Dedication Festival 3rd October 2010

As parish priest I carry a lot of keys.

The Church keys are big – they make holes in my pocket!

I’ve got other keys for my house and my car and the smallest is this - my key fob to London’s Boris bikes.

Yes, Tuesday, my day off, saw me taking a series of 30 minute cycle rides across London thanks to my new membership of Barclays Cycle Hire.

Put this key into the docking station and it releases you a bike near Victoria station so you can cycle, as I did on Tuesday, to the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth.

I docked and then, after my visit, like changing horses in the middle ages, I used my key to release for me another bike that took me to my next port of call in Bloomsbury.

With Boris bikes you can ride all day for £1 if you make multiple journeys of under 30 minutes each.

This is a precious key, opening up London to me.

This is a no less precious key, opening up Church.

It is our Feast of Dedication. We recall the day this building was set apart, after its construction, for the worship of God.

Church keys take us into church buildings but what you do there is the real thing.
We worship. We lift heart and mind to God standing on the shoulders of thousands who’ve been here before us in this holy place seeking God’s face.

There was worship in heaven before Saint Giles was built and there will be worship in heaven after this building lies in the dust.

The question is will you and I in a century’s time be part of that worship?
We will need a key to do so.

That will be our faith in Jesus who opens wide the gate of heaven to those below.
By faith, the conviction of things unseen, we unlock possibilities for this world and the next.

Just as this key fob gives you access to free journeying in London so the gift of faith gives you access to a sense of belonging, purpose and empowerment that makes life really worth living.

On this Feast of Dedication we have a challenge to deepen our spiritual life.
In ten days time St. Giles is launching a prayer exploration fortnight. Next Sunday at Harvest Festival every church attender will be offered a free resource booklet to aid their personal prayer.

The booklet will provide exercises linked to the three interactive teaching sessions on Thursday evenings spaced a week apart starting on October 14th. These prayer exercises will be commended and talked through during the sermon on Sunday 17th and 24th October.

The three Thursday evening sessions will centre on praying from scripture, silent contemplation and charismatic prayer. There will be reference to Ignatian meditation, use of the Jesus Prayer and experience of the Holy Spirit among other aspects of prayer. The overall theme will touch on inviting the indwelling of Christ and building the desire to be his instrument in the work of spreading the good news Jesus brings to us.

When the church becomes a house of prayer the people will come running. wrote Brother Roger of Taizé

The church’s mission is weak because her prayer is weak. This month could be the key to a new work of the Holy Spirit here at St Giles. Last Sunday we had the excitement of several new faces on Back to Church Sunday a well as a gift of £5,000 to bring the welcoming doors project back to life.

Refreshing our prayer has enormous implications if we really set our hearts to it – and this month is a privileged place if you will make it so.

Prayer is the key of faith. By it we unlock the eternity we were made for and the eternal love that welcomes open hearts to make them one with the just made perfect .

Prayer is the key that unlocks the way into what God has in store for each one of us.

Through the prayer of faith we are able to make better life choices from the countless possibilities that lie before us all.

When I was 21 I remember getting cards with keys upon them. ‘Key of the door – 21’.

Life has moved on so that the things I gained access to at 21, to vote, to open a bank account and so on, come earlier than they did years ago.

My key fob works through an electronic internet new to the world this century. Through it there can be an oversight of 6,000 cycles at 400 docking stations across London.

My church key opens up access to a building where through preaching and sacrament we encounter one whose oversight extends across this world and the next.

Your faith and mine, the Christian faith, owns that oversight and welcomes through it a purpose for living and a reason for dying.

This is what lies behind what we are about this morning on our Feast of Dedication which is today a call to the prayer of faith which is the key to life.

I close with some words addressed to Our Lord in a hymn of Charles Wesley:
Visit then this soul of mine, pierce the gloom of sin and grief, fill me radiancy divine, scatter all my unbelief. More and more thyself display. Shining to the perfect day!