Empires Crush
Occupiers Crucify
Oppressors Jail
Betrayal and Denial
are in the air
It seems like
…Everywhere
And yet
Forgiveness is Spoken
without Apology
Criminals are Remembered
in Paradise
Crosses are Carried
For a Mile
By Strangers
Women Follow
Beating Their Breast
Confessions Are Made
Of Christ
At even the Last Moment
And It is
Ok
That Friday
Isn’t Good
…
Yet
Feel free to share/use/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta “KatyandtheWord”
The tears
on my Face
the Broken
Butterfly
Bowl
Shattered
reminding me
Of all I missing
I ache, remembering
the Soup I ate from it
at a Homeless-Dinner-Slash-
Leadership-training
As I touch the pieces
I can almost smell
the countless
Ashes I burned
In
it
For
Ash Weds
Saying
Write Everything
You want to give to God
On a Piece of Paper
And I will Burn it for you
The Holy Spririt
will Somehow
transpose it
To the ashes
We will write
in a shape of a Cross
on your forehead
Tears
Shattered Butterflies
Silent Call
Is as Close to a Good Friday Service
I will get today
I pray as I put the pieces in the trash
Jesus
Remember Me
When you Come
Into Your Kingdom
Feel free to use/share/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta “KatyandtheWord”
Lent 6 Prayers of the People & Lament, Hosanna, Save me, Giving space for real sadness and deep lament for the pain that comes with living is a gift that God gives us so that we do not have to suffer lonely or unheard. When the children say “Hosanna” Save us, it is because our suffering deserves to be named. Imprecation prayer is a type of prayer that exists to name all of the injustices of the world and to call God forth to fix them.
Hosanna: A Dangerous Prayer (Anti Gun Violence)
Psalm 23 as a Lament or James 5:1-6
Revelation 21:1-6 or Mark 11:12-14
*Imprecation: Psalm 55 or Psalm 58
Breath Prayer
Inhale: Hosanna
Exhale: Save Us
Inhale: I hurt too much
Exhale: God, take my pain
Inhale: There is too much injustice
Exhale: I will not stand for it
Inhale: God hear my anger
Exhale: God let me be ok with being angry
Call to Worship:
Let us come to God who comforts us
God is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega
God is present, even when we feel abandoned
Sometimes, we feel alone in the pit, God
God be with us even when we yell at the empty air
Come, let us lament together today.
Call to Confession: God hears us, God can take our anger. Let us confess our laments today.
Prayer of Confession: God we confess that anger and lament do not fit well into polite society. Too often they are used by bullies and power brokers, instead of expressions of true injustice and pain. We confess that Christianity does not leave much room for lament at church, we like to shuffle it off to certain times and places. Even though we have a Jesus who called out hypocrites, squelched storms and condemned fig trees—not to mention our favorite flipping tables story. Help us to find healthy ways to express and support lament we pray—in the name of our fully human and sometimes grumpy Jesus. (Silent Prayer) Amen.
Prayer of Confession: God, I confess that some days I am so full of emotion, I do not know how to express it. I feel like I am shouting into the void, trying to fix all the things that are wrong with my community, the universe and me. And then I confess, I feel ashamed, because I think that all of this: my feelings, the lack of perfection, the feeling of aloneness are thing to feel guilty over. Remind me that we are supposed to be building a community where these things can be safely expressed and held, and help us to find support on these days we pray. (Silent Confession) Amen.
Assurance of Pardon: Jesus cries when we are crying, and walks with us in our anger and hurt. Jesus loves us in all of our emotions, thus we know the comforting Good News In Jesus Christ we are Forgiven.
Prayer of the Day/Dedication: God, sendyour Holy Spirit to tend to us, so that when we feel overwhelmed by emotions, we might remember that you are here to walk with us, to cry with us, to lament with us, and sometimes just to sit with us. Help us when we feel like we are in the pit of the despair, to find the connection and community we need, each and every time. Amen.
Taize: My Soul finds Rest in God Alone
Prayer Activity: Option 1: Cry with those who cry, take a rock and meditate over those prayers you are lamenting, drop the rock into a bowl of water
Option 2: Write Down all of your Prayers of Concern and add them to/make a new woven prayer cloth https://theresaecho.com/2012/09/20/interactive-way-to-pray-in-worship-part-ii/
*For information on imprecation see This Here Flesh by Cole Arther Riley’s chapter on Anger
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CW: Sex Work, Infant Loss
God,
Solomon thinks he is wise
to trick a ruling
out of two women
He thinks he is powerful–
to Lord it over
two women
who have to sell their bodies
For money
But all I can see
Is red flags
All I can think is
how I knew this story at five or six
I maybe knew what prostitution was,
I definitely did not know what appropriation was
and how it made fostering and adoption messy..
I had some idea of what feminism meant
but I did understand grief–
and that it can get really complicated really fast
However, I knew then, and I know now that one woman
went home empty-handed
Where was the chaplain
that day God?
Where were the midwives? The healers? The other women?
This so called wisdom falls hard on my ears today God.
I find it, as my kids say, sus.
Is this about wisdom–or something else
Do the women need wisdom?
Or does Solomon need compassion
Holy Comforter, I know why you put a story of prostitution in the Bible
Its not so the King can teach the whores
God forbid
Jesus bless the sex workers
Because we should treat them
Like the human beings
No matter what
and not use any excuse to judge them
And God bless all those who mourn
Help those whose arms feel empty
Please, reach out to all those who are grieving in unhealthy and unhelpful ways.
Walk with them.
Please, remind us that you are not Solomon,
You will never slash our beloved things in half,
or send us home empty-handed
You will instead, reunite us with our sisters and friends
Restore us to our beloved
And whisper in our ears that its ok to be sad
Walk with us in our unhappiness we pray.
Amen.
Feel Free to use/share/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta
So…we are all going to mourn Betty White hard
Bc we need to mourn
And we all know why
And Betty White is something we can agree on
And so she is giving us that final gift.
The ability to laugh and cry and scream NO FAIR in one voice before this horrible year ends.
Thank you Betty White.
Binding us Together one last time in 2021.
And as someone noted—right before 2022 and her 100th birthday—her timing, as always, is flawless
We miss you already.
I hope you are making your husband laugh right this second.
Selah!
Thanks to @CrystalChetaham for her inspirational tweet about Betty White’s impeccable timing
We don’t know how we are going to get through this season,
They sat through my office and said,
And their pain sat visceral in the room.
And I nodded along and prayed that they could find places
where their grief could be invited along with them and given a place at the table.
God, this is a prayer that Christmas can be more of a season of comfort
for those who need it.
I sat in the cards shop the other day,
and could not find one card
that expressed the comfort that I wanted to say during this season
of pandemic-Christmas tide. And I think, God
of what it exactly it was that the shepherds,
and the (actually unnumbered) Magi
and John the Baptist and Mary were looking for on that dark night.
The tidings were Good News of Great Joy yes,
but also, I think, it was comfort that they hungered for
Wasn’t that the fulfillment proclaimed in the Magnificat?
Wasn’t that the first title given to Jesus in Isaiah?
Not mighty* or everlasting father! No!
The first thing named for the Savior to come Counselor! Comforter, and a Wonderful one at that.
Because Lord knows this advent we are black with mourning and grief.
There is no comfort candle on the advent wreath (at least not traditionally)
But that’s who you are, Holy Spirit, Comforter.
And Lord knows we need comfort!
God, may we let this season be one not just of Joy or Hope–
if we aren’t feeling those things, let that be ok.
Help us to make this, for those who need it,
be a season of Comfort.
Help us to create a Season of Comfort, for the lonely, the lost, the grieving, I pray.
Comfort your people. Please God, because you know, we sure do need it.
And maybe next year, we will add a comfort candle to the wreath–
Til then, comfort your people we pray.
Amen.
Feel Free to use/adapt/share with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta
Thanks to @byAndriaIrwin for the inspirational tweet
*note that the Hebrew word for this actually translates as God of many mounds, which means God of many worships spots (powerful/accessible) and God of many breasts/nourishing places. We have later shorthanded it as mighty.
I remember staying up all night,
And waking up to the phone in my dorm
(landline, yes)
It was the 2nd week of Freshman Year.
And God, all I can remember
Is that everyone was so angry.
Because no one seemed to know
How to be sad.
Never Forget–
How to be angry I wondered?
As we marched off to war?
As I viewed the Holocaust museum in embattled Israel?*
As we became more embittered against Brown people.
And now,
After Iraq, and Afghanistan,
and a million Covid deaths later,
God, I think that maybe,
we are way more apt to get angry–
because we as a nation are not good at getting sad.
How often do I see our leaders cry?
How often do we encourage mourning?
So Today I’m glad that you are the God who weeps with those are weeping.
Today I’m glad that you affirmed
that
Jesus wept.
A tear for every life.
God does not need to get even for justice to be done.
And today, I am so thankful, for a God that weeps.
As I remember the first day,
that I realize that justice is so separate from anger–
and mourning is too.
So today, God, I think I’m going to concentrate on mourning,
and nothing else.
Please sit with me, again,
while I cry
whatever more tears
need to be cried.
Amen.
Feel free to share/adapt/use with Credit to Pastor Katy Stenta
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*The Nationally Funded motto of all the museums in Israel is also Never Forget, which I discovered upon a pilgrimage there in 2010.
God, we are walking into the dusty path of Lent we realize that we are entering into a world of the missing.
The parents, the children, the aunts and uncles, the neighbors and friends and mentors.
God we have lost 500,000 people. (900,000)
We have lost them. They slipped through our fingers of selfishness and greed and individualism.
We have lost them, like coins scattered upon the ground, they slipped through our finger–a treasure sunk into the ocean, never to be recovered.
We left our fellow sheep upon the rocks, and didn’t protect each other from the lions and the snakes.
We have forgotten that we are herd animals.
God, we no longer just taste ashes on our tongue. We are consuming them daily–in the news of black and brown people’s continued suffering under racist structures, in the habitual “forgetting” of people with disabilities and their extra isolation and danger in this time of contagion, in the news day after day after day of new infections and new deaths, in the cry of an entire state left in the cold for profit.
God I am afraid I am getting used to the taste of ashes.
I’m becoming bitter like Mara, convinced that normal wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and yet longing to go to a time where I didn’t know death as intimately as I do now.
I feel lost without those 500,000 (900,000) people.
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust
And I know that each of us are grieving in our own way.
And when things implode, and my kids are frustrated beyond my comprehension, or little annoyances seem to take over the day, or it’s hard to get going in the world. I remind myself that we are all living with ashes.
Gather your Sheep, Good Shepherd.
Coax us, tempt us and hook us into the herd.
Tell me its ok if I am a Mara today. It’s ok that I feel too much, and want too much and still somehow dare to dream of a different way.
Remind us that you know each of the 500,000 (900,000) by name. We have lost them, you promise they will be found. Like coins or sheep, precious and beloved treasures of God.
And my job is to keep walking, to keep finding the rest of my herd, to love those who are lost and to love those who are found.
Help me to keep walking the road to Jerusalem with 500,000 (900,000) ashes on my tongue I pray.
Amen.
Feel free to use/adapt with credit to Pastor Katy Stenta
katyandtheword 