Life wouldn’t be life without those moments when we’ve stood on the brink and wondered about the future. Humanity wouldn’t be humanity without the challenge of such vulnerable and risk-taking choices: in our personal lives and careers; in our growing up and living as people, as institutions and in society.

At a time like this memories are profound and formative. I remember coming here to Saint Luke’s Church as a young lad to cub and scout events; as a teenager to the disco and to parties at “The Cave” in the basement of this Church; as a student to deputise at the organ for weddings and funerals; and as a Venture Scout to build and decorate the rooms we had, also in the basement. If my memories from these fleeting connections are lively, then you, who have lived here and loved this place, must truly have memories that are infinitely more potent and profound.

We meet today to celebrate and give thanks before God for those memories, not as a self-indulgent act of reminiscence, but because they mark out stages in our journey of faith and key moments in our faithfulness to God as expressed in our worship and living in places like this.

We meet today on the brink as we wonder about that new future under God about which your Rector and Select Vestry took the step of faith nearly 18 months ago now.

We meet today, not only to entrust again that step and that future to God, but in a moving symbol of our pilgrimage of faith, just as the Children of Israel were asked to be ready to do in the midst of their Passover Meal all those years ago, we will move from this Church to Saint Anne’s: taking that step of faith; signalling our trust in the future God has for us, even though we don’t fully yet know what that may be.

When I came here last September on an ordinary Sunday parish visit I reflected with you pragmatically and spiritually about the plans you were making as a parish. That day I deliberately set your predicament and opportunity in the context of the wider scenario of the life of the Diocese and the Church as a whole. I did this, because, while you here in Saint Luke’s may feel alone in what you have decided, you are not alone – other parishes in this diocese and further afield are having to and will have to face up to uncomfortable, contemporary realities: a changing demography, heritage and planning legislation; insurance concerns, equality legislation and still to come the adaptation of churches to meet planned disability legislation. As well as these there are the realities of ministry: for example there are about 58 vacancies for rectors in the Church of Ireland at present. Indeed, more people left the ministry of the Church of Ireland in the first six months of last year than entered it.

So in taking the decisions you here have taken I know they have been painful. It does hurt. But it also shows courage, realism, and most important of all - faith.

Today is not a day, however, for renewed preoccupation with that analysis.

There is no easy way to draw to a close a relationship of love and affection such as that we as community have for Saint Luke’s Church, Cork.

In 1903, exactly one hundred years ago when the Revered John Harding Cole published his Church and Parish Records of the United Diocese of Cork, Cloyne and Ross he notes that Saint Luke’s parish had about 2000 parishioners, and Saint Anne’s had another 700. Today we know that both between them have just over 100 people.

In a sense we see the cycle of history turning in on itself. Saint Mary’s, Shandon was the mother parish. Saint Anne’s, named after the grandmother of Mary, mother of our Lord, was at first a daughter church – a Chapel of Ease of Saint Mary’s, which in 1738 was given parochial status. Saint Luke’s in turn became a daughter of the daughter, when the Chapel of ease was built in 1834, and granted parochial status in 1872. The cycles change, the parochial mother church and one of the daughters close; and the other daughter - Saint Anne’s – becomes the spiritual home for the Church of Ireland people of this part of Cork.

If today is not a day for analysis, it’s not a day for history lessons either. But this simple progression, together with much other history we could add if we had time from the Diocese and the Church at large serves to illustrate a very basic point that we often lose sight of. It’s this: that it’s not only in our day that the Church has had to make courageous and painful decisions, to take steps of faith into an uncertain future. This has always been an unavoidable part of being the Church or being a pilgrim in the faith.

Christians measure not in numbers, nor in the endurance of years, nor in the pedigree of our history, nor in the survivability of this building or that, but in faithfulness. That is why we can offer thanksgiving in large measure today for all that has been. More than that we in the Diocese; and I as Bishop, on my own behalf and on behalf of my predecessors, say “thank you” to all of you here who in ministry, lay and clerical, have been so faithful. Even though on a day like this it may be hard to think like this it is important to celebrate the fact that God has blessed the work done faithfully in his name here over the years and there has been much blessing.

We acknowledge today especially the faithful ministry of the successive clergy of the parish, most especially those we still enjoy fellowship with in the community of the Church today – Canon George Salter and the Reverend Jack Heaslip; and particularly your present rector who with great courage and faithfulness responded to the call to come here not knowing that anything like this might arise ahead of him. None of us knew. And we acknowledge that the Reverend Brian O’Rourke is still here giving the leadership that is so necessary at a difficult time like this; and is continuing the ministry of pastoral and priest faithfully and dutifully in a way that warrants our support and admiration.

Being a Christian is about responding to God’s call in faith - about being a pilgrim – a pilgrim of faith in and in fellowship with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Even though we value the roots we have put down and the buildings we have built, Christians are always a people on the move. Faith of itself is always dynamic, never static. The Celtic theologian Ian Bradley has described pilgrimage as a perpetual moving on, venturing out into unknown territory and meeting new fellow-travellers along the way. This is what you have had to plan; and in doing so you are close to the heart of what following Jesus Christ involves.

It was as the disciples journeyed that first Easter Sunday evening from Jerusalem, puzzled, confused, perhaps a little angry at the way the things had turned out; not sure whether they dared to hope; to believe in the rumours that their executed master had risen from the dead – it was in the midst of that maelstrom of emotions that we read Jesus came and walked with them. But they didn’t recognise him.

Perhaps some of us are like them – perplexed, confused, exhausted, frustrated, not sure what to think, maybe even hurting and angry – and it will take time, perhaps, to recognise the presence of Christ walking with us in the journey this parish is making.

But we pray that today, as on that day, when the bread was broken at the table, like them we may be given insight and grace to recognise him: food for our journey; nourishment for our faith; and hope not only to keep going, but to carry on his work of preaching the kingdom and healing the sick.

The sense of journey goes back even further than that. In the Hebrew Scriptures we see again and again a people on the move. Even when Joseph had his dream at a place he later called Bethel; even when he sensed that God was in that place and he called it the gate of heaven; even when he felt the need to build a pillar to mark that precious holy place; he soon discovered that he had no option but to leave it behind and to continue on the journey.

And in today’s reading from Joshua we meet the people of God following their wanderings in the wilderness – a hard, testing time, but one during which they discovered who they were; that they were God’s people and that he was there God. Again they are hurting. Moses, their long-time and great leader has died. It falls to Joshua to lead the people onwards on their journey, across the River Jordan.

He told them to take twelve stones from the River and to set them up as a memorial in the place where they would camp that night. They did it and they set the stones up at Gilgal where they camped. And Joshua explained it to them this way

“When your children ask their parents in time to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel crossed over the Jordan here on dry ground.’ For the LORD your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you crossed over, as the LORD your God did to the Red Sea,? which he dried up for us until we crossed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the LORD is mighty, and so that you may fear the LORD your God forever.” Joshua 4.20-25

In the future, your children, people will ask in living memory about today’s events here, about how we began our worship here in thanksgiving, about how we brought what is precious and central to our worship in this Church (the Bible, the Cross, the Paten and Chalice and Register of Baptisms) with us; and how we continued our journey to Saint Anne’s to break bread together and to share it at the Lord’s table to which he invites us. So you will tell them that it was a sad and difficult time, but that it was also a time of hope and opportunity done in faith and trust in the God who made us, who redeemed us and who gives us life.

We shall let our children know, our answer will be when they ask what all this means, that this was a day when in faith, we continued on our journey in faithfulness to the God who is our God forever.

So dear friends in Christ, today we remember, we celebrate, we journey and we begin. The physical journey is in many ways the easy bit, for at its most profound, pilgrimage is more than moving from place to place in the hope of finding God here and there; it is about an inner journey in our hearts, minds and spirits.

In his novel Byzantium Stephen Lawhead describes a fictional conversation between an old monk and his young friend, the monk Aidan, who is about to go off to Byzantium to present the emperor with the Book of Kells. The older monk says:

“Remember, Aidan. Never doubt in the darkness that which you have believed in the light. Also, this: unless the pilgrim carry with him the thing he seeks, he will not find it when he arrives.”

As ever on the Christian journey, we are required to take the step of faith. It’s a step that flows from our believing in Christ and from our baptism. It’s a step summed up well in the Act of Faith, Renewal and Commitment that we make now and which is overshadowed by the prayer of the Church for you here at this moment:

May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith that you may be rooted and grounded in love and bring forth the fruit of the Spirit. Amen.