2022 July 03

Prayers of the People #

Friends, let us gather together in prayer.

God in Heaven, blessed is Your name. We pray to You now as a community in the sure knowledge that Your ears hear and Your heart turns to us as ours do to You. We thank You for this time together as a community, in this Chapel where I stand and all across the face of the earth through the Internet.

Spirit of Provocation,
Receive our prayer.

You have made the world on which we live, formed us from the dust, breathed life into our nostrils, declared all of creation good and then rested1. We are of Your image and You walked with Adam across the face of it where You had once glided before light was. Yet, Adam erred and we have inherited that erring2, perpetuate it. You came to us, lived among us as a man, allowed Yourself to be crushed by the casual violence of men that declared themselves gods, men whose names are now only dimly remembered[^littlegods]. Why? Through Your mercy Adam’s stain is wiped clear and we profess that a new way is rushing into this world, reconciling all to all3.

Spirit of Provocation,
Receive our prayer.

We know that it is Your will that is done day in and day out. We thank You, Lord, for those of us who have gone on before, whether their lives were long or short. But your ways are not our ways and we struggle, Lord, to understand4. We weep for grief but, then, so have You wept for grief5. You have raised the dead, have healed with a touch, with a word6. It is You who could make a new people from dry bones7. Lord, there are those among us who are ill now even unto death, those among us who are afflicted with pain that will not pass in this life. We now ask for Your intercession, naming the afflicted now aloud or in our hearts.

Spirit of Provocation,
Receive our prayer.

Not a hair falls from a head that You have not numbered8, not a lily sprouts in the field that You have not clothed9. Many of us live now in want, Lord, for lack of water, for shelter, for food. Are we so numerous on the face of the Earth that we have overstretched your handiwork? No! We till the soil and raise food up out of it, more than enough to feed every hungry person. Upon Your Earth it could be that hunger were as vaguely remembered nightmare. So too thirst, so too exposure. But we err, Lord. Teach us to live together in harmony, to distribute from those that have to those that need, with gladness and determination. Break the yoke placed upon us, Lord10.

Spirit of Provocation,
Receive our prayer.

You have instructed us to hold no other gods before you, Lord. We profess with our tongues that there are none other and yet confess that our hearts stray in search of little idols, false gods. We make them with our own hands, build bronze bulls to Profit11, drape ourselves in flags of genocide and slavery12, lust for our comfort at the expense of our neighbors. Guide us, Lord, to see these idols for what they are — lifeless things13 — and give us wisdom that we might cast them down.

Spirit of Provocation,
Receive our prayer.

We are a people without a King but live under the dominion of those that Samuel warned the Israelites against14. We give to Caesar what is Caesar’s but how hard it is, Lord, to bear this burden15. Strengthen us, Lord, against the wicked, against the rich, against the slaver, the imperialist, from all those that bless with their words but damn with their actions. The Accuser swept You up above all the Kingdoms of the world and offered them to You, if only You would worship him. You denied the Accuser, teaching us the hollowness of worldly might16. Save us, then, from the temptation to replace those that wrong us with those who will wrong others in our stead. Save us from the temptation You threw off.

Spirit of Provocation,
Receive our prayer.

We live now in a time of undoing, as you did17, a time when our social orders are breaking down and the way of things that seemed so permanent is crumbling. Comfort our fears, Lord, our disappointment. We confess that the Church is Your body upon the Earth and that only You and Your Church will endure. Take our hands Lord and guide their work to Your glory. Take our hearts, Lord, and teach them to pine not for what was but what can be. We eat now the aftergrowth and next we will eat the stubble and be famished but in the time that comes we will sow and harvest and plant vineyards and eat their abundant fruit18. All will eat. A new thing is coming, a new Heaven and a new Earth and it is breaking in now among us, through us, to us.

Spirit of Provocation,
Receive our prayer.

Forgive us our sins whether intentional or accidental, against one another or against ourselves. We struggle to do what is right in your eyes. But through your grace, through your spilt blood, through Your screaming and dying on the cross, through that miracle foretold by Your prophets we are forgiven what we have done and will do. Teach us this grace that we may carry it ourselves to those that wrong us, that we might see them as you see them, precious, beloved. What divides us seems at times eternal but only You, oh Lord, are eternal. Bless those among us who work for peace, who speak and do so at personal cost to themselves, who risk much in Your Works. We profess that if You are for us what can truly be done against us? We bless now the works of the people either aloud or in our hearts.19

Spirit of Provocation,
Receive our prayer.

You invite us, Lord, to Your table, to break bread with one another and with You. With Jacob You wrestled and You blessed him, renewing your covenant20. With Job you debated and it was he in his torment and anger that spoke well of You, earning Your praise21. You, Lord, are the great demolisher of walls, the great usurper of what is for what will be. What is it that we are called to, Lord? Teach us22.

Spirit of Provocation,
Receive our prayer.

Our lives are brief, we who are dust and to dust will return23. Our breath is Your breath24 and rushes in and flees in Your time. You laid the foundation of the mountains25, loosed the waters26 upon the face of the earth, and for all this the Earth is as the merest foot stool to You27. What are we upon it, so vast a thing, and to You? Precious. Beloved, formed in Your image to walk with You in the good of this world. Your ears hear what we say and what we cannot say28 and You are here among us now.

Amen

  1. This is a brief retelling of the Creation in Genesis. ↩︎

  2. That is, we participate in Original Sin. The phrase does not appear at all in the Bible – we have St. Augustine to thank for it – and it’s not at all clear that the idea as we understand it exists in the Hebrew Bible. In Genesis 8:21 God asserts that our inclinations are evil from youth, although this is not the same as being evil at the moment of coming into being. It’s Paul that gives us the explicit connection between Adam’s sin and the coming of death into the world, although God does state the consequences of Adam’s sin pretty plainly, for both Adam and Eve and all their descendents. Well, bar one. This point is made by Paul in Romans 5. ↩︎

  3. Re-reading Colossians 1:15-23 I’m struck by how rapidly Paul is attempting to impart theological basics to a people that may have practiced a Jewish / Gnostic syncretism that Paul, evidently, very much did not care for. ↩︎

  4. Isaiah 55:8-9 ↩︎

  5. John 11 ↩︎

  6. Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10 in particular. Although, Mark 7:24-30 also comes to mind. The sheer variety of ways in which Jesus healed and who and when he healed in the written record must surely be the tip of the iceberg. ↩︎

  7. Ezekiel 37:1-14 ↩︎

  8. Matthew 10:30, Luke 12:7 ↩︎

  9. Matthew 6:28, Luke 12:27 ↩︎

  10. This is, maybe too obliquely, a reference to 1 Samuel 8:11-17. Samuel, a judge and prophet, takes the wish of the people of Israel for a king to God and God delivers a stark warning concerning the pestilential nature of kings. I think, also, of Walter Brueggemann’s “The Liturgy of Abundance, The Myth of Scarcity” in March 24-31, 1999 Christian Century. ↩︎

  11. I am referring to the Charging Bull in the Financial District of New York City, but also the golden calf of Exodus 32. Of note, the Charging Bull’s scrotum are polished from being rubbed so often by so many hands for good luck. In the Roman Empire the civil religion was practiced in small ways throughout the day, from shrines set up on corners through to the manner in which meat was distributed. I find it hard to see the Charging Bull outside of the context of the American civil religion, a syncretism of nationalism, free-market ideology and Protestantism, with a pantheon of God the Father in His angrier moments exclusively and the quasi-diety Founding Fathers, bar Thomas Paine. ↩︎

  12. But, which flag isn’t? ↩︎

  13. In 1 Samuel 5 the Ark is captured by the Philistines and placed next to Dagon. In the ancient world the gods of defeated people were captured, either to deprive the defeated of their gods or in order to incorporate the gods into the conquerors pantheon. The Ark is God’s footstool – where the Ark is, God is in the logic of the period – and so by placing the Ark in Dagon’s temple this deprives the Israelites of God’s help and either increases the power of Dagon – Dagon having triumphed, in the logic of the period, over God – or adds God to the pantheon of the Philistines. Dagon, of course, does not come out well from the encounter, losing his hands and feet. Judges 1 suggests mutilation of the utterly defeated a common enough practice. ↩︎

  14. 1 Samuel 8:11-17 again. ↩︎

  15. Mark 12:13-17, Matthew 22:15-22, Luke 20:20-26 ↩︎

  16. Matthew 4:1-11, Luke 4:1-13 for the full Temptation of Christ, as we’ve come to know the story in tradition. Also note that I use “The Accuser” in place of the traditional Satan, a literal minded translation of ha-Satan, the very same that goes zigging and zagging across the face of the Earth. I don’t deny the existence of Satan – far from it – but I do think that the Bible describes a more complicated and more troubling figure than has come down to us from tradition. Satan lurking in the shadows to trick me into harming my neighbors is bad, but how much more frightening is ha-Satan who stands in God’s court and makes wagers with Him (Job 1,2)? David Bentley Hart and Sarah Ruden have both written beautifully on the subject in their translations of the New Testament and the Gospels, respectively. ↩︎

  17. Roman Judea was not Roman with much gladness. It was a place of continual political violence, unsettling intrigues at the elite levels of society, rampant and climbing economic inequality combined with starvation levels at the low end of society and a worsening outlook as the Roman interior demanded more tax be sent inward to fund inconclusive expansionary wars. This culminated in revolt and the destruction of the Second Temple, an event that destroyed Temple Judaism, spawning both Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. ↩︎

  18. Isaiah 37:30 ↩︎

  19. There is much here that is similar to the petitions beginning “God who Turns the Cheek” in the prayers for June 5, 2022. ↩︎

  20. Genesis 32:22-32 ↩︎

  21. Job 42:7 ↩︎

  22. James 1:5 ↩︎

  23. That human beings are made by God of dust and will return to dust is a repeat theme in the Bible. When casting Adam and Eve out of the Eden in Genesis 3:19 God declares that “for dust you are, and to dust you shall return”. ↩︎

  24. Genesis 2:7 ↩︎

  25. Job 38:4 ↩︎

  26. God opens the floodgates of the sky in Genesis 7:11, having previously shut the primordial sea up behind doors in Job 38:8. The sea is a wild, chaotic thing in the Hebrew Bible that only God is the true master of. ↩︎

  27. Isaiah 66:1 ↩︎

  28. Psalm 139. The 19th verse sort of takes a hard turn but, according to Alter’s translation, the name of God used in the Hebrew is ’eloah which occurs only in poetry and often enough in Job. Readers contemporary to me – hello, Anthropocene dwellers – will hear the close drumbeat of current events in verse 13. ↩︎

© 2019-2023 Brian L. Troutwine. All content under CC BY-NC 4.0.