In the Praetorium
Matthew 27:27-30 (NIV)
Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand. Then they knelt in front of him and mocked him. “Hail, king of the Jews!” they said. They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again.
Prayer
| voice 1 | Our Father in heaven |
| voice 2 | and here in the police headquarters, amongst us, the detained. |
| voice 3 | We who meet in your name day after day. |
| voice 1 | Hallowed be your name |
| voice 3 | despite all the jeers and roughness with which they treat us when we name you. |
| voice 1 | Your kingdom come |
| voice 3 | where there is no degrading treatment, no infringements of liberty, |
| voice 2 | nor police obeying unjust laws. |
| voice 1 | Your will be done on earth |
| voice 2 | and on this part of the earth in particular. |
| voice 1 | As it is in heaven |
| voice 1 | Give us this day our daily bread |
| voice 2 | the bread which takes away hunger |
| voice 3 | and the bread which maintains within us the hunger and thirst for justice. |
| voice 1 | And forgive us our sins |
| voice 2 | those that we have done to the police when we refuse to treat them as brothers, |
| voice 3 | or when we refuse to accept that they also live with great tensions and contradictions. |
| voice 1 | As we forgive those that sin against us |
| voice 2 | or rather, as we try with all our heart to forgive those that sin against us, even the commissioner of police. |
| voice 1 | Don’t allow us to fall into temptation |
| voice 3 | by responding to a curse with a curse, to hatred with hatred, to maltreatment with maltreatment. |
| voice 1 | Free us from evil |
| voice 2 | from grovelling and fawning, from humiliation, |
| voice 3 | from despair and desperation |
| voice 2 | and from our sense of loneliness and isolation. |
| voice 1,2,3 | Amen |
(Chile, prayed by ten people detained
in the Central Police Station, Santiago)
Matthew 27:31 (NIV)
After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.
Prayer:
A Procession of Prayers: Meditations and Prayers from Around the World by John Carden, p. 203-4