How grateful we are, O God, for the gift of Christ … for love beyond all limits … for grace, mercy and peace … for hope and courage … for wisdom to guide us, and faith to help us through the dark moments of life … for love to lift us beyond self-interest.
How grateful we are, O God … for the little Bethlehem baby boy and the angels who sang to the shepherds in the hills … for the wise men who made the long journey to follow a star and find a king … for John the Baptist in the wilderness who preached a new day to the people and baptized our LORD in Jordan’s water …
How grateful we are, O God … for the Rabbi who called James and John, Peter and Andrew … for the gentle man at the well in Samaria who talked to a lonely woman … for a kindly man who stood beneath a tree and saw a little man up in its branches … for the daring man who challenged the powers of his day, who refused to knuckle under to the conservative forces of Rome and it’s temple collaborators … the powers that feared all change and killed the prophets.
How grateful we are, O God … for the man who stood silently in Pilate’s courtroom … who bore the lash of the whip and the shame of crucifixion … for the man who walked into the arms of death and felt its sting for our sake.
How grateful we are, O God … for the great Son of God who went to hell, to the far-reaches of death and despair, to the place of no-return, to give release there to all the prisoners … that none might be lost, that all would be found, and everything made new.
Help us, this day, O God, to receive this Christ.
The Christ of the Cross … that we might be brave in our faith and bold in our mission.
And with him, and through him, to live your kingdom …
To talk to the lonely and stand for the truth.
To confront the conservative forces that drive power and religion … political power and religious rituals that have long forgotten their true purpose to serve the people and protect the children.
Help us, we pray, with a full measure of your Holy Spirit, to make this Lenten journey really count … to stand before the cross and feel the crisis – to hear the deep questions you pose to us … questions that ruffle our feathers and unsettle us, so that you can transform our spirit and move us along the road to a better humanity and a richer faith.
Do not leave us alone, O God, even when we turn away from the light of Christ. Don’t not leave us alone, O God, even when we steel our hearts and close our minds to you.
Do not leave us to our own devices, for therein we die.
Do not leave us alone with our small ideas and shallow loves.
Do not leave us alone in our pride and our prejudice.
Come to us, we pray, LORD Jesus, for we need your grace, your forgiveness, and your light to find ourselves and become truly human.
How grateful we are, O God … in the name of our LORD Jesus Christ, who taught us to pray, saying, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done …
"Rabbi" Tom
ReplyDeleteThank you for the very beautiful and meaningul prayer! I can hardly wait for Lisa (my daughter) to send me your sermons. You have such a gift to take the word and make it so comtemporary that it reaches our heart and soul. And to remember to include it in our lives.
God Bless You!
Roz