St. Nicolai Notes

GIFTED BY THE SPIRIT: Lenten Prayers for 2014

     Last year, in a prayer guide called, “In the Spirit of Truth,” I took you through a series of prayers that were based upon references to the Holy Spirit in the Gospels and Acts.  This year, I pick up where I left off, in the final chapter of Acts, then take you through Romans, the Corinthian letters, Galatians, and the first two chapters of Ephesians (but I plan no additional booklet on this theme).  I do not hit every passage, only those which specifically mention the Holy Spirit (or Spirit, Spirit of God, etc.).

     In recent reading, I came across the following quote from Karl Barth:

     The Holy Spirit is the quickening power which underlies, capacitates and actualizes the act of the individual in the Christian community in its totality, giving to it both its distinctive character and scope and also its distinctive direction.  It is he who awakens man—each one in the form and to the task which He Himself allots to him.  It is He who endows him with the corresponding abilities and freedoms and powers.  It is He who enriches the whole Christian community with the endowment of the individual Christian, thus deepening and broadening its whole life, and extending its power for the fulfillment of its mission in the world (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV.2, 825-6, Hendrickson Publishers, Marketing, LLC, 2010).

     More inclusive language was not very common among us when the first English translation of his volume appeared in 1958, but I assume that Karl Barth would recognize the Spirit’s energizing, empowering work as the foundation for the faith of the women among us. 

     In a different vein, poet and author Luci Shaw, borrowing words from a review about a sculptor, writes, “I want the Holy Spirit to be the ‘something that grabs me,’ so that I too am eager to yield to the impulse to push the life of faith and the life of the mind to extremes” (Luci Shaw, The Crime of Living Cautiously: Hearing God’s Call to Adventure, p. 56, borrowing from Calvin Tomkins New Yorker article about Lee Bontecou, “Missing in Action,” August 4, 2003).

     Whatever else we may want to say, Christian faith is about being grabbed, indwelt, and energized by the Holy Spirit.  The prayers in this booklet reflect a desire that this be more fully true in our lives.

     This booklet is not a commentary.  Where you might want commentary, you get prayer.  The prayers may or may not help you with interpretive and theological issues.  But I hope they help you live your lives more fully aware of the presence of God’s Spirit within you, and more receptive to the Spirit’s guidance and empowerment.

     I have followed my usual pattern of writing prayers in the first person plural, as a reminder that we always pray as part of the church.  We are part of the holy people that God is creating for communion and for God’s own glory.  I know it often seems that we are unholy, solo stragglers in the faith, but the Spirit is at work within us, shaping us together for a future that we cannot fully envision.  One of the instruments the Spirit uses to shape us is prayer.

     I pray that these prayers will assist you as you open your life to the Spirit’s presence during Lent.  

David K. Antieau

Pastor

St. Nicolai United Church of Christ

3000 N. Kedzie Ave.

Chicago, Illinois 60618

GIFTED BY THE SPIRIT: LENTEN PRAYERS

Day 1: Ash Wednesday

Acts 28:17-28

     O Holy One, like your people throughout the ages, we are often insensitive to your call and your guidance in our lives.  Your Spirit impels prophets and preachers to declare the truth and call us to repentance, but we can barely hear them because of the loud shouting of our own desires in our heads and the deceitfulness of the idols we have shaped.  Prophet and preacher point the direction of our return to You, but we do not see the signs because we are looking in the direction of our own shallow interests.  Some days our hearts are as impervious as granite: inattentive and insensitive to You.

     Do not give up on us when we have chosen to be deaf, blind, and calloused.  Let the fire of your Spirit soften our hearts.  Let the truth of your Word overcome the noise of deceit and desire in our minds.  Let your Spirit open our eyes to your presence with us and your way for us.  

     Though we sometimes have strange ways of showing it, we want to be your people, O God, our God.  Help us not to impede the work of your Spirit among us.  Amen.