| New Book now Available Here is an anthology of over 1100 brief prayers and thought-starters, for each day of the year, with almost 400 original prayers by Bruce Prewer. Included is both a subject index and an index of authors-- an ecumenical collection of about 300 different sources. |
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| Title: Brief Prayers for Busy People. Author: Bruce D Prewer ISBN 978-1-62880-090-6 Available from Australian Church Resources, web site www.acresources.com.au email service@acresources.com.au or by order from your local book shop or online on amazon. |
Year C, Advent
1
Luke 21:25-36...
(Sermon
1: “Looking to the Future.”)
(Sermon
2: “Doomsday Blues.”)
1 Thess 3: 9-13...
Jeremiah 33: 14-16...
Psalm 25:1-10
PREPARATION
The spectacular mercies of the Advent Christ be with you all.
And also with you.
That we may be glad whenever the Lord Jesus comes to
us;
May Christ’s
own goodness be consolidated in our hearts.
That we may honour God together with our sisters and
brothers of every race;
May the Lord
increase our love for each other and all humanity.
OR –
Advent is here;
In the revolving seasons of the church calendar,
today a new year dawns.
Let us begin this new year
by greeting one another in the name of the coming Christ.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
And also with you.
SENTENCES
O God, we trust in you alone,
let me never be put to shame.
Let none who wait for you be ashamed,
let us be ashamed of nothing
except our sin
You lead the humble in the way of goodness,
and you, loving God, teach the
meek your ways.
PRAYER
God our holy Friend, you have pledged to complete
the love-ministry which Christ Jesus began, making all things young again.
Enable us during this Advent season to get ready for the celebration of the
coming Lord Jesus, that he may find us watching eagerly, serving gladly, and
loving wholeheartedly. To the glory of your name
Amen!
CONFESSION AND ASSURANCE
Because most of us are slow learners, lukewarm
believers, yet loquacious excuse-makers, let us pause, take stock, and confess
our sins. Let us pray.
Because we have sometimes busied ourselves
religiously,
as if the success of God’s
kingdom depended solely on us:
Lord
have mercy.
Lord have mercy.
Because we sometimes opt out, and with a perverse
piety
leave everything up to God and
the holy angels:
Christ
have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Because your mercy is over all your works, and your
grace is greater
than our pride, foolishness and
weakness:
Lord
have mercy.
Lord have mercy.
Have pity, loving God, on our little lives and our
errant ways. Forgive our sins which are many and diverse, correct the distorted
view we have of ourselves and the world, lead us from discouragement to hope,
and restore within us a passion to seek your will and do it. Through
Jesus Christ our Saviour.
Amen!
ABSOLUTION
My Friends, stand up straight, lift up your downcast
eyes, your redemption is at hand. In Christ Jesus our sins are forgiven and the
final victory is assured.
Thanks be to God.
May the Lord make you increase and abound in love to
one another and to all people,
that we may be free from shame
and holy at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.
PRAYER FOR CHILDREN
Trusting God
Dear God,
sometimes we get afraid
of darkness or bad dreams,
of thunder and lightning,
of accidents or cruel people,
Please keep us safe -
like a baby kangaroo
in its mother’s pouch.
Amen!
CHILDREN’S
SONG: THE COMING CHRIST
Tune “Around the mulberry
bush”
The prophets
told of a coming Christ,
a coming Christ, a coming
Christ.
The prophets
told of a coming Christ
with a
wonderful love preparing.
He came and
comes in each new day,
each new day, each new day.
He came and
comes in each new day,
with a love
that’s wonderfully daring.
He calls to us
in the poor and lost,
the poor and lost, the poor and
lost.
He calls to us
in the poor and lost,
with a love
that’s wonderfully sharing.
At the world’s
end he will be there,
he will be there, he will be
there.
At the world’s
end he will be there’
with a love
that’s wonderfully caring.
Ó B D Prewer 1990
PSALM 25: 1-10
Lord Jesus, to you my spirit surges in joy,
on you I stake my life.
Don’t let me ever be ashamed,
or discouraged by a critic’s scorn.
No one who follows you is disgraced,
only those who turn back.
Show me, Lord Jesus, the disciple’s path;
teach me the right directions.
Saviour lead me and coach
me;
each day I’ll trust your healing love.
Continue your tireless compassion
displayed throughout the ages.
Don’t recall the impetuous faults of youth;
remember me now in your saving grace.
You alone are unconditionally good and reliable
and show the lost the way back home.
You guide unpretentious folk in goodness;
you teach the humble your path.
Untiring kindness and fidelity are your ways
for those who want to maintain their faith and vows.
© B.D. Prewer 2000
POEM: HE IS NEAR
Look around and see
the season has come
for the greening of every tree.
They wave their hands
and shout their joy
from many lands.
The Lord comes not for fear
but for celebration;
rejoice, for He is near!
This same Jesus rose up high
in the ascension cloud,
beyond where people die,
comes again to full-fill
every healing word;
hold your heads up still!
whenever there is consternation;
don’t be afraid on that day
for your full liberation
is already on the way.
© B.D. Prewer 1990
COLLECT
Most wonderful God, keep
us alert to all your works around us, that at his
coming the Lord Jesus will neither find us apathetic nor so frenetically busy
that we have no time to smell the roses or to have chat with some lonely
neighbour. Amen.
SERMON 1: LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE
Luke 21:28
Now when these
things begin to happen, stand tall, lift up your heads, because your liberation
is drawing close.
Do you ever wonder about the future shape of homo sapiens?
What
will a human being in the year 2,500 AD be like?
Or in 5,500 AD?
I’m not talking about physical appearances;
not asking whether people might develop into three metre
giants,
or maybe small-legged, squat creatures with bulbous
egg-heads.
I’m asking about character, personal qualities,
attitudes and values.
How
will they see each other and deal with each other?
How
will they relate to God?
GOOD NEWS
The first Sunday in Advent is widely observed as a
day when the church thinks about the final coming of Christ Jesus. Some call it
the “second coming.” A misnomer. I prefer to use the
words “final coming”
From the early days of the church, Christians
believed that the same Jesus whom they had come to deeply know and love, would
come again at the end of the world to consummate all
his works of grace.
At first, like St Luke in today’s Gospel reading,
they expected the end to happen in their generation. Slowly they had to adjust
to the fact that God was not in such a hurry. Yet they never wavered from the
belief that at the end, one day, Jesus would come again in the cloud (shekinah) of God’s
glory. It was a theme repeated with sparkling eyes. Good news. The Gospel.
But now? Too frequently we hear this
message of the Final Coming preached as a message of
doom; employed as an assault weapon. It has been used to terrorise people into
conversion. That is a travesty! An obscenity!
The Final Coming of Christ Jesus is first a message
of hope and joy. It is always gospel, great news, something to get excited
about. Something to stake all of one’s happiness on.
It is the greatest possible news that Jesus is the
most enduring reality in the world; that he shapes and determines and
consummates the final future. The final Word is Jesus, the person of sublime
grace and truth. Now, that is really something to shout about!
Luke declares that whenever the negative forces
throw their weight around, when wars and suffering are everywhere, when
horrendous natural disasters happen, when evil flaunts itself, we should not be
afraid:
Stand tall, lift up you heads, for your
liberation is drawing close.
LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE
Over the last 100 years, there have been many
attempts to look into the future. Much of this has taken the form of science
fiction. It has indeed become a part of the mythology of our era.
At its best, science fiction is created by brilliant
minds, with a sophisticated scientific training behind them. I like reading
SciFi. But I would be the first to admit that the credo behind much science
fiction is ultimately pathetic.
In it you will find the same old human story of evil
projected into space and into the future. The same old litany of injustice,
tyranny, slavery, cunning, lust, violence, pride, greed, fear, hatred, going on
and on and on......world without end.
In some SciFi, even after our planet earth has been
deserted or destroyed, the same sordid human activities spawn on, further and
further into space. An endless regurgitation of human (and
other-than-human) ignorance and evil.
To be sure, in much of it the heroes finally win.
But they only win by using superior cunning, power and technology. Force wins, survival of the fittest. All that is rotten and evil
in humanity lives on. In spite of its enthralling cleverness, much science
fiction can be a most gloomy mythology.
At the base line, there we usually find a dismal
view of the future. Therefore, as a myth science fiction fosters anxiety. It leaves us to remain slaves
of fears, being suspicious of others, and having little trust in humility,
mercy, gentleness, forgiveness, compassion and peace.
THE CHRISTIAN CONTRAST
In contrast, the Christian Gospel of the Final
Coming of Christ is good news.
The
ultimate future is in his hands.
The
end is Jesus shaped, Jesus coloured, Jesus textured.
Agape
love rules everything and everyone at the end.
To live with him and for him is not only a noble way
of life,
it provides an immovable foundation,
it was, is and will be, a sure winner!
Here and now we can be people of that assured
future.
Profoundly
yet simply, we can be people of hope;
people who embrace a piece of the Jesus-future and embody it
day by day.
Jesus is not, and never will be, outdated.
He
was, and still is, a
man before his time.
Christians
are called also to be people before their time.
In the eyes of critics who are committed to the
stale old world and its selfish obsessions,
those who follow Jesus are freaks and the church is the
fellowship of losers.
(Blessed
are the meek? And the poor, the merciful, the hungry, the
pure?)
But
what glorious freakishness!
We
are before our time.
We are a people who know
the end of the story,
the way things will irrevocably end up,
and we start living that story now!
Therefore into the sour face of all the negativity
and anxiety that mouths-off around us,
we speak the Advent Gospel:
Christ
Jesus, “this same Jesus,
comes again in glory.
Stand tall. Lift up your heads. Your
liberation is drawing close.
SERMON 2: DOOMSDAY BLUES?
Luke 21:33
Heaven and
earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Luke 21:33
To believe in Christ Jesus, is to believe
in a gracious Purpose that is ever at work.
It is to trust
in a redeeming ‘X Factor’ that is unconditional,
irrevocable.
The Bethlehem event was not a beautiful but lonely
flash of light in a dark night, but the Light that is the only permanent
reality.
Heaven and earth will pass away, but
my words will not pass away. Luke 21:33
In the present world political climate, we need to
hear this Advent message.
-------------------------
Doomsday blues seem to be afflicting many of our
fellow citizens since September 11th in the USA, and
since October 12th in Bali. There is a mood of doomsday gloom, and at times
thoughts and deeds of desperation. Many commentators claim that in the wake of
those terrorist atrocities the world will never again feel a safe place. With
that I emotionally agree.
Yet I must hasten to interject (even into my own
thoughts) that this is very much a crisis for the Western world. It is those
communities and nations which have long enjoyed an extended “arm chair ride”
(sometimes on the backs of the poor and the exploited and the abused) who are
now anxious and pessimistic.
But for people like the Palestinians, or the poor
millions of Latin America, or the indigenous people of Australia, or the racial
and religious minorities in Indonesia, or the people of Tibet, nothing has
changed. Their sense of security and well being was blown away long ago.
It is the Western world that now has the jitters.
And we in Terra Australis (although
located in the region of Asia) are a cultural and
political part, of the anxious, new current of Western insecurity.
THE SECOND COMING?
Here is a strong Word to the anxious and the shaken:
Christ will come again.
For many centuries, Christians have on the first
Sunday of Advent celebrated faith in the coming again of Jesus Christ. This
coming of Christ is a joy to be celebrated.
This is frequently referred to as the Second Coming.
I prefer to employ the phrase “Final Coming.” Christ first came dramatically in
the holy incarnation. By his Spirit Christ unobtrusively comes again and again
to every generation, to initiate and foster the work of liberation and healing.
Finally he will come to consummate all things. That ultimate consummation is
the theme of this Sunday.
If you don’t believe in the Final Coming of Christ,
then I suggest that you don’t really believe in the first coming of this True
Child of God. They are inseparable as lightening and thunder. The parousia and the incarnation
go together. If they are not inseparably linked in our faith, our Christmas
activities are in danger of. becoming a sentimental
excursion into fantasy; like pixies in the garden, an omniscient Santa Claus,
or yowies* in our deep forests or bunyips* in our billabongs.
*
[Australian mythology: yowies were huge
apemen, and bunyips were amphibious monsters of our inland waterways and
lakes.]
Unless we see Christ as the Alpha and Omega, the One
who will certainly come again, then Advent and Christmas can be a brief
sentimental diversion; time out from the hard suffering and desperation of this
world. It may offer a bit of temporary escapism. But mere tinselled sentiment
will not provide a liberation for anxious souls who fear
they are living in doomsday times.
NEW TESTAMENT OPTIMISM
In New Testament times many people suffered from the
doomsday blues.
In preparing for this Advent, it struck me again how
the imagery of troubled times (as written by the 21st chapter of St Luke in the
Gospel for today) reads like a commentary on bad times in every century since.
Jesus drew from the widespread mood and apocalyptic
language of his time.
His words echo other writings of that era. Wars,
terrorism, revolts, persecution, famines, earthquakes, betrayal by spies, break
up of family life, meteors and comets, religious extremism, and injustices.
What is more, Many people in each century really
thought they were living on the edge of doomsday, the very end of the world. If
we read St Paul, certainly in his early letters he was expecting, in the near
future, the
final collapse of the old world order.
Yet those early Christians, like St Paul, were not
pessimistic.
They did not have the jitters. They had a confidence
about them which contrasted with the doomsday blues of those around them. They
lived with hope. This hope was grounded in God and the work of God’s only true
Son, Jesus. This God was greater than all their fears and was never outwitted
by any evil or calamity. Jesus was and would be God’s final word.
They believed that Christ would come again to fulfil
the reconciliation of heaven
and earth. They believed that what Christ was on about (his agape-love, expressed in what he taught, how he lived and died)
would have the ultimate say. They might have to live through calamity terror, or suffering, but
such evils were not the end of the story. Jesus is the end. Jesus is the irrevocable end.
Never did those first Christians pretend that bad
things could not happen
to the world or to the church,
but that Jesus and his love ultimately rules this universe. Like Luke they
repeated the words of Jesus with quiet confidence: Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
THE WORD TO US
There are always some people on “the lunatic fringe”
of Christianity
who exploit the Final Coming of
Christ as a message of fear. Please,
dear family of God, don’t let them be the only voice! The New Testament
preaches the Final Coming a message of love and joy! This is God’s word to us. Hope, love and joy. Not doomsday but doxology!
I repeat: Not doomsday but doxology!
In the midst of our doomsday blues the Advent
message is one of hope.
Anxiety, despondency, or even despair are not meant to be the Christian condition. Not one of the
hope-full words of Christ has been cancelled by recent events. Christ Jesus,
with all his amazing grace, will come again to us, even among the carnage and
rubble of events like the September 11in New York and the Bali bombings.
Three weeks after the Bali bombing carnage,
some of the bodies were still
not identified. One, a woman, had finally been identified and the remains
returned home for her interment. Her son, speaking at the funeral of his
mother, pleaded with the congregation to forgive those who had killed her.
That, he said, he was certainly what his Christian mother wanted. In that
profoundly moving interview, I saw Christ come again in glory.
Then, finally, at last, at so me future ultimate
end,
when God says the time is right,
hrist will come again in finality, fulfilling all that he began.
You can bank your life on it!
AFFIRMATION: STAND TALL
When the nations go to war while good men stay
silent,
do not become weary and cease
to care,
for your liberation is near.
When cyclones ravage and insurance companies renege,
do not rant wildly and vainly
swear,
for your salvation is near.
When recession hits hard and the poorest people
suffer,
do not forsake compassion and
prayer,
for your rescue is near.
When casinos prosper while the church seems to
shrink,
do not propagate gloom and
despair,
for God’s kingdom is near.
When the fig and all the trees of the forest are in
leaf,
stand tall and deeply breathe the
springtime air,
for the Lord is very near.
© B.D. Prewer 2000
OR
-
A CREED FOR TROUBLED TIMES
When nation rises against nation, and kingdom
against kingdom, the end is not violence, for there is a God of resilient,
redeeming love, and the Brighter Purpose is at work in the shadows, and the
darkness cannot smother it.
Lord we
believe, strengthen our timid faith.
When there are earthquakes, famines and pestilences
and collisions among the stars, the end is not chaos, God the Creator of the
heavens and the earth has not forsaken us, and the harmony will again break out
and gather to hasten towards consummation.
Lord we
believe, strengthen our timid faith.
When believers are arrested and abused, dragged
before kings and governors, the end is not injustice, the Holy Spirit is always
with you in all your trials and travail, and words will be given to confound
your adversaries and shake the gates of hell.
Lord we
believe, strengthen our timid faith.
When parents, brothers, sisters, relatives or
friends, betray you even unto death, the end it not alienation: the crucified
Christ will reconcile all things seen an unseen, and the glorious finale is
much nearer than when you first believed.
Lord we
believe, strengthen our timid faith.
PRAYERS OF INTERCESSION
For
most of us, time goes too swiftly.
Let
us pray today for those for whom time goes far too slowly.
For displaced people who have been living for many
years in refugee camps yet still see no hope of repatriation.
For political and religious
prisoners who pray for justice for themselves and for the well being of loved
ones on the outside.
For the diseased and the maimed who long for a
future which is no longer dictated by limitation or pain.
For declining churches that seem too obsessed with
wanting a return to past glories to be able to step freely into Christ’s new
future.
For the newly bereaved who fear their anguish will
never cease, and even wonder whether they are losing their minds.
For friends and loved ones who, for various reasons,
seem unable to plan for tomorrow without anxiety and trepidation.
You, Holy Friend, are forever our healing,
liberation, peace and joy. May all your people open their minds and hearts to
your time of salvation, and receive the grace which is made perfect in human
weakness. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
SENDING OUT
There is a world out there that is oversupplied with
theories and technology,
but drastically undersupplied
with hope.
You however, like Christ, are tomorrow’s people,
those who know the future is pregnant with promise and hope.
This same
Jesus comes again with glory, to judge the living and the dead.
Go and live out your hope graciously and
courageously.
This same
Jesus comes again with glory, to judge the living and the dead.
The grace of Christ Jesus
who is the same today, yesterday and forever,
will lead you to the love of God
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
and then take you on to those
tasks and joys
which will prepare you for the
greater glory which is to come.
Amen!
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