Opening of David Young Academy Service

Queen Victoria once asked her Prime Minister, William Lamb, what he thought about Thomas Macaulay's brilliant essay on education for all.

"I don't know, Ma'am, why they make all this fuss about education" he is reported to have answered "none of the Paget family can read or write but they all seem to get on well enough".

Education has traditionally been about the "three R's" - reading, writing and arithmetic, but for me Education is more than that. Education must have, for its object, the formation of character.

From a Christian perspective it is a delusion to train the head and let the heart run wild. We should not allow culture and character to walk miles apart, stuffing the head with mathematics and languages whilst manners, morals and spirituality are left out of the picture.

Isn't the great aim of education informed action and not merely minds filled with facts and factoids ?

A story is told of a boy who was found at the age of twelve having been raised by a wolf. The boy had a tremendously high IQ. In three years he obtained A Star and A grades in all his GCSE and A levels. Two years later he graduated with a first class degree in nuclear physics from a top university. He was destined for an extremely brilliant future – until a terrible accident occurred. The boy was killed one day trying to bite the tyres of a speeding car in a 30 mile an hour residential area.

True education does more than enable us to pass exams.

Education forms the common mind – it creates the realm for the application of knowledge beyond simple understanding.

This academy, and all our church schools, must surely be models of the Heavenly City. At its best it must be a place which gives us a glimpse of what heaven will be like - where the treasures laid up in heaven turn out to be the best the saints have known and loved on earth - filled with the achievements of our civilization and our culture and bound together in common cause.

In a moment we will be placing our items into the time capsule to be buried. It will be opened again many years from now, and who knows what those who open will make of what we put into it ?

Would they laugh at what would seem like the archaic technology of the latest I-Pod and shake their heads in bewilderment at those gadgets and gizmos of which we are now so proud but which will one day be useless and obsolete ?

Next year we will celebrate the bi-centenary of the abolition of the Slave Trade in Britain. In particular we will commemorate the achievements of William Wilberforce, whose concern for his neighbour was inspired and impassioned by his deep Christian faith, and for whom knowledge could never be an end in itself. Wilberforce was encouraged in his campaign by his friend John Newton, a former slave trader and drunk who renounced his former ways on conversion to Christianity and became a passionate abolitionist. Newton also wrote the hymn which Curtis has just sung to us.

Today I will be placing two separate items into the capsule, both of which speak not of gadgetry and gizmos but of hope and triumph, of humanity and divinity, of freedom and of victory.

The first is this anti-slavery medallion, made 200 years ago during the reign of Queen Victoria, by Josiah Wedgwood. Here was the top designer of his day creating a medallion with a black figure in chains and the line 'Am I not a man and a brother?' the motto of Britain's Committee to Abolish the Slave Trade formed in 1787.

The medallion became a must have and Wedgwood, a passionate anti-slavery campaigner, began to reproduce the design on fashionable jasperware medallions and seals. The following year Wedgwood sent some of these medallions to Benjamin Franklin, who was President of the Abolition Society in America.

I do not know what tomorrow's children will make of this medallion when they open the time capsule. It may remind them of the long struggle that was necessary before slavery was abolished, of the need to persevere and to face defeat after defeat before finally tasting triumph. It may remind them that in the end Justice does prevail and that God's promises are fulfilled.

My hope is that it will be a symbol to remind them, as it reminds us, of the evils of racism and the infinite worth of every human being before God and before one another.

My second contribution to the time capsule is also a symbol. It's a symbol of hope borne from suffering and tears and it has been the subject of controversy in the news recently.

My second item is a hand made cross, made of the finest English hardwood.

The Cross is a symbol used by Christians to remind them of hope. It is the hope of light overcoming darkness, life victorious over death and good triumphing over evil. It is the place where Jesus died but where his story did not end. Like the word of God which we heard about in our reading, so Jesus fulfilled his purpose on earth by dying only to be raised again from the dead three days later and return to his father. His mission was accomplished, the word of God returned having fulfilled its purpose.

The Cross remains a powerful symbol to many, and like many powerful symbols it has been misused over time. We need only think of the Hindu Swastik which was used by the Nazis as a symbol of hate oppression. The power of symbols is such that they will be claimed by many who seek to misuse them for their own ends.

But for me the Cross remains important because it reminds me – as our reading reminds us – that God keeps his promises.

But why a Cross ? How is it that God achieves his purposes with one of the most inhumane ways of torturing and killing someone that man has ever devised ? As the words in the hymn we have heard remind us, "see from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down". The story of the Crucifixion tells us of the Roman soldiers who hammered iron spikes into Jesus' wrists and feet to nail him to the Cross.

But this horrible instrument of torture now carries something other than the body of that man whom to me is a Saviour. The Cross now carries the weight of our own hopes, hopes that are freshly felt this day as we look at the opening of this new school.

And for those of us who wear a cross, there is not only hope but also a responsibility. The responsibility that goes with claiming the name of a Christian. The responsibility to act and to live as Christians. This symbol does not point only upwards but also outwards, it reminds us of our duties not only to God but also to one another.

Those wearing a cross proclaim themselves followers of Christ and have the duty of acting accordingly; of showing love to our neighbours of all faiths and none, of forgiving those who offend or persecute us, or choosing a life of service to those we meet in this community be they students or teachers, the cool or the uncool, the weak or the strong. Our duty is to show love to them all.

And this is why I will put this Cross into the time capsule. Not only as an enduring symbol of hope, but also as a reminder to those generations to come of their continuing duty to care for the world in which they find themselves years from now and to love all of those with whom they share that world and this very special place.

Amen.