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As people of faith gather for prayer and praise, the first act is that of interrogation.

How long, oh Beloved, will you permit envy and enmity to choke the soil of our land and souls?

Why are the righteous silenced, the truth-tellers scorned?

Speak, oh Confidence of the Ages.

Train your eyes on our brittle bones and hungry hearts.

Draw near, You from whose womb earth was birthed and bathed in mercy.

Our land shakes and shatters under the weight of its discord; the sky wails and the sea churns.

Remind us again, oh maker of peace, oh drier of tear and calmer of storm, that lion and lamb share a common destiny.

Remind us again, that all is Yours and Love secures.

And now prepare, prepare, prepare ye the Way of the Lord!

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Inspired by Psalm 82.

Turning from darkness (death) to light (life) is a major theme in Scripture. But there is also a minority report, where darkness and shadow are the place of God’s abiding Presence.

Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry; give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit. Guard me as the apple of the eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings. (Psalm 17:1, 8)

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings. (Psalm 36:7)

Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, until the destroying storms pass by. (Psalm 57:1)

O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips when I meditate on you in the watches of the night; for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy. (Psalm 63:1, 5-8)

You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.” For God will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and under God’s wings you will find refuge. You will not fear the terror of the night, or the arrow that flies by day, or the pestilence that stalks in darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday. God will command the angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. “I will protect those who know my name. When they call to me, I will answer them.” (Psalm 91:1-3, 5-6, 15-16)

They shall again live beneath my shadow, they shall flourish as a garden; they shall blossom like the vine, their fragrance shall be like the wine of Lebanon. (Hosea 14:7)

For a significant part of the ancient Hebrews’ history, Egypt was the world’s sole superpower. Abiding in God’s “shadow” contrasts with such political allegiance:

Oh, rebellious children, says the Lord, who carry out a plan, but not mine; who make an alliance, but against my will; who set out to go down to Egypt without asking for my counsel, to take refuge in the protection of Pharaoh, and to seek shelter in the shadow of Egypt. Therefore the protection of Pharaoh shall become your shame, and the shelter in the shadow of Egypt your humiliation. For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. (Isaiah 30:1, 3, 15)

Zechariah, father of John the Baptizer in his song of praise when Elizabeth gave birth, made this prediction: “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace." (Luke 1:78-79)

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. 

Background: There are two great ironies behind the “Liberty Bell,” associated with the founding convictions of the United States of America and inscribed with the phrase “Proclaim liberty throughout the land and unto the inhabitants thereof.” The reference, from Leviticus 25:10, is a text that stipulates profound social renewal as part of God’s covenant with the Hebrew people, requiring the forgiveness of debt, reclamation of ancestral lands and the release of slaves every fifty years.

It is ironic, first, because the bell’s tolling to announce the opening of the first Continental Congress in 1774 was preface to the nation-building policies that enshrined slavery as a legal form of commerce. Indeed, throughout human history the lure of commercial gain often trumps humane political aspirations.

A second irony is that the bell, originally referred to as the “Independence Bell,” did not assume its current name until 1837 when it was adopted by the American Anti-Slavery Society as a symbol of the abolitionist movement.

Let praise leap from the lungs, ascend the throat, rattle the teeth and flutter the tongue. The Blessed Haunt of Zion calls out to all flesh. To this Embrace, everything that has breath shall come. The God who lingers in slave quarters assails every Pharaoh’s palace:

Let my people go! Proclaim liberty throughout the land!

Independence from the Reign of Death has been declared! The boundaries of transgression have been breached. The Liberty Bell of Creation echoes across the hills and plains. The God who forges a people of redemption sets the covenant of freedom as the bond of bounty:

Proclaim liberty throughout the land!

The very edges of the earth hear the sound of God’s Rousing. The sun’s rising is a gateway for the Beloved’s Voice, and the evening stars burst into freedom song. The God who waters the earth and sprouts abundant harvest, who clothes the meadow and silences the roaring sea, makes this demand of every citizen of Mercy:

Proclaim liberty throughout the land!

Let no one lift a coin of gold and say, “In God We Trust.” The shekel’s rule and the shackle’s restraint shall feel the wrath of the One who sets prisoners free. In this confidence, sing and shout together, lift every voice and sing:

Proclaim liberty throughout the land!

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Inspired by Psalm 65, for a worship service focused on the U.S. “Independence Day” holiday on 4 July.

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you, “Violence!” and you will not save?

We pound the doors of Heaven, shouting “Listen! Pay attention! Are you asleep!”

Why do you make me see wrong-doing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise.

Pull the alarm! Sound the alert! Summon the Almighty!

So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous, and justice is bartered to the highest bidder.

Are we forgotten? Cast aside? Scorned by those of boastful pride?

Then the Lord answered: Stop your whining! Pull yourself together. Your self-pity is embarrassing. Get yourself a billboard. Set a neon sign in the sky. So that even the most harried soul can see it clearly. And this is what it should say:

Don’t let your fears get behind the wheel. Live out of the memory of God’s provision; resist the madness of market forces.

Live by the sturdy Promise, not the ruptured profit. A New World is approaching. If is seems slow, keep on keeping-on.

Shiver no more, for God is not done!

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Inspired by Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-4.

Sisters and Brothers, both near and afar, from our tribe or another, of whatever skin hue—whether chalky or chocolate—from Mars or from Venus or places in between: Come, gather round, turn your ear for the better to hear.

The pool of deliverance will soon be astir. A transforming immersion awaits your approach.

Come, all you whose lives have been poisoned with shame and crippled with regret.

The pool of deliverance will soon be astir. A shame-rinse submersion awaits your consent.

Come, all of you whose memories are strangled in anger.

The pool of deliverance will soon be astir. Here the tangles of vengeance are soaked to submission.

Come, all of you whose lives are belittled by failure.

The pool of deliverance will soon be astir. Let your frets be dissolved by a stain-cleansing plunge.

O Breath of Heaven, come hover again o’er these waters of pardon: let new life begin.

Bid us rise and to walk in your wake and your Way, knowing grace is sufficient for each passing day.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Inspired by John 5:1-9a.

Hear this, O People of the Dream: It is good and right that you recall the memory of

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the movement which mobilized him. The journey to the Beloved Community is sometimes dark and desperate and dangerous, and we need constellating light to orient our hearts and direct our feet.

Singing: God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
               Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
               Thou who hast by Thy might led us into the light,
               keep us forever in the path, we pray.

We confess, O God, that the dream once unfurled with unmatched eloquence on our nation’s lawn has been tamed by pious sentiment and framed for commercial interests. The oratory that once sent shivers through White House and big house and church house alike has been reduced to polite platitude, “race relations” Sundays and gushy, mushy reverie.

Singing: Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee;
             Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.

Ignite in us again the Word that stirs insurrection against every imperial reign, against every forecloser’s claim, against every slaver’s chain, until the Faith which death could not contain, the Hope which doubt could not constrain and the Love which fear could not arraign lifts every voice to sing till earth and heaven ring!

Singing: Let our rejoicing rise, High as the list’ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea!

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Using lines from “Life Every Voice and Sing” by James Weldon Johnson, written in honor of the Martin Luther King Center in Havana, Cuba.

When Pentecostal power erupts, all heaven’s gonna’ break loose.

The boundaries will be compromised; barriers will be broken; and borders will be breached.

Economies of privilege will be fractured, and the politics of enmity will be impeached.

The revenge of the Beloved is the reversal of Babel’s bequest.

“I will pour out my Spirit,” says the LORD.

Poured out not for escape to another world beyond the sky but here, amid the dust.

Poured out not on disembodied spirits but “upon all flesh.”

We stand amazed, astonished, even perplexed, and we ask, “What does this mean.”

It is to the agony of abandonment that Heaven is aroused.

Queer the One Who fashions a future for the disfavored.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Inspired by Acts 2, Isaiah 40:5 & Luke 3:6, adapted from the author’s longer poem, “Pentecostal Passion.”

Dear Jesus: Don’t do that. Don’t go saying “I come not to bring peace, but division.” You’re scaring us. Don’t you know there are children in the room!

Peace is not the product of the politics of fear, of Wall Street fraud or war profiteer.

Listen, Lord, we need you to get back to being a sweet Jesus. Sweet little Jesus boy, born in a manger.

Herod didn’t think of Jesus as sweet.

And a manger wasn’t some first-century Palestinian crib. It’s an animal feeding trough filled with dried sheep slobber.

Peace is not the silence of the sepulcher, drowning sad-soul songs of lament; peace is not repressing, abducting, disappearing all who dissent.

Peace isn’t passive. It’s not always nice or good-natured, cheerful or charming, winsome or quiet or sweet.

Prophecy that provokes no crisis, asserting no claim or offense, is a liturgy deaf to Redemption’s resolve, inflated with pious pretense.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Inspired by Luke 12:49-53, Jeremiah 6:13-15, and former Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to abandon it.*

And how are we to spend ourselves for the sake of the world that God loves? For the recognition? For the virtue?

For the hope of return in the future? Maybe for the pleasure?

No, we “give as in yonder valley the myrtle breathes its fragrance into space.”**

Give without allowing the left hand to know what the right hand does.

Give without hope for heaven or fear of hell.***

If you experience forgiveness, you will be forgiving. If you encounter mercy, you will be merciful.

Exhausting yourself in giving grows more from pride than from love. The world’s salvation is not up to you. So back off!

In Jesus’ parable, we are neither the sower nor the seed. We are the ground. Direct all your longing to be fertile soil. The sower will come, and the seed will be planted, in good time.

It is no sin to leave some things for our children—and to God.****

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org. Inspired by Mark 4:26-34 & Matthew 6:3-4. *Line from the Talmud. **Line from Kahlil Gibran. ***Line from Rabia al-Adawiyya, 8th century Sufi mystic. ****Line from Walter Rauschenbusch.

Listen up, you heralds of hope: Hear the cheer of angels for your big, bold, even brassy acts of courage. Don’t back down from the chance to be audacious, bodacious, maybe even contentious.

Yet it is the tenacious on whom the Beloved most depends.

Quotidian faithfulness—in life’s persistent, unremarkable moments, when no bands play, no cameras roll, no headlines appear—this is the persevering labor which Redemption most employs. Ordinary time rocks.

Vision for mission begins with the street signs in your own neighborhood.

The bonds you restore outweigh the bounty you confer.

An inch of fertile soil takes a millennium to amass. Plant a coastal redwood, and fruit trees whose yield you will not taste.

Small stuff matters. An ounce of care is worth a ton of theory.

Foster the habits of daily attention and timely words to encourage.

God’s in the details; the devil prefers abstraction.

Come mothers and shepherds, gardeners and menders. Come fathers and healers, instructors, defenders.

The rendezvous of Heaven with earth is announced with each pardon’s release.

©Ken Sehested @ prayerandpolitiks.org.