Prayers of the People #
Oh God, who tends even the sparrows and speaks on the beauty of the lilies in the field, we join as You have taught in common prayer and bless Your Holy Name, alive with the surety of Your kinship with us and we with one another. This is the day that God Almighty has wrought. Friends, let us rejoice and be glad on it.
Spirit of provocation,
Receive our prayer.
Descend on us, Holy Spirit, Tongue of Fire, and burn in us. Did not James the Just say that the tongue in our mouths is, itself, a fire, a totality of iniquity, a defiling thing? How can we speak, oh Settling Flame, as you would speak, bringing comfort and hope and joy? Place that burning coal in our mouths as you did Isaiah, let Torah drip from our tongues, make a torrent of True Gospel to flow like a mighty river. Dwell on us, oh Spirit, unloose from us the Jubilee that yearns to break over the world.
Spirit of provocation,
Receive our prayer.
We remember this day our brothers and sisters that died in Tulsa Oklahoma, May 31 1921. On that day the black residents of Tulsa were attacked by their white neighbors, with fists and guns and with bombs dropped from airplanes. Their souls were ripped from their bodies, their blood cries to You even now from the ground. How many on that day cried to you Lord, Lord! even as they bludgeoned the life from Your beloved children? And how many, oh God, cry to you Lord, Lord! even now and fester with hatred in their hearts for queer folks, for poor folks, for immigrant, for any whose skin is not quite the right shade or whose people are not quite the right people? And what do you say, Oh Pillar of Fire? These are my children, my beloveds, white whom I am well pleased. We cry out in fear, we cry out in sorrow, oh God. Touch, please, the merest tassel of your cloak to this world, heal the madness that hemorrhages among us.
Spirit of provocation,
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.
Spirit of provocation,
Receive our prayer.
How much more we have to say, oh God, how much is in our hearts. Beloved friends, for what else do the people of God pray for this day? PAUSE Oh God, You hear our prayers before we form them. 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.
Spirit of provocation,
Receive our prayer.
Oh friends, let us sing to God while we yet live, let us hymn to Him while we yet breath, let our speech be sweet unto Him. As for us, will we not rejoice in the Lord and His works? God willing, will we not be a blessing to our neighbors and, God willing, will we not be a bane to the wicked?
Spirit of provocation,
Receive our prayer.
In the holy name of Jesus, Child God, the blameless lamb, who lived and died and lives again for our sake, we pray,
Amen