Our God is the Ultimate Other;
Xe knows firsthand what it is
to be the one who does not fit,
whose ways are not “our ways”
and whose thoughts are not “our thoughts.”
Thus trusting in Her steadfast solidarity,
let us lift up our prayers for all those
who know the heart of the stranger.
We pray for Indigenous peoples across the globe
who are made Other in their own homelands,
their lands stripped from them and genocide attempted
against their languages, their cultures, their bodies —
we pray particularly for the First Nations peoples of North America
whose long-held, never yet healed wounds were recently reopened
with the discovery of the remains Indigenous children
who were forced into residential schools, died, and were discarded;
as well as for Palestinians facing persecution
and expulsion from the homes of their ancestors
with nowhere to go:
O God who saw and saved
the enslaved foreigners Hagar and Ishmael,
whose descendants would one day found the Islamic faith;
hear our prayer.
We pray for immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees
and all who find themselves far from all they know and love
only to face contempt and mistreatment,
often by the very powers that had a direct hand
in the violence they are fleeing:
O God who transformed the migrant Naomi’s bitterness to sweetness;
O God who, in the person of Jesus,
was yourself a refugee, finding asylum in Egypt as an infant,
hear our prayer.
Finally, we pray
for all who experience double consciousness
in which they feel forced to think always
of how the oppressor will respond to their words and actions,
from Black persons to the children of immigrants
as well as Asian Americans and other persons of color
who are subjected to the stereotype of the “perpetual foreigner”,
treated always as alien even in their place of birth:
O God of Moses, who felt stuck somewhere between
his adopted Egyptian family and his Hebrew roots,
hear our prayer.
Great Breaker of the human Binaries
of blood ties and national borders,
gather us into one community — something fresh, something new! —
where no one’s needs are denied
on the grounds of being too difficult or strange;
where no one is forced to cut off pieces of themselves
to fit into a pre-established mold;
where no one is treated like a problem, an afterthought, a disruption
but rather every person is protected, cherished, listened to.
It is you, God of the Stranger, on whom we depend
to right the wrongs of xenophobia.
Teach us to move with you towards justice.
Amen.
I wrote this pastoral prayer to accompany the “prayers of the people” session of a worship service on Immigrant Sunday, celebrated in the PCUSA denomination. It could also suit the UCC’s Immigrant Rights Sunday and, I imagine, other such services across denominations.
For more on Moses as one torn between identities in a way that relates to the second generation Latine experience, I highly recommend “Moses Speaks Spanglish” by Daniel José Camacho.
For more on God as ultimate other, see Joy Ladin’s text The Soul of the Stranger.
The term “double consciousness” comes from W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1903 text The Souls of Black Folk.
See here for the stereotype of the “perpetual foreigner” defined.
Binary-Breaking Worship 