MANY DWELLING PLACES:
THREE-HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF ST MARY’S, ROTTERDAM

In the King James’ Bible, the Authorised Version, this verse is translated ‘in my Father’s house there are many mansions.’ But ‘mansions’, with its contemporary meaning of grand and imposing residences, is rightly not thought a good translation today. What Jesus is saying is that in the ‘house’ – the home, the large room, of the God he calls Father - there are many places to rest, to lodge, and to dwell. In St John’s Gospel Jesus speaks much about ‘dwelling’ and ‘abiding’ using a word which means to ‘make your home somewhere’, to find a place of belonging. But the Greek word used here is monai, which means a place of lodging, and was to become the word used for a monastery, a religious house. Today we celebrate three hundred years – not of this building – but of this English-speaking congregation here in Rotterdam. A Queen, Queen Anne of England, had a part to play in the founding of the original church here in Rotterdam.

Today we are honoured by the presence of another Queen for this celebration – and we thank you, your Majesty, for making time to be among us today, as you were present also fifty years ago, when the two-hundred and fiftieth anniversary of this church was celebrated, when Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip shared in the celebration.

There are indeed many monai, many ‘lodgings’ or ‘dwelling places’, many religious houses of prayer in the large room which is the house of the Father. At times, in the history of the church, and in the history of the world, that ‘large room’ and those many ‘dwelling places’ have not been recognised. The boundaries and limits have been drawn very narrowly, and, far from a welcome to all seeking the Father, barriers have been erected and human searching has been repulsed.

Rotterdam is the birthplace of one of the great humanists of Western Europe, Desiderius Erasmus (1466/9-1536). Born here, and educated at Gouda and Deventer, as a young man Erasmus went to England where he was deeply influenced by John Colet, later Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral. Colet encouraged him in the study of the New Testament. He went on to Paris, to Louvain, to Italy, to Rome, to Cambridge, before he died at Basle in 1536. Here was a European, who linked so many places, but particularly Rotterdam and England and whose grace and gift was a humanism that was deeply Christian, rooted in the Scripture, and also in that wonderful pattern of Christian devotion in which he, like Thomas à Kempis, was shaped by the Brethren of the Common Life. An Anglican looking at Erasmus and reading his writings can detect in them a recognisable common spirit – concerned for reform, for a Christian life to which all are called and which all can follow, a scriptural piety, and yet a reverence for the sacrament, nervous of sectarianism and the distortion of religion. ‘If anyone thinks the mass ought to be abolished because many misuse it,’ he wrote, ‘then the sermon should be abolished also.’ The Gospel ‘should be made acceptable by holy and forbearing conduct.’ If Anglicans have no confessional documents but a Book of Common Prayer, and an ordered liturgy and ministry, and a rootedness in scripture, then the humanism of Erasmus of Rotterdam, has much in common with it.

It is appropriate to recall Erasmus on this anniversary, for he is only the first of many connections between the Netherlands and England, and between our religious traditions. The first St Mary’s was to provide for worship for the English merchants who came to Rotterdam because of trade and the port. Queen Anne and the Duke of Marlborough were notable benefactors. The links between England and the Netherlands were close, and particularly so after William III came from the Netherlands to take the English Crown. St Mary’s is thus part of a wider cultural link, a reminder that, although an island, England could never – and can never - be other than linked with Europe. Today, more than ever, the nations of Europe, bound together in a new relationship with institutional expression, need to remember their Christian inheritance. The Archbishop of Canterbury on his visit to the European Institutions some three years ago challenged the institutions – and indeed all Europeans – to ask the question ‘what is the moral compass of Europe?’ The answer to that question cannot avoid the Christian inheritance of Europe, an inheritance shared in a particular way by both England and the Netherlands, of which the history of this church is a special and particular expression.

 Jesus said that there were ‘many dwelling places’ in his Father’s house, which many have rightly seen as giving a proper place to the different traditions of the Christian church, celebrating a proper diversity without sacrificing the underlying unity. The same challenge is faced in a less specifically religious way by the living together of the different nations of Europe. Those nations now include nations of the Christian East as well as the Christian West, Christians who have not been through a Reformation experience living together with those who have, who see things rather differently from the different historical perspectives of Catholic and Protestant. Anglicans who had a unique reformation may have something special to contribute to that understanding of the Christian East. We cannot understand Europe without understanding our history, and we cannot understand the church of which we are part without understanding our own history. It has been well said that a church – or for that matter, a state – which has lost its memory is in as critical a situation as a person who has lost their memory. We need to remember – to remember the good things, the faithfulness, the shaping Christian values, as well as to remember with penitence the conflicts and divisions, the embattled oppositions which still leave their mark on the European map.

When the old St Mary’s was demolished its pulpit was taken and in 1913 placed in Lincoln Cathedral by Arthur Benson, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and author of the words of ‘Land of hope and glory!’ set to the rousing music of Edward Elgar. He was the son of Archbishop Benson of Canterbury, who had served in Lincoln, and whom Arthur wished to remember. The word of God had been preached in St Mary’s from that pulpit, and now it would still be preached but in the great cathedral of Lincoln. Again, another link between Rotterdam and England.

To remember this history is not to be backward looking, but to remember our roots. To keep anniversaries is to remind ourselves of the vision of all who have gone before us, and to stimulate us to look to the future – to the future of this Christian congregation, of the worship of God that has endured through so many generations, of the service of others – and particularly of those who travel the seas in trade for the well-being of the nations, of Europe which needs to rediscover its common vision and values, to be aware of its Christian inheritance, and to know the stability of family and personal life that comes from  rootedness in prayer and self-giving and life in Christ.

Jesus follows what he says about there being many ‘dwelling places’ in his Father’s house, by talking about the journey which we share with him. ‘You know the way to the place where I am going’ – the place which he prepares for us. Thomas asks him ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ To which Jesus replies ‘I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ [If Jesus were speaking Arabic his reply would be ‘I am the shari’a, the truth and the life, for shari’a simply means ‘the way’]. Jesus tells us that he is the way – for Christians the way is a person before it is ever a book, and Erasmus and Thomas à Kempis would have valued that – Christian life as the Imitation of Christ by the grace of Christ. As St Mary’s looks to the future and asks what that future is, that surely can be th.e only answer we can both give and live. May God bless you all in faithfully continuing in that way – ‘Christian life as the Imitation of Christ by the grace of Christ.’

Notes

The illustrated History of St Mary's published to mark the 300th anniversary can be obtained by contacting Anneke Barends-Kraak (anneke.barends@chello.nl).

Pictures of the anniversary celebrations can be found on the St Mary's, Rotterdam website www.stmarys.nl