Portsmouth Cathedral: Patronal Festival Sermon

Sermon by the Very Revd Nicholas Papadopulos

‘Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven’

For five happy years I was the Treasurer of Canterbury Cathedral, and when I left that post,  six years ago, I thought that my days of living around a place known to Thomas Becket were over. I was wrong. Two miles east of Salisbury through lovely farmland, accessible only by foot, stand the ruins of Clarendon Palace. Little remains of what was once a royal residence favoured by successive medieval kings. Although there is evidence of rooms and of the cellars underneath them, a fragment of just one wall still stands.

Fixed to it is a tablet on which these words are inscribed:

‘…here were enacted the Constitutions of Clarendon, the first barrier raised against the claims of secular jurisdiction by the See of Rome. The spirit awakened within these walls ceased not until it had vindicated the authority of the laws and accomplished the Reformation of the Church of England…’

The inscription was placed there in 1844 by the local landowner Sir Frederick Hutchison Hervey-Bathurst. His Wikipedia entry makes him sound like one of those gloriously eccentric Victorian aristocrats of whom we’ve all heard.  His principal claim to fame was as a cricketer. He played for Hampshire, the MCC, and the Gentlemen of England, a right-handed batsman and fast bowler. But alongside a first-class career of ninety-two matches he evidently took an antiquarian interest in the ruins that formed part of his estate, in the interpretation of the historical encounter that took place there - and in the rights and privileges of the Established Church.

For it was to Clarendon Palace that Thomas Becket rode in January 1164. He had been Archbishop of Canterbury for three years when he was summoned by Henry II to a Council of the most powerful men in the realm: the bishops and the great lords of England. At issue was where authority in the kingdom ultimately resided. Henry’s assertion was that the bishops and priests of the Church were accountable to him, under royal law, rather than to the Pope, under ecclesiastical law. In advance of the Council Thomas had been assured that this was a formality, that he needed only to assent verbally to Henry’s assertion.

But once he had done so, the King triumphantly produced a lengthy written schedule setting out in minute detail a host of new restrictions on the liberties of the Church. These were the Constitutions referred to in Sir Henry’s inscription. Having given his verbal assent to the King, Thomas had no choice but to agree the document. It was to become one of the greatest regrets of his life.

Power and authority - where they reside, how they are used, and how their use is overseen - these are resonant themes not only for our celebration of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, but for our nation and our world. We have cast our votes, and we have a new Government. Just across the water our French neighbours return to the polls today. And on the other side of the Atlantic the first televised debate of the Presidential campaign has provoked much soul-searching.

Sir Henry’s inscription invests the Constitutions with a far-reaching significance for the location of power in England, a significance of which he thoroughly approves. They were ‘the first barrier raised against the claims of secular jurisdiction by the See of Rome’: he understands them as the first steps in a historical process which culminates 400 years later in the reign of another King Henry and in the settlement established under his daughter, Elizabeth.

But that grand narrative will not have impinged on the consciousness of the bishops and lords who rode to Clarendon through the snow and ice of January 1164. The chroniclers record that the Council’s meeting was characterized by human emotions which are thoroughly recognizable: Thomas’s fear of what was being asked; the King’s fury at his hesitancy; the lords’ sycophantic desperation to please the King; the bishops’ dismay at the betrayal in in which Thomas was implicating them. Inscriptions – or headlines – may offer a lofty version of history, but as history unfolds perhaps it has more to do with the passions, neuroses, and obsessions of fallible human actors than with great impersonal trajectories.

Fear; fury; betrayal; sycophancy: this is the stuff that has fuelled the shifting dynamics of power in every age. In ancient Israel Elijah’s people abandon the worship of God and murder his prophets. A violent Roman execution outside the city gate occupies the mind of the author of Hebrews. Downing Street will have been full of fear; fury; betrayal; and sycophancy on Thursday night; the Elysee Palace will be brimming over with them today; so too will the White House and the Capitol in the weeks ahead. In the last resort these hallways of power – in the Ancient Near East, in medieval England, and throughout the twenty-first century world – these hallways are walked by vulnerable women and men like you and me, and power asks much of them.

Which is why as we celebrate this Patronal Festival on the first Sunday of a new chapter in our national life, and as we do so under the watchful eye of Thomas of Canterbury, our first duty is to pray for those who are taking up the reins of power this weekend. Perhaps this is a particular vocation of cathedrals – these great spaces that serve as common ground for our common life. We are not called to agree with our representatives, or to like them. We are called to uphold them in prayer, recalling the struggles of Thomas and of every person who walks the tortuous line between personal conviction and public expectation. We are called to uphold them in prayer, remembering their ineradicable humanity.

And we are called also to speak truth to them. Jesus promises to acknowledge those who acknowledge him, to acknowledge those who bear witness to his truth. But this part of our vocation is far less comfortable. Last month the then Leader of the Opposition wrote to the faith leaders of the UK. It was a good letter, citing the vital work that faith groups do to strengthen community and champion the spirit of service. But it did not acknowledge that from time to time it will be the duty of faith leaders to be critical of policy – to point to the gap that sometimes yawns between political expedient and Christlike example. Perhaps this too is a particular vocation of cathedrals, as centres of learning and teaching, of debate and exploration. We pray for those who lead us, and we are not be afraid to challenge them.

Sir Henry’s inscription speaks of the reforming spirit awakened within the walls of Clarendon. But perhaps another spirit was awakened there too. Thomas wavered, and then signed the Constitutions. He would not make that mistake again. Six years later he faced those who had come to murder him. He would not abandon his church, and he would not renege on the decisions he had made in its name. And so he died. May he inspire us; I trust he prays for us. For blessed Thomas, and this place under his patronage, thanks be to God.