Prayer, day 2299: Inspired by the Lord's Prayer

Our Loving Light in heaven,
we are called to forgive others
as much as You forgive us.

Help us let go of anger and resentment
when we have been wronged,
and nurture understanding
in place of feeding the weeds of rage.

Help us to understand
that all are wounded and in need of healing,
including ourselves.

Help us to lower our defenses
and not impugn the motives of those we love,
opening ourselves to the vulnerability and blessing of love.

Help us to judge
only as harshly as we ourselves wish to be judged,
and no more.

For You are our loving God,
and You forgive us repeatedly when we fail You.

Teach us that in bearing grudges
we grip a weight that will sink us,
and when harboring anger
we risk loss in a sea of recrimination.

Let us embrace those who seek our pardon,
and repair mutual injury
with the balm of Love that never fails.

O Loving One, hear our prayers
and grant your benediction and grace
to those whose needs we now raise before You.

Amen.

As We Are Forgiven: Speaking to the Soul for May 15, 2019

“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”- Luke 6:37, from today’s daily office readings

Last night, a sudden spring storm rolled through the night, and all three of our dogs did not handle it well, so, like a good dogmom, I found myself up comforting three furballs who draped over me in various levels of unhappiness until it stopped. The flashes of lightning were beautiful to me, though, and I watched the brief light show with amazement and gratitude, and heard the first bird of the morning trill out its relief when the storm finally passed.

This also meant I took the opportunity to pray morning prayer exceedingly early for one who is a nightowl. The verse about forgiveness is the one that stayed with me after I had closed my computer and closed my eyes for a few moments. It stayed with me, because I know that forgiveness is something with which I often struggle mightily—especially forgiving myself.

I had been thinking about forgiveness, especially self-forgiveness, since the Sunday before last, when our gospel text in the lectionary was John 21:21-19, the story about Jesus appearing to the disciples as they are fishing on the Sea of Tiberias, handing out fishing advice and making them breakfast. As part of the conversation around the charcoal fire, the risen Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves Jesus, and when Peter answers in the affirmative, Jesus admonishes him to feed and care for Jesus’s sheep.

I imagined Peter seeing that charcoal fire burning on the shore and remembering the last time he had stood around one, denying Jesus three times, adding yet another betrayal of Jesus on a night of betrayal. I imagined Peter expecting condemnation and around that breakfast fire, yet instead being fed and brought toward healing. Three times Peter had denied Jesus—and three times Jesus asked Peter if he loved him, and then commanding him to carry out his leadership of the nascent Church. Each question about love cancelled out a denial on the night of Jesus’s betrayal, and reminded Peter that he was forgiven for his momentary failure of nerve that led to those famous denials. Now all Peter had to do was to forgive himself, which was no small thing.

The verse from Luke about forgiveness in today’s daily office leads us to remember the grace of forgiveness on both the person wronged as well as the recipient. It hews closely to the statement in the Lord’s Prayer about forgiveness that goes even further: “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us,” we pray, often sleepwalking through those words without really examining them.  

Yet what a challenge to us to remember that forgiveness is a two-way street, and that it heals us when we are wronged as much as when we are the one in need of forgiveness. What a relief when we let go our the grudges we bear against those who have hurt us, whether they are sorry or not, when we release the Jacob Marley-like chains of resentment that we drape around our own necks, and even more so when we forgive ourselves for the failures that haunt us like Marley’s ghost. Once you lay that weight down, the relief cuts through the darkness like the lightning in that spring storm, and awakens us to new levels of gratitude and healing. The storms of betrayal and self-recrimination subside within us, and call us to breathe deeply the cool clean air of forgiveness.

Our Loving Light in heaven,
we are called to forgive others
as much as You forgive us.

Help us let go of anger and resentment
when we have been wronged,
and nurture understanding
in place of feeding the weeds of rage.
Help us to understand
that all are wounded and in need of healing,
including ourselves.
Help us to lower our defenses
and not impugn the motives of those we love,
opening ourselves to the vulnerability and blessing of love.

Help us to judge only as harshly
as we ourselves wish to be judged,
and no more.
For You are our loving God,
and You forgive us repeatedly
when we fail You.
Teach us that in bearing grudges
we grip a weight that will sink us,
and when harboring anger
we risk loss in a sea of recrimination.

Let us embrace those who seek our pardon,
and repair mutual injury
with the balm of Love that never fails.
O Loving One, hear our prayers
and grant your benediction and grace
to those whose needs we now raise before You.

Amen.



This was first published at the Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on May 15, 2019.

Prayer, day 2298: Inspired by the Beatitudes

O God, You bless us in every moment,
and uphold us by the strength of your Love:
hear our prayer, for our hope is in You. 

Bless those who work as your servants,
for they have fixed their hearts upon salvation in each moment.
Bless those who are gentle and kind,
for they draw others to You through their witness.
Bless those who hunger for a just society,
for they seek to build the kingdom of God.
Bless those who demonstrate mercy and forgiveness,
for they live out a life of Love and Charity.
Bless those who are innocent and childlike,
for their hearts are always open to You.
Bless those who spread peace in their wake,
for they call us to live as better people and children of your household.
Bless those who suffer for their faith,
for their resolve will never be shaken.
Bless those who cry out to You,
for they know that God will comfort them in their needs.

Amen.

Prayer 2297: For a Funeral for a Friend

Holy One,
we bow before you in gratitude,
aware of the hand of grace uphold us in our lives.
You, O God, are abounding in mercy:
You know our sorrows and our joys,
and are with us always.
We give you thanks and praise always
for all your blessings, O Lord of Life.
You are ever-present North Star,
and your guiding love is ever before us,
leading us on in discipleship and communion.
Be our shade and comfort, O Blessed Savior,
as we laugh and as we weep,
as we celebrate and as we mourn,
we humbly pray.
Spirit of the Living God,
breathe upon us your peace,
and comfort and shield all those
whom we remember before our God
as we pray.

Amen.

Better Sheep: Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Easter C (Shepherd Sunday)

We all know today’s psalm. We’ve heard it in movies and on TV shows and at funerals. We've heard it in funerals in movies and on TV. We’ve prayed it in times of stress, or maybe, as I often do, to go to sleep at night. Although most of us go automatically to the KJV of it, with its magisterial language, translators are continually rewording it, trying to get the nuances of the psalm right.

For instance, listen to these different interpretations of the first verse alone:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. (NKJV)
Yahweh is my shepherd; I lack nothing, (New Jerusalem)
O God, You are my shepherd; I shall not be in want. (St. Helena Psalter)
O my Beloved, You are my shepherd, I shall not want; (Nan C. Merrill, Psalms for Praying)
The Lord takes care of me as his sheep; I will not be without any good thing. (Bible in Basic English) 
God is my Shepherd! I don’t need a thing! (The Message)

Just this year, Robert Alter completed his sweeping translation and commentary of the entire Hebrew Scriptures, and his version goes like this:

The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
In grass meadows He makes me lie down,
by quiet waters guides me.
My life He brings back.
He leads me on pathways of justice
for His name’s sake.
Though I walk in the vale of death’s shadow,
I fear no harm,
For You are with me.
Your rod and Your staff—
It is they that console me.
You set out a table before me
in the face of my foes.
You moisten my head with oil,
my cup overflows.
Let but goodness and kindness pursue me
all the days of my life.
And I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
for many long days.(1)

The image of the shepherd who is devoted to his or her flock is an image for leadership and governance throughout scriptures. When it is applied to God, it becomes yet another startling metaphor for its listeners, who knew that shepherds were humble folk, and most of the time when we think of God, “humble” doesn’t immediately come to mind. But maybe it should.

Too often, we think of God and emphasize might, power, vengeance. Smiting. I love that scene in Bruce Almighty when an infuriated Bruce yells up at heaven, “Smite me, O mighty SMITERRR!” Of course, he then gets smacked by a semi, but only so that he and God can have a talk—so he will stop bleating long enough to listen TO the Shepherd’s voice.

God’s insistence on being associated with the concerned, caring shepherd who knows us intimately and loves us deeply is one that we need to hear and treasure no matter how many times we have heard those words in the 23rd Psalm or every year during the Great 50 Days of Easter. Notice, though, that God goes from being talked about in the third person to be addressed personally in the second parson a third of the way in. This is a personal relationship. But you’ll notice that the relationship isn’t just one way—it’s up to the sheep to follow the shepherd, not wander too far off, listen when he or she calls.

I have written daily prayers for nearly every day for almost seven years now, and several times I have written prayers based on the 23rd Psalm. One of the ones that I have written that has gotten shared the most is this one, because I wrote it with that mutual nature of the relationship in mind:

O Lord, You are our shepherd;
help us to be better sheep.

When You give us green pastures,
help us to be grateful and not refuse to eat.

When You lead us beside still waters,
help us quiet our souls and be refreshed.

When our cups run over,
help us not to obsess about the mess
but shout for joy at the abundance
you give us always. 

When You lead us to right pathways,
help us not to be hardheaded and go astray.

When we are in the darkest valley,
help us to remember that You are ALWAYS with us.

When you spread a table before us
in the presence of our enemies,
help us invite them to join us,
that their hearts may be turned by love.

Help us to stop bleating long enough
to hear Your voice calling us to You.

May we remember that your goodness and mercy
follow all of us all the days of our lives.
Amen.

In our gospel reading, we again hear Jesus describe his followers as sheep—last week, Jesus told Peter three times to care for or feed Jesus’s sheep as a sign of Peter’s love for Jesus. Sheep that know their shepherd’s voice and recognize it as the voice of one who will do anything to save them. We NEED to remember that—especially when we feel lost, or not good enough. The voice of the one who loves us is always calling for us, but especially at times like those.

I love that image of the shepherd—because it’s another metaphor for God that isn’t necessarily male. In fact, it definitely has a certain mothering quality to it, one I hope we have all experienced and we have all emulated for someone else in our lives, whether we are actual mothers or not, whether our mothers are with us or not, whether our mothers were always there for us or not. Hearing the voice of love, with tender love and care, calling us back from where we have gotten lost.

So I have a story to share. I had just transferred from the middle school to the high school, and was asked to come up early in the summer to meet with some of my colleagues to discuss some curricular matters. But I had no one to watch my kids, so I brought them with me. Of course, one of them wandered off while I was in another room for a couple of minutes. And I didn’t know the building. Practically no staff was there. It was a brutally hot day. So after making sure that there was no pool in which my child could drown, I began going all over the building looking high and low for my child, while my one colleague watched my other two kids.

It seemed to go on forever. I went around the building on the outside (106 degrees!) and on the inside, calling my child’s name. I was finally at the point where I was going to call the police. There was one hallway that I had already been in, and it was hot because the air conditioning was shut off in it. Surely she wouldn’t have gone in there—it was miserable. I called my child’s name… and heard a tiny, reedy noise. But I knew that voice. My child knew my voice—and I knew hers. She had gotten locked in at the end of the hallway and could not get out of the stairwell, and thankfully wasn’t strong enough to open the door to the outside, where there was construction and traffic and a quarry beyond the back fence. I was so grateful-- and furious-- but mostly grateful.

When I finally got to my child, I asked her why she hadn’t answered me, and she said she hadn’t heard me because she was so busy calling my name. My much louder voice had cancelled hers out, but she kept calling me, because she knew I would not give up. And, oh, the relief once I had found her. She was my child.

The next morning as I was praying the Daily Office, I was struck by this image in verse 7 of Psalm 95:
For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.
O that today you would listen to his voice!

It is through the Shepherd’s voice that we are saved—together, as one flock, supporting each other. Salvation means being protected in the hand of Jesus, to be in his grip, never to be snatched away or pried loose. And we can support each other in trusting in that promise, in having faith enough to share when others are faltering.

This being what is known as “Shepherd Sunday,” we are reminded that Jesus’s sheep know him and his voice, the same way my daughter knew my voice even behind two locked doors. But this recognition works both ways. Jesus knows his sheep—and the sheep know Jesus. The joy that Jesus feels when some of his lost sheep are returned to him, as he describes in Luke 15:4-7, always makes me think of that tear-filled little voice echoing down a hot hallway after being lost for what felt like an eternity.

Maybe some of us don’t have these feeling of being lost—but I know many of us do, at one time or another. We may let our sense of loss and sometimes shame keep us from being able to listen to that loving voice of our shepherd calling to us, loving us no matter what. That’s one of the roles that communities of faith play—they aren’t a place where we are expected to be perfect. They are meant to be a place where we feel safe enough to come as we are, confess where we have gone astray, and then help each other hear that loving voice calling us back home.

As I continue to grieve the loss of Rachel Held Evans, I have been rereading her works, and this is what she says about that tendency we have to let the bleating voice drown out the voice of welcome, of love, and forgiveness that our shepherd uses to call to us. She talked about the blessing that communities of faith play in being supportive and safe, in accepting each other but also encouraging each other at the same time. In Searching for Sunday, she wrote:

We Christians don’t get to send our lives through the rinse cycle before showing up to church. We come as we are—no hiding, no acting, no fear. We come with our materialism, our pride, our petty grievances against our neighbors, our hypocritical disdain for those judgmental people in the church next door. We come with our fear of death, our desperation to be loved, our troubled marriages, our persistent doubts…. We come with our addictions—to substances, to work, to affirmation, to control, to food. We come with our differences, be they political, theological, racial, or socioeconomic. We come in search of sanctuary, a safe place to shed the masks and exhale.(2)

Many of us have experienced times when we have felt that God is far from us. Or we may feel that way due to the scars and wounds the world has inflicted upon us. We may feel unloved and unlovable, and treat ourselves as disposable- or allow others to treat us that way. It’s important to remember though, that it is not God who has wandered off.

A shepherd waterspout in Paris

But if we still ourselves, if we can stop our tremulous crying out just for a moment, we can hear the voice of the One Who Loves Us calling to us, welcoming us home, assuring us that we can never be snatched out of his hand, not even by our own wandering away, not even by the hurts that the world may inflict upon us. None of that matters. Listen-- the voice of Love calls to us, and holds us fast within his hand.

O Lord, You are our shepherd;
help us to be better sheep
And to listen for your voice.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on May 11, and the 8:00 and the 10:15 on May 12, 2019, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:
Psalm 23
John 10:22-30

Sources:
(1) Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, vol 3, The Writings, pp. 70-71.
(2) Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church, p. 77.

Prayer 2290

Ascend, my heart, on wings of hope
to rest securely in the arms of the Almighty,
whose love sustains all that is.

God of Mercy,
guide us in the Way of Love:
help us to
turn from sin and carelessness,
learn your ways of wisdom and grace,
pray for those in trouble,
worship you in gratitude,
bless those who reach out to us,
and go into the world testifying to your faithfulness.

May our prayers ascend on the warming breeze,
our spirits led by You, Lord Christ,
into the holy path of reconciliation and truth.
Holy Lord, stretch out your healing hand
and grant your peace to those for whom we pray.

Amen.

The Charcoal Fire and Forgiveness: Sermon for Easter 3C

We have a lovely story today in this gospel selection, but I will be honest, during the time I was thinking about this precious gospel passage, I was also mourning the loss of Rachel Held Evans, far too early at the age of 37. Her beautiful, passionate voice helped lead so many people who had been burned by the Church back to being open to belief, and although I never met her, her words and her witness meant so much to me. I was thrilled when, like me, she found her way to the Episcopal Church from the rocky shores of evangelicalism.

Her beautiful writing about the importance of story was something I've been thinking about since the news of her death this morning hit me.

In her last book, she spoke of the importance of story in helping us to find our own meaning in the Bible, regardless of the vastly different culture and circumstances we find ourselves in from the people who produced these texts.

She wrote,

Why do bad things happen to good people? Will evil and death continue to prevail? What does it mean to be chosen by God? Is God faithful? Is God present? Is God good?
Rather than answering these questions in propositions, the Spirit spoke the language of stories, quickening the memories of prophets and the pens of scribes to call a lost and searching people to gather together and remember:
Remember how in the beginning, God put everything in order and made the whole cosmos a temple? Remember how we are created in God's image, as stewards, not slaves? Remember how Adam and Eve disobeyed, how Cain and Abel fought, how all the people of the earth grew so rebellious and cruel that God regretted creating the world in the first place? Remember how one family's faithfulness was enough to save them from the Great Flood?
Remember how God promised an elderly Abraham his descendants would outnumber the stars? Remember how Sarah laughed? Remember how God chose a peopleless nomad, a second-born son, a stuttering runaway, and a little shepherd boy to create, to liberate, and rule a nation? Remember how that nation is named for a man who limped from wrestling with God?
Remember how God saw the suffering of a banished Hagar, the unloved Leah, and the oppressed Hebrew slaves? Remember how Pharaoh's mighty army drowned in the sea?
Remember the desert? Remember the manna? Remember the water from the rock?
Remember how it is our God who said, 'Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine" (Isaiah 43:1 NRSV)?
Remember how this God has been faithful? (1)

I thought about God's faithfulness, perhaps especially in the midst of heartbreak and loss, as I though about the story of Peter we heard just now. So how can we view Peter's story?

Peter’s head was swirling with thoughts, and his heart was churning with emotion. He needed to get away. So he decided to say he was going fishing—and of course, half of the other apostles immediately jumped in, demanding to come too.

It was torture. All he wanted was to be left alone with his failures—but instead he spent all night listening to the chatter of his fellow-apostles, who didn’t seem to notice he wasn’t his usual, impulsive self.

All he could think of was the red glow of that coal fire, and the reflection of that glow in the faces all around him as he had denied again and again that he knew Jesus. And then the rooster had crowed, and his heart had sunk like a stone, and he had run away.

He would never forgive himself.

Jesus had made a terrible mistake in claiming that he could be the head of the group, the leader of the apostles. He couldn’t continue Jesus’s work in proclaiming the good news of Jesus! He couldn’t even stand up for what he believed standing on a side street with a bunch of strangers.

Dawn came and, on top of having to endure PEOPLE all night long in that little boat, they hadn’t caught a damn’ thing. It was hot, and it was still, and the beer had run out a long time ago. It was the perfect combination of conditions for someone determined to be miserable, and it almost gave Peter a grim, black sense of satisfaction.

Then, just about dawn, some guy on the shore had started calling out advice—and if there’s one thing a fisherman can’t stand, it’s some yahoo giving advice from the comfort of shore. “Cast your net on the right side,” the stranger had called. Oh, sure, THAT must be the problem.

But they hauled the nets up, sorted and rolled them, and then cast them on the right side of the boat. For a moment, the nets just sunk out of view into the gloom. And then, when they started to haul it up, the resistance caused the boat suddenly to tilt to one side. As soon as they had shifted their weight to right it, John had yelled out that the guy on shore was Jesus. He sounded so sure that Peter squinted hard at the stranger—and he recognized the slope of those shoulders.

Peter’s heart leapt to his throat, and he did the only thing he could think of—he made himself presentable and jumped over the side. It seemed like it took just seconds to reach the shore. Dripping, he took the hand Jesus offered as he flopped through the rushes, but then dropped it like it was hot. He saw that coal fire, burning merrily, and remembered. 

He had no right to expect anything other than condemnation. He had denied his Savior three times to save his own neck, and he deserved nothing more than to be cast out.

Instead, he got breakfast. Breakfast, and forgiveness.

One of the things that is most striking is the ordinariness surrounding Jesus’s encounters with his followers after his resurrection in the gospel of John.

Jesus appears so ordinary that no one recognizes him at first. Mary Magdalene thinks he’s the gardener just outside his empty tomb. The other apostles have to see the wounds on his body to recognize him—and some even demand it. And now, here he just shows up on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, another name for the Sea of Galilee.


And, once again, it is in a simple meal that Jesus communicates so much. Jesus himself has provided the fire, some fish, and the bread—and invites them to contribute too, just as we do to this day in the Eucharist. As the apostles struggle to get the boat to shore dragging their bulging net, some of them remember that time along that same shore that Jesus had fed a multitude with just a few fish and a couple of simple loaves of bread.

So often, we expect to see Jesus surrounded by the miraculous. That expectation fools us, though, and makes us forget this most important fact that Jesus himself alluded to time and again in his teaching: Jesus is almost always found where we least expect him, because he is most present to us as one of us-- the stranger offering us advice we don’t want to hear. The hungry elderly man choosing food over medical care. The homeless person seeking shelter and community who feels she’s been cast away by anyone she has ever loved. The refugees fleeing the only home they’ve ever wanted for the probably unfriendly shores of a foreign land where they may never be accepted.

Jesus’s parable of the king judging the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 makes it clear that Jesus is among us, and that’s why we keep missing him so much. We don’t expect to see him in the stranger who says unexpected things. We don’t expect our work as disciples to be doing the boring dirty work of putting down our nets around the lost, the forsaken, the broken, the hurting, the desperate. But we are wrong in that.

I just returned from two days in our nation’s capitol, meeting with faith leaders and political leaders across the spectrum to talk about the importance of humanitarian assistance both at home and abroad in eliminating hunger, malnutrition and lack of medical care to the most vulnerable populations among us. It was thrilling to hear people of all stripes commit to supporting concrete action in providing assistance in the holy work of peace, compassion, and generosity that reflect our values in the world. In our Christian tradition, the words of Matthew 25:37-40: “Then those who are righteous will ask him, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and gave you a drink?’… Then he will answer, ‘I assure you that when you have done it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me.’” Blessings are only truly blessings if they are shared.

In my free time, one of the blessings of this trip was to be able to spend some time in meditation and prayer at the Washington National Cathedral, one of my favorite holy places. Besides sitting near the Space Window, which contains an actual moon rock, I spent some time praying noonday prayer in the Chapel of the Resurrection in the lower level of the Cathedral for two people hovering on the edge of this life, one of whom I never actually met.

This chapel features beautiful mosaics along the walls which depict scenes from the resurrection, and so it is the perfect place to be during our glorious 50 Days of Easter, since many of the scenes depicted there are from our gospel readings in John during this season. Tonight’s gospel was one of the featured scenes there. The mosaic along the front wall of the chapel depicts the scene we just heard described, with the risen Jesus is standing on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias pulling up their bulging nets, filled with every kind of fish—the net filled, straining, but not breaking.

Those nets have been empty all night—and they remind me of the growing desperation that many proclaim as the number of people who profess faith in God and who attend religious services continues to shrink. Empty nets, empty pews.

If our nets are empty, perhaps it’s because we are putting them down in the wrong place. Perhaps we need to remember to cast our nets down where the fish are. No longer can we expect the fish to swim right up to our boat and hop in. And really, was that ever how it was, or just how we’ve thought it was?

That scene is a reminder to all of us to put our nets down where the need is the greatest. And be willing to joyfully take part in the work of discipleship-- the reason why we're here in the first place, really. We're reminded of that at the end of our gospel, because the reading ends with two simple words: “Follow me.” Simple, but not easy, as Peter and the apostles and as you and me all know.

As we continue with our celebration of Easter this weekend, which will include another joyful baptism tomorrow, I hope you take some time to pray about where God is asking us, as both individuals and as this parish and as this diocese, to cast our nets. And that we can all then be bold enough to cast those nets far and wide, moving from invitation to action. I pray that you listen and respond to those two simple words as they are specifically directed at you in your life.

I pray that you hear the loving voice of Christ urging you to cast your nets wide that you may know the abundant love of God and share it with others, as we all seek to say yes to that call to follow Jesus in faith, empathy, and hopefulness.

Christ is all around us, and it is in the ordinary things that he is most at work in our lives, and he doesn’t always show up wearing a nametag.

Jesus feeds us, and asks us to contribute, to share in the offering that he himself has exemplified. This is what the resurrection life means—the simple acts of fellowship, charity, forgiveness and generosity that bind us together in the name of Jesus, and through which we testify to the world of his great mercy and lovingkindness.

Jesus meets us where we are, but his abundance moves us beyond what we could have ever imagined in ourselves, restoring our faith in ourselves and each other through his faith in us to entrust his work of reconciliation into our unsure hands.

It is in the ordinary that the true miracle of Christ’s love plays itself out for us in each moment, whether of joy or sorrow. We have all been called, like Peter, to proclaim our discipleship—and all of us have had times where we have failed. But not a word of blame is spoken by Jesus to Peter, or to us. Just a simple question: Do you love me? And then he feeds us, body and soul.

Each time Jesus asks, one of Peter’s denials is blotted out. Do you love me? Jesus asks, and he already knows the answer. Then let down your nets, and gather all you can. Draw the world to Jesus in your words and actions, and in your love most of all. Don’t worry about being overwhelmed, or about the net breaking. The net of faith is strong enough to hold everyone. Don’t worry about your own failures and shortcomings and doubts—know that you are beloved of Jesus, beloved, and worthy, and called.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO, on May 4, 2019.

Readings:
John 21:1-19

Sources:
(1) Rachel Held Evans, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again, p. 11.

Prayer, day 2289: Third Sunday of Easter

Almighty God, Ruler of the Universe,
we gather before your altar
to worship You and sing your praise:
hear us, we pray. 

Lord Jesus,
you are the way, the truth, and the life:
help us to proclaim your truth
in all our steps and words today.
Give us the faith to cast our nets wide for truth,
and the strength to receive the abundance of grace
You give to us.
Remembering that God's love shows no partiality,
may we broadcast your way of compassion
to all the corners of the Earth. 

Give us the humility
to seek pardon from those we have injured,
and the heart to forgive those who have hurt us.
In your mercy, O Holy One,
reach forth your hand of healing and power
over all whose hope is in You.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2288

Most Merciful God,
we praise you from the depths of our hearts,
and thank you for your loving care.
Set us, O Savior, upon the path of holiness;
open our eyes to see your beauty all around us.

May we bear your banner of love with rejoicing,
and sing out your praises in our lives,
testifying to your abundant grace, O God.

We lift up those who suffer
lack of food, of home, of safety.
We lift up those who have been the victims of crime.
We lift up those who are sick
in body, heart, or mind.
We ask that you comfort, heal,
and restore these, your children, O Heavenly King.

Amen.

Prayer 2287

Most Merciful One,
accept our prayers and praises
as we dedicate this day to your service,
and seek to live out your love
made visible in our lives.
Shepherd of Our Souls,
take us by the hand
and lead us in paths of charity and hope.
Gather within your comfort, Lord Jesus,
all who face any turmoil or trial:
strengthen and guard them by your mercy
as we pray.

Amen.

Prayer 2286: A Prayer of Trust in Memory of Wayne Moseman

Lord of Light, Lord of Love,
to You I lift my hopes,
and with the eyes of my heart
I wonder at the glory of your creation.

My spirit feels the imprint
of your guiding, strengthening hand, O Holy One;
your love is a comfortable weight upon my shoulders,
and your wisdom is a lamp that allows my steps to be sure.

You are my strength and my respite, Blessed Savior,
as you call me to faithfulness, integrity, and compassion,
that your truth may be revealed in all the world.

I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that You envelop me in loving-kindness
even when I rest in the gates of sleep.

God of Mercy,
you know the cares and concerns of our hearts:
pour out your mercy and benediction
over all who ache, or weep,
over all who are tossed about by anxiety or discord,
especially for those whom we lift before You
as we pray.

Amen.

Prayer, day 2285

Lord Jesus,
we lift our hearts to You
to be filled with your limitless love
as we walk in your path of peace.

In your mercy, forgive us
our failures, our jealousies,
our maneuvering against each other regardless of cost.

Make us faithful in little things,
that we may be worthy of bearing your Holy Name
into the world, O Holy One.

Teach us to always walk in mercy and forgiveness,
ever compassionate and welcoming to the stranger.
Make us upright and generous,
like a green olive tree in your house, O God,
and make us a blessing to those we meet.
Make us happy to serve others, Lord Christ,
especially the lost, the forsaken,
and those in any pain or grief.

By your grace, dwell in our hearts and minds, O God,
and place your hand of blessing on those who call upon You.

Amen.