Pastoral Prayer for Easter Day (inspired by 1 Cor. 15))

Holy God:

We give you praise with hearts full of thanksgiving on this, the greatest of days, the day your Son rose
from the dead to show us that death had been destroyed. You have given us the perfect sign of your
faithfulness, you miracle working power, and your love that gives us ultimate victory.

We confess to you that deep in our hearts, the reality of the continuing power of death continues to
weigh us down and limit our ability to celebrate fully. We feel the power of death in our bodies. We still grieve over those who have died ahead of us. We experience the power of death drawing our souls into the dust. We struggle to overcome the sin within us. We struggle to overcome cynicism and a gnawing sense that our world is corrupt beyond repair.

Help us to see the many small and great demonstrations of your life-giving power overcoming the
blasphemous claims of death all around us. Help us to believe in our bones that the resurrection is not
some beautiful fairy tale of something that happened ago, but a demonstration of the way your life
renews all life. Help us to believe beyond our seeing that you are even now swallowing up every kind of death in your victory. Help us to live in every moment so that we will spread your life and participate in the renewing of everything.

Most of all, give each of us new life. To those who have never been made alive by your spirit, may
this Easter Sunday be the beginning of a new birth to a life lived with you, a life of power, joy, and
confidence, a life lived in wonder and awe of your miracle working power. For those of us who have
grown weary and lost our easter vision, help us to feel a fresh surge of your resurrection power making
everything dead within us alive again.

You said that if the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwelt in us, he would give new life to our mortal bodies. So bring healing to every broken body, joy to every broken spirit, reconciliation to every broken relationship, and peace to our broken world.

Amen.

Pastoral Prayer based on Luke 15:1-3, 11-32 (the Parable of the Prodigal God)

Holy God

Thank you for bringing us into this house of worship once again today.  Thank you for the joy we feel as we share this hour with those we love.  Thank you most of all, for the grace we feel here, the love you have extended to us, the welcome we feel simply because we are all loved by you and your grace swings the door wide open for all who enter.  We thank you that this place is a sign of the love, the grace, and the welcome that you offer us in all times and all places, that your forgiveness is a banquet of joy and love to which we are continually invited.

We confess that we have often failed to accept your invitation.  We’ve wanted to go our own way.  We’ve needed to figure things out on our own.  Either through our own misunderstanding or through the failed witness of others, we’ve often misunderstood what you are calling us to.  We’ve run from you because we’ve thought that you were a hard task master, or that you wanted to make our live boring or lifeless.  We’ve very rarely thought of the grace you’ve offered us as an opportunity to live lives of celebration and rejoicing, a banquet, a party celebrating your goodness and redemption.

So whether we’ve run away from your grace because wee wanted the life we could create for ourselves more than the life you have for us, or even if we’ve been good religious people who’ve been so stuck on following the rules and being good citizens that we’ve forgotten what it means to truly feast on your mercy, help us to enter your house with fresh love, fresh grace, fresh joy.  Let the party of your grace begin.

Be with those who suffer.  Make them know your closeness and bring them new life.  Bless our enemies.  Bless those who are far from your family.

Amen.

Pastoral Prayer based on Luke 13:1-9 (parable of the unfruitful fig tree)

Holy God:

We thank you for the love you have poured out to us, the love you are pouring out right now, and the love you have sent before us for the needs ahead of us.  We thank you that you chose us without regard to our deserving.  We thank you that you have given us your word, your spirit, your very lifeblood.  You have given us each other.  You have given us new hearts and loving friends, countless sermons and Bible Studies, a comfortable building in which to worship, and so much more than we can ever name.  

You have told us to abide in you, and we are thankful that you want to abide with us.  You also said that if we abide in you and your word abides in us, then we would produce fruit that would last.  Those words comfort us, but they also worry us.  Because they teach us that the life you have invested in us should produce a return.  And you have taught us that you will hold us accountable for producing the fruit that your love should produce.

So help us to take a hard look at ourselves, both as individuals and as a church.  Help us to honestly take account of what we have produced--how we have loved others, how we have grown as disciples, how we have helped others to come to faith.  Today, let us honestly hear from you what good has come from all those hours in church and all those sermons and all our religious activity.  We want to be made new.  We want our lives to be fruitful.

We cannot be anything other than what we have always been unless you remake us.  So help us, holy God, to feel our need to be nourished, shaped, transformed, and reconnected.  And help our lives to bring a harvest of righteousness.

Amen.

Pastoral Prayer for Lent 2 (Luke 13:31-35--Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I have longed to gather you under my wings...)

Holy God--

Your son taught us to be holy, as you are holy.  He said that if we would hold onto our lives, we would lose them, but if we would lay down our lives for for you and for th esake of the Gospel, we would find them.  We have often felt your spirit moving within us to give our all, and we have sometimes answered that call as best as we can.  Our feet are made of clay and the voices that draw us away are many.  As the old hymn says, we are prone to wander.  Yet you keep calling--you tell us that your goal is to make us perfect in our love.

When we hide from you, as Adam hid from you in the garden, we ask you to come looking for us, as you did him.  Let us hear your voice.  O holy and loving God, let all our repenting be about nothing more than running into your arms.  May we never feel shamed or cajoled, bullied, manipulated or coerced.  For your call to be holy is always a call to come in from the rain, to come away from ways of living that destroy us.  Help us to find ourselves, to be made safe from the storms of this life, under the shelter of your wings.

We offer our all, as you have offered all of yourself to us.  We give our money because it is not ours but yours, and you have made us stewards.  We thank you for your provision and give back the portion you commanded in thanksgiving.  We offer you those who we love who are hurting--may your love overshadow them, comfort and heal them.  we offer our land and this community.  Help us to run to you and to find ourselves under the loving care of your Lordship.

Amen.

Pastoral Prayer for the First Sunday of Lent

Holy God,

We remember this day a time when your Son went away to be alone in the wilderness, to fast and pray, to be alone with you.  He took time out of his life to confront those things that were a temptation to him.  He confronted the devil.  Help us, through these forty days and always, never to run from those things within us that make us afraid, those places where the unknown and uncomfortable dwell, the broken places of unforgiveness and misdirected motives, of insecurity, of rage, of loneliness and hopelessness.  We will do anything to hide from ourselves.  We will invite any distraction.  We will fill our lives with noise and people and a thousand excuses.  But the demons still whisper to us and the wilderness cannot be contained.  Give us the courage to finally face it, to face ourselves, to have the guts not to run away from whatever we’ve been running from for so long.

We thank you that when we go to the wilderness, we don’t go alone.  We go with you.  We go together.  And because you are there, it is you who give us comfort.  You are the one who makes our hearts perfect.  So we present ourselves to you.  We want to give ourselves completely, but maybe we’re not quite ready for that yet.  So take what we can give today, and grace us to give it all.  Grace us to have a perfect heart totally given in love to you.

Amen.

Throwing a Party

I was distracting during prayer worrying about church finances and thinking about Stewardship matters when I read the Old Testament lectionary text for the week, Deuteronomy 26:1-11.  It tells us exactly what to do when we give.

1. Give the firstfruit of your harvest (in case you are not a farmer, that means to give to the Lord before you pay your bills or buy anything for yourself).

2. Give it to the priest (I give to the church before I give anywhere else, and I think this is the proper way to give).

3. Say the following: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord hear our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.  The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and fave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord have given me."

Why are we taught to give this speech (or at least something similar as a prayer of our heart)?  Because we need to stop poor-mouthing and feeling sorry for ourselves that we don't have a house like someone on the Real Housewives and carry around a wad of benjamins like Tony Soprano.  This speech teaches us to say to God, "I came from absolutely nothing and my people were absolute nobodies.  And now, look at the amazing blessing I have!"

4. Throw a party.  "Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house."  Enjoy what God has given you.  He gave it to you so that you can enjoy it.  If you're anxious or feel guilty about it, then your wasting the gift God wanted you to have for your enjoyment (and the enjoyment of those around you).  Just don't forget where it came from.

I must say that we could use some help with our view of money.  We are pretty miserable and anxious and we gripe like crazy about how bad times are and how the government is robbing us blind and how we can barely survive.  All the while we live in the richest nation on earth and have multiple cars and the latest phones, computers, and multitude other gadgets and gizmos to keep us constantly distracted.

It's time to get grateful, get generous, get real, get happy, and throw a party.

After the Wars

Last night's State of the Union address dealt with many issues that are at the forefront of the American consciousness.  Perhaps the biggest announcement that has gotten the least attention was that the war in Afghanistan would draw to a close by the end of 2014.

Americans have been deeply divided about the Iraq War, perhaps slightly less so about Afghanistan.  We have argued about whether we should go to war, how we should proceed, what we expect to accomplish, and how long we should stay.  However we feel about the role of war and our nation's role in the world, it seems to me that nearly all Americans are war-weary and will be relieved when these wars are finally done with.

It will be over 13 years of non-stop war when it's all through.  I was 25 when it started and I'm 38 now.  I was just young enough that I could have gone to war, though seminary and a young family made me choose not to enlist.  Kids who were toddlers on 9/11/2001 are serving in combat even as I write.

Most of the talk of the cost of war seems to focus on money--budget cuts, the deficit, etc.  There's not much I can do about that.  But I'm more concerned about a cost of war that I'm hearing discussed more and more in private conversations.  That cost is the cost that veterans have paid with the damage that has been done to their souls.

More soldiers are dying from suicide in our Armed Forces than from combat.  Divorce is skyrocketing. PTSD is rampant.  Even healthy vets are struggling to know how to re-assimilate.  

I grew up a child of the Vietnam era generation.  I can remember that society knew that folks in Vietnam had been damaged by that war.  But I don't know that our society did a whole lot about it.  Maybe they just didn't know what to do.  I certainly don't remember churches having a special calling to serve damaged Vietnam vets.

The VA can only do so much.

I really don't know what to do about it.  But I feel that the Church is called to offer hope and healing to a whole generation of beloved, proud, and hurting people.  I just can't believe that the Church can know that so many are hurting so deeply and not respond somehow.  I just don't know how to respond or what we might do.  There must be some churches doing something that's working--I'd love to hear about them.

Any ideas?