Prayer for the Eighth Sunday After Pentecost - July 18, 2021

How easy it is to forget O God, that you create us to be as one. All the diversities in how we look, what we believe, our traditions and practices, where we live, even what we eat- it seems at times we are more different than alike.

And yet you don’t see these as strange or based on them divide people into “us” and “them”. You give us these as gifts to be celebrated, appreciated, that are intended to be just that- differences. You still call all of us with one name- your children, siblings encompassing the whole of humanity. Thank you for possibilities this diversity provides us.

Yet too often we don’t see possibilities. We judge these differences as making others as better or worse, wrong or right, at times even safe or a threat. When presented with someone new or unknown, too often we fail to avail ourselves of the opportunity to learn something new, or to discover something that may enrich our lives. Instead, we construct barriers, designating the rules that need to be followed to keep “them” distant from “us”. Too often even when we know their names, we still relate is if they are strangers to us, others who must be changed at best, or gotten rid of at worse.

Hear our prayers this morning O God, that you turn our understanding of those we would call strangers into knowing them as siblings. If it is someone we haven’t met before, may we approach them as a friend yet to be.  For those we would define as adversaries, turn our hearts to see them as friends. Help us recall the times we have felt like outsiders, when told we weren’t in the right group, we were chastised for believing the wrong things, or that we could be nothing but a stranger to others. Use that to fuel our desire to treat others with the welcome, the openness, and the love that we so desired, and that you offer all of us. 

Bring up those memories of times we were viewed as a stranger when disagreements arise.  When differences over what should be done lead us to begin disparaging another, restrain us from the temptation to label others as somehow less than human. When heated disagreements tempt us to turn friends into strangers with declarations of “I thought I knew you”, nudge us to recall that we do know- they are yours, held in your love.

 Make us into the seeds that you nurture and grow to heal the divisions that exist in so many places, in communities, the nation, and the world.

For it is only when we no longer see someone as a stranger that we can have compassion for them. We witness this in Jesus, who never met a stranger, only a member of your family, a sibling of his to love. As we follow Jesus’ ways, provide us the hearts and actions that do the same.

We lift up all these prayers, as well as the unspoken ones of our hearts and spirits, in the name of Jesus. Amen.