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Prayers from 2003
[These pastoral prayers were spoken this past year in my
irregular duties as liturgical leader at St. Paul United Methodist Church
in Muskogee, Oklahoma, The Reverend Kevin Tully, pastor. Posted here 1/5/04]
First Sunday after Christmas, 12/29/02
It is with joyous gratitude, O Lord, that we gather this day to worship
thy name and thy glorious works of salvation in Jesus Christ. It is with
humility and thanksgiving that we remember thy coming to us in Jesus as
one born in humble poverty among the least of the persons of the world.
It never ceases to utterly surprise us when we grasp how he refused to
garb himself in the glories of the world——the glories which
even now seem so seductive and attractive to us. As we pray this day,
O Lord, we confess we remain uncertain about the full meaning of thy condescension
and humility in coming amongst us in such low estate, and it startles
us that you ended up strung out on a cross.
As the Advent and Christmas season fades from us and Epiphany arises before
us, we confess that we have often been less joyous, more bedraggled, and
more on edge during these receding Advent and Christmas times. We wonder
what has sapped the joy from us and plunged us into the helter-skelter
of buying what seemed like the necessary gifts. Now give us in the coming
days the joy we missed in Advent and Christmas.
Because of thy mercy toward us, O Lord, we are bold to pray for those
in our community of faith who are stricken with illness and distress or
who have lost loved ones to death. May these friends in Christ know the
comfort and challenge of thy love and embrace that hope in thee that is
secret hope of all nations and all humans: to flourish eternally in health
and peace with thee and our neighbors.
As our nation and others march grimly toward war and the kingdom of death,
O Lord, empower us to heed thy counsels and become peacemakers. We pray
for those who have died or even now are dying or will yet die at the violent
hands of human hatred and fear and revenge. We know that thy love will
not be defeated by their violent deaths and that thy grace will finally
prevail for them. You will surely embrace the dead and the dying by thy
tender mercies and transformative life. But O Lord, why do so many have
to die as nations in their violence toward others claim only to be doing
what justice requires? Why does such presumed justice seem so tattered
and unpromising for establishing a peace commensurate with thy Kingdom?
In praying about these matters of concern, O Lord, we are grateful that
thy Word in Christ continues to inform and transform us. Many of these
thoughts we might never have had in the absence of thy coming to us in
Jesus of Nazareth. Teach us even more how to clutch his Word and be freed
from sin and be filled with an uncommon courage and undaunted hope.
In Christ’s name we pray.
Amen
2/23/03
O triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God, and Mother of us
all, we gather as thy people, as the ones who were created by thee in
love, as the ones who were reconciled and saved from sin by thy incarnate
love in Jesus, and as the ones inspired and formed by thy Holy Spirit.
We gather with profound gratitude and thanksgiving for the wonders of
thy gracious love. We trust in the ultimate triumph of thy almighty love,
even as we face the perils of living in these days and times.
You have beckoned us to come to thee in prayer, without arrogance and
without expecting that our will should be done instead of thine. We come
to thee in humility suffused with hope as we lay before thee the concerns
that bear heavily on our hearts.
In particular, Lord, we lift up to thee those members of our congregation
and their families, who have experienced sickness, injury, consternation,
or grief in the preceding days and whom we now name: [name them] We pray
they might know the comfort of thy love and the hope thy Spirit bestows
so abundantly.
Even as we know ourselves called and gathered by thy loving gospel, we
know that we are not the only ones you love and about whom you are concerned.
It is a great mystery to us that not all confess the name of Jesus and
live in that pattern of life he exemplified. But we surely know that all
those beyond thy church have also been blessed in Jesus’ name by
the redeeming power of his cross and resurrection.
Teach us, O Lord, how to be a blessing to those beyond thy church, how
to weep for their miseries, how to work for their liberation from oppression,
and how to respect the sheer dignity you have conferred on them as thy
beloved creatures. Give us the courage, O Lord, to learn how to live on
their behalf, how to hear their sorrows, laments, aspirations, and hopes,
how to enfold them in our arms as the tender arms of thy mercy.
We pray, O Lord, for the strength to live by faith in thee, even as we
confess our own individual and collective tendencies to live in oblivious
self-centeredness. We confess how often and how deeply we want our own
self-interested will to be done, instead of thy wise and reconciling will.
Relieve us from the toxicity of our own desperate desire to have our lives
and the lives of many others on our own terms, instead of on the terms
you have blessedly revealed in Jesus. Relieve us from that vaunted toughness
and insularity in which we are willing to set Jesus aside and do what
we might think is compellingly necessary for our good and for the good
of those we prefer to love—even to be so tough as to will the destruction
of those others we judge expendable. Relieve us from the self-justifying
need to be the ultimate judge of others.
O Lord, we confess our hearts turn to icy stone when we are dominated
by fear, and we confess that faith then flees from our judgments and feelings
and actions. It is so hard to give up the fears that stalk us, so we seek
in thee that faith that casts out fear and that empowers us to be courageous
peacemakers, to be lovers of thy creation and of all those creatures for
whom you constantly search and upon whom you have never abandoned hope.
The joy of thy grace does still stir our hearts, and it is in earnestness
for thy grace in Jesus that we have dared so to pray.
Amen
Easter, 4/20/03
Dear Lord of all creation, we come this day to celebrate the crowning
moment of thy incarnate life with us in Jesus Christ. On this Easter morning,
the crucified Jesus was raised from the dead and thy eternal verdict on
his life and brutal death was made manifest to his closest disciples.
While we, the people who claim to be the body of Christ in the world,
do indeed marvel at the splendid mystery of Jesus’ resurrection,
we are also baffled about how we are to take it. We confess that it is
not the simple, magical belief that just any dead person came back to
life. But it is the resurrection of Jesus who preached thy coming kingdom
and who was brutally slain by the reigning powers of the world. We know
that when they crucified him those powers were declaring to Jew and Gentile
alike that their power to dominate and impose their will on others was
supreme.
Even as the disciples fled the scene of the crucifixion, they were haunted
that perhaps the only real power was Rome and they feared Rome. Rome was
trying to put an end to that life that had proclaimed thy coming kingdom
in which peace, love of neighbor and enemy were the supreme and defining
powers of a new, resurrected world.
We too, Lord, are as bewildered as the fleeing disciples. We too fear
the kind of power Rome had, even as we secretly admire the sheer coercive,
dominating strength of armies and weapons. We confess that too often we
think that Roman power is what is decisive in human history, because we
trust that power more than we trust the power of Jesus’ way of life.
We do not want to be crucified, but we pray that we will not become the
crucifiers of others.
Yet we cannot escape the testimony of the disciples that Jesus was raised
from the dead and declared the real Victor and the final, ultimate power
in the world. When you raised Jesus from the dead, you declared that the
power of his life and kingdom is the real power in human history.
O Lord of life, we too know that we are in a war, intending to use the
supremacy of new precision weapons to impose our will on unruly nations
and declared enemies. We are stalked by fear of others, and we have an
uncanny pride in the presumed discriminating powers of our weapons. Teach
us, O Lord, as thy people, what it might mean to believe in Jesus’
resurrection as that way of life that is indeed the Alpha and Omega of
all things in heaven and on earth.
As thy people, we pray for soldiers who are commanded by authoritative
others to slay and subdue and place themselves in harm's way. Even if
you cannot place thy blessings on this war as a just war, we pray for
their safe-keeping.
We also pray for the people of Iraq, a people strange to us, who seem
full of bitterness, fear, hostility, and hopefully a desire for a peaceful
and free life. We confess that they too are thy creatures and are included
in the ones for whom Jesus died and was raised. In the confusion that
will engulf them in the days ahead, O Lord, guide their leaders and ours
that they might love peace and justice more than the power to impose their
wills on others.
As thy Son Jesus is raised from a death at the hands of the world’s
principalities and powers, then teach us how to have an uncommon faith
and hope in him as the true revelation of thy will and the real Lord of
history. Teach us how to live the way he lived. Teach us how to hope in
the face of death and domination and despair. Confer on us the resurrecting
power of vulnerable love that we might be faithful witnesses to thy love
in Christ.
It is with hopeful joy that we pray in the name of the raised Jesus. Amen.
Third Sunday of Easter, 5/4/03
O Lord God, we gather on this third Sunday of Easter, remembering the
days in which Jesus was appearing and teaching his astonished disciples
and friends. We know that his rising and his appearing to others is the
great miracle of thy life with the world. We are thankful that our gathering
today would be inconceivable without the magnificence of Jesus manifesting
himself to others in the days following his repudiation of death’s
tomb. We praise thee that Jesus is not among the dead and that he gives
us hope about our lives now and in life beyond death.
It is because of the power and grace of his resurrection that we dare
to hope in thy Son Jesus as the hope for the world. It is in that hope
that we pray for those among us in this gathered congregation who feel
hopeless or who are in desperation because of illness or the death of
a loved one or who are in despair about their own possibilities in life
or who are in sorrow about the losses of war and conflict in our world
today. We pray that they might know thy peace that builds hope. In all
these ways we pray for a resurrected future in which thy peace might prevail
among the people of thy world.
We especially lift up those brothers and sisters in our nation who are
out of work and who are in despair of finding the sort of work that is
meaningful and financially sufficient. We know that these unemployed folk
are subject to a terrible fall into self-accusation and feelings of worthlessness.
Not many of us, O Lord, understand that the real source of our final worth
is in relationship to thee. Empower us, however, to understand clearly
and practically that those who cannot find work are those about whom Jesus
summoned us to love and to whom we can offer our own assets and securities.
Save us from the demonic thought that these folk have brought their unemployment
on themselves. We pray as well for an economy that values honesty, fidelity,
justice, and truthfulness and that is not engendered by greed and selfishness.
We pray for the little ones around the world who lack power over their
lives and destiny, who are continually subject to the neglect and oppression
by the powerful. Give them power, O Lord, to maintain and assert their
own dignity before thee and as our brothers and sisters.
All these words, O Lord, are but our own earnest searching to understand
what it means to believe that Jesus is raised from the dead. Teach us
how to hope in thee in all things, how to become the sort of folk who
raise up and encourage others, how to be the sort of folk consumed by
an miraculous generosity, how to become the servants of thy kingdom of
grace and life, resisting and thwarting the kingdom of death and death-dealing.
We confess that if Jesus still lives, then we should not live as though
he is dead and irrelevant to our actual living. Teach us how to live as
he lived and how to hope in the final joy of that sort of resurrecting
confidence.
It is in Jesus’ name that we have prayed these concerns.
Amen
8/24/03
O Lord God, we gather today as thy people, praising thy wondrous works
of creation and redemption and giving thanks for thy coming amongst us
in Jesus Christ. We seek to be conformed to his life and in that way to
be in conformity with thy life.
You have taught us that whether we live or whether we die, we are thy
beloved children and friends. We confess that we do not often live as
though we believe that. Rather we know ourselves as inclined to fear death
above all things and we are often confused as to how to live. We pray
that you will not give up on us in the bitter depths of our failures and
in our foolish desires to have life on our own terms.
We are thankful that we can gather as a congregation amidst others who
can teach and upbuild us in the faith. We pray that we might be open to
the guidance of those wise saints among us and to the guidance of thy
Holy Spirit.
We pray for the one sent to pastor us in faith and life, even thy servant
Kevin. Give him the courage he will always need to be a faithful and truthful
interpreter of thy Word, to be a bold conveyor of thy justice, and to
be a resolute proclaimer of thy unfailing grace. Give him that keen vision
of the cosmic sweep and grandeur of thy life and works and the almighty
power of thy grace. Keep him mindful of his own spiritual needs and preserve
him from the peril of trying to run on empty. We also pray for his family
that we might be a blessing to them and that they might find friendship
and solidarity with us.
And O Lord, save Kevin and save us from that terrible heresy into which
he and we are inclined to fall, namely, that he is the one who does the
ministering and we are the ones who get ministered unto. Keep us all mindful
of our common priesthood and ministry as believers in Christ and witnesses
to Christ’s Gospel.
Dear Lord, there is much in the world today that distresses us and strikes
dismay in our hearts. The world seems so out of control and so full of
uncompromising hatred and selfish violence and arrogant exertions of power
aimed at domination and subjugation. Keep us from the temptations of either
the despair that nothing can be done or the indifference of not caring.
So once again, O Lord, we pray for thy beloved people in Liberia, torn
by a chaos created by violent and reckless men. And we pray for our brothers
and sisters in Israel and in Palestine as they struggle to rise above
the hatred, revenge, and demonic violence that decades of conflict have
made into unbreakable habits. We know that you are always trying to bring
good out of the evil that is done by us humans to each other, and so teach
us how to find ways to work with thee for good.
O lord we pray for peace, even as we know from thy Word that thy peace
can never be achieved down the barrel of a gun.
It is in Christ’s name that we have dared to pray so boldly.
Amen.
10/5/03
O God, merciful giver of all life and blessing, the fount of all goodness,
we come gladly and gratefully together to praise thy name, to confess
our sins, and expecting to find ourselves addressed by thy judging and
forgiving Word.
Even as we praise thy name, we also confess that we have lived largely
for ourselves throughout much of this past week and have neglected loving
thee and loving our neighbor. Embrace us with thy forgiveness to remind
us how we too must be forgiving of those who harm us. Address us in Kevin’s
sermon with thy Word. Give us ears to hear and hearts to feel and minds
to think thy Word as it comes into our lives.
There are many, O Lord, in our community of faith who are stricken with
illness or decline or despair. We lift them up to thee as the ones who
need thy special care and love and restoration. Move within their lives
that they may know thy love and be comforted by thy peace.
O Lord, we especially beseech thee about the violence that seems so rampant
on our streets, the easy way death comes into our midst, the frightening
consequences of guns too accessible to those of us filled with anger and
hate. We pray for those families in our town and state this past week
that have had loved ones mindlessly slaughtered on our streets, in our
stores, and in our homes. Give those families, in their inconsolable grief,
the strength of thy love that they may not become further victims consumed
by an unquenchable hatred and lust for retaliation. Teach us that thy
justice does not require returning evil with evil.
We pray for our youth O Lord. Empower us to be faithful and loving parents
living lives worthy of imitation by our children. Give us the peace to
be patient, the attentive wisdom to know our children well, and the courage
to give them direction and support. Relieve us of that self-centered and
careless neglect that leaves our children to their own devices.
We pray for this congregation that we might be faithful witnesses to thee
and thy grace. Teach us how to be hospitable to each other and to those
who come to worship with us but are not yet committed.
Finally, O Lord of all goodness, it is wonderful to be alive in these
times, however challenging and confusing they might be. It is wonderful
just to have life from thee and before thee and to have a hope in thy
unfailing grace and love.
In Christ’s name we pray.
Amen
Third Sunday of Advent, 12/14/03
O Lord of Hosts, we have heard once again the rumblings out of Bethlehem
of thy sure invasion of our privacy and our kingdoms. You keep coming
after us and disturbing our peace. You will not let us alone and you will
not leave us to our own devices. We confess that in our better moments
we long for a savior who will do our bidding and take up our private and
public causes. But these rumblings of advent warn us that you want to
disturb our lives and save us on thy own terms for thy kingdom.
We earnestly pray this third Sunday of advent that you not take from us
the warm sentimentalities of our Santa Claus Christmas. Yes, we know we
spend too much, and we purchase the sentiments without glad hearts. But
at least this hectic season keeps the economy going, people have work,
corporations thrive when we buy. Please, O Lord—the One proclaimed
by John the Baptist—do not disturb us with any other news than that
the real meaning of Christmas simply is the warm fuzzies of family, the
lighted evergreens, the tinsel stars, and the cozy songs that wring tears
from our eyes.
Do not disturb us with the thunder of war and destruction that the powerful
Herods of the world are wreaking on near and distant battlefields. Soothe
us with the thought that these battlefields will bring a better future
and will surely protect our freedoms and our right to privacy and our
right to live our lives on our own terms.
Please, O God of our own desires, just leave us alone. The last thing
we want to hear now is that you are coming toward us out of the midst
of stark poverty to be born a poor Jew who will challenge the mighty powers
of life and death that we both fear and love. Do not beckon us to any
kingdom that calls upon us to repent of our illusions and betrayals, that
calls us to lay down our security devices and disband our armies, that
calls us to comfort the prisoners among us, that calls us to feed the
hungry, that calls us to clothe the naked and forsaken.
O God, we are so afraid of being called to these sacrifices that we will
surely strike out in violence at any one who lays another guilt trip on
us. If you really want to do us a favor, forget that stuff about a new
kingdom of peace, about death dealing crosses, about saints who give without
restraint. Just leave us to Santa Claus and Wal Mart and peanut brittle
and hot chocolate.
O God of all truth, forgive what we have been praying, even as we admit
that these are the honest discourses of our hearts. Teach us how to speak
of thy coming kingdom, of thy mighty power and love in such a way that
we might become thy servants following the way of Lord Jesus, the One
we crucified. Teach us once again just what thy kingdom is about and what
you want from us and how you want to redeem us. We are really quite lost.
Come, O come Emmanuel. Do not leave us to our own devices. Do not leave
us alone in the darkness of this world of selfish conflict and violence
that is of our own making. Come Emmanuel, shine thy light into the darkness
and we will surely repent and change our ways.
Amen.
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