Feast of St Alban, Sunday 22nd June 2025

Feast of St Alban, 22nd June, 2025.

Holywell Hill on the other side of the park was thrown into total chaos yesterday by a bursting water main. But of course it was- this is the weekend when we remember St Alban’s martyrdom, so naturally his Holy Well (or at least a water source nearby) sprung up again just as the original is reputed to have done all those years ago. In case you don’t know the story of the Holy Well that gives the hill into town its name, here’s a potted version.

Alban, who lived somewhere over there, was arrested and tried for becoming a Christian after having given shelter to a fleeing priest. Christianity was officially frowned upon by the Emperor Diocletian because he thought Jesus-loving soldiers were the reason his legions were losing so many battles. This was a problem; the Christians had to go. Anyway, Alban was arrested and tried, potentially where the choir are sitting (points), but if not there then near enough, and marched out of the city up a nearby hill for execution, the usual Roman punishment for a first offence.

As for the Holy Well there are two traditions about its beginnings- one goes that Alban, climbing the hill to his execution on a hot day such as this, fell to his knees and prayed for a drink. And up sprung the water, to support him on the way. The other is that he got to the top of the hill unaided, but after he was decapitated a spring opened up where his head fell. It’s conceivable there are other explanations for the site of the well, but they’re boring and don’t involve Alban.

Anyway, however it got there, the spring has long since been covered over and lost, even if the road above it still called Holywell Hill, but yesterday it fought back bursting forth from under the tarmac of the road and reasserting its presence among the landmarks of the city just in time for its big day, the day we celebrate now.

I tell you all this because I think these stories are important. You see I had to explain to a year 6 group who came to church the other week what the saints that we see all around us in church are for.

I had been doing what I thought was a good job of saying who they were, but they were less interested in that than in what the saints are for. I could have said lots in reply, and I held my thinking pose for a good 30 seconds, but in the end I landed on 2 things. First they are here because they tell good stories. Saints tell us their stories, and what makes them saints is that they help us understand the ultimate story we tell in church, the one we call Christianity.

Sometimes Christians are called people of the book, but it makes me squirm a bit because that’s not right. We are in fact people of the Word, by which we mean the Word made flesh, the one who shows us what God is like. We do not worship a book, we worship the person whose story it tells, Jesus Christ who lived, died, and rose again for us. That is the story of our faith, and Jesus is the Word we worship. He is the light by which we read our book.

But we need help to understand this story, and so the saints step up. ‘Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life will find it.’ So said Jesus to the disciples in this passage from St Matthew before he sends them out. All very challenging, but what does that look like in practice we might ask?

Well, here is the story of Alban- sheltering, caring, feeding, and dying for the sake of another. Finding life, and losing it. It is in his story that generations of people have understood a little better the story of Jesus. It is in following Albans example that generations of people in this church and city have learned to be better disciples. The stories of the saints help us understand the story of our faith.

And, secondly, I said that the saints are more than their stories, they are supporters. We live and worship in their fellowship.

Now that’s a word that gets a bit of a hard time. You are, most of you, less cynical than me, so maybe you cope better with this sort of thing but when I go to a church and someone tells me ‘We are going to have a time of fellowship’, I get downcast. They mean someone is going to put an arm around me and speak softly.

But fellowship with the saints is more than that- fellowship is the absolute conviction that we are most ourselves when we are together. Fellowship is for life and beyond death, and because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ those two things are held together in a continuous whole. The saints are our supporters now, praying with us and for us, because they have walked the roads we walk and have not been overcome.

Story and fellowship, that is what we celebrate today when we remember St Alban. May his story well up again like the waters of that Holy Well, to remind us of whose fellowship we share in this place. May his fellowship teach us more about the faith we share in the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, the true and living God, whom he worshipped and adored.

Amen.