Here are the prayers I prepared for today's Service of Celebration and Thanksgiving for Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Ambassador Lindiwe Mabuza at St Martin-in-the-Fields:
God of justice, we give you thanks for your prophets, prophets like Desmond Tutu, who advocate for love, justice and human rights in the struggles against apartheid, oppression and exploitation and for climate justice, peace in Palestine and Israel, equal rights for the LGBTI community, equality, fairness and justice across the world. Like the Arch, may we come to see that all humans are of infinite worth intrinsically because all are created in Your image and that systems such as apartheid are blasphemous because they treat the children of God as if they are less than Your own. Challenge us through your prophets to create societies wherein people count and where all have equal access to the good things of life, with equal opportunity to live, work and be educated. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
God of culture, we thank you for your poets, poets like Lindiwe Mabuza, for whom art was an essential part of the struggle and poetry a part of a whole arsenal of weaponry to be used against apartheid. We thank you for all who shape their words to get to the heart of the matter and move their hearers. We thank you for all who kneel, where road-blocks to life pile precariously, and scoop earth, raising mounds of hope, who oath with their lives to immortalise each footprint left, each grain of soil that flesh shed, each little globe of blood dropped in the struggle upon the zigzag path of revolution. We thank you for those who saw that Soweto's blood red road would not dry up until the fields of revolution were fully mellow tilled, always to bloom again. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
God of unity, we give thanks for your reconcilers, reconcilers like Desmond Tutu, who do the demanding, sometimes agonising, sometimes traumatic work of truth-telling, testimony, confession, listening, reparation and rehabilitation. We thank you for all who helped investigate the violations that took place in South Africa between 1960 and 1994, provided support and reparation to victims and their families, and compiled a full and objective record of the effects of apartheid on South African society. Remind us that while we are not responsible for what breaks us, we can be responsible for what puts us back together again and naming the hurt is how we begin to repair our broken parts. That, as the Arch reminded us, in our own ways, we are all broken and out of that brokenness, we hurt others. May forgiveness be the journey we take toward healing the broken parts and become whole once again. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
God of relationships, we give thanks for your Ambassadors, Ambassadors like Lindiwe Mabuza, who succeed in promoting their countries and cultures winning new friends from across many fields, from business to tourism, music, literature and arts and culture. Give us the gift of bringing people together and of polishing rough diamonds until they themselves know how brightly they shine. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
God of freedom, we give thanks for 27 years of freedom since South Africans voted in their first democratic elections. We give thanks for the lives and work of Desmond Tutu and Lindiwe Mabuza and the part that each played in the anti-apartheid movement. We give thanks for those of all faiths and none who contributed to the anti-apartheid movement. We give thanks that Trafalgar Square became a global focal point for the movement and for the part that St Martin-in-the-Fields played within that movement. We give thanks for the ongoing partnership between St Martin’s and St Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg. We give thanks for the work of the High Commission in the UK as it contributes to the creation of a better South Africa through its engagement with the government and people of the United Kingdom. God Bless South Africa; Guard her children; Guide her leaders And give her peace, for Jesus Christ's sake. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Merciful God, accept these prayers for the sake of your Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.
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David Fanshawe - Dona Nobis Pacem - A Hymn for World Peace.
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