Chaplaincy

A SERMON BY THE REVEREND SARAH STEVENS-CROSS

Celebrating the centenary of the Chapel of our Glorified Lord.

On 6 August 1996, I sat here in this chapel. Seventh formers and Old Girls gathered to celebrate the Chapel Festival. Bishop John Paterson as he was then, now Archbishop Emeritus – the 10th Bishop of Auckland, and Catherine Paterson’s dad, was preaching.

An Old Girl of the School, the Reverend Anne Moody, was presiding. Bishop John shared his delight at an Old Girl of the School presiding at the event. Perhaps, he said, there may be others among you here who may feel called to ordained ministry within the church too?

Bishop John had a habit of sowing seeds of calling among students at church schools and confirmation services. I heard him do it many times. He himself experienced a sense of call while a student at King’s College.

That day, I heard those words as though they were spoken directly to me. I considered them deeply, wondered if I might be up to the task and discussed them with the then assistant chaplain, Win Blyth, and promptly embarked on a gap year, a degree in geography and psychology and a career as a journalist.

It was a very long time before I realised, to the best of my knowledge at least, that there was not another girl in chapel that day who heard or even noticed this comment, let alone gave it another thought.

DARING TO DREAM

This chapel is a very special place. If these walls could talk, I am sure they would tell stories of countless vocations discovered by young women who first dreamed of being 'more than they ever imagined' in this very space. Countless stories of God’s love and encouragement sensed in tangible and intangible ways - of Olympians, world champions, medical professionals, scientists, teachers, administrators, lawyers, judges, advocates, social justice campaigners, parents, politicians, diplomats, designers, artists, architects, musicians, engineers and visionaries and leaders of all sorts, who dared to dream and imagine that they could make a difference in our world.

All those who have been inspired in large and small ways, to use their time, talents and resources for the common good, for the benefit of others and the good of our world – Ut Serviamus, ‘so that we may serve’ – through the regular, quiet discipline of gathering here to pray, reflect, sing and learn about their faith.

How many different ways has the prayer been answered, that we – who teach or learn in this school – may grow daily in the knowledge and likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ, be fitted for the service in life to which it would please God to call us – to loosely quote the school prayer? passion meets the world’s greatest need,” vocation can take many forms in our lives.

GOD’S CHOSEN ONE

This chapel was named The Chapel of our Glorified Lord. Its feast day is that of the transfiguration, the story we have just heard from Luke's gospel.

Jesus is up the mountain with his friends – close friends. They are praying together. As they do, God's glory is revealed in vision and in word. The appearance of Jesus’ face is changed and his clothes flash of lightning – what a moment of awe and wonder. Moses and Elijah appear with him – heroes of the Jewish faith. They speak about what is to come: his suffering and death in Jerusalem.

The disciples see Jesus’ glory. Peter is so moved that he wants to build a house for each of them and stay forever, but the mountain is enveloped in cloud. From the cloud they hear a voice, not unlike that which was heard at Jesus’ baptism from above, but this time from the very cloud which surrounded them: “This is my son, my chosen. Listen to him."

The voice of God affirms what Peter himself declared earlier in Chapter 9, that Jesus is the Messiah, God's chosen one.

The God we see here is both transcendent – a God out there – great and wonderful, worthy of our praise, and entirely imminent – with us and amongst us, closer than our very breath.

This is the God, encountered in this place, by generations of Dio girls, their families and staff, revealed in word and song, sacrament, scripture and prayer.

It is often said by Old Girls that the thing they miss most on leaving school is the chapel. There is something about the stillness of this place in the middle of the busy school day. There is something very special in the practice of coming together with others in prayer.

ARRIVING AS A STUDENT AND LEAVING AS A PILGRIM

In my later 20s, I had the incredibly good fortune to travel to St George's College in Jerusalem. St George's is an Anglican Theological College that runs shortterm study and pilgrimage courses for international students, so that they may better understand the geographical, cultural and historical context of the Bible lands.

I went as a student. There to learn about the places Jesus walked.

One place we visited was Mt Tabour – one of at least four places where the Transfiguration event might have taken place. The Bible tells us it was up a mountain – just not which mountain.

This phenomenon applies to many holy sites. It really bothered me at first. We would visit a place which may or may not have been significant in the Bible. What was the point of going, I wondered, if we didn’t know for sure where something happened? The tradition of Mt Tabour in lower Galilee has been around since at least the third century and it has been a place of Christian pilgrimage for many centuries.

The Church of the Transfiguration that stands there today was completed in 1924. But this structure was built on the ruins of an ancient Byzantine church (from the fourth or fifth century), and a 12th century Catholic Church built during the Crusader period.

As I gathered in the Church of the Transfiguration to share communion with my fellow students, I not only thought about our own school chapel, which had so shaped my faith, but I was profoundly moved by the realisation that this place was not just holy because something may or may not have happened here. Pilgrimage sites are holy because of the faithful prayers of pilgrims who have been coming there to pray, to remember and to give thanks for thousands of years.

I may have gone to the Holy Lands as a student, but I left as a pilgrim, profoundly changed by the experience of joining my prayers with the faithful cloud of witnesses who had gone before.

A LASTING SOURCE OF JOY

In a similar way, we join our prayers today with those who have gone before us. Speaking at the Consecration, Mary Pulling expressed her joy that this place would be “forever set apart,” standing as a message from the first generation to all generations, written in permanent brick and stone and marble, saying to those generations that “we believe in God.”

“This chapel,” she wrote, “will tell them that we believe in a God of beauty and of joy. It stands here in the very midst of the school a thing of beauty, and therefore a lasting source of joy and of an increasing sense of loveliness.”

And since then, day after day, week after week for 100 years, staff and students have gathered in this place to pray. This place set aside for the glory of God has been made holy by the hopes and dreams, exam worries and friendship strife, the heartaches, fears, disappointments and joys brought before God in silence or in tears, in word and in song.

How many Old Girls have declared their love for another in this place or brought their children, promising to share with them the faith they have themselves received? This chapel is sanctified by these actions and by their prayers. It is sanctified by our actions and by our prayer today.

Today we celebrate, we remember and we give thanks for all those who have gone before. And we look forward in hope and faith, confidence and trust, to the next 100 years, that in this place a new generation of young women may experience the beauty and the joy of God and be inspired, empowered and emboldened to ‘be more than they ever imagined’ in the service of our God. Ut Serviamus.

Reverend Sarah Stevens-Cross Dio alumna, Board of Governors member, Vicar of St Andrew’s Epsom