Call to Congregational, Personal, and Group Intercession

News of tragedy has a way of interrupting the flow of our lives, calling us all to wonder what to do and how to pray.

Our temptation is to respond simply and only to such events, one at a time. We devote perhaps a special Sunday or other special services to address that particular tragedy or event. We develop and pray "special prayers" that particularly fit the situation. Perhaps if the news was particularly tragic or joyous, we offer services on anniversaries of the event remembered.

Certainly, extraordinary events call for prayer and ritual that express the extraordinary shock or grief or joy in such moments. The Psalms, prophets, and histories of Israel are full of examples of the people of God doing just such things in faithful response to what was happening around them. The Spirit moves in and among us, offering us words to say or sing and ritual actions to engage, or maybe only sighs and groans; and we are witnesses of the healing and transforming power unleashed at such moments.

But such power may be unleashed more readily in extraordinary times when we already have a vocabulary in music and ritual and prayer deep within us, a vocabulary that is formed through the ordinary practices of intercessory prayer. These practices may become embedded in each and all of us Sunday to Sunday in corporate worship and every day between in personal or group prayer. Our capacity to offer the ministry of intercession given to us as church in the extraordinary times depends on the degree to which we have faithfully engaged that ministry in our ordinary life as congregations and Christians.

We are called and ordained by the Spirit into a royal priesthood in our baptism, every one of us. Intercession for the church and the world is the priestly vocation of every disciple of Jesus. We have strong resources for such comprehensive intercession at Sunday worship in The United Methodist Book of Worship, pages 395-399, and 495. The United Methodist Hymnal includes sung responses for corporate intercessory prayer (483-491). So does The United Methodist Book of Worship (183, 195, 207, 215). The Faith We Sing (2201) provides a simple musical form for intercessions. The intercessions from that form may be used between the verses of 2200 as well.

The Book of Common Prayer of The Episcopal Church also offers six forms of Prayers of the People (pdf) in the public domain. (Skim down to page 383 in the formatted text). And there are a variety of ecumenical resources offering forms of intercession for every Sunday of the liturgical year. Intercessions for the Christian People by Gail Ramshaw is one such example. Revised Common Lectionary Prayers by the Consultation on Common Texts, the ecumenical developers of the Revised Common Lectionary, is another.

Our basic United Methodist worship resources enable us and call us to offer intercession not only on Sunday morning, but every day. Patterns for individual and corporate prayer and praise for every morning and evening are provided in The United Methodist Hymnal (pages 876-879). Music for such services may be found in The United Methodist Hymnal as well (pages 674-693). Patterns for such prayer at mid-day and at night are also included in The United Methodist Book of Worship (pages 568-579). More music and patterns for daily prayer and forms of intercession are available in The Upper Room Worshipbook.

Our priestly calling to prayer, personally and corporately, like our discipleship, is "in season and out of season." May we all find ways to live more deeply into this calling "in season" as individuals and communities of faith that when we find ourselves out of season, we will know how to sing and pray even in that strange land.