Prayer at the Table: Lament and Longing

Here’s a prayer of lament and longing at the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.  It comes from the jonnybaker blog (see below for link).

Prayer at the Table

On the night before Jesus died,
he gathered with his friends to have supper.
Over the meal they shared stories of lament and longing.

They told stories of Lament for a world of injustice and powerlessness
that before they met Jesus they hadn’t even noticed.
Lament for the empires of the age
that were bent on their own continued existence,
but no longer had any reason to exist. 

Lament over the people who were silenced. 

Lament over the people who were blind to the possibility
that the world could be anything other than what it was.

They told stories of Longing that the new world they’d glimpsed
might become the dominant reality;
Longing that the voiceless would be given a voice.
Longing that the powerful would be freed from their addiction.
Longing for the imagination to escape the numbing quality
of the empires that tell you that this world is all there is.

The meal moved towards its conclusion,
and Jesus called for bread and wine.
He took the bread, broke it, gave thanks and said:
this is my body, broken for you.
Do this to remember me.

He took the cup of wine, gave thanks, and said:
this is my blood of the new covenant,
which is shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.

Father God, we pray that you will send your Spirit on us,
that this bread and wine may be for us the body and blood of Christ.

May the bread be food for the journey
as we seek to see the new reality of God’s kingdom in the world.

May the wine be a sign that we are no longer shackled to the old order.
We are no longer in debt to the empire
whose power over us Christ has broken.

May these tables be places where our hopes are forged.
May this community gathered here be a reminder that we are not alone.
That throughout our city there are people
who are working to throw off the old
and seek the new life of Christ
as they bring peace and justice to the places where they walk.

~ written by Dean, and posted on Johnny Baker blog. http://jonnybaker.blogs.com/jonnybaker/2012/07/wake-up.html