Sermon for St Edward’s Dedication Festival / July 2025
Readings: Luke 11:1-13 and Psalm 138
We’ve just heard Jesus teaching the disciples about prayer and giving them what we now call the Lord’s Prayer, so today we’re going to think about prayer.
Today we celebrate our birthday and it’s a good opportunity to think about all that God has done in this season of the life of St Edward’s, over the last 3 years or so. Prayer has been the foundation of all that. We prayed about our vision and we prayed about how to put that vision into practice. We prayed for key people and teams. We prayed for the strategy, for how to shape our worship. We prayed for God to bring people to faith and to bring people to St Edward’s. Prayer has been a foundation to it all.
Charles Spurgeon, famous Baptist preacher, reportedly said that prayer was the boiler room of his church, the fuel, the energy if you like, the heat.
and Martin Luther, German priest and reformer said:
To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.
Martin Luther
Prayer is vital to all we do. It is our lifeline to God. It’s a conversation.
Jesus talks about and models prayer throughout the New Testament. He prays by himself in quiet places – on a mountain (Matthew 14:23), in deserted places (Luke 5:16), he prayed early in the morning (Mark 1:35), he prayed on the cross, (Luke 23:46), with the disciples (Luke 9:18), he prayed for his disciples and for all believers, (John 17). He taught they should pray in secret (Matthew 6:6), not flaunting it, not using lots of words; and more…
There are many ways to pray, but in our Luke passage we heard that Jesus himself was praying, and then that the disciples asked him – teach us to pray. Perhaps they were intrigued, what is he doing, can we do it?
and Jesus says here in Luke 11 and in Matthew 6 as part of the sermon on the mount, this is how you should pray…
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…
It is what we have come to know as the Lord’s prayer, the prayer Jesus told us how to pray. A prayer that has been prayed by millions of people the world over, for thousands of years. Probably the most well-known prayer ever.
The Archbishop of York and former Archbishop of Canterbury said of the Lord’s prayer:
At the heart of our prayers will be words that Jesus himself taught us. It is simple enough to be memorised by small children and yet profound enough to sustain a whole lifetime of prayer.
profound enough to sustain a whole lifetime of prayer.
It also carries echoes of Ps 138 as we heard.
Why is it so powerful?
Well, firstly because it is how Jesus taught us to pray of course.
It opens with Our Father in heaven or who art in heaven – and let’s not get too hung up about the exact wording, we use different versions here but you can pray whichever you want, it really doesn’t matter. And anyway even the traditional one is not as it was given, and has had various variations over the years. What is more important is the sentiment and motivation, and the fact that we do pray it.
Our Father in heaven (in fact the NRSV passage omits the ‘our’ but it is actually there in the Greek.)
The first line lays out who God is. A God who is a spiritual Father, relatable, not distant. Whilst I realise some of us will have problematic relationships with our fathers or the idea of a father, God is the ultimate and perfect Father. This opening line positions him as someone who loves us and cares about us. Jesus even refers to God as Abba – a more personal way of saying Father – like Daddy or Papa.
So we begin, addressing God as someone with a personal loving connection to us.
Our Father in heaven – in the Bible reference to the heavens or skies is often a way of pointing to God’s authority and power over all things. So we pray to this God who is personal enough to be our father, but powerful enough to oversee and inhabit the entire creation or cosmos. Almost absolute opposites and yet they are combined in God.
And then the prayer is essentially divided into 2 halves. The first is focussed on God’s will. the ‘you’ petitions – let your name be hallowed, your kingdom come, your will be done…
God is worshipped, adored, recognised for who God is. It is all about you God, we worship you – we lift your name up. It is all about your kingdom, this is your creation, your world, your will be done – lead us into your plans and purposes for us and for this world, and today for this church.
On earth as in heaven –
We pray that as we become part of God’s kingdom, that we will see that here and now on earth. It is a prayer of seeking a reuniting of heaven and earth.
After recognising and declaring who God is and our relation to God, the prayer turns to our concerns for daily life – the ‘we’ petitions
Give US our daily bread, forgive US our sins, lead US not into evil.
These are about seeking God in the detail of our lives.
Our daily bread – God’s provision for us. An echo too of the God who provided bread for the Israelites in the wilderness, trusting for God’s provision each and every day.
Forgive us as we forgive others – we have a responsibility too. Just as we know we are forgiven we are called to offer that same liberation to others. Forgiveness was central to Jesus’ teaching. God forgave Israel and drew the people back into his presence, but we are called to do the same for our neighbour.
But life is not easy, there will be difficult times, temptations even, so we ask for God’s protection on us, God’s guidance to keep us from the wrong path.
Then the final sentence, giving glory to God, is called the doxology. It is not part of the New Testament text, but was added very early on. In some cases it is still excluded. But the prayer finishes with this declaration again of worship and praise, this is who God is.
This simple prayer then encompasses a lot, it recognises who God is, it is a declaration at the beginning and end. It is prophetic, in that it seeks God’s will for the future or any given situation into which it is prayed. It is requesting, interceding, recognising our need of God. And it is a warrior’s prayer, it sees our need of spiritual protection.
It’s actually a pretty good prayer to pray for our church just as it is. We declare the God who we believe in, our motivation, the one whose plans and purposes we want to step into here at St Edward’s. It asks, as we ask for God’s guidance for the future, we ask for God’s provision to revitalise this church, to help us grow spiritually, numerically, financially. It asks for help to get things right as we plan and develop and seek to grow; and it seeks God’s protection over Christ’s church here.
But it isn’t always easy is it? in the last 3 years, we’ve had to compromise, and learn from one another, to be patient with one another, and with change. To accept things that are different or that we don’t like, so that we can move forward together in our difference, for the kingdom and for our community.
You know Jesus gives the disciples this prayer and then immediately after he goes on to say that they must persevere in prayer. He knows it isn’t always easy. There will be challenges, that we need to keep praying and keep focussing on God because life is hard, and it’s not always easy to trust in God or forgive, or to hold onto who God is.
Jesus knows that only too well, he himself prayed on the cross as he died, Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Mark 15) he felt alone, he felt separated from God.
So we should persevere in prayer even when it is hard, or especially when it is hard, and that’s also why we do it together, why we should pray together as a church. In our home groups, as a PCC, with the prayer ministry team, as a whole church.
As a church we’ve tried various ways of praying together regularly over the last few years and they haven’t stuck or they haven’t drawn many people together to pray. We’ve had our Wed eves of prayer and worship, we have had 24/7 prayer events, morning prayer, evening prayer, we’ve prayed for key purposes, the prayer ministry team prays together. But for whatever reason, they are not well attended.
But Jesus says we should persevere in prayer, not give up.
Jesus uses the example of asking a friend for some bread and that because the friend persists in asking, even when the response it not immediately favourable, he will be rewarded for his persistence. There is a suggestion here that we must persevere in prayer, to be rewarded with a Spirit led answer –
v13 notes: how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!’
So I’d love to just take a moment now to encourage one another. Can you think of a time when a prayer was answered? doesn’t matter who big or small. I wonder if you can just turn to a few people near you if you feel comfortable doing so and just share with one another. How has God answered your prayers?
Sometimes we need to be reminded that God does hear and indeed answer our prayers. They might not always be the answers we want though! and I’m not focussing on unanswered prayer today which I acknowledge can be difficult.
But as a church we prayed for:
people to be on vision, strat and worship teams – and had very clear answers
we prayed for people with skills to join the church and they came. for key roles like safeguarding and treasurer and people stepped up.
we’ve had church prayers written for key seasons
we prayed together for our vision and God united us in that, we prayed for gift days and grant funding and God provided.
There are so many answers to prayer over the last few years and we only have to look at how the church is growing to see the fruit of that. And not only the last few years but in the history of this church from its beginnings in the 1930s and its dedication in 1968.
in fact services were held in the chapel, not just funerals, from its inception in 1936.
and before it became a church in its own right, as a plant from St John’s church, prayers were said there.
The prayers of many people over many years echo through these walls. Prayer is the foundation of this church.
So, let us not take our eyes off the ball! Just because we have a vision and a strategy and good things are happening does not mean we should stop! The opposite, we should keep going, persevere in prayer together.
I’ve been praying for a while now about corporate prayer, about how we should pray together and I have been challenged by a few of you on this, why are we not holding prayer evenings for example. And the answer has been because I don’t know where God is leading us in this. we’ve tried things that are not working so what should we do. But Jesus tells us to persevere and so we shall and we are going to try some new ways of praying together from September.
PCC will have a new dedicated time of prayer before each meeting
We will have monthly prayer walks and if anyone would like to lead one of these let me know!
and we will have termly prayer evenings for the whole church
and I’d encourage you all to come along and to pray with others. and many of us have different ways of praying, that is totally fine, we might want to come and sit in quiet, there is no pressure to pray out loud, but we will still be together.
I’d also encourage you to be praying for this church regularly. Often we focus on the things closest to us in our prayers, the people we love, the situations we face, but how often do we pray for our church? There are some prayer points which we will give out afterwards, stick them on your fridge or somewhere you will see them to remind you to pray for church.
We celebrate our birthday today, perhaps our gift to the church might be a commitment to pray for her?
and we are going to start that now. You were given paper and pens on the way in and I’d love to encourage you to write down something you’d like to pray for this church. and as we worship together in a moment we will bring those prayers forward to gather them together and they will be shared next week.
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