When asked by his apprentices how to pray, Jesus gave them a rather straightforward model to get them started. “The Lord’s Prayer,” as we call it, begins with the declarative invocation, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” All at once, Jesus proclaims the majestic truth of intimacy and breadth of God‘s rule and humbly summons that authority over the details of daily life.
This month, as a part of our new year’s traditions, we are going to pray a prayer together that is learned from Jesus’ prayer. A prayer for our Father’s kingdom to come and his will to be done in our time and place in His-story.
In each of the following weeks, we’ll draw out a particular part of this prayer to give us focus. This week, though, let’s refamiliarize ourselves with the prayer, letting the Spirit lead us to invite the “God of every time and place” to be the Father whose care and wisdom take active shape in us, through us, and for our neighbors.
Let us pray together an adaption of Ernest Campbell’s “A City-Dweller’s Prayer.”
Father, our God of every time and place,
prevail among us too;
within the city that we live
among the people whose streets we share
and whose souls we learn to love,
your promise to renew.
Our people move with downcast eyes,
tight, sullen, and afraid;
Surprise us with your joy divine,
for we would be remade.
O Father whose will we can resist,
but cannot overcome,
Forgive our harsh and strident ways,
the harm that we have done.
Like Babel’s builders long ago
we raise our lofty towers,
And like them, too, our words divide,
and pride lays waste our powers.
Behind the masks that we maintain
to shut our sadness in,
There lurks the hope, however dim,
to live once more as your design.
Let wrong embolden us to fight,
and need excite our care;
If not us, who? If not now, when?
If not here, Father, then where?
Our forebears stayed their minds on you
in village, farm, and plain;
Help us, their crowded, harried kin,
no less your peace to claim.
Give us to know that you do love
each soul that you have made;
That size does not diminish grace,
nor concrete hide your gaze.
Grant us, Father, those who labor here
within this throbbing maze,
A forward-looking, saving hope
to galvanize our days.
Let Jesus, who loved Jerusalem,
and wept its sin to mourn,
Make just our laws and pure our hearts;
so shall we be reborn!