CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter
Our pastors at St. Mark’s
UMC, in Bloomington, IN, where we were the first couple married 58 years ago,
asked me to give the pastoral prayer at worship on 2-5-17. The Gospel for the
day was Matthew 5:13-18, where Jesus says that we are the salt of the earth and
talks about how communities can be transformed.
As we prepared to pray, I
led the congregation in singing, a
capella: Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and
the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace.
[Helen H. Lemmel]
Here is the prayer:
We give you thanks, O
Loving God, for the gift of Jesus, the Christ, for that face that is so dim in
the eyes of the world, but so clear in the eyes of the spirit, the one in whose
countenance is life and light.
We give you thanks, Almighty
God, for this day that you have made, and allow us to share.
We thank you, merciful
God, for those who are the salt of the earth, who give life its flavor. We
thank you for those who cast salt on icy streets and icy souls so that we will
not slip and fall.
We thank you, sort of, O
God, for designating us to be the salt of the world, but salt is just so
common. It’s so easy to lose our saltiness, but it’s not really our fault. Salt
is so mundane. Who notices salt, really?
A saltiness app would be
nice, to remind us of who we are, or you could let us be something a little
more palatable, like the cookies of the world, so that people would like us
better, the ice cream of the world, that would be nice, at least some flavoring
a little less common, more exotic, more cool and current, like the cardamom of
the world, or the turmeric of the world. We’d seem more interesting and exciting
cool and dope.
But if we must be salt,
may it be that when the hard rains come, we may be those who still pour, pour
out wisdom and love upon our community.
We pray, O God, for those
for whom life has no flavor, those trapped in the boredom of sin, in the dull
routine of addiction, in the drab pursuit of greed and lust, in the tedious
grasp for power.
We pray for those in pain,
whose lives are a constant struggle for just a bit of peace, who fear each
coming moment, who pray for surcease of agony.
We pray for those who live
in worlds of delusion and lies and the false paradise of selfishness.
We pray for children,
whose lives so often are laced with fears they cannot understand, and forces
they cannot control.
We pray for those who are
always on the outside, always left out, who have no community of hope and love.
There seem to be so many
these days, O God, in high places and low, who want to rub salt into the wounds
of your people instead of binding up those wounds with the oil of healing, who
scatter salt on the fields of our common life so that those fields cannot
produce the daily bread we need and pray for. Help us to repent of the misuse
of our saltiness and to commit ourselves anew to being salt and light, flavor
and hope.
We give you thanks for the
communities you have given us—family and friends and church and nation and
world. Help us to be good salty citizens of these communities.
We pray for Jimmy Moore
and Mary Beth Morgan and Trina Mescher and Andy Cron, the leaders of our church
[1], for Michael McRobbie, the president of our university, for John Hamilton,
the mayor of our city, for Trey Hollingsworth and Joe Donnelly and Todd Young,
the congresspersons of our state, for Donald Trump, the President of our nation,
and for all of the other servant-leaders of our various communities. Endue
them, each and every, with wisdom and kindness and all other virtues necessary
to lead, so that everything they do may be pleasing in your sight, and all our
communities may be transformed into fellowships of salt and light. [This was
followed by silent prayer and The Lord’s Prayer]
JRMcF
I tweet as yooper1721,
because I was a Yooper when I started and didn’t know any better.
1] Moore and Morgan are
pastors. Mescher and Cron are Lay Leaders.
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