Sunday, October 16, 2011
Offered by Calum I. MacLeod, Executive Associate Pastor

We are shaky people, living in a shaky world,
holding on to shaky assumptions, which once were certainties;
seeking understanding where too often our faith itself is shaky.

The economy falters, we fear for our jobs,
or struggle to find work; our homes are no longer
the safe and growing investments they once were.

Perhaps our prayers should be for a return to how things used to be—
vibrant consumerism, robust markets, rising house prices—
but that would only perpetuate the boom-bust cycle
and the desperate inequality between haves and have-nots
on which that is predicated.

Or we should pray for the restoration of old-time religion,
grounded in purportedly absolute claims,
where God is “three angry letters in a book,”
Jesus is our mild-mannered Caucasian-looking friend,
and no one who is different, other, is welcome in the body.

Or pray, O God, for the reestablishment of the old order,
when we knew who the enemy was (or thought we did)
and were content to live in the shadow of mutually assured destruction.

We are shaky people, O God.
But this is not new for you,
because so were Abraham and Moses,
Ruth and Rahab, Isaiah and Peter,
and the man who confessed to his unbelief,
and Jesus, even Jesus, as he prayed in Gethsemane, “Let this cup pass.”

So perhaps, God of love, our prayers, the prayers of the people,
the prayers of your people at Fourth Presbyterian Church this Sunday,
are that you would be our God as you were to our foremothers and forefathers in the faith

so that like Abraham we would heed your call to new things and new places,
like Moses we would trust that you love us even in our imperfection,
like Ruth we would gladly embrace the unexpected,
like Rahab we would do that which is right in your eyes,
even if it means putting ourselves in danger’s way,
like Isaiah we would overcome our fears to proclaim justice,
like Peter we would proclaim an ethic of inclusion of the other,
like the anxious father, that our honest doubts would lead us to deeper faith,
like Jesus—like Jesus that we would love the world and serve it, forgive, heal.

We are shaky people, O God, but that is not new for you.

Draw close to your people now and hear us as we offer our prayers in silence . . .

Our Father . . .

Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church