Prayers of the People #
Friends, let us gather together in prayer.
Oh God who has no need of a statue to Be, who dwells but has no need of a house, who delighted in the sweet smell of sacrifice but needs no food, who strides the Earth clothed in names that are but imperfect garments, we gathered here bless You and make a joyful noise to You, sure in the knowledge that where we gather so too are you.
God in Your Mercy,
Receive our Prayer.
Throne Dweller, You bend down to behold the heavens and the Earth. Is Your seat so far away, so outside the sphere of totality that you must rock forward to get a better view? If the Earth is Your footstool, how mighty are You then? But when You walk past do not the leaves rustle? Mountains melt in your sight, but do You not watch with anticipation the seeds that germinate in their soil rushed down to the ocean? You whisper through the wall at night, calling us by name, even to those to whom the word has not been revealed and we rush into other rooms, confused. What need have You of Babylon’s tower, E-temen-anki, with its priests climbing up and climbing down its steps, Nebuchadnezzar prostrate there, crying out to Marduk, silent and unknowing? What is the use of a feast for You if even one person hungers? What is the use of a palace if even one person sleeps rough? Thrown Dweller, were you not also born in a barn and placed in the animals’ feed trough? How mighty are You, Son of Man, to be a nobody, to live in a hovel and subsist on the mercy of others, to make wine because Your mother insisted and heal those that come for pity’s sake? Call out to us in the night; our hearts will answer.
God in Your Mercy,
Receive our Prayer.
Tongue of Fire, You alight and we speak and are heard. But, we are creatures that speak much and not always with Your words, even though we profess they are. Forgive us our greed for miracles, for there is social standing that comes from them. Break the idol of hatred, the false god that esteems Your children, our siblings, as no better than animals. Cut the feet and hands from the idol of utility, that looks out on creation and assigns dollar equivalency to everything it zigs and zags across. Be fruitful and multiply, You say, but how much yield do we make when we sow beyond our need and reap from out of the mouths of the wretched, Your beloveds? Expand the place of our tents, dwell with us in devastated cities, crumble our walls to dust and recover among us hospitality for the stranger. No one with Your breath rushing in and out will truly be a stranger, merely kin with strange news. Let them speak and make our ears to hear.
God in Your Mercy,
Receive our Prayer.
Stayer of the Knife, it was You who promised and brought Isaac from Sarah, You who instructed Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and he, in faith, strode his son up the mountain and bound him and came to strike him, caught only at the last moment. Our brother Kierkegaard took this into his heart and pondered it and from there rode the ‘knight of faith’ who sees the paradox of a commandment opposed to Your promise and sets forth knowing the consequence of action but with full belief in Your countervailing aim. You promised Abraham and Sarah descendants numbered to the stars, giving them one son and Abraham swung to kill him, knowing full well he would die and from him would spring a multitude. Mary, betrothed but unmarried, declared in Your favor by a Messenger who announced the sweeping over her of Your life-breath, became with child and lowered thereby to a social standing that allowed execution. Elisabeth, even while Your judge John quickened and leapt within her, exalted Mary among women. Mary did not despair and weep but sang in faith that You were her rescuer, had looked on her loneliness and that all the future would call her happy. You it is that cast rulers from thrones, lift the poor from dust and dung-heaps, fill the hungry with good things and bring aid to the seed of Abraham and Sarah for an endless age. Mary knew full well that she was now among the lowest, one who Joseph could cast out, a poor, occupied woman that would be set even outside her current meager circumstance. Yet from her lips poured blessings and in the full sum of days it was You she bore and she who You called Mother. Tree Hung Son of Man, shape in us such faith, give us strength and wisdom, leap with us.
God in Your Mercy,
Receive our Prayer.
Oh Tender of Daily Bread, under whose roof beams all are welcome and all are fed, You name us Your children, Your siblings, Your beloveds. We live in common in imitation of You and are drawn each to one kind of work or another, some safe in our current age and some not. We confess that the Church is Your body upon the Earth and that only You and Your Church will endure. Take our hands, guide their work to Your worship as our hands are able. Remind us of the works Your Saints have done in Your name. Bless us in our work as we bless those among us that work for You now. We think especially now of the Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic Sister Maura Clarke and Sister Ita Ford, Sister Dorothy Kazelbless of the Order of St. Ursula and lay missionary Jean Marie Donovan. These women were martyred, being raped and then murdered, on December 2, 1980 by members of the El Salvador National Guard. Their blood cries out to You from the ground. Please, friends, raise up aloud or in your hearts the names of those that work for God, remembering especially those that work at risk to themselves.
God in Your Mercy,
Receive our Prayer.
Oh Seer of Hagar, who looks in mercy on the cast off and the wounded, we look out into the world and we see much that is wrong. We look into ourselves and see that what we wish, we do not do, and what we hate, we do We who are among the quick suffer illness and injury, both knowable at a glance and invisible to our eyes. There are those among us who are ill unto death, who suffer for want of medical care or live in a time before care can come, who are afflicted with pains that will not be healed in life, are set in trials that will not be lifted and are sundered from their kin in a way that cannot be mended. We ask for Your intercession where it is Your Will, for the healing and for the comfort of the afflicted, who we name now aloud or in our hearts.
God in Your Mercy,
Receive our Prayer.
A day is coming when what is will be usurped, when those now who sit in power over the common — the dictators, the autocrats, the billionaires, that great crowd of lessers of two evils — will be laid low and the lowly will be raised up, not as a new elite but to a level of common abundance. In that day trees will stretch into the sky, grasses will wave in the field, rivers will flow pure down into the ocean filled with whale song, all doors will open and every pantry will be readied, on the cusp of a party. No one will be displaced, every person will be welcome and among friends. No child will go hungry and no parent will live unable to quench thirst, no person will set aside more than they need at the expense of another and the clouds you’ve clothed the world in will roll peacefully overhead. In that time to come the Bay will shimmer with the sun’s light, fog will roll in over the peninsula from the West, the sun will slip beyond the horizon and all Your people will sleep undisturbed in their beds, one star twinkling for each.
In the holy name of Jesus the Christ, who lived and died and lived again for our sake, we pray,
Amen