In Memory of 'Papa Joe' 1954-2015

The full text of my address in memory of Dr Joe Cassidy, Principal of St Chad's College. It was given in a shortened version.

I am honoured to give this sermon in memory of Joe Cassidy. I was among the many, the very many, who loved him. I still can’t take it in that he has gone from us, taken, I want to say, cruelly out of time when he had so much life to live, so much wisdom to impart, so many gifts to offer with which our lives would have been lit up in years to come. His family, Gillian, Emmeline, Marianne and Benedict whom he loved with a fierce and wonderful devotion, are in all our thoughts and prayers.

When I came to Durham twelve years ago, Joe was one of the first to welcome me. The Cathedral is St Chad’s nearest neighbour on The Bailey. He invited me to be its Visitor, and then its first Rector. He believed that a lively partnership between these two great Durham institutions could only be good for both. I have loved my roles in the College, thanks not only to its warm, generous hospitality but also to Joe’s personal kindness and gift for friendship.

Joe had been a distinguished Catholic philosophical theologian and ethicist whose fine mind was already recognised in awards and prizes gained in undergraduate and postgraduate days. His specialism was the thought of the twentieth century Jesuit theologian and fellow Canadian Bernard Lonergan. He joined the Society of Jesus and was deeply shaped by the clarity and focus of the Jesuit way. He became a gifted and much valued retreat conductor and spiritual director. Accompanying others on their spiritual journeys was close to his heart all his life.

It’s not unknown for Jesuit priests to become Anglican, A catholic Benedictine who makes the same journey finds, I think, a natural home in this church so influenced by the Benedictine ideal and, of course, with its own Benedictine communities. There are no Jesuit communities in the Church of England, probably because the Order was explicitly founded as a Counter-Reformation organisation. Many Anglicans today practise the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius guided by directors trained in the Jesuit tradition. Joe and I often talked about these things at College high table. I mention this because Joe brought spiritual insights into Anglicanism that as a temperamental Benedictine myself, I found stimulating and refreshing. In some ways he never stopped being a Jesuit in his energetic outward-facing openness to the world, his attention to the interior life, his mentoring and spiritual guidance, and the spiritual, social and intellectual vision he brought to St Chad’s.

As an Anglican, Joe contributed significantly to the councils of the Church of England, including the General Synod where he and I would sit in the back row and commiserate about the Byzantine processes of ecclesiastical decision-making. He championed theological education and formation in the national church where he looked for seriousness, rigour, Christian wisdom and well-earthed familiarity with ordinary human life. I wonder if his own intellectual acuity as a theologian was sufficiently realised. In 1997 he came to Durham as Principal of St Chad’s. If he thought that being head of house in a Durham college would allow lots of time for leisured literary and scholarly output, reality quickly set in. Running a college  nowadays is an all-consuming enterprise. It is to Joe’s enormous credit that he succeeded in stabilising St Chad's which was then going through demanding times. His prodigious energy always in the fast lane, his practicality, his capacity to solve problems, his sheer appetite for hard work were all important aspects of his leadership.

It was a joy to watch the college flourish. It’s true that the fortunes of any institution are not simply down to the person who leads it. Next weekend I say farewell to Durham Cathedral after twelve years as Dean. I am profoundly aware that whatever our achievements, the right pronoun to use is not ‘I’ but ‘we’. You can’t be a leader in the church or higher education unless you understand that every institution these days is an organisation of consent. Collaboration and teamwork are fundamental; old-fashioned command-control techniques won’t work and aren’t respected any more. Joe would be the first to ascribe St Chad’s successes to the teams he led and was justly proud of. But leaders identify directions, inculcate values, set the tone, are influential in aligning and shaping their communities. Joe never wavered in his energetic pursuit of these goals. For him they were an act not just of duty but of love.

If you ask Chad’s students and alumni what they will remember ‘Papa Joe’ for, they will tell you about his wisdom, his warmth, his quick-witted love of repartee and his intellectual liveliness. He thought and spoke fast: you had to keep up. You will also hear about his belief that a higher education institution like a Durham college should – indeed, must – be a living community of human beings in which people care about one another and about the world they are part of so that everyone can flourish. This was the kind of college he set out to shape at St Chad’s: a humane society in which wisdom, truth and social justice are cherished. In this, he was brilliantly successful.

I last sat with Joe at the Domus Dinner in March. For some strange yet providential reason that only made sense after Joe had died, a number of us there, students, staff, alumni, wanted to pay special tribute to Joe’s leadership. Some of us decided we would get up and say something that evening. I’m so glad that just before he died Joe was able to hear these tributes expressed publicly on that lovely occasion and that he could know how much he was honoured and loved. In his modesty, he did not want to make too much of it. Self-deprecation was more his style, arising out of his genuine humility, always a beautiful quality but especially in those who lead.

Joe belonged to this Cathedral Foundation as a member of its College of Canons and Council. He loved this place and valued his own as well as the College’s connection with it. He could challenge as well as affirm us, but you always listened to what he said, whether it was to do with the Cathedral’s values statement, the Open Treasure project or arising out of his close scrutiny of the annual accounts. When Chad’s were here for the College Day service in March, at the end, he suddenly produced from nowhere a green College hood and invested me with it, saying that the Council had resolved to make me a life-fellow as a sign of the importance it attached to its relationship with the Cathedral. ‘Now this relationship is for life’ he said and gave me a fond embrace. Looking back, how moving that was for me personally, and how poignant.  

Si monumentum requiris, circumspice. ‘If you want a monument, look around you.’ So runs Christopher Wren’s famous memorial in St Paul’s Cathedral. What will Joe’s monument be? Talk to Chadsians across the world; or look into the life of this remarkable community for yourself. It’s written on the hearts and lives of the men and women he served so devotedly – and loved. And I believe this is because of what he fundamentally believed about God and about humanity. His beloved Lonergan wrote about what it means to be created in the image of God. Such a person practises ‘total surrender to the demands of the human spirit’ – others’ and his own. ‘Be attentive’ he said, ‘be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible, be in love.’ And always cherish and honour the mystery at the core of human life for, as Pascal said, the great thinker to whom Lonergan owed so much, ‘the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.’ This was Joe.

‘Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.’ St John’s grasp of the central insight about human life, how everything is transformed by our capacity to be loved and to love lies, I think, close to the centre of Joe’s view of things. It inspired him to be as he was. It inspired us who saw it in him. You knew that his God was as St John says he is: ‘God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.’ This was his way, his truth, his life.

Thank you Joe for everything you gave us. May you rest in peace, and rise in glory.

Durham Cathedral, 19 September 2015 (1 John 4.7-16; John 14.1-7)

Floreat Dunelmia!

1414. Henry V had come to the throne of England the year before. The year after came the Battle of Agincourt. There was a Council of the Church at Constance to sort out who should be elected Pope. An obscure alliance called the Parakeet was founded by European princes to defend themselves against a common enemy. But these are nothing compared to the event we celebrate today: the founding of Durham School 600 years ago by Thomas Cardinal Langley. It always moves me to see Durham School students at his commemoration in November when flowers are laid on his tomb in the Galilee Chapel.

We say that Langley founded our school, but that may not all of the truth. The founder of my Oxford College, John Balliol, was a Durham man, and he said he attended a School here as long ago as the thirteenth century. It’s clear that for as long as there has been a Cathedral, education has been at the heart of its mission. The grammar school, now Durham School, and the song school, now the Chorister School, both belonging to the Foundation, were two aspects of this. The Cathedral Priory founded a college in Oxford to educate its monks. The library was, still is, legendary for its manuscripts and early printed books, many of which still survive here. The monastery took scholarship seriously: the Rule of St Benedict required that the monks spend one third of each day in study alongside prayer and work. What Langley did was to establish the school as a community of learning with its own identity and resources. And this was necessary if it was, in the words of the school motto floreat Dunelmia, to flourish (so much more upbeat than my own school motto which is paulatim sed firmiter – ‘slowly but surely’; I have always been one of life’s plodders).

This service, however takes us even further back, to before there was a Cathedral here in Durham. The coffin that was processed in at the beginning of this celebration tells a longer story that begins on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne in the seventh century. From there, the monks carried Cuthbert’s body on a journey lasting more than a century until they ended up here at Dun-holm and built their first Cathedral round his coffin.This is the long march Durham School students have been making in the past few days: reminding us of that journey without which Durham Cathedral, Durham City, Durham University and Durham School would not be here. What Cuthbert’s monks brought with them to Durham was the memory of how learning had been cherished on Lindisfarne. When St Aidan founded the community there in the seventh century, he educated boys to become future leaders in church and nation – we know this from the writings of the Venerable Bede. So in a way, it is correct to say that the origins of Durham School, like the Cathedral, lie as far back as 1300 years ago.  

This great history that we celebrate on this 600th anniversary: how does it speak about the kind of school we are now, and want to be in the next 600 years? I think the answer lies in our two readings from the Bible. They both give the same message: remember those who have gone before you. Let them inspire you to do great things in the present and to embrace the qualities for which we admire them: their goodness, their loyalty, their faith, their generosity, their service to their fellow men and women, their wisdom, their sense of justice, their passionate love of God. ‘Their bodies are buried in peace’ says the Old Testament, ‘but their name lives on generation after generation’. Like Cuthbert, here in this Cathedral; like Thomas Langley; like Granville Sharp and other Dunelmians whose memory we treasure and of whom we are truly proud.

And this makes me ask a question: if a school is for the formation of young men and women, equipping them to become citizens of the future, what matters most in education? The statement about Durham School’s ethos says that it aims ‘to educate pupils in the very broadest sense…sound judgment and the exercise of moral courage are the cornerstones of this, developed through such attributes as tolerance, compassion, self-discipline, imagination, flexibility and resilience….It values and nurtures skills such as leadership, teamwork and intellectual reasoning which will enable its pupils to thrive in the twenty-first century world living life in all its fullness, but mindful always of the obligation to put back into society more than has been taken out’. It’s a noble statement in that it recognises how intangible values are as important as those that have measurable outcomes like academic achievement and sporting success. They have much to say about the kind of people we are going to be, and not simply what we shall one day do. This service is a good time to ask why we are here, what we are doing, what we aspire to in the years ahead. And we begin to answer those questions by looking back to our past, drawing inspiration from those who have gone before us, and striving to imitate them.

But there is a particular quality in the litany of the great and the good that the New Testament reading brings out. The writer emphasises how each of these Old Testament heroes looked into the future, filled with a hope that gave them extraordinary confidence and trust as they persevered to live and die well, often in extreme circumstances. Abraham, says the reading, set out on a journey ‘not knowing where he was going’. He ‘looked forward’ to the city that has foundations, ‘whose architect and builder is God’. That says to me that faith is focused on the future, on the opportunities tomorrow brings, on what God will do in the days ahead. ‘All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, indeed, he has prepared a city for them.’

Investment in people and institutions like ours is always an act of faith and hope. We give it everything we have because we believe in its worth. We believe that the fruits of that investment will be harvested one day – not by us, possibly not even known about by us, but by others who will find new reasons to be thankful for the education that Durham School gave its students. But ultimately, says the reading, there is one investment we must make that gathers up and crowns all the others, gives them permanent meaning and significance. It’s that little word ‘faith’. A sound education never neglects that spiritual dimension. It recognises the part faith plays in making us truly human. It helps us ‘look beyond’ as Abraham did, so that we see the transient trials and rewards of this life in a larger context. It prompts us to reach out for what lasts for ever: the grace and truth of the eternal God himself.

This is the faith and hope by which Aidan and Cuthbert lived and died, and Thomas Langley, and Granville Sharp and so many others beyond number. This is the foundation on which Durham School was built. Floreat Dunelmia! May our school flourish as we celebrate not only an illustrious past but also an unquenchable hope in the future that is both God’s and ours.

Sirach 44.1-10; Hebrews 11.8-16

What is education for? Celebrating 750 years of Balliol College Oxford

I am honoured to be speaking to you at this service of celebration. It is exactly 40 years since I left Balliol, armed with degrees in maths and philosophy, and in theology. In those far-off years, I did not give much thought to the events of the 13^th century that brought our college into existence. In particular, I did not think at all about its northern origins. To me, a Londoner, the north of England was an unknown region, a distant, cold and sooty place, not blessed with the mild climate and mellow limestones of Oxford. It was not until I went to live and work there as a Northumberland parish priest that I began to appreciate its beautiful landscapes, its heritage and its genuine, hospitable communities.

Ten years ago I went back to the North East, this time as Dean of Durham. The whole world seems to love Durham Cathedral, and with good reason. My interest in the college’s North Eastern origins was awakened. The name Balliol is everywhere around Barnard Castle County Durham, for the family had large estates there. The neighbouring landowner was the Bishop of Durham whose palatine powers made him a not-so-petty monarch in the lands between the Tees and the Tyne. Somehow, these two got across each other. The story goes that in the 1250s, some of John Balliol’s retainers seized estates claimed by Bishop Walter de Kirkham. He in turn excommunicated them whereupon Balliol laid an ambush for him, subjected the kidnapped bishop to unspecified indignities and carried off part of his retinue. The bishop, supported by King Henry III, demanded reparation. So Balliol had to prostrate himself before the bishop dressed in penitential garb on the steps of my Cathedral. And here is where today comes in: the bishop required of Balliol a substantial act of charity: to endow a house for scholars at Oxford. This he did 750 years ago, in 1263.

The bishop died in 1260 and is buried under the floor of the Norman chapter house at Durham Cathedral. Several times a day, I walk across him as I process into services. I trust I do this in a spirit of piety, thankful for the penance that led to the founding of our college, one of Oxford’s oldest and, I need hardly say in this company, one of its greatest. By 1263, the year of the college’s foundation, universities in the sense we understand them had been established across Europe. But since the 11^th century, Durham Cathedral Priory was itself acquiring the reputation of being one of England’s great centres of learning with its legendary library and its large scholarly community of Benedictine monks. Bishop Kirkham himself patronised these developments. So Balliol, with its next-door neighbour which, to avoid the T-word I had better call Durham College because it was originally founded under that name by the monks of Durham, were both communities of learning that originated in the North East with links to its proud scholarly traditions.

The rest, as they say, is history, an honourable and at times glorious one. We have been right to celebrate it during this anniversary year and coming here to thank God for it today. The contribution our college has made to the intellectual life of the nation, especially since Benjamin Jowett’s mastership in the 19^th century, is something I don’t need to rehearse today. Instead, I should like to ask what it means to be a ‘community of learning’ in today’s era, so different in every respect from that that of our founding father and mother (for we must not forget the vital part played in the early history of the college by Devorguilla, John Balliol’s devoted wife).

The academy is of course a community of research, and of teaching and learning. In our knowledge-based economy, these things count for a very great deal. In particular, university education in a research-led environment inculcates the values of lifelong curiosity and rigour without which learning can never make a real difference to the way communities and individuals learn how to think. If anyone asks me what use a degree in maths and philosophy has been to my chosen vocation as a priest in the church, I reply at once that it taught me how to think well, how to express myself coherently, how to be at least semi-articulate in the different thought-worlds my work has taken me into, how to show an intelligent interest in other disciplines where my actual knowledge is little or non-existent. I doubt if I have often  invoked formal logic, topology, recursive function theory or Abelian groups in my day-job. But I owe them an incalculable debt, as I do to those who did not so much instruct me in them as helped me to learn them – yes and love them - for myself.

But I believe we need to understand the academy in more holistic ways than simply the training of the intellect. The medieval disciplines of the trivium and quadrivium which Balliol scholars learned in the college’s medieval centuries, cast their net wider. The study of grammar, logic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy and music together imparted the perspective that human beings inhabit a large, mysterious and complex universe, and the properly educated student, on taking a degree, becomes, so to say, a grown-up citizen of that world, at home in its mystery and complexity. And one of the lessons that the study of theology in the middle ages inculcated was that to find our place in an often baffling world, what is needed is not just knowledge but wisdom. And wisdom, in the spiritual traditions of all the world faiths, is not only a matter of the mind, but of the whole person, or as the Bible speaks of it, the heart. It is about the formation of identity and character in both people and societies.

So what heart-work, as Rilke called it, do we need to do as a college and as its members, in which of course I include all of us who are proud to be alumni?  In other words, what is education ultimately for? Our founding traditions suggest that it is this cultivation of wisdom. As it says in Benjamin Jowett’s translation of his beloved Republic, ‘first among the virtues found in the state, wisdom comes into view’. Christian moral theology sees wisdom as the summation of virtue, expressed in the cardinal virtues of justice, prudence temperance and fortitude and in the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. These shape what it means to live well, for the wise understand what life requires of them and charts a course that will enhance human dignity against all the corrosive forces that would diminish it. In the New Testament, Jesus speaks about the values that belong to the kingdom of heaven and which he calls his followers to embrace now. In the Hebrew Bible, King Solomon prays at the outset of his reign for a ‘wise and understanding heart’ so that he will know how to govern ‘this great people’, discern what it means to be a guardian of all that ennobles human life. And when those same scriptures, in a classic wisdom text in the Book of Job, asks where wisdom can be found, it embarks on a long search that scans the ends of the earth before concluding: ‘the fear of the Lord is wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding’. Find your place in creation, he says, by letting it teach you humility, reverence, worth, a good conscience, a sense of the divine.

Humanity faces huge challenges if our race is to prove capable of surviving the threats that face it. Climate change, simplistic politics, radical fundamentalisms and the terrors they spawn, the risk of collapse in our global financial systems not to mention the poor who are always with us: even far-seeing leaders like Jowett could not have glimpsed these futures, let alone John Balliol, Devorguilla and those who bequeathed us our college.  But perhaps the values of self-awareness, moral and spiritual intelligence, the ability to see into the life of things and understand the vicissitudes of human existence, in short, wisdom - perhaps these may yet save the world if we succeed in embedding it into our social, political and personal lives. As a person of faith, I believe these values to be ultimately God-given: Christ himself is called in the New Testament both 'the power of God and the wisdom of God'. Which is why, when the big storms break against the shores of our complacency, we need to cry, like the sailors at the beginning of The Tempest, ‘to prayers, to prayers!’.

In its first seven and a half centuries, Balliol College has added incalculably both to the world’s intellectual capital and its social, ethical and spiritual capital too. It has helped make it a better informed, a more deeply aware, a more compassionate, in short, a wiser place. This God-given work that builds up nations, societies and people in wisdom continues confidently as the college moves into the next three-quarters of a millennium. We gather today to celebrate the lasting achievement of our founders who came out of the north 750 years ago. On All Souls Day we remember them and our benefactors down the centuries since, and all who have helped make Balliol College the flourishing institution it is today.  More personally, we recall with gratitude all in this college who have played a part in forming and shaping us as human beings, helping to train our minds and hearts for the service of his kingdom of justice, truth and peace. It is right and good to celebrate today.

St Mary’s University Church, Oxford, 2 November 2013
1 Kings 3.3-14; Matthew 5.1-12

You can see a video recording of this sermon at

http://www.voicesfromoxford.org/video/sermon-by-michael-sadgrove-at-a-service-of-thanksgiving/303

 

At St Chad's College Rector's Feast

Welcome to the St Chad’s College Rector’s Feast.

I’d like to join with the Principal and congratulate all of you for your outstanding achievements, not least in this year’s exam results.  It’s right to be celebrating success at this feast  as the year comes to an end. What I hope we all celebrate is success in the widest sense: the satisfaction of having travelled well for another year, having learned and grown in knowledge and our insight, deepened our relationships and enriched our lives.

This week, Palatinate is carrying a thought-provoking article ‘How to survive as a non-Christian at John’s’.  It speaks about our neighbours at St John’s being tucked in between ‘the supposed party animals at Cuth’s and the tiny semi-secret society that is Chad’s’. John’s people, says the author, seem to be the only ones who don’t seem to make much of an impression, reputation-wise, on the rest of the university apart from a vague sense of us being ‘religious types’.

John's people will no doubt be mulling over this intriguing piece. But what the article doesn't say is that Chad’s like John’s is a Christian foundation. As Rector, I don’t have many onerous jobs to do in the college: I give my name to this feast and attend all kinds of nice occasions dressed in this splendid gown.  But when I was invited to take up this honour as titular Head of House, it was as Dean in the Cathedral to help safeguard the historic Christian identity of this college. I hope we all do this in a way that is inclusive, generous and welcoming to everyone of all faiths and no faith at all.

But I also hope that even if you are not a religious person, you recognise the Christian values of our college. Here are some of them: a passion for justice, integrity in our collective and personal lives, collaboration in a trusting environment, the pursuit of truth not just academically but in all aspects of life; curiosity not simply about our own academic disciplines but everything; practising kindness, friendship and care; living out of courage, not fear. It’s about being not only clever and intelligent (which you all are), but humane and wise.  I like those words.

Every college has its USPs, its unique selling points.  But Chad’s are remarkable because they have a lot to do with those values and how we live them out.  Whatever they may think at St John’s about our being a ‘tiny semi-secret society’, perhaps it’s true that this is not a college that makes a big splash, even when we achieve spectacular results as we have done this year. We don’t need or want to parade our achievements. They speak for themselves in a way that is utterly convincing. There is a quiet pride in what we do, and even more, who we are.  I find this understated modesty is hugely attractive, somehow true to the ethos both of this northern city and of our Anglican founding fathers.

But I know that the passion is there. For example, you have been exercised lately about the new random allocation policy for admissions to Durham colleges and have asked that this be looked at again. I think you have gone about this in a way that does you credit: you want to preserve the values and ethos of the college, and to be fair to all who want to come here. I don’t know where this story will end, but you have had the courage to engage and provoke a debate. It’s much easier to be silent than to speak, as I found to my own cost recently when I wrote a blog about fascism and football and was amazed what hatred it drew down.

This is not a formal after-dinner speech, simply a few words of welcome to my Rector’s feast. So let me end by saying three things very simply: 

First, thank you for all that you put into this College.  Thank you if you are leaving, and thank you if you are returning. You receive a lot from your university education and from this college because you give a lot.  That needs recognising, and now is my chance to say so.

Second, for those of you whose days at Durham are drawing to a close: I hope you don’t dwell too much on the word ‘leaving’. These Durham years have been part of a lifelong journey: your learning, your personal development, your membership of a wonderful community, your friendships, many of which will last a lifetime.  This college is a permanent part of that journey. It won’t simply become a glowing memory. You can take people out of St Chad’s when the time comes, but you can never take St Chad’s out the men and women who make up its worldwide family.  I hope you’re as proud as I am to belong to it. 

Third, come back often: you will always be welcome. Stay connected as alumni.  Let me wish you the very best for the future, wherever life leads you.  And I am going to add, may God bless you always.

St Chad’s College, June 2013

A Social Network: at a school commemoration day

Many of you have seen the film The Social Network about the college students who founded ‘Facebook’ in 2003.  I suppose my Cathedral should declare an interest: we have a Facebook page with (I believe) more fans than any other cathedral in the world.  When I first set up a Facebook account my children were pretty alarmed: they regarded it as their territory and didn't want me knowing too much about their lives. Well, even oldies like me are getting the hang of social media now. I admit it: I enjoy Twitter and writing a blog. It can be a powerful medium for organising ourselves to do good and make a difference to our world.

Social networking is about the longing we all have for connection, for communities to belong to, for relationships.  It says in Genesis, ‘it is not good for a human being to be alone’.  I am no expert on digital media, though I am intrigued by the way they are influencing our lives more and more - for good or ill.  What kinds of relationships happen in cyberspace?  Does a community need to be face-to-face?  Can you have a virtual church, a club, an online party?

Jesus told a story about a man who wanted to network. He adopts the Facebook strategy which is to ask people you have never met and don’t know and have never even seen before to become your friends.  He does this because he is having a party.  He invites his family, friends, neighbours, business contacts.  But none of them wants to come, and they find every excuse not to: I’ve purchased land and must go and manage it; I’ve bought cattle and must see to them; I’ve just got married, so can’t come.  In the ancient world there’s only one thing worse than not offering hospitality yourself and that’s refusing to accept someone else’s.  Didn’t they like their host?  Were there old scores to settle?  We don’t know.

But this host is not to be outdone.  He tells his servant to go out on the streets and find anyone they can to come to the party.  He means anyone: the homeless, the diseased, the mad, the outcast, the poor.  The story says, compel them to come in, so that my house may be full.  This man will party come what may: so a bit like this weekend here at Giggleswick School, for what is speech day if it is not a great celebration of all that it has been and is today. And Jesus told this story as a picture of what God is like.  It turns out that God loves nothing better than a party.  In the Old Testament reading from Proverbs, God sets the world going and it turns out that to create a universe is an act of sheer playfulness. Worlds come into being and there is a cosmic party.  Jesus dispels all the old assumptions about God being a fierce, stern, vengeful deity.  He says: think again, see how a world you never dreamed of is full of happiness and joy.  That is what God is like.  We reckoned we knew what religion was all about: to make us all serious and solemn. But if we thought this we were wrong. Faith is to make us laugh and sing.  When we celebrate together, we glimpse something of the kingdom of God.  A bishop I once knew said: religion comes down to prayer and parties. When we laugh, perhaps we are close to the kingdom of God.

So this is a day of prayer and partying for our school.  I am very glad to share in it because there is a long connection between this school and Durham Cathedral where I am dean. When this school was first founded, it was on land that belonged to the Prior and Convent of Durham Cathedral. That was 500 years ago. I am not sure that you don't owe us several centuries of unpaid rent. But as we commemorate those far-off days, we want to give thanks for all that this school has come to mean to us and to those who have gone before us.  And look forward to the next half-millennium when, God willing, it will continue to go from strength to strength as a place of education and learning, of community and friendship: a social network, if you like.  That is a serious business and hard work, of course, but also, I hope, being a place where the words thank you are frequently on our lips, a place of wholesomeness and enjoyment where everyone flourishes, or to speak in the language of Proverbs, a place of recreation where we do what God does and bring new worlds into being. Just think of the way this school-shaped social network has had a lifelong influence of thousands of people across the centuries and across the world.

Why do we make this huge investment in education? Because nothing is more important for the future of our world than that we grow and flourish as human beings and take our place in the community as mature, responsible citizens. We call it ‘formation’, shaping us to become the men and women we have the potential to be. As a person of faith I believe that the spiritual dimension of human life matters deeply, indeed, is the foundation of everything else. Which is why we are here today, in this chapel that plays a vital part in the school's life. We are here to celebrate what we are as a school, and to offer its life and our own lives to the God who made us in his image. We are here to recognise that it's the Spirit of God who comes to make us a family of faith, a network or society of friends bound together by his gift of love, who leads us, as Jesus tells us, into all truth.

Our Cathedral was built as the shrine of the north's great saint, Cuthbert. The Venerable Bede, who died on this very day in the year 735, had a lot to say about Cuthbert in his writings. He sums him up as the kind of human being for whom loving others and loving God were what mattered.  You could say that it made him the man he became, and this is why he was remembered. He said yes to the invitation to come to the party, yes to the dream that there is a better way of living than simply being obsessed with ourselves.  He said yes to the idea that connection is everything: connection to the God who made us and loves us; connection to the whole human race we share this planet with; connection to the world of created things where we learn to know our place in God’s universe, the ultimate social network.

Whoever we are, we are his welcome guests at this party.  He wants nothing more than that we should be his friends.  That's why he made us: to come in and be part of his life of joy, peace and love. Our celebrations and the wellbeing they foster can be a symbol of these good things. I hope you all enjoy the party.

Giggleswick School, 25 May 2013
Proverbs 8.22-31; Luke 14.15-24