John 21:1-14   http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=44216210

 

A Prayer:  We are not self-starters

“Speaking, acting, life-giving God

   the one with the only verbs that can heal and rescue,

We come petitioning one more time,

    Seeking your majestic address to us,

   asking your powerful action among us,

   waiting for your new life toward us.

Your creation teems with bondaged folk

   who have not enough for life,

      not enough bread, not enough clothes,

      not enough houses, not enough freedom,

      not enough dignity, not enough hope.

Your creation teems with bondaged creatures,

      great valleys become dumps,

      great oceans become dumped pollution,

      fish wrapped in dumped oil,

      fields at a loss for dumped chemicals.

So we pray for creation, that has become a dump,

   and for all your people

      who have been dumped,

      and dumped upon.

Renew your passion for life,

Work your wonders for newness,

Speak your word and let us begin again.

   In your powerful presence, we resolve to       do our proper work,

But we are not self-starters.

      We wait on you to act, in order that we may act.

Show yourself in ways that give us courage and energy and freedom,

      that we may care for our neighbors,

      love your creation,

      praise your name.

We pray in the savaged power of Jesus,

   who cared and loved and praised. Amen.”

                         Walter Brueggemann (from Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth)

 

 

One thing we learn from today’s readings from Acts & John

                is that Jesus is loose in the world.  He’s no longer confined to time & space.

His presence is unpredictable, unexpected, unexplainable.

He cooks breakfast for his friends – a surprising priority for a resurrected deity…

He knocks Saul of Tarsus to the ground and takes his sight, apparently to get his attention…

 

We have a right to ask, then,

                “Where were you last Monday?”  The unspeakable happened, in a town very much like this one, at a university very much like this one, to people very much like ourselves.  32 were slain at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg:

 

Ross                                  Christopher                                    Brian      

Ryan                                  Austin                                           Jocelyne

Kevin                                  Matthew                                        Caitlin 

Jeremy                               Rachael                                         Emily  

Jarrett                                 Matthew                                        Henry

Liviu                                    G.V.                                             Partahi

Lauren                                Daniel                                           Juan 

Minal                                  Daniel                                           Erin 

Michael                              Julia                                              Mary 

Reema                              Waleed                                          Leslie

Maxine                             Nicole    

 

                Students & faculty, from 8 different nations, slain in Virginia…  “Where were you, unbound Christ?  For these & for all who died violently last Monday and every day before & since – in war, in starvation, in captivity, in oppression – where were you?  Where are you?”

 

We proclaim resurrection, and rejoice in new life -- and we still find our breath snatched away in horror and shock at the brutality of events.  It’s the same shock and horror with which we witnessed the Passion of Jesus.  So we look for your healing touch, O God, your reassurance that you have not abandoned those who perished, or us.

 

                Today we observe 37 years of conscious attention in this country to the Earth as your gift and responsibility to us; we celebrate some progress and pray for your patience as we struggle toward stewardship.  Continue to surprise us, we humbly pray, O Christ.  Feed us when we least suspect, knock us down when we’ve missed the point.  Take the scales from our eyes; heal us, we pray…

A prayer:  i thank you God

i thank You God for most this amazing

day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,

and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth

day of life and love and wings: and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing

breathing any--lifted from the no

of all nothing--human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened).  Amen.

e.e. cummings