Consider Well

The following remarks were prepared for the tenth monthly interfaith prayer vigil held outside the Miami Correctional Facility near Bunker Hill, Indiana, a state prison currently housing men kidnapped by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and where one ICE detainee has already died. Clergy from the Indiana-Kentucky Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America under the leadership of the Reverend Timothy Graham, Bishop, were tasked with organizing this month’s vigil. Unfortunately, the vigil was cancelled due to severe thunderstorms, torrential rain, and dangerously high winds at the facility.

My name is Ken Ranos, an ordained minister of Word and Sacrament in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and it is my pleasure to serve that part of the body of Christ that is Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran Church in Indianapolis as their pastor.

I am here to amplify the voices that racist, cisgender, white, Christian men too often ignore or discredit unless they hear from one of their own, to ensure those voices are not silenced.

I am also here because I cannot claim to love the immigrant members of my own family and not use my position and voice to work for their safety when they are threatened, especially as other family members celebrate those threats.

A reading from Psalm 94:

O LORD, avenging God,
    O God of vengeance, show yourself.
Rise up, O Judge of the world;
    give to the arrogant their just deserts.
How long shall the wicked, O LORD,
    how long shall the wicked triumph?
They bluster in their insolence;
    all evildoers are full of boasting.
They crush your people, O LORD,
    and afflict your very own.
They kill the widow and the foreigner
    and put the orphans to death.
And they say, “The LORD does not see,
    the God of Jacob takes no notice.”
Consider well, you most brutish people;
    You fools, when will you be wise?
Does the one who planted the ear not hear?
    Does the one who formed the eye not see?
Does the one who disciplines the nations not punish?
    Does the one who teaches all humankind lack knowledge?
The LORD knows our human thoughts;
    how like a puff of wind they are.
Happy are they whom you discipline, O LORD,
    those whom you teach from your law;
you give them rest in evil days,
    until a pit is dug for the wicked.
For you will not abandon your people,
    nor will you forsake your very own.
For judgment will again be just,
    and all the upright of heart will follow it.

-Psalm 94:1-15, Evangelical Lutheran Worship

Let us pray.
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.
Hear the cries of those unjustly imprisoned behind us,
who call out, “Freedom! Freedom!
and find no one is listening.
See the pain of those incarcerated
for the color of their skin
and the language they speak,
who yearn for safety and are denied.
Hear, see, answer,
and deliver justice too-long delayed.

Rise up, O Judge of the world.
Tear down the walls of stone and steel
that confine them.
Rip apart the chain link fences
that keep them from their families
and their communities.
Flatten the troubled and perilous social landscape
that endangers them
and guide them along safe paths.
Give them rest in evil days.

God who disciplines the nations,
scatter the proud in their conceit,
and cast down from their thrones
the mighty who have created
and fed this injustice.
Put repentance in their hearts,
that they may turn away from evil
and toward love of neighbor.
Remind them that “just following orders”
is not and never has been
a moral justification for heinous acts,
and that their freewill participation
does not go unnoticed.

Finally, Teacher of all humankind,
continue to raise up communities of faith
with courage to confront injustice
no matter the cost, no matter the price.
Fill us gathered here with your Spirit,
compel us to action,
inspire us with wisdom,
protect us in danger,
and reunite us with those we have lost
to the injustice happening behind us.
For you will not abandon your people,
nor will you forsake your very own.

Amen.