The Parish has launched a prayer guild principally, though, not exclusively to allow housebound members of the church to be involved int he church’s work through prayer.

Our Rector, Fr Mark Soady describes it in this way, ” Often the elderly and housebound parishioners feel they have nothing they can offer any longer to the life of the church. They can still pray, and may find they have more time for prayer than the more active members. Prayer is a vital and important part of the life of any church. They can offer that prayer ministry for and with us”.

Our Licensed Lay Minister, Ian Wells further elucidated its role and purpose at his Evensong Sermon on Old Church Sunday, he said:

“Almighty and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give us more than either we desire or deserve …‘

Wow. From today’s Book of Common Prayer collect: isn’t that just the case? Isn’t that the human response of us here and now, 400 years on?

This is why we heard the modern language version of that in this morning’s services.

It was relevant in Cranmer’s day, and it is relevant now.

It was just as relevant in earlier times.

Our reading from Exodus shows that in action.

The assembled people of Israel listened, and ‘bowed down and worshipped.’

All worship is a form of prayer.

But – as we know as the Exodus story unfolds – the new Pharaoh neither recognised God nor listened to him or to his prophet and representative Moses. His conscience wasn’t afraid, as the collect puts it. So much so, he continued to ignore all the signs and wonders Moses was instructed to perform, in spite of the plagues that were falling on Egypt.

Move on several thousand years and remember how often Jesus went away to a quiet place to pray.

Move on a few decades: our second reading from the unknown writer to The Hebrews of his time, second generation Christians from a Jewish background who have suffered persecution.

Pray for us: the writer has a clear conscience but knows that prayer is a necessity, a necessity for leaders themselves, and a necessity for those they are leading to pray for them as leaders.

As I hope we all do for Fr Mark, and our bishops and archdeacons, and our archbishops.

And so we move forward again, to the 300s. This coming Friday and Saturday, we remember first Monica, Mother of Augustine of Hippo, and then her son Augustine, later bishop and teacher of the faith.

Monica prayed for his conversion (as she must have prayed for the conversion of her pagan husband Patricius, who came to faith earlier.)

Augustine later said “She never let me out of her prayers.”

What an example to us, to pray regularly for family and friends we know well but who haven’t yet found Jesus.

When you get the September magazine, you will find Fr Mark kindly asked me to mark my move to Emeritus by writing the opening letter.

In that, you will find he has also asked me to be Warden of a Guild of Simeon and Anna for our parishes.

This is named for the two mature and deeply prayerful people Joseph and Mary met when they brought Jesus to the temple to be circumcised.

When I was a boy and heard this story, in the readings just after Christmas, I thought Simeon and Anna must at least as old as my grandparents.

Now I am that age myself, and realise that prayer is the core of belief, and that without it, just coming to church means nothing.

Prayer – even if it is a desperate cry of despair at not being able to pray as we’d wish – is what brings us closer to God.

In a recent online retreat, I realised that trying for meditative prayer is positive – even if, like me, you are not very good at it.

In aiming for meditative prayer, you are trying ‘to be’, not just to be busy.

Don’t get me wrong: we all need to be busy about our Father’s business, as the writer to the Hebrews says – Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have – but to do that effectively, we need just ‘to be’ as well, as for so many that is when they feel the presence of God.

He is there all the time, of course: it is usually us who are not listening carefully enough.

That is why a prayer routine is always helpful, as it carries you though dry periods.

And why anyone who wishes to join the Guild will receive a simple form of liturgy to frame and sustain their prayer pattern.

 

Which brings us back to the collect:

‘Almighty and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give us more than either we desire or deserve:

Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us good things which we are not worthy to ask.’

And to that splendid benediction at the end of the Epistle to the Hebrews:

‘ Now may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant,  make us complete in everything good so that we may do his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory for ever and ever.”