Presented at the WCRC “COVID & Beyond” discernment session on July 21, 2021. Today we gather, confessing before God and one another the Church’s complicity in the systems and structures of this world that reproduce human misery in excess. God of grace, Hear our prayer. Hear our prayers O Lord, as we join together now to pray for the Black, Brown, and Indigenous bodies that have been lost at the intersection of Racism and COVID-19. For the disparities in the COVID-19 mortality rate, that on average in the United States claims 3.8 times as many Black lives as it does white lives. Even now, we pray for Black lives in Michigan, where Black people make up 40% of all COVID-19 related deaths, while amounting to only 17% of the state population. God of all life, Hear our prayer. Hear our prayers God, as we lament the scapegoating of our Asian American and Pacific Islander siblings who have been attacked 6,603 times in the twelve months between March 2020 and March 2021. Settle within us a holy discomfort that we may resist the temptation to participate in racist stereotypes, policies, and practices that endanger the lives of your children. God of everflowing justice, Hear our prayer. We lift now all those who have carried an outsized portion of the economic toll of this pandemic. As America’s most wealthy members have gotten on average $1.2 trillion richer since January 1, 2020, we remember the 61% of Latinx households who saw their wages cut and jobs lost due to COVID-19. We pause now remembering all those who do not have the privilege of legal protections in the United States, who received no stimulus checks, did not benefit from enhanced unemployment, and continue to be exploited by the economic systems of the richest nation on the earth. God who provides, Hear our prayer. We confess in solidarity with a report by the University of Albany which found that “Systemic racism has produced, and continues to produce, deeply entrenched differences in health care and the social, economic, and environmental conditions that account for inequities in longevity and the likelihood of disease. This was true long before the first case of COVID-19 was diagnosed … and will remain true unless the resources and will exist to make systemic changes.” God we pray that you would give us the will and the courage to imagine a new way of being as we seek your kin-dom right here and right now. Lord in your mercy, Hear our prayer. God who offers us the choice between life and death, grant us the wisdom to resist death and its agents, as we seek to unmask idolatries in Church and culture, hear the voices of peoples long silenced and work with others for justice, freedom, and peace. Help us now to choose life, and strengthen us for the work ahead, the work of ensuring the lives of Black and Brown and Indigenous folx are seen as precious in our eyes just as they are in yours. God who is the Resurrection and the life, Hear our Prayer. The Assurance Hear now these words of assurance, God is yet at work! Our God, the maker of earth and sky, whose hands set the heavens with stars; and whose fingers spread the mountains and plains. Our God is at work, calling us to communion, calling us to one another. It was in the early days of the pandemic, in the city of Memphis when I sat in a room where Southern Baptist preachers sat next to Imams who sat next to mega-church pastors. In a room where Presbyterian clergy connected with non-denominational leaders. Where Episcopal Bishops connected with Catholic Bishops for the sake of choosing life in the face of the death presented by COVID-19. God is yet at work! When low-wage workers were forced to quarantine while living in multi-generational households and ecumenical partners entered into a season of local mission, providing food and personal protective equipment, coordinating care calls for those isolated, and joining in prayer for one another, I saw that God is yet at work! When Black and Brown communities were being targeted by vaccine misinformation and adequacy vaccine access had not yet been achieved, I saw Presbyterian churches and Disciples of Christ churches, Baptist churches and UCC churches, offering their buildings and campuses as vaccine sites, lending their credibility to pass along reliable information, and leveraging their moral authority to preserve life at every time. Beloved, God is yet at work. And if God is at work in this way in the United States, we know, I know that God is yet at work in your region, in your community, in your church, in your life. Choose to be where God is, choose life. Amen. Joshua Narcisse, candidate for ordination in the PC(USA) and Director of Spiritual Care at Church Health located in Memphis, TN. He is a graduate of Yale Divinity School and a 2018 PCUSA delegate to CANAAC. Samuel Son serves as Manager of Diversity at Presbyterian Mission Agency. He is also a writer of short stories, poems and columns. www.sonsamuel.com.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorsCANAAC members. Archives
January 2023
Categories |