A Prayer for Our Time
By: President Dr. Timothy C. Tennent
The recent national election has heightened and underscored the need for the church to embody kingdom values in the midst of a national crisis. We do not know what the future may bring. The emergence of the United States as an increasingly post-Christian nation will not change dramatically based on what happens in Washington, D.C. In fact, that is one of the most important points to recognize. The DNA of Protestant Christianity was formed in the womb of Christendom where we fully expected our values to be embraced by the larger cultural context. Europe “enjoyed” the establishment of State Churches. The United States was formed in the context of civil religion, even though we embraced a plethora of distinctive Christian expressions, whether Roman Catholic, Protestant or Independent.
That is all in the rear view mirror now. We must learn what, for us, is uncharted territory; namely, life in a truly post-Christendom world. We must learn to occupy the prophetic margins and speak into power (whether Republican or Democrat) from a stance of weakness and vulnerability. The good news is this: If we look back to those earlier expressions of the church, we will discover that they understood profoundly how to be the people the people of God in the midst of every conceivable political environment. They knew how to be a people of Lament, even as they proclaimed and embodied the good news of Jesus Christ.
Psalm 40 is one of the most poignant laments in the Bible. The last five verses of Psalm 40 (13-17) were separated and used as a special prayer of trust and today is known as Psalm 70. The opening line of Psalm 70 is, perhaps, the most prayed line of the psalter: “O God deliver me, make haste to help me.” This is a good time to memorize this prayer and keep it ever on our lips.
St. John Cassian (360-435) was the first to make this simple prayer from Psalm 70 required for all the monasteries in the East which were started under his ministry. Later, St. Benedict included this prayer in his daily Rule and it was prayed seven times every day. In our own Anglican history, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer started the Anglican evensong with this same prayer. In short, it is a prayer which has encircled the globe! “O God deliver me, make haste to help me.” This is a prayer which you should keep on your lips.
We are facing challenging times as a nation: O God deliver me, make haste to help me. We are facing challenging times in our church: O God deliver me, make haste to help me. We are facing challenging times in the world: O God deliver me, make haste to help me.
This is the most basic prayer for help and assistance. We need discernment in responding to the changing world we live in. We need to pastor our churches with sensitivity and empathy. We need our churches to be safe places for the poor, the immigrant, and the disenfranchised. We need to re-address the culture with the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ, but not from the triumphalistic pinnacle of power, but from the foot of a cross, and a bloody, crucified savior. We must remember that God did His greatest work, not through an expression of power, but through the brokenness of the cross and under the cloak of failure.
Respectfully, it sounds as if you may have experienced some pressure to respond to the “crisis” of a Trump victory; but if Clinton had won, would that NOT have been a “crisis?” The Catholic Church is rejoicing over their impact in the Trump victory, knowing that Trump gives them at least a partial pro life platform, whereas Clinton would have given them nothing at all. Seems protestants have been left in a cloud of prophetic irrelevance.
It is falsely dichotomous to ignore the cultural institutions like education and entertainment that will shape the future population’s worldview. We have allowed these to become antichristian, and we can now from Washington begin to dramatically change some of it into a decreasingly post-Christian nation–a hopeful fact that you ignore, embracing further retreat to the margins. Rather, our stewardship mandate requires a harder path than mere retreat. Let us rejoice in exercising the virtue of hope!