A Prayer for Merciful Relationships
This prayer was offered by Mako Nagasawa as part of our May 22 Faith and Politics Prayer Call. You can sign up for future calls at the bottom of this page.
Lord, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Especially in the body of your church.
Jesus, you taught us to pray for all your people. In our church communities, We ask that your spirit of love and mercy would be among us. As strongly as we feel about policies and candidates, help us feel even more strongly about you and about your call to us to be your people of mercy.
Lord Jesus, you're the one who's called us to mercy, saying, “Be merciful as your father is merciful.” We celebrate you. We worship you as the son who is the perfect radiance of the Father. You have embodied mercy. You have bore the cost of mercy. You have shown us mercy.
So help us, the children the Father has adopted in you, to embody and bear and show our Father's mercy together with you. Help us to not retreat into corners, but to extend our ears in mercy to listen to one another and know one another more deeply. We desire to extend ourselves in love towards others, to show your mercy even when the differences are sharp. We desire to embody your mercy, Jesus, to one another and to the watching world.
We acknowledge the ways that our engagement in politics can be a challenge. The ways it raises things in us that are obstructions to mercy.
We acknowledge our ignorance, and the shame we feel at being ignorant, and the desire to hide that ignorance rather than learn.
We acknowledge bitterness from trust betrayed, and we repent of it.
We acknowledge vanity, our desire to score points in public. We repent of it.
We acknowledge that we feel afraid and we repent of being governed by it.
We acknowledge despair and we repent of it.
We repent of the ways in which we let our internal challenges blunt your desire to shine mercy through us, give us wisdom, and fill us in cases where we are unsure how to appropriately relate to those who might hurt us.
In cases where we're wounded already, fill us with wisdom. Help us. By your Spirit, help us in our weakness and our weariness, that we would not grow weary in doing the good you call us to do.
Fill us with love and strength for this task. Remind us, Jesus, that you bore our woundedness so that we, as your people, might bear your wholeness, deep within ourselves.
By your Spirit, in your name, on behalf of all your people, we pray these things.
Amen.
Mako Nagasawa is the Director of the Anástasis Center in Boston, MA. He earned a Master of Theological Studies from Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary in May 2019, and serves as an elder at Neighborhood Church of Dorchester in Dorchester, MA.
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