Sermons

Eighth Sunday after Trinity

Sunday 29th July at 10am

Simon Cowling
Readings: Colossians 2. 6-19; Luke 11. 1-13

How and when do you pray? Those were questions we were thinking about in one of our recent pre-Confirmation sessions. It was good and encouraging to hear what everyone had to say, to learn something about the sheer variety of our prayer life at St. Ed's outside our Sunday morning worship and, in company with others, to reflect on our own practice of prayer. Early morning or late evening, with others or alone, using written prayers or in silent conversation with God - in these and in many other ways our collective life of prayer as a Christian community is continued each day.

These thoughts about prayer have been prompted, of course, by this morning's Gospel reading. Jesus' disciples ask him to teach them to pray and he gives them the prayer which has ever since served to unite Christians across time and space, whatever their other differences: the Lord's Prayer. Jesus follows this with a passage of teaching about prayer which could be summarised in one word of advice: be persistent.

I've brought along a bedding plant this morning. Like all plants, bedding plants grow from tiny beginnings, relying on moisture and sunshine and the skill of the gardener for development into plants that will beautify the borders or hanging baskets of our gardens. Bedding plants begin life as seedlings, but we don't want them to remain seedlings. We want them to grow and develop, to become what they have the potential to be. Over the past eleven years I have had the privilege, with my family, of journeying alongside people in our parish - with those who worship here regularly, with those whom we see occasionally in church and with many more whom I have encountered in the sometimes bewilderingly wide variety of contexts that parish clergy in the Church of England find themselves. During these eleven years, I have seen much growth take place. Some of this has been physical growth, for instance of children whom I have baptised as babies and who are now on the threshold of transition to secondary school, or of people who were teenagers when I arrived in 1996 and who are now married and have children of their own, either in Leeds or elsewhere. Such growth, not least of my own children, gives me a faintly alarming sense of the passage of time, but also, and far more importantly, an awareness of the many gifts which children and young people bring to our church family and wider community in their own right and at every stage of their lives.

But as well as physical growth, I have seen spiritual growth and development. This spiritual growth and development has had far less to do with anything I have been able to bring than with the way in which so many people over the years have placed their own gifts and insights at the disposal of our church family and wider parish. I have learned from these gifts and insights as much as anyone, as I have journeyed with you. I have learned and grown through conversation with those whose understanding of scripture differs from my own; I have learned and grown through the insights of those whose Christian upbringing has been in a tradition other than Anglican, yet who have found a home here; I have learned and grown through the wisdom of ordained colleagues, past and present and ecumenical. And in all this I have been aware of the words of St. Paul to the young church at Corinth: the one who sows and the one who waters really do not matter. It is God who matters, because he makes the plant grow.

If you take nothing else away from this final sermon of mine as Vicar here, please take that verse away with you. The life of St. Edmund's does not depend on any one individual, least of all the Vicar. It depends for its growth and development on God, whose people we are and who wishes for each of us to grow, like a seedling, into what we have the potential to be.

Two more reflections to end. In that same passage from 1 Corinthians, Paul reminds his readers that .. we are partners working together for God, and you are God's field. In some ways, I find the image of the Church as God's field a much more suggestive one than the image of the Church as a building, an image which Paul in fact goes on to use directly after that verse. A field is there for all to see, what goes on in it is visible; a field is more likely than a building to have porous edges that merge into its surroundings; and as well as whatever crop is sown, a field, even in these days of targeted herbicides and pesticides, is likely to support a wide variety of flora and fauna. What better way for a church community to be than to be out there, open for all to see; with porous edges so that all may easily enter; and with the largeness of spirit to support people at all stages of belief and with all manner of understandings of what it is to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Finally, back to our Gospel. The request of the disciples to Jesus to teach them to pray, just as John taught his disciples, arises in a particular context: the disciples have seen Jesus praying himself. I think that first part of the first verse of Luke 11 is the most important one of all in our Gospel passage: the disciples see how important prayer is to Jesus and want him to teach them how to pray. In the same way, we must never underestimate the importance of how we bear witness to those whom we would wish to welcome. Our willingness, our commitment, to growth in our relationship with God in prayer will be a measure of how far we are serious about offering and proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ to those whom we are called to serve in his name, wherever God has chosen to place us. Amen.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay