Prayer: The Frontier of the Spiritual Life




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He Loved Them to the End

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"Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end." --John 13:1   Life with Jesus was life immersed in the gracious love of God:  embracing; drenching; challenging; shocking; thrilling.  The love was strong yet tender.  They were destabilized from their normal way of life while becoming rooted deeply into another Jesus-centered way of being.  The love was moment-by-moment, decision-by-decision; a life-changing agape love that was inviting them and transforming them at the same time. When Jesus gathers his disciples for the Passover meal  on what we call Maundy Thursday, he knows that "his hour has come;"  the time they had been preparing for was now here.  And how do the twelve arrive?  Hopelessly wrongheaded, it would seem, their heads full of assumptions about their own privilege in God's emerging kingdom, bickering with each other over what positions each will hold in the new administration, blissfully deaf to the p...
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Greater Things

Very truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will  also do the works that I do, and in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.  --John 14:12 Of all the things Jesus teaches, this may be one of the hardest teachings for us to receive as his disciples.  How in the world can WE do what Jesus does?  Not to mention "greater things?" Jesus heals the sick and the wounded and the traumatized.  He lifts up and empowers those who have been crushed by the world's systems; the discarded, the forgotten.  He stands with the scapegoated , the condemned, those being bullied.  He removes labels and shame; he names people in new, life-giving ways.  He overcomes the power of death to define life.  He feeds the spiritually and physically hungry.  He pitches his tent among the poor and inaugurates an order that puts them first.  He forgives--removing obstacles, lifting  burdens, loosing that which binds us...
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Sanctuary Search

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We spent the early part of our class time up in the sanctuary.  When we discussed the meaning of "sanctuary," one of us said it was a place of safety.  That is indeed the meaning of the term.   What will it mean for the church to commit itself to be a "safe place" for all people?   "Refuge" is another term to describe the sanctuary.  We noted that at St. Andrew's it is where we gather together for worship. So it is our gathering place and our worship space. Here are some pictures of things we saw and talked about.  How many of them do you remember?  What is the significance of each one? What did we say about the "geography" of the sanctuary and what it communicates?
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