Here is a prayer for Epiphany from Walter Brueggemann’s Prayers for a Privileged People.
The wise ones hurried from the East.
They are the wise of the world.
They are the ones wise in science,
for they read the “intelligent design” of the stars.
They are the wise ones of the economy,
for they come with gold.
They are the wise ones of politics,
for they sought a king.
They are our delegates, as we stand
carrying all the learning of the academy,
of the market,
of the laboratory,
of the halls of power.
They came, tenaciously and eagerly and regally.
They came and bowed down before your foolishness.
They sensed the contradiction
between his vulnerability and their sagacity,
between his innocence and their calculation,
between his exposure and their many concealing
robes of power.
They worshiped him!
They recognized that he called into question
all that they treasured,
so they yielded their best to him,
their preciousness,
their secret potions,
their rich perfumes.
And we stand alongside them with
our wealth,
our control,
our smarts,
our sophistication,
our affluence.
Give us freedom like theirs
to yield,
to worship,
to adore,
to have our lives contradicted.
Give us grace like theirs
to embrace the foolishness of the child,
that the first will be last and the last first,
that the humble will be exalted and the exalted humbled,
that we may lose the world and gain our lives.
Give us the imagination like theirs
to go home by another route
on the path where foolishness is wisdom
and weakness is strength
and poverty is wealth.
Make our new foolishness specific
that the world might become–
through us–new.
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