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Protagonist Corner
An Old Preacher’s Easter Prayer for His Young Colleagues
James S. Lowry
Hendersonville, North Carolina
Note: The last of my “Old Preacher Prayers” to be included in the pages of this journal was from a collection of my private devotional prayers that were not written to be read by anyone other than me. This one, like the other, is published at the request of the editor. Unlike the previous one, however, the present offering is written specifi cally as intercessory for my young colleagues in ministry. Easter blessings, friends known and unknown. Thank you for your faithful ministry and bold proclamation. JSL
God who sprinkles the night sky with stars, numbers each one, and calls it by name; God who selects a handful of stars and sets planets around them to spin; God who on one such planet teaches song birds to sing, blows breath into human beings, calls preachers to preach, and, by your Word living and spoken, teaches them to teach us how to love and be loving. Word of God, who from before creation was seated at the right hand of God, who once in time while on the road to destiny taught and healed, spoke, and fed, and who on Calvary’s slope died to live so that we might live… live to sing for you alleluia once again; Word of God, who sits now in Spirit and Truth beside me just here in a cane bottom chair listening to this old preacher’s prayer,
(You smell like a refugee, you know, too long without a shower walking long on a stony road; or is that the odor of an alien looking for a home?):
Easter’s coming, Word of God, and I’ve come to pray for my young colleagues, women and men called by you, fellow travelers, pilgrims, along the way.
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Journal for Preachers At my age almost all of them are young, very young indeed, or so they surely seem to me. Some of my young friends are all full of spit and vinegar, confi dent in what they believe, ready in joyful confi dence to declare Easter’s hope and truth. Others are plagued with secret doubts that by seasons come and go when the church must hold the faith in trust for them.
Most of them are somewhere between.
Give them every one and give them all strong grace and clearing thoughts as they pour again over the stories of your rising, savored and passed from generations past, parsing every nuance and verb to gather the truth of Easter’s hope . to be proclaimed in accents bold to your waiting people longing for truth… your yearning people and theirs hungering and thirsting for righteousness.
The world just now, as always and ever before, needs to hear the Easter story: Refugees are clamoring at fences and borders; White supremacists are spewing their fear and venom. Masses of people are believing lies and half truths. Governments are teetering and governments are falling. Children from gunshots in the streets are dying. The good earth by place is awash or afi re, parched or melting. Our leaders are, by case, too vocal or too silent while my young colleagues just now are wondering what on earth this Easter they should be saying.
So help the young preachers to know for sure you are as surely with them as you are at my elbow now…
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there as here to cheer them on and in the end to say to them again, “Good job, well done, fellow travelers, servants, and friends.”
My fi rst thought, Word of God Most Holy, is to suggest you take a shower before Easter morn; but my second thought is better by far. Perhaps it’ll be a good thing if you attend Easter worship just as you are. Among the lilies your people will whisper, “ Is that an alien I smell… an alien from Main Street or some foreign land or a refugee or someone else named as the least of these?”
“Yes,” the young preachers will say. “What you smell among the lilies today is an alien who has at last found a home… found a home right here… right here sitting on the pew next to you…
at home at last… at last and at least on this glad Easter day alive and well as you can see.”
Then with a gentle elbow nudge, Holy Son of God, prod the young preachers one and all to say,
“Let the church stand and sing, Christ the Lord is risen today. Alleluia!”
Amen.
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