| 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 22
Aug 28- Sept 3
Luke 14: 1 & 7-14
(Sermon
1: “Uncosted Hospitality”)
Hebrews 13: 1-6 & 15-16
Jeremiah 2: 4-13
(Sermon
2: “God’s that are No-Gods”)
Psalm 81: 1, 10-16
PREPARATION
We are here
to worship a remarkable God.
The love of God welcomes us,
the grace of
Christ awaits us,
the joy of the
Spirit enfolds us.
Don’t come as slaves, come as the truly free.
Don’t come as petitioners,
come as those who are already heard.
Don’t come as interlopers, come as invited guests.
Don’t come as the outsiders,
come as much-wanted children.
The love of God emboldens us. .
The grace of Christ redeems us.
The joy of the Spirit
uplifts us
Come as the joyful, come as the eager, come as the
thankful,
come as the recipients of
amazing grace.
The love of
God overflows our hearts,.
The grace of
Christ liberates our spirits,
The joy of the Spirit sings in our minds.
OR—
This is the house of God,
and we are, by Christ’s
invitation the guests.
Yes, this is
the house of God,
and we are, by saving grace,
the guests.
Sing to God who is our strength!
Shout and cheer the God of deepest joys!
Lift up our
songs, make joy with keyboard,
strum the guitar and let the
drums roll!
This is the house of God
and we are, by grace, the
guests.
PRAYER OF APPROACH
Wonderful are you, God of Christ Jesus! By your
Spirit, lead us in this opportune time of worship, that we may stretched beyond
our knowledge and lifted much higher than the inadequate words of our prayers.
Set us free to indulge ourselves in your hospitality
and to enjoy you with uninhibited delight. Wonderful are you; glorious are you,
most awesome Friend, today, yesterday and forever!
Amen!
THANKSGIVING
We awake each day, loving God, to a world which is
packed with good and beautiful things.
We are grateful for this morning’s early sunlight,
slanting our way with cheerful warmth;
the
aromas and tastes of our food and drink at breakfast,
and
the sensual rituals of bathing and dressing in clean clothes.
We are grateful for the things that gave us pleasure
on the way to church;
the
young translucent leaves on trees and the glory of spring blossom.
the
busyness of birds building nests and sipping nectar from flowers.
We are grateful for the people arriving at other
churches that we passed on the way;
for
the pleasing sight of our own church coming in to view,
and
the privilege of gathering among friends intent on worship.
We are grateful for the music and singing which gets
us involved and lifts out spirits,
the
voices of fellow believers who lead prayers and read lessons,
and
the Gospel of Christ as fresh as when it was first proclaimed.
Most generous God, we have awoken again on this
Lord’s Day to a world which speaks volumes about your providence and grace.
Please accept the thanks we give you, and the lives we offer to you in
gratitude. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen!
CONFESSION AND ASSURANCE
Love and mercy always awaits those who turn to God.
Let us pray.
God of the weak willed and God of the strong, of the clever and the
foolish, the humble and the powerful, please continue to have mercy on your
people.
Forgive the weak for giving in too easily when the
pressures of work, family or community wear them down until they become
irritable.
Forgive the strong for pushing ahead with scant
regard for those in their way, and for despising those who can’t push back.
Forgive the foolish for rushing into poor decisions,
and then berating others when things go drastically wrong.
Forgive the clever for using their skills and
knowledge to overwhelm lesser intellects in order to get their own way.
Forgive the humble for using their lowly status as
an excuse for the evasion of responsibility when challenged by your Holy Spirit.
Forgive the powerful for becoming arrogant, and
insensitive to the needs and troubles of those who are effected
by their decisions.
Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy. Christ have mercy.
Lord have mercy,
Lord have mercy.
Most loving God, bring to bear on our lives the
saving grace of Christ Jesus. Give us the desire and the courage to repent, and
help us not to be too proud to accept a mercy which asks nothing but our
acceptance of it. Enable us to put right whatever we can, and to let go of the
remainder, leaving it in your hands. Through Christ our Lord.
Amen!
GOD DOES FORGIVE US
The Bible declares:: “As
far as the east is from the west, so far has God removed our sins from us”.
Jesus came “preaching peace to those who are near, and peace to those who are a
long way off.”
My friends you are set free: to be a forgiven
people, and to become a forgiving people in all your dealings with those who
sin against you.
Thanks be to God.
PRAYER FOR CHILDREN
Come
As You Are
Dear God, you know what?
I reckon coming to church
is like a “come as you are
party.”
You do not invite us
because we are good looking,
or well dressed or have clean
hands,
or because we are extra nice
people.
You invite us to come as just we are,
with all our faults poking out
like elbows through a worn
jacket.
Thanks you for loving us
with such an accepting love.
Amen!
PSALM 81: 1, & 10-16
Sing to God who is our strength and happiness!
Shout and applaud the God of joy and pur
holiness!
I am the unique God, your God.
who brought you into liberty.
You only have to open up your mouth
and I will fill
it with the beard of certainty.
M own people would not listen to me;
I came to my own folk and was rejected.
So I let them get lost in their own stubbornness,
to wander among
their vain ideas, neglected
How I wish my people would listen to me,
that they would walk on my
narrow road.
Then I would soon tame their adversaries,
and turn the
tables on all who mock and goad.
Those who hate me should come and bow down,
and escape the disaster on
which they are set;
I would nourish you on the finest bread
and sweeten you
with the purest honey yet.
Sing out to God who is our strength and happiness!
Shout and applaud the God of joy and holiness!
© B.D. Prewer 2000
POEM: THE CRITICS
He teaches humility,
this Galilean crank,
the stuff of slaves and clowns,
not citizens of rank.
This peasant prattles on
about the lowest seat,
asking the unwashed mob
to come inside and eat.
He has not got a clue,
this charismatic fool,
about the real world
and what its costs to rule.
It takes a clear head
to keep them in their place;
you cannot run a world
on parables and grace.
© B.D. Prewer 2000
COLLECT
God our holy Friend, you invite us to participate in
a hospitality which is something else! Help us not only to accept it with
thanksgiving, but to freely share it with those whose lives are restricted or
crushed by the meanness of this rapacious world. Make us not only receivers but
generous and unostentatious givers. to the glory of
your name, through Christ Jesus our Divine Brother. Amen!
SERMON 1: UNCOSTED HOSPITALITY
Luke 14: 12-14
When you have
a dinner party, don’t invite your friends, relatives and best neighbours, who
can return the compliment and repay you. When you throw a party, invite the
poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind. Then you will find real happiness,
for they cannot repay you.
Jesus launched a new phase in human relationships. I
call it uncosted hospitality. It was, in that era. a revolutionary approach.
It still is.
If fact it is so revolutionary that most of us (yes, that includes Christians!) have barely tried it.
Although we may not openly advertise our uneasiness about Jesus’ revolutionary
approach, the truth is that there are plenty of church folk think it is too
idealistic for our tough, rough old world.
Nevertheless, whenever Christ’s revolution is
actually practised, instead of the old methods, a bit of heaven
is let loose on earth; a new dynamic; a new beauty and rare kind of happiness
flowers.
The old methods? These are the pre-Jesus
models. I will try to describe them under the headings of the Traders, the Exploiters, and the
Robbers.
WHAT A CLANGER!
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
First, look again at the unsettling thing (some
would say the discourteous thing) that Jesus actually said at a dinner party.
Jesus, himself a guest, looked around and noted the
well washed, well dressed, well fed guests around him.
He turned to the host and said something that no person of good etiquette
should ever say to a host. (But of course Jesus was not a person to be ruled by
etiquette, tradition, or polite sweet conversation)
When you have a dinner party, don’t invite your friends, relatives and
best neighbours, who can return the compliment and repay you. When you throw a
party, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind. Then you will find
real happiness, for they cannot repay you.
What a clanger! If that’s not a conversation
stopper, I have never heard one. Can’t
you picture the stunned silence for a few seconds, before the more confident
and well polished among them would take over, and resume conversation about
‘sweet nothings’ as though Jesus had not spoken.
One thing is for sure: it would be a long time
before Jesus was invited back to that house. His name would be scrubbed for
their guest list.
What they did not realise was that Jesus’ guest list
would remain open to them. For he too is a host. He
too has a table spread with far less food than you would normally find on a
dinner table, yet which is immeasurably more wonderful than that found on any
other table in the world.
This statement about inviting the nobodies, the
‘great unwashed’, came from the lips of one whose whole life was a banquet of
uncalculated giving. His was truly a divine way to go.
Jesus was not talking just about dinner parties. The dinner
party is a mini parable for the whole of life. It was about how we use our
time, our abilities, our possessions, our very life
energy.
I now return to the lesser creeds which dominate the
community around us. These are the ways of the Trader, the Exploiter and the
Robber.
THE TRADER.
The Trader says: ‘I will invite you to my party if
you invite me to yours.’ In a one sense, there is nothing wrong with this attitude.
Most of our lives are based on trading: our time, our energy, our abilities,
our possessions. It is an honest and socially acceptable way. It certainly
helps us live with some security in a tough, rough world.
But it has its down side. It favours those who start
with an advantage either in wealth, position or cleverness. It allows the
advantaged people to feast together on the biggest cake, and leaves the
disadvantaged to share together the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table.
In relationships it is a failure; it stunts the
growth. A friendship based on trading can hardly be called friendship. A
marriage based only on trading is a travesty of committed love. A church that
attempts to live that way falls tragically short of the New Testament koinonia where
the gifts of each are offered for the good of all.
THE EXPLOITER
The exploiter says: ‘You
invite me to your party, and maybe, one day (no promises mind you!) I may be in
a position to invite you to a really big one I am planning.’
The exploiters shamelessly use other people. They
butter others up, they issue vague promises, they employ manipulative methods, they may even offer vague threats. They want 12 of your
hours to 2 of theirs, all of your abilities for a snippet of one of theirs;
they want your time, your talents, your possession, your life.
The may even try the old trick: “If you were a true
Christian you would surely
do this..........for me.”
Whenever they ring us on the phone, we do well to
caution ourselves with: “Now what do they really
want?”
Modern society is riddled with exploiters. Even some
churches get in on the act. I have
known both laity and clergy whose modus
operandi is to exploit fears, guilt, hopes, and ideals. In fact there are
sectarian groups that are utterly stuck in the exploiter mode.
THE ROBBERS
They simply say: “Like it or not, were
are here.”
They gate-crash our party help themselves to the
drink and food.
These are clearly defined. The best thing one can
say about the robbers is that at least they are out in the open. There is no
doubt about their game.
They do not want friends, they want lackeys not
equals. You even find these types in marriages. What is more, their children
are only there to please them, too.
These ruthless types will laugh in our face should
you talk about mutual caring and sharing. As far as they are concerned,
Christ’s way is a joke. You are there for their use. There is no pretence in
this. I suppose we could say that they are honest. Indeed some of them will boast: ‘At least I
am not a hypocrite!” True. But I find that small comfort.
Maybe they are not as insidious as the exploiters.
Except when they do get hold of power; then they cause immense chaos and
suffering.
UNCOSTED GIVING
Into the world of traders, exploiters and robbers,
Jesus arrives with his radical way: that of uncosted
giving. We are to be his kind of people. Not asking what is in it for us, not
counting the cost, but responding to needs with generous hearts.
We care because there are those who need caring for,
we fight for justice because others are suffering injustice, we give support in
crises just because that person needs support, we reach out to those who are less fortunate without looking for even gratitude.
We preach the Gospel, we engage in evangelism, not
to bolster our church membership or increase our financial support base, but
because Jesus Christ is good news and others deserve to have the opportunity to
hear the real thing.
I am delighted to be able to say that in my
experience I have witnessed much of this uncosted
giving among people of the church. Sometimes one can get frustrated with the
weaknesses of the church, with its fear of taking risks for Christ’s sake.
There is some bad news about the church. Yet after I have made a small catalogue
of its sins, I need a much larger catalogue for all the quiet, altruistic,
unmeasured goodness that flows from its people. I find that remarkable and
beautiful.
Its source is the impact of Christ on our lives.
From the uncalculated giving of himself for us, we
find the freedom to give of ourselves to others. His revolution has not been in vain. The
seeds of heaven on earth that he left here have continue
to bear fruit.
Jesus stepped out of the traders’ circle, rejected
the exploiters’ network, and scorned the robbers way.
He had no truck with anything that treated other people as things there for our
use. What he gave he gave freely, and those who followed did so freely .
SOME EXAMPLES
The church as an organisation displays uncalculated
giving in the way it reaches out to assist others, not to make converts but
simply to show them love. I am grateful that I happen to belong to a
denomination that is the largest supplier of non-government social welfare
services in Australia.
Only Jesus of Nazareth could have inspired that kind of voluntary giving from a
mixed bag of sinners like us!
Individually, the members of the church also do
much. I think of all the uncalculated goodness of ordinary Christians who in
small ways brighten the lives of others, without any blowing of trumpets. Some
examples from my experience are—
A shy man who for years
regularly visited his local hospital, spending time with those who never seemed
to have visitors.
A woman whose casseroles
unpretentiously found their way to families where the usual carer was ill.
The keen gardener who often left fresh vegetables
with me to pass on (anonymously) to families
who were finding it hard to make ends meet.
The inarticulate factory
worker, and a bachelor, who for 15 years financially assisted a widow and her
five children and not once asked for the tiniest thing in return.
A woman who for nearly two decades wrote letters
lobbying our Federal Government to take a more pro-active role in backing the
rights of the people of East Timor.
A female QC who for years included in her already
heavy work load, the defence (without fee) of young people whom she believed
were being unjustly treated by the authorities.
And I could go on and on. These are just a few, and
by no means the most spectacular, examples of the uncalculated giving that has
been set loose by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
When you have
a dinner party, don’t invite your friends, relatives and best neighbours, who
can return the compliment and repay you. When you throw a party, invite the
poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind. Then you will find real happiness,
for they cannot repay you.
SERMON 2:
GODS THAT ARE NO GODS
Jeremiah 2:
11-13
Has a nation
ever changed its gods for nothing,
even though their old gods had
been empty?
Yet my people
have given away their glory
for that which is utterly
useless.
O heavens, be
appalled at this shame!
Be shocked and
desolate, says the Lord God
For my people
have made two evil choices,
they have deserted me, the
spring of living waters,
and hewed out rock cisterns, to
hold stagnant water,
cracked cisterns which can never
hold the water anyway.
Jeremiah
2: 11-13
It was not a bundle of fun to be a prophet of God.
To be closely allied with God inevitably means to
share a little of his long-suffering love.
To get close enough to participate in God’s
redemption of stupid, wilful humanity, can be a
devastating experience. The true prophet endures times of dark loneliness,
vicarious shame and desolation. Times
when the evil of the world presses in upon the mind and spirit, with crushing
power. There are moments of bliss for those who are very close to God,
but there are also hours and days of grim anguish.
So it was with Jeremiah.
He was called by God to start his prophetic ministry
while still a youth, at a time when the faith of the Jews was in decline, and
they were running after many false gods. Later, he endured seeing his homeland
land overrun by the Babylonians and its leading citizens sent into exile. Much
of the frustration and pain and sorrow of God flows through the prophet
Jeremiah.
It comes out vividly in many of his words as written
down by his faithful scribe, Baruch.
There is a lot of soul-anguish in passage we read
today, from Chapter 2. Through his servant Jeremiah God cries out:
What fault did your forebears find in me,
that they
turned so far away from me?
Why did they go chasing after worthlessness
to become
themselves utterly worthless?
Jeremiah lost faith in his own beloved, Jewish people.
They had abominably forsaken their God. He felt like
an alien among his own kith and kin. What is more, as a spokesman for God, he
had to take a public stand against them. To become as it were their enemy, even
though in truth he was their dearest patriot.
A PATRIOT’S DISQUIET
Have you sometimes felt a measure of that kind of
disquiet in your heart?
When you look around at our nation and see the
greed, corruption, prejudice, entrenched injustices, and the rampage after many
trivial “gods” that is widespread today? Don’t you feel the judgment of the
living God upon much that is accepted in what is called “our Australian way of
life?”
As a true patriot of this ancient continent, I
become distressed.
I can sing along with all my heart the sentiment in
that song written by the late entertainer Peter Allen: “I’ll still call Australia home.”
Also, I find myself deeply moved when a choir of children from diverse
ethnic backgrounds sing. “We are one, but
we are many, and from all the lands on earth we come. We share a song, and sing
with one voice I am, you are, we are Australian.”
Like most of you, I dearly love this aged continent.
As you know, I have spent much of my life trying to
express this patriotism in the language of worship for the people of this very
ancient continent. However, I am deeply troubled about the soul of this nation.
I experience a measure of that grief which I find in Jeremiah and his God over
the dissolute ways of Israel.
AUSSIES ARE AN IRRELIGIOUS PEOPLE
Of course, one cannot simply equate Israel with our
own nation.
They were a nation with a special calling and
covenant with God. They had an exceedingly rich religious history, from those
first adventurers in faith, Sarah and Abraham, to Joseph, Miriam, Moses, Ruth,
Samuel and the remarkable, yet flawed poet-king, David.
In the sharpest contrast, this multicultural
Australian nation has never been religious.
Only in the most superficial way could previous
generations call this a Christian country. We have never been a godly people.
Our foundation was as a penal colony.
Convicts, soldiers, sailors, and the most
opportunistic of restless men and women, formed our earliest society. Among
those who joined them were rogues from England who got
out before the law caught up with them. Also, in the ranks the so called “free
settlers” were the delinquent sons of English gentry who were sent far away
from home so that the good name of the family would not be disgraced.
From the very beginning, the Christian faith had
only a tenuous toe-hold .
To be sure, a little later, among the flood of
“lower class”
immigrants who were fleeing the desperate economic times in the
19th century, there were devout Methodist, Presbyterian, Church of England,
Baptist, Congregationalist and Roman Catholic people. Likewise with the 19th C
gold rushes there were numerous Welsh and Cornish evangelicals, and Irish
Catholics, who came among those who flocked to places like Ballarat and
Bendigo. Many prospered and with optimistic faith, built their lofty houses of
worship.
Nevertheless, generally speaking, the church has
always been a minority. Australians have largely been an irreligious people.
This has become more marked since the late 1960’s, when the move away from
Christian ideals to blatant hedonism has emptied the churches even more.
Australia is very different from Europe and the USA.
Europe has been moving away from mainline
Christianity over the last 100 years, but it was steeped in it for well over a
thousand years. The USA was founded by deeply Christian people, and even today
the churches have a large following. In
contrast, since the “coming of the white man” to Australia, faith has never
held sway here.
There is one major irony in all this.
Before Europeans set foot in this land, 100% of the
population here was deeply religious. For Native Australians, the whole of life
was a spiritual event. There are sacred sites in this ancient land with a
history of 40,000 years and more. They make Westminster Abbey or St Peters in
Rome seem just like yesterday’s innovation. These
first Australians had much to teach the new arrivals, but we were too arrogant
or to prejudiced to see it.
RECENT DECLINE IN VISIBLE CHRISTIANITY
Recently the church here has been in a recession.
oth publicly and privately the
influence of Christianity seems to have been in sharp decline. Even though in
earlier days organised religion in Australia was never dominant in our culture,
at least some of its values permeated widely through the community. Not so now.
The great grandchildren of those fervent Welsh and
Cornish Methodists,
those dedicated Scottish
Presbyterian, devout Irish (and more recently Italian) Catholics, and devoted
English Anglicans, have exchanged the Bible God for other gods that are no
gods. They have left the ever flowing waters of God ‘s
grace for the cracked cisterns of society. They have thrown away faith in the Creator and Redeemer of all things, for the no-gods
of pop culture.
It is this situation which makes some of us feel an affinity with Jeremiah.
Has a nation
ever changed its gods for nothing,
even though their gods had been
empty?
Yet my people
have given away their glory
for that which is utterly
useless.
O heavens, be
appalled at this shame!
Be shocked and
desolate, says the Lord God
For my people
have made two evil choices,
they have deserted me, the
spring of living waters,
and hewed out rock cisterns, to
store stagnant water,
cracked cisterns which can never
hold the water anyway.
OUR MISSION AND CURRENT DISILLUSIONMENT
Of course we are not “chosen” like Israel.
We cannot see ourselves in the same light as that
special people Israel. They had a particular call from God and a unique service
to render God. A mission for the blessing of the whole world.
We cannot make a straight comparison between them and us. That is not possible.
Yet there is some common ground.
I have this deep hunch that God does have a
particular mission for Australia. A special task to do in this part of the
world; situated as we are in South East Asia. Our multicultural nation has a
unique opportunity.. But I fear that we will not
discover our mission until we regain the indigenous Australian insight that the
whole of life is a spiritual event.
How long will it take before we get disillusioned
with the gods of hedonism?
For some the disillusionment has already arrived.
But they fear there is nothing with which to replace it. The high rate of youth
suicide in this country is a testament to the sense of futility that has been
festering among sensitive souls.
Even the churches are implicated.
At the moment the disillusioned folk of the church
are disturbed by what’s going on. They see how, even in the church we have, to
some degree, been seduced by the tawdry gods of the world. Too often we take
our cue from social pressures and expectations, not from Christ and his God.
WHERE ARE WE IN ALL THIS?
Do you know what scares me most?
I don’t really know for sure how much my own faith
and values have been gradually undermined and eroded by the invasive influence
of our hedonistic society. White-anted by the gods that are
no-gods?
No matter how hard I try, I cannot make an objective
audit of myself.
I can preach to you about the need to keep our
hearts lovingly and tenaciously fixed on Christ Jesus. Yet how free am I, the preacher,
from the insidious contamination of other gods?
I do not know for sure. That is what I find so
scary! But I hear Jeremiah’s cry —
My people have given away their glory
for that which is utterly useless.
I hear Jeremiah and I throw myself on the mercy of
God.
With all my heart I pray that by the fiery furnace of the
Holy Spirit
I may be purged from any alloy or slag that
links me to the empty idols of
the present world..
And what I pray for myself I most earnestly pray for
you,
the kindly people to whom God
has sent me,
as a very minor prophet,
this day.
GENERAL INTERCESSIONS
FOR PEACE
Reconciling God, please strengthen the will of all
peacemakers. Pilot negotiators through the reefs of fear,
pride, and hoary prejudice. Build up courage, truth, trust, and mutual
respect.
FOR INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
God of resurrection, please restore to dignity the
lives of our aboriginal citizens, from Cooktown to Flinders Island, Redfern
to Broome. May the Risen Christ be among
them with enabling love, sharing their frustration and their prayers, and
giving them the will to inherit that better future which is your will for all people.
FOR OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM
Source of good government,
please give our leaders the vision to see beyond party jockeying to the real
needs of this nation. Show the them best way to
develop the full potential of our people and to foster opportunities for the
weak, the neglected and the inept.
FOR THE SICK
Loving God, embrace your
suffering children with almighty tenderness. Where the natural healing forces
are weak, or where the agents of decay are strong,
grant an infusion of your healing love, penetrating every tissue and cell, and
recreating health and vigour.
FOR THE SORROWING
Comforter of those who mourn, if you are still ready
to turn water in wine, please take the burning and salty tears of human grief,
and turn them into the wine of faith, hope and a large love.
Through Christ Jesus our
Saviour.
Amen!
SENDING OUT
It’s time to go.
Time to re-engage with the secular world.
Time to put the faith into deeds .
Time to practice uncalculating love.
Time to meet the Christ who
waits for you.
Time to share his boundless hope.
You can do all things through Christ who strengthens
you.
With the blessing of God, in your mind and heart,
let
each morning be a joy to you,
each path be a joy to you,
each neighbour be a joy to you.
Now and always..
Amen!
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