You have to admire those first Anglicans who settled here in Eastbourne. The first recorded Anglican service of worship was in a disused store in 1902, and within ten years they had raised enough money to build the church we are worshipping in today. Their effort was a remarkable feat. It required vision and commitment; and because of their faithfulness, their foresight and their generosity, they were able to achieve what they set out to do.
But since then it has not always been easy. Looking after a building never is. Most of us know that through the ups and downs of home ownership; and maintaining a church is no different. A parish may have to dig deep to build a church or a vicarage, but the costs don’t stop there. With insurance premiums having doubled since 911, electricity prices continually on the rise, and changes to the building code requiring some to spend 10’s of thousands of dollars on earthquake strengthening, sometimes you have to wonder if it is all really worth it.
For reasons such as these I imagine King David was relieved not to be chosen by God to build the temple. Having been made king of all Israel, and having brought the Ark of God, the symbol of God’s presence to the people, into Jerusalem, David had hoped to build the temple himself. But because he had shed a little too much blood, as well as being involved in one or two other misdemeanours, the task was given to his son Solomon. Up to this point the Ark was kept in a mobile sanctuary, a tent (a much more economical option!), and was carried from place to place. But once the Israelites had become a settled people, no longer transient, the call for a more permanent home for the Ark became louder and clearer.
So, like the Israelites and our own forebears, the desire of faith communities to build places of worship is understandable. Churches and temples are symbols of the Eternal, and gathering places for God’s people. That’s why I am certainly grateful to those who had the vision to build this church. What they have left us with is a gift we have a responsibility to maintain. But what concerns me is sometimes we become so fixated on bricks and mortar that we forget what the church is really about. I commented on this some weeks ago in a sermon I preached. I said that contrary to popular opinion the church is not the building. We are the church; and whenever we meet as one in Christ’s name, we become the place where God chooses to dwell.
Paul makes this point in his first letter to the church in Corinth. He tells his readers they are a temple for the Holy Spirit. God is not contained within the walls of a building but is present whenever the people of God gather. ‘Surely’ he says, ‘you know that you are God’s temple, where the Spirit of God dwells.’  Jesus also makes this point many times. In Mark’s Gospel, for instance, we hear how after he entered Jerusalem Jesus went into the temple precinct and was aghast by what he saw. He rebuked the people for turning a house of prayer into ‘a robber’s den’. Then later, when one of his disciples commented on the beauty of the temple’s stonework, he replied the temple would soon be no more. And those alarming words did not take long to be proven true. We can’t become too attached to our buildings!
On the 1st of September each year the Anglican Church in this part of the world marks a special day. It is a day when we remember the builders of our church. And although when we hear the word ‘builders’ we may think of the architects and labourers who constructed the fine buildings we worship in today, the focus of this celebration is more on those people who have helped give our church its distinctive style. People like Tarore, the young girl whose gospel, after her tragic death, travelled from the Waikato to Wellington and then on to the South Island challenging warring tribes with its message of peace; and Octavius Hadfield, the first Anglican priest to be ordained on New Zealand soil, and the second Bishop of the Wellington Diocese, whose enduring legacy is seen not only in the numerous churches he had built on the Kapiti Coast, but more so in his readiness to use his position of influence to affirm the God-given rights of all human beings.
Tarore and Hadfield are both commemorated in our church’s calendar, but there are many other builders of our church who are not. One such person I came across this week is a woman by the name of Hazel Voysey. Now Hazel lived in the Hutt Valley in the latter part of the twentieth century and towards the end of her life made this parish her spiritual home. She was an attendee of retreats at Frederic Wallis House in Lower Hutt and went on to become the Warden there for fifteen years. But what makes Hazel a builder in my eyes is not that her name is etched on a plaque somewhere but because she sought to live out her Christian faith in the midst of her ordinary life. This can be seen in her leadership of the retreat centre, which was centred in prayer and committed to the vision of making Wallis House a place where people could experience the presence of God. As Peter Stuart said at her funeral, ‘[Hazel] stood firm under God’s providence and love and showed forth the things eternal to all who used the House and because she did – the House did.’
So like those who had the vision and commitment to build this church, let us be people of faith and foresight and generosity, so future generations can enjoy a place to worship. But let us also not forget that we are the builders of the church, and when we gather together in Christ’s name within or without a building God dwells in our midst. And like Tarore and Hadfield and Hazel Voysey, let us centre our lives in prayer and service, committed to the message of God’s love for all people, so that we may show forth the words we proclaim and give glory to the God in whose name this building is dedicated; the God made to known to us in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A sermon preached in St Alban’s Church on Sunday 31 August, 2008
(1 Chronicles 28:1-10; Mark 11:1-11)