Pastoral Prayer based on Luke 15:1-10 (the Parable of the Lost Sheep)

Holy God:

We give you thanks and praise for the beauty of this day and for all the promise it offers.  We thank you for life, for joy, for every opportunity to walk with you as children of the light.

An old hymn has the line, “prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love.”  We all, like sheep, have gone astray.  We are all prone to wander.  We have times when our hearts are completely wrapped up in your heart and we can’t imagine that we would ever stray.  And then, one day, we wake up and wonder if we even know how to pray.  We feel as if we are merely going through the motions.  We may look just the same on the outside, but inside, we are like the Prodigal Son, lost in a far off country.

As easily as we wander, we quickly judge others when they wander.  We want everyone else to be held to high standards.  We get tired of always doing your business of drawing back the wanderers to your fold.  We want people to take responsibility and do right without having to be helped all the time.  When they wander, we often act as if they should do some penance before they are fully celebrated in the family.  

Cleanse our hearts and give us a new view of your heart.  Give us a heart like the shepherd who left the ninety-nine to go looking for the sheep, whose heart was full of joy when he found it, who celebrated and put the lost sheep on his shoulders because he was so happy to have found it.  Give us a heart like the father of the prodigal son, who threw a party when his son returned because he had been lost and now was found, dead and now alive.  Help us to find our greatest joy in the finding of the lost.  Help us to remember, and perhaps to know for the first time, the joy that comes from being lost and then being found by your love and grace.

Amen.

Pastoral Prayer for 1 Sept 2013 (based on Luke 14:7-24--the Parable of the Banquet)

Holy God:

We gather today to give you praise.  Many things have taken our attention this week.  Many things have been the object of our praise and adoration.  Many things have captured our imagination and inspired our passion.  Today, we gather to remember that nothing truly matters in the light of your glory.  Everything else will pass away, but only you, your love, and your eternal Kingdom will last forever.

We have spent our lives trying to move forward, trying to move up.  From time to time we have pushed others out of the way.  We have climbed over others, excluded others, and made others feel small.  We have been hurt and angry when others have treated us with less than respect or have made us feel like outsiders.

Today, we remember your Son, who took flesh and walked among us.  We remember that he took his place with the least, the last, and the lost.  We remember that he made himself a criminal, an ethnic minority, a person in poverty, a person under political domination.  We remember that he was despised and rejected by men, and object of scorn and ridicule.

We look forward to a day when he will throw a banquet for his people, where he will be the host and each and every one of us will be the guest of honor.  In the meantime, teach us to place ourselves where he chose to place himself--in the last place.  In the place of dishonor.  And so, may we find him there.  And may he make a new world through us in which there are no places of dishonor and where everyone has a place at the table, a world that begins to look a little more like the marriage supper of the lamb.

Amen.