I asked the Holy One, not once but time and time again, to tell me what is first and prime. The sound of silence breathed to me, “Grace. Grace is first, and last, and everything.”
I might have raised a voice in protest to the silent breath, to claim the privilege of suffering for faith, through faith, in faith. “Grace. Grace is first, and last, and everything.”
Have I not traveled farther in my span of years than Abraham in his? Might I not claim the mantle of such righteousness? “Grace. Grace is first, and last, and everything.”
But breathed the silent syllables: “Did you devise yourself, beloved child? Did you create the feet you set upon the road? Grace. Grace is first, and last, and everything.”
Blessed be the Holy One who makes to be the things that were and things that have not been. Blessed be the One whose sound of silence breathes: “Grace. Grace is first, and last, and everything.”
A poem/prayer based on Romans 4:1-5, 13-17, the Revised Common Lectionary Second Reading for Year A, Second Sunday in Lent.
I didn’t want a divorce but I got one, Jesus. A broken relationship handed to a judge. No prison, but I’ve never been released.
So many gifts I’ve laid before your altar never certain whether there was someone I had hurt. But no, I lie. There was always someone whether I knew or not.
To reconcile, though – ah, there’s the rub. For now I’ll ask “On whose terms, precisely, Jesus? I have my injuries, my hurts. Who’ll make their peace with me? Who’ll listen to my terms?”
Don’t say it, Jesus. I know just what you’ll say to such a question; you’ve no need to say, “My terms.” Oh, go ahead. I’ll wait. Just say it… Oh. You did.
A poem/prayer based on Matthew 5:21-37, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel reading for Year A, Sixth Sunday after Epiphany.
You can stop right there, Jesus, after beatitude/blessing/makarios (Hey! I can pray in Greek!) the first. You know as well as I the poverty of my spirit.
No mustard seeds to see, no pearls beyond appraisal, no fields a-hundred-fold to view for you. Just sighs and bluster nearly equal there.
So you might want to think again about this notion you would make the realm of heaven mine. I can’t conceive of an idea much worse despite the virtues of the thinker.
For you to give the realm of God to me is just as ludicrous as if you gave the keys of heaven to a fisherman named, “Rock.”
Oh. That’s right. You did.
A poem/prayer based on Matthew 5:1-12, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel reading for Year A, Fourth Sunday after Epiphany.
13th century manuscript illustration of picking cherries.
“When [Jesus’] mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” – Matthew 1:18b
It’s all very well for me, you know. He gave the plot away, the evangelist did, for all his readers to know what Joseph could not: Mary told the truth.
I feel no gut-wrenched shock, no rising fire, no heart-destroying grief and pain to close my mind against the simple fact that Mary told the truth.
“Hey, Joseph,” I whisper over the centuries, “What need of angels visiting in dreams if you could only hold your faith and trust that Mary told the truth?”
What need, indeed? Except that I rely far more upon my keen discernment of the world’s condition. It took Matthew to assure me that Mary told the truth.
Officiously I do declare that voices often silenced – women, children, refugees – should be attended, but: would I have trusted Mary told the truth?
For love, perhaps. For faith, perhaps. For trust, perhaps. For God, perhaps. For obeisance of a cherry, then: Mary told the truth.
A poem/prayer based on Matthew 1:18-25, the Revised Common Lectionary Gospel reading for Year A, Fourth Sunday of Advent.
I have told this story often over the last seven years.
It was a Friday. I’d taken the day off from the Connecticut Conference, United Church of Christ, to drive to Burlington, Vermont, and pick up my son Brendan at the University of Vermont. I’d left early in the morning so that we could stop in Brattleboro and have a tasty and unhurried lunch.
As we approached the town near the Massachusetts line, my cell phone rang. It was one of my colleagues on the Conference staff. She told me that there’d been a shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. There weren’t many details, but…
“It sounds bad,” she said.
As the person responsible for communication, this was my job.
I took the next exit, which was the one I’d intended to use in Brattleboro, but rather than search for a restaurant with a distinctive, creative menu we pulled into the chain restaurant closest to the highway. Instead of a cheerful conversation we sat silent as I scanned news websites, Twitter, and Facebook for information. I’m sure the waitress thought I was the worst father she’d ever seen.
Hastily, I tapped this prayer into my phone and sent it to my colleague in the Hartford office. “Read this carefully,” I warned, “and edit it as needed. Then email it to our churches and leaders.”
This was the prayer:
Our voices rise as from Ramah. We cry out for our children. God, who will comfort us?
With stunned tears we watch and listen and wait as word of horrors comes to us. With frozen minds we ask how, once again, such terrible violence has erupted among us. With aching hearts we anticipate the grieving cries: Rachels upon Rachels, Isaacs upon Isaacs, weeping for their children.
The days will come when we can ask why and have some hope of answering the question, O God. We pray your guidance then, when we can labor to prevent these tears.
Until then, to our aching hearts, for our frozen minds, amidst our streaming tears, bring tender comfort and unshakable love.
Amen.
Our hasty meal consumed, we resumed our southward drive, directed now toward the Conference office and not our home.
The next day I received a phone call from one of the pastors of First Church of Christ UCC in Glastonbury, where I was a member. “We need a song for a candlelight vigil on Sunday night,” she said. “Can you find something?”
I couldn’t.
I had to write something instead. The prayer gave me the place to start.
I sang “Courage in the Candle” for the first time that night. You’ll find photos and a recording of that original performance here. The video below comes from a worship service at a meeting of the Connecticut Conference. It features my dear friend and colleague the Rev. John Selders on the piano. At his suggestion, we melded “Courage in the Candle” with “God Has Work for Us to Do.”
ordainedgeek 
