Against the Sorting in Our Hearts

Lord Jesus, glorious Lord, we gather in your name today, and we confess that we bring our rankings with us. We notice clothes and cars and titles. We warm to those who could help us and cool toward those who could only need us. We have given the good seat to the wrong person more times than we know. Forgive us. You chose the poor to be rich in faith, and we have sometimes disagreed with your choice by the way we treat them.

Make our churches places where the world's sorting stops at the door. Let the stranger in worn clothes be greeted as warmly as anyone. Let those who serve be honored as much as those who give. Teach us the royal law, that we love our neighbor as ourselves, and show us where we have broken it while thinking ourselves faithful. And where we have judged, let mercy win. Let it win in our congregations, in our families, in our own thoughts about the people who have hurt us. We have received mercy from you that we could never have deserved. Make us people who pass it on. Amen.