Prayer of Illumination
Open our hearts, Spirit of God, to
be and do whatever you call us to: to hear what we don’t want to hear, and see
what we don’t to see, and do what we don’t want to do, whenever such is your
will. Amen.
Mark 14:65
Some of them started spitting at
his face, hitting him and saying, ‘Play the prophet!’ And the attendants struck
him too. NJB
Jeremiah 9:17-22
Yahweh Sabaoth says this,
‘Prepare to call for the mourning women!
Send for those who are best at it!
Let them lose no time
in raising the lament over us!
Let our eyes rain tears,
our eyelids run with weeping!
A lament makes itself heard in
Zion,
“What ruin is ours,
what utter shame!
For we must leave the country,
our homes have been knocked down!”
‘Now listen, you women,
to Yahweh’s word,
let your ears take in the word
his own mouth speaks.
Teach your daughters how to wail
and teach one another this dirge,
‘Death has climbed in at our
windows,
and made its way into our palaces;
it has cut down the children in the street,
the young people in the squares—
Speak! Yahweh declares this—
human corpses are strewn
like dung in the open field,
like sheaves left by the reaper,
with no one to gather them.’ NJB
Isaiah 53:5
…he was being wounded
for our rebellions,
crushed because of our guilt;
the punishment reconciling us fell
on him,
and we have been healed by his
bruises. NJB
Do we know the sorrow of the
downtrodden? Do we know the agony of abuse? He was beaten; he was struck; he
was abused. Our high priest sympathizes—”suffers-with”—our weaknesses and
agonies in ways we would have never thought possible, but this is the greatness
of our salvation.
And such radical suffering on the
part of our God must elicit response. If this is who God is, everything about
us must change. Will we suffer-with, or will we abuse? Will we take up our
cross, or pound in the nails? There are only two roles; the bystanders aid
abuse. Does our hand show the scar or hold the hammer? BR
“My grandmother, who had been out
among the whites, returned in a state of intoxication and, without any
provocation whatever on my part, began to belabor me most unmercifully with a
club…She continued beating me, by which means one of my arms was broken in
three different places. I was then only four years of age and consequently
could not take care of or defend myself—and I was equally unable to seek safety
in flight. But my uncle… succeeded in rescuing me and thus saved my life, for
had he not come at the time he did, I would most certainly have been killed…
In view of this treatment, I
presume that the reader will exclaim, “What savages your grandparents were to
treat unoffending, helpless children in this cruel manner.” But this cruel and
unnatural conduct was the effect of some cause. I attribute it in a great
measure to the whites, inasmuch as they introduced among my countrymen that
bane of comfort and happiness, ardent spirits—seduced them into a love of it
and, when under its unhappy influence, wronged them out of their lawful
possessions—that land, where reposed the ashes of their sires; and not only so,
but they committed violence of the most revolting kind upon the persons of the female
portion of the tribe… The consequence was that they were scattered abroad. Now
many of them were seen reeling about intoxicated with liquor, neglecting to
provide for themselves and families, who before were assiduously engaged in
supplying the necessities of those depending on them for support. —William Apess (1798-?), A Son
of the Forest ch. 1
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