The congregations I’m working with in my day job at the Minneapolis Area Synod have been recently exploring ways in to incorporate the neighbor in worship. For churches, worship is the central practice of community life and the language, rituals, stories, and symbols we center there form and undergird a community’s culture. So finding ways to center the neighbor and the story of the place where we gather in worship is an essential element for shifting church culture and embracing our call to be the neighbor.
In the Lutheran liturgical practice, the Prayers of the People or intercessory prayers are an especially powerful time to name and claim the neighbor and the neighborhood. For Dietrich Bonhoeffer, intercessory prayer is a duty we owe our neighbor and one another and essential element of community life.
“A Christian community either lives by the intercessory prayers of its members for one another, or the community will be destroyed.”
Strong words. But, in my experience absolutely correct.
Our intercessions are that practice where we bring our neighbor and ourselves together before the throne of God. Where we acknowledge and give thanks for God’s presence in every element of our human relationships. And it is in our intercessory prayer where we make commitments to one another, to love, service, forgiveness, and accompaniment. For this reason, we ought to treat our intercessory prayer seriously and with great attention.
In my opinion, this means that our intercessions must be particular and concrete. While we want to be sure to pray for the church and the world universally, there is a chance we have often taken that universality too far. When our universality becomes generality, we’ve maybe lost the thread.
Instead, I would suggest that our intercessions attend to the particularities, not only of the church, but of the neighbors and the neighborhoods where we live and gather. When we pray for creation and God’s ongoing care for the natural world, we may consider naming those green spaces, water ways, and/or particular environmental concerns of our neighborhood. What are the rivers, lakes, or watershed near your church? Name them.
When we pray that God’s justice may be known in this world, how might we most like to see that justice show up in the few square miles around our church building? We are invited to pray for things like affordable housing, economic justice, an end to police violence, and more. But attaching those prayers to the ways they show up particularly in the community where we gather connects them to our daily experience and gives us an imagination for justice in reality.
Do we know any of our neighbors enough that we could name in them in our intercessions? Their joys, concerns, needs, and gifts? Who are the decision makers at work in our communities? Who are the neighbors living our their call in the neighborhood, and how might we pray for the continuation of their good work?
Bonhoeffer says:
“…intercessory prayer is not something general and vague, but something very concrete. It is interested in specific persons and specific difficulties and therefore specific requests. The more concrete my intercessory prayer becomes, the more promising it is.”
When churches gather for worship, I believe we have a responsibility to pray for the place where God has called us to gather and the people who comprise the community. It is a duty we owe the neighborhood that sustains and enlivens our mission and our call as church. It is a practice that attunes our attention to notice our neighbors, and calls us to seek out the ways that God is active in the community.
So, how has your congregation named and centered the neighbor in your intercessory prayers? How do the intercessory prayers unique to your context? Where might there be an opportunity to make these petitions more concrete and more particular? What are the unique joys, challenges, and questions facing the community where your church gathers for worship? How might this practice show up in your own daily prayer?
As Bonhoeffer reminds us,
“…intercessory prayer is a gift of God’s grace for every Christian community and for every Christian. Because God has made such an immeasurably great offer here, we should accept it joyfully. The very time we give to intercession will turn out to be a daily source of new joy in God and in the Christian congregation.”
Amen.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Life Together. Fortress Press.
