| 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, FIRST AFTER CHRISTMAS
Luke 2: 41-52
(Sermon
1: “Growing Pains”)
Colossians 3:12-17
1 Samuel 2: 18-20 & 26
Psalm 148
( Galations 4:4. Sermon 2: “For the New
year”)
PREPARATION
We are here
in the name of Christ Jesus.
We are together in this house of prayer
because Christ has come among us;
“trailing clouds of glory, from God who is our home.”
The love and happiness of the Lord Jesus Christ be
with you all.
And also with you.
OR—
Give thanks to God through the Lord Jesus.
In whatever you do, in speaking or serving, do it
all in his name.
The grace of the Lord Jesus be
with you all.
And also with you.
Let us praise the Lord.
Young men and
women together,
the elderly and little
children.
Praise the Lord from the heavens,
praise God in the highest heights.
Give praise
all you angels,
give praise you heavenly hosts!
PRAYER
God our holy Friend, with wonder and joy we come
before you. We come from the aftermath of Christmas celebrations, contented
though weary, relaxed and thankful. Please do not allow the glory of Bethlehem
to slowly fade from our focus, but let it illuminate all our worship, home
life, and service in the wider world. In the name of your
holy Son.
Amen!
CONFESSION AND ASSURANCE
r
Come let us return unto the Lord, who always has
mercy and will abundantly pardon. Let us pray.
Most loving God, we admit to you and to each other,
that we are beings in whom light and darkness are
uncomfortably mixed.
We are beings
of cleverness yet foolishness,
faith yet
much unrest,
strength
yet frailty,
compassion
yet self interest.
We want to be
close to you yet we ignore you,
we praise
you yet defy you,
we serve
you yet evade you,
we love you
yet deny you.
Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.
God of liberation and healing, through your grace in
Christ Jesus, we ask to be cleansed and made young in the Spirit once again.
Amen!
ABSOLUTION
God hears our prayer. Those who come without reserve
shall never be turned away.
“Let
the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,
the peace to which you are called as one body,
and be thankful.”
Amen!
“Be
patient with one another,
forgiving one another as the Lord has forgiven you.”
Amen!
PRAYER FOR CHILDREN
My Home And Family
Please bless my brother/sister
even when we fight,
bless my bedroom
where I feel safe at night.
God bless my mum
and bless my dad –
even when I’m naughty
and they get mad.
Please bless my pets
and each wild kangaroo,
bless birds in our garden,
and don’t forget the zoo.
Bless each of my friends
and my teachers at school,
Please even bless the bullies
who think they are so cool.
And now please bless me too,
and keep me close to you.
Amen.
COMING OF AGE
He was not thoughtless,
but in the year
of his bar mitzvah
he went missing,
while parents with fear
went anxiously looking.
He was not thoughtless;
a greater kin
had caught him up;
his search was on
among the big questions
priests founder in.
He was not thoughtless,
but was on track
for that Divine
Friday of squander
when all heaven
would weep in wonder.
From
‘Beyond Words’
© B D Prewer @ Joint Board of Christian
Education
COLLECT
Holy and most amazing God, when you threw in your
lot with us in a stable at Bethlehem, you scattered the darkness and filled
your people with new light and joy.
Please continue to fill us with your light, that by
deed, word and abundant good humour, we may share your incarnate glory with
those around us.
In the name of the Creator,
Redeemer and Inspirer.
Amen.
SERMON 1: GROWING PAINS
Luke 2: 52
Hebrews 5: 8-9
And Jesus grew
in both height and wisdom, held in high regard by God and people. Luke 2:52
Son though he was, Jesus learned obedience in the school of suffering,
and being made complete, he became the source of eternal liberation to all who
obey him. Hebrews 5: 8-9
How did Jesus, whom we call the Christ, come to be
the uniquely good person that he was?
So
compassionate yet so resolute, so wise yet so simple,
so loving yet so resolute when toughness was needed,
so holy yet so approachable?
How was it that the son of Mary
stands at the pinnacle of all that is best in humanity?
COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS
Much of popularist
Christian attitudes assume¾
That Jesus in the manger was already perfectly and
omnisciently Divine. That from his
conception he was ‘programmed’ to live the holy life without flaw.
Such folk assume that his heavenly origin and
destiny meant that he was incapable of being anything else but the perfect
person. We see this in so many paintings of crib scenes, where the baby Christ
pronounces blessings on his worshippers, every inch like a
infant Pope; magnifico! You hear it also in prayers
and hymns. “The little Lord Jesus no
crying he makes.” “And through all his wondrous childhood, he would honour and
obey.”
In such piety you will find it very difficult to
discover anything which suggests he ever slopped his food, soiled his diapers,
or as he grew in to boyhood, that he ever dirtied or tore his clothing like
every active child does.
What is more, as his mind develops, do we ever allow
him to have doubts? Nor argue with his dad, or experience peer rivalry for food
and drink (you know how it goes-- her piece of cake is bigger than mine) nor be tempted to
lie, manipulate, to break wind, to feel anger, or experience sexual longings? (especially that last one!)
Some excessive writings, both ancient and modern,
make Jesus an obnoxious child prodigy, knowing all things and able to do all things.
Something like a spiritual version of little Wolfie
Mozart, dazzling his contemporaries with his omniscience and omnipotence!
Especially the latter!
In the Gospel for today ,
we read again the story of Jesus, on the threshold of teenage years, going with
his family to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival. When the celebrations were
over, Jesus went missing. His parents finally found him in the courtyard of the
temple, questioning the rabbis and giving his own opinions.
Unfortunately this passage is also often interpreted
as a case of the perfect young Jesus, using his infallible, complete knowledge
to confound the wisest men of Israel. In some paintings on this subject, he is
like an obnoxious young upstart, lecturing the elders about their errors
and duties.
This distortion is even worse in some of the
apocryphal literature from the second and third centuries. There you will
encounter a self-righteous know-all, the terror of those rabbis who were given
the task of teaching Jesus. Some did not survive their attempts to correct him.
(Praise God that these piebald writings did not make it into the New
Testament.)
THE PAIN OF GROWING
As I see it, Jesus had growing pains like the rest
of us.
I take heart from the conclusion to today’s Gospel
reading.
And Jesus grew in both height and wisdom, held in high regard by God and
people
With a sigh of relief, I get a picture of Jesus
in the process of growing in body mind. I see a very special, indeed
unique, young man on the way to becoming that magnificent person whose character , deeds and words, have enthralled the succeeding
centuries.
I also want to place beside Luke’s comment about
Jesus growing in body and mind, some comments from the letter to the
Hebrews. Now, I confess that Hebrews is
not one of my favourite books in the New Testament. Yet it contains some
absolute gems. Such as this one from
Chapter 5, verses 8 and 9.
Son though he was, Jesus learned obedience in
the school of suffering,
and being
made complete,
he became the source of eternal liberation to all who obey
him.
This informs me that Jesus, like the rest of us,
came to fully be what he was through the complex and painful process of daily
life, with its ups and downs. In his own life he also had to grow, to learn,
and to mature. And some of the maturity came from suffering.
The thirty or so years between his birth and active
ministry were not a “running on the one spot” by a perfect, spiritual athlete,
waiting for the right date to perform. No way.
It was an essential part of the incarnation; the developing of the Son
of God, the growing of Divine Love, enfleshed in
humanity, for our salvation.
THE ESSENTIAL HUMANITY OF JESUS
I think we in the church live in constant danger of
neglecting the essential humanity of Jesus, and thereby we lose the profound
mystery of the incarnation of God, and the wondrous brotherliness of our
Christ.
I have heard folk comment, when confronted with some
of the tough challenges and complexities of life, “But of course Jesus had that
big advantage over us; he was God’s Son.”
Not so! That is heresy. Christ Jesus was a true
member of our race. “He learnt obedience in the school of suffering and so became the
source of eternal salvation.
Here is one of the ironies of my life as a minister
of the Gospel:
It
is very hard to get non-Christians to confront the fact that Jesus was Divine,
yet it difficult to convince Christians that he was truly
human.
One of the attractions of imaginative books about
Jesus, like the recent “Joshua” series (and for an earlier generation the books
by Lloyd Douglas) is that they underline the common humanity of Jesus.
They were/are read mainly by church goers who have
been in danger of losing the down-to-earth reality of the incarnation: They
warm our hearts be depicting a Christ who was one of
us. Really one of our human mob.
I suspect the same goes for “The da
Vinci Code,” when it comes to readers on the religious fringe. In terms of
historical accuracy, the book is nonsense. Measured by literary standards, it
is mediocre. But it portrays a Jesus who is human enough to fall in love, get
married, and have kids. For many observers, this seems a great relief.
That things ever got to this point, underlines the
failure of the church to celebrate our Lord’s humanity. As I commented a few
minutes ago,
One of the ironies of my life as a minister of the
Gospel is this:
It
is very hard to get non-Christians to confront the fact that Jesus was Divine,
yet it difficult to convince Christians that he was truly
human.
We are missing the point unless we can affirm: In
Jesus the human and the divine become beautifully and awesomely aligned.
TRUST THIS MYSTERY
This is the Mystery!
Hold
on to the Mystery.
Or better, let the Mystery
hold on to you.
Throughout all the year, with the special Christian
festivals of Christmas, Epiphany,
Transfiguration, Crucifixion, Resurrection,
Ascension and Pentecost –
for goodness sake don’t let go of the hand of the human
Jesus.
Only
in the human hand do we find the Divine hand,
and only in the Divine hand do we humans find our own divine
destiny.
SERMON 2:
FOR THE NEW YEAR
Galations 4:4
One text which has been tugging at my post-Christmas
thoughts during
last week is not from today’s readings but from Galations
4/4
In the
fullness of time, God sent his Son, born of a woman.
Here we have a thought that bridges Christmas and
the New Year.
Paul in his letter to the Galatians speaks of the
birth of Christ Jesus and the “fullness of time”
What do we know about the fullness of time? An odd phrase?
We know about other kinds of satisfying fullness;
the fullness of a cup, a dinner plate, or a lake, a room or a crowded street,
or the “G” [Melbourne Cricket ground] packed with 95,000 fans. But the fullness of time, or the fullness of a day? What’s
that?
We are not talking about over-busy days; not packing
every moment with hyper activity. No; it is more like an overflowing glass; “my
cup overflows.”
Ezra Pound suggested that none of our times are
fully enough to make us feel satisfied and replete:
All the days are not full enough,
and the
nights are not full enough,
and life
slips by like a field mouse
not shaking
the grass.
Great, eh! That poignant truth:
“life slips by like a field mouse, not
shaking the grass.”
The New year will offer
us 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes,
31,536,000 seconds. But will it have the quality of fullness in it?
WHAT IS TIME?
We know it is one of the things God created along
with the universe, but for most of us it remains a mystery. Is it a fourth
dimension? St Augustine, a profound philosopher wrote:
What then is time? If no
one asks me, I think I know.
But if I wish to explain it to
another, I don’t know.”
Moreover, what
is the clue to this “fullness of time” of which Paul wrote to the
Galatians? Is it quality time? Frenetically busy time? Overflowing time? Maybe ripe time?
All the days are not full enough,
and the
nights are not full enough,
and life
slips by like a field mouse
not shaking
the grass.
SOME VIEWS ON TIME
1/
Less-than-real.
Some Greek philosophers regarded this life-in-time
as shadowland. It is only a temporal reflection of
the real. Only the eternal world is real. What we have here is illusion. Heaven
and earth are incompatible.
Comment: If this is so then it is impossible that in
“the fullness of time” the Divine could become incarnate; the Son “born of a
woman.” What is more, no happening in time could ever carry the description
“fullness”.
2/ Cyclic.
Everything repeats itself. Things are going nowhere.
Time is a bondage-wheel of repetition As in Ecclesiastes: That which has been is that which shall be, and that which is done now ,shall be done again. There is nothing new under the
sun.
Comment: On this view, “fullness” is not possible
within time, no matter whatever kind of god becomes incarnate. The only
fullness comes when one is set free from the cycle of time.
3/ Clock & calendar time:
This has dominated Western thought in recent
centuries. Time is measured out in little bits. We even use the hackneyed
phrase “at this point in time” as if time went in little jerks like the second
hand on a watch, or as if each day on the calendar is a separate entity to be
appropriated by acquisitive humans. In my questions about how many hours,
minutes and seconds in the year 2004, I plugged into this common view of time.
Comment: Quantity tends to become important in this
view. How can I live to be 100? Or can we genetically alter humanity so that we
can attain 150 years! How much more of this clock/calendar time can we
seize? Recently, when
a speaker was carrying on about this prospect, one elderly person with a
twinkle in her eyes stage-whispered: “Boring! Boring! Boring!
WHAT ABOUT QUALITY?
Over the last couple of decades a new concern has
emerged with what is called “quality time.” I know; the phrase has become
over-worn and dog-eared! But I still reckon it shows a partial coming to our
senses.
Ezra Pound hints at our hunger for a greater
fullness.
All the days are not full enough,
and the
nights are not full enough,
and life
slips by like a field mouse
not shaking
the grass.
The Bible declares something wonderfully better is
available:
In
the fullness of time, God sent his Son, born of a woman.
In the Bible time is a gift of God, lovingly created , and it is filled with purpose and destiny. Time is
an opportunity. The opportunity offers greater fullness. And when time was ripe, God
full-filled the possibility by sending his Son “born of a woman.”
The birth of Jesus ushers in the fullness of time, the plhrwma . This word
pleroma carries the meaning of ripeness, utter
satisfaction, overflowing-ness, completeness, rich
fullness. It can be brim full water jars, full sails, a full cup of wine, or
people overflowing with the Spirit.
Time provides the opportunity for this fullness; and
such fullness takes possession of time in Christ Jesus, and through him the
fullness becomes available to us.
This is “quality time” not measured by excessive eating and drinking,
partying, attending entertainment extravaganzas, tourism, a varied “love life”
(yuk!) , a 100 channels on your TV (yuk, yuk, yuk!) luxurious homes, getting
your fists on to power or fame, and certainly not living to the over-ripe (you
know what happens to over-ripe fruits!) age of 150!
Quality time is living in God’s love through Christ
Jesus our Saviour. This is the pleroma, the
fullness of time. An example of its fullness is simple: try measuring 30 years of Jesus’ life with that of
tough billionaires who live to be 90 or 100.
Or try comparing the “time” of the late Mother Theresa with that of the
late iron-ore magnate, Lang Hancock?
EMBRACING THE NEW YEAR
All the days are not full enough,
and the
nights are not full enough,
and life
slips by like a field mouse
not shaking
the grass.
As we prepare to enter 2004, with its 31,536,000
seconds of clock time, will we be on about God’s quality time or societies’
pathetic diversions? Loving fullness or
frenetic frustration?
It will all be inadequate without Christ and the pleroma of his grace, in which we can chose to live, and move and have our being.
A brief story.
After the funeral of Tim, a dearly loved 11 year old
child of the congregation, who had fought a battle with cancer and physically
lost (note ‘physically” not spiritually) the grieving father, Paul, commented to me. “The
pain feels unbearable right now, but I know as I look back and treasure Tim’s
life, I will see how much he helped us have quality time together. If he had
lived to 70, the quality could not have been better.”
Fullness of life! God’s gift
through Christ. Now that is what it is really about.
BRIEF
THANKSGIVING
Generous God,
we thank you for the life of
our Brother Jesus.
Child
with an inquiring mind.
Friend
with the laughing eyes.
Teacher
with a new story.
Physician
with the healing hands.
Priest
with the forgiving word.
Lord
with the wounded feet.
Thanks, for all Jesus was.
thanks, for all he is,
thanks, for all he will be
now and through all eternity!
Ó B D Prewer 2012
INTERCESSIONS
* for two voices or Leader and People.
Loving God, as we get ready welcome a new year, we
pray for both the world at large and for the intimate world of our family,
friends, church, neighbours and workmates..
For those for whom the New year
will bring success, and those who will experience discouragement and failure.
Help us to use
both success and failure for your glory, Lord Jesus
For those who in the coming year will enjoy good
health and buoyant spirits, and those who will suffer, injury, disease,
increasing handicap, or mental
disability.
Help us enjoy
the strong and encourage those who are weak, Lord Jesus..
For prominent people who govern nations, negotiate
for peace, struggle against injustice, and counter terrorism; and for those many people in the
background who quietly go on loving their neighbours without receiving any
recognition.
Help us to
appreciate great gifts and to celebrate small ones, Lord Jesus.
For the folk who during the coming year will rejoice in birth
and growth, and for those who must endure decline, decay or be plunged into the
anguish of sorrow.
Help us to
laugh with the happy and to grieve with the sad, Lord Jesus.
For churches that will seem to flourish with new
members and programmes, and those who will appear to shrink and struggle to
maintain their mission.
Help us to
walk humbly when strong and faithfully when weak, Lord Jesus.
Most patient and generous God, please continue to
deal graciously with this congregation, and enable us as individuals and as a
fellowship to serve you boldly in times of doubt and to go gently in times of
confidence.
For the
healing of the nations, the love of the least and lost, and to the glory of your wonderful name, we
so pray, God of unfailing love.
Amen!
SENDING OUT
The world of time and space can never be big enough
for the Holy One who has created it, redeemed it, and sustains it.
Yet by astounding grace, God the Holy One can live
in the small hearts and minds of those who receive and share him.
Thanks be to God!
May God be a smooth path ahead of you,
a guiding star above you,
a sharp eye behind you,
today, tonight, and forever
Amen.
( From an
old Celtic blessing)
OR—
This is our mission for the New year.
“You
whom God has called, and named holy and much-loved,
must clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness,
humility, gentleness and patience.”
“And above all else we dress
ourselves with love
which binds
everything together in perfect harmony.”
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ will cover all
your faults,
the love of God will provide
for you through every moment,
and the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit will be with you all the way.
Amen!
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