On Weeks of Prayer, Communion, and Fasting, Part 3

This if the final installment, Part 3, of my reflections on beginning this year with prayer, communion, and fasting. (You may also be interested in Part 1 or Part 2.)

Prayer Week is apparently a Canadian Mennonite tradition; fasting is not. When I first floated the idea of inviting folks in our fellowship to join me in daytime fasting during Prayer Week, I met with quizzical expressions. This would be something new. On the first Sunday I suggested that maybe someday soon I'd do a bit more substantial teaching on the topic. Frankly, I didn't expect anyone to actually join me in this discipline. I thought about foregoing the fast.

I'm glad I didn't, for two reasons. First, people joined me in fasting. I think this was a bit of an experiment for some of them. I heard good reports back--God met them in their fast. Alongside this fellowship and growth among those who kept the fast, a number of good discussions cropped up about fasting when I was visiting folks who didn't opt to try out this discipline (ironically, those conversations consistently happened around dinner tables).

My second reason is that it was in my fast--more than in prayer alone or even at the communion table--that I encountered God during Prayer Week.

My hope for our fellowship during this week was that God would illumine the path forward for us in 2013: What relationships, what sacrifices, what celebrations is God leading us to as we witness to God's kingdom? I didn't walk away from this week with a clear and distinct vision or game plan, but in my hunger and, especially, in my fellowship with other fasting folks, I felt the seeds of a vision being pushed down into our hearts. We're still waiting for them to sprout. They're germinating now. They're still just an intuition too fragile for words. But I they are there, hopefully in good soil, waiting on God's time to waken them.

On the third Sunday I followed through on my promise to teach on fasting. This was a difficult decision. Like I've said, fasting is not a Mennonite practice. Also, preaching on fasting would mean sharing a lot of my own practice of fasting. I'm slow to draw attention to myself in this way. After all, Jesus said that it's what's done in secret that will be reward by the Father who sees into the secret places (Mt 6.18).

In the end I did, to some degree, preach on fasting. And, yes, my own fasting journey featured front and center (personal stories, after all, make for good introductions). But this sermon grew to be about something more than fasting.

So a bit of my story: I first personally encountered the practice of fasting when my high school youth group took on WorldVision's 30 Hour Famine. (It's a great project; I highly recommend trying it out!) My initial approach was more or less mercenary: if I give up food I can raise money so hungry people can eat. But in the wee hours midway through a youth group all-nighter, my fast became something spiritual for me. I'm not sure if it was my youth pastor's meditations on Jesus' forty day fast in the desert or simply the Spirit at work. Either way, by the time we all broke our fast with a simple beans 'n' rice meal at six p.m. the next day, I knew that I had met with God in a new way.

At that same time I was a student leader with Youth Alive, a student led Christian organization in my high school. Every now and again we'd hold evangelistic rallies like See You at the Pole. I thought it was a small step from fasting for people's material needs to fasting for their "spiritual needs." (I wouldn't make the same distinctions today, but I still believe my heart was on the right track.) I would make all sorts of sacrifices, takes all sorts of risks to talk with my friends about Jesus. Giving up food for a day or two didn't didn't seem like much of a sacrifice if it brought my friends closer to God.

A few years at university challenged my understandings of fasting, evangelism, all sort of things. Reading a few chapters of medieval or colonial church history will sour you on all sorts of things. I saw the abuses, the legalism, the way fasting (or evangelism or Bible reading) became a shibboleth on occasion. Still, something kept drawing me back to fasting. On my evangelical college campus, evangelism wasn't my prime purpose. Rather, I began to find that when I fasted, things would take on a certain clarity, they would bear a heightened urgency. I'm sure some of this was manipulatively self-produced, but I'm equally sure that at points God used a fast to clear away my collegiate haze of textbooks, flirting, coffee cups, and too many video games.

As I was preparing, revisiting my history, I kept stumbling into a bit of scripture that was very important to me then but that I probably haven't run into in six or seven years: 2 Cor 1.3-7.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort.

During late high school and throughout college, this was something of a life verse for me. Open your eyes to the pain of the world, the pain of your peers, and then bring God's solace. Bind up wounds, listen to hurts, dry tears--all with the gospel of Jesus.

A quote by Peter Holmes in The Fasting Journey also shed some unexpected light. He writes, "Throughout a fast you need to see your life as prayer."

On Sunday morning I talked through the basics of fasting: what it is (choosing to refrain from certain things), what can we fast (anything that reveals our dependency on God), who should fast (only those who are medically able).

But when we got to the Why of fasting, I had to slow down. Why fast--the inner logic of fasting, its spiritual dynamics--felt like the heart of what God has to say to our fellowship in this season.

Another quote from Holmes' The Fasting Journey offered a bit of jumping off point:

"The purpose of fasting must be considered from two perspectives. One is the benefit it brings to us personally in our relationship with God. But the other is the wider benefit it brings to the Kingdom of God. Sometimes the latter does not directly profit us. Fasting is often a way of paying the price in order that others may benefit."

Paying the price that others may benefit. This idea resonates deeply with Paul's explanation that if we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation. 

There's a kind of messianic, Suffering Servant logic to fasting.

Sure, giving up food (or Facebook or television or our morning coffee) peels back the layers of creature comforts that insulate us and distract us from God's voice. Self-restraint helps our spiritual sensitivity grow. At times we need this desperately, like when we repent.

But for our fellowship, it's the messianic aspect of fasting that whispers of where God is leading us.

Truth be told, this messianic kind of suffering is at work in much more than just fasting. The practice of fasting, it turns out, is shorthand for, a symbol of the missional character of Christian discipleship. Jesus has called us together to witness to God's kingdom. God sees the world's suffering, and, rather than turn a blind eye, God chooses to take that suffering on himself in Jesus so that God can renew all things, replacing suffering with comfort. Our witness to this has the same shape as Jesus' witness--we take suffering on ourselves to bring others comfort. Every bit of our lives ought to be caught up in this witness work. When we forget that, fasting reminds us that chosen suffering for the good of others is the way of love.

I'll end this post with the words I ended with on Sunday morning. Here's my conclusion:

Fasting is one way--a very intimate way--to share Jesus’ physical hardship: his own fasting in the desert, the late nights and early mornings he spent preparing for ministry, the days when healing the sick and casting out demons kept him so busy he couldn’t eat, even the suffering he faced as he walked toward Golgotha and then hung on a tree. There are other ways to deny ourselves to take part in his work.

But we must never forget that the purpose of Christ’s self-sacrifice as well as our own is so that we can give away God’s love more freely to those around us. That is the broader picture. Without that in view, our fasting or spiritual practices are no better than those of the Pharisees which God detested.

This is the question I want you to contemplate this week: How is God asking you to share in Christ’s self-sacrifice in order that you can share his love with your sisters, brothers, and neighbors? This is a question I put to you personally. It is also a question for our church fellowship: How is God asking us to deny ourselves for the sake of sharing his love with our neighbors here in our town and those around the world?

Pray on this. Pray with me.

Notes from the Corner - Prayer Week - Prayer at the Table

One of the most common places I’ve heard prayer is around the dinner table. Even in fairly secular households, I’ve watched people pause for a moment before starting a meal.

I’m not sure why praying and eating tend to go together. It’s not a Bible command (though we do have examples of Jesus and others thanking God for food). My best guess is that sitting down together at the table reminds us again of the many good things in our lives. Prayer is a natural expression of gratitude.

An old name for the Lord’s Supper is eucharist (Catholics, Anglicans, and others still call it that). Eucharist is simply the Greek word for “thanksgiving.” Communion, like our mealtime prayers, is a way of saying “Thank you” to God.

When we come to this Table together, we have much to be thankful for. We are thankful that God’s thrown open his arms to welcome us back into God’s family. We’re thankful for the spilt blood and broken body of Jesus that made us a Way home. We’re thankful that we’re here together, brothers and sisters sharing a meal. We take this bread, take this cup, as joyful acts of praise and thanksgiving.

On Weeks of Prayer, Communion, and Fasting, Part 2

This is Part 2 in a three-part series on my experience of Prayer Week 2013. (See Part 1 for more details.)

Prayer Week in our fellowship involved increased times of gathered and personal or household prayer, some folks trying out fasting, and a concluding communion service the follow Sunday. These practices pushed me into some deep reflection on love, ours for God, God's for us, and our love together for the world.

I talked about this love and these practices on three consecutive Sundays. Here I'm returning to these topics, rehashing what I said and pushing deeper into each topic.

Week Two: Meeting Jesus in Prayer and at the Table

Something seemed right about ending a week of praying together with a Sunday morning eating together in memory of Jesus. As I prayed through the week, my conviction grew stronger and stronger that prayer and communion should go together in the life of our fellowship right now.

My mind also kept returning to the story of Jesus, now resurrected, surprising his listless disciples on the beach with hot breakfast on the beach. This passage isn't quite a communion story (though it echoes the eucharist in many ways), and prayer certainly isn't its main concern. Perhaps because my heart was in the last chapters of Jn for Prayer Week or perhaps because the Spirit had something important to say, but this story became the center of my meditations on prayer and communion for Sunday morning.

Praying over the passage, over the communion liturgy (which circled around 1 Cor 11, Jn 14, and Lk 15), and over the circumstances and hearts of our fellowship, I began to see that prayer and communion overlap in three significant ways.

1. In both prayer and communion, we encounter Jesus. Believers have long debated how exactly we meet Jesus at God's dinner table. But whatever the encounter's mechanics or metaphysics, we can't deny that in sharing in this bread, this cup, we encounter Jesus.

Prayer, too, whether we're conscious of it or not, is always in Jesus' name. We seek God's face, and we find the Incarnate Son. We seek God's  goodness to heal our diseases, God's wisdom to direct our steps, God's justice for the oppressed, God's forgiveness for our guilty hearts, and we find that all these things come to us in the person of Jesus. (See Jn 14.6-9)

(We could also say that when we go to God in thanksgiving, the very things we're giving thanks for have already faced us with Jesus. Both John and Paul say that Jesus is the order, the wisdom, the logos that secures goodness, order, shalom in the universe--whether that goodness be a warm dinner or a miraculous healing.)

2. Both prayer and communion strengthen our love for fellow believers. I saw this firsthand as our fellowship gathered in small groups to pray for one another on Wednesday night. (Thank you, Cindy, for leading us in that exercise.) Text messages, emails, actual face-to-face conversations followed up these shared prayer requests. Prayer increases our stake in other people's lives.

I find this morning by morning as my book of Common Prayer asks me to voice "Prayers for Others" before reciting the Our Father. Those I pray for work their way into my heart, and I find myself calling them up or sending an email to them.

Paul told the Corinthians that their eucharistic fellowship should reflect their true heart-felt fellowship with one another. For this lack of "discerning the body of Christ" to be present in those sisters and brothers eating with them, Paul said some were sick, even dead. Remember, Paul's teaching on the Lord's table in 1 Cor 11.17-34 comes only two or three paragraphs before his instruction about the church being one body made up of many members in 12.12-31.

If we are to eat this meal as a true testimony to the Messiah who submitted even to crucifixion to reconcile us to God (and one another), we must no longer be wrapped up in our own concerns but begin to privilege more the concerns of others (Phil 2.1-11).

3. Both prayer and communion send us out to love and serve the world. We share with one another at the communion table to proclaim the Lord's death until he comes (1 Cor 11.26). This meal is a witness to one who has begun to renew all things and who will return to complete that project. If we share with him at table, we must also share with him in life. He cared for the lonely, healed the sick, cast out evil. If we eat his food and look forward to enjoying the shelter of the homes he is preparing for us, we must live by his rules, after his example.

More fundamentally for me, communion is about a renewal, a recommitment to our discipleship. Every time I stand receive this bread and wine, I remember the promise I made with baptism. Jesus said, "Follow me," and I got up and followed.

Among the things that the example of the New Testament teaches us about prayer, perhaps one is that prayer is as much listening for God to speak as it is talking to God. Think of the the pre-Pentecost prayer meeting (Acts 2). Think of the one in Antioch (Acts 13): As they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I've called them." So after they prayed and fasted, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.

Praying to God means, in part, being ready for God to use us to answer our prayers.

All three of these dynamics are at work in Jn 21, even though neither prayer nor communion show up in the story. The disciples encounter Jesus on the shore. (Picking up week one's themes, Jesus shows them his goodness by filling their nets and bellies, even while there are deeper needs that won't be addressed until after they've finished eating.)

After the breakfast meeting, Jesus calls Peter aside. Peter needs relational repair work with Jesus. While Jesus was on trial, Peter had sworn by heaven and earth that he didn't even know who Jesus was. Jesus addresses that by asking Peter three times if he loves him. Jesus pushes Peter to a stronger love. (Although Jesus is the fellow believer in question here, the principle holds that an encounter with Jesus results in stronger commitment to right relationships within God's family.)

This encounter not only offers reconciliation; it also gives Peter a task: "Care for my flock." We think of Peter's commission primarily in terms of pastoral care of believers (a strong love), but this task had a strong missionary aspect. Jesus predicts at the end of the chapter how Peter will die: a martyr in Rome, far, far away from the shores of Galilee. Earlier, he was a guest in the first Gentile convert's house in Caesarea and a minister to the fledgling congregation in Antioch. Jesus sent him out to the nations.

In my view, Jn 21 opens the shared dynamics of prayer and communion beyond Prayer Week, church services, or focused times of prayer. Paul says, "Pray continually." It seem that we could continually, at any moment, meet Jesus, find him calling forth more love, hear him sending us to do something new. The spiritual and sacramental practices train us for a spiritual and sacramental awareness of all of life. Jesus may be standing on the shore, if only we have eyes to see him.

On Weeks of Prayer, Communion, and Fasting, Part 1

I am three Sundays into 2013. Between the first and the second Sunday (from 06 to 13 January) our fellowship devoted itself to prayer. Some fasted during those days. We ended the week by eating a communion meal together.

A January "Prayer Week," as it's called, is something of a Canadian Mennonite tradition, I'm told. It was new to me. The impulse seems to be (1) to give to God the first portion of the year and (2) to seek God's blessing and direction for the new year. [If you have more information on this tradition, I'd love to hear; share it in the Comments.]

Both these motivations are well and good. I know that our fellowship needs God's direction. We have hard work ahead of us, first discerning personally and corporately where the frontiers of God's reign are in our context and, second, going and doing whatever God shows us.

But I worry that the stated motivations for Prayer Week encourage us toward a tit-for-tat take on spiritual disciplines. It's not long before we're thinking, "Okay, God, I'll spend time praying to you so that you will bless/guide/protect me and mine."

So when we've met up for worship and encouragement on the last three Sunday, I've explored our reasons for praying, for eating the Lord's communion meal together, for fasting. I'm trying to preach more and more from notes (and less and less from manuscript), so I won't be posting sermons whole-text regularly (unless my attempts at note-preaching crash and burn). But here's a summary of where my heart has been as I've wrestled with these issues:

Week One: Why Should We Pray?

My home passage was Jn 17.1-5. (Others, including Cindy, led us in reflection on vv 6-19 and 20-26 at prayer meetings later in the week.)

Jesus uses "glory" language over and over in this paragraph. He "brought [his Father] gory on earth" and was glorified "with [his Father] before the world existed." At the same time, Jesus asks that his Father "glorify [his] Son, that [his] Son may glorify [him.]" The question is, What is glory?

My answer: Jesus glorifies his Father by revealing his Father's character, bringing his Father's presence, ha-shekinah, present on earth. What do we see when Jesus reveals his Father? My answer: love. John, in his first letter, states this plainly: "God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him" (1 Jn 4.8-9). Or, in the Gospel's paraphrase of Ex 34.6-7 in Jn 1.18, "We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of chesed and `emet."

Understanding glory as the revelation of God's loving and faithful character, I came up with two basic motivations for prayer as I listened to Jn 17.1-5.

1. We pray because Jesus has already glorified his Father. We have experienced God's lovingkindness and faithfulness, in ways small and big. There are the common blessings that God pours out on the wicked and the good, the shalom we experience now, fractured and bent up as it may be. Ultimately, these are all reflections of the God's greatest act of love, the compassion and obedience that carried Jesus to a cross.

2. We pray because we ourselves, our neighbors, and our world still need God's glorious love to be revealed here and now for us. Having "tasted and seen that the Lord is good" heightens our awareness of how much is not yet good. Experiencing God's love turns up the contrast. Suddenly the ills, the violence we might have off-handedly chalked up to "that's just the way things are" become an aching hole, a wound in the otherwise infinite goodness, love, faithfulness, glory of God. With Jesus, we pray, "You have been glorified on earth, now glorify yourself again" (cf. Jn 17.1, 4 and 10.27-28)

(Watch for reflections on the next two weeks over the next few days)