Prayers of the People #

Oh God, You who spoke us into being, who breathes life into us and we become, we join as You have taught in common prayer and bless Your Holy Name, filled with the promise of your kinship. This is the day that God has wrought, we rejoice and are glad on it.

God in Your Mercy,
Receive our prayer.

Mothering God You, oh Jesus, have told how You yearn to gather us up as in hen’s wings. How we would rejoice at the warmth of of You in that fastness. Hear, oh God, the cries of our kin, of the wounded and afraid. Fly to them, sweep them up, carry, oh God, the weary and weeping to lands where Your joys are scribed on every heart. We pray especially this day for our trans siblings, our kin and our beloved friends, who bear the load of fascism on their shoulders. Come quick, oh God, for the burden is heavy and grows by the day. Whisper in our ears, guardian of Joseph, of the paths that lead to peace and kinship for all. We will follow.

God in Your Mercy,
Receive our prayer.

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, make these memories a guide to us. We think especially now of The Diggers, who on April 1, 1649 occupied St. George’s Hill in Surrey. They rejected private property, lived in common tilling the land, declaring the shared good of Your Earth and Your People, seeing the world as it was “running up like parchment in the fire and wearing away”. They wished only to live in peace doing humble work. Who else, friends, do we remember this day, those that work for God?

God in Your Mercy,
Receive our prayer.

We profess the Life Eternal and know that we will see all who lived again on some future day, resurrected, perhaps in a moment and perhaps when the stars themselves are cinders. Those that have died, we know, will not be as they were, as we will not be. Dry our tears, oh God, for they have been our bread for too long. 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, for their healing if You will it or their comfort, naming the afflicted now aloud or in our hearts.

God in Your Mercy,
Receive our prayer.

How much more we have to say, oh God, how much is in our hearts. Friends, for what else do the people of God pray for this day? PAUSE Search our hearts, oh God, see them, do you not find all there that is unsaid? Look on us with thy glad eye. Who are we that You behold us? Kin, friends, beloved, You say. We thank You, Almighty God, this day for Your friendship, sorely needed.

God in Your Mercy,
Receive our prayer.

In the holy name of Jesus the Christ, who lived and died and lives again for our sake, we pray,

Amen.