The Beloved Community

Being the Answer to Christ's Prayer

Photo by Elianna Gill on Unsplash

Why do you stand looking up to heaven?
Christ has no body now, but ours.
Acts, Teresa of Avila

…everyone near him knew that he took very seriously this traditional, beautiful terminology when he said that what he was seeking for was not simply equality or rights, but what he was seeking for was the creation of the beloved community…
Vincent Harding on Martin Luther King, Jr

A LITURGY OF PRAYER FOR ASCENTIONTIDE


1^st Readings

John 17.1-11

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you,

since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.

And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do.

So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

‘I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.

Now they know that everything you have given me is from you;

for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.

I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.

All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.

And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

REFLECTION

This week I listened to an interview hosted by Krista Tippett many years ago on her ever-inspiring podcast On Being¹. It was with Vincent Harding, a visionary of the civil rights movement and a close friend of Martin Luther King Jr.

When Krista asked Harding what the difference was between protestors then and protestors now, he said, in effect, that many young people today are not being grounded in or nourished by spiritual language and community - not the kind of religion that hardens boundaries, but the kind that deepens belonging. And so, he implied, the focus can be too narrow, leading to the kind of polarisation and subtle violence we are witnessing so often: we are good and you are bad.

Instead, Harding said:

… the community that helped to create King, and that he then helped to nurture, was a community deeply grounded in the life of religion and spirituality. This was their way of being. For instance, everyone near him knew that he took very seriously this traditional, beautiful terminology when he said that what he was seeking for was not simply equality or rights, but what he was seeking for was the creation of the beloved community…

Harding knew that King was not fighting only for civil rights but for a beloved community: a community that would include all people, whatever side they might be on. There is little doubt that King was inspired by Jesus, and that this was the community he was envisioning and committing everything to. Like Jesus, it cost him his life. Although Harding was quick to say that any faith tradition with depth might provide something of that language and imagination, I am struck this week by the relevance and power of Jesus’ final words to his disciples – culminating in this heart-felt prayer for his beloved community.

At first glance, this prayer of Jesus looks rather esoteric, even exclusive: the authority to give eternal life, the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed, all mine are yours and yours are mine. Baffling words - until you hear them in light of what Jesus actually lived and what he was heading for after lifting his head from this prayer.

The ‘before’ picture is one of radical compassion, tender healing, fierce justice, scandalous inclusion. The ‘after’ picture – betrayal, torture, death. It doesn’t sound very much like authority or glory. Except it was. It is. However we understand the resurrection, it clearly glorified all that went before: affirming Christ’s great work of love, marked by humility and forgiveness, and crowned with mercy for all.

The ongoing life of the Spirit, poured out upon us, was the answer to Jesus’ prayer: the Spirit that gathers communities together, enabling them to flourish and to embody the radical love Christ came to proclaim and to live out. Our commitment to creating and sustaining beloved communities is one of the clearest fruits of that Spirit. Whenever we come together in Love with brothers and sisters of every shape, colour age and persuasion, we fulfil the passionate prayer Jesus prayed just before he died.

This week, On Being revisited the life and writing of Harding. Michelle Alexander, spoke about the first time she met him. She had been speaking about racial injustice and Harding was in the audience, sensing her discouragement. She recalls:

Vincent pulled me aside, and in his loving grandfatherly voice, said, you know, “Thank you, daughter, sister, niece, Michelle, for your work and your research and for indicting this system.” He said, “But I think there’s a deeper message here that you are struggling to name and claim, perhaps even for yourself. And I think that deeper message is what Jesus was trying to say when he said, ‘What you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.’

That’s the message. That’s what this is all about. It’s not about building bigger and better movements or power struggles. If we don’t awaken - not just to our racial history but to who we are, that we belong to each other, to the oneness of all - if we don’t awaken, that’s what will ensure that these cycles of oppression and domination and exploitation and control are born again and again. We must awaken to who we are to one another.

We live the beloved community most faithfully not only through great public movements – important though they are– but through our commitment to ‘the least of these’, in our homes, our churches and our local communities. Here in my lovely village church, I have been deeply touched this week by so many small acts of kindness - mostly unseen.

This week we entered the short season the church calls Ascensiontide: the days between watching Christ depart (those dangling feet!) and discovering that we are now called - and empowered - to become his feet, his heart, his body on earth. Christ has no feet now but ours.

And so perhaps this is the invitation for the days ahead: to remember that even as we loosen our grasp on one way of knowing, we open to another; even as we turn our faces from the One, we turn them towards the many; even as we belong to God we belong to one another; even as we acknowledge our utter inadequacy, so we long for the power of the Spirit.

Come Holy Spirit.
Empower us to become the answer to Christ’s prayer:
your Beloved Community.

Ponder. Pray. Practice.

An Ascensiontide Prayer

Why do you stand looking up to heaven?
Christ has not body now, but ours.
I will fill you with power from on high…

Raise your arms and look upwards: give thanks for all that inspires you to love.
Open your arms wide and look around: who is nearest to you.
Turn your palms upward: invite the Spirit to renew you.
Place your hands on your heart: receive deeply.
Stretch your hands ahead: bless the community you live in.

Questions to reflect upon and to deepen the prayer:

What inspires you to love and live with compassion?
Who around you are you most aware of needing your kindness?
What do you need from the Spirit to give it more fully?
Who will you bless as you allow the Spirit to move through you?

Contemplative Corner
for those so inclined

Here’s a few lines from Rumi, echoing the mystical unity that is ours.
It will lead you nicely into some wordless prayer…

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.

Widening the Circle

Giving thanks for the gift of whatever grace you’ve received, take some time to extend a prayer of longing and love to the people and places on your hearts today. I invite you to pray, especially this Ascensiontide, for the power of the Spirit to move in and among us to inspire and nourish Beloved Community wherever we are.

Lord’s Prayer

Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your heavenly will be done by all created beings!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials too great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and for ever.
Amen.

Jim Cotter

Poetry

Christ Has No Body
Teresa of Avila

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

Declaration of Interdependence, Excerpt
Richard Blanco

We hold these truths to be self-evident…

We’re the cure for hatred caused by despair. We’re the good morning of a bus driver who remembers our name, the tattooed man who gives up his seat on the subway. We’re every door held open with a smile when we look into each other’s eyes the way we behold the moon. We’re the moon. We’re the promise of one people, one breath declaring to one another: I see you. I need you. I am you.

The Republic of Tenderness
Nathan Spoon

This is a note of encouragement

left in a difficult world during a
difficult moment. This

is a secret you already know even
though you are waiting

to realize that. You are the answer
everybody else is

waiting for. There is no pressure. You
are the answer.

Blessing

Come Holy Spirit.
Empower us to become the answer everybody else is waiting for.
Empower us to become the answer to Christ’s prayer:
your Beloved Community.

And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all, now and evermore. Amen.

Music:

Two beautiful chants to pray with this Ascenstiontide.

1. Thanks Julia! x

You can find both podcasts mentioned anywhere you listen to podcasts. On Being, with Krista Tippet. The first one is called: Is America Possible. The most recent one: The Fierce Urgency of Now.