Category: Worship Resource

Approaching the fifth week of Lent, we engage our fifth and final element: fire. Like the other elements, fire has within its nature the potential to harm and destroy. To wipe out forests in a day. To raze homes and buildings in mere minutes. To burn animals’ delicate skin. To erupt and cover our planet with molten lava.

Perhaps, it’s mostly from our human perspective that fire seems so dangerous and destructive. And it’s true that fire takes human lives and has been used as a weapon of torture and capital punishment.

So, what does it mean to pray for the peace of the fire? Does it mean that we hope that fire is tamed, controlled, domesticated? Or does it mean our perspectives on fire will be changed?

Fire connects to this week’s lectionary passage in the Gospel of John, chapter 11, when Lazarus is raised from the dead. Fire is cleverly hidden in the passage – you have to look harder for it than in other weeks. It is certainly in the ground, the rocks and hills that make up the landscape of Judea. But’s it’s also in the stone that covers Lazarus’s grave, which is then pushed away in an act of life-giving. That stone, birthed in fire, delivered its own miracle on that day in Bethany – where once death was a final and unyielding citadel, with the stone as its sentry, the stone now abandoned its guard in a defiant act of resurrection.

So fire, too, becomes a witness and actor in God’s foolish love of shalom.

O God, our rock in a weary land,
we pray this day for the peace of fire.

We praise you for the fire of the sun,
warming planet Earth,
kissing the plants and waters and our bodies
with steadfast love.
We praise you for the fire of the earth,
creating land for land animals to trod on,
for towering mountains to behold,
and deep canyons to ponder.
We praise you for the fire of our hearths,
delighting us with feasts of holy communion,
where friendships blossom and laughter abounds,
and where, in the quiet crackling and dancing of flames,
our soul’s deep questions find illumination and new life.

May your Spirit, like tongues of fire, purify all hatred and fear,
inspiring this world to burn with life-giving peace.
We ask this in the name of Jesus the Peacemaker. Amen.

 

A prayer inspired by John 9, in the style of a Collect.

O God, you are the Great Physician.
You see us by the side of the road,
and you come to be with us.
You know how we long for healing,
how we long to be restored to community.

Touch our eyes,
that we might see and believe
and become witnesses of hope in your hurting world.
Amen.

We are facing our mortality more than ever these days, the threat of covid-19 looming large in every conversation, news story, or trip to the grocery store. How (when) will it affect me and the people I love? What will happen to those who are particularly vulnerable? Will we have enough toilet paper? Our fear and anxiety are often based, if hidden from our minds, in our fear of death – of losing control over our mortal, physical selves, and entering into the Great Unknown. We’re afraid of becoming dirt again, for to dirt we shall return.

At least in modern English, “dirt” is a negative concept. If something is dirty, it seemingly has lost its purpose and is fit only for the rubbish bin. When a person is dirty, it justifies isolation and exclusion until they are clean again.

How do we hold dirt, humus, the earth in a more positive light…where to return to stardust, to return to dirt is not bad but necessary for the continual renewal of the cosmos? In the midst of our fear and anxiety, can we “ground” ourselves in trust, that the Love which made us, is remaking us still, and will continue to use us “dirt creatures”* in the transformation of the universe? Can dirt be beautiful without being sanitized? Can mud, smeared on our blind eyes, give us hope to see again?

Great Creator,
who delights in the messiness of mud,
we pray this day for the peace of the dirt.

We praise you for the rich earth beneath our feet,
holding ancient memories of its time among the stars.

We praise you for the dirt’s revolutionary vocation,
breaking down what is spent in order to nurture new life–
dead leaves and moldy fruit,
last month’s casserole forgotten in the fridge,
our beautiful and bloodied bodies —
transformed into new beloved communities
of flesh and fiber.

We praise you for the inherent goodness of mud,
slathered on our world as a healing salve.

May your gentle hands shape the earth each day,
enlivening the dirt with your Breath of Life.
We ask this in the name of Jesus the Peacemaker. Amen.

 

*When God forms the first human from dirt in Genesis 2, the better translation of what is formed (ha-adam apar) is “dirt creature.” The creature represents humanity in its fullness.

Last week, on my day off, I walked from our house to the art museum on campus. For the first time, I realized that I could spot Lake Mendota on Speedway Rd. – just the smallest of vistas between various buildings, but there it was, still frozen and frosty white. Since moving to Madison, I have missed the presence of a body of water just outside my door. I never tired of sitting on our front porch in Linville, looking down the hill to Linville Creek and listening to its gentle current. Leaving that porch and that creek was hard; and the waterfall-themed white noise app I use at night rarely convinces my brain to shut off like Linville Creek did.

But this lake vista, a surprise sighting as I walked on the sidewalk along a street busy with cars, gave me pause – and delight. Each time I have driven up Speedway Rd. since, I have waited for that moment when my eyes catch sight of that sacred body of water, the “blood of the earth.”*

Loving God,
whose presence is like a stream in a desert,
we pray this day for the peace of the waters.

We praise you for the lifeblood of this watershed,
for Yahara, the Catfish River**
for Mendota, the lake “where the man lies”
for Monona, the “Teepee Lake”
for Waubesa, the “Lake of the Rushes”

We praise you for the snow and ice,
that encrust the world,
and slow our hectic pace.

We praise you for the gentle rains,
that awaken the earth in spring,
and nourish the crops in summer.

May your healing love cleanse the waters of this world,
from the aquifers below to the storm clouds above.
We ask this in the name of Jesus the Peacemaker, Amen.

*pulled from a quote by Chuang-tzu, in Grounded: Finding God in the World by Diana Butler Bass.
**Names used by the Ho-Chunk peoples. (Mendota, Yahara, Monona, Waubesa)

During Lent at Madison Mennonite, our weekly Peace Prayers are being shaped by the elements (nature, earth, fire, wind, water.) As I wrote this week’s prayer on nature from Gate 12 at the Dane County Regional Airport, four F-16 fighter jets took off on their daily practice flights, one after another. Thundering by on their exit, the noise shook the terminal. We could hear nothing else. It was terrifying. My body seized, chest tightened, and tears came to my eyes. Christ, have mercy.

While I can hear the jets taking off from our home and feel their abhorrent power even miles away, today, simultaneously writing a prayer of peace for nature, I was utterly convicted again how much our world needs peace. While the empire stays at war, prepares for more war, plays war, and builds ever-more-destructive weapons of devastation, we must pray and work for peace. Christ, have mercy.

Peace Prayer for Nature

Giver of Life,
We pray this day for the peace of the natural world.
We praise you for the trees,
who send their roots deep into the earth, and their branches to the skies.
We praise you for the rising and falling of the landscapes,
the driftless regions, the prairies, the dells, kettles, and moraines.
We praise you for the many creatures who live here,
from the smallest prairie dog,
to the honking wild goose,
to the slinking coyotes.
May your Spirit of Shalom permeate the natural world,
sustaining life in all its good forms.
We ask this in name of the Jesus the Peacemaker, Amen.

In the midst of Love Feast worship service, in which we reflected on the post-resurrection sighting of Jesus in Luke 24, I offered this prayer during our “Joys and Concerns” prayer time.

God of Love,
like the pilgrims on the way to Emmaus,
you journey with us through life.
When we step tentatively through treacherous terrain,
when we march defiantly for liberation,
when we plod through uncertainties and confusion,
and when we dance with unbridled delight,
you accompany us,
taking the same route and matching our pace.

Faithful God,
We offer you these prayers,
trusting that you reveal yourself to us,
on our roads to Emmaus,
in the fellowship of this beloved community,
and in the breaking of bread. 
Amen.