A City Dweller’s Prayer, by Ernest Campbell
I
Because we did not make ourselves;
Because we do not keep ourselves;
Because we cannot forgive ourselves;
Our hearts reach out to you, O God.
We thank you for our creation, preservation, and redemption:
for hills to climb,
burdens to carry,
temptations to resist,
and fears to overcome.
We thank you for all that helps us in our pilgrimage:
the remembrance of those who walked this way before us and
did it well;
signs of your presence, often in unlikely places, giving us to
know that we are not alone;
the unanswerable logic of lives given over to your service in
selfless love;
the work of your Holy Spirit in our minds and hearts, uniting
for us the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.
With all that lies within us we acclaim your goodness and speak your praise,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
II
We pray today for all those who seek as Christians to make this towering metropolis mindful of your presence:
concerned believers, at work in radio and television, to rescue
the public airways from their bondage to puerility and greed;
those in the judicial process who believe that justice partakes of
the eternal, and labor in that light;
business leaders who shun the shoddy product and the inflated
price in an effort to serve the public well;
Librarians and museum keepers who delight in making their
wares available for the flowering of our humanity;
police officers who enforce the law fairly and with
understanding;
those in the performing arts who waken in us the good and
beautiful and true;
prison chaplains who quietly make their rounds each day,
communicating hope;
parents in our crowded slums who defy their grim
surroundings and secure their children in a love that will not
Quit.
Help these, and others like them, to keep at it. And through their several ministries, gracious Father, may a city find its soul again,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
III
Play the light of your truth upon our less-than-perfect hearts, O Lord; for, left to our own understanding, we have a way of befriending sin and opposing righteousness.
Help those who pass through heavy seas to ride out the storm.
By your providence lead those who are down on themselves into some life experience in which their worth will be affirmed.
Call back to your side those who can recall a day when they loved you more.
And for those who weep the tears of the bereaved, renew the vision of earth’s first Easter that they may conceive of death henceforth as one of the “all things” that work together for our good.
Keep us faithful to each other and to you, whatever comes, until on your strong arms we fall, and our work is done.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Our Lenten Devotion this year is going to focus on the pastoral prayers of Ernest Campbell, first published in 1973 in a collection entitled “Where Cross the Crowded Ways.”
The collection was published while Campbell was the senior minister at the Riverside Church in New York City. Campbell believed that attention to crafting an artful and spiritual pastoral prayer was both an elevation of worship and the worshiper. He was said to have spent as much time on his weekly prayer as he did on his sermon. “A City Dweller’s Prayer” that you just read (prayed?) was him most famous pastoral prayer, and he returned to it often.
We will open the Lenten Season on Ash Wednesday with one of his prayers as part of our service with the imposition of ashes.
Then for the next 6 weeks, every Wednesday evening at 7:15, we will gather in the church’s zoom room for another of Campbell’s prayers. We will begin with a time of centering, to silence or music, before Michael prays the prayer.
There will be a short pause for you to add your silent prayers wherever God inspires them to go.
Then a second time, we will read the prayer again, with 3 different voices (the prayers are always tripartite) leading us. In the second reading – in sort of a lectio divina style – people are asked simply to listen deeply, even close their eyes and look inward, for the WORD, IMAGE, PHRASE or IDEA that strikes you. You will be asked to write it down and “live with it prayerfully” over the next few days.
If we have time, a few people might share what struck them, but it’s not necessary (if we are short on time) and you do not have to; most people probably won’t.
I hope we are finished by 8 pm or just a few minutes after.
You will not need a copy of the book; I have all the prayers. But if you want to purchase the book, it was revised in 2004-5. (I was one of Campbell’s readers for that revision!) It is available in paperback or digital copy, and he directed any proceeds from the revised copy to support Habitat for Humanity. Here is where to order it.
