A number of folk in this church love the sport of running. I gather that there's an increasing Trinity Church contingent at the Wykeham Lakes Park Run on a Saturday morning. If they change the time so it's not 9:00 a.m. on a Saturday, I might be tempted to give it a go myself. But running is a popular activity for many today.
Let me ask you a question: what kind of priest do you think you need? Most religions have priests. Now, what does a priest do? A priest will represent you before God, and having represented you in the presence of God, the priest will bring to you things that you need from God. They might dispense you with forgiveness; they might give you blessings for success in various areas of life; they might give you wisdom—either general teaching or specific guidance that you might need.
We live in a very distracted age. Whether it's notifications on your phone shouting at you, "Stop what you're doing and look at me now!", whether it's you're trying to browse the internet to maybe buy your weekly shopping and pop-up ads invite you to visit pages that are nothing to do with the task at hand...
You choose to watch a single episode of something on Netflix, and as it comes to the end, you're told that maybe you'd like to watch this next – and unless you press stop, it just starts.
Why bother with church?
That’s our question for this morning.
I meet people from time to time who tell me that they are keen Christian people, they just don’t go to church much.
Nationally, church attendance is declining.
“The real benefit comes as you stick with it.”
That’s true in so many walks of life. It’s true in marathon running – at least, so I’m told. Keep going, and you get the satisfaction of finishing the race. If you get a stitch, run it out. It’s true in any friendship, and it’s true in a marriage – as you stick with it over many years, the friendship becomes a greater and greater blessing. It’s true for being a vicar – the longer you’ve been around, the more you’ve got to know people, the more use you can be.
And it’s true of being a Christian.
This morning’s sermon is about prayer.
And the chances are that makes your heart sink.
If you’re anything like me, you already know that Christians are supposed to pray. You don’t need a Bible passage that commands us to pray. You don’t need a sermon that tells you to pray. You know that. We know that prayer is important. And yet there’s this gulf between what we know and what we do, so Bible passages and sermons on prayer just make us feel guilty.
There is no greater privilege in the world than being a Christian.
That is no over-statement.
Many people think that you are best off if you manage to own you own home, or if you have a good job, or if you have a good family. The reality is that none of those things comes a patch on being a follower of Jesus Christ.