Pastoral Prayer for June 30, 2024
Our pastoral prayer this morning comes to us from Ted Loder.
Please allow his words to become your own.
Help me to trust, Loving God,
that the longing unleased by joy will be fulfilled,
that it is not a joke, a cruel illusion,
or else immunize me to it
lest it only break my heart.
But wait, Lord! Do not immunize me.
Joy cannot be a joke, nor pain the end of it.
I think of Jesus, of the cross, of all the crosses
on the landscape of history,
what mysterious resurrections came from them,
and surely, sneakily, come still.
Is it true, it must be true,
you’ve made it so, haven’t you,
as what we see through a glass darkly now,
that pain and scuffle, loss, anguish, and tears,
suffering endured, shared, contested, prayed through,
becomes the door that opens out to joy.
And yet, by the light of you, I begin to see that’s but half of it.
Joy is a swinging door
that opens back into the pain and scuffle,
the sharing and suffering that makes us human
as Jesus was human, as you will us to be,
for compassion is the hinge on which the door swings,
so we take the might and hope of joy back into the fray
with sacrifice and gratitude the way,
joy pivoting toward bits and pieces becoming a feast,
enough to feed us all.
God, help me with this quandary turning on itself.
Help me to trust that joy is a now hint
of what throbs imperishably
at the heart of eternity,
in your heart, your purposes,
and that all things set against it, gnawing at it,
all the pain, suffering, corruption, exploitation,
all blood-letting and violence, cruelty and disease
are what is perishable and will pass away,
or truer, will be folding into your heart,
transformed, changed, redeemed, as will I,
and that is the deepest joy in the flickering glory
of moments like this
and those you sprinkle on us
in such excessive, endless ways,
gifts to be accepted,
walked with,
walked through
in the gladness and gratitude of these
humble, wondering, timidly brave,
falteringly faithful hearts of ours.
Amen.