St Wilfrid’s was built on this hill to crown the development of Haywards Heath.
As Town Team puts together over the next year the 2020 Haywards Heath history celebration the parish Church will fittingly have pride of place. There’ll be a Light Show here day by day complementing an exhibition in the Town Hall and culminating in the expanded version of September’s Town Day that occurs every few years.
We rightly take pride in the Churches role and Fr Ray has been working as ever on our behalf to help tell our story at St Wilfrid’s as part of the bigger narrative. This narrative began at a crossroads east of Cuckfield. There the Roman Road heading north from Hassocks met and crossed the well drained high ground we know as the Weald, later the pilgrim way to Canterbury. From the Hayworth animal enclosure on the Weald near that cross roads Haywards Heath was born when the railway was laid parallel to the Roman Road in 1841.
Haywards Heath grew from an ancient cross roads to become the heart of Sussex. Getting trains to Brighton, now known as London-by-the sea was the motivator. Our town’s strategic worth is captured in the title of the town’s authoritative 1981 history, Ford and Gabe’s ‘Metropolis of Mid Sussex’. Due to railway phobia in Cuckfield and Lindfield we were a new build in 1841 after 5000 men and 50 horses made the tunnel we stand on. As Sussex metropolis we draw life from the County, at first through the arrival of thousands of so-called lunatics at the County Asylum and cattle for the market once so famed as to be in the top 12 in the country. The Asylum and market have gone but the strategic role and growth of our town has continued. The 2020 celebration is geared to affirm and direct our Sussex-wide role. Haywards Heath draws economic life from those who commute to London but it's also in the Greater Brighton City Deal. Such was the success of the railway to Brighton that brought this town to birth some are calling London ‘Brighton inland’!
Our family moved to Haywards Heath from London in 2001 so I could serve the mission and renewal of Chichester Diocese. Bishop Eric who appointed me expected me to work from the centre of the Diocese, the centre of Sussex. We took residence in Gatesmead and on our first Sunday we joined the Palm Sunday procession here at St Wilfrid’s. My licensing was to St Richard’s but I’ve continued close to St Wilfrid’s, through friendship especially with Fr Ray, and literally close to the Presentation from 2017 when Anne and I retired next door to Marylands after 8 years as parish priest of Horsted Keynes. My former diocesan role reminds me how Haywards Heath isn’t just the heart of Sussex but at the heart of a great Diocese stretching from Crawley to Brighton and Rye across to Chichester.
Before I change gear from town history to engage with today’s scripture might I invite your participation in our 7 September 2019 town day Festival of Hope here in St Wilfrid’s and, beyond that, with me in preparing the 9-13 September 2020 History Celebration? We’ve written as Town Team, under the oversight of Councillor Ruth De Mierre, to schools inviting them to lead a project countering an amnesia destructive to the health of our community. The idea is to encourage pupils to interview parents, grandparents and elderly neighbours to gather stories of Haywards Heath, recording them and presenting them suitably at the 2020 Celebration not least at next year’s planned night by night Light Show in St Wilfrid’s.
From today’s second reading: ‘Since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks, by which we offer to God an acceptable worship with reverence and awe’. In his great commentary on the letter to the Hebrews Bishop Lightfoot makes this note on verse 28 of Chapter 11, and I quote, ‘though at first sight there is something strange in the idea that thankfulness is the means whereby we may serve God, we are perhaps inclined to forget the weight which is attached in Scripture to gratitude and praise. It is the perception and acknowledgement of the divine glory which is the strength of man. The sense of love is the motive for proclaiming love’.
We gather at the eucharist primarily to give thanks - the word means thanksgiving - and in so doing to build ourselves more into what we’re called to be. St Wilfrid’s was built on this hill by Bodley its great architect precisely for that purpose: a temple for divine worship, for giving thanks and praise to God, more than a preaching house for human edification. When we look back over the history of our town there’s so much to give thanks to God for, not least the Wyatt’s, father and son. Our role, as ongoing part of the Church in Haywards Heath, is to secure that worship for generations to come in response to the unshakeable security of God’s love.
We were born as, and we continue as, a community Church. Our gift paraphrasing Mark 12:17 is to render to the community what is owed by love and to God the things we owe to him. We’re bi-lingual, speaking the language of our community and the language of faith. This sets us apart as both a community group and as a Christian church. Unlike other community groups - the Golf Club, U3A or Air Cadets - we have an other-worldly reference. Unlike the other 17 Churches - Roman Catholic, Methodist, New Church and so on - far from being a gathered separate community we’re one with a commitment beyond our Christian faith to Haywards Heath. ‘You are the light of the world’ Our Lord says in Matthew 5:14. ‘A city built on a hill cannot be hidden’ and those words make me think of St Wilfrid’s so visible to our town. The Lord continues: ‘let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven’ and here we think of our membership, the 7 generations that have maintained this beacon of faith on Church Road.
We have a calling to gracious dialogue with this town and to come thankfully ‘in reverence and awe’ before God with the people and the needs of Haywards Heath on our hearts. The parish eucharist brings both aspirations together.
Getting more members to have a heart for drawing people into the life of the church is pivotal. Reaching out, cutting through spiritual apathy, by prayer and invitation is the strategy, picking up on a saying of Walter Wink: 'The future of the world lies with the intercessors and connectors.'
Very many of us have that gift of connecting – building friendships which season the community life of our town and its surrounds. Some of us like myself are very active on Haywards Heath’s social media groups which are coming into their own through the history project. To complement such ‘connecting’ I find myself and would encourage each one of you in turn to seek the Holy Spirit’s guidance in prayer so we attain the best directing of our energies and those in our orbit. ‘More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of’ wrote the poet Tennyson.
Our splendid tower with its pyramidal cap affirms this, pointing modestly to a God whose possibilities exceed our imagining and who listens to and answers prayer.'The future of the world lies with the intercessors and connectors.'
‘Since [then] we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us give thanks [in this eucharist], by which we offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe’.
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