prayer for worship, february 27, 2022

Church, stay seated, and press down on your thighs with your palms. Imagine a heavy weight on your lap. Feel the tension in your arms, your core, your shoulders.

This is gonna take a minute; we’ve got lots to say.

O God our Mother, the weight of grief is heavy on our church and our world tonight. We know we don’t have to give you a news report; from your God’s-eye view of the world you can see every detail, every crevice in every broken heart. We know you know. 

But it helps us to say it out loud, to organize our sorrows enough to pray them through, to feel their weight while we are together. Maybe they feel a little lighter to us when we remember that we are carrying these burdens together.

O God our Mother, we are deeply sad with the Shores family, with Remi and Nathan, in the loss of their pregnancy, the loss of their joyful anticipation of parenthood, at least for now. It’s so fast, the way love springs up for a child you have not met; and so fast, the way hope can be torn away with an ultrasound and a blood test.

Please, O God, grant to Remi and Nathan, and Ken and Kathy and Jeana, plenty of time and space to grieve their loss; and, when the time is right, grant to Nathan and Remi the courage and wisdom to take another step, and another, toward the lovely future you have in mind for their family. Courage and wisdom, wisdom and courage, this is our prayer.

Church, give yourself a break from pressing, if you need it, but keep imagining that heavy weight on your lap, holding you down.

O God our Mother-Father, we are so exhausted and angry about the ongoing persecution of trans and gender-diverse people in Texas, most especially the bullying of children whose purity you would not dispute. We have seldom felt so helpless in the political arena; we have seldom felt so maligned as parents and as people.

Please, O God, discipline your sons who use bigotry and fear-mongering to gain power; bring them to political ruin, by the courts or by the vote; let us rejoice in their downfall and dance on their defeat; let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream (Amos 5:24).

And in the meantime, while the tyrants rule, help us, by the power of your Spirit, to stay at work, doing justice, doing kindness, embodying love with our hands and our hugs and our time and our money and whatever else we’ve got. Grant the parents who are raising beautiful trans and gender-diverse kids (every one of them made in your image!) with courage and wisdom to do every single thing they know for the sake of their children’s health and flourishing. Courage and wisdom, wisdom and courage, this is our prayer.

Church, press down hard, harder than you have been.

O God our Father, God our Mother, we are worried and sad and shocked and afraid about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The images of families huddled in subway stations to avoid the bombing of their homes, the men sorting through bottles for constructing homemade weapons, the women with guns they hardly know how to use, the families desperately trying to leave the country with newborns and elderly relatives and the sick, the borders where the color of your skin makes a difference in your welcome or your rejection – the whole thing is a nightmare. 

And we know that war is not new, and our own country is not exempt from bringing violence to bear on other people’s homes. But this time we are sensing a shift in the world order that feels especially dangerous, for our children and our children’s children, and we know not what to do, except worry and watch and wait. 

Please, O God, take account of these your children, the ones with guns and the ones without, the ones following orders and the ones giving them, the aggressors and the victims and all the ones in between.

As at the moment of creation you separated the day from the night and the land from the waters, do for this world again the work of sorting it all out, ordering the chaos, like a Mama-Papa ordering the house tonight for a fresh start on Monday morning. Sort out this earth and its peoples, so that the lines fall in goodly places and shalom is restored for those who stay awake in terror all through the night. Send everyone home to their own place, un-deploy the soldiers, resettle the refugees, restore a good and generous order where everyone sits under their own vine and their own fig tree, and no one makes them afraid (Micah 4:4). And most of all, grant to every person in Ukraine, from the least to the greatest, the courage and wisdom to survive this nightmare. Courage and wisdom, wisdom and courage, this is our prayer.

Finally, church, lift your hands, relax your core, feel the sensation of weightlessness in your shoulders and arms as you reverse the pressure.

We are glad for the invitation to give voice to our sorrows and our fears, O God our Mother-Father. There is no one else to tell, no one else to ask for help. We are, of course, yours, only yours, no one else’s, yours alone. Remember us, your little children, carrying heavy burdens, as we remember you, carrying the heaviest by far. Show us your courage and your wisdom, O God our Mother-Father, so that we may grow up into it. Courage and wisdom, wisdom and courage, this is our prayer.

And hear us as we pray the way Jesus told us we could: Our Mother-Father who art in heaven…