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Prayers for Hard
Times
Advent 2006 to Advent 2008
Selected prayers given as occasional liturgical
leader in worship at St. Paul United Methodist Church in Muskogee, Oklahoma
from Advent 2006 to Advent 2008, times of great change and distress in
election politics and economics. Posted here 4/6/09.
12/3/06 First Sunday of Advent
Lord Jesus Christ, it is a bit astonishing that we are beginning another
Advent season, as though we are to remember over and over that you dwelt
among us at a particular time in the distant past. A Jew born in a strange
land under the rule of an overwhelmingly powerful empire, you were set
on a collision course with that empire.
Sometimes, Jesus, we confess that we wish we never had to deal with thee
as a grown up Jewish prophet. We are soothed by the sentimentalities that
attach to little babies, sweet and gentle, even as we are sure you never
cried or bawled like babies that annoy us. We like wise men and shepherds
and glowing angels and mooing cattle. Yes, Jesus, they are an interesting
and attractive mix of characters that give thy birth the unthreatening
aura of innocent kindness and generosity. In your swaddling clothes you
aren’t a threat to anyone, neither to emperors nor even to folk
like us who just want to be comforted and affirmed in our daily travails
of living.
O Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, why did you have to grow up and put so much pressure
on how we live are lives. Why did you become that sort of Savior who so
harshly criticizes our complacencies and our desires to be left alone
without feelings of guilt? Why did you command us to turn the other cheek,
to refuse to return evil for evil done to us, to love folk that seem so
strange and inimical to the ways we prefer to live? Why didn’t you
just stay there in that mythical manger and let us adore your childish
innocence? Why did you provoke just those political authorities upon whom
we depend for security and to keep the wolfish criminals at bay? Why,
Jesus, did you end up on a cross, slaughtered by all the powerful folk
we are inclined to trust with our lives and purse? Why were you a criminal
when we all know criminals are those who defy authority and power? Is
it really necessary that the shadow of thy cross should fall across thy
manger?
All right, Lord Jesus, here is a prayer request. This Advent season still
has a few weeks to go until we have to confront the inescapable fact that
you—a Jewish baby become prophet and Savior—are right here
in our world and that we will have to deal with the sort of life you lived,
the unnerving shape of your teachings, and your fate on a brutal cross.
Give us a little time, we pray, between now and Christmas for us to smell
the pine trees so grandly decorated, to sing those hymns that stir our
hearts in the middle of wintry days and sad nights. Give us time to make
a spectacle of thy infant gentleness and time simply to adore Mary and
Joseph and thee from afar. Then, Jesus, after Christmas we promise to
be ready for that steady, narrow, but oddly joyful and redemptive journey
through winter into spring toward thy cross.
Yearning for peace and meaning and hope, we so pray. Amen
3/11/07
Lord God, Creator of all things visible and invisible, ground of all real
goodness and hope, we gather this day with hearts in search of thy presence
and blessings. We are keenly aware of the many ways in which we are creatures
who live in time and in whom time lives. Yet time is such a mystery to
us. Even though we have set our clocks forward, we know we cannot jump
forward into the future, except in our imagination and hoping and fearing.
Even as we gather today, our gathering will end in a few minutes and we
will scatter, and our scattering will itself pass into another day in
just a few hours.
Often time feels like a prison to us, inescapable and unrelenting in its
movement forward. What will tomorrow bring to each of us, we ask? Why
can’t we reach back and take back those cruel acts we have committed,
those harsh words that cut to the quick of another’s life, that
overwhelming lethargy that kept us on the sidelines while others were
deciding our own future?
Lord, how can we redeem this hurtling through time that is just too fast?
It is such redeeming that we seek as we gather to worship thee, to pray
to thee our hearts’ concerns, to find the courage to persist faithfully
into whatever short or long future we might have. We pray for the families
of those whose time expired since we last gathered. We pray for those
who are sick and know their bodies are in decay and rushing toward death.
We pray for those who are in despair and feel only a dull dread about
the tomorrows ahead.
O Lord, here it is: in our gathering in worship it is deeply obvious to
us that we cannot redeem time, that even though we might turn the clock
back or forward, we cannot stop time’s irreversible move into the
future and we cannot heal the wounds of time. But you can.
Because of thy coming to us in Jesus Christ, we know you are our sure
and dependable partner in time. Because of Christ Jesus, rather than time
being a prison, we understand that it is more like a gift of new moments
in which to live and to love and to give ourselves unselfishly to others,
just as you have given so lovingly to us. Because of Jesus we have a hope
in thee that the limits of time are not the absolute limits of our being
and life before thee. We gather this day because we are grateful for our
lives in time because you are continually redeeming our time and bearing
it into eternity.
In Christ’s holy and incarnate life and name we pray. Amen
5/6/07
Lord God, Creator of all things in heaven and on earth, we rejoice that
we are gathered here in this place on this day to praise thy name by singing
hymns, by giving offerings to the work of thy church, by hearing Scripture
read, and by listening to thy Word proclaimed and explained by our pastor.
We rejoice at seeing those faces of friends and family sitting next to
us and greeting us with open smiles and bright eyes. We are glad we are
not strangers sitting with other strangers, wondering why we are here
or wondering what is going on. And just so we pray that visitors among
us will be gladdened by warm greetings and nurtured by words of gracious
discernment and hopefulness.
However, Lord, we confess that in this past week many of us have worried
desperately about the pains in body and soul, about our need for more
money to make life more bearable, and we worry about the haunting uncertainties
of our jobs and our capacity to make and to save money. We worry much
about our children and their inescapable vulnerability to harm and their
own inclination to careless, self-destructive judgments and decisions.
And we worry about children who worry about parents absent and uninvolved,
about the glares and stares of their schoolmates, and about whether anyone
will find them lovable and desirable. We worry about elderly parents and
friends whose lives are shortening and whose precious independence seems
under such strain and threat.
We worry, Lord, about politicians who lack basic honesty and who make
poor judgments that bring great suffering to others. We worry about soldiers
called upon to inflict harm and to risk being harmed and who must bear
terrible stress and fear. We worry about our Iraqi brothers and sisters
who live in constant fear of sudden death and who live with only dim hope
for a safer and happier future. We worry about Muslims who seem so strange
and threatening to us, and it is startling to us, Lord, to be told by
them that they fear we Christians intend to wreak havoc upon them and
condemn them to hell.
Lord, Lord, hear our pleas and confessions: in us and in others, there
is just too much hatefulness, too much selfishness, too much hardness
of heart, too much envy and rivalry, too much killing and being killed.
Lord, we plead with thee for guidance and strength in how we might live
courageously and peaceably and graciously; how we might live without fear
of death and disease; and how to live, in spite of our worries, with an
abundance of joy that can pull us into the future as a time of peace and
goodwill.
It is with all these worries and hopes that we dare to pray to thee in
the name of Jesus that we might be granted the strength to do good and
to be good and to turn our worries over to thee. Amen.
11/11/07 Veterans Day
Lord God, Creator of all creatures and Savior of human creatures so repeatedly
given to sin and bedeviled by the consequences of sin. Thy creation seems
to be in a mess. In the midst of that mess, we gather today to worship
thy gracious name and to hear thy Word interpreted and proclaimed as that
Good News about how we are to live before thee and before those sinful
neighbors that seem so often to sin against us.
We confess, Lord, that you are the Good Creator who has created this world
out of nothing and that you intended thy creatures to flourish and thrive
in cooperation and mutual support. You created us to live in peace and
yet we wonder why we find peace so elusive and why so many of us have
never really known peace—that is, that peace that reigns between
us and among us and that casts out fear.
To be sure, Lord, we sometimes glimpse an inner, fleeting peace. But we
know you aimed for that peace between and among us humans to be everlasting
and not a fleeting peace by lonely and isolated individuals. And we know,
Lord, that you did not create us to be lonely and isolated, to live in
fear of neighbors near and far, to spend our lives inventing newer and
deadlier devices to protect ourselves from the ones we call ‘enemies’.
What’s happened here Lord? We, the people of thy church seem to
stand in the line of those very powers that slaughtered Jesus because
he seemed a threat to our human ways of dominating and subduing others
in the name of our safety and advantage and of our justice.
We’re in crisis, Lord, right here on this day the nation says Veterans
must be honored, and indeed they should be honored. Many are we who have
gone to war or prepared to go to war, and many are the soldiers who faced
harrowing death with an amazing courage and loyalty to the nation. And
yet many are they who have died brutal deaths under the promise that just
one more war and against just these most ferocious enemies will bring
a lasting peace. Before thee today, Lord, as the people of thy church,
we confess that we know that promise has always been a lie—the lie
of that snake that coils around our hearts and chokes our powers to love
and to be cross-bearing.
We need thy help, Lord, as we weep this very day for our dead and for
our soldiers whose lives were torn out of joint and forced into a violence
contrary to thy intentions. We weep for families among us who lost loved
ones to the powers of war and fear and who still ache with grief. It truly
terrifies us, Lord, that when we open our eyes to our human past that
families on both sides of every war grasp desperately for the belief that
their loved ones did not die in vain.
We pray, Lord, that you might empower us to hear thy counsels of peace-making,
that we might refuse to simply perpetuate that constant state of war,
of killing for a presumably righteous cause that seems to be at the heart
of our lives—and of our forebears’ lives, and of our children’s
and our grand children’s prospects, and seems to have been at the
heart of those billions of other humans who have preceded us in life and
death on this earth.
Yes, yes, Lord, we know you have spoken to us in the teachings, the crucified
death, and that strange resurrection of Jesus—that you have left
no doubt that our fears and warring ways are not what you intended and
are not what you have blessed. But Lord work among us that we might be
empowered by thy gracious and forgiving Spirit to be more faithful.
In the name of thy Son Jesus, and yet with troubled souls, we dare to
pray and to weep and to hope. Amen.
12/2/07 First Sunday of Advent
Lord God, as we gather this first day of Advent, we find ourselves overwhelmingly
busy. For us students there are tests to take; for us parents there is
the struggle to find enough money to buy all the gifts we think we should
buy. For those of us who live alone we are busy worrying about our loneliness
and fearing that no one really cares. And when we confess all of this
before thy all-knowing eyes, we feel a bit foolish.
We know that in our church year, Advent is the time of preparation for
the birthing of Jesus our Savior. And yet, when we are so busy and harrowed
with all the necessities of buying presents and wanting presents and planning
parties, we often think the real savior we need is one who will deliver
us from Christmas fury. How odd it is, O Lord, that we in thy church feel
we need someone to save us from all the busy fears and frustrations that
have become the Christmas season in our world. We confess, Lord, that
sometimes we are just not sure who Jesus was and what he is about, and
we are often unsure what it means to call him ‘our Savior’.
We pray, Lord, on this first day of Advent that we might have eyes to
see and ears to hear the songs of angels declaring Jesus and Jesus’
kingdom are coming.
In this season we pray especially with those among us who are in ill health
and feeling deeply their mortality. Be with the young who are puzzled
about friendships and peer groups and peer judgments. Be with wives who
feel unloved and unappreciated, and with husbands who are bewildered about
what is important in their lives. Be with enemies that arouse fear in
us and empower us to see them as thy human children; and disarm both them
and us of our fears and angers.
Be with Kevin as he plunges into Advent with so much expected and so much
to discern. Protect him from sleepless nights and anxious days. Be with
Georgia as she tends to the sick and searches for the hope that is at
the heart of Advent.
Surprise all of us, O Lord, in these coming days that we might be like
the shepherds who steadfastly tended their daily tasks with few long-term
hopes. And yet, astonishingly, Lord, they were those upon whom you bestowed
surprising joys and hopes that they had neither earned nor expected. Surprise
us too, Lord. Surprise us that we might hear thee coming—as though
for the first time. Surprise and astonish us that we may be glad of heart
and filled with hope.
In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen
1/20/08 Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
Dear Lord God, long suffering Savior of this bewildered and violent world.
Even as we gather to worship thee this day, we confess that we have done
little to promote peace in thy world, even though our impression of ourselves
is that we are peace-loving and live peaceably. But we confess Lord that
we shudder at the thought of being peacemakers in all of our living and
doing and feeling.
We confess that sometimes we feel lonely and disheartened in our own practice
of discipleship to Jesus, thy eternal Son and our Savior. Today, however,
in spite of our waywardness we take some encouragement from recognizing
that millions of thy church people around the world are engaged in active
praying and work for the unity of thy church. We are not alone in confessing
Jesus as Savior.
Yet, even as we know that Jesus summoned his disciples into a distinctive
way of living as his body of redemption for the world, we worry whether
we truly and faithfully are Jesus’ body in the world. We know the
words, O Lord, but we are not sure we know the melody as a pattern of
life for the redemption of the world.
Lord, teach us on this very day in our worship, in song and word, that
we have fellow Christians in Indonesia, in China, in India, in Iraq and
Iran, in Palestine; fellow Christians in Okemah and Wichita Falls and
in New York City and Chicago, who are praying for us—gathered right
here in Muskogee—that we too might know we are one people as the
body of Christ.
Teach us, O Lord, that we might learn faithfulness from these brothers
and sisters around the world who also confess and live as though Jesus
is Lord, the ultimate peacemaker, the ultimate sufferer for the good of
others, and the One who loves us and desires that we be One as his body
throughout the world.
Earnestly, therefore, O God, we pray that we might find faithful and steady
ways of being thy people, of being thy body, here in Muskogee, here in
Oklahoma, here in the United States, here in thy world. We know that from
the beginning of all things you intended all these places of human habitation
to be places of thy presence and grace and people living in peace together.
May we thy church, as one body, be a gracious beacon of hope for the unity
of all thy creaturely children.
In Christ name we so pray. Amen.
3/9/08 Fifth Sunday of Lent
O Lord God of Israel, Creator of all creatures, incarnate Lord in Jesus
the crucified Jew, we praise thy name as we gather here on the Fifth Sunday
of Lent, keeping our eyes lifted toward the astonishing Glory and Beauty
that beckons us toward Easter Resurrection Sunday. As we now gather to
sing hymns, to read Scripture, and to hear thy Word commanding our attention
and illuminating our souls, we confess that our minds have been continually
diverted from thy Glory and Beauty by the images of death and violence
and despair and the utter absence of neighborliness in our daily worlds.
Some of us, Lord, are sick and aging fast and it is not easy to be grateful
for life and hopeful. Some of us are without meaningful work and it is
not easy to be hopeful and responsible. Some of us live in relationships
that are disheartening and threatening, that suck life out of us rather
than give life and hope to us. Some of us are young and saturated with
anxiety and angry about how hard it is to live joyfully and hopefully.
Some of us resent just how lonely life can be, how hard it is to be stuck
in a rut of isolation and abandonment. Some of us thought we were really
important and successful and have ruefully discovered how shallow and
negligible we now seem.
Some of us are so cynical about leaders and authorities that we find a
sour comfort in condemning just about everyone. Yes, Lord, we admit it
is a sour comfort that is utterly bereft of hope and utterly convinced
that all beauty is mere fleeting appearance and at base mere self-centered
sexual attraction and commercial deceit. We are bewildered, Lord, when
we search on our own for what is truly beautiful, truly glorious, truly
trustworthy, and truly redemptive.
Yes, Lord, there are many of us for whom these confessions of the absence
of enduring Glory and brilliant redemptive Beauty are the honest truths
of our hearts. We gather here regularly, hoping against oft-disappointed
hopes that Jesus is the bearer of genuinely good news about us. Is it
really possible, Lord, that we might become capacitated during this Lenten
season to understand and to believe that you have lavished everlasting
Glory and Beauty upon us as Jesus is nailed to a cross? We shudder when
we admit that on the cross Jesus is abandoned by his disciple friends,
with only a handful of no-body women there to comfort and weep as he dies.
Lord, please empower us in the coming two weeks and beyond to grasp how
thy Son—the crucified Jesus—is the very Beauty of your Life
coming incessantly and graciously in search of us to mend our brokenness,
to redeem us from our hopelessness, to convert us into lovers of peace,
to free us from fear, to empower our hearts to hear hope and our eyes
to feel thy awesome Beauty pulling, attracting, and beckoning us to imbibe
deeply of thy resurrected Beauty and Glory.
Maranatha! Come Lord Jesus Come! Amen
3/23/08 Easter Sunday
Lord Jesus Christ, the bitter opposition of the powerful, the terrible
loneliness and dereliction of thy cross, and the dark cave of death and
burial could not defeat your life and mission. You are raised from the
dead, you left the grave empty, and you have come in search of us—miserable
and bumbling sinners all. But what difference does it really make that
you have been raised from the dead? Are we to be fascinated and speculative
about the implausibility of a dead man coming back to life? Are we to
be impressed with such awesome power? Are we to try to convince the world
that you live and the grave is empty? If you are indeed the Word made
flesh and the crucified Lord who reigns over the whole world and over
all flesh, what do you want from us?
Today we celebrate that you were raised from the dead, but tomorrow we
will live as though you are an interesting but forgettable myth and an
impractical Lord. We will live as though it matters not whether you are
or are not raised from the dead. We will return to the messiness of everyday
life and we will continue to be messy and fearful. We will deal with enemies
as though our battles with them are indeed the only important issues in
our lives. We will pretend that we are immortal, but will live as though
surviving the mortal threats of the day is all consuming.
Most of all, Jesus, we fear death and we want to be really safe from the
threat of death. We feel justified in using whatever means available to
postpone death and to protect ourselves from whatever threat or power
that might kill us. We want to live forever, Lord, but we want to live
forever on our own terms and under our own power. We want the ways we
have chosen to live to be immortalizing. We do not want to bear crosses.
Honestly, Jesus, we confess this is how we are. Yet it does linger dimly
at the edges of our souls that if you have been raised from the dead,
then you are indeed the Lord over all creaturely lords—even though
we really love these creaturely lords that we serve almost everyday. Yet
you summons us to live differently than we do now: to be cross-bearing
lovers, seeking the good of others over our own, caring for the least
powerful among us, with the courage to know that whether we live or whether
we die, we are thine.
Sometimes we get it, Lord Jesus: if you are raised, then everything has
changed about what is important and what is negligible, about the meaning
of life and the meaning of death. The powers of death-dealing have been
defeated; we are free to refuse them allegiance or heed their demands
and threats. That is really good news! We are only safe in the arms of
thy grace and in doing thy will.
Come Lord Jesus, Risen Savior of us all. Amen
7/20/08
O Lord God, who creates all things from nothing and who called Abraham
to be the father of all nations in a new way and who called Israel to
be a special people as a light to the nations, and who came to all the
nations in that odd Jew named Jesus, the one from Nazareth, the one we
crucified because he seemed so uppity, naïve, and odd—we gather
today because we believe that this Jesus in his oddity was thy very Word
made flesh showing us how to live under grace in love and hope. We pray
now in Jesus’ name.
The rains seem now to be in retreat; they left our lakes and rivers full
and flooded— our lives often drenched. Now the sun shines often
and the heat rises, as the grass grows greener and the animals loiter
in the warmth of the sun. We are drying out, Lord, but we don’t
want to be too dry. But whether the rains come and we are wet or the sun
shines and we are dry and hot, help us to remember that you are Lord over
all things and we can trust thee as the One who will not let us go into
despair or death by flood or drought without your being present and beckoning
as our Savior.
Bless our new pastor, Mark, and his family. We realize that he and his
family have been undergoing a huge transition as they get acquainted with
us as thy people and this town and county as a place strange and given
to its peculiar ways. As they make their home here with us, keep us mindful,
O Lord, that we must not fall into the temptation to think that Mark is
here to minister to us and that we have no ministry to him. We confess,
Lord, that in our better moments we know it is a heretical inclination
in us to think our pastor is the one who does all the ministering and
we are the ones who get ministered unto.
Yes, Lord, we know that the signs of the times suggest that we are moving
into hard economic conditions, that setbacks and tightening of belts seem
inevitable. We pray, O Lord, that as conditions harshen, we may not fall
into the temptation of thinking that it is every person for himself, that
we are not interconnected with everyone as people dependent on one another.
Teach us how to be friends in the midst of struggle, poverty, and hard
times. Teach us, O Lord, the simple rule that selfishness itself only
leads to bitterness, enmity, and despair. In selfishness and fear there
is no real hope. Yet in thee we hope that whatever comes, nothing can
separate us from thy love in Christ Jesus.
All this we dare to say in Jesus’ name. Amen
8/24/08
O God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you are our Savior and Hope, and
we pray this day that we—this gathered folk here at St. Paul UMC
in this wee town of Muskogee, Oklahoma—might boldly grasp what it
means to be saved and to have hope. We confess, Lord, that we talk about
salvation a lot, but we remain unsure what it means to be saved and how
we are called to live insofar as we are saved.
We seem to think, Lord, that we are saved from our sin and from the consequences
of our being sinners. How did this happen? That is, how did it come about
that we sin and that we are saved from the consequences of our sin? As
good Methodists, Lord, are we to believe that we earn our salvation by
righteous living—that you are going to reward us with heaven?
And what exactly, Lord, is that righteous living you will reward? That
we have faithfully loved the neighbor, the stranger, and the enemy and
that we have in all our living nonviolently sought their good? What happens,
Lord, if in fact and practice, we have refused to love some of these folk?
Are we on our way to hell, to living in utter isolation and fear, terrified
of what the future might bring?
This is quite confusing, Lord; something has really gone wrong. We confess
we do not seem to be living in such a way that you might reward us with
salvation from the consequences of our sins.
But Lord, aren’t you supposed to be merciful, forgiving, and gracious?
Why this hard line about having to love the stranger and the enemy? We
do not want to do that, for it would upset the whole pattern and balance
of how we want to live our lives. We find strength and solidarity in being
wary and suspicious of the stranger and in fearing and loathing the enemy:
these are the ones we want to keep at a distance and perhaps destroy.
Why can’t you mercifully bless our fears and defenses and pat us
on the head for being good citizens?
What, Lord? You are concerned about being merciful and gracious to our
enemies and to those strange to us—they are your children too and
tender to your heart?
O Lord, even in our hardheartedness and fear, please grant us mercy and
hope, that we might learn the ways of faithfulness to thy kingdom of peace
and grace.
Yes, we know Jesus has taught us about that kingdom and we pray as he
has taught us. Amen
10/10/08
O God our benevolent Creator, our unwavering Redeemer and Lover, we gather
this day as thy people, here in eastern Oklahoma—a place big and
important to us, but a small place amidst global markets shifting funds
and devastating lives. We gather as Methodists, eager to live as faithful
followers of Jesus, living those methodical disciplines of neighbor-love
our mentor John Wesley so much emphasized. We gather Lord to hear a good
word about our living in these times that seem so extraordinarily out
of whack. Frankly, Lord, we are really scared; there are dark clouds all
around; our financial securities are shrinking and our election politics
are harrowing, confusing, and terrifying.
We pray now to understand what you want from us. No, Lord, we are not
going to pray about what we want from you and expect you to do for us.
We want to know what you want from us—how you are calling us
to think and live in the days ahead.
Are you calling us to live as folk angry about those we identify as the
evil-doers and thieves threatening to our way-of-life and not only angry
but ready to destroy them in order to preserve our way? Are you calling
us to live as folk ready to tell lies and withhold the truth in order
to protect our own myopic self-interests? Do you want us to live as though
only we and our loved ones are important to thee—that our survival
is the only real concern? Are you calling us to be driven by greed in
order to compete and make our way in the world?
So, who, Lord, are you calling us to trust, with whom are we to invest,
for whom do we vote? Who will save us? Lord, what does thy “salvation”
really come to?
Lord, here we are praying for a bright light upon our path, and as we
pray a sobering shadow is falling over us. O Lord, is it Jesus’
cross that is casting that shadow? Jesus hoisted onto a cross by those
with the power to kill to protect their political order, by those who
tell lies in order to dominate and control outcomes, by those who think
they are the masters of the universe.
So it’s the cross of Jesus that you are summoning us to think and
pray about in the midst of our troubling times. That is so hard, Lord,
for we do not like to bear crosses or to bear the burdens of peacemaking,
of truth-telling, of steadfast neighbor and stranger love. Yet we beseech
thee, Lord—that whatever the future might bring—that you might
breathe thy Holy Spirit upon us that we might be faithful and learn the
joy and hope that comes with living for thee and thy kingdom.
Amen
12/14/08 Advent
O Lord God, you created us and all that has life and being, you called
Israel to be thy people, and you came among us in Jesus the Jew from Nazareth,
and thy Spirit continues to inspire good spirits and broods over the whole
world. Lord, as powerfully meaningful as these words are—words we
repeat in so many ways in our worship and prayers—we confess that
in the midst of this Christmas season we find ourselves overwhelmed with
worry, fear, with conflicts, controversies, wars, with theft and malfeasance,
and losses far beyond anything we know how to control or correct. We really
feel lost.
We know you do not want us to retreat into a private, inward spirituality
insensitive to the woes of our neighbors, who are also thy children. But
what are we to do in this Christmastide in which we remind ourselves that
in Jesus you came to us in a Jew born and raised in astonishingly humble
surroundings. And we remind ourselves that this Jesus so irritated powerful
leaders that he was killed in a manner intended to demonstrate to the
world—to us— who is really in charge of life and death. The
politically powerful, in possession of money, arms, swords, spears, armor—those
weapons deemed necessary to impose and keep order—they thought then
and they think now that they are still in charge.
That’s it Lord: in the midst of the disorder in our times and in
our lives, how are we to live if it is true that Jesus is the Savior of
the world?
Say that again, Lord: you want us to live as though all of our sins have
been forgiven and as though the sins of our neighbors and our enemies
have been forgiven? You want us to reckon with the abundance of thy grace
for the whole world and you want us to learn how to be gracious? You want
us to share what we have—no matter how little or how much—with
others and not simply with family or the neighbors from the neighborhood
but with those others near and far whose needs are so urgent and desperate?
You know, Lord, that doing and being gracious is not easy and is not what
comes rushing to mind when we are experiencing losses and are scared about
what the future might bring. So, Lord, you really do understand our hesitations
and fears, but nevertheless you still want us to be the Body of Christ
in the world—the bearer of Christ’s mercy for the world? To
be a generous and life-giving Body, not bent on revenge but on peaceful
hope?
O Lord, we lift these matters of heart, these matters of life and death,
these matters of grace and forgiveness unto thee in the name of the one
whose Body we have been called to be, namely, thy Son our Lord, Jesus
of Nazareth, born in poverty, bold in spirit, and crucified dead, but
raised from the dead as light and hope for the world.
Amen.
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