Patronal Festival 31 Jul 2011

For most Sunday sermons, there are two main starting points, or ‘ways in’, for the preacher. One is the readings for the day, and the other is whether the Sunday in question has any particular significance in the Church’s calendar. Not exactly rich pickings in this case! Regulars among you may have been surprised at the brevity of the readings, and certainly a Gospel reading of only two verses might have a place in the record books. Moreover, these two verses from Matthew’s Gospel are not especially well known – interestingly they form an aside which Jesus speaks to his disciples in the middle of the parable of the sower, and curiously, whenever the parable of the sower appears in the Sunday lectionary, these two verses are left out!

So, that leaves us with the Church’s calendar. As you’re well aware, today we’re celebrating our Patron Saint, Anne. Anne and her husband Joachim are believed to be the parents of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and so therefore, Jesus’ grandparents. However, there is no mention of them in the Bible and the little we know about them is based in legend and tradition, and certainly more conjecture than fact, so their feast day, which falls on the 26 July – last Tuesday – and which we have transferred to today, is counted as a lesser festival.

At St. James’s Piccadilly we celebrated our patronal festival last Sunday – as St James’s day is on 25 July – the day before St. Anne. There are actually two St. James’s – the St James the greater and St James’s the lesser, and there’s some uncertainty over which is our patron saint, because as it turns out, the church wasn’t specifically named after wither one of them, but rather after the royal palace and a 17th century leper hospital. I was interested therefore, to discover that similarly, St. Anne’s church was not named after the saint but rather, in honour of the future queen who was the younger daughter of the Duke of York when work first began on the building in the second half of the 17th century. It was fitting therefore, that it was another Princess Anne who laid the foundation stone of our current church building 21 years ago, but clearly the church was not named with material for preachers in mind!

Nonetheless, let me share with you what little I have gleaned about St Anne. Interestingly she features more in the Eastern orthodox tradition than in Western Christianity and also in the Qur’an where she is recognized as a highly spiritual woman and the mother of Mary. Some traditions believe Anne was only married once, others suggest she had two further marriages after Joachim, with each marriage producing a daughter. Perhaps more reliable, although not authorized or included in canon, is the Gospel of James which relates that after years of childlessness, an angel appeared to tell Anne and Joachim that they would have a child. Anne promised to dedicate this child to God (much the way that Samuel was dedicated by his mother Hannah in the 1st Book of Kings). Tradition has that Joachim and Anne lived first in Galilee, and later in Jerusalem, where Mary was born and raised, and where Anne and Joachim died and were buried. Anne is the patron saint of women in labour, of women who have difficulty conceiving, of housewives, grandparents, and cabinet makers.

However, it doesn’t take a genius to read between the lines to realise that however neglected they may be in the annals of church history, Anne and Joachim clearly played a hugely important part in God’s plan. We’re all familiar with the famous story of the encounter when the angel Gabriel broke the news to Mary that she was to bear God’s Son. Mary’s response is staggering in both its simplicity and the huge courage and faith behind her “Yes.” In many ways she was a seemingly ordinary young woman, little more than a girl and yet surely much credit must go to the little known couple who raised the child who was considered worthy of bearing the Christ child. The Bible is frustratingly silent on so many of the details surrounding Mary’s pregnancy and the reactions it must have caused, but it’s difficult to imagine a young woman in Mary’s situation not turning to her mother for support at such an extraordinary time in her life. And no doubt, if Mary’s birth had been heralded by an angel, then Mary’s story of her encounter with Gabriel would not have seemed such a far-fetched notion to Anne and Joachim. Imagine the scene, the young Mary agonizes how to break the news to her parents that she is pregnant and wrestles even more with how to explain the mystical angelic visitation and is met not with shock, anger and disappointment and a lecture on how she has let the whole family down and ruined their reputation, but rather the simple and steady response, “We believe you”.

In Anne and Joachim we have a prime example of ordinary folk who lived quietly extraordinary lives of faith and service, who each used their particular gifts to the best of their abilities, but who have been largely overlooked and written out of history. They are in many ways, the silenced, the forgotten, and the omitted. Nonetheless, their lives mattered and they mattered to God. Our parish is one of great contrasts – behind, above and below the bright lights, sights, sounds and smells of this unique part of London are many ordinary folk, each with their own gifts, who are overlooked, who are vulnerable or needy, who feel isolated and invisible, who have no family, some have no homes, others feel silenced by the judgements and prejudice of others or even the church. They too matter to God. Part of our calling is to recognise one another as brothers and sisters, and to encourage and nurture one another’s gifts. Like Anne and Joachim, we each have a part to play in God’s plan.

Because of course, today, we don’t just celebrate our little documented patron saint, but also St. Anne’s, this church and this community which has been at the heart of Soho for over four hundred years and this year, we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the rebuilding and rededication of our church. And so our sentiments echo with those of the prophet Zephaniah in the first of our short Bible readings: “The Lord, your God, is in your midst . . . he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.”

This festival day, we come together at the end of period of extraordinary change to take stock and give thanks. We give thanks for this building, this oasis of prayer in the heart of this unique part of London; we give thanks for the church family here, which goes back generations, and for the wider family which forms part of the infrastructure of Soho – the Soho Community Centre Trust, Soho Parish School, the Soho Society, the House and Chapel of St Barnabas, our brothers and sisters at St. Patrick’s and Warwick Street, the West End Timebank, the Soho LBGT Community Forum, the French House and the Admiral Duncan, the Soho Theatre, to name but a few of the many groups, charities, organisations and businesses here in our parish.

Let’s return for a moment to today’s Gospel reading: Jesus is addressing his disciples when he says: “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. Truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.”

The disciples were ordinary everyday folk, in many ways less holy that Anne and Joachim. Many of them are not presented as particularly devout before they are called by Christ, but it is through their openness and willingness to be part of something new that they witness firsthand things which prophets and righteous people could only dream of.

And so today, we celebrate and give thanks for the importance of family and community, for the wisdom of grandparents and the elders in our community; and for the calling we share in seeking to serve and to build a relationship of mutuality and reciprocity between the church and the wider community, in which all people and their gifts are welcomed and cherished.

And so to celebrate both this patronal feast and this twentieth anniversary, we are now going to light three candles which represent the past, present and future:

As we gather together today we give thanks for the history of our church – for its original architects, Sir Christopher Wren & William Talman and those responsible for St. Anne’s as we know it today. We give thanks for all those who have played a significant part in the life of St. Anne’s through the ages, for previous rectors and priests-in-charge; for churchwardens and PCC members throughout the generations; for Bryan Burrough and Janet Vance. We light this candle in celebration of all that has been accomplished to the glory of God.

As we gather together today we give thanks for the present – for this twentieth anniversary of the re-dedication of our church. We give thanks time for reflection at this turning point in the life of St. Anne’s, and for all those giving so generously of their time, efforts and talents during the Vacancy. We light this candle and give thanks for this sacred space – and pray that God’s presence may be known and celebrated in this open, accessible oasis of prayer and community here in the heart of Soho.

As we gather together today we ask God’s blessing on our future, and for a strengthening of the bonds and relationships through which we can work together to build up our community. We pray that this may be a place where all are welcomed and valued, where folk from all walks of life can be themselves and depend on one another. Together we seek the way forward, each step forging new links, each dialogue opening further the channels of peace and understanding. We light this candle and pray that God will lead us into new ways of living, loving and serving one another.

A final prayer:

For Anne and Joachim,
For the roots of our faith and the roots of community,
for what we share together,
for the path that lies before us now
and our future in God’s hands,
we give God thanks and praise. Amen.