A prayer for the 4th of July weekend, after the overturning of Roe…

Embodied God,

    we come to you on this weekend

        where we celebrate baptism, and patriotism.

And all of it, God, is hard.

We remember in baptism,

    that you are a God who cares about bodies.

For we do not baptize with just words, but with water.

We do not just promise our children they belong,

      but we mark them with that promise -

            cold water, by our hands, on tiny heads.

We remember, God,

      that you chose to put on flesh,

         and that at the end, when all felt said and done,

      you returned, not as spirit, but as body.

You are a God who loves, not just our souls, but our whole beings -

      and so you know…

         you know how hard these days have been,

             when the rights to our bodies have been undone.

No longer equal under the laws of this nation -

      you know, God -

         you know how hard it is,

              to celebrate being part of this collective body.

So God we come to you this day

     confessing what’s hard,

         and leaning towards the water,

       needing to be renewed by your promise

             and trust that even now, even here, it is still true.

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayers.

We need your promises to be true, God.

For there are a lot of other promises -

     that have unraveled around us.

The work past generations did,

        now shattered.

And so we lift up to you the breaking pieces of our nation.

We lift to you our naivety, our anger, our fear.

We lift to you our broken trust,

     confessing it was misplaced, if ever placed at all.

And we ask God,

  that you pour your water over us, and wash away these broken things,

          that we might not trip as we pick up the mantle of our Mothers,

       as we fight forward - for the sake of our bodies -

         for the sake of this collective body.

For if your promises are to be trusted, God,

     we know the fight ahead is worth it -

            for you have claimed our bodies for more than this.

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayers.

You have made us for more than this,

      and despite all evidence to the contrary -

    somewhere deep in the echoes of our bodies

            where we can still feel our grandmothers marching -

       we know - our nation has the capacity to be more than this.

We’ve never seen it, God.

Even in other moments, when we thought we were getting closer.

This nation has never reached her full possibility -

      but it is never this nation as she is that the faithful have fought for.

Etched into our beginning is the call to be more.

And so while the brokenness seeks to undo us,

       remind us God, that more is what we fight for.

Not a nation we have known,

     but one our grandmothers believed in enough to organize,

         one our Black and Indigenous sisters have begged us to see,

               one our daughters deserve.

Your promises have nothing to do with our nation, God.

But you have claimed our bodies,

     and so as long as we live here

          we pray that you renew us, embolden us, protect us,

       that we might fight forward -

           for a future that looks more like the one you call us to.

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayers.

Embodied God,

    on this weekend of baptism, and patriotism,

          we offer our whole selves to you.

Claim us, and equip us, to do the work you need us to do

     in these days.

We pray together, in the words our savior taught us, Our Father…