical feasts; sports events of various kinds; a pet service in October (please don't invite my two border terriers – that is unless you are prepared to call in the police, counter-terrorism, and MI6 as well!); and next month is the 800^th anniversary of the granting of a Charter to Gosport by Bishop Godfrey de Lucy.

Our forebears were indeed wise to leave the tower until the last, first building  the chancel, which was completed in 1865, and the nave twenty years later in 1885.  Whenever I come into this church, I am struck by the way in which the eye is led, without any effort, to the cross in the decorated stone-work behind the high altar.  Here, like the tower, is beauty with bold simplicity.  There is no self-conscious desire to over-state.  The architect knew how to get maximum impact from resources which were not lavish, or, by the standards of the age, expensive.  I suppose that is one of the reasons why on those journeys from the Island, I always link that cross with the tower.  Both works of art seem to be saying, not ‘here am I, look at me’, but ‘here am I, look beyond’.

Tonight’s two readings underpin that golden rule of faith.  It is a faith that has grown beyond the first stirrings of self-consciousness, to a sense that whatever we achieve, or fail to achieve, in this life, we are in the hands of a God both infinitely greater than ourselves, yet who is calling us in our generation both to seek and to serve him now.  We are only a paltry part of something much bigger than ourselves.  But we are also called to listen to the questions which are being placed before us, not fifty years ago, but today – which is one of the reasons for the KAIROS process in the diocese, where we look at our world, and at our Church, and then make plans for the future.   That was, after all, Jesus’ great and unique gift.  In the gospel-passage he turns the tradition of Jewish family culture on its head (‘Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother’ – Mt 12:50) and challenges us to look beyond the confines of our own homes for meaning, for truth, for forgiveness, for the capacity to pick up life’s fragments and then to make sense of them.  Jesus is not decrying the nuclear family: he is just saying that it can suffocate, it can limit, it can stifle growth, it can exclude.  We need to look beyond it, if we are to be part of the new kind of family of his disciples.   Whenever I meet a group of confirmation candidates these days, I am struck by exactly that: the age-range will be unpredictable, the stories that people bring will vary, and there is a sense of crazy diversity – a long way from the twelve-year old ‘passing-out parade’ of a previous generation; it is the sign of a very healthy, humble and questing church.

Then there is the strong but sublime image of the shepherd at the end of the book of the prophet Micah, whose writings date from around 700 years before the birth of Christ.  The passage in question has a lyrical quality which suggests that it was used in temple-worship.  The Lord will indeed ‘shepherd his people with his staff’ (Micah 7:14)  – which suggests not just public, visible leadership, but the occasional challenging prod from behind, as well as the less welcome experience of being drawn back into line.  If this is the kind of God we both seek and want to serve, then that process will come at some cost: not the cost of our integrity, but of our natural desire for independence and autonomy – a hard sacrifice for an age which prizes both so dearly.  But we can only find true independence when we realise how much we need others; and we can only be really autonomous when we recognise the place of other people on this rather crowded, confused and violent planet.   And as if to ram these points home, the Church calendar provides two challenging and little-known figures for commemoration on July 20^th.  Margaret of Antioch, sometimes called Marina, gave her life for the Christian faith near the start of the fourth century – refusing right to the end to compromise herself.  Then we have Bartolomé de las Casas, who died in 1566, a radical Spanish Bishop who worked as a missionary in Mexico, he is remembered for championing the cause of the local indigenous population who were often treated appallingly by the Spanish colonists.

To build a tower requires not only foundations but a plan – like an author working at a book, a composer putting pen to paper to express the sounds that they can already hear, or the dancer on fire with movement that nothing else can express.  That tower, like our faith, sits at the point of tension between human yearning for justice, righteousness and truth and the heavenly reality of God himself.  Let them both rest at that point of tension, the tower, and our faith, for, in the words of St Augustine, describing his conversion to Christianity from all the philosophies and faiths available to him in the religious market-place of his time: ‘our hearts are restless, until they find their rest in you.’

+ KENNETH PORTSMOUTH