Prayers by Malcom Boyd

Prayers by Malcom Boyd

from ‘Are You Running With Me, Jesus?’ ©1965

Why is reality about you so shocking to us, Lord?

• They’ve made the cross you hung on so pretty, Jesus.

• I know the real cross wasn’t pretty at all. But I guess I understand why they want to make copies of it out of fine woods and even semi-precious stones, because YOU hung on it.

• Yet doesn’t this romanticize your death, Lord, and give it kind of a gloss it didn’t have? Your death was bloody and dirty and very real. Can’t we face it that way, Jesus? And can’t we face the fact that you were a real man, living a human life as well as God?

What is love, Jesus?

•It seems so important, Jesus, that You called on the Father to forgive your torturers because, as You put it, they didn’t know what they were doing.

• But You kept on loving then.

• Help us to learn from You, Lord, how to keep on loving when we feel like hating. It’s hard. Some of us have even turned Your cross into a symbol of hate. When the Ku Klux Klan burns a cross, Lord, the blasphemy of it startles me. Doesn’t this mean, in a very real sense, joining the ranks of your own executioners?

• Nevertheless, you were actively, creatively, responsibly LOVING, even on the cross, Jesus. Help us to see that love for what it is- in all its fierce passion and sweep of forgiveness.

You’re hanging on the cross again, Jesus

• The symbol is so familiar to us that maybe we don’t think about the reality of your execution any more. Wasn’t it simply the means of your execution, something like an electric chair or a hangman’s noose would be today?

• In churches the cross always seems to be everywhere, over altars and in stained-glass windows and even hanging in clergymen’s offices. I know it represents the act of redemption, but Your whole life seems to do this much more significantly.

• Is your death more important to us than your life, Lord? Is Your death more central than Your resurrection? Help us to keep these things in balance so that we don’t lose sight of You among all the religious symbols we put up in Your honor.

Prayer of Repentance

• God:

• Take fire and burn away our guilt and our lying hypocrisies.

• Take water and wash away our brothers’ blood, which we have caused to be shed.

• Take hot sunlight and dry the tears of those we have hurt, and heal their wounded souls, minds, and bodies.

• Take love and root it in our hearts, so that brotherhood may grow, transforming the dry desert of our prejudices and hatreds.

• Take our imperfect prayers and purify them, so that we mean what we pray and are prepared to give ourselves to you along with our words, through Jesus Christ, who did not disdain to take our humanness upon Him and live among us, sharing our life, our joys, and our pains.

• Amen