Consecration of St Nicolas Prestbury
It’s a wonderful day, a great occasion. It’s a kind of coming of age. The
apostle Paul says to the Ephesian Christians in our first reading, “You are
no longer strangers and aliens”, you are something new - citizens with the
saints and members of the household of God. People of St Nicolas, Prestbury,
you are no longer children, a daughter church, an untested plant. You are
something new, a mature Christian community, you are a grown up church,
today you take your place among the parish churches of this team and, in due
course, you will take your place among the parish churches of the larger
North Cheltenham Team. To dedicate a church has a certain provisionality
about it; it’s a first stage. To consecrate it is to say confidently that,
for as far as we can see, this church will be needed to serve the people of
this part of Cheltenham and we want to call down God’s blessing as we set it
apart for that holy purpose.
We give thanks, of course, for 37 years of faithful and imaginative
ministry in and from St Nicolas’, with all the freshness that belong to a
young church, breaking new ground. But today we celebrate the coming of age
of a parish church. A great occasion.
When the church was dedicated in 1970 there was a focus on the font, on
the lectern and on the altar table and we are revisiting that today. Actions
speak louder than words, so I don’t want to explain away the symbolic
movements and actions of this service, but just let me do a little bit of
underlining.
We have gathered around the baptismal font. Even before that we have
showered the church building with holy water, and holy water is always
related to baptism, a reminder of what is claimed for Christ in the water of
baptism. And, at the font, we made once again our baptismal profession,
publicly affirmed our faith, which is also the faith of the Church.
One of the things that a church building exists for is to provide a place
where the community may bring people to faith. We makes disciples of them.
We do it by welcoming them and teaching them, and somewhere along that way
we bring them to the waters of baptism. That’s how we make new Christians. I
guess that has been important through the 37 years, but never more important
than now. And perhaps nowadays we hear more clearly the call of Jesus to go
to make disciples, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit. We don’t simply wait. From here we go out to seek,
to proclaim, to witness, and then we bring in to be welcomed, to be taught,
to be discipled, to be brought to the waters of baptism. There’s a priority
for the Parish Church of St Nicolas Prestbury - bring to faith, bring to
baptism.
And then we moved our focus to the lectern where the scriptures are read,
the gospel is proclaimed, the sermon is preached. The lectern that we stand
around and face when we hear the gospel, because in its words we meet a
Living Lord who addresses us with God’s word for us, a Lord who nurtures our
faith as we engage with the scriptures, as we struggle sometimes with their
meaning, as we try to relate them to the challenges of our time and the
complexities of our lives. Through reading the sacred texts, through
listening to the preaching through participation in study courses and house
groups, through prayerful reflection, we let Christ speak to us his word of
life and it develops our faith, confirms our faith, deepens our faith,
nurtures our faith. That’s an on-going process for individuals and for
communities.
That’s been important through 37 years here at St Nicolas’, but never
more so than now. We live in an age when there is such widespread ignorance
of what Christians believe, so little knowledge of a faith that shaped this
nation, such danger in a degeneration into, at best a kind of vacuous
spirituality and a worst a godless secularism. Christians need to understand
their faith, to be able to speak about it confidently, to understand its
reasonableness as well as its mystery. We need to be a learning church.
There’s a priority for the Parish Church of St Nicolas Prestbury - nurture
faith.
And soon we shall move our focus to the altar, where there will be a
moment when we call upon God in prayer to consecrate this building.
We thank you for this house of prayer, which we now bless,
sanctify and consecrate to your glory and in honour of St Nicolas.
Later still in the service there is a legal moment, when the Registrar
reads the Deed of Consecration and I sign it. For the lawyers that is the
moment of consecration. But, before ever the legal moment, the prayer
moment.
We thank you for this house of prayer, which we now bless,
sanctify and consecrate to your glory and in honour of St Nicolas.
And we set it within the Eucharistic Prayer, because then it becomes all
caught up in our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving and connected to what
we do, to what people have done here for 37 years, week by week to remember
Jesus. I said this church was built as a place where the community can bring
new Christians to faith. It was also built to be a canopy for the altar, a
tent under which the people of God can gather to do what Jesus commanded
them to do in remembrance of him.
Bring to faith. Nurture faith. Draw near with faith. Feed on him by
faith. Draw near with faith and be nourished by Christ, be fed at his table,
participate in his life. That’s what you do here at St Nicolas and its what
you need to do. Keep coming back to be fed by Christ, so that you are always
drawn close to him, always equipped by him for discipleship, always
remembering what he has done for us, always holding before us the feast of
heaven towards which he beckons us. You need to be a eucharistic church. It
goes on being a priority for the Parish Church of St Nicolas Prestbury, a
place where people draw near in faith and are nourished by Christ.
The Font - bring to faith. The Word - nurture faith. The Altar - feed on
him by faith.
And that faith is always faith in Christ crucified. And we have
symbolised that this afternoon by signing the church building, just as in
baptism we sign a new Christian, with the sign of the cross, just as many of
us sign ourselves with the sign of the cross at key moments in our worship
and our prayers. For everything we do is in the light of the cross, every
expression of faith makes sense because of the cross. And when we bring new
Christians to baptism at the font, we pledge them to a pattern of life that
is about dying and rising, death and resurrection - we draw them into a
relationship defined by the cross. When we open the scriptures and proclaim
what we believe, we tell a story of God’s relationship with humankind that
finds its ultimate meaning on a hill outside a city and in a garden where a
stone has been rolled away from a cave. As Paul puts it, “we preach Christ
crucified”. When we gather around the altar table, week by week, we receive
bread that speaks of a broken body and a cup of wine that speaks of the
shedding of blood upon the altar of the cross. We make our lives a sacrifice
in solidarity with the sacrifice of Christ once for all on the cross. We
proclaim his death and resurrection until he comes.
The cross is not something to frighten us or to appal us. It is a sign of
victory, a sign of glory, a sign of wonderful wonderful love. But it hovers
over everything we do in this church and its message impacts on everything
in our lives. Let the consecration crosses put you in mind of that as you go
forward, the Parish Church of St Nicolas Prestbury, with your mission
- To bring to faith.
- To nurture faith.
- To feed on Christ by faith.
- Faith in Christ crucified.
+Michael Gloucestr:
