Good Friday Prayer

 

Hear these words from Rev. Nadia Bolz-Weber:

Richard Rohr once wrote that “Holiness never feels like holiness, it just feels like you’re dying”.  Maybe this is what Lent is about. Not giving up chocolate, but giving up on the things that, let’s be honest, weren't working anyhow. Denying yourself might be as simple as letting yourself off the hook for having to be God.  So if you are faced with your own limitedness right now.  If you are exhausted by our achievement culture. If your me-based solutions to your me-based problems keep failing you. Christian, know this: there is no shame in that.  Not really.  I mean, not with the kind of God we have. Because as St Paul said, God’s strength is perfected in your weakness.  Denying yourself might be as simple as letting yourself off the hook for having to be God. Every time our me-based solutions to our me-based problems fail us, just know this: it is in the tombs of our self-manufactured darknesses that God always shines brightest.

 

God, we come to the cross today to lay down our solutions and our problems, individually and collectively.  There is so much to grieve this day, did you read the paper this morning, Holy One?  It causes our souls to break and hearts to ache and minds to short circuit.  It is easier to blame those people and believe that if we just elect the right person then everything will be chocolate rivers and pony rides.  God, help me lay down at the cross today my inner critic who loves to keep ruminating on the words of others, especially when that person touches a nerve of pain I have not process.  Help me lay down my three a.m. arguments that I have with people in my mind.  Help me lay down my need for perfection and busyness and proving that I am a good pastor.  Help me lay down my anger at the leaders, the Church, fellow featherless bipeds, and myself.  Help me lay down my grief at the constant, dizzying disorientating rate of change, with transitions happening in my family, at work, and in a world where no one wants me to be King (no matter how many times I post my opinion online).  Help me lay down my brokenness when I have spoken too quickly and held back love because I believed someone didn’t earn or deserve it.  Help me lay down my fears, failures, and humanness.  You are God and I am not.  I don’t need to solve every issue and cannot.  Like Moses I stutter, stammer, and stand silently today drenched in a love that will not ever let me go ~ even and especially when I am suffering.  Only a suffering God can save, let that truth undo the other gospels of the world and rewire my heart, head, and whole life not just this day but every day for the rest of 2024.  Amen.