St Bene’t’s Patronal

The Rev’d Dr David Bagnall

Rector of St John’s Episcopal Church, Edinburgh

12 July, 2026

At present, I have the unenviable task of redesigning and updating my church’s website. And in the face of so great a challenge, I thought to myself: what use is there in reinventing the wheel? Why not go straight to the gold-standard of church websites – the pinnacle of the genre – and see how the professionals do it?

It was thus that I found myself recently scrolling through the well-formatted pages and calming mid-blue tones of a certain website known to many of you here: that of St Bene’t’s Church in Cambridge. And, what an experience I had, for, little did I know that, beyond the inspiration I might get for my own church’s website, I would also be in for a surprise – a treat, even.

For, there I was, flicking through the pages, when I saw, underneath a tab labelled ‘Community’ a page entitled ‘20’s & 30’s Group’, and, clicking on that page, to my great delight and surprise, I found myself greeted by none other than my own face, younger and markedly less lined, grinning inanely up at me. Indeed, looking a little closer, I saw, to my increasing joy, the chaplain of Corpus Christi College – the Rev’d Dr Rob Hawkins – slurping away at a chocolate ice cream. Looking closer still, I saw the Rev’d Rosie Hewitt, who currently ministers at Great St Mary’s and, to top it all off, my own wife, smiling alongside us all in the Cambridge sunshine. There we all were, in our twenties or thirties, enjoying an ice cream on King’s Parade having sung together, I think, in one of the contemplative evening services we used to run here.

I love that photo, not only because it features some of my great friends, but also because it captures a particular moment in the life of this great church. Many of you will, of course, have such moments of your own you can point to, whether in photographic form, or written form, or even simply in the form of memory; particular moments in the life of this church which capture something of its essence and identity. And, of course, with essence and identity in mind, one of the great paradoxes of a venerable old church like this is that it is at once both unchanging and constantly in flux.

What I mean by this is that, on the one hand, at what we might call a certain ontological level, St Bene’t’s is St Bene’t’s is St Bene’t’s, and has been for over 1000 years now. Just as a tourist may walk beneath its tower this afternoon, look up and say “oh look, it’s St Bene’t’s”, so a Norman soldier in 1068 could have walked beneath the self-same tower, looked up and said “Oh look, it’s St Bene’t’s”, before presumably bonking the local priest on the head and making off with the silverware.

And the point is that both Norman knight and 21st Century tourist would have been referring to the same thing. There is a particular category of being in time and space which is occupied by St Bene’t’s Church in Cambridge and nothing else, which both marauding Norman and Instagramming tourist refer to equally. And yet, on the other hand, St Benet’s’ is also a constantly shifting, constantly mutable, and ever-changing reality. The St Bene’t’s pictured in that photo of me and my friends already no longer exists, and some of you here I’m sure will have known many different St Bene’t’s’s over the years.

Existing as we do within time, this paradox of identity is present in almost any institution with a sizeable history, and can be discerned in many aspects of our lives as we experience them. It’s what lies behind the realisation, reached by all teachers, who find out sooner or later that every year they grow a year older, but that the students never age. It’s what lies behind the curious feeling of nostalgia one feels when visiting a house once lived in or a childhood haunt, and finds that everything is both the same and different at the same time.

And it’s the same of course, even with our own selves. At one level, you as a seven-year-old were as much you as you are today, and yet at the same time, almost everything about you is different now. We are creatures of time, and to live in any such system is to be subject to change, and provision, mutability, and even decay. This is our lot as time-bound creatures.

But what of God? What of that great unchanging inexhaustible source of all that is and which holds all things, even time itself, in being? Well, in strict theological terms, of course, God never changes. God is the great uncaused causer, the unmoved mover, that which exists beyond time and beyond therefore any possibility of ‘variation or shadow due to change’, as we heard in our epistle from James this morning. And yet as we have heard, we do change, and so although at the level of intellectual understanding we may know that God doesn’t change, our experience of God must do so. It’s in this sense that we can relate to God a bit like we relate to a church like St Bene’t’s: at once never changing, and yet always new whenever we encounter it.

The problem, however, faced with such a dynamic, is that there can be a great and understandable temptation for us to resist any change in our relationship with God. Faced as we are with a world of constant flux, in which all things are subject to variation and shadow, the temptation for people of faith can so often be to preserve our faith as it were in aspic; to resist the natural transformations that will happen within faith, and to cling to earlier perhaps simpler assumptions regarding God and his activity in the world. This is entirely understandable, of course, but it perhaps less than the natural, life-giving, growing relationship with God to which we are called. Our epistle from James this morning teases out this precise point.

We worship, the author of the letter writes, ‘the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change’. And yet, he continues, ‘in fulfilment of his own purpose God gave us birth by the word of truth’. The word which the NRSV translates as ‘gave us birth’ literally means to bring forth or to grow, and so at the heart of this verse is the idea that in worshipping that which is unchangeable we ourselves are constantly changed and brought forth into being. To worship God, in other words, is not simply to change passively as we grow older, and to adjust our conception of God every few years to account for the growth, but actively to be changed, to be brought forth into being, by means of that relationship.

It’s not simply the case, in other words, that our changing bodies and hearts and minds will change how we experience God, but that in encountering the God who is beyond all shadow of change, we ourselves are changed. God is constantly calling us, constantly generating newness within us, constantly guiding and nurturing us into the people he created us to be.

There’s a wonderful poem by the metaphysical Anglican poet John Donne, entitled ‘Love’s Growth’, which explores this idea of growth and change within the dynamic of a loving relationship.

I scarce believe my love to be so pure

As I had thought it was,

Because it doth endure

Vicissitude, and season, as the grass;

Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore

My love was infinite, if spring make’ it more.

As Donne realises, and as the rest of the poem goes on to explore beautifully, it is in the dynamic of a loving relationship that we are changed and brought forth into being. Love itself actively changes us, even if the object of that love remains constant. Love itself actively changes us, even if the object of that love remains constant.

Today is the patronal festival of this wonderful church, and as we gather here in the ancient beauty of this holy place, it’s right that we give thanks for all that is constant and permanent and unchanging in the life of this great church. But as we ponder such constancy – as we marvel at the unchanging reality of St Bene’t’s over the past 1000 years – so we would do well also to remember that God’s call for this church has never been simply to sit and be, but constantly to be transformed anew.

To become, by means of encountering the unchanging source of all love, ever more loving; by worshipping the eternal source of all compassion, ever more compassionate, by drawing near to the eternal source of all that is beautiful and just and true, ever more beautiful more just and more true.

To be continually brought forth, in other words, into the church that God has always been calling it to become. My prayer for you today is that you would continue to hear that call of God upon you as a church, and that you would continue to grow ever more into that glorious future, which has always been at the heart of what St Bene’t’s was and is and is to become.

Amen.