A Prayer for Pentecost 2020
Holy God,
Today we remember Pentecost, the day that the Holy Spirit lit a fire in the souls of Jesus’ disciples and the Church was born. Scripture calls Your Spirit an Advocate, a Counselor, and a Helper. It tells us that the Holy Spirit is the giver of spiritual gifts and the answer to our prayers. She is Your spirit that dwells within us.
That Greek word for spirit, pneuma, also means breath. The Holy Spirit, the breath of God within humankind. It is not lost on us, Lord, that we celebrate the arrival of the breath of God on Your Church the same week that the breath of life was choked out of one of Your beloved children, George Floyd. It’s just been a couple of weeks since the breath was taken from Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. God forgive us.
It is also not lost of us that we celebrate the arrival of the breath of God upon your Church in the middle of a pandemic in which 100,000 Americans have died from a virus that makes its victims struggle to breathe. We know that a disproportionate number of the sick and the dead have been people of color. God forgive us.
Across our country, fires are burning. Some are fires lit by Black Americans enraged that white Americans keep stealing the breath from your Black beloveds. Others, we are told, are fires set by white supremacists seeking to cause even more destruction in the midst of so much pain. Lord, let us listen the truths that these fires have to speak about the state of our nation. May these flames ignite holy fire within us, Your Church.
For too long, white branches of Your church have contorted holy scripture to endorse and even sanctify white supremacy. For too long, we have remained silent, twisting Your gospel into a slaveholder religion that enables some to maintain power and a superficial sense of peace. God forgive us.
We repent of our perpetuation of pathetic theology that teaches that some are created more fully in Your image than others. We repent of deluding ourselves into believing that You give power as a reward for faithfulness when scripture shows us that You are always closest to those with the least social power. We repent of being silent for the sake of remaining comfortable.
Holy Spirit, light a fire within us. Purify us by burning white supremacy from our hearts, our churches and our nation. Let our current chaos somehow remind us that we belong to each other because we are all Your beloveds. Like those gathered on that first Pentecost, help us to understand one another even as we seem to be speaking different languages. May your holy wind blow empathy into our hearts and fire into our bellies until we demand that freedom and equity be woven into our systems.
Fill us with Your Holy Spirit, Lord. We invite Her to transform us so that our hearts, our churches, our communities, our country, and the world reflect Your kingdom, what some womanist and feminist theologians call your kin-dom. Remind us of our interconnectedness until we truly live as though our liberation is bound in one another’s. May the breath of Your Spirit enliven us so that we may stand up for and alongside each other so that we may truly embody your Church.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.
