Loading...While the Daughters of the King® were spending time together yesterday at their “Quiet Day,” I was in my office to work on this sermon and found myself writing a prayer. I don’t usually work this way. If I am going to write a prayer for the end of my sermon, it usually comes after I’ve written the sermon. But yesterday, when I started writing, it started as a prayer. The words kept flowing.
I let the Spirit do her work. I must have needed to write this way for me, for you, for God. I would like to share with you what I wrote. While it is a prayer, it is very long. I’ll let you decide the best way to listen and participate.
Let us pray.
Most merciful God, you sent your son to this world to help those who had lost their way, who had forgotten your mercy, who had become reliant on their own wit, will, and wisdom, who had set you aside.
You sent your son into this world to remind all those who had stopped depending on you, that without you, without your grace, your mercy, your abundant love, their lives were, and some still are, lacking the reality that we are mortal, finite beings with only so much time to experience your love, your faithfulness.
Help us to hear the words of Jesus, to follow his examples, to see the depth of your love and mercy in this world. Guide us to live our lives in ways that reflect your love to others. Make us instruments of your peace and agents of your compassion.
For you, O God, made Abram great because he was willing to do and be the kind of man whose life was focused on his dependence on you.
For you, O God, were who David sang to, acknowledging in his own failings that you would always provide help in times of trouble, guidance in times of sin, hope in your creation.
For you, O God, spoke through Paul in his many letters to guide people to live righteous lives of faith. In whose letter to the Romans reminded them that you, dear Lord, are present for those who believe in you. That you, Creator, made all things.
For you, O God, brought Nicodemus to Jesus in the night to learn about your grace. Even with a message that confounds and confuses Nicodemus, and let’s be honest, even us, Jesus teaches and guides those who are curious and who wonder, and who are willing to discern who you are to them, to the community, to the world, and how, in our lives we recognize who you are to us.
You, O God, desire our questions, our inability to grasp the depth of who you are. You welcome our incomplete prayers, our unwillingness to love all of creation, our mistakes and our misjudgments. You do these things because you love us, completely.
You sent your Son, dear God, to remind us to look to you, to believe in you, to love you. You sent him to turn this world right-side-up, to face creation and all the people in it, with eyes of compassion and grace.
You did not send Jesus here to condemn us. You did not send Jesus to ridicule or demean us. On the contrary. Everything Jesus came here to do was to help us return our gaze, our hearts, our whole beings to you. To see you and your love in one another. To see you in the changing of the seasons. To see you in all the ways the world has progressed through science and education, technology and the arts, and so much more.
You gave us your Son as a way to teach us that we need you. Especially in times of turmoil and war. Of course, in those times. But even more, we need you in the day-to-day. We need you to help us build better relationships, communities, countries. And you sent Jesus because we needed and still need a model to show us just what is possible in a world where so many, over generations, have forgotten to trust in you. To believe in you. To experience you.
Help us, God of all, to remember that our lives are truly in your hands. You created all things, all people, and called them all good. We betrayed our own goodness when we began to depend on ourselves and not depend on you. We still need Jesus to help us turn our focus back to you, to trust our lives to you.
Jesus told Nicodemus that you loved the world so much that you sent him, Jesus, your Son, to help us remember that when we believe in you, we will have eternal life. In you. With you.
And while we might want to believe otherwise, because there are so many stories throughout history that make us wary, Jesus told Nicodemus also that he was not sent to condemn the world, that he was not there to destroy anything. Rather, Jesus told Nicodemus that he was sent to save us from ourselves. That when we refocus our attention to you, we, and the whole world, can be saved.
O God, you created us. You gave us hearts that beat in a rhythm and lungs that fill and release with regularity. We are marvelously made, every single one of us. You placed us in families, with histories, with cultural norms, with religious (or not) practices, from every race, every tribe, every nation. Each of us unique, with characteristics and behaviors that reflect where we come from and what we continually become.
Help us to remember you. Help us to know that we get to choose to follow you, to be born of the Spirit, to walk in ways that reflect your all-encompassing love as we learned from Jesus.
Let us be reflections of your love to all humanity.
We know that we cannot know what you know … but help us to be people willing to be transformed as we learn more and more what it means to act with mercy, kindness, compassion, and to seek justice—not condemnation, not vengeance—but fairness and equity—for all those you have created.
In this time of uncertainty:
where bombs are dropping,
where people are struggling to survive,
where decisions are being made that disrespect
the humanity of some and not others,
help us to see that when we follow you,
when we look to and act on the teachings of Jesus,
when we feel the presence of the Holy Spirit
we can be counted as your people.
That we will have the eternal life you have prepared for us.
That we will be saved because we have listened to Jesus
and become his hands and feet, mind and heart, of this world.
Help us, O God, to be your people. Let us remember that you are God, and we are not. That our souls belong to you, as long as and because we believe in you.
In your Holy and life-giving, loving name, we pray. Amen.
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