Dedication Festival

A Sermon preached by the Precentor, Canon Anna Macham
Sunday 28 September 2025

Ephesians 2:19-end and John 2:13-22

Last week I met the Pope.  Well, to be fair, I didn’t meet him exactly.  Following a Papal Audience which I attended with a group of fellow Precentors from other cathedrals across the UK whilst at our annual conference, which this year happened to be in Rome, we were invited to wait for 25 minutes or so on the steps of St Peter’s in the Vatican sweating in our cassocks in the blazing late summer heat, before Pope Leo came over to our group, nodded and waved at us briefly in a swirl of Vatican cameras and media operatives, paused and had his photo taken with us, and then promptly moved on.

Our encounter with him was brief, but during that short time he must have been photographed dozens and dozens of times.  Observing him first at his Audience, which must have been attended by hundreds at least, if not thousands, and then in close proximity to our group surrounded by the cameras, I thought that he gave a new meaning to the word dedication – to do this every week, to meet and pray with and for so many, and address them, and be so intensely scrutinized and photographed, whilst maintaining such a pastoral air of calm and composure and patient humility, is dedication indeed.

Today, as you’ve heard, is our Dedication Sunday, a day to ask what it is that we are dedicated to. A Dedication Festival is about faith, the faith of the Church.  And in particular, it’s about remembering and reflecting on the dedication of a place of worship.  This year, here in Salisbury Cathedral, on our Dedication we focus not just on the consecration of the completed Cathedral building- including nave, transepts and quire – on this day, at Michaelmas, 767 years ago, in 1258, but also this year on an earlier dedication on this day in 1225, exactly 800 years ago, of the original altars in the Trinity Chapel, marking the start of any worship on this side.

There is much to be thankful for today, as we look back over 800 years of worship here.  Today, we remember those whose vision and faith resulted in this place where we, day by day, week by week, experience the presence of God. We remember too those whose care and skill maintain this house of prayer.  And today we remember above all that one of the truths of the incarnation, the fact that the word became flesh, becomes flesh, means that although we worship a God who is transcendent, universal, omnipresent, and all those other grand sounding words, we worship a God who is also located, who meets us in particular places, at particular times: who meets us, among other places, here in this Cathedral.

When we think of our dedication festival, we tend to think of the past.  The stones of this building speak of eternity, and of timelessness, a place apparently invulnerable to the whims of history, or the winds of change, and providing safe shelter and protection amidst the storms and transitoriness of human life over many centuries. This is true, but- as our Collect reminded us- this timeless tradition is one that is constantly evolving into the present, too. Inspired by our worship here, and strengthened by our personal prayer, we ourselves are to become “A living temple,” living, changed examples of God’s Church in the present, “no longer strangers and aliens,” according to the writer of the letter to the Ephesians in our reading this morning, but “citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God , building our lives on the solid foundation of Jesus himself, the “cornerstone” in whom “the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom [we] are built together spiritually into a dwelling-place for God”.

When the creators of New Sarum started building this Cathedral, they weren’t thinking of the past. They were thinking ahead to a new and exciting future.  It was rare to build a new Cathedral from scratch. Richard Poore, the former Dean and new Bishop of Salisbury, brought to this new Cathedral down in the valley a new mindset, a new philosophy and vision. With its innovative architecture and Gothic arches, its modern learning and secular spirituality, it brought a new liturgical pattern, the Sarum rite, whose elaborate processions would dramatically express the worship of God, renewing people’s faith and connecting them with eternity.

Of course, no place of worship is invulnerable to corruption or human error. It’s all too easy to think that sacred buildings- especially grand ones like this one that stand as a beacon on the horizon, drawing people to them, have a monopoly on the presence of God. This is a danger that Jesus warns against in our Gospel reading, where the chief priests seem to have become complacent, taking God’s presence for granted and assuming – it seems – that that presence means that they can do what they want.  Jesus, who in his person encompasses all that the temple stood for – for he is the temple of God not made with human hands- cleanses the temple building, which has strayed far from Solomon’s dedication of it as a house of prayer, and has instead become “a den of robbers”.

Our dedication festival reminds us of this building’s primary purpose, and the reason it was built in the first place, which is to be a place where God is worshipped, and where people turn to him. Cathedrals like this one were designed to evoke awe, and through the heavenly worship that took place within them, to lift our hearts to God. But the building also shows us that God isn’t just somewhere up above, out of our reach.  As we look down – deep down – into the waters of baptism in the font, we see ourselves reflected back in the soaring Gothic arches in the water. And whether its surface is disrupted or calm, we’re reminded that God is present with us in all our experiences and difficulties, and cares about the ordinary, everyday details of our lives.   God, by the incarnation and death of Jesus, is present with us, because through the waters of baptism, we have been buried with Christ in his death, and been raised to new and glorious heavenly life with him.

In his Papal address last week, Pope Leo reflected on the theme of rest, and on Jesus’ resting within the tomb on Holy Saturday following his death on the cross, after he completed the work of redeeming humankind. In an overly frenetic world, he reflected, the Gospel teaches us the importance of stopping, resting and trusting in the Lord. “We rush to produce, to prove ourselves, to keep up”, he said, and yet “the Gospel teaches us that knowing how to stop is an act of trust that we must learn to perform”.

Worshipping within ancient buildings such as this one also connects us with the bigger picture. As we reflect on the vision of the past, the beauty of this building and its worship reminds us, on this Dedication Sunday, and on every Sunday, to stop and allow ourselves to experience again with the awe of God. Our rest in God’s presence renews our trust in his love, enabling us to go out and express better God’s word in those places in our world where his glory seems less evident.

On this Feast of the Dedication, then, we give thanks that God is here. God is not constrained by these walls, but he is present within them; as we read the scriptures together and celebrate the Eucharist; as we learn more of what it means to be Christlike, and to live out God’s love in the world. Today we give thanks for over 800 years of worship and witness in this place. This is something we rightly celebrate, but history alone does not make a church a dwelling place of the living God. For that, we need a people formed by Christ, growing in his likeness and loving and serving him in the world and in each other. The chief priests in our Gospel thought they had God’s presence sorted, and became complacent. To celebrate the dedication of this house of prayer is to commit ourselves anew to recognising God’s presence among us, and letting God renew our trust in him, as he forms us into a people through whom his love is made visible.