Sermon for Encaenia 2020
“A garden enclosed is my sister … a paradise of pomegranates”
I did not think that I would see you again. I have wanted to “hear your voices,” even if muffled, and to see your comely faces, even if masked! So what is this? A carnival? A masquerade? Mirabile dictu, we are at this special Encaenia service; the real rather than the virtual. We are missing some of your friends and fellow graduates who are not able to be here owing to the restrictions and limitations of these ‘Covidious’ times. But they are with us in intent and in spirit. We embrace them in our gathering as companions in the garden of learning.
It may seem odd, and to use the overworked word, ‘unprecedented,’ but as such historic, to have Encaenia in August rather than June. But to be gathered here at what I call the ‘big Chapel,’ Christ Church, is not without precedent. Encaenia and graduation services were held here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Nor are you strangers to this place where you have gathered for Advent & Christmas Services of Lessons and Carols in years past and for the Cadet Church Parade; the latter, a casualty this year of Covid. But never mind, here you are! It may seem trite but ss Bobby McFerrin puts it, “Don’t worry, be happy! In every life we have some trouble but when you worry you make it double”.
One other thing is different. Officially you are already graduates of King’s-Edgehill rather than standing on the edge of that momentous transition from students to alumni. But Encaenia is more than a milestone, a rite of passage. It signals and recalls us to the foundational principles that belong to the life of the School.
The term derives originally from ancient religious festivals but has migrated to the annual celebrations of the intellectual and spiritual traditions that belong to the foundations of schools and universities, particularly those derived from the great medieval universities of Oxford and Cambridge, such as King’s-Edgehill. At a time when our institutions are in disarray and confusion, we do well to recall the principles that belong to their truth and character for they are about things which are greater than ourselves and which hold us to account in the face of our many, many failings. Schools are only as strong as their commitment to their foundational ideals which have, in their truth, a corrective and reformative aspect. For you as graduates, it is about your experience of being at the School, as being part of the School, and as being shaped by the School. As such it is about your experience as grounded in School’s life and history.
Our gathering is not simply defined by Covid-19. You are more than Covid-19 victims. I would caution against such a way of thinking; to define yourself as a victim is to be a victim twice over. Our current epidemiological uncertainties are just as much about our epistemological confusions, that is to say, about how we think about ourselves and the world around us. Encaenia, in recalling us to the principles which define and shape the life of the School, reminds us of things which are greater than the circumstances and events of our world and day. That has been a constant point of emphasis in Chapel. We have, time and time again, considered questions about the self and the other, about how we look upon one another, and, consequently, about how we deal with one another within a wider consideration of reality, intellectually and spiritually understood. The word is respect which is, literally, about looking at things. It relates to our present experience of so-called social distancing and the wearing of masks. Such things are about a kind of respect for one another; looking at one another as more than walking pathogens. Looking at one another with respect, not out of the fear of the other.
Charles Inglis travelled to North America in 1759 as a Church of England missionary to Dover, Delaware. In 1765 he went to 