Prayer for Others: Christ the King Sunday
Here’s a prayer of intercession for Proper 29. It was written by Rev.
Tina Kemp and posted on the Church of Scotland’s Weekly Worship website.
Prayer of Intercession
for Reign of Christ Sunday
Lord, as You hung on a cross,
Your first thought was for others.
You forgave the ones
who ridiculed and tortured You,
You accepted the criminal
who hung beside You.
And it was You who made a mockery
of the sign they placed
above Your head.
For little did they know
that they did indeed
gaze at a king.
We don’t need signs and labels
to recognise Your power
and Your authority, Lord.
It is because we have seen
the unlikely become reality;
because we have witnessed You
in the unexpected,
and because we believe
in truths honed by a carpenter’s son,
that we dare to hope, Lord,
that Your kingdom has come among us
and continues to come,
day after day,
among the poor and the lonely,
the sick and the weary,
the angry and the abused,
the warmongers and the peace seekers.
And so it is for those
and others whose lives are touched
by grief and greed,
injustice and injury,
emptiness and endlessness
that we pray now,
trusting in the goodness and the grace
that retrieved lost sheep and wayward sons;
that consoled grieving mothers
and weeping women at a tomb;
that fed aching stomachs
and eager minds;
that soothed the open wounds
of untouchables
and the throbbing scars of hatred;
that laid open itself
to pain, rejection and abandonment
so that we might know healing,
acceptance and belonging.
And if we catch only a glimpse
of Your mercy among the hardness of life,
if we can sense Your presence
only for a fleeting moment
in the busyness of life,
if we can witness that wholeness
happens among the brokenness of life,
then we will know
that Your kingdom has come
and we pray that Your will be done.
This day and always, for Jesus’ sake
and in his name we pray.
Amen.
~ written by Rev. Tina Kemp and posted on the Church of Scotland’s Weekly
Worship website. http://www.churchofscotland.org.uk/
