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Prayer of Invocation
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Prayer of Invocation given by John Auer
for the Opening Session of the Annual
Meeting of the National League of Cities in Reno, Thursday, December 7,
2006.
As a veteran of inner-city and downtown ministry,
many years in Chicago, then Fresno, San Rafael, and the Biggest
Little City in the World, I greet you heart to heart and thank you
for your life, your faith, your work.
Please help me as I pray –
O Thou who art all-conceiving and all-creating, all-giving and
all-gratifying, all healing and all-whole-making, all-sustaining and
all-satisfying –
Thou who really art all things to all peoples in every land and
city, of every tongue and nation, color and character, culture and
creed, age and language, condition and class, gender and orientation
–
We humbly beseech Thee on this occasion of the opening of our
convocation called the National League of Cities, in this, like all
of our cities, Reno richly resplendent and resilient, redeemable and
renewable --
make us instruments of your unconditional and unqualified love of
all life, all lives, and all living, and witnesses to your fierce
and fomenting passion for our liberation from every bondage to any
oppression or power of death.
Free us from every preventable death – by our violence, our war, our
hunger, our poverty, our greed, our indifference, our addiction, our
abuse.
Free us for a Jubilee kind of justice and joy, of past forgivings
and new beginnings -- of equal access and comparable result for all
your children.
With our heads help us conceive it, with our hearts help us believe
it, with our hands help us achieve it – the fullest possible reach
of your grace and good will for all peoples in all cities whom you
bravely give us to serve!
The majestic sweep of your scriptures carry us from gardens of Eden
to new cities of Jerusalem – reminding us our cities are not only
economic but also ecologic and above all ecumenic –of every land and
people!
You are the great scatterer of peoples and the great planter of
cities – on ocean’s coast and mountain’s top, by lake’s shore and
river’s mouth, in desert and valley, on prairie and plain, lowland
and hill – we are everywhere! And by your love, your grace, your
mercy we have survived everything! Earthquake, fire, hurricane,
terror, red-lining and plant-closing.
We celebrate we are the cities you set on high as beacons to an
enlightening hope for the world. We confess we are also the cities
over whom prophets weep, for we have not learned what makes for our
peace.
Here by this unlikely landlocked lifeline called the Truckee we
offer to stand as trees planted by your waters today. We shall not
be moved until the leaves of your trees, as promised, bring about
the healing of your nations, and we may sing of our cities in words
of the prophet Micah –
And everyone neath their vine and fig tree shall live in peace and
unafraid (2x). And into ploughshares turn their swords, nations
shall make war no more (2x). And everyone neath their vine and fig
tree shall live in peace and unafraid. Amen.
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