November 18thFive Minutes on Friday #49
Prayer for Peace
Walter Brueggemann (b. 1933)
The Noise of Politics
We watch as the jets fly in
with the power people and
the money people,
the suits, the budgets, the billions.
We wonder about monetary policy
because we are among the haves,
and about generosity
because we care about the have-nots.
By slower modes we notice
Lazarus and the poor arriving from Africa,
and the beggars from Central Europe, and
the throng of environmentalists
with their vision of butterflies and oil
of flowers and tanks
of growing things and killing fields.
We wonder about peace and war,
about ecology and development,
about hope and entitlement.
We listen beyond jeering protesters and
soaring jets and
faintly we hear the mumbling of the crucified one,
something about
feeding the hungry
and giving drink to the thirsty,
about clothing the naked,
and noticing the prisoners,
more about the least and about holiness among them.
We are moved by the mumbles of the gospel,
even while we are tenured in our privilege.
We are half ready to join the choir of hope,
half afraid things might change,
and in a third half of our faith turning to you,
and your outpouring love
that works justice and
that binds us each and all to one another.
So we pray amidst jeering protesters
and soaring jets.
Come by here and make new,
even at some risk to our entitlements.
ETERNITY SUNDAY
Today is Eternity Sunday – we give thanks for the ordinary men and women who have shown us how to live faithful lives. Their names are not in any hall of fame, there are no statues erected in their honour. But in their everyday lives they showed us how to live, and to love. we give thanks for them.
The risen Christ is the alpha and omega - the beginning and the end. The creativity of God does not end in the creation of the first world in Genesis, but continues until God creates a new heaven and a new earth. This is our great hope in life and in death. In the end we shall be with God. We are destined for communion, because of the eternal, creative, miraculous love of God in Christ.
Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
When you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
And the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, Your Savior.
[Isaiah 43:1b-3]
PRAYER of the WITNESSES
O Lord our God, we thank you
for the many people throughout the ages
who have followed your way of life joyfully:
For the many saints and martyrs, men and women,
who have offered up their very lives
in advancing your kingdom.
For Peter, Paul, and Stephen,
Biblical men stalwart for the truth.
For Esther, Ruth, Mary, and Lydia, Biblical women of faith and courage.
We thank you for our Anabaptist ancestors -
For Conrad, Felix, Barbara, and Margaretha,
who spoke the truth in trying times.
We thank you for your witnesses in our own day:
For Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King,
for Corrie Ten Boom and C.S. Lewis,
for Al Geiser and Glen Lapp, witnesses to peace.
For those we have known and loved,
for teachers, co-workers and friends,
for parents, grandparents, husbands, wives, sisters & brothers,
for all who by their faithful obedience and steadfast hope
have shown us the way of Christ –
the way of humble service and love.
For Anne and Agatha who lived their faith with quiet deeds of generosity and love.
O Lord, we thank you for the truth they learned
and passed on to us:
That it is by giving that we receive;
by becoming weak that we become strong;
by loving others we are loved;
and by dying we inherit eternal life.
Gracious God,
continue to form us in the image of your Son;
renew your Holy Spirit’s work in our generation.
We pray, through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour.
AMEN
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=dYZCOvRr-xo&feature=share – ‘The day Thou gavest’