A prayer for mothers

God from whom we have all received life,
    Thank you for mothers: for the women who gave each of us birth, and for the women who preceded us in the faith.

Thank you for Eve, the mother of all the living.
    You love all her children: those who came before us, those who will come after us, those who are (or seem to be) our enemies, those whose suffering is distant to us, those whose lives are harmed by the systems from which we profit and prosper. Teach us once more that we all belong to you, that we are one family. Forgive us when we forget that we are still called to be our brothers’, our sisters’ keeper. Give us today our daily bread, that we may learn to share it generously and justly. And let us not neglect the bread, the land, the respect and honour that we have stolen from Australia’s first peoples. Forgive us our trespasses.
    Lord in your mercy,
        Hear our prayer.

Thank you for Sarah, mother of Isaac, who laughed at your crazy promise and then laughed again in joy when she held it in her arms.
    You are patient with all of us who struggle to see your goodness in the pain and misery of the world. You hear the cries of those suffering crippling drought in Zimbabwe, drought and famine in Ethiopia, drought and heat waves in Vietnam, Thailand and India, those thousands who have lost homes in the heat wave and fires of Alberta, those still rebuilding after cyclone Winston in Fiji, those slowly losing their homeland in Bangladesh and low-lying Pacific islands, those reliant upon bleached coral reefs for food and livelihood, and all those whose future seems to have dried up, who cannot imagine how you could be faithful to them on a planet getting dangerously warm. Give us a renewed trust in your goodness, and an eager desire to embody that goodness in your world, to be living symbols of your care and delight in all your children. Thank you for those around the world taking peaceful direct action today and this week to break free from dirty energy and the dirty politics it engenders. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
    Lord in your mercy,
        Hear our prayer.

Thank you for Tamar, mother of Perez and Zerah, a woman abused, exploited, shamed and threatened with death – all due to the failures of men in her life – yet whose resilience and creativity turned the tables on her abusers.
    You cherish all your daughters: including all those bearing scars of the body and of the soul. Too many of those wounds were inflicted by men: fathers, brothers, husbands; bosses, pimps, priests. Break the entitlement, heal the bitterness, dissolve the disdain and dismantle the systems that teach our sons to scorn their mothers and to mistreat the mothers of their own children. Rescue women trapped in cycles of violence and abuse, liberate the enslaved and empower the voiceless. Provide resources to domestic violence services, wisdom to policymakers and humility to your people to learn afresh your gentleness. Deliver us from evil.
    Lord in your mercy,
        Hear our prayer.

Thank you for Jochebed, the mother of Moses, who gave birth in secret then entrusted her child to the waters in order to escape Pharaoh’s murderers.
    You embrace all mothers living under tyrants, and all who entrust their children and even their own lives to the waters. Guard and protect them. Raise up those who will take them into new homes. As we hear of tens of millions fleeing war and persecution, fill our hearts with compassion towards all those in desperate need. You love the mothers of those trapped and suffering on Nauru and Manus Island. You know their fears, the withering of their hopes. Comfort those mourning the death of Omid Masoumali. Preserve the life of Hodan Yasi. And as our government’s policies have faced condemnation in multiple courts this week, bring fresh vision and deep wisdom to our national imagination, that we may share more fully your heart for all who cry for help. Make our churches places where hospitality is practised and practised and practised until it is second nature for your people to extend protection and care. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
    Lord in your mercy,
        Hear our prayer.

Thank you for Naomi, the mother-in-law of Ruth, who became like a mother to her when they were both widowed.
    You welcome all those whose family lives have been fractured and reformed, with bonds formed not by blood but still with great loyalty and love. Be with all those estranged from their mothers, and with mothers estranged from their children. Bring healing, perseverance, insight and even (we dare to ask) the usually-slow often-imperfect miracle of reconciliation. Provide extra nurture and care for those whose mothers have recently died, or for whom today is a fresh reminder of old grief.
    Lord in your mercy,
        Hear our prayer.

Thank you for Hannah, mother of Samuel, who for year on year was deeply distressed at not being able to have children and who faithfully brought her tears to you.
    You care for all those without children who mourn (often in secret): the involuntarily single, the infertile, the ones wounded by broken dreams. Hold close today those who have lost children: whose babies were carried but never met, or who were held but couldn’t be taken home, or who came home but didn’t stay. Build us into a body that is attentive to our members who need particular honour and tenderness.
    Lord in your mercy,
        Hear our prayer.

Thank you for Esther, an orphan who became queen, without recorded children, yet who is known today as the mother of all Persian Jews on account of her thwarting a genocidal plot through her courage and boldness.
    You delight in all who stand against injustice and are not silent in the face of wickedness. Thank you for the examples and legacies of so many women throughout history whose contributions to your people and your world have involved so much more than raising children. Remind us all that we are first your children and that you bless your church with all kinds of gifts. May we cultivate, encourage and equip one another for every act of service without enforcing stereotypes or implying that motherhood is the epitome of femininity.
    Lord in your mercy,
        Hear our prayer.

Thank you for Mary, the mother of our Lord Jesus.
    You love her and all those like her who receive your grace, obey your command, wait for your promise, and heed your Son. May your church follow her example and walk in his true and living way. Give us here in this place humility and patience as we listen to one another and reach out to our neighbours with the message and love of Christ.
    Lord in your mercy,
        Hear our prayer.

Let us pray together the family prayer that Mary’s son taught us.
    Our Father in heaven,
        Hallowed be your name…

Prisoners of hope

The former South African archbishop Desmond Tutu used to say, "we are prisoners of hope", echoing the prophet Zechariah (9.2). That is, in the midst of apartheid South Africa, the archbishop and the Christians with him felt that they were hemmed in, restricted, compelled, prisoners – but not prisoners of the racist laws that saw black people treated as less human than white people – Tutu was a prisoner of hope. It was hope in God that hemmed him in, restricted him, compelled him. He was not free. He was not free to give in to despair, to give up, to lie down, to blend in. He was not free to live his life in fear, because he was a prisoner of hope.

Now this might sound like mere pious sentiment, but it was powerfully expressed one day when Archbishop Tutu was preaching in St George’s Cathedral in Cape Town. Suddenly, during the middle of the sermon, a large armed squad of the notorious South African Security Police broke into the Cathedral and surrounded the congregation, whom they outnumbered. They did not attack, but instead, some of them pulled out writing pads and tape recorders to record whatever Tutu said, thereby threatening him with consequences for any bold prophetic utterances or political comments he might make. They had already arrested Tutu and other church leaders just a few weeks before and kept them in gaol for several days to make the clear point: religious leaders who speak out about apartheid will be treated just like any other opponents of the regime.

What would you do in such a situation? Stop the sermon? Just keep going? Continue criticising the regime and get arrested or worse? Now maybe even the thought of standing in front of a congregation giving a sermon is scary enough, but what would you have done if you were a congregation member? What would you have been hoping Tutu would do? One misstep could land you all in gaol.

According to eyewitness Jim Wallis, the Archbishop looked intently at the intruders for a few moments as they stood there with their guns, notepads and tape recorders then he said, “You are powerful, very powerful. But I serve a God who cannot be mocked. Since you have already lost, I invite you today to come and join the winning side!” He said it with a smile on his face and enticing warmth in his invitation, but with a clarity and a boldness that took everyone’s breath away. The congregation was transformed by this extraordinary challenge to political tyranny. According to Wallis,

“From a cowering fear of the heavily armed security forces that surrounded the cathedral and greatly outnumbered the band of worshippers, we literally leaped to our feet, shouted the praises of God and began… dancing. (What is it about dancing that enacts and embodies the spirit of hope?) We danced out of the cathedral to meet the awaiting police and military forces of apartheid, who hardly expected a confrontation with dancing worshippers. Not knowing what else to do, they backed up to provide the space for the people of faith to dance for freedom in the streets of South Africa.”

- Jim Wallis, God's Politics (Oxford: Lion, 2006), 353.

This is an extract from a sermon a few years ago. My next post will make clear why I thought of this story recently.

Are you already dead?

"I say to you this morning that if you have never found something so dear and so precious to you that you will die for it then you aren’t fit to live. You may be thirty eight years old, as I happen to be, and one day some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause and you refuse to do it because you are afraid; you refuse to do it because you want to live longer; you’re afraid you will lose your job; or you’re afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity; or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you, shoot at you, or bomb your house and so you refuse to take a stand. Well you may go on and live until you’re ninety, but you’re just as dead at thirty eight as you would be at ninety. And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. You died when you refused to stand up for right. You died when you refused to stand up for truth. You died when you refused to stand up for justice."

- Martin Luther King, from a 1967 speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta,
titled “But if Not“.

Check your pulse. Are you already dead? Are you largely occupied with expanding and protecting your goods, preserving your health and massaging your reputation?

There are things worse than death. And so there are things worth dying for. Would you know one if you saw it?
H/T Milan.

Perplexed but not in despair: Christian pessimism

"We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair" - 2 Corinthians 4.8.

This is a verse I have often reflected upon, and it seems to me to justify a certain kind of Christian pessimism. Paul is no triumphalist; he makes no claim that the Christian life will consist of steady improvement or sudden perfection. Affliction, difficulty, confusion, grief, yearning, lament, dissatisfaction, weakness, dying: these all belong to the normal Christian experience. Faith in Christ is not a miracle cure for all of life's ills. In fact, it is what enables one to let go of all such delusions as the inevitability of progress or the impossibility of failure, to embrace one's finitude and acknowledge one's fallenness and the brokenness of the whole created order without being crushed by fear or guilt in the process.

Of course, such pessimism is not the whole story, but it is a very important part. Without it, faith is shallow, or simply in denial. Unless we are willing to lose all our false hopes, then real hope is obscured and diluted. Christian faith means the courage to face the truth about ourselves and our inability to secure the results we most earnestly desire.

Karl Rahner offers these thoughts under the heading of "Christian pessimism" as a reflection on 2 Corinthians 4.8.

“Our existence is one of radical perplexity. We have neither the right nor the possibility to ignore this situation or to believe that we can abolish it in any dimension of our experience. I need not point out, or bemoan in detail, the daily experiences that make us perplexed.

“In the beginning of Scripture God tells us that we must rule over nature and her powers. When we do it we start misusing them. We invent all kinds of social systems, and every one of them turns without fail into an occasion of injustice and abuse of power. We claim that we are looking for peace among all peoples, and we get ready for war in order to find peace. The whole of human history is a perpetual swinging back and forth between individualism and collectivism, and humanity has never succeeded in discovering a permanent and universally acceptable compromise between these basic demands of human nature.

“What matters here however is to understand that, for a Christian anthropology, this perplexity in human existence is not merely a transitory stage that, with patience and creative imagination, might eventually be removed from human existence. It is a permanent existential of humanity in history and, although it keeps assuming new forms, it can never be wholly overcome in history. This is an essential feature of a Christian pessimism. It does not matter here whether we explain this pessimism through the fact that we are creatures, and finite creatures at that, or through an appeal to original sin, or by making our ineradicable sinfulness an argument for pessimism.

“Of course, we cannot say that human finitude and historicity alone explain the fact that history cannot follow its course without friction and without blind alleys. Nor can this Christian pessimism be justified merely by the fact that it is impossible fully to harmonize all human knowledge with its many disparate sources, or to build a fully harmonious praxis on the basis of such disparate knowledge. We might also mention that we can never fully understand the meaning of suffering and death. Yet in spite of all this, the Christian interpretation of human existence says that within history, it is never possible wholly and definitively to overcome the riddles of human existence and history, which we experience so clearly and so painfully. Such a hope is excluded by the Christian conviction that we arrive at God’s definitive realm only by passing through death, which itself is the ultimate and all-embracing enigma of human existence. It is true that Christian hope has the right and the duty to project, in the empirical space of our human existence, an image and a promise of a definitive existence. But ultimately this is only the manner in which we practice faith in the consummation that God alone gives, that God’s self is.

“People are afraid of this pessimism. They do not accept it. They repress it. That is why it is the first task of Christian preaching to speak up for it.”

- Karl Rahner, "Christian Pessimism" in Theological Investigations XXII
(trans. Joseph Donceel; London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1991), 156-57.

Faith's daring

"Only a Christian who does not allow himself to be infected by modern humanity's neurotic anxiety [...] has any hope of exercising a Christian influence on this age. He will not haughtily turn away from the anxiety of his fellow men and fellow Christians but will show them how to extricate themselves from their fruitless withdrawal into themselves and will point out the paths by which they can step out into the open, into faith's daring."

- Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Christian and Anxiety (trans. Dennis D. Martin and Michael J. Miller; San Francisco: Igatius Press, 2000), 88.

What are these paths? How can a Christian discover and share these paths from fearful fruitlessness to faithful daring today?