I offer this weekly #LetUsPray as a way to stay anchored amidst the turmoil of the day. Paid subscribers have access to liturgical resources and sermon prompts based on the week's readings from The Revised Common Lectionary and/or The Narrative Lectionary.
Summer FAith Montage
This week I continue with the next section of my Faith Montage from Everything Good about God is True: Choosing Faith. I hope some of these passages will speak to your soul. If you are interested in using slide versions, I am slowly litanizing (Is that even a word?) the entire montage. Paid Subscribers have access to a PDF of the entire montage for personal or congregational use.
For you pastors out there, I don't know about you, but I generally dread preaching on July 4th. It has often been because many of the churches that I have served have sacrificed themselves at the altar of "let's just get along," or I simply was not brave enough to tackle Christian Nationalism and toxic patriotism.
This July 4th, you better believe that I am taking on both of those when I am in the pulpit. I'll expand in the worship resources section, but I am going to try and come at it from two directions: we critique because we want the best for things we love, and we are all closer to crossing the line of kindness to cruelty than we would like to admit.
But first, we continue working our way through my Faith Montage as we see how and why we gather as God's people. If you need a specific prayer addressing Christian Nationalism, here is one: For Those Fighting Christian Nationalism.
Gathering as Misfits and Strangers #LetUsPray
Let us pray —
By dirt roads and oceans vast, across concrete highways and infinite skies, by coercion and by consequence, by circumstance, and by choice — our journeys converge.
Ancestors and saints, generations past, generations of today, and generations yet to come.
We arrive, we mingle, and we observe.
We step forward, we step back, we pause, we try again
We engage in a divine dance, these bodies, the body, all in a space that is God’s,
These bodies embody the depth and texture of the Divine, seen and unseen, known and unknown, addressed and avoided.
These bodies are not always in control, minds betraying, bodies breaking down, emotions in disarray, mind, body, and spirit, swirling, swirling, swirling.
Misfits and strangers uniquely gathered like no place other. Gathered by love, gathered to love, gathered even when we are unable to love, and gathered especially when we feel undeserving of love.
Woven together in moments momentary and lingering to worship God, to know what it is to belong, to celebrate the jubilance of life, to grieve when life is loss, to lament and to confess, to forgive and to be forgiven, to worship, to pray, to march, to nap, to argue, to ponder, to weep, to laugh, to discern the mind of Christ and the will of God, to love the other as the world would not want us to love ourselves, to affirm and proclaim that we belong to one another, and in turn we belong to God.
— Amen.
Hoping that you experience belonging in many ways and in many places!
In writing liturgy, I attempt to be economical with words while addressing the events of the day in ways that help people find grounding in their faith. For readings, I refer to the Vanderbilt Revised Common Lectionary(RCL) and The Narrative Lectionary from The Working Preacher(NL). Paid Subscribers should please feel free to use any of the liturgical resources with or without attribution.
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