In any need or trouble
The prayers of the people call us. When we answer, we invite the possibility that it is we who will be poor, hungry, sick, and in prison.
There are moments when we hear familiar words of liturgy and suddenly realize their subversive power. This has happened to me recently with the “Prayers of the People” in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.
In Form II of these prayers, the petitioner invites “prayers for the poor, the sick, the hungry, the oppressed, and those in prison. Pray for those in any need or trouble.” I have been realizing that this is not a prayer of pity. It is a prayer to prepare us for the life of discipleship.
We pray for the poor, the sick, the hungry, the oppressed, and those in prison because discipleship in this world cannot be authentic if they are not among our members—and we are not ready to join their ranks. In The Cross and the Lynching Tree, James Cone highlights a 1963 conversation between Reinhold Niebuhr and James Baldwin in which Baldwin claimed that in America, only the “most despised” people truly believe in Christianity. Baldwin went on:
