Like so many others, I watched the Presidential Debate on Sunday night. I gritted my teeth and joined others in lamentation and dismay on Twitter. When the debate was nearly over, one of my friends confessed via group text that she’d drunk way more wine that she intended while watching these two presidential hopefuls on her computer screen.
There were words of affirmation and support from the other pastors in that text. Each of them sharing in the unique struggle of being a pastor in the middle of this particular election. Maybe it’s always this bad. Maybe this year is especially horrible. Maybe it always feels this charged. I’m never quite sure but unlike my sisters in Christ, I am not pastoring right now. I am without a church to lead for this season.
I am not spending as much time worrying about how to preach on Sunday or how to heal the divides between those that don’t share the same political perspective. (Instead, I’m hiding out on a military post and wondering what it means to be a military spouse in this middle of all of this election nonsense.) My thoughts aren’t so much on how to lead the church through this quagmire but how to orient my own heart and mind. Perhaps these are not different things after all.
A colleague directed me to read the Epistle Lesson for this coming Sunday. She read it preparing for worship and felt it to be the very words that she needed to hear from God. I have to say that I concur. I’ve adapted the words from the New Revised Standard Version to read more like a prayer than an exhortation from Paul (or someone who wants to be Paul). I intend to use it in my personal devotion but it might be used each week in worship leading up to Election Day in place of a prayer of confession.
I confess that I’m writing this prayer just after finishing reading this week’s chapter in Drew G.I. Hart’s Trouble I’ve Seen as part of the RevGal’s Anti-Racism Project. So the language might sound a bit like the chapter I’ve just read. Even as a personal prayer, the language is plural. It’s not just my personal transformation that matters, but how I am transformed to love and share in this life with others.
Prayer Before Election Day 2016
Inspired by 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
O God, help us to remember how you called us out
and gathered us from the margins to be your church.
Every good word you have spoken across the generations
reminds us of this radical reorientation you made in our world.
Teach us again. Correct us and train us in your righteousness,
so that every one of us might be so well equipped in your love that we do not seek to dominate and conquer but to be changed by your message for this world.
Help us to continue.
Remind us that to fight the good fight and carry out our ministry fully
is to remember that good news can be found in hardship
and that there is salvation that can change our whole world in Jesus Christ.
Let us not die, but let us live in your hope, O God.
Help us to continue.
For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine,
but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves
teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away
from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.
Let it be Christ who judges, not us.
Convince us, rebuke us, and encourage us,
with the utmost patience in your teaching.
Help us to continue.
Do not let us forget what we have learned and firmly believed in every good word you have spoken. Let it be that radical change toward the kingdom that helps us to decide how what we will preach and what we will teach. Help us to continue in the radical way of your hope and your love, especially in this unfavorable time, O God.
Check back for more Ingredients for Worship next Tuesday and don’t forget to share what you’ve cooked up in the comments below!
Cooking with Elsa 