AN INVOCATION FROM PASTOR NATHAN GIVEN AT ELYRIA ROTARY 

God of Many Names, we pray to you but with caution. This prayer is supposed to be an invocation, a call to you, but this prayer is also an evocation for it re-orients us toward who you are and who you have called us to be and become. Finally, this prayer is a provocation, but whom are we provoking? You? Ourselves? Both, maybe? Invoke, evoke, provoke: These three words share a common root; only the prefix differs.

But does this prayer even matter? Do we have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, do we not believe a word of it? Are we playing on the floor with chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a social service organization? We should all be wearing crash helmets. Greeters at the club meetings should issue life preservers and signal flares; we should lash ourselves to our seats. For, you, the sleeping god may wake at the sound of this invocation and take offense, or you, the waking god, may draw us out to where we can never return.

Long ago, one of your prophets said, “whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites… Don’t pray to be seen… and when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to God who is in secret, and God who sees in secret will reward you.” And yet, here we are in a public, secular setting, complete with microphone and a live stream. But perhaps we should let these words be for us an evocation, a clarion call to remember what we’re doing by having this prayer as part of the liturgy of our weekly meeting.

We make this prayer to you at the beginning of this gathering of diverse people, yet will we mention that Jackson, Mississippi, still doesn’t have clean water, or that more than one-third of the whole country of Pakistan is under water, or that a fourteen-year old Elyria High School freshman was shot and killed in his bed on Sunday evening, or would that be too provocative for polite company?

Forgive us for when we make pledges of allegiance to a flags that call us to liberty and justice for all and ignore what that pledge demands. And forgive us, too, for the invocation we make and the power you give in response that we misuse so that we can mind our own business.

As we go throughout this day and the days ahead, remind us that invocation, evocation, and provocation also share a common root with vocation: our call… our call as human beings, our call as Rotarians, to place service above self and engage in the most provocative work in all the world: PEACE.

AMEN.