Our bishops have called the church to pray for eight minutes and forty-six seconds at 8:46 a.m. and at 8:46 p.m. every day for thirty days as an act of lament for the amount of time a police officer knelt on the neck of George Floyd.
What are we supposed to pray in the face of such evil and suffering? Perhaps the psalmist can guide us.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? Psalm 22: 1.
The psalmist’s plea is recorded as the last words of Christ as he hung on the cross (Mt 27:46)—a cross, which in the African-American tradition has long represented the lynching tree. Jesus hung on the cross, deprived of breath and life, just like George Floyd and so many other black and brown people who have been deprived of breath and life by racialized violence.
God has not forsaken them or us, because Jesus rose from the dead and with him rose hope. Please pray that out of the ashes of the tragedies of the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks and others, we would find hope.
A Prayer : My God, my God, why have you forsaken us? You sometimes seem so far from the words of our groaning. But we know that you have not left us or stopped loving us. You loved us so much that you sent Jesus to redeem our deaths. When he rose from the dead, he also redeemed our hope. God lead us to real acts of repentance. Help us turn from ways that do harm to the hope of the resurrected life.
Amen.