Romans 8.26-39, Matthew 13.31-33, 44-45, 51-52
The Seventh Sunday after Trinity, 26th July 2020
Austwick, Keasden and online
On the day that Clapham village school closed, the school leavers of 2020 planted a time capsule in Clapham village park. The capsule is due to be retrieved in 2050. Maybe one or two of this year’s ‘last-ever’ pupils will be around to take their children along to share in that revealing moment.
Into that stainless steel capsule the pupils put their memories and memorabilia; including something quite unique: extracts from their ‘Lockdown Diaries’, so that those who open the capsule thirty years from now will be able to read these children’s first-hand accounts of life in the season of coronavirus.
Introducing the ceremony Headteacher Adam Kay gave a brief history of time capsules, which have been around for centuries to preserve people’s history and capture people’s personalities, or the culture, the spirit, the concerns of the institutions which sponsor them. They also often speculate on the way that people will live in the future; and express people’s dreams and hopes for those who will come after.
When Zagreb Cathedral, Croatia was reconstructed in 1898 a time capsule was planted in the bell tower, carrying a message from the architect Herman Bollé, saying, 'When it is opened, let the Croats be a unified nation’. It was opened in 2013, by which time Croatia had been a sovereign state for 22 years. [1]
Time capsules capture the things people treasure - what is new and what is old; memories, hopes and dreams. Planting a capsule is a generous act, a way of reaching out to the people of the future and gifting those treasures to them. It’s an act of hope in itself, hope that when its contents are rediscovered its old treasures will be cherished for the windows they open on a world now past, and its new treasures - that is, its hopes and dreams for the future - may be realised. For reasons such as these I’ll dare to say that planting a time capsule is a way of praying.
In my home town in 1904 a stonemason Fred Bower surreptitiously placed a letter in a tin in the foundations of Liverpool Cathedral, a short time before King Edward VII laid the foundation stone over it, sealing it for posterity. Bower’s letter was addressed to a future society. Signed, “Yours sincerely, ‘A Wage Slave’” Bower described the "immense wealth” and the "abysmal poverty” of the then “second city of the mightiest empire the world has ever seen”, and of the poor working conditions of his fellow construction workers. His message encapsulated his hope that their descendants’ lives would, “compared to ours of today, be a happier existence.”
Fred Bower treasured his people, and cared about their lot in life with a passion expressed through his lifetime commitment to the labour movement. The secret of his letter was revealed in his autobiography published in 1936, and on June 27th 2004, as the cathedral was preparing for its grand centenary celebrations, a small group of people gathered by its foundation stone to commemorate the secret message in the tin. They laid a wreath in memory of the unknown number of workers who died during the 74-year construction of the cathedral, including those who fell victim to the stonemason’s disease, silicosis. Amongst them were members of the Merseyside Construction Safety Campaign, who channel the spirit of Fred Bower into their present-day struggles for safe working conditions. [2]
Time capsules hold the things people treasure - what is new and what is old; memories, hopes and dreams - and so they can be catalysts for change in the future world they address.
I’d like to invite you to take something away from here today. If I offer you an empty ‘time capsule’, what would you put in it? What of all those things and people you treasure would you want to preserve for a future generation to discover? What old things would you want to share with them? And what new things do you wish for, for those who will come after? What are your hopes and dreams for the coming generations?
This, I suggest, is a way of praying - of saying ‘thanks’ for the most precious things in our lives past and present, and of interceding for the future.
Notice how Jesus taught about the kingdom of heaven in terms of buried treasures. Often modest little things, but treasures nevertheless. The tiny mustard seed that someone put into the ground and which grew into great tree, a nesting place for the birds of the air. The yeast that a woman mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened. The treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he went and sold all that he had to buy that field. The one pearl of great value a dealer discovered after a long laborious search, and went and sold all that he had to buy it.
The kingdom of heaven is Jesus’ way of describing how God meets us in the world. Always there but often hidden, waiting to be revealed, longing for us to search for him.
The kingdom of heaven is Jesus’ way of expressing how God operates in our lives, always ready to share his treasures with us, longing for us to make those wonderful discoveries.
And the kingdom of heaven is Jesus’ way of talking about the way that we then live - what we do with the treasures that God has given to us, how they can grow and flourish and make things new when we share them with others.
Jesus said to his friends and followers, ‘Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.’ That joyful task is ours, we who train for the kingdom of heaven by our life of prayer and devotion.
What is your treasure - your cherished past stories and your future hopes and dreams? How can you share that today and with those who come after?
Notes
[1] Wikipedia: Time Capsule; Timeline of time capsules.
[2] Peter Taaffe, Laying the foundation stones of the workers' movement. The Socialist newspaper, 24 June 2015; Paddy Shennan, The secret message buried in Liverpool Cathedral. Liverpool Echo, 6 July 2015.
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