God of new beginnings
Below is the congregational prayer I wrote for worship this past Sunday. The service used both themes of Epiphany [wise men following a star to Jesus] and the story Jesus first calling his disciples in John 1:35–51.
God of new beginnings. You are the source of life and light and are eager to show us the path we should walk.
We hear you call out to us to follow you. Give us strength and courage to heed your call even though we may not know where you are leading us. Give us eyes to see and boldness to follow the star guiding us to your presence here on earth.
We hear you calling us to care for our sisters and brothers, here within our community and throughout the whole world – for we are all your children.
We pray for all people in places afflicted with the disease of war. For people displaced and distraught. God, it is hard to understand what help our prayers are in these situations, but still we implore you to bring your strong and loving arm into these places. Replace the hearts of stone of the leaders who choose to inflict this pain on others. We pray for weapons of love to heal these places.
We pray for those brought down by fear, despair, and discouragement. For those whose night skies are always cloudy with no stars to guide them. We ask that they might feel your loving embrace and begin to feel the warmth of hope.
And God, we pray with those who feel are feeling an extra dose of your love and joy. Thank you for their openness to you and for your work in their lives. Thank you for the light and love they bring into the lives of those they encounter.
Loving God, you have seen us under the tree and you have called us your child. Fill our hearts to follow you to be your love in the world. Amen
Prayer for the people
A prayer I offered at a recent morning worship service. (The first sentence is borrowed from another prayer in our hymnal.)
Listening God,
You hear our words before we speak and yet welcome our praying, therefore we lay our concerns before you now.
We pray for all those suffering in mind, body, and spirit. For those living in fear of an uncertain diagnosis and an uncertain future. For those silently suffering and for those losing hope. We pray they be surrounded by love and peace and a caring hand.
We prayer for the powers and principalities which inflict their unjust ways on the world, on its people and systems and ecologies. For all those who cause harm and deny the good. We prayer that your refining fire might burn in their hearts and incinerate their hate. We pray for people to not only speak truth to power, but to actively resist and demonstrate peaceful ways of living.
We pray for our congregation, for your beloved children of God and we continually walk in your way and discern what our life together in love might look like.
We pray with all those celebrating today – for minor accomplishments and for big. We pray for all those whose lives matter so much to us and for all the love they bring into our life. We prayer for those who offer care and support and service to our lives. Bless all these people.
We offer our deep gratitude for your listening ear and pray that we might share this listening love with all we meet.
Amen
House of Prayer
Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, ‘It is written,
“My house shall be a house of prayer”;
but you have made it a den of robbers.’
Luke 19:45-48
This past Friday’s gospel reading was about Jesus driving out the commercial ventures that were housed in the temple. It’s a text on which a lot of people place a lot of weight. It is often used to evoke questions about Jesus’ relationship with violence. Or it’s used to talk about the exploitation of the poor.
Those are all fine, but that’s not where my eyes and thoughts were directed. Jesus states “My house shall be a house of prayer.” Jesus’ complaint was that the purpose of the temple and the reason people come to the temple was for prayer. And these financial exploits were viciously distracting from that purpose.
I am struck at how Jesus centers prayer, and his anger is that the temple’s purpose as a place of prayer was being violated. Jesus’ iconic moment of anger and action was about prayer. I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever thought it this story that way before.
I’ve been increasingly attentive to the centrality of prayer in Jesus’ life and teaching. A quick search of the gospels for verses having to do with Jesus and some version of the word “pray” yields four pages of verses. Curiously none of these verses are from the gospel of John. All this means is that John doesn’t use that specific word, but we know this book is filled with instances of Jesus in prayer.
Luke’s gospel is particularly attentive to the prayer life of Jesus. Immediately after baptism Jesus is seen to be in prayer. “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened,” Lk 3:21
Luke’s gospel has the most mentions of Jesus withdrawing to a deserted place to pray.
Luke 5.16: But he would withdraw to deserted places and pray.
Luke 6.12: Now during those days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God.
Luke 9.18: Once when Jesus* was praying alone, with only the disciples near him, he asked them, ‘Who do the crowds say that I am?’
Luke 9.28 Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus* took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray.
Luke 11.1 He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.’
This final verse demonstrates that Jesus’ disciples recognized Jesus’ particular gift for prayer and asked to learn from him. In Matthew’s version of Jesus teaching the disciples to prayer he offers instructions not only in the words to say but that prayer is not to be a public display of piety or a wordy exposition but an intimate connection with God.
Another verse in Luke that has captured more of my attention recently is “Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” (Luke 18:1). This instruction to “pray always” is echoed in Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians “pray without ceasing.” (1 Thess. 5:17) This goal of ceaseless prayer is a puzzling mystery for how one might live that out, but many monastic traditions in particular strive to make that a reality. While the mechanics of how to do this may be a mystery, this instruction is a reminder that prayer is to be a constant presence in the life of one following Jesus.
In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians we are reminded that we are temples of the Holy Spirit. (1 Cor. 6:19) And so, as temples of God, we too are to be a house of prayer. The purpose of our very being is to be in contact and communion with our God.
As a Mennonite one of the central tenets of our expression of faith is captured in the German word “nachfolge” which means succession, or emulation, or following after. This word is used to describe our relationship with Jesus; that we follow in the way of or emulate Jesus. I’ve mostly encountered this being expressed as an ethical injunction. Follow in Jesus’ way of sacrificial peace. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a sermon on following Jesus up the mountain to pray. I’m not saying this as a criticism of my Mennonite family, but as perhaps a bit of a missed opportunity.
I wonder what Jesus’ act of clearing away the vendors and the moneychangers looks like in my life. How might Jesus clear those things that distract me from the purpose of prayer?
The centrality of prayer to Jesus’ life and ministry is important to pay attention to. His work was sustained and enabled through constant prayer. Jesus was a healer, a teacher, and a prophet. Jesus was all those things because Jesus was a man of prayer.
I don’t think much about my legacy or what my impact on the world will be, but when I have thought about it, the one thing I’d like people to think about me is that I was a man of prayer. I’m far from deserving that epithet but hope some day to earn it. I hope that some day I will be a house of prayer without distraction.
Prayer for Unity
We are going through prayers in the Bible as our church’s sermon theme for the summer. This Sunday our text was John 17:20-23, the 2nd part of Jesus’ wonderful prayer for the disciples and the church. Our pastor encouraged us to write new prayers based on these four verses. Here’s what I offered.
Holy One,
You are the unity we seek.
You are the one and only, and in you we live and breathe.
Open our eyes to see you in the other.
Open our eyes to see you in ourselves.
Unity is not ours to create or destroy but is always present in you.
Holy One of Glory,
Open our eyes to encounter your Glory bursting forth in all creation.
May our lives delight and celebrate your Glory in others and ourselves.
Holy One of Love,
Open our hearts to recognize that it is love, your love, that gathers each one of us into your unity.
Tear down the boundaries we build so that your unifying love might flow freely through us to all the world.
In your one and holy name we pray.
Amen
Looking for Jesus in all the wrong places - Ascension Day Sermon
I used to work at a large library. It was Michigan’s state government and history library. It was four stories tall with hundreds of thousands of items in its collections, books, periodicals, government documents, maps, microfiche. I supervised our student workers and one of their jobs was shelving books. This also meant they looked for missing materials. When they just could not find the missing piece they came to report this to me. My common, if cheesy response to them was “If you don’t find it where it belongs, you look for it where it doesn’t belong.” I had a bit of a knack for intuiting where these wrong places might be.
It's easier to find something if you know what it is you are looking for. Imagine playing Where’s Waldo if you have no idea what Waldo looks like. Where would you begin to look?
In our Acts text we find the disciples staring up into the sky. Looking for something that wasn’t there. This is the same direction which Jesus just departed from them. Jesus was taken up into the sky. I recently saw an ancient painting of the disciples looking up and all that was visible at the top of the painting were Jesus’ pierced feet.
I can imagine the levels of confusion these disciples were dealing with at this moment. “Just a little while ago he died, and when we looked at the tomb, he wasn’t there, and then he just showed up. And now up he goes into the sky. Poof. And he’s gone again. So is this just another short term thing? Really, what on earth is going on anymore. I’m soo confused.”
And while they were staring up into the sky two white robed men appeared and asked “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
White robed guys asking questions about an absent Jesus was starting to be a pattern. Remember back in Luke when the women went to the tomb to look for the body of Jesus, and again our white robed guys appear and ask “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”
Every time they look for a missing Jesus these guys show up and say “Nope, not here. Not in the grave, not in the sky.”
So then, where do we look for Jesus? Where do we expect to find Jesus? How do you even know if we’ve spotted him? These disciples who had spent 3 years with Jesus were still looking for him and were quite puzzled about his absence.
Much earlier in his life, Mary and Joseph went looking for the young Jesus, who was not where they expected him to be. They returned to Jerusalem and found him in the temple talking with the religious leaders. This is not where you expect to find a 12-yr old boy. The women coming to the tomb looking for the body of Jesus did not find him where or how they expected. The Pharisees often found Jesus in places they didn’t expect him to be, with tax collectors and sinners.
The messiah even appeared as a baby in a stable born to a young virgin. This is not where or how we expect to find the messiah.
The opening verses of our Acts text begins with the disciples asking Jesus “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” They were still thinking that the Jesus they were looking for was a political leader. Jesus was right in front of them, but they couldn’t quite find him.
Once again, where do we look for Jesus? Where do we expect to find Jesus? How will we even know when we’ve spotted him?
Finding the divine in unexpected places is not unique to the New Testament. God’s presence in the Old Testament, the First Testament often comes in unexpected forms.
From 1 Kings 19
God said to Elija, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; 12 and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. 13 When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’
God was not in the powerful acts of great winds, of splitting mountains, of earthquakes, fires. Not in these “acts of God” but in the sound of sheer silence did Elijah hear God’s voice. In silence Elijah found God.
From Exodus 3
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 3Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ 4When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ 5Then he said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ 6He said further, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
Moses found God in a fiery bush. Moses wasn’t looking for God, and when he saw the burning bush he didn’t think “Oh look, there’s God.” I’m intrigued that Moses, turned aside to see the bush. This turning aside reminds me of Jesus’s call to metanoia, to repent, to turn around, to change one’s mind.
One key difference between these two stories of Elijah and Moses, and our New Testament stories of disciples is that while the disciples were looking for Jesus, Elijah and Moses were not out looking for God. Elijah was fleeing and asking that his life be ended and Moses was just out tending his flocks. These people weren’t looking for God, but God revealed God’s self to them.
Maybe our efforts at looking for Jesus, looking for God are misdirected. Maybe we are looking for Jesus in the wrong places. We’ve learned from the white-robed men that we won’t find him looking down among the dead, and we won’t find him looking up into some way beyond. Maybe we are even fooling ourselves thinking we can find Jesus.
Is Jesus, Is God there to be found like a lost coin? Will shining a light and sweeping all our corners lead us to find Jesus? Or is Jesus more inclined to just show up and be found, in a locked upper room, in a Garden by an empty tomb, at a table breaking bread in Emmaus? Does God, out of God’s own generous will simply reveal God’s self to us? Is it perhaps not on account of our looking that we “find” God. Christopher Columbus did not “find” the new world. Perhaps we do not “find” God. Perhaps we are found by God. Perhaps God reveals God’s self to open hearts ready to receive.
Or maybe it is both. Maybe our seeking is necessary. Maybe’s God revealing God’s self is necessary. Maybe finding and being found, maybe seeking and being sought, maybe these together are an essential to our relationship with God.
Just before my meditation we sang one of my favored hymns. The first verse reads “I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew he moved my soul to seek him seeking me. It was not I that found, O Saviour true, no, I was found of thee.” That verse pretty much summarizes what I have to say.
Both God and us seek and are sought. We both find and are found. We are completely separate from, and intimately one with God. There is a mutuality of desire and action between us and God. The kingdom is now and not yet.
If part of our call is to be found by God, how do we do that? How do we open ourselves to be found by the one we are seeking? How can we be good soil ready to receive the seed of God’s word? If we had problems with the question of where do we find Jesus, I think the question of how do we be found by Jesus is even more challenging. How do we prepare our hearts to receive the one we seek? How do we allow, and assent to God’s presence within us.
The final sentence in our Acts passage offers an important clue to answering this challenge of seeking God, and preparing our hearts to be found by God. After the ascension when the disciples had reconvened in Jerusalem, the verse reads “All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers.”
As fun as it is to make fun of the disciples for sometimes seeming clueless about what was going on, they show some deep wisdom here. They have learned that Jesus is not to be found among the dead and Jesus is not to be found in some far off home in the sky. They might not have completely figured out how to find Jesus, but in gathering together to spend time in prayer and reflection the disciples were opening their hearts in the direction of God and becoming attuned to God’s presence already among them.
As Jesus seemed absent, the disciples reconvened as a community of prayer. Perhaps they did this to try to regain the intimacy and immediacy of Jesus’ physical presence that had been with them. Perhaps they learned by Jesus’ example of repeatedly going off to pray. Perhaps they couldn’t imagine connection with God, without connections with each other.
In this gathered community of prayer the disciples, and ultimately us, continue the practice of seeking and being sought, of finding and being found. In this community of prayer we prepare our hearts to receive God in ways we might never have imagined possible. Together in prayer we till and nourish the soil to be ready for the divine seed of God’s word.
The call to be a community of prayer is not a call to withdraw from the world, but in this community of prayer we develop an awareness to be attuned to God’s presence in the world. While the outpouring of the holy spirit in Pentecost has not yet arrived, the disciples gathering in prayer are preparing themselves to receive God in these tongues of flame, and be empowered to bring the presence and power of God to all the world.
Where do we look to find Jesus? Gathered in the prayerful community, in a mutual relationship of seeking and being sought, Christ opens our eyes so that we may find Jesus wherever we look.
Retreat Centre Exploration Meeting
Below is a letter I sent to some people in southern Manitoba, but the invitation is open anyone who is interested.
Greetings
Are you eager for a place of spiritual retreat? A place that emphasizes silence and solitude? A place of rest, prayer, and contemplation?
I invite you to join a conversation where like-minded people will begin exploring the possibility of such a place in southern Manitoba.
I am Kevin Driedger, a resident of Winkler and member of Covenant Mennonite Church. For the last 23 years I’ve been associated as a volunteer, board member, staff, and director of The Hermitage, an ecumenical contemplative retreat center in southwest Michigan. I know the impact a place like this can have on all who take time for retreat. I’m also aware of the paucity of similar places in southern Manitoba.
I invite you to join this initial conversation on May 23, at 7pm. The meeting will be held at Covenant Mennonite Church in Winkler, but we'll also make a Zoom link available if people wish to join online.
Everyone who has any interest or curiosity about a space for retreat is welcome to attend. Please share this with anyone you know might be interested.
Please let me know if you would like to participate in this meeting either in person or online, or let me know if you have any questions.
Kevin Driedger
ksdriedger@gmail.com
In Praise of the Useless Mennonite*
I have a compulsion to be useful. Growing up I absorbed/adopted the idea that usefulness was next to godliness. Or perhaps usefulness was godliness. I think I’m really good at being useful. I wish I wasn’t.
Christian usefulness is an important value and characteristic of north American white Mennonites. But I wonder when our emphasis on usefulness as a personal religious value is really just an expression of extractive capitalism. Just as a land’s value is based on how much economic worth we can get out of it, a useful person’s value is dependent on how many service hours they can provide. How much hardworking good can a person do to achieve greater good for all. Any evening spent tying comforters for MCC is more useful and of greater value than an evening reading a novel or playing with Lego®.
I think usefulness is a distraction from our true work.
I want to sing the praises of the useless Mennonite. The useless Mennonite shifts the location of their value. The useless Mennonite detaches their value from their accomplishments, or the good they achieved. The useless Mennonite rests in God.
Some of the greatest Christian activities are prayer and worship. This is not prayer for the purpose of negotiating some transaction with God. Not prayer to cajole God to accomplish something, no matter how good. And this is not worship for the purpose of being a pre-cursor to fellowship hour. But rather, useless prayer and worship is simply recognizing one’s presence with God’s presence. In useless prayer and worship the only transaction is God freely loves you and you freely love God.
We are all familiar with the two greatest commandments: to Love God with all our heart and mind and soul, and to love others as ourselves. How often do we Mennonite skip over the loving God part and get to the loving others part? Do Mennonites have conferences, working groups, and retreats to reflect on loving God? We may have, but I’m not certain. But Mennonites do have conferences and working groups to think and meet about loving others. This Mennonite understanding of loving others is best expressed by serving others for the cause of justice.
Service itself is not a bad thing, but I think the motivation for service can reshape service from useful to useless. I’ve been pondering service as a sacramental activity; service as an act of worship. The purpose and practice of sacramental service is to open ourselves to bear witness to God’s presence in the other and to then love and worship God through your interaction with that person. The purpose of sacramental service is not to achieve great social change, but to love God. Brother Lawrence’s mode of life was to do everything, even flip an omelet in his frying pan, for the love of God.
Being a useless Mennonite does not mean not getting anything done, it means not doing something primarily to accomplish something, but first to do that thing for the love of God.
I used to work at the Hermitage, a contemplative retreat center that offered space for silence, solitude, and rest. During my time there I began to realize that rest was one of the greatest gifts for a person to receive on retreat. Too often I had people arrive with stacks of books to read and an agenda of all that they wanted to accomplish. A I welcomed them I would often encourage them to start first with a nap. The useless practice of rest and silence creates space within ourselves to hear God. And what could be more valuable than that? We do not accomplish God’s presence. We do not achieve a listening heart. We let go of all our useful activities and allow God’s presence to fill us.
The goal of the useless Mennonite is to detach themselves from their striving, serving, and accomplishing. The useless Mennonite may still be active in serving, and accomplishing great things, but that is not their goal. Their goal is simply to love and worship God in all they do. The useless Mennonite lives out the moniker “the quiet in the land” not by holding the world at a distance, but in resting with reverence and awe in the loving presence of God.
* My use of Mennonite in this piece is referring to north American, white Mennonites. And my use of Mennonite includes poorly informed, over-generalizations for my own convenience.
If you are my light, then shine on me.
I recently read Prayer Book for Earnest Christians: A Spiritually Rich Anabaptist Resource. It is a recent English translation of Die ernsthafte Christepflicht which was initially published in the early 1700s. It’s a fascinating insight into how at least some Anabaptists prayed. The language of the prayers feels more familiar to texts by earlier Catholic writers than any of my own Mennonite context.
Below is a portion of one of the prayers that I particularly liked.
Discipleship and Prayer: Following Jesus up the mountain
The concept of discipleship has been central to Anabaptist teach from its beginnings. For most of this history discipleship was spoken of as nachfolge German for to follow. Anabaptists emphasized Christ’s call to “follow him” and that following Christ should shape our lives and faith. This discipleship seemed to have largely ethical ramifications. Discussing ethics is the Anabaptist “happy place”. Following Jesus shaped how one was to relate to others with non-resistance/pacifism/non-violence being central to all relationships. (Unfortunately, we have seen that non-violence in relationships with women was not seen as important by some who emphasized discipleship.)
This approach to discipleship as shaping ethics is fine, but it is incomplete. Jesus life and ministry was not just about ethics. One place I can’t recall ever being taught to follow Jesus was up the mountain to pray. I’ve recently been rereading the gospels and have once again been struck by how often Jesus went away to be alone to pray. Mennonites have traditionally loved to follow Jesus into communities and crowds, but following Jesus into solitude up the mountain, or into the desert has not been seen as important part of discipleship.
It seems that one of the dangers of ethics being the central vision for discipleship is it quickly valorizes activity and effectiveness. Doing something is always better that doing “nothing” and quiet, prayerful solitude looks way too much like doing nothing. But this understanding is not faithful to following the Jesus of the Bible who yes, was very active and effective, but also repeatedly and regularly went up the mountain to pray, and regularly invited his disciples to follow him in this practice.
Stepping away from our good works to pray is necessary to place ourselves and our work in context of a fuller awareness of God’s presence in this world, and our humble and dependent reliance on God. Too often our work is a distraction from simply listening and being aware of God. Without this awareness our good works simply become our good works. Spending significant time going apart to pray helps our good work become God’s good work.
I could write a lot more about this than the little bit of meandering typing on this chilly Saturday morning. Image is from Maumeen pass in Ireland.