| 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, SUNDAY 18
July 31- Aug 6
Luke 12: 13-21
(Sermon
1: “A Fool’s World”)
Colossians 3: 1-11
Hosea 11: 1-11
( Sermon 2: “A Fully Rounded God”)
Psalm 107: 1-9 & 43.
WE GATHER
We have come here together
in the Presence of an awesome
Host.
Here is patience and generosity, beyond our
imagining.
Here is love
and joy beyond our dreaming.
God satisfies those who are thirsty
and fill the hungry with good
things.
O give thanks
to God who is so good,
whose love goes on forever!
OR -
If you wish to be raised up with Christ,
then seek the high ground where
Christ is found.
O give thanks
to God who is so good,
whose love goes on forever!
Let the redeemed all say so together,
Those who have been liberated
and gathered in from many
lands.
From the east
and from the west,
from the north and from the
south,
We seek the high ground where Christ is found.
O give thanks
to God who is so good,
whose love goes on forever!
Let us worship our wonderful God.
WE APPROACH GOD IN PRAYER
You, Holy Friend, only you are our joy! You are the
ground of our believing, the spring in our hoping, and the happiness in our
loving. You are the reason why we are here and the purpose that will later take
us on our journey. Help us to make the most of this time, reaching deeply and
rising high in bountiful worship. Through Jesus, our guide
and Saviour.
Amen!
WE CONFESS OUR SIN AND TRUST IN SAVING GRACE
God is ready to satisfy those who thirst for
goodness,
and those who are hungry for
grace, will be filled with good things.
Let us in
prayer make
our confession..
If we were self sufficient, and had all the answers,
we would
not be here, all-wise God.
If our achievements matched our aims
and if our deeds perfectly
reflected our holist vows,
we would
not be so spiritually hungry, God of truth and grace.
If we had cared for our neighbours with the love of
Jesus Christ,
and cherished our loved ones
without selfishness or impatience,
we would
not be seeking your mercy, redeeming God.
We bring to you our inept and evil ways, and rest
the troublesome load of frustration, disappointment, regret and guilt in your
hands. Please wash the grime and infection from our wounds, and anoint us with
the salve of forgiveness. Take us gently
by the chin and lift up our faces so that we can look up into the face of
Christ Jesus without shame or fear. With him let us recover our authentic
humanity and face all coming challenges with his quiet strength and optimism.
In his name we so pray.
Amen!
FORGIVENESS
Family of God, lift up your spirits with
thanksgiving to God whose nature is always to have mercy. All who have come
clean and sought forgiveness, shall never need to
revisit old shame again. The untarnished future is God’s and it is now offered to
you with open hands. You are forgiven, all things have become new! Through
Christ Jesus our Saviour!
O give thanks
to God who is so good,
whose love goes on forever!
PRAYER FOR CHILDREN
Save
Us From Ourselves
Loving God,
please don’t let us get away
with spoiling our own lives.
Whenever we become a gup*,
and think more about toys and
clothes and things
than about being loved by Jesus
and loving you,
please be hard on us,
and save us from ourselves.
Clear our muddled brains,
put our own Spirit in our
hearts,
that we may again start acting
less like a gup*
and more like your true
children.
In Jesus’ name we pray.
Amen!
*
gup= An aboriginal word for fool.
PSALM 107: 1-9 & 43
Come and celebrate the goodness of God,
whose unlimited love stands forever.
Let God’s liberated people sing and cheer,
all who are freed from deep trouble;
those who have found new birth
from Hobart to Cairns, Sydney to Perth.
Some wandered in a spiritual desert,
unable to find where they belong;
so exhausted from hunger and
thirst
they had lost the will to live.
At their wits end they cried out to God,
and were liberated from their misery,
and taken along a newly opened
road
to reach their true spirit home.
Let them celebrate this unqualified love
and God’s wonderful work amongst us!
Our spiritual thirst is fully quenched,
the hungry are filled with the best food.
Let all people take time to reflect
on the unlimited affection of God.
Whoever wants to be really smart,
must begin by taking God’s love to heart.
© B.D. Prewer 2000
YOU FOOL
He always talked big,
and liked dropping a name
when chatting with neighbours;
but his true claim to fame
was in building big barns.
His wife was a great mum,
his kids did well at school,
but he took these for granted
while he worked like a mule
on building bigger barns.
He schemed into the night
to make his farm more grand.
He took a heart attack and died
with the plans in his hand
for even bigger barns.
On a wintry afternoon,
the hearse drove slowly past
the biggest barns around;
then went on to the cemetery
where they put him in the ground.
© B.D. Prewer
2000
(See “Beyond Words” for
another on the same subject.)
COLLECT
Loving God, by your most precious son you have
taught us that the good life slips through the fingers of those who are most
grasping, yet falls like a bonus into the hands of the poor and the humble.
Teach us to trust nothing that money can buy, but to build our life on those
eternal verities wherein are found love and peace and holy joy. Through Christ Jesus our rock and salvation.
Amen!
SERMON 1: A FOOL’S WORLD
Luke 12: 20
“And God said:
you fool. Tonight you must give up your life.”
In an era when economics are king, and determine
every policy from foreign affairs, to public health, to the quality of
education, and to the sustaining of the arts, it is appropriate to hear again
the story which Jesus told about a rich man and his plans for the future.
Here was a bloke who just wanted to build bigger and
yet bigger barns. Now isn’t that an apt description of the expectations of many
Australians? Although there is a considerable minority of battlers who are
getting poorer, the majority are prosperous and expectant of more, while a few
more are getting obscenely rich by leaps and bounds.
Have you noticed the size and ostentation of many
houses being built in new sub-divisions?
Is there some law (which I don’t know about) which decrees that as
families grow smaller houses must get larger?
“I will pull
down my barns and build larger ones...... and I will say to myself: “Self, you
have plenty of stuff laid up for many years; take it easy, eat drink and be
merry.”
While we are building our bigger barns, what is
happening to our real selves?
THE PARABLE AS TOLD BY JESUS
Turn to the story told by Jesus.
1/ “There was a rich man whose land yielded
heavy crops”
It looks as if he had the advantages of the rich,
owing the best quality land, maybe able to employ the best farming practices, and also having the
good luck of a few bumper seasons. I suspect that like every rich person I have
ever met, he assumed that every gram of his success was well deserved. That his special character, or skill, or hard work, or even his
righteous prayers, were being justly rewarded. There is no thought of
good luck, and no thought of what some of us call providence. It’s a case of
“I’m a good bloke and I deserve it.”
2/ Notice
next that there is no suggestion of impropriety. Jesus does not even hint at
anything wrong with his code of practice. There is nothing like those
exploiters vehemently criticised in Jeremiah ( 12-11)
that suggests his prosperity was the result of criminal activity. Nor was he
one of those sharpies such as those referred to in Proverbs (11:26) whose
intention was to build bigger barns to hoard the produce and finally force up
prices. This is an honest man. In fact, he even quotes from the Book of
Ecclesiastes ( 8:15) to justify his position.
3/ The only thing wrong with this rich farmer was that he was
stupid. With all his property and all his big plans, he had missed the real
point of life. He lost the plot. He threw all his energies into physical
prosperity and planned for future physical self indulgences. He did not stop to
ask: “Is this all there is to life?” And so he died as a spiritual pauper.
THE AFTERMATH
Imagine his funeral.
A large send off I am sure, because I have noticed
through my ministry that people who build big barns (of one sort or another!)
usually get a big “send off”.
What was his eulogy about? Success and big barns, I suppose. Afterwards,
outside the church
would the mourners swap stories about his big barns? Would they
say to his widow: “He’ll be greatly missed. He set a standard in big barns that this
district will always remember”. And the epitaph: “One who built the biggest barns. Sorely missed by all.”
I wonder how his children felt?
Had he been a good father or was he so busy that he gave them scant attention?
Did they really know him? Maybe he gave them lavish pocket money, but how much
love?
And what about his wife? Did she feature in his
allocation of time and energy? Was her advice ever sought? How does a marriage
go when one partner is enthralled with building bigger barns?
The fact is that he was stupid. His missed the whole
point of life. He left unexplored the personal-spiritual dimension, the better
business of loving God and loving others. He had ceased to be alert to the
precious nature of life, the wonder of the gift of each new day, the miracle of
love, and the exceptional potential of his own soul.
(By the way, I even wonder whether his eldest son
was lumbered with the expectation of having his late father’s plans for bigger
barns brought to fruition.? If so, what a grim fate.)
The most surprising thing about people like this, is that they have little they can call their own.
There was nothing left when death stripped him down to the essential truth. Our
mortality shows what is really ours, what we are really worth; and this worth
is not measured in big barns, big power, big popularity, big influence, big status. God’s
currency is love, love and more love. Love cannot be devalued either in life or
death. It is eternal. The fool in this
parable had nothing to take with him in the hour of death. A fools life end’s
with total emptiness.
A MAN WITH NO BARNS
Compare the builder of big barns with the story
teller. Jesus said of himself: “The foxes have lairs, and the birds have nests,
but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head.”
Already Jesus was watched by those who wanted to rob
him of his freedom and take his life. Already in Jerusalem the schemes were
progressing. This Jesus who travelled so lightly, would soon be hounded, betrayed , arrested, deserted, denied, tortures, stripped of
even his clothing and butchered.
He did not get a funeral send off like the man with the barns. A few women and the disciples John stood near
him. His enemies gathered around and jeered. At one point he cried aloud that
even God seemed to have forsaken him. When dead he is quickly placed in a borrowed
grave.
Yet this Jesus with absolutely nothing,
is the person with the most riches. He has real life, boundless life, multi
dimensional life, which transcends space and time. He has love-life, deathless
life, so abundant that he shares it with every generation since.
You see, the riches of Jesus were seen in their full
glory when he was absolutely stripped bare of everything else. This is the
direct opposite of those who surround themselves with possessions.
Economic success? Possessions, money, eat
drink and be merry? Those whom our society
call wise, Jesus shows up to be “Fools!”
The person whom his killers labelled “fool,” God has
declared to be his only true son.
AT THE LORD’S TABLE
See how wonderfully this comes together at the Table
of the Lord.
What we have on this Table is a small quantity of
bread and wine. You are invited to have a morsel from that small amount bread
and a sip from that one cup of wine. It is minimal. Anything less and it would hardly be
discernible.
By the world’s standards this is not a meal; it is a
travesty. This is not the way to eat drink and be merry!
Yet we do. This is the real thing. This is ultimate
celebration. For this fragment of a meal
is infinitely more than any other meal. This is the maximum banquet of
Christian experience, because here we are nourished by Christ himself.
Here we are staggeringly wealthy. It is the food of
heaven, and as we eat we already pass from death to life and celebrate with the
mighty host of those who live eternally.
SERMON 2: A FULLY ROUNDED GOD?
Hosea 11:
1-9
“When Israel
was a child I loved him.”
In my sermon last week on Hosea, the image of God
was masculine.
It used the metaphor of a man choosing a bride and
cherishing her “for better for worse.”.
This week in Hosea chapter 11, the metaphor is
feminine.
God is spoken of as a mother cherishing her child,
then lamenting when that child grows up to be rebellious and dissolute.
Thousands of mothers in Australia, and millions around the world, can identify
with that motherly heartache.
Let us go through the text of Hosea again, in a
freewheeling translation.
When Israel was a little child, I
loved him,
And I set him free from slavish
dependence.
Yet now the more I call his name
the more he
runs away from me.
He sacrifices everything for false
values
and burns
himself out for the world’s idols.
Yet it was I who taught my child to
walk.
I used to carry him till my arms
ached.
He does not remember how often
I tended his wounds and healed him.
I first I led him with training
straps,
the bonds
of a mother’s true love.
I was the person who shared his pain
and still
bear the yoke of his burdens.
It was I alone would bend down to
him
and lift
him up to suckle him.
Hosea recognises the mother-like nature of God.
Today I want to celebrate with you this aspect of
the nature of God. The female qualities of God are most precious. Hosea and
Jesus of Nazareth are the people who best express those qualities. They have
what I will suggest is a rounded understanding of God.
What follows is more like a testimony than a sermon.
A MASCULINE GOD?
Like many of you, I grew up with the notion of a
masculine God in my head.
After my period of teenage rebellion, and my brief
visit into the territory of atheism, I returned to Christ like a desert
creature thirsty for water.
But still, at that early stage (as far as I can
remember) it was a male God.
Even as my concept of God expanded massively to
encompass, and underpin, and outreach the immensities (and the awesome intricacies)
of the universe that were unfolding through the discoveries of modern science,
my concept of God nevertheless had a masculine tone to it.
That does not mean that I visualised God as some
kind of cosmic grandfather.
I knew very well that God was too “Other” for any
such crude visualisation. But in prayers I used the “God our Father” words a
lot, and that inevitably tinted my thought with maleness. (I am utterly
convinced that one cannot use words in that way without them shaping a certain
feeling about the nature of God.)
Looking back now, I see that my notion of God was
far from being well rounded.
It was lop sided view of our Creator, Redeemer and
Inspirer. And I was the poorer for it.
A FEMININE GOD?
Things changed a few years down the track.
Still precious to me is that day in the late 1950’s
when a footnote in a theological treatise raised the feminine aspects of God.
The thought set my mind expanding yet again and my thoughts dancing with glee.
If humanity is the handiwork of God, made to reflect something of the nature of
the divine, then female qualities issue from God’s own nature.
This insight brought a wonderful enrichment in my
spiritual experience.
My wife, my mother, my sisters and cousins, my women
friends and also those other robust women who confronted, needled me or
nurtured me, all
reflected the glory of God. Wonderful!
The God I am now able to love and worship
includes (yet goes far beyond!) the
best I have experienced in womanhood.
FEMININE STRENGTH
I think I saw, and still see, woman as being
stronger than men.
Generalisation? Yes, of course all
generalisations are dangerous. Not all women can classed together, no more than
all men can be so categorised. Many men have their female side, and many women
have their masculine side.
Yet there seems to be a tenacity
in much womanly loving.
A painful nurturing and creating which exceeds that
of many (maybe most)
men. There is a profound strength and courage and complex
embracing of hope. Women (that dangerous generalisation again!) seem more
willing to suffer for those whom they love. Resurrection-like, they rise up
from disasters. And they don’t give up.
It is significant that it is so in our aboriginal
communities.
Where loss of faith and hope among
the men have led to tragic degradation, it is the women who hold things
together. They themselves are often abused and violated, yet they hang in
there, caring and hoping and fighting for a better life for all. Men may still
occupy the up-front positions on community councils or on government sponsored
boards. But the real strength lies with the women. They are the dependable ones
in the community, and the real innovators and hope bringers.
Women understand that new birth involves travail.
They cope when many men become frustrated, angry or
fall into a heap. They hold on to the dream when others may settle for the
mediocre.
THE BEST OF MANHOOD AND WOMANHOOD
Our God is awesomely complete.
The God of Christ Jesus, and the God of the prophet
Hosea, has the best of human qualities in supra-abundance. The best we see in
both manhood and womanhood flows from God our creator, sustainer,
and redeemer.
I was ready for the so called feminist revolution.
Because of that one footnote I read in the 1950’s,
and the way God used it to widen my narrow mind, it was no surprise to me when
the gender revolution shook the church. From the late 1960’s and 70’s and
onwards, advocates of the feminine nature of God came out into the mainstream
in Christian thinking. I am indebted to woman Biblical scholars and theologians
who have taken a leading role in recent decades. Things I was groping towards,
yet partially blinded from seeing by my own maleness, they have made explicit.
A few women thinkers have, from my (male)
perspective, gone overboard.
In their enthusiasm, some at times have put at risk
the key nature of God as revealed in Christ Jesus. But that is to be expected
when one considers the layers and barriers of male resistance they have had to
surmount. There are excesses in all revolutions.
HOSEA TO JESUS
The God whom we worship, is
indefinable.
Far more wonderful than we can ever speak or
conceive. Yet what we have come to know we should treasure and celebrate with
undiluted joy!
Hosea showed a new breadth of understanding.
He pictured God as a mother bending down to embrace
and suckle her child, Israel. A mother who cries out when her child grows
rebellious: “How can I give you up!” Yet Hosea was
torn between this new insight into God and the older authoritarian idea of God
who might indeed be ready condemn and cast Israel aside. In his prophecies he
swings between light and gloom.
Jesus inducted us into a deeper understanding.
He revealed a God of tenacious love who will never
surrender the human family. A God who was willing to suffer crude humiliation and
extraordinary pain for humanity. A God for whom the travail
of a cross was the way of redemption and new birth.
Please don’t take the following amiss:
Jesus to me seems to be one of the most feminine men
who ever lived. By that I do not mean he was what is sometimes labelled
“effeminate.” He was strong and daring, robust in thought and deed. As well as
being insightful; intuitive, and compassionate, he was tough as a mother’s
love, and as enduring as a woman’s tenacity.
Jesus regularly spoke of his God as the intimate
“Abba.”
He was using the affectionate word of a child for
his daddy; expressing the more tender and nurturing
side of a father rather than the authority and power of traditional male
stereotype. That does not mean he was a soft touch. The scene in the temple
when Jesus “cleansed “ it, also helps define the
nature of Abba.
Jesus reflected God more truly than any other person .
No doubts on that score. As well as the male
qualities, he also revealed those feminine qualities which eternally belong to
God. As God’s one, true son, he was then, the most feminine man who ever
lived. He was a person of enduring
grace. For me as a Christian, Christ Jesus remains the litmus test for any concept
of God we would embrace.
Through him God is revealed.
In him we find both the authentic fatherhood and the
motherhood of God, the brotherhood and sisterhood of God, the female friendship
of God and the male mateship of the most holy God.
GOD IS ALWAYS GREATER THAN WE THINK
The truly rounded God is found as we journey in
faith:
From Abraham and Sarah to Ruth and Isaiah, from
Hosea and Gomer to Mary and Joseph; from Bethlehem to Galilee, from
Golgotha to the empty tomb, from a breakfast with a risen Lord on the shores of
Galilee to the fiery love-energy of Pentecost.
I say again, we can never speak adequately of God.
Nor can we ever conceive God as an image in our
mind. God will always be greater than we think. But that greatness includes
both those rich virtues that we tend to see as either male or female. In Christ
we have the call, and the saving grace, to become more like this very God as we
love and respect one another.
This I believe.
So help me God!
WE GIVE THANKS TO GOD
Let us give thanks for the many things that are
priceless.
Let us pray.
We thank you, delight-full Creator and Redeemer,
for the host of things that
money cannot buy.
Sunrise on a cold morning
and wreaths of mist in valleys.
Magpies warbling in the rain
and ducklings exploring parkland ponds.
The micro-delicacy of small
wildflowers and the bold splendour of wattle blossom.
For the pleasure of waking
refreshed after a night of uninterrupted rest.
Familiar faces that smile a
greeting and share the breakfast rush.
A wave from a neighbour or a
surprise visit from an old friend.
For the awe we feel in the presence of exquisite
beauty or pure goodness.
Human curiosity which itches
to explore and make sense of things.
Love which spends itself without thought of either
comfort or reward.
For the Christ who came among us with a zest for
abundant life.
The parables that unsettle us and leave us exposed
to raw Gospel.
His saving grace which pays the highest price that
we might truly live.
We thank you, delight-full Creator and Redeemer, for
joys so freely available,
and for the added joy of
knowing that they not just good luck but your gifts
to a much-blessed people. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen!
PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE
Let us brings the needs of other people before the
throne of grace.
Let us pray.
Loving Friend, continue to bless us day by day. God
of both the saints and the fools, please uphold your children by your immense
and dependable love.
Bless all health and overcome all disease.
Bless all happiness and overcome all distress.
Bless all faith and overcome all anxiety.
Bless all enlightenment and overcome all ignorance.
Bless all forgiveness and overcome all bitterness.
Bless all compassion and overcome all violence.
Bless the lives you have given us, and overcome all
fear and death.
God of saints and also of fools, save your children
from everything that diverts and corrupts,
and saturate us in the truth of
Christ Jesus. In his name we ask it.
Amen!
A BLESSING FOR THE WILLING
Happy are they who know where the real treasure is
to be found.
Happy are they
who take from the treasure and share it.
Friends of God, prepare to leave this church with
spirits lighter than when you came in;
Trusting
Christ to take an intimate interest in the costly investment he has made.
Invest in others as his love has invested in you;
Rejoicing in the fellowship of his Spirit.
The blessing of the eternal God is upon you:
redeeming grace,
enfolding love,
enduring fellowship.
Now and forever.
Amen!
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