I was delighted to be asked to speak to you this evening, especially as my mission was to be as amusing as possible, lightening the mood of an already light-hearted affair with some choice memories of the Church we know and love.
While I am not an unambitious person, my hopes and desires have never really included becoming an historian of any particular kind. Rather, I see myself as a sort of bowerbird, with an instinctive tendency to amass a vast collection of objects, often strikingly coloured, to sort them and arrange them, to put them in their place, and a knack for procuring unusual and rare items.
(I note from my research that bowerbirds are widely regarded by the ornithological fraternity as the most advanced of any species of bird. I am quite pleased about that, though less so about the bowerbird's tendency to exhibit, and I quote, "spectacular behaviour in the course of mating rituals".)
Bowerbirds aside, I have indeed amassed quite a colourful collection of objects these years past. They're not so much shells, leaves, flowers, feathers, stones, berries, bits of plastic, tin and glass that make up the bower. They're memories, anecdotes, plots and plans, and tales of varying tallness and truth.
The story of St Mary Magdalene's first hundred years is recorded in Fr John Devenport's 1986 centenary history. It's more or less fair to say that my association with St Mary Magdalene's covers the intervening 20 years. I was susceptible to the exotic goings-on of its special services, and put in an occasional guest appearance in the sanctuary from 1984 onwards, but my permanent association with St Mary Magdalene's commenced in 1990, when Bryon Finch had the misfortune to sprain an ankle in Holy Week, and the only person they could think of who was fool enough to have memorised the chapter in Ritual Notes about the services of the Great Three Days.
And what foolishness it is. All the peculiarities of those special services were taken with such po-faced seriousness, for such was the Anglo-Catholic way. I couldn't help myself from giggling, time and time again, and it's a wonder that I passed muster. For St Mary Magdalene's, in those days, was fighting a losing battle to maintain a conservative view of Church.
Within a few years of the Centenary, the parish priest abandoned mainstream Anglicanism for the conservative fringe, taking a good proportion of an already small congregation with him. By 1990, St Mary Magdalene's had just a single service a week, attended by a faithful remnant.
The appointment of Fr Graeme Kaines heralded new beginnings, and over time we saw the establishment under Fr Brett Williams of the Drop In Centre, first as a sandwich kitchen and later as the major enterprise we know today; and ultimately the opening of the Magdalene Centre.
And there was something more. We remembered how to laugh.
Which is where, today, I come in. For the trinkets I prefer to collect are the brightly coloured ones that inspire joy and laughter. And have there ever been some rippers.
The early days of the Drop-In Centre were incredible. A group of relatively young Anglicans would meet in the old kitchen in the Mission Hall with begged and borrowed loaves of bread and sandwich ingredients, make them up, and take them down to Hurtle Square. I think it was the third week that we did this, took the sandwiches on trays to someone's car, and headed off down the square. As we got out, the group that had already assembled were on the ground squealing with laughter, as we looked behind the car to see the trail of sandwiches from the tray that had been left on the roof lining the street like coloured paper in a cave.
The early days of the Magdalene Centre were better still. Peter Burke is merely representative of the people who quake at the thought of a re-enactment of the Great French Stick Incident, when a parish volunteer became so frustrated with the bureaucratic mumbling of the well-intended then-manager of the Magdalene Centre that he gave her a tap with the French Stick he happened to be holding. Alas, like Lazarus it had been dead four days, and was hard as a rock. Somehow we avoided industrial action, though only just, I suspect.
Then there was the refurbishment of the Mission Hall. I had a bet with Fr Bullen that the discussion of the toilets would take twice as long as any other element of the project. I was right. I was also the secretary of the Working Party that developed the plans, and so to this day the minutes of the meeting proudly record, as a standing agenda item, "The Great Toilet Debate". The authorities in the Adelaide City Council are still talking about it.
And these weren't even inside the Church. As the outward appearance of the parish has changed over time, so the carryings-on inside the building have continued to evolve with a long succession not so much of colourful trinkets as colourful characters.
Fr Don Wallace, who tipped over an entire chalice on the altar at Midnight Mass, only to say "Oh dear"; or on another occasion, as the sanctuary party went to sit for the readings, sailing out of the side door with a look of anxiety on his face. Someone chased him into the hall, where he confirmed he was alright while heading towards the gents, full Mass vestments and all. As he vanished into the door, he was heard to say "Where I am going you cannot follow."
I very much miss Fr Ted Whitworth, one of the many priests who gave amazing service to St Mary Magdalene's in the most difficult years of our recent history. Fr Ted encouraged the legend that the fabulous UK television show of the same name was based on his exploits which may be a little unfair to both, but nevertheless had a grain of truth in it. Fr Ted's notably poor and changeable eyesight was the source of more than a few great moments, not the least of which was the time, at Stations of the Cross, he mis-read the verse from Luke 23 "the women that mourned and wailed for Jesus" as "the women who mounted and waited".
Fr Grant Bullen, determined to wear a hot pink fiddle-back chasuble on the Third Sunday of Advent, entering the church to muffled squeals of laughter only to have the entire place collapse when daughter Hannah, going through a bridesmaid phase, deemed him a bride and rushed into the sanctuary to hold the back of the chasuble up like a train.
The look on Archbishop Ian George's face as he rounded the final corner of a procession only to see a canopy borne by four vested acolytes ready to be carried over him in the last run down the aisle. (He took it like a lamb.)
Or the time that Fr Warren Huffa, flushed with relief at having got through the first part of a mass straight from the unfamiliar Roman Missal, got half way through the Eucharistic Prayer and began to read the stage directions.
Or the invention, surely a first in Anglo-Catholicism in Australia, of ante-natal ritual for the benefit of Mother Ruth Mathieson, who found the 20 or 30 genuflections that populated an Old Rite Mass clinically challenging when 8 months pregnant.
Or the time that Fr Bruce Stocks, something of an evangelical at various times in his life, asked worriedly if he was breaking the 28th of the 39 articles of religion by presiding at a Procession of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction. "Yes", was the reply. And what do we say of the current crop. Fr Anthony's splendid travelogues at 9 am; Fr Bryan Parnell getting lost in the middle of something - much better than an episode of Fawlty Towers; Fr Bruce Naylor reciting the Swahili Canon on Thursday lunch-time - really! And I have said nothing about Fr Alan or Fr Philip.
Nor have I mentioned a single lay-person, whether living or departed! Perce Gore, progressive in many ways, and conservative in a few, greeting passers-by in Moore Street. "Hello, welcome to St Mary Magdalene's. We don't believe in the ordination of women." I'm relieved to report he changed his mind. Joan Grotto adjudicating on the colour of the new carpet. "Well, there's red or there's blue, and we're having blue." Kevin Dougherty who could empty a bottle faster than Fr Jack. Tailoress extraordinaire Joan Woods collecting every can and bottle between her home and the church door. Our devoted thurifer Roy Cummings upending the incense boat in the middle of the sanctuary and return with a pink broom and dustpan to tidy up. Another server ringing the bells, only to have the handle come off in their hand. Another who belted the gong with some force, only to see the end of the striker shoot wildly across the sanctuary. At least one story involving myself cannot be told in polite company, and I would be happy to exchange the details out-of-session. Suffice it to say that it has been my privilege and my pleasure to be close at hand for many, indeed most, of our delightful, delicious happenings these past 15 years or so. But no more about me, lest I be accused of making my phylactery broad or my fringe unduly long.
I cannot claim this list to be exhaustive, and of course St Mary Magdalene's has had its share of mirth in times gone by. The incumbency of Fr Howell Witt, though tense on occasion, was clearly a riotous time, and the Vestry Record books from our church were a gold-mine for Bishop Witt's celebrated autobiography Bush Bishop.
And another time, a story Chris Gent tells much better than me, about a magnificently chaotic Easter Vigil which went for three hours, but only after the subdeacon had broken the Easter Candle and the deacon had dropped the incense studs into the font. Or an early instance of our environmental consciousness, way back in 1942, when the time of Evening Prayer was moved from 7 pm to 4 pm as a means of saving electricity!
And possibly the best story of all, concerning the vestry meeting called to discuss the proposal to close St Mary Magdalene's and transfer the Mission to Elizabeth. The congregation was split down the middle on the issue, and in the course of a heated meeting, one member, an opponent of the move, fell ill, and was taken to hospital by two others, both known to be in favour. When the vote was taken, it was lost - by a single vote. God works in mysterious ways.
At the end of his centenary record, Fr Devenport asked "Where is the church going now? Is it continuing or even developing as a voice of stability and compassion emanating to a world in distress? Will the church modify to such an extent that it has difficulty in being recognised as a part of that continuum of some 2000 years? Time will tell."
Where is the Church going now? I can't speak for the Church, but I can hazard an opinion about this one. St Mary Magdalene's is, in fact, as strong and stable as it has ever been throughout its 120 years.
Some things have stayed the same. We continue to be faintly amused by the hierarchy in general and bishops in particular, and to dislike the Archbishop of Sydney. Well, not just the Archbishop of Sydney, but anyone whose intolerance blinds them to Jesus' example of acceptance, tolerance (especially of social outcasts) and spiritual understanding. For 120 years now, the people of St Mary Magdalene's have instead preferred the loving, thoughtful attitudes and behaviours that Jesus showed us as he feasted and prayed with his own community, high and low, rich and poor.
But other things have changed. Where once we were a defensive outpost on the fringe of diocesan life, now we are something that is widely regarded as a model of what is good and right. Where once we patched the old, now we embrace the new. Where once we were pear-shaped, now we are mission-shaped. Where once we were concerned about where the frontiers of the church and the faith might be, or about defining the barrier between church and society, now we're content to be untidy.
And that untidiness doesn't hurt at all, for it's on the untidy, indefinable margins where the people whom we serve live and move, and these are not necessarily places where belonging and not belonging, believing and not believing, have all that much meaning. And it is in precisely those uncomfortable places that Christ is to be found.
