Warden’s Blog – Building on Firm Foundations
The following is a transcript from the Warden’s sermon on the first Sunday of the year.
Three weeks ago, down in Carlow, a stolen car with five young men in it was driving fast up the wrong side of the motorway, filming their prank to post on TikTok, when it collided with a car traveling in the opposite direction. All five of those young men were killed and the four people in the other car, driving to the airport to fly to a family wedding, were very seriously injured. These young men were all known to police and the incident was sadly predictable.
On 22nd August in Middlesbrough, in the north of England, something almost identical happened. Five young men with a long string of previous convictions, stole a car and drove the wrong way up the motorway, where it collided with a police car with two police officers in it. The five young men all died and so did the two policemen, who left young families behind them.
On Friday, two days ago, schools in Middlesbrough were closed early, because there was a huge funeral for one of those young men and police were afraid that of the anti-social behaviour that would surround it, as a huge crowd turned out to celebrate him as a hero.
Now, I do not want to judge any of those young men or that one young man in particular. I don’t know what sort of upbringing he had, what sort of family he came from or what challenges he had had to face. The death of any young person is a tragedy, but what saddens me is that there are so many people who thought of him as some sort of hero for the way he lived and died. To me that speaks of a society that has become unhinged from its moorings and whose values have been wrecked in the process. Maybe it is society itself that is driving the wrong way up the motorway.
Keeping hold of your values and beliefs in an ever-changing world is not easy but it is very important. If this is your first Sunday chapel at St. Columba’s and you are wondering why we are all wearing white surplices this evening, it would not surprise me. I will let the chaplain explain to you the tradition at another time…but tradition is not a bad thing as it helps to remind us where we have come from. As a school I like to think that we are very up to date in our teaching, in our facilities and in our pastoral care, but we also like to hold on to some of those things that make us different and unique and which remind us of who we are: gowns, surplices, hymns, prayers…and they are not just empty traditions but they still have relevance and value.
Gustav Mahler, the famous Austrian composer said, ‘Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.’
And Pope Francis said, ‘Tradition is not a museum; it is guarantee for the future.’
If you attend school here for 6 years you will attend chapel well over 1000 times and every time you do so it reminds us of our Christian heritage, the values that are part of that and the faith of our founders. Imagine a ship at anchor, floating steadily and safely on the ocean as the storm rages. It will not get wrecked because it is tied down and secure. Now cut the anchor and it will drift onto the rocks and be smashed to pieces. That is a picture of what happens to an institution, and indeed a society, when it abandons the truths on which it was founded.
There are lots of metaphors that one can use to describe the importance of having a firm foundation in life: maybe it is like a tree with deep roots that is able to withstand the strong winds; maybe it is like having a map that shows you the way through unknown an country; maybe it is like knowing your scales in music…they are pretty dull on their own, but if you don’t know them you won’t be able to play the more complicated pieces. They are the foundations which enable musicians to build high from deep roots.
At the end of Jesus’ most famous teaching in Matthew’s gospel, the Sermon on the Mount, he uses the metaphor of two people building a house. One takes a lot of time to dig deep foundations on rock, foundations which will last and enable him to build high and stay safe. But it takes time and is quite costly. The other one thinks that is pointless, time-consuming and expensive…he is happy to build on the sand and put down shallow foundations and he laughs to see his friend digging such unnecessary foundations and wasting his time and money. Then a storm comes and the inevitable happens: the house on the rock stands firm, while the house on the sand comes crashing down.
When you come to St. Columba’s we help you to build a house that will last through the storms of life…and there will be storms in the future if there have not been already. The house that we encourage you to build takes a lot of effort…it takes time and there are no short cuts…but I believe that every time you walk into this chapel you are making your foundations just that little bit deeper. And the house that you are building is built deep on the values of the College, which come from our faith, values of Kindness, Compassion, Inclusion, Determination and Responsibility. And they are based not so much on a religion but on a person, Jesus, the person that Christians believe was God in human form, who lived out those values in a way that no one else has ever done. Ultimately our foundation is built on him, a man who championed the cause of the poor and disadvantaged, who stood up against injustice and exploitation by the rich, who treated women with respect in a very patriarchal society and welcomed children to spend time with him, despite his disciples trying to keep them away from him. If our foundations are built on him, I think we are building in the right place.
Where are you building your foundations? If life is all about likes on social media, on a desperate attempt to fit in with the crowd, on admiration for the manosphere, on fashions and fads that are here today and gone tomorrow, created by AI algorithms which exploit your lowest instincts… you will be like those ships that are tossed about without an anchor, like a tree that has no roots…like a house built on sand. It will come crashing down. And isn’t it exhausting, all that comparing yourself to others?
A society that comes adrift from its moorings and forgets where it has come from…a society that abandons its values of respect for every single person, whatever their background or race or ability or disability…a society that allows its values to be chosen by algorithms and consigns its Christian roots to the history books…is a society that is approaching the rocks. That is why I believe so much in what we are doing here at St. Columba’s College, where we still endeavour to lay deep and firm foundations on a rock of faith that will not break or bend or let us down in the storms of life. If you haven’t done so before, I hope that this year you will learn to appreciate what takes place here and the security that it gives you in a turbulent and troubled world.
