| 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 27
2-8 October
Luke 17: 5-10
(Sermon
1: “Where are the Clowns?”)
2 Timothy 1:
1-14
Lamentations
1: 1-6
Psalm 137
or Lamentations 3: 19-26 (Sermon 2: “Sweet sour Songs
of Faith”)
PREPARATION
We are here togther
in the name of Christ Jesus,
in the Presence of an awesome,
Holy Love.
A person without God is like a feather in a
perpetual wind, blown all over the place without any control or choice in where
to rest.
O come, let us
return to the living
God,
Let us bow
before the One who is our Maker.
OR
–
Good news. God is always great news!
We are never cut off from the love of God,
God’s mercies never come to an end.
They are
renewed every morning
for great is God’s
faithfulness.
Each day I call miracle this into the centre of my
mind
and therefore I am full of hope
and happiness.
PRAYER OF APPROACH
Holy God, you are the hope of all who seek you, and
the joy of all who are found by you. Find us, we pray. Wherever we have been,
whatever we have done, find us, reclaim us, and gather us back into your love
and certainty. Grounded in you, let us love, enjoy and adore you. Through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen!
CONFESSION AND ASSURANCE
There is only one Person who knows every thing about
us and understands it all.
We come to God without excuse or fear and make our
confession of sin.
Let us pray.
Merciful God, we admit to each other and confess to
you, our shallowness and wilfulness, our folly and our selfishness.
We confess the
careless, cruel word,
the negative, cynical thought,
the irresponsible deed,
and the dithering inaction.
We regret the
kindness withheld,
the opportunity not taken,
the high ideal betrayed,
and the faith fudged or denied.
Please forgive
us, cleanse us, amend us,
and restore to us that zest for
abundant life
which we have witnessed in Jesus.
Amen!
FORGIVENESS
My friends, “Christ Jesus came preaching peace to
those who are near,
and peace to those far off.”
Trust, and let the mercy and peace of God embrace
you.
Trust, put the past behind you and face the future
with quiet confidence.
Trust, God is faithful and can be absolutely relied
on.
Thanks be to God.
PRAYER FOR CHILDREN
Planting
Seeds of Love
Teach us, Lord Jesus,
to be like gardener
who sows seeds of kindness and
hope
in the rough soil of every
day.
Wherever the weeds of greed and jealousy grow,
and when people pay back wrong
with wrong,
help us to grow lots of generous
love.
Teach us your way, please Lord Jesus.
Amen!
PSALM: LAMENTATIONS 3: 19-26
God, in my distress I go round in circles,
and my mouth feels bitter with
bile.
I
can’t get my worries out of my head,
my soul seems as heavy as lead.
Now is the time for me to focus on you,
to have hope and be positive.
For
your love is never in debit
and your grace knows no limit.
Your mercies are new each morning,
so wonderful is your
faithfulness.
“God
is my fortune,” is my song,
therefore my hope is forever young.
God is good to those who wait patiently,
and blesses the soul who seeks
sincerely.
There
is nothing better than to wait quietly
and bask in the salvation of God, faithfully.
© B.D. Prewer 2003 & 2012
TREES IN THE SEA
I said to the man from Galilee:
‘How many sycamores grow in
the sea?’
He answered with a winsome smile:
‘As many
as travel the second mile.’
I said to the man who wrote in the sand:
‘Don’t sycamores grow much
better on land?’
He answered me with eyes bright and alert:
‘It depends on whether you
give your shirt.’
I said to the man with thorns on his head:
‘They’re easier to grow in a
garden bed.’
He said as he wiped the blood from his face:
‘Not if you hope to reap
saving grace.’
© B.D. Prewer 2000 & 2012
COLLECT
Loving God, eternally reliable, please increase our
faith. Coax us beyond mere assent to commitment, and beyond commitment to
enthusiasm, and beyond enthusiasm to the utter pleasure of giving unmeasured
love in situations where only Christ’s fools dare to tread..
Through your Son, Jesus our Brother and Saviour.
Amen!
SERMON 1: WHERE ARE THE CLOWNS?
Luke 17:6
If you had faith,
even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this sycamine
tree: “Be uprooted and be planted in the sea. And it would do it.”
Planting trees in the sea sounds a clownish
exercise. It even outdoes ludicrous!
I reckon that is exactly how Jesus meant it to
sound.
We miss the point of this mini-parable if we look at
it with solemn eyes
It is cartoon he is creating. Think of it in cartoon
terms. Unfetter your imagination.
Imagine a bloke standing up to his waist in the sea
at Cable Beach, or Coolangatta, or Coles Bay, trying to plant a tree. Crazy, huh?
Like any clever cartoon, behind this picture there
is a serious point. In this cartoon Jesus is challenging those who would follow
him to start attempting the hard and clownish things..
Such teaching of Christ is for many, impractical nonsense. But not for the
disciple; for the disciple it is the way to go.
FOUR COMMENTS
Four comments about what Jesus said ¾
1. The sycamine tree. To get literal, the tree
Jesus mentions is not what in English we call a sycamore tree, but a variety of
mulberry tree that grew in the Middle east. It is a
fruit tree. Also, maybe it is significant that here Jesus speaks of a tree
which happens to have a large and deep root system.
2. ‘Be planted’. He
actually says planted. Not dumped into the sea, but planted. The Greek word phuteuo is used. It’s the
common word for planting flowers, trees or vegetables. It’s the kind of thing you do when expecting things to grow and
produce food.
3. ‘The sea.’ In Jewish
thought the sea represents a primitive, untameable, alien force. Jews feared
the sea. The sea separated people. To be lost at sea was most feared because it
was thought to cut you off from any hope of resurrection. No wonder the Jews
made poor sailors.
4. ‘If you had faith.” For Jesus faith is not a passive, fatalistic
acceptance of things, but an active, disruptive force. It is not resignation to
whatever the stars decree. Jesus’ faith is prepared to roll up its sleeves and
get working at changing the world with God and for God.
Faith is not have a lever
to get God to do what we want, but the readiness to do what God wants. Even a little faith, Jesus says; even faith a
small as a mustard seed will have surprising results.
PLANT THE IMPROBABLE
Christians are called by Jesus to plant fruitful
possibilities in alien situations..
In the eyes of a cynical world, faith is an exercise
in improbalitity.
To the worldly schemer what we are on about will
seem impractical; a waste of time and effort.
We will always be seen by some as the clowns of God. They say: “ There is
nothing we can do.” We say: “Let’s give it a try!”
Christians should be the people who dream up
exciting ideas that to the cynics around us seem clownish nonsense in their
calculating view. We are called to put ourselves at risk. We should be asking
the awkward questions, making the unpopular stand, trying to win the unwinnable
contest with evil. We are called to give it a try, and if we fail, to fail
gloriously.
It would not be a bad thing if we took as our motto:
“Clowns of faith, by appointment to his humble majesty, Jesus of Nazareth.”
Planting trees in the sea is our true business. The
clowns of God should be ready to go where the wise and sophisticated disdain to
tread.
MY GRATITUDE
I thank God for those who take up the challenge.
Those who are prepared to take a risk for the sake
of Christ Jesus, inspire the rest of us.
A 29 year old convert, with
no Christian upbringing, who within three months of becoming a person of faith
accepted office in his trade union; “To be Christ’s man there.” How is that for planting trees in the sea?
A 7 year old child, after hearing about starving
people in Africa in Sunday School, drew a picture and
made a donation box. This she installed at the front door and made sure any
visitors saw it. She could not cure the ills of Africa but she could plant her
small tree in the sea of general apathy.
One young man who decided to study both economics
and social work so that he might be able to offer some skills to the long term
unemployed. Fellow students who found out his game plan, derided him as a
crank.
The mother in her forties who went back to study and
completed teacher training so that she could specialise in helping children
with learning difficulties. In a large school, she worked with a class of what
others (off the record, of course!) used to call the “dumbos”.
Because she actually asked for this difficult class, some teachers treated her
like a nutter. Planting trees in
the sea?
A priest in Africa who faked a crime and got himself
imprisoned so that he could minister without any status to those who needed him
most. Now that is planting in a deep sea! What a clown of a thing to do!
COMMON GARDENING STUFF
Not all tree planting has
to be as dramatic as these examples.
Much is common stuff. Some happens very quietly and
unobtrusively.
I am keenly aware of some of you in this
congregation who have done your share of planting fruit trees in the sea. In
your own way, you tackle the difficult and attempt that which seems improbable.
Sometimes you appear to succeed, at other times you may appear to fail.
Common plantings do matter.
I am convinced that in the kingdom of God, what
appears like a waste of time is always a success. The act of attempting the difficult
for Christ is itself a glorious success. No brave act of faith is wasted in
God’s regime. That which may not appear
to bear fruit, will fruit in ways we cannot discern. Nothing
done for Christ Jesus is a write off. No brave risk of faith and love is
a pathetic defeat.
GET CLOWNISH
So, how about it?
Some more clownish impudence, please! Get out there
in the seas with a spade in your hand.
In those places where others are negative and defeatist, and stand
around bemoaning the state of the world, or the church, let us get on with
Christ’s tree planting programme.
There is much more fun in being a clown of God that
in “sitting in the seat of the scornful.”
If you had
faith, even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this sycamine tree: “Be uprooted and be
planted in the sea.’ And it would do it.
Luke 17:6
SERMON 2:
SWEET-SOUR SONGS OF FAITH
Texts:
Excerpts from Lamentations 1 and 3.
Do you want some inspiration to keep you going in
living your faith? My thouyghst today are inspired by
the poems known as the BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS. Sad songs
indeed.
It takes a very sad person to sing such very sad
songs.
Such was the prophet Jeremiah. And such are the
poignant poems in the Book of Lamentations which were attributed to Jeremiah.
We cannot be sure he wrote these poems, but they certainly are in tune with his
soul. And they provide a fitting postscript to his life.
The first chapter is a song or poem that is
exquisitely painful in its beauty.
It is an outpouring of unrelieved sorrow for the
kingdom of Judah and for Jerusalem its holy capital on Mt Zion.
You and I may think we have our grey days,
shadowed times when no light seems
to break through to relieve our clouded situation.. Maybe a few have been
thrust down much deeper into the gloom than others of us.
Yet the worst that most of us have experienced is
like a Sunday school picnic
compared to the desolation of the
prophet Jeremiah and those who were close to his heart. His own sufferings,
plus his additional grief for his crushed and scattered nation, plunged him
down as far as any soul can go.
The writer of Lamentations captures this.
Listen once more to the doleful, yet haunting song
of the first lamentation over the destroyed city of Jerusalem:
How lonely sits the city that was
filled with people;
once great
among nations, she is now a desolate widow.
She who was a princess among many
cities,
has now
become a humiliated slave girl.
She weeps bitterly through the
night, tears on her cheeks;
of the
lovers she once had, none stay to comfort her.
Those she thought were allies have
proved treacherous,
friends of
the good times have become enemies.
All the roads to Mt Zion are in
mourning,
no pilgrims
come to the great feast days.
Her gates hang desolate and ragged
priests moan,
young girls
are abused and the city suffers bitterly.
The sad man also must have loved deeply.
Only a deep love could create such a broken-hearted
poem. Someone like
Jeremiah. Jeremiah loved the city of Zion deeply. He loved his people
dearly. The love and faithfulness of Jeremiah was such, that he foreshadows the
love of another Jew who appeared on the scene 700 years later, a mightier
prophet from Nazareth.
THE LONELINESS OF THE
PROPHET.
Jeremiah was a sorrowful, lonely, yet renowned
national figure.
For over three decades Jeremiah had been almost a
solitary voice. He warned his nation that the course on which their faithless
leaders were set was destined for total calamity. For over thirty years he saw
them go from bad to worse.
Jeremiah started young.
He was only a lad (maybe 16 yrs old
) in about the year 627 BC when he first became God’s spokesman. After
watching a promising reform programme under king Josiah, Jeremiah witnessed his own people slip
away from God. They turned from worshipping the wonderful God of heaven and
earth, whose ways were justice, truth and mercy. They embraced popular pagan
gods. He watched the people of the kingdom of Judah slither into the low morals
and the superstitious customs of idol worshippers.
Jeremiah was also alarmed that Judah had lost its
national integrity.
It became a political lap dog to super-powers like
Assyria, Egypt and Babylon. (Does that remind you of anyone?) He watched in
disgust as “popular” preachers and priests toadied to both rulers and people by
preaching whatever false lies they wanted to hear. Jeremiah insisted on the
truth. As a result he was ostracised by most of the priests and prophets.
This lonely prophet, month after month, year after
year, called for repentance,
for a change of heart, a return
to God. Otherwise his country would be weighed and found wanting. Dire
judgement would fall upon it.
As time went by, and Judah
appeared to be getting away with it, more or less.
Of course people scorned Jeremiah as a religious
nut. His freedom was curtailed, his rights infringed. He did suffer. But no dire harm came to him.
He exchanged hard words with the head priest of the
Temple (a chap called Pasher) and for his
faithfulness found himself first beaten up, and then clamped into stocks near
the gate of the temple. There all who passed by could mock him and throw
rubbish at him.
The poor fellow seems to have been given a nickname.
Ironically, it was the nickname Jeremiah first gave
to the priest Pasher. That name was turned back on
Jeremiah by his enemies. He heard them whispering “Magor-missabib.
Magor-missabib!” Literally it meant
“terror all around” Maybe it was like our phrase “Old Misery Guts”.
Flogging and the stocks were bad news.
It did not end there. On one occasion his enemies
thrust him down into a dry well, and left him there in the darkness. Even some
folk from his home village of Anathoth plotted to
assassinate him.
That should keep old “Misery Guts” quiet!
GOD SEEMED UNSUPPORTIVE
And do you know what? God appeared hesitant to
assist his prophet.
God just seemed to stand by and let Jeremiah cop the
abuse without redress.
What is more, the disasters Jerry predicted were
slow to materialise.
This apparent lack of support from God really got at
Jeremiah. One day he cried out in frustration: “Lord you have fooled me and made me
your fool.” He complained that he had taken enough! He would not be a
prophet any more. Why should he put himself in this situation of ridicule and abuse.!
Yet this remarkable person, this true man of God,
did not actually resign.
The fire of the word of God still burnt on in his
soul. He returned repeatedly with yet another message from God, calling the
people to repentance. In return, they mocked old Misery Guts.
Finally, the day of reckoning did come.
The Babylonians came and crushed the troublesome
kingdom of Judah without mercy. In 587 the walls of Jerusalem were breached,
and before long the city was in complete ruins. King Zedekiah saw his own sons
butchered in front of him, and then they put his eyes out and marched him off
as a war trophy to Babylon..
Some of the leading citizens escaped into Egypt.
They dragged Jeremiah off, along with his faithful
scribe Baruch, to a town called Tahpanhes. There he
continued to preach the word of God without fear or favour. And there, at the
age of 57, he
disappears from sight. But not, praise God, from history.
A PROPHET OF HOPE.
It takes a sad man of deeply compassionate soul, to sing a sad song for Jerusalem,
now sacked and destroyed and
her people scattered as refugees among the nations.
The Lord has made her suffer for her
multitude of sins;
her
children have gone, captives of the enemy.
All the magic has departed from the
daughter of Zion,
Her princes are as bucks with no
grass to eat,
weakened,
they flee from their pursuers.
Yet here is a remarkable thing about this man
Jeremiah.
When his prophecies of destruction began to be
fulfilled, he turned increasingly to messages of hope. Jerusalem was flattened,
the temple a ruin, but Jeremiah’s faith was neither flattened nor in ruin. Out
of the catastrophe of defeat, destruction, and exile, God would bring a new day for his
people.
Isn’t that remarkable! Don’t you love this guy!
Jeremiah is often remembered as a prophet of doom.
That’s unfair.
He should be celebrated as a prophet of hope. Even
among the Lamentations there are glorious passages of faith. In that reading we
had today, from Lamentations 3: 19-26, hope and faith breaks through like the
dawn sunshine after a long, starless, stormy night.
First let us hear some of the storm:
Arrows from his quiver have pierced me,
driven into
my heart.
I have become a laughing stock for
all people,
that sing
their scorn all day long.
He has made my teeth grind on
gravel,
made me
cower among the ashes.
My soul is bereft of peace,
I have forgotten what happiness is.
Then comes the mighty
upsurge of hope and faith:
But this I call to mind
and
therefore have hope:
The steadfast love of God never
ceases,
God’s mercies never come to an end.
They are new every morning:
Great is your faithfulness!
Don’t you love this man’s faith? The nation ruined,
the holy city derelict, Jeremiah himself kidnapped and hauled off to Egypt, and
yet here is one who still believes in God and trusts God.
But this I call to mind
and
therefore have hope:
The steadfast love of God never
ceases,
God’s mercies never come to an end.
They are new every morning:
Great is your faithfulness!
SING THIS THEME TODAY
No wonder these powerful words of faith and hope
have been made into a well loved hymn within many Christian churches. More than
2,600 years after this Jewish prophet, his kind of faith still gives us
strength in our difficult times.
Thank you, noble, lonely Jeremiah. Thank you, those
few believers and poets, whose names are unknown to us, who stood up with
Jeremiah and kept the faith.
Most of all, thank YOU most faithful, wonderful God!
Thank you for not giving us up to evil. Great is your faithfulness!
GIVING THANKS
My friends in Christ Jesus, I invite you to enter
into the spirit of thanksgiving.
Let us pray.
Wonderful Creator, it is good to be alive in your creation;
to know beauty and seek
understanding, to experience wonder and feel love. It is good to know that all
things are a part of a complex purpose too intricate for us to understand, but
not too difficult for us to participate in.
Wonderful Redeemer, it is good to be alive in a world where
Jesus lived,
taught, healed, laughed, wept,
suffered, died and rose again. It is good to be among the people he has called
to be your agents through all the common events of life, and through the times
of daunting challenges.
Thank you for giving us a Divine Brother.
Wonderful Enlivener, it is good to be alive in
a church
where, in spite of our blatant
faults, there flows a Spirit who can invigorate the tired, embolden the timid,
enhance the gifted, restore the defeated, inflame the slack, and create a surge
of love which is much stronger than the total of our small, individual loves.
Thank you for giving us the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit..
Encourage us to turn our gratitude into firmer
faith, and our faith into deeper compassion, and our compassion into doing good to those around us.
Through Christ Jesus our
Lord.
Amen!
PRAYING FOR OTHERS
God loves,
God listens, God answers . The answers may not be the
ones we expect, but no prayer for our sisters and brothers is ever wasted.
Let us pray.
Loving God, because the world’s problems and
miseries are so vast and complex, and because we are neither wise enough, nor
resourceful and strong enough to put things to right, we pray for your divine
assistance in every sphere.
Please assist those who are struggling for justice
and peace among nations and communities.
Please assist those who through research or hands-on
care are fighting disease and suffering.
Please assist those who are trying to govern wisely,
and those who administer justice.
Please assist those who care for the dignity of the
unemployed, handicapped and the homeless.
Please assist those who give schooling to our
children and advanced skills to young adults.
Please assist those who are pastors in churches,
hospitals, industry and aged care facilities.
Please assist all those who in spite of the help
that is offered are still finding it hard to cope and find themselves
at their wits end.
Loving God, Friend of all who turn to you, and
Friend also of those who in anger turn away from you, in your love embrace this
world with your almighty tenderness, and lead us from all that is hurtful and
destructive to grace, mercy and peace. In the name of Christ Jesus.
Amen!
SENDING OUT
Go well. There is nothing that can happen this week
that God has not anticipated,,
nothing that is outside God’s providence. Go faithfully, go
lovingly, go hopefully.
We are ready
for all things, through Christ who strengthens us.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God,
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit,
will be with you
today and forever more
Amen!
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