On Inauguration Day, January 20th, 2017, Kairos’ Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis helped lead the “National Prayer Call for Hope and Focus” as part of a Day of Moral Resistance, along with Repairers of the Breach. She offered up a prayer, which you can read below.
God of justice and righteousness, we come to you seeking justice, dignity, and prosperity for all.
As Rev. Dr. King said in the last year of his life: We live in a cruelly unjust society. In a world when on Dr. King’s birthday, just a few days ago, Oxfam can come out with a report that exposes that 8 people own and control as much wealth as half the world’s population, we know that this is not just, that this is not your will being done.
Earlier today, a political leader was sworn in as the President of the United States. A preacher compared this leader to Nehemiah from the holy Bible. But we know that you shuddered when you heard this, God. Nehemiah help to rebuild his society after it was destroyed by poverty, slavery, conquest and war; Nehemiah wasn’t responsible for and didn’t benefit from poverty, discrimination and war. And when your prophet Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem, restored the streets so that the people could live in them; he did not separate and deport families, or cut people off of health care. He didn’t privatize their children’s education, or refuse to pay the laborers living wages. He put the needs of the least of these who are most of us at the heart of the city — at the heart of the society — because the poor, the immigrants, the women, the LGBTQ people are the heart of God.
In these difficult days ahead of us we can take encouragement from Walter Rauschenbusch, the great social gospel preacher, who challenged the robber barons and bigots and pharaohs of his day, and his Prayers of Social Awakening. He prayed as we pray now:
“We bless thee for the inspired souls of all ages who saw afar the shining city of God, and by faith left the profit of the present to follow their vision. Make us determined to live by truth and not by lies, to found our common life on the eternal foundations of righteousness and love, and no longer to prop the tottering house of wrong by legalized cruelty and force. Help us make the welfare of all, the supreme law of the land, that so our commonwealth may be built strong and secure, on the love of all its inhabitants. Cast down the throne of Mammon who ever grinds the lives of women and men, and set up your throne, O God. Show your erring children at last the way from the City of Destruction to the City of Love, and fulfill the longing of the prophets of humanity. Our God, once more we make thy faith our prayer: ‘Thy kingdom come! Thy will be done on earth!’”
May we make it so. May we work for justice. May we march tomorrow and everyday until justice comes. In your many names of justice and righteousness, we pray. Amen.