Psalm 95 & John 4: 5–42

By Revd Michael Burns, Chaplain for Younger People 1992–2000

Exactly 34 years ago next Friday, this Ecumenical City Centre Church was dedicated by the Presidents of Churches Together in England in the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth 2. Those of us present that morning knew it was the culmination of a huge amount of work and effort over the preceding years in the life of the Congregation. I had only moved to Milton Keynes a few days before to take up my new post as Chaplain for Younger People, but, as part of my appointment process, I did worship once with the Congregation in the library and I was grateful that I had a brief glimpse of what their move to this new building would mean for them.

Thus, it was on Friday, 13 March 1992 that Cardinal Basil Hume, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, became the first Roman Catholic in over five centuries to preach before the Monarch. No wonder that the BBC chose to broadcast the service live. Only last year, in another historic first since the sixteenth-century Reformation, King Charles 3 and Pope Leo 14 prayed together in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. Their joint prayers marked a major ecumenical moment, bridging a 500-year divide between the Church of England – of which the King is Supreme Governor – and the Roman Catholic Church. But I would humbly suggest that it was here 34 years ago that history really was first made.

The Queen was later to describe 1992 as her ’annus horribilis’: but I suspect that this was more to do with her family troubles and the Windsor Castle fire that year than it was to do with her visit to Milton Keynes!

Over these past three decades and more, this church has grown and developed its distinctive ministry here in the city centre. Served by an array of ordained and lay ministers and loyally supported by many incredibly talented and hard-working lay people, you have carved out a special place in this city down the years.

Of course, most towns and cities are inevitably quite transient places and Milton Keynes is no different. Inevitably, over the decades, people have come and gone – but this church, and what it stands for, remains, encouragingly reminding all sorts of people, that ‘Christ is our Cornerstone, on him alone we build’.

Now of course I know full well that you are at something of a crossroads, as Bishop Jonathan Meyrick recently put it, as you work to discern with your church leaders how this place can continue ‘Creating an Oasis of Hope in Central Milton Keynes’ with the appointment of a new Anglican Vicar.

In all your discussions and deliberations, it is clearly helpful, on the one hand, to listen to those who were present in those pioneering early years and to hear their stories, their dreams, something possible in a young church like Cornerstone, where worship first began in Centrecom in 1980, becoming the Church-in-the-Library in 1981 before the move here in 1992. But at the same time as listening to the stories of yesteryear, it is perhaps also important to come to a realisation that life moves on and that there are inevitably new people in this Congregation who need to pick up the baton for the future life and health of Cornerstone.

One thing I have learnt in my retirement after 45 years of active ministry in the Church of England is that my time, to a large extent, is over and I must be ready and willing to give way to others who come with their fresh ideas, their new ways of wanting to do and to be church. Cyrano de Bergerac puts it like this: ‘My task is to prompt others – and then to stand aside.’

Do be assured that you are much in my prayers for all that lies ahead. Living in Norwich, I have to quote our best-known fourteenth-century mystic Julian of Norwich when she wrote these reassuring words: ‘All shall be well.’

‘Creating an Oasis of Hope in Central Milton Keynes’: I really warm to that phrase – for I am sure that this church can continue to model hope and purpose in a world desperately short of both. There have been huge changes over these past 34 years – but I would suggest that this Church and this Congregation are needed more than never before in the life of this city and its people.

Today is a good example of your priorities when the Social Justice and Eco Church groups have arranged a Social Justice Day, setting an example of vital issues with which this Church is ready to engage.

The Church of Christ the Cornerstone, together with its clergy and people, exists, in the words of the Psalmist, as ‘the rock of our salvation’, from whence the living water springs forth from the oasis of hope to cleanse and give life to all. It is in today’s Gospel that we hear these words of Jesus: ‘Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’ Truly the Creation of an Oasis of Hope.

I recently discovered this prayer written by Bishop Ken Untener and used by Cardinal Hume in 1997 and by Pope Francis in 2015 and I hope that its words might encourage you all as your future under God unfolds. It is called ‘Prophets of a future not our own:’

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No programme accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future that is not our own.

May those magnificent words be true for you and for all who love this place and everything that it stands for in the life of this amazing city as you discern what God is calling you to be and to do in all that lies ahead.

One final thought to leave you with – and it’s a true story.

A few days after my arrival in Milton Keynes back in 1992, the then Bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries, wrote me a warm letter of welcome. But one sentence stood out. He said, ‘the new Church is all most exciting’.

At least, that is what he dictated to his secretary – ‘all most exciting’.

What she actually typed was ‘the new Church is almost (a-l-m-o-s-t) exciting’.

Of course, the secretary was wrong and Bishop Richard was right.

Christ the Cornerstone was then and still is ‘all most exciting’.

So – do go bravely on.

Amen