Friday Prayer

 

Please join me in the spirit of prayer:

God who continues to speak and sing the truth with love that holds and heals us; there are moments when we wonder if the cure is harder than the dis-ease we feel?  Does our desire to return to “normal” (whatever and whenever that was), might be pushing us away from You?  The exhaustion of constant dinging notifications disrupts our souls.  Help us, God, to return to You.  Guide our hearts back to a way that makes space for the lost, lonely, and left behind.  May Your steadfast, and sometimes stubborn, care reshape us to who You long for us to be.  God of prophets who protested, wept, cried out, sang out, inspired a vision for today, and infused people who hope even when the headlines didn’t support such a posture, let that be true for us this day and every day for weeks to come.  Amen.  

Blessing for the Fumbling

 

After this week of difficult and demanding words.  Here is a wonderful blessing from Kate Bowler:

 

a blessing for when things don’t make any sense

God, I’m fumbling around for answers, reasons, meaning.

I can’t find any purpose in this pain.

Why me?  Why them?  Why now?

 

I don’t know when this is going to get better.

Or if I will ever feel relief.

 

Blessed are we who need to be reminded that there are some things we can fix

…and some things we can’t.

 

Blessed are we who can say: my life isn’t always getting better.

 

Right in the midst of the pain and fear and uncertainty,

may we hunt for beauty and meaning and truth… together.

 

Not to erase the pain or solve the pain, (though surely that would be nice),

but to remind us that beauty and sorrow coexist.

And that doesn’t mean we’re broken or have been forgotten.

 

In our hope. In our disappointment. In our joy. In our pain.

God is here and we are never—were never and will be never—alone.  

Prophet-ting with God

 

“The prophet knew that religion could distort what the Lord demanded of man, that priests themselves had committed perjury by bearing false witness, condoning violence, tolerating hatred, calling for ceremonies instead of bursting forth with wrath and indignation at cruelty, deceit, idolatry, and violence.”  Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets

 

Today, we remember that as people of faith, we can get caught in cycles of maintaining the status quo that causes hurt and harm.  I want to be careful not to think the prophets are for “those” people, rather than “we” people. 

 

No human organization is perfect.  We will have moments when our brokenness causes us to do things or say things that are not grounded/guided by God.  It is healthy for the church to look to be prayerful, honest, and open, especially about our values.  As a church, we say that at the center and core of our church is worship, welcome, belonging, caring, justice, and faithfulness.  The truth is that there is no finish line with these values.  We will be working on living these values for years to come.  We will never finish “worship”, just like you will never finish the internet or Netflix.  Worship continues to evolve and expand as we bring new experiences each Sunday.  Nor is there ever a “perfect” worship service, especially while I am leading the service.  To be honest and humble that our efforts to delight God do delight God.  God doesn’t have a scorecard to rate and rank the worship; God joins in the holy moment fully with all its goodness and less-than-perfect polish-ness. 

 

Take time today to think about our values alongside our humanness.  May you have moments of grace and love that see the beauty of messiness as we seek to enflesh these words in these days.  Amen.

Prophet-ting with God

 

“(The prophets) had to remind the people that chosenness must not be mistaken as divine favoritism or immunity from chastisement, but, on the contrary, that it meant being more seriously exposed to divine judgment and chastisement.” ― Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets

 

Heschel today reminds us that chosen-ness is not immunity or impunity from responsibility.  Rather, when God calls us “beloved”, we enter into a relationship that shapes our whole lives.  Last Sunday, we heard Hosea call to sense God’s bands of love to lead us.  One of the beautiful tensions of the prophets is how God’s love can be both unconditional and stir our souls, changing our lives.  To be sure, all relationships make demands upon us.  For example, after twenty-five years of marriage, my wife and I have defined and distinguished our expectations of each other.  We have worked hard to make sure chores are covered (the lawn is mine to mow, the pool is hers to clean).  We have settled into a holy rhythm.  I may forget that these are our unwritten covenant of connection.  This is the case with the people and God.  We forget that unconditional love longs to be let loose in our lives to author how we live.  We forget that grace makes a claim on us and calls us to a particular place and people (especially those who are being hurt and harmed by the status quo of social order).  Prophets are masters of paradox.  Yes, God loves you as is.  And, yes, God’s love will do something to you and through you the more you let it roam around.

 

Humans are not immune to our own brokenness, individually and collectively.  The Prophets call us to be honest, humble, and heartfelt in admitting and accepting this. God is not as angry, but as calling us back to the image of the Holy that hovers within us, longing to be the energy we live from. 

 

As we continue to listen to the prophets, as we continue to rub our toes, they stomp on and our egos they poke at, where are you at?  Which of the words from the last few weeks are stretching you, and where are you resisting the Prophet’s call?  Where would you rather point your fingers at others and stomp your foot that you’ve got it all figured out, thank you very much?!?  When I am reading the prophets, I find denial and deflection are natural reactions.  And as people of faith, we are called to learn from our ancestors who had resistance, but also longed to live deeper into the reflection of God.  May these words continue to sing and stir us in these days.  

May you find moments to reflect on the last time your toes were stepped or stomped upon...whose toes have you stepped or stomped on recently?

Amen.

Prophet-ting with God

 

As we continue to lean in and listen to the prophets this month, we can review where we have been so far.  We swam in Amos in the waters of justice.  Pause, where have you felt refreshed and renewed by God’s realm recently?  Be specific.  We also heard Micah remind us that God isn’t interested in a transaction, but transformation.  The prophets not only pointed out the brokenness, but they also invited people back into their belovedness.  The prophets bravely, boldly, brashly painted a vision of how we treat others and creation is how we treat God.  We named the tension because culture likes the status quo.  The powerful prefer the way things are, which is to say, with them having power.  The rich cling to wealth.  This isn’t just a reflection on 2025, but the past two thousand years of human life.  Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in his book on The Prophets writes this:

 

“The opposite of good, is not evil; the opposite of good is indifference.  There is nothing we forget as eagerly, as quickly, as the wickedness of (humans). The earth holds such a terrifying secret. Ruins are removed, the dead are buried, and the crimes forgotten. Bland complacency, splendid mansions, fortresses of cruel oblivion”.

 

It is easy to feel pulled by the multitude of injustices, inequities, and rights being revoked.  I can feel overwhelmed.  It is easy to shrug our shoulders in defeat, believing there is nothing we can do.  In a world where the media cycle lasts only a few days before they are on to the next outrage that has flooded the zone, we can’t keep up.  The opposite of good is our own waving the white flag as we sit on the couch binge-watching the next recommended video.

 

I can also be prone to cycles of cynicism.  The Prophets remind us of the goodness of God.  Grace is not just some commodity we consume, but how we are consumed by the Divine to live another way.  What would grace sound like today in your meetings?  What would grace feel like in a phone call or conversation?  What would grace compel you and energize you to share with others?  May these questions infuse and inspire our living this day and this week, as Micah said, “to embody/enflesh justice (in your life) to be brave and brash in showing loving kindness, and to remember your humanness/humility”.  May it be so for you and me. Amen.  

Prophet-ting with God

 

Please pray with me:

God of prophets who tasted both the hurt and hope, the sourness of sadness and the sweetness of honey-like unconditional love, be with us today.  God, You continue to invite us to hold our lives lightly.  You call us to be honest that, as people, we can’t fix, solve, and save everything or everyone.  We breathe in the truth that our point of view is a view from a single point (Richard Rohr).  Yet, we keep tossing and throwing our way around, especially online, because everyone is entitled to our opinion, which is obviously correct!  God, help us.  God let your prophetic wisdom loose in our lives in ways that interrupt, intercede on this pathway we are traveling.  God let Your tears for the rips/ruptures in life be held, heard, felt, and sing to our hearts.  God let Your presence continue to call us back to a way of life that is inspired by justice, loving kindness, and human-sized ways we try to live.  In Your justice-leaning, graceful, peaceful, loving, hopeful, joy-filled, and holy names we pray.  Amen.  

Prophet-ting with God

 

If we stay with our rage and resentment too long, we will righteously and unthinkingly pass that on in new directions, and we injure our own souls in ways we will not recognize.  Richard Rohr.

 

Today, I invite you to hold the above quote close to your heart so that it might be as sweet as the honey of the scroll Ezekiel ate.  Where is your rage roaring like a lion?  Write down where your anger causes the cheeks of your face to turn a brilliant, bright shade of red.  Where does that tiny vein in your neck pulsate when you think about an issue or person, or a situation?  Where does your heart quicken in the presence of another?

 

Where do you hold onto grievances and grudges because you believe that is the way of the world?  What hurts do you keep returning to, because you believe that if you forgive, you will forget the pain and might end up repeating the same mistake, even though the scar will always remain from the rupture?  Where do you pick at the scab of the past? This can be done individually or collectively. 

 

Rohr says that when we do this, being a victim consumes our narrative.  We trade our ability to be an agent of our own story because we believe someone else holds the editorial red pen.  To be sure, systems continue to wound, dehumanize, and discriminate.  To be sure, there are laws right now that do not reflect God’s belovedness for humans to thrive and hurt God’s holy creation.  To be sure, God is always authoring another chapter in your soul.  Do we hear what God hears? 

 

Name your rage today.  Invite your resentment over for a cup of tea.  Be honest, these voices can become dominant and take over not only what we see but also how we respond to others.  Sit with this truth that the prophets preached and proclaimed were part of the human condition.  It is when we let this truth rest and reside that we can begin to live another way.  Amen.