Are we the people God calls us to be?  How then do we pray?

by Dr. Peter J. Zografos

I invite you to join with me to examine ways that the communal prayer can reconnect us to spiritual companionship, after all we are Christians together, not apart.  Intercessory prayers in our worship have the potential to make us a holy, welcoming, and inclusive people.  Prayer as hospitality and mercy calls us to heal the wounded and alienated in our own communities.  The Gospel impels faith communities to look inward and outward and to reach beyond limited perceptions of who merit the good news and who are welcome.  We must reach out to all those who are marginalized: gays and lesbians, divorced and separated persons, persons with disabilities, the stranger among us, the abandoned, and the homeless.  Becoming, welcoming, and inclusivity are the hallmarks of the Christian community’s home between the present and the promised future.  Becoming, welcoming, and inclusivity are the characteristics of the “now and not yet” of the kingdom.  Becoming, welcoming, and inclusivity are rooted in and spring from hospitality.  Jesus’ ministry was first about a hospitality that honored the dignity of all.  Can Christian communities become anything less than hospitable, welcoming, and inclusive?  I believe that it is only from this place of welcoming that our faith can do justice.  An inclusive community more clearly points to the obligations of a priestly people to work for social justice and recaptures the practice of journey through the faith with another sojourner.  

As a “feel good” society we seem to avoid the other side of the “good life,” the painful things and that is often mirrored in our prayer.  However, the individual members of the Body of Christ must ask the tough questions of our culture and our religious shortcomings.  How do I contribute to injustice in the world by my decisions? How is sin active in my own life? Am I aware that every decision I make is a moral decision? How have my preconceived ideas about others prevented me from seeing, knowing, and loving them? Who is missing from our assembly? Who have we excluded from the Table? These questions have the power to open the meaning of sin, especially exclusion, to the community so that not only can sin begin to be thought of differently, but also so that the community can begin to form their prayers differently. Faith that does justice requires a direct correspondence between the public worship of the church and the prayerful consciousness of the local church community. And with consciousness raised we become more attentive and intentionally welcoming and inclusive.

Worship is not where we go to avoid the world, retreat from the mundane, or recoil from life. Worship is where we bring our shattered dreams of crushed lives, our lamentations of loss, our sorrows, and the pain of a broken world. Worship is where we also bring our joys and hopes knowing that all is transformed. Intercessions clearly connect worship and life. Through the General Intercessions the community exercises its priestly role to name what we have done, what we have failed to do, and what God has done for us. It is in the Intercessions that our lives are shared with the community of all believers present and far away, and far removed. When we name someone, we give them a place in our consciousness. Conversely, to fail to name someone makes them invisible, in other words, not present to us. When we name someone or something, we recognize their or its importance. To fail to name a thing evil or sin makes it more ugly, more rampant, and more deadly. To name someone in liturgy is to give them a place in our assembly and a claim to our care and conern. To name something evil or sin gives us an opportunity for conversion.

We will work together to provide a guide for parish communities that will restore the hopeful and prayerful anticipation that was present at that first gathering in the Upper Room, where everyone was welcomed. We will reflect upon three questions of inclusion:  1) Are we the people God calls us to be?  2) Who is not at the Table?  3) Does our current practice of Intercessory Prayer help the reign of God? The goal is to assist in the creation of welcoming and inclusive prayers for the transformation of the community in becoming a holy people: a church whose faith does justice. This workshop has the potential to encourage church communities to be aware of the importance of church as a welcoming place through Intercessory Prayer, to encourage congregations to study and reflect on the lectionary readings for the Sunday celebration, to acknowledge the brokenness of not only their own community, but also the world, and to pay attention to who is absent and whose voice has not been heard before they live out in prayerful proclamation their baptismal duty to pray as the Body of Christ. Join me, as together we are challenged to go beyond our own limits of inclusion and justice-making.

(C) 2008 Dr. Peter J. Zografos