Luke 15: 11-32

Preacher: Rev. Roy Woodhams

Rebellious American Rock Star Alice Cooper, was once asked how his ‘way out’ image fitted in with his also being a Christian?  He replied, ‘It may sound ironic, but it’s the most rebellious thing I’ve ever done! Drinking beer is easy!  Taking drugs is easy!  Trashing your hotel room is easy!  But being a Christian - that’s a tough call - that’s real rebellion!’

 Today is ‘Back to Church Sunday’, when we are delighted to welcome some of you as our visitors.  I sincerely hope you have all felt welcomed - if you haven’t, please tell me about it over lunch!

 I’m sure that we are all familiar with today’s scripture reading - the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  I chose it because Jesus is such a brilliant story teller, and also because it’s, in itself, a story about be welcomed back.  It’s about the only time many of us even use the word “prodigal” and I wonder if we actually know what it means?  For the record it means, “recklessly extravagant.” 

 So, in this parable of the Recklessly Extravagant Son, Jesus tells the story of a younger son, who has grown up in the lap of luxury.  I suppose he’s a bit of a ‘spoiled rich kid’.  And this kid, rather audaciously asks for his inheritance early, and is given it!  

 At first, he lives the high life, probably going to parties with all the right people, eating the best food, and drinking the best wine.   But then a famine occurs, and when it does, he also happens to have run out of money.  In his desperation, he finds a job feeding pigs - dirty, smelly work.

 And being Jewish, it’s an even worse shame because pigs were regarded as unclean, and good Jews were not even supposed to be around pigs, let alone feeding and cleaning up after them.  Not only does he work with unclean animals, he is so hungry he’s even envious of the food the pigs are eating.  What a contrast with his previous playboy lifestyle!

 But then the young man comes to his senses.   He is his father’s son.   Even his father’s hired hands, the lowest rung of the ladder in the whole household, have more than enough to eat.   He has to swallow his pride and admit his wrongdoing, but he hopes the love of a father for his son will be enough.  

 He goes and says, “Dad, I’ve sinned against God and you!”  And to show his true change of heart, he is even willing to become a hired hand in his father’s household.  But his father won’t hear of it and instead calls for a celebration.  His son is back who was lost but is now been found.  

 The father would be justified in treating his son as a hired hand, but that father, not out of anything the son has done, but only out of his love welcomes the son back home.

 But there’s still some unpleasantness, because the older brother, the good guy in the story, is mad.   He doesn’t understand how he’s done everything right his whole life and yet “when has he ever had a party?”   The older son has done all the right actions, but has the wrong spirit.  He doesn’t understand the repentance of his brother or his father’s love.  This son would have preferred his brother to have stayed lost and dead, while the father rightly understands that he must rejoice, in spite of the past, because his younger son has new life, he has been found.

 Now, there are two challenges galore here for all of us, but I’m just going to home in on two particular ones:

• The first challenge is an immediate one, and we need to sort it right away, and
• the second is long-term, which may well take us a lifetime to live out!

The immediate challenge is this: to work out which of the two Sons most represent us, and where we sit in relation to the Father, who is our God? 

 Now don’t get me wrong here, for there is no distinction here between our ‘back to Church’ guests and those of us who sit here week by week, because I know as well as anybody, that some of you who aren’t regular worshippers with us, may well be sitting much closer in God’s favour, than even the Vicar!

 So, are we like the Son who has gone off with the family fortune and had a good time before running into trouble?  Or are we the one full of righteous indignation, who has done all the right things, but lacks the grace to be forgiving?

 And then there is the long-term challenge, which is not so simple, because it involves using what we have just found out, as a foundation on which to live the rest of our lives?

 And the challenge is this - if we think of our lives as a journey, do we want to travel the rest of our journey hand in hand with the one who created us, redeemed us, and longs for us to walk the road with him, or do we want to say that we have no need of God, that he is irrelevant to our lives, and we are far too busy to choose that other path?

 During the week I was talking to my friend Chris Bird, the minister of Fleet Baptist Church, and he has just returned to work after a three month sabbatical, part of which was spent in the Southern Sudan.

 Chris told me about some truly amazing and life-changing experiences, which I hope to invite him to come and share with our congregation sometime soon, but one thing which I would like to share with you this morning, is something which he told me which is, I think, very relevant to what we are thinking about today. 

 A local Sudanese Christian said to Chris, that he thought it was much more difficult to be a Christian in the developed world, because our modern lifestyles are such, that it is so easy for us to live our daily lives without needing God.  But in the

 I wonder if you’ve heard the story of old Gladys who attended church one Sunday and the sermon just seemed to go on and on and some of the ageing congregation fell asleep.  Afterwards, she went up to one particularly sleepy looking old chap, and trying to be polite said, ‘Hello, I’m Gladys Dunn’. To which the gentleman replied, ‘And so am I!’

Well, I’m not ‘Gladys’, but you’ll be relieved to hear that I am ‘Done’, and I want to end by saying ‘thank you’ to those of you who have come as our guests today, and ‘thank you’ to those members of our congregation who have invited and welcomed you!  And above all, I want to say ‘thank you’ to God, who is the Father who welcomes us back with open arms, each and every time we ‘mess up’!

Genesis 18:20-33

Luke 11: 5-12

Luke 18:1-8

Robert Smith

This is the first of three sermons on Prayer to coincide with the launch of our new Parish Prayer Programme in September. The theme of my sermon is ‘persistent prayer’ and as well as the three readings we have heard, I need to draw from another story. …This is about three men who were trekking through a jungle when they came across a violent, raging river. They had no idea how to cross. So the first man decided to pray: “Please, God, give me the strength to cross this river.” Immediately he grew enormous muscles in his arms and legs, and he managed to swim across the river in a couple of hours, nearly drowning twice.The second man saw this and he prayed “Please, God, give me the strength AND the tools to cross this river.” A boat appeared from nowhere, and he battled across the river in an hour, nearly capsizing twice.The third man saw this and prayed “Please, God, give me the strength, the tools AND the intelligence to cross this river.” To his surprise, immediately he turned into a woman. She looked at the map, walked upstream a hundred yards, and crossed over the bridge to the other side.This morning I want to address four aspects of prayer:

q       Can we change the mind of God?

q       Persistence in prayer

q       Being specific in prayer

q       Answers to prayer

So, firstly, can we change the mind of God through prayer? At first glance, in our Old Testament reading, Abraham appears to have changed God’s mind through his repeated petitions asking for the city of Sodom to be spared. (Gen 18:20-33.)

To give some background, Sodom and Gomorrah were two cities that were condemned by God to destruction if He finds that the ‘outcry’ against them is true. Some of Abraham’s relatives (it is thought about 10 of them) lived in Sodom. They were Lot (his nephew) and his family. Abraham knew that God is a just judge and that it is in God’s nature to spare the righteous. But Abraham thought that implied sparing Sodom and was unaware of any other way around it. God indeed said that, if necessary, He would withhold His judgement to protect a righteous remnant of ten or more. However, reading on, we see that there were only 4 righteous ( Lot, his wife and 2 unmarried daughters) and God spared these anyway by guiding them out of the city.

God sent two angels to check the outcry and then destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah anyway.

So, can we change the mind of God? Isn’t it more that, by praying, we change:

q       ourselves – and our relationship with God

q       the circumstances – by being a praying church

q       our involvement in the situation

q       God’s ability to communicate with us, and work through us

q       which is the best option open to God.

eg. He can revert to Plan A (for a praying church) rather than Plan B or C (for non-praying churches)By accepting the burden of prayer we can become part of the solution.Now lets look at the importance of persistence in prayer. Abraham was certainly persistent! God did not seem to have a problem with this, although Abraham was pretty worried! In the reading from Luke 11, Jesus recommends persistence in a parable, ending:“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”And in Luke 18 he specifically says “…pray always and do not lose heart.”So how can we ‘pray always?’ Obviously this does not mean on our knees at the side of the bed! It suggests that prayer should be an on-going conversation with God alongside us. It is our relationship with God that is of most importance to God, and prayer is an essential element in maintaining it. For example, I wrote some of this sermon while mowing the lawn! I hd to stop occasionally to make some notes, but I find that I can often have a very close conversation with God whilst undertaking such a mindless occupation.Moving on to being specific in prayer, Jesus said (Luke 11:10) that we should ask for what we need. He also said:“….if two or three of you on earth agree about anything that you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.” (Matt. 18:19)So in order to do these things we need to be specific …. and to pray corporately. Then we will recognise the answers and can give thanks.Reading Luke 11:10-13 from Eugene Petersen’s paraphrase of the Bible ‘The Message’:“Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. Ask for what you need. This is not a cat-and-mouse game we’re in. If your little boy asks for a serving of fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? If your little girl asks for an egg, do you trick her with a spider? As bad as you are, you wouldn’t think of such a thing – you’re at least decent to your own children. And don’t you think the Father who conceived you in love will give the Holy Spirit when you ask him?”The Holy Spirit seems to be key to our prayers being answered and often the way God answers our prayers is through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.The answers to our prayers may not be what we expect. In the OT reading for example, what Abraham actually wanted was to save the righteous. But he was not specific about his need. He tried to tell God how to achieve it. Abraham was probably surprised by the answer to his prayer -

q       It is important to persist in prayer…and to be specific in what we ask for q       Practice makes perfectq       The answer may well differ from our expectations…but will always result in a better solution!The Parish Prayer ProgrammeToday we are launching the Parish Prayer Programme and you will be handed PPP Launch Leaflets and Prayer Diaries when you leave the church this morning. Please study the Launch Leaflet. The aims of the PPP are clearly laid out. It contains a varied menu of corporate prayer and we hope that everyone can find at least one new aspect of corporate prayer that suits them.The PPP Working Group comprised members of both P&J and All Saints congregations and those involved in the PCC as well as those not involved. This was deliberate in order to give a fair spread of experience and views. We ran a pilot scheme for the Prayer Diary for three months and also for the Prayer Hub.I must say that I am in as much need of this Prayer Programme as anyone. I need to fit prayer into a busy life; I need opportunities to learn new ways to converse with God; I need to start to give Him his correct position in my life. I hope that you will also share that need and find that the PPP helps you.

By the time you read this, the launch of the new Parish Prayer Programme (PPP) will have begun. The first sermon and distribution of the PPP Launch Leaflet and September Prayer Diary is at P&J on Sunday 2^nd September, to be repeated at All Saints the following week. We ran successful pilot schemes in July and August for two aspects of the PPP - the Prayer Diary and Prayer Hub – and have used the experience gained to refine them both. I know that many of you are keen to know more about the PPP but, apart from these pilots, we have waited until now to provide you with full details in order to ensure that we distribute coherent and correct information. I hope that by reading the magazine articles in July and August, and when you have read the PPP Launch Leaflet distributed in September, most of your questions will have been answered.

A key objective of the Parish Prayer Programme is to involve as many people as possible in focused prayer aimed at underpinning God’s work in our parish. We are all different in the ways we like to pray, and have varying amounts of time available, so the PPP deliberately offers a varied menu of prayer activities. In this way we hope that everyone will find at least one aspect of the PPP that fits his or her requirements, and may also choose to try out something new. For example, those who like to pray with someone else may be attracted to the Prayer Partner or Prayer Triplet schemes. Others may prefer to use the information in the Prayer Diary to allow their private prayers to be more specific and focused and this is particularly useful for those with very little time to pray each day. The Prayer Diaries fold up to go in your pocket or handbag so you can even make good use of time on the train! If you would rather commit half an hour a week and are interested in a more ecumenical flavour, Churches Together In Fleet runs a Prayer Wall which would be ideal for you. Some people may want to invest more time and be involved to a greater extent by praying for the parish ministry at the weekly Prayer Hub, or through intercessory prayer for one another through the Prayer Telegraph or by attending the Tuesday Morning Prayer Group. Finally, if you prefer to pray in church, Morning Prayer is said four times a week in P&J, and there are regular Taizé Prayer and Celtic Worship services that are prayer based.

We also want to provide additional routes for people to request prayers, for people, initiatives or events, and the Prayer Telegraph is intended to allow rapid dissemination of prayer needs, whether urgent or requiring persistent prayer over a long period. We encourage the inclusion of thanksgiving prayers so we can all rejoice in the answers to our prayers. To this end, the Prayer Boards, at the back of each church, will be extended to become Prayer and Thanksgiving Boards. You can jot down your prayer request or thanksgiving prayer and pin it to the board. These prayers will then be circulated via the Prayer Telegraph and also prayed, as before, by the Tuesday Morning Prayer Group. No request is too small – we want to share in bringing the needs of our church and our membership to God.

The parish website has a list  of relevant points of contact, times and venues. Further details are in the PPP Launch Leaflet that will be issued at the services through September with the Prayer sermons and  also available for download on the website. 

Robert Smith

Chairman of the Parish Prayer Programme Working Group

This article appeared in the September Parish magazine.