Father, Forgive Us For We Know Not What We Do

God our only Hope:

You sent your Son to redeem us.  We killed Him.  As He died, He offered us grace: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

The religious authorities who asked for his death didn't know what they were doing.  They thought they were doing right.  They thought they were defending you, defending your honor, protecting your holy faith, protecting your holy place, protecting your people from a dangerous heretic.  In their own minds and hearts, they were making a difficult but necessary choice.  They were murdering their Messiah.  They didn't know.

The Romans who executed him didn't know what they were doing.  They thought they were serving their nation, the greatest nation on earth.  War is ugly, and insurgents on the other side of the globe needed to be contained to avoid compromising national security.  They thought they were serving faithfully, risking their lives as they left families and comfort a world apart in sacrificial service to an important cause.  But they were murdering the Son of God.  They didn't know.

Today, our world is spiraling out of control.  We are taking it apart with our own hands in our effort to do what we think is right.  Forgive us.  We don't know what we are doing.

Iraqi Islamicists think they are serving you.  They think they are working for a day when your word will bring peace and stability to their culture.  They think they are driving false doctrine and heresy from the land.  They think they are creating a nation that needs no longer be rent apart by civil strife because they are making a land in which everyone agrees.  They know it will be ugly for a time, but it will be worth it eventually, they tell themselves.   So they murder Christians.  And Muslims who think differently than themselves.  They drive entire people groups into hiding in the mountains.  They draw blood and tears.  They destroy those who were made in your image and likeness.  They think they are serving you.  Forgive them, for they don't know what they do.

Palestinians have been pushed to the brink, huddled in encampments, starved and harassed.  They push for dignity.  They fight with desperation of one shoved into a corner.  Many are Christians, afraid that the faith of our Lord is being systematically driven out of the land of His birth, even as we, their brothers and sisters in Christ around the world, ignore their plight.  So they send rockets into general population  centers.  They see their effort as self-protection.  But they invite uneven reprisal.  They have no good answers, so they choose poorly.  They play into the cycle of escalating recrimination.  The tears of grieving Jewish mothers do not bring the end of the tears of grieving Palestinian mothers.  They think they are doing all that they can do.  Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Israelis have lived in the shadow of violence as long as they can remember.  Their nation was borne from the world's horror over the genocide of the holocaust.  They have been threatened by their neighbors with extinction.  They have combatted terrorism in their neighborhoods. And so, they think they are defending themselves, and You, and their destiny, and the dream they believe was born from Your heart.  You have chosen them.  Yet you have not chosen them merely to survive.  You have chosen them to do justice, to treat the stranger as their brother.  They think they are doing your will, serving You, serving Your cause.  But they have forgotten that the Gentile, the Muslim Palestinian, the Christian Palestinian, was made in Your image, that Abraham's children were blessed so that they might bless every nation, even the hostile nation, even the enemy.  Jesus knew.  He said so.  They didn't understand.  They still don't.  Forgive them.  They don't know what they do.

Fearful young men in Missouri think they are doing what needs to be done.  They think they are showing courage, putting themselves in harm's way, showing strength to bring right in a world full of wrong.

Some of these fearful young men are police officers.  They see crime and the potential of crime in decayed neighborhoods.  They think that if they act tough, if they show no weakness, if they intimidate potential criminals, they will keep troublemakers in line.  They think that if they stop and frisk, if they follow suspicious looking kids around, if they check into sketchy situations, then the good kids will understand and the bad ones will be warned or even deterred.  They think they are protecting and serving.  They can't understand how it feels to be a suspect because of the accident of the situation of one's birth.  They can't see that each person they harass is made in the image and likeness of God, that treating them like criminals when they've done no wrong humiliates them, crushes their spirit, ignites a simmering rage, diminishes their sense that they are infinitely more precious in the sight of God than in the fearful eyes of our culture.  Those fearful angry young officers think they are serving the public.  They forget that young black men are the public.  Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.

Some of these fearful young men are the ones clashing with police into the early hours of the morning, the few violent protestors among almost entirely peaceful demonstrators.  They think that mayhem and the expression of anger will draw attention to their cause.  They think that they will scare the world into bringing them justice.  They think that if the world sees the hate that they have learned through a lifetime of mistreatment, that the world will give them what they want and treat them differently.  They are wrong.  They do not know that the community they damage is their own, that their actions play into the very stereotypes that cause the world to see them not as precious human beings but as threats that need to be locked away.  Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.

Vladimir Putin knows not what he does.  Bashir Al-Assad knows not what he does.  Wall Street tycoons, corrupt politicians, angry fundamentalist preachers, white supremacists, pornographers, felons, abusive prison staff, over-aggressive prosecutors and ambulance chasers, lazy religious bureaucrats and relentless religious entrepreneurs.  All convinced they are the good guys.  All breeding chaos and crushing the human spirit.  All crucifying you again.  Father forgive them for they know not what they do.

I see the wrong in others.  I can identify how they crucify you again.  They can't.  So, maybe just maybe, it's me crucifying you again.  Maybe it's me who needs forgiveness, because maybe it's me who knows not what I do.  Maybe it's me whose efforts to stem the tide of suffering and chaos are only making matters worse.  Maybe it's my zeal that puts you on a cross.

Father, forgive me, for I know not what I do.  Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do.

Amen.

Pastoral Prayer based on the Parable of the Mustard Seed (Matt. 13:31-33, July 27, 2014)

Holy God:

We thank you for your grandeur, your majesty.  We thank you for your great love, which is wider than the oceans, deeper than the seas, more vast than all of the universe.  You are God, Lord of all, knower of all that can be known, sovereign over all things, creator, sustainer, redeemer.  

We love to think of you as being a big God, for we like big things, and we love to think of a big God being our God.  We like to feel big, to be a part of a big country with lots of money and power.  We like to build big things, to drive big cars on big roads, to live in big houses, to feel as if our influence and our name are big.  We are impressed by big people, big stadiums, big lights, big events.  We have been taught to dream big dreams and to pursue big goals.  We shy away from things that seem small, or poor, or insignificant, or unambitious.  We have seen a lot and we are hard to impress. 

You are bigger than all we can imagine, and you certainly could choose to do things in big ways and to use the kinds of big things we so admire.  And yet, you chose small and insignificant things to show your heart.  You could have sent your son to be born into Rome with its great big empire and far reaching influence, and yet you chose for him to be born into tiny little Nazareth.  You could have chosen Egypt with its great big pyramids, and yet you chose Abraham and his little family.  You could have chosen the wisdom of the Greeks, yet you chose the folly of an incorrigible clan of wilderness wanderers.

You told us to have the faith of a mustard seed--small faith.  But we want to believe big. We want big faith.  We want to see miracles and dramatic changes.  We want to see the nations won to Christ, but we overlook the people in our house.  We want to have hearts purified to be completely given to you, but we don’t want to whisper a halting desperate prayer.  We want to build a great church, but we easily overlook our brother and sister before us.  We want big faith.  You have only offered us small faith.   

We mustard seed is easy to drop, easy to lose, easy to miss.  We miss it again and again.

Give us small faith.  Give us humble hearts.  Give us small vision, that what becomes may be great only because you have made it great because only you are truly grand.

Amen. 

Prayer for Pentecost On the Last Sunday in our Sanctuary

Holy God:

Our hearts are full today--a day that is bittersweet.  We have gathered once again in this sacred space, a place of worship in which you have met us again and again.  We have found your grace here.  We have been family together here.  We have mourned those who have died in the Lord, those now in your presence with whom we will be united, but we see no more.  We have made promises to you at these altars and you have made promises to us.  We have broken the bread and poured the wine, we have been nourished by your sacraments.  We have laughed and danced and cried and sung.  We have grown up here and grown old here.  This place has been a spiritual home to us--You are our only home, and yet we have found you here, and so it feels so very much like home to us.

We celebrate that we will soon have a new place where new disciples will be made and new prayers prayed, where children will learn to love Jesus and where the Gospel will be proclaimed.  A place where the scriptures will be read and understood and lived.  A place for which we have given and sacrificed and labored and dreamed and fought.  

But today, we remember.  And we thank you.  We thank you for our visionary forefathers and mothers who built this place so that we could be the people of God together here.  We thank you for all who prayed and sweated and struggled to bring this place in to being for us, those who fixed and renovated and scrubbed and vacuumed this house that we might know your love when we arrived.  We thank you for those who have walked the floor in prayer and worn out the kneeling cushions when no one was here, begging you that we might sense your touch and have our hearts transformed when we arrived for worship.

We thank you for all you will yet do in this place--For children and youth and adults who will first learn to love your name here.  For water that will be poured for baptism, for bread broken to feed hungry souls.  We ask you, Holy God, that you will do more in this room to draw your kingdom near in the next fifty years than you have done in the past fifty years.

Pour out your spirit today.  Pour out your spirit in this place. Pour out your grace.  Let us know your presence.  May your church be born afresh.  May we be empowered to go from this place with boldness, not in our own power, but powered by your spirit, to make disciples of all people.

Amen.

Prayer for Memorial Day

Holy God:

On this Memorial Day weekend, we confess that we have often turned the celebration of the day into a time of rest and recreation. While this is well and good, help is to avoid forgetting the meaning is the day.

As our nation begins to emerge from a time of protracted war, we take time to remember those who have paid the ultimate price for the sake of this nation, those who have given their lives on our behalf.

Our community has been touched by the loss of those who have died in battle. We ask that your healing balm would restore the broken hearts of their families. We ask also that you would touch with your mercy those who have been wounded in body and soul by the horror of war.  Directly or indirectly, we are all victims of the greatest of human evils, so we ask for your mercy that we might all be made whole.

We remember also that you have made your people into an army fighting evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. Many have given their lives and are currently dying on behalf of their testimony for the Prince of Peace.

So on this Memorial Day, help us to recommit to your fight, a battle in which our weapons are those our Lord employed, and the only weapons he offers us, the weapons of self-sacrificial love service and unshakeable allegiance to our humble king.

We recommit ourselves to your vision of a peaceable kingdom in which nation will not rise against nation and neither will they learn war anymore. We ask your grace for the conviction to fight for love, to battle against hatred and misunderstanding, to offer our lives for reconciliation and the conquest of the Gospel alone.

Above all, on this Memorial Day, we remember the one who died for us all, who fought for our redemption, who died that we might have abundant life, that the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdoms of our God and king.

Help us to remember. Help us to be true to the example he set. Help us to live and die for the purpose for which he gave his life.

Amen

The Healing of Combat Vets

About a year ago I noticed that it was more difficult for me to integrate vets into the life of the congregation as others.  Recent vets seemed uninterested in Sunday School, for example.  I began to think about ways to maybe connect them with each other.

About the same time I went to a clergy day at Maxwell.  The chaplain told us stuff that shocked me.  He talked about how his deployment nearly cost him his marriage and shared openly about the psychological damage war had done to him.  He asked the clergy to partner and figure out ways to help vets.  He told us that more Iraq and Afghanistan vets had died from suicide than combat.

Right then, I knew the church needed to do something to deal with a crisis.  I also knew that I knew absolutely nothing about how to help, and that combat vets were likely to feel as if a preacher could do not one thing to help them.

Around this time I worked a Kairos weekend at Staton prison.  I met a young man inside who had been damaged by war and gotten into drugs to self medicate his PTSD.  He was imprisoned on a drug charge.  He had given his life to Christ and held no bad feelings toward the military or the state.  He took responsibility for his actions and was full of joy.  I was ashamed that this young man had risked his life and had his soul broken on my behalf, and that the society of which I am a represented participant had locked him up for doing what he could for dealing the with price he had paid to serve us.  He deserved treatment and care and gratitude, not prison.

I began to talk to vets.  I quickly learned that combat vets understand that combat is something no one can understand without experiencing it.  Since then, I've found that if a vet broaches the subject of his or her service, if I will simply say, "I can't begin to imagine what that was like for you, and this is something I know has to be experienced to be understood," the vet will often open right up and share all kinds of things he or she wouldn't otherwise.

My dad served in Vietnam.  I grew up never hearing anything about it.  Last fall, we drove together to Pennsylvania to bring my grandmother home as the end of her life drew near.  I mentioned my concern to him and he talked for hours about his experience.  He shared all kinds of helpful thoughts about how churches could help vets.

In this same time frame I've dealt with at least a half dozen pastoral situations involving vets and their families that have opened my eyes to the nature and scope of this need.  It would be inappropriate for me to share details of any of them.  But I have come to know that people, families, and communities are suffering in often hidden and very hurtful ways because of the interior wounds of war and results of family separation.

I don't know how churches can help returning vets.  But I'm learning.  Here's are my hunches so far:

1. Vets are the best resource to help vets.  It's highly unlikely that a vet will go to a support group.  Pastors can't bridge the experience of combat unless they've been there.  I have a hunch that personal connections between Vietnam vets and new Iraq and Afghanistan returnees could provide a vehicle of healing for both.  Churches are full of vets who could serve as a ready and willing resource.

2. Vets go to the VA as a last resort, not as an initial place to deal with concerns, especially for mental and spiritual health.  One of the vets in my congregation has suggested that the church could offer a military family day of some kind that would have fun stuff for the kids and VA reps available to explain resources.  Screenings of various kinds could be made available, too.

3.  Vietnam taught us that failing to welcome vets home can create an entire generation of wounded people.  Their interior woundedness will not just subside over time.  It will spill out into their relationships with spouse, children, employers, church, and community.  I have come to believe that many Vietnam vets are still as wounded on the inside as if they had come home a few months ago.  Society is more aware of the need to welcome vets, but it's unaware of how to heal the wounds.  Thankfully, Iraq and Afghanistan returnees have not been called baby killers or been spit upon.  I've spoken to Vietnam vets who had this experience.  Even those who were most opposed to our recent wars have not acted similarly toward these vets, and for that we should be thankful.

Clergy, congregations, military, mental health professionals, medical professionals, chaplains, and society as a whole must enter into a constructive conversation on the challenges vets face and how to address them practically and holistically.  We cannot let these vets suffer on the inside without doing what we can to heal this generation's wounds.  We must create vehicles to share our learning and experiences.

I'm going to keep on learning all I can and talking to anyone who can teach me anything.  I will try to share what I discover and hope that it will help others in ministry with vets.  I especially invite conversation from churches and clergy who have had success in designing ministries that have helped vets.

Pastoral Prayer for Baptism of the Lord Sunday (12 January 2014)

Holy God:

We thank you for the love and grace, the power and majesty, the humility and mercy you have shown through your Son Jesus.  We thank you that you have made yourself known to us through becoming one of us, that you have shown us that you love us more deeply than we can ever imagine and that you never leave us or forsake us.

Today, as we remember that our Lord was baptized by John in the Jordan river so long ago, we are grateful also that we have been able to share in baptism.  You called Jesus by name.  You spoke of your love for him.  You poured out your spirit upon him. You said that you were pleased with him.

Give us eyes to see and a heart to understand the gift of baptism as the sign of your heart toward Jesus being extended toward us.  Help us to hear your voice today.  Help each of us to hear you call us by name.  Help us to know that you are our father and that we are your beloved children.  Help us to hear you bless us, to know you find pleasure in us, that you are pleased with us just because you love us and we are your family.

And, holy God, pour out your spirit afresh upon each of us.  Fill us with power.  Help us to go from this place with a mission, with your joy in our hearts and your word on our lips.  May the same spirit who filled Jesus with the power to proclaim repentance and the coming of the Kingdom, the same spirit that empowered Jesus to heal the sick and set free the captives, may that same spirit overwhelm and empower us to do even greater works and to see your kingdom established in our community and the works of darkness destroyed.

Amen.

Pastoral Prayer for Epiphany Sunday (January 5, 2014)

Holy God:

We thank you for another day.  On this Sunday, we thank you for another year.  We set aside the failures and disappointments of a year past.  we set aside, also, the victories and joys of the past.  We are grateful for both the good and the bad that has come, for how you have used it and for all we have learned.  We are grateful that you have brought us through even to this day.  You have been faithful.  We thank you for your faithfulness.

But we will not live in a past that has already ceased to exist.  We live in the present of this day.  This day and this year are full of concerns and anxieties, but they are also full of hope and opportunity.  A change in the calendar is a sign of what is always before us--an opportunity through your cross and your son and your spirit to experience a new beginning.  Open our hearts to see a new world of your grace, and new kingdom of love.

Above all, open our hearts to see your son, to see in him the perfect expression of your heart.  You have left the glory of heaven to become a frail and humble human being so that we might see just how much you desire to be with us.  You meet us in our homes, our families, our workplaces, and schools.  You are with us in our lives’ transitions--births, deaths, marriages, graduations, divorces, moves, promotions, retirements.  You are with us in our anxieties and our celebrations, our laughter and our tears.  The coming of your son shows us that you are with us and shows us who you are when you show up.

So open our eyes to see him afresh, to see him everywhere and always.  Let all of our lives be about him and for him. May we desire to know nothing but him, and to know everything else we know in the light of his glory and grace.  May our lives reflect him.  May the world, the community, each person we meet know the heart of God a little better because they have seen the face of Jesus in the way we have reflected his glory.

Amen.