Today we keep the anniversary of the dedication of this Cathedral, which took place 165 years ago.

Places of worship can be vulnerable, even to weather  but to worse than weather. We were reminded of that, very distressingly last Thursday, with the attack on the Jewish Synagogue in Manchester. We’re reminded of it often in Scotland – think of the great cathedrals of St Andrew’s and Elgin, the Lantern of the North, now well-tended ruins. In Nigeria since 2009, some 1,200 churches have been destroyed by Islamist terrorists. For very different reasons, the Church of Scotland is closing many of its churches throughout the land.

We can’t take churches for granted. That why they’re reasons for gratitude. And so it’s a very Catholic thing, in the first place to dedicate our churches to God – there is a liturgical rite for this, one of the most beautiful we have – and then to commemorate these dedications annually. Every year our calendars include the commemoration of the 4 major basilicas in Rome, the Lateran, St Peter’s, St Paul outside the Walls, St Mary Major, and then more locally we remember the dedication of our parish church, and – throughout the diocese – the cathedral.

What’s going on here? We can speak of the logic of the Incarnation. The Word, God’s Word, who fills the universe and goes beyond any possible universe, became flesh, God became man. A human being, body and soul, became a Temple – in the womb of Mary, in the crucified and glorified Christ. “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up”, says the Lord today. And so the infinite, uncontainable, unknown God became finite, contained, knowable, visible. St John can therefore speaks of what “we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked upon and touched with our hands – the Word of life.” God has downloaded himself, gone online, come close and we have access, connection, contact. And then, what was visible in our Redeemer hasn’t just disappeared back to heaven; it has passed over into sacraments. The logic of the incarnation, the pattern, plays out now in the seven sacraments, that go back to Christ and the apostles, and in the second circle of the many sacramentals that have developed in the Church’s history. The Word was made flesh and still dwells among us, in the Eucharist supremely, but in many other ways too. And our churches, strong but vulnerable, are part of this ongoing presence, the sign-language of God’s closeness to us. They are sacramentals, these dedicated buildings, and in them Christ meets us and we him. Thanks to the Incarnation bread and wine, water and oil, words and rituals, statues and icons, music and incense, wood and stone, bricks and mortar can all speak to us of God’s ongoing presence with us, Emmanuel. Like Christ, Christianity lives in the world, engages with the world, politically too, suffers in the world, declines and revives, dies and rises. “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up.” That’s true of Jesus and true of the Church. And true of our churches too. They too convey the good news of the Gospel: God is with us.

So when we keep the anniversaries of our church, when we gather to pray in them, when we care about them and maintain them, and reverence them, we are remembering this pattern, this logic of God’s love taking flesh among us. We are touching the hem of his garment and being healed.

And there’s one more step isn’t there? Why did the Word become flesh, why the Incarnation: that we may be incarnations too. Why sacraments and sacramentals, that we may be sacraments ourselves: signs and instruments of him. Of course, there are distinctions to make; we can leave them to the theologians. We are not God in person, but we are made in his image and likeness. We exist to contain and communicate him. He becomes the Eucharist, so we can become Eucharists. And if we have buildings and temples to gather in, it’s because, as St Paul says, “You – that’s us! – are God’s building.” Don’t you know, he asks, “that you are God’s Temple, and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”

This is true of us collectively, as the Body of Christ, and true of us individually too, as members of Christ.

Here’s the first line, and the last lines from a gem of a poem by an American poet, e.e. cummings:

“i am a little church (no great cathedral)…

i am a little church (far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish) at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)”.

Yes, when we remember our churches, we remember who we are. In Isaiah’s sweeping vision, we are the foreigners who have been joined to the Lord. We have been brought to his holy mountain, his Church. There we learn to be his servants and offer our lives on his altar. There we become a house of prayer for all peoples. “I am large; I contain multitudes”, said another American poet; when we pray, we do. The God of Israel, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is bringing people, here and now, to his holy mountain. It’s this great mystery of God’s transforming grace our churches incarnate and sacramentalise, and serve. In celebrating them, we celebrate Him among us and in us.

St Mary’s Cathedral, Aberdeen, 5 October 2025