Pentecost Prayer 2009

I was asked to offer the Prayers of the People this Pentecost Sunday. At my former church I regularly gave the Pastoral Prayer in the worship service. As a matter of course a pastoral staff member led in that prayer during Sunday worship, and on occasion, a church member would. The practice is opposite at my current church, where the norm is to have the Prayers of the People led by a church member, and on occasion, a pastoral staff member leads it. Here is the prayer for Pentecost Sunday:

Our Creator God,
You who birthed your Church
with rushing wind and tongues of fire;
In this season of Pentecost
we celebrate the life of your Church.
You have redeemed us and called us the Bride of Christ,
and so we have become a new creation;
Called to live in faith and action,
to light the world aflame with your love
and toil to realize your kingdom on earth
as it is in heaven.

But we confess our God,
that often we have lived in the shadow of the Old Nature,
living in the illusion of the search for the certain
rather than in faith.
And we have hidden our light from the world
by keeping it behind the vanity of amenability
and the opaque curtain of accommodation.
You have promised, O God,
That you will forgive our shortcomings,
if we confess them in the name of your Son;
So we confess today, that in Christ, we can love deeper than we have,
act kinder, walk humbler, trust more, give more.

We trust in your word, and with this confession
celebrate the liberating truth
that the expanse of oceans, languages, races, and cultures
do not separate your Church
just as the expanse between heaven and earth
cannot separate us from
your redeeming love.
Amen.

The prayer is adapted from the book, Let Us Pray: Contemporary Prayers for the Seasons of the Church. Of the book a member of my former church said, “Oh, so that’s what you preachers do with all those prayers you write!” Well, only some of us compile them into collections. Feel free to use the prayer next year if you like.