Advent Week 1 (Year B, 2020): Destruction & Stirring

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With this litany and the Lectionary selections for November 29, 2020, we begin a new Liturgical year. I do try to provide Advent litanies earlier than normal, as I understand clergy need to prepare for these church seasons in advance.

This litany follows closely with the themes presented in the Lectionary selections for Week 1 of Advent, Year B: themes of destruction, and the stirring of the reign of God on the horizon; of shift that are long-awaited and long-watched for.

This year, Advent’s subtle and shadowy themes resonate for me even more profoundly than usual, given the struggles of the year. I can echo the prophet Isaiah more readily this year: “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” (Isaiah 64:1). We have felt the metaphors of the darkened sun and moon, the stars falling from the heavens, which Jesus describes in Mark 13, if we are paying attention. The shifts the scriptures describe - when the Son of Man comes in glory, when God’s might comes to save us (Psalm 80:2), when restoration comes (Psalm 80:7) - feel crucial, necessary, imminent.

In this year's Advent series, I'm using this phrase "There is a moment" as an opening line rather than the usual address of God. This is an intentional choice to help place us in the Now/Not Yet into which Advent invites us, and as a way to acknowledge the rumble of longing beneath our current reality. 


There is a moment,
As when fire kindles brushwood
Or heat brings water to a boil (1),
When the character of God is revealed…



Proper 27 (Year A, 2020): Litany for Lady Wisdom

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Well, I just had to; Lady Wisdom is too beautiful and compelling not to address. So here is another litany for this week, Proper 27, Year A, based in the account of Lady Wisdom as told in the Wisdom of Solomon.

God, we are looking the one who makes Herself found by seekers:
Lady Wisdom (1).
We fix our thoughts on her
And she graciously appears (2).

Proper 26 (Year A, 2020): Litany for Mirroring

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In this week’s Lectionary selections, the prophet Micah calls out those who lead God’s “people astray, who cry "Peace" when they have something to eat, but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths” (Micah 3;5).

And Christ, in an echo of Micah’s fiery whistleblowing, calls out the scribes and Pharisees of his day: “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.” (Matthew 23:4)

As we finish out this election cycle over the next week, it makes sense to become reflective about our society. How do we treat those who “put nothing in their mouths,” the hungry, poor, houseless? What burdens do we lay on the shoulders of the disabled, the least politically powerful, the least upwardly mobile, the sick? And how might we become willing to move them? These are, in part, what we are voting about. But they are also an invitation to reflect on our own lives and practice. And we know from these sacred scriptures, that God is silence and shadow toward the unjust (Micah 3: 6,7); that God humbles the exalted and exalts the humble (Matthew 23:12).

Are we listening to and voting in solidarity with the most marginalized people in society? Are we listening to Black women, Women of Color, LGBTQ voices, the perspectives of the Disabled, the unjustly incarcerated, the under-resourced? This is what we have the opportunity to reflect on now, that we are invited into both by this Lectionary and by this cultural and historic moment.

God, you invite us to hold the scriptures up
LIke a mirror ,
To perceive ourselves in their plane,
To reflect upon our works, policies, and actions….

Proper 23 (Year A, 2020): Litany for the Banquet

This week's litany centers around the text from Matthew 22, the story of the banquet, and Psalm 23 - two invitations into "green pastures and still waters," and into celebration of life amidst all the turmoil. 

(Here is the litany for the same lectionary selections from Year A which I wrote in 2017: Litany for Rescue. )

God, let your peace find every crack possible (1)
Through which to seep into our hearts;
Let it have the persistence of water
To soften every hardened place within us.