Litany for a Nation Brutalized by Violence

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I have written this litany as an offering. Finding words for the depth and breadth of what the collective, and in particular the Black and Asian communities, are experiencing (and have for centuries) in terms of violence feels impossible. But I feel our communities need to speak aloud about this to God, together. Not for some hollow "unity." But for sacred lament and consciousness.

I have tried to articulate these far-reaching problems - gun violence, violence against Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian folks, school and mass shootings, and more in this prayer of lament. But the task feels monumental. It is imperfect, but something is better than nothing for putting words and action to this lament. .

It is my hope that we will be drawn in to peace, and toward a non-violent, equitable future, toward Heaven on Earth. All beings safe. All beings provided for. All beings held accountable to love. Amen. Amen. May it be so.



God, we bring to you our lament 
And our sorrow. 

We are a people undone, 
Brutalized by violence:
By gun violence, 
By police violence, 
By violence against Black and Brown people, 
By violence against Indigenous and Asian people. 

Our streets are blood-soaked, 
And our history tainted by supremacist evil. 
We are crying out in lament, 
And we know that you weep with us. 

We grieve every lost life. 
We grieve every orphaned child. 
We grieve alongside every mourning family. 
We grieve every trauma and tragedy. 

We reject every system that makes some of us safe at the expense of the lives of others. 
We reject white supremacy and police militarization.
We reject government-sanctioned execution. 
We reject systems of mass incarceration. 
We reject systems that prioritize whiteness over all other people.
We reject systems of poverty and inequity.  

We lament; and we gather our power. 
We combine our resources to re-imagine this world,
To abolish inequity.
To create a safe and harmonious reality for every person. 
We join with those who have been working for justice tirelessly for decades. 
We apply our energy, money, time, and voices to this work. 

May the government of this nation be moved to right action, 
May the churches of this nation be spurred to work for justice. 
May the local and community leaders of this nation create positive change. 
May the economic systems of this nation cease to reward evil.  
May those who remain asleep or apathetic to injustice become conscious participants for good.
May we as individuals hold our leaders, government, and ourselves accountable to the work.

Let the fire of justice burn in every heart
So that every mother’s child may live in peace and safety.

Amen. 


Lament for Breonna

This lament is in response to the murder of Breonna Taylor by police officers in Louisville, KY on March 13, 2020. As of Wednesday, September 23, the officers who killed her have received no indictments for her wrongful death, nor any repercussions at all. Another in a long line of Black bodies killed by the state.

God, this is not the world we want to live in:
Where murderers go free,
Where the state kills innocents,
Where the political system justifies lynching,
Where the system protects the powerful and leaves the innocent to their fate. 
Where justice is not done. 

This injustice is not new. No. 
It is an old, old pattern: 
Of racism, 
Of white supremacy, 
Of power-hoarding, 
Of greed,
Of theft, 
Of ego. 

We cry out for the abolishment of unjust systems. 
We cry out for an end to police abuse of power. 
We cry out for an end to the state-sanctioned murder of innocents. 
We cry out for an end to the abuse and murder of Black lives.
We cry out for an end to political stalemate that does not legislate protections. 
We cry out for Breonna’s family and loved ones. 

We lament Breonna’s lost future here on earth. 
We lament her life cut short. 
We lament the trauma of her death. 
We lament the corrupt officers who got off without consequence. 
We lament the pain and grief of all who mourn her. 
We lament the long line of martyrs Breonna joins. 

Give us strength, oh God, to continue the work. 
Strength to be struck down but not destroyed, 
To be persecuted but not forsaken,
To be mystified but not despairing (1). 

Give ear to our voices, God, 
Hear the pleas of the righteous. 
Cast down the mighty from their thrones.
Lift up the lowly (2). 

  1. 2 Corinthians 4:8,9

  2. Luke 1:52

Proper 17 (Year A): Litany for Suffering

(Note: this litany goes along with the First Testament reading for this week. )

In Matthew 16, this week’s Lectionary Gospel reading, Jesus is clear with his followers about what’s ahead: great suffering. Peter can’t stand the thought. He thinks everything must be wrong if suffering is involved. Jesus rebukes him strongly for this. 

Because he knows and points out that suffering is part of this journey here. Just because there’s suffering doesn’t mean he’s on the wrong path. He won’t be exempt from the human condition, from an experience of suffering, loss, death, betrayal, pain. He doesn’t seek it out, but he knows it will find him. 

I never want to glorify suffering, nor insist upon it. I never want to cause or sanctify it. Rather I want to acknowledge it when it comes, and work to remedy it. I want a world in which suffering is no more. 

God, we are suffering. Our siblings are suffering.
Suffering from the effects of systemic injustice,
Brutality and violence,
Racism and inequity,
Political polarization and environmental abuse,
Greed and oppression.

Juneteenth: Some Links and Prayers

Hello friends, readers, and fellow prayer-pray-ers. In honor of Juneteenth today, I’d like to call your attention to a few items of interest and invite you into ongoing solidarity, work, and prayer for Black people’s liberation.

Happy Juneteenth. May we work and pray for the freedom and thriving of all humans, especially Black, Brown, and Indigenous humans; and understand our Oneness and the ways our collective liberation is bound up with one another’s.
-f

Proper 8 (Year A): Litany for God Who Sees

This week’s Lectionary Torah selection is from Genesis 21, the story of Hagar and Ishmael in the desert, runaways from their oppressive masters.God saves Hagar and the child from death. But in writing for this moment, I have intuitively backed up in the chronology of the story, back to the moment when Hagar, in another runaway moment, meets the angel of God who encourages her. She becomes one of the first to give God a name, the God Who Sees Me. 

The story of Hagar is powerful in its themes of slavery and oppression, of marginalized peoples gaining a voice, of violence against women, and of the God Who Sees oppressed people. The God Who Pays Attention to the most vulnerable. The God Who Cares for the Needy. These themes of God’s heart are reinforced in other Lectionary passages for this week, particularly Psalm 86 & Jeremiah 20. 

I hope you’ll humor me in this deviation from the Lectionary text, but I think it's a worthwhile move, given the cultural and historic moment. 


God, more people are waking up to ways our society has failed,
Failed those in the minority,
Those experiencing economic scarcity,
Those imprisoned,
Those on the margins of the predominant culture,
Those who don’t live inside the status quo…

Litany for Forgotten Hope (Ordinary Time, Year A)

Hi! In 2019 I moved much of my work over to Patreon
as part of my effort to make this work sustainable.
So thanks for reading and subscribing.
You can find archived litanies here, and purchase my book here.

This litany references the Lectionary passage from Genesis 18 where Abraham and Sarah receive 3 visitors who tell them that God’s promise to them of a community of offspring (Genesis 17) will be fulfilled, and that Sarah will give birth to a son in her elder years. I imagine their hope for that new, future family was difficult to remember. Just as it is at various times difficult for us to remember our hope in the Commonwealth of God, the Kin-dom of God, and its nearness to us, just at the horizon of today. 

God, the times we live in are chaotic and divisive,
Revealing systemic injusticeAnd institutionalized inequity.
We feel the unrest of our nations.We feel the undercurrent of fear.
We feel the stress of uncertainty. 

Day of Pentecost (Year A): Litany for Holy Spirit Fire

I'll mostly let Frederick Buechner do the commenting this week. Except to say, the Lectionary is never the wrong thing for the moment.  And to say: Rest in peace George Floyd, who was murdered in a racist act of police brutality earlier this week.

“Every morning you should wake up in your bed and ask yourself: "Can I believe it all again today?" No, better still, don't ask it till after you've read The New York Times, till after you've studied that daily record of the world's brokenness and corruption, which should always stand side by side with your Bible. Then ask yourself if you can believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ again for that particular day. If your answer's always Yes, then you probably don't know what believing means. At least five times out of ten the answer should be No because the No is as important as the Yes, maybe more so. The No is what proves you're human in case you should ever doubt it. And then if some morning the answer happens to be really Yes, it should be a Yes that's choked with confession and tears and. . . great laughter.”

― Frederick Buechner

God, our world is rife with violence and evil
With cruelty, injustice, and materialism.
We need Holy Spirit’s fire
To burn away our unjust systems…

Litany for Revealing

Last week’s news about large-scale sexual abuse of children by clergy in a Catholic diocese in Pennsylvania has shaken and sickened a lot of people, myself included. It’s another example of the great revealing (apocalypse) that is happening in these days. Hidden things are coming to light. #metoo and #churchtoo are happening. White supremacy and racism are coming to the forefront of the collective consciousness in a new way. Motives and deep-seated sins, what the scriptures call “powers, principalities, and spiritual forces,” are being revealed. Evils that have gone unacknowledged (in a mainstream way) are coming into light.

I believe this is the Community of Heaven breaking in. And our task is not to resist it, but to become contemplative, to listen and examine our complicities, to search our own hearts; to “get our people,” as my Black teachers say - by which they mean we should be speaking to our own tribes and inner circles and helping them get on board and understand.

Whenever I think of what’s been happening the last couple of years*, I get the image in my mind of a glacier moving over a land mass, slowly slowly, leaving behind a mess of rubble and fertile soil and reshaped landscape. Our first step is admitting our landscape needs reshaping, which we can’t see unless we step back far enough to get a good view. The evidence is in every school shooting, every Black life ended by police, every Nazi rally, every sexual abuse scandal, every Latinx child separated from her parents at the border, every executed prisoner, and on and on. Without a doubt, our landscape needs reshaping.

And it’s coming. Millimeter by millimeter. Breath by breath. Prayer by prayer. Awakening by awakening. It’s coming and is happening now. The kingdom of God is at hand. The Community of Heaven has work to do. We shirk and deny and resist and cling to the past at our own risk. Help or get out of the way.

 

God, forces are at work in our world,
Which are at odds with your goals:
Death and destruction,
Injustice and abuse,
Apathy and self-centeredness,
Violence and hatred,
Status quo and inertia,
Distraction and disregard.

Evil is being revealed,
And hidden sins brought to light.
But ahead we can see,
Your kingdom coming,
Your people awakening,
Your glory shining.

We can see how today’s messy revealing
Is tomorrow’s hope,
How the rubble of today’s destroyed systems
Is tomorrow’s fertile soil.

So we trust,
And we follow,
And we stay awake
And we keep watch.
And we don’t shirk our work,
And we don’t deny our complicity,
And we don’t disempower the prophets,
And we don’t silence the marginalized.
And we don’t surround ourselves with so much noise that we can’t hear your voice.
And we don’t allow ourselves to despair.

We beat our swords into ploughshares.
We set our tables and open our doors.
We make way for the Community of God.
We prepare the way of the Lord.

Help us to humbly accept all the change that must happen,
In our society and in our own hearts,
To work together for new life and for good,
And to walk the peaceful way of Christ. Amen

 

*Really, what's been happening has been happening for a couple millenia, with various movements and intensities. I'm taking a micro-within-a-macro view here. With lots of gratitude and appreciation for the saints who have gone before me.
 

Litany for Embracing Race

As I have been getting an education on race, and as injustices and harm continue to happen, and as our society's inherent racism continues to be revealed; I feel compelled to write about race. I write as a white person primarily to white people. I write as a pastor, sometimes preacher, friend, and as an ally of People of Color. If you need a place to start your education, I recommend Austin Channing-Brown's _I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness_.


God, we can get an education in injustice,
If we are open to receiving it.
Soften our hearts, oh God,
That we may be willing to learn.

We acknowledge that the structures that make up our society have advantaged whiteness,
And disadvantaged People of Color.
We acknowledge that our Black and Brown siblings suffer in the same institutions and circumstances
In which whiteness finds comfort.
We acknowledge that privilege has suffering as its underbelly,
And oppression as its hidden cost.

We know that the time has come for our collective blindness to be revoked,
For the comfort of whiteness to lose priority,
For the weight of institutional injustice to be lifted,
For us to confront our pride,
For humility to become our prized virtue,
For listening to characterize our conversations.

Thank you for sending us the Christ
To show us a vision of a New Society
     A New City
     A New Era
     A New Government
     A New Law:
Where humanity is seen and valued;
Where privilege is a thing to be shared;
Where deference and gentleness are our best conventions;
Where institutions care for the disadvantaged;
Where race is not only tolerated, but embraced and admired;
Where diversity is beauty;
Where we are able to look beyond basic equality,
     toward Abundant Life and thriving for all (1).

And we are thankful, Oh God, for that institution begun by Christ -
The Church, the Body of Christ on Earth -
In which we re-imagine human relationships in light of Christ’s priorities;
And for this life you give us, which is love’s proving ground.

Amen

1) John 10:10