Our Father who art in heaven, rend the heavens and come down. Holy is your name. Holy and whole making, full of justice for Ahmaud and his many sisters and brothers, our sisters and brothers who are murdered by the spirit of white supremacy.
Thy kingdom come, not for kings and queens, but for mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters who go to bed as beggars tonight - begging for life lost for no goddamn reason.
Thy will be done, thy will that is not our will, but Thy will which stands not with Egypt, Rome or America, but with those we oppress. Thy will be done, so overturn our tables, Thy will be done so put mud on blind eyes; Thy will be done so feed the millions who’ve been cheated out of basic human dignity.
Let it be on earth as it is in heaven. Let heaven be as earth filled with potholes and weeds poking up through the sidewalk. Let us smell humanity, the fragrance and the stench. Yes, let it be disturbing not peaceful, let it be anything but bliss, because bliss and peace are not good news but fake news for those who have not entered the wound.
Give us today our daily bread, but let that bread be bitter to those of us who are filled with sweets and sweet to those for whom life has grown bitter. Call us back to the time when all we longed for was bread and not unending prosperity and control.
And forgive us of our separation from suffering, the sins of our fathers and mothers who’ve turned a blind eye to racism that puts human life on scales of importance. And forgive me for complying with it all, and living on the other side of the tracks and for crossing the road.
As we forgive others, let us not do so in the way Esau gave his birthright to Jacob. Remind us that forgiveness without justice is tyranny and further injustice. Forgiveness at its deepest roots must feel the full weight of wrongdoing and choose no longer to carry it - forgiveness is empowering not the opposite. Don’t forgive until you’ve felt the weight.
Let us forget our petty internal moral workshop and the temptation we keep trying to avoid. Help us pull our heads out of our ass and navel to see that to be fully human isn’t about perfection but connection. God cares far more about how much time you spend shaming yourself than he does about your addiction to self improvement. The greatest temptation for Evangelical is to be caught in cycles of sin-management and forgetting our neighbor. Seek first your neighbor and all these things will be added unto you.
Deliver us from the evil that can kill a black man and about the day. Deliver us from evil that can afford to not know, and to be mostly unaffected by true evil. Deliver us from a gospel of piety whose highest priority is purity, white-peace, and whose only goal is to overcome. Deliver us from our self-project, unsettle us and teach us that the way to true security is not found in grasping but letting, in surrender not weapons. Incarnate me and my white/privilege/Christian/educated brothers and sisters for we have rejected our humanity and we kill it in our friends.
In the name of our Brother Christ.
Amen.