Easter 4 2026

[A sermon for a service for the re-dedication of tower and bells, Bepton St Mary’s.]

John 16.5-15

When, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.

The New Testament uses the word “truth” a lot; ἀλήθεια in Greek—over one hundred times, in fact, and only seven times fewer than it uses the word “love”, ἀγάπη. Christians are, and have always been, obsessed with truth. This comes as a surprise to some sceptics, who might insist—not entirely unreasonably—that Christians and, perhaps, religious people in general, are not interested in truth at all. And they will cite various historical examples in which the Church certainly comes across as the enemy of truth; quite to the contrary, the Church ends up as a purveyor of falsehoods. Of course, to some sceptics, the purveying of falsehoods is itself the whole truth about religion anyway. 

I think this is quite unfair, of course; but then again, you’d expect me to say that, what with being a religious professional. In popular histories of science-and-religion, we remember the Church’s persecution of Galileo, and shenanigans, more in the US than here, over evolution. But we forget to mention that Copernicus himself was a canon at his Cathedral; Lemaître, the Belgian physicist who first proposed the Big Bang Theory was a priest; Roger Bacon, who arguably invented the modern scientific method, was a Franciscan friar; Mendel, the father of genetics, an Augustinian friar like the current pope. There are, of course, mitigating factors: back then, in medieval Europe, few other than churchmen had the means to do pioneering science. But for every historical game of blame and praise, there are always mitigating factors. That applies to Galileo and Darwin too.

But we don’t have time for my lecture on the history of science and religion, as fascinating as that subject is, at least to me. I want to say something instead, on this occasion, about the Church as a preserver, even a conserver of truth. The Church is, perhaps unlike the scientific community, not really in the business of discovering new truths, as exciting and worthwhile as that enterprise is. Rather, it is a conservative body [with a small C; don’t get too excited, Andrew], whose work it is to hand down, from generation to generation, what we call the deposit of faith, the gospel truth that we have ourselves inherited from our forebears since the days of Christ’s ministry, death, and resurrection. The etymological root of the word “tradition” is to “hand over”. 

We are, in that sense, not particularly interested in whole new moral and metaphysical truths. We don’t deny that there are, or can be, any. But for the most part, we leave that to other people. In every age, we might find cause to rearticulate these old truths, because the old words and images might not work so well anymore, and that is itself a sort of creative work. All the same, the main concern is to remain faithful to what we have been given. 

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Our ancient buildings are an expression of all this, of course. These ancient—and, frankly, inconvenient and expensive—buildings could easily be demolished, and a new church built, more in keeping with contemporary fashions; or, better yet, at least to the aforementioned sceptics, we could replace the church with something else—a gym, an ATM, a pub—something more useful, more popular. But we, the Church, remain stubbornly insistent on maintaining these old things. They are not exactly what they were when they were built, and we can see around us now, evidence of evolution: but what we see also is essential continuity. Faithfulness, as well as moving forward with the times. Our architecture reflects our theology.

And in this church in particular, which is never locked, always open to anyone who wants to come in, to say a prayer, seek some peace, find refuge from whatever assails them; here at St Mary’s, our building’s openness is also a parable in stone, of that essential message that is the Church’s to hand down in perpetuity and also to proclaim to all who are willing to hear: the message of God’s own hospitality, who loves and therefore welcomes all into the kingdom whose very law is love, which calls us to lives of mutual self-giving for the good of each other and of all.