demanding space for God's groans
Gracious God
Who prays when
I know not how to
With groans
Too deep for words
Forgive me
Because
When I do pray
When I try to pray
When I fail to pray
Sometimes
All I can pray
Is a question—
What is it I’m doing?
Is prayer an extravagance
That only the powerless
Can afford
Because they have nothing else?
Am I not wasting this precious time?
This gift of life and a body?
And you responded
In your radical life
With your radical body
By flipping tables
In righteous rage
Declaring the house of God
Shall be a house of prayer
And not a den of thieves!
For prayer sometimes sounds
like a table crashing to the ground,
Prayer is a practice
That stands in opposition
To exploitation
Sometimes it even sounds like whips
Driving away thieves and oppressors
But sometimes, if we don’t have whips
If we don't like using whips
If we don't like using whips
We have our bodies
To occupy space
To occupy space
Like the Young Lords did
Occupying a Methodist church in Harlem
While Juan Gonzalez
Insisted that such a big church’s
Unused space
Be given during the week
For a breakfast program
To feed children
For your Eucharist meal
Can never be divorced
From the meal of manna
That feeds the hungry
After all, Gonzalez reminds us,
It was you, Christ, who
“walked among the poor,
the poorest and most oppressed,
the prostitutes,
the drug addicts of his time”
Gonzalez declared that
“they’ve forgotten
that it was Jesus who said
that it is easier for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle
than for a rich man to enter
the kingdom of heaven”
And what is a church that
Concentrates wealth in a building
Does not hold all things in common
Does not share its resources
What is it but a den of thieves?
For the house of prayer
Your prophet Isaiah spoke of
Was one of radical inclusivity
For all peoples
With or without resources
What is a house of prayer
But one that welcomes
The stranger from another land
Who ensures there is a place
For the sexual ‘other’
For a true house of prayer
Is not compatible with
A den of thieves
Who have not amended their ways
Who have not stopped oppressing
The stranger
The orphan
The widow
The economically excluded
The socially excluded
For your prophet Jeremiah says
That’s what it means
To walk after other gods—
It means
To oppress the marginalized
To shed innocent blood
And to shrug it off
With a calculus that renders
Innocent lives as nothing more
Than collateral damage
The worship of capital or the state
Over human life
That is the bad religion
That you detest
Worst of all, too often
Carried out under your name
The worship of capital or the state
Over human life
That is the bad religion
That you detest
Worst of all, too often
Carried out under your name
And your prophet Jeremiah warns
That prayers from oppressors
Such as these
Cannot be heard
Will not be heard
Will not be heard
For our problem
Is not our lack of
Pious public prayer
As hypocrites in churches
And on street corners
As you put it
As you put it
Our problem is that we
Do not know how to pray
As your apostle St. Paul says
And sometimes all prayer consists of
Is hearing your groan, O God
And sharing in the suffering
Of You in the world
Sometimes prayer
Is a type of listening
But how can we hear
The groans you make O God
If we do not make space
For Your groans to be heard
Sometimes prayer
Is something lived
Sometimes prayer
Is the demanding of space
For people who need it
For your unruly body
That we fail to recognize as You
Sometimes prayer is
For your unruly body
That we fail to recognize as You
Sometimes prayer is
As the Young Lords did
And as you Jesus our Lord did
Amen
~ texts ~
Romans 8:26
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groans too deep for words.
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groans too deep for words.
Matthew 6:5-6
And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Mark 11:15-19
Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching.
John 2:15
Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.
Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching.
John 2:15
Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.
Isaiah 56:3-8
Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; and do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord... these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer... for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.
Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; and do not let the eunuch say, “I am just a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord... these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer... for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them besides those already gathered.
Jeremiah 7:3-11, 16
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.” For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever. Here you are, trusting in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, “We are safe!”—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? You know, I too am watching, says the Lord... As for you, do not pray for this people, do not raise a cry or prayer on their behalf, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you.
John 6:11,31-35
Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted... Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
Acts 2:44-45
All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.
Matthew 25:44-45
Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.
Juan Gonzalez
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.” For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever. Here you are, trusting in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, “We are safe!”—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? You know, I too am watching, says the Lord... As for you, do not pray for this people, do not raise a cry or prayer on their behalf, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you.
John 6:11,31-35
Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted... Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
Acts 2:44-45
All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.
Matthew 25:44-45
Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’ Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.
Juan Gonzalez
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