Sermon by Marjorie Brown on 2nd August 2009

Since everything is so pared down and simple for the summer holidays, we thought it might be a good idea to use the sermon time in August to talk about some of the basics of the Christian faith. For some of our younger members, newcomers or visitors this might be the first time you have heard them, and we can all do with a refresher from time to time.  

The five weeks of August will touch on Praying, Paying, Staying, Straying and Saying - all will be explained as we go along!  For the whole month except the last week, we set gospel is from the sixth chapter of John's gospel that we started last week, on the Bread of Life, and we will try to make links with that reading too.

So we start today with Praying.  If people know one thing about Christians, they know that we supposed to pray.  When I worked as a curate in Poplar in the East End, I would often meet people who said "Say one for me" - sometimes it was "Say one for me, Father" without really noticing that the person in a dog collar was female.  It is the job of the clergy to pray.

We are bound by our ordination vows to say the Daily Office, that is morning prayer and evening prayer, the set forms that are in our Common Worship book (or we can choose to use the Book of Common Prayer).  The word office comes from the Latin word for duty.  This is supposed to happen every day in church, with the church bell rung to summon others to pray with us.  I had an email of complaint the other day from a local person who hated being woken up by the bell, but I replied that canon law requires us to ring out this invitation to the community.

So that is the bedrock of what happens in church on a daily basis.  At the daily office we say psalms, we read from the Bible, and we offer intercessions for those in need.  Daily prayer is a development from the Jewish tradition of morning and evening prayer in the synagogue, or wherever ten Jewish men can gather to pray together.  Jesus would have said these prayers, and his disciples continued to pray them.

The first generation of Christians prayed the Jewish prayers in the synagogue or the Temple.  But in time they were expelled from Jewish assemblies and began to develop specifically Christian daily offices.  These have come down through the centuries to us, moulded by many generations of monks who prayed not two but seven daily offices, all of them based principally on the psalms.  Thomas Cranmer in the 16^th century combined several offices into the traditional Anglican Mattins and Evensong.  Nowadays we also have the options of midday and night prayer, also known as Compline.  But the bedrock is daily morning and evening prayer.

These are said in St Mary's every weekday morning at 9 and usually on Mondays through Thursdays at 6, and anyone is welcome to come and join in.  The prayers change with the seasons of the Church year so they have a different flavour in Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent and Easter seasons from the rest of the year.  We also read the lives and writings of saints who are commemorated on their special days.  But the great majority of the words that are said are straight from the Bible, apart from the intercessions that we offer for the Church, the world, and our own parish community.  We will include prayers for any special needs that we are aware of. 

But this isn't the whole story of Christian prayer, of course. The early Christians also brought in a new tradition: the breaking of bread.  This was a form of prayer based on the Passover meal that Jesus had shared with his friends on the night of his betrayal.  The Christian meal did not take place in the evening, however, but very early on Sunday morning, because it was a way of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus on the first day of the week.  This was the specifically Christian form of corporate prayer that became the weekly act of worship, at first secretly or at least discreetly in large private houses, and later in churches built for the purpose.

For several centuries in the Church of England after the Reformation it seems that Sunday worship was usually Mattins and Evensong, with the eucharist relegated to an early celebration at 8.00 on most Sundays, or added at the end of the morning service for those who were really keen.  This came about because the Reformers did not like the mediaeval habit of "hearing" mass without receiving Communion, which was very common - most people only received Communion once or twice a year.  But attending frequent celebrations of mass was very important to them.

In the past sixty or seventy years, we have recovered the parish communion ideal of making the main service on Sunday a eucharist at which everyone gathers and receives Communion, ideally.  This will become an even more inclusive service shortly, we hope, as the PCC has now petitioned the Bishop of Edmonton for permission to admit baptised children to Communion from the age of seven or eight. 

Our gospel reading today emphasises just how important it is that we meet to worship in this way.  Jesus told his listeners, "It is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven... I am the bread of life."  We celebrate the eucharist not to observe a peculiar ritual but to have a personal and yet corporate encounter with the risen Christ.  We meet Jesus as a gathered people.  No Anglican priest is allowed to celebrate the eucharist alone.  There must always be two or three gathered in Jesus' name.  It is when Christians come together to do what Jesus told us to do that he makes himself known among us.

So Christian prayer has two great wings: the regular praise and intercession of the daily office, and thanksgiving (which is what Eucharist means) when we celebrate Holy Communion.  The Eucharist is also the means by which we experience God's healing, so it is the right place for our prayers of confession.

But what of private, personal prayer?  Of course that is important too.  But anyone who prays only on his or her own will struggle to keep a regular balanced pattern going.  It is easy for private prayer to turn into a shopping list, or to be resorted to only when we are in trouble.  The daily, regular, communal act of praying the scriptures and hearing God's word to us is best done with others.  All the great faiths know this - when I lived in Stamford Hill I was used to seeing Muslims and Jews walk to their places of worship several times every day in order to pray with others.  We did the same in our parish church, but with a very small group by comparison.

Those who can't come to church on weekdays can still pray corporately by following the lectionary and using the Common Worship book or the Book of Common Prayer.  You can do it sitting at your computer by clicking on the Church of England website and following the links for daily prayer.  This will show you all the psalms, Bible readings and special prayers for each morning and evening.

Whether you follow the Church's pattern of daily offices or not, whether you pray with others or on your own, it is important to remember that all Christian prayer is communal prayer, because it is always in Jesus' name.  Whenever we pray, we do so because the Holy Spirit has prompted us to join in Jesus' prayer to the Father.  So all our prayer is Trinitarian.  We are caught up into the eternal cycle of loving communication that takes place in the very heart of God.