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- Herausgeber: IVP
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
Transform Your Prayer Life and Draw Closer to Jesus At the Feet of Jesus isn't just another book about prayer. It's a guided adventure into the heart of the gospel story, inviting you to step into the lives of some of Jesus' closest friends—Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Picture yourself sitting at Jesus' feet in faith, just like Mary did, or finding hope and love in his presence, just as Martha and Lazarus experienced. At the Feet of Jesus makes these timeless stories come alive, offering you a chance to experience Jesus' love in a profoundly personal way. At the Feet of Jesus was written to bring you into a deeper, more intimate relationship with Jesus, transforming your daily routine into a spiritual retreat. Unique Features - Prayerful Readings of Scripture: Engages you with the Word of God in a way that speaks directly to your heart. - Personal and Group Retreat Guide: Perfect for individuals wanting a solitary retreat or groups looking to grow together in faith. - Experiential Exercises: Thought-provoking activities that encourage you to encounter Jesus personally and profoundly. Open the door to a more profound prayer life and a closer relationship with Jesus as you embark on a daily spiritual retreat that will enrich your faith and transform your daily life.
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To Jim Houston
CONTENTS
PREFACE
ITHASBEENOURPRIVILEGE to lead a number of prayer and discernment retreats over the years for various groups. We have been able to stand witness to the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of many men and women as they have read the Scriptures prayerfully in the presence of God with “all hearts open” (as the Book of Common Prayer says). We have often felt that we were on holy ground. On one occasion we took a small group of graduate students away on retreat at a beautiful spot on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia near Pender Harbour. We were leading a three-session retreat on praying with Mary of Bethany (the material that would become this book). On Saturday afternoon, we sent our students off in silence to pray on their own. While they were off praying, we were praying for them—praying for the pray-ers. For a moment, it seemed as if we could see their faces turned toward God in prayer, lit up and made radiant by the face of God looking at them. Nothing could be more beautiful. We gathered again for our evening session over a meal and continued the retreat. It was a memorable weekend. The students seemed to encounter Jesus Christ in the Gospels in a way that was life changing. We are still in touch with many of them.
It was witnessing this sort of response to joining Mary of Bethany at the feet of Jesus, poring over the Scriptures in prayer, that prompted us to write this book to see if we could make this experience available to others. We are grateful to Ted Olsen and the excellent team at InterVarsity Press for sharing our vision and supporting the endeavor with all their expertise. It is because of them that you can hold this little book in your hands.
We have learned so much from those who have joined us on these retreats. We’re more thankful than we can say for our amazing students who seem to know instinctively that study and prayer belong together. We’re especially thankful to Bruce’s teaching assistant Dan Glover and his wife, Trina, who became close friends as we led this retreat and cooked together for students. We want to offer special thanks to Shawn Reese and the pastoral team and congregation at Peninsula Bible Church Cupertino for inviting us many times to lead retreats, for their generous hearts and their love for the Scriptures, and for welcoming us as friends. Ian McFadden and his band of fellow pastors prayed with Mary of Bethany on Galiano Island, and it was humbling to see their raw honesty with God and with each other—and their good humor. Bishop Steve Breedlove and the clergy of the Diocese of Christ our Hope joined us on this retreat even as we were honored to watch them go on to renew their ordination vows—a moving ceremony of consecration and self-donation so much like the way Mary poured out her pint of nard at the feet of Jesus. And we owe a debt of gratitude to all the other groups that have spent time with us and Mary of Bethany at the feet of Jesus.
Over the years, our notes for this retreat have become so mixed up that we hardly remember what each of us first contributed. Our manila folder labelled “Mary of Bethany” grew and grew and got jumbled together over time. It has genuinely been a team effort.
Carolyn, an instructor in Koine Greek at Regent College, has watched her students encounter Christ in Scripture as she has led them to read the New Testament prayerfully in Greek. Yes, even in Greek! We have had Greek retreats with students in our home in the same spirit as this book. It has been her joy, increasingly, to accompany people spiritually with Scripture as a spiritual director. Her training with Dom David Foster and the Benedictines at San’Anselmo in Rome, and with Trevor Hudson and the Jesuits of South Africa and the Martin Institute, in leading the Spiritual Exercises, has contributed much to our retreats and to this book. This could also be said of Gary Moon and Chris Hall who, with Trevor Hudson, led the DMin program at Fuller Seminary where Carolyn trained as a spiritual director.
It would be impossible to acknowledge all the spiritual writers and biblical scholars to whom we are indebted, though we hope our notes at the back of this book point the reader to some of these sources. This book is not a work of historical-critical scholarship as such, though we hope it is informed by such work. Historical-critical scholarship is in many ways our stock-in-trade as teachers and scholars. And yet this book is doing something different than advancing contestable theses or offering historical reconstruction of first-century texts for academic debate. If we think of such work as sharpening our knives, then this book is about actually cutting some meat. As Augustine said long ago, we read the Scriptures in order to grow in love for God. We want the reader to indwell the text of Scripture rather than to instrumentalize it or thing-ify it. For the Scriptures themselves invite us to encounter Christ. The words of the Bible are like windows that open to allow the grace of God to enter and, like sunshine, illuminate our hearts.
So, drawing on Hans Urs von Balthasar and Timothy Gallagher in our times, and Ignatius of Loyola, Richard Baxter, and many others in times past, we ask our readers to see all the details of each Scripture passage as vividly as possible. In a way, this is a deeply human and ordinary use of our mind’s eye whenever we read a novel or historical narrative. We may picture the scene to ourselves actively or passively, consciously or unconsciously, earnestly or lazily, but it is just what we do when we read or hear a story. Here, in this book, we want to get the details as realistic as possible—the clothing, the food, the buildings, the landscape, the weather, and so on—but in the end some of this may be debatable. Who is to say whether Martha would have served chickpeas or lamb, or whether Mary would have worn a homespun blue tunic or something uncolored? But it matters that we see these narratives as being as real and as tangible as our experience of the world today. So, while we will be speculating at points as we imagine the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus in Bethany, we hope it is with an informed imagination. We’ve outlined some of the theology and history of this devotional mode of reading in our introduction, but if readers are distracted by historical questions here and there, there are several resources to go deeper into the details. (Consider The Anchor Bible Dictionary or The IVP Bible Background Commentary by Craig S. Keener.)
This book is dedicated to Jim Houston, our teacher and friend of many years, who has taught us in so many ways that we may never stand aloof from the word of God but must always remain at the feet of Jesus in faith, hope, and love.
IntroductionTHE DISCIPLES AT HOME
WHENWETHINKOF JESUSANDHISDISCIPLES, we usually think of the twelve who traveled with him in his public ministry and who were uniquely called by him and designated his apostles (Luke 6:13-16). However, we might also think of the three who were his friends and whose home he visited on at least three occasions.
When we first encounter them, we learn that “Martha opened her home to him” (Luke 10:38). We meet Martha and her sister Mary and (later) their brother Lazarus. We might think of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, therefore, as the domestic disciples. Indeed, Jesus refers to Lazarus as “our friend Lazarus” (John 11:11), and the three are together described as uniquely beloved by him: “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus” (John 11:5).
In this small book, we would like to help you, like Martha, to open your home to the Lord Jesus Christ and to consider what it might mean to invite him into this most intimate space. What does it mean to be befriended by Jesus Christ and beloved by him in such an interior way? We are certainly called to follow him in the world as disciples and to share in his public mission. But we are also called to receive him and allow him to enter in and make his home with us.
Jesus is still saying, as he did to the church at Laodicea, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me” (Revelation 3:20). Is there any invitation more wonderful or more sacred? How remarkable to have table fellowship with Jesus Christ, to be permitted to be his host, to welcome him, and have him for our guest!
It is at home, behind closed doors, that we dare to voice our greatest hopes and fears, that we experience our deepest joys and sorrows. It is at home that we are known most intimately and fully. In the Gospels, the Lord Jesus chose to visit Martha, Mary, and Lazarus in their ordinary home and to enter fully into their messy lives. On each occasion, his presence made all the difference.
We will consider all three domestic disciples at home in the village of Bethany, but we will focus the spotlight especially on Mary and invite you to follow her in her response to Jesus. By placing yourself there with Mary at the feet of Jesus, you can pray with Mary of Bethany and make her wholehearted response your own.
MAKING A RETREAT
We have designed this book as a prayer retreat. It can be used as a group retreat or as a personal retreat, or can simply be read through as a devotional book, but it is meant above all as an invitation to prayer and to encountering Jesus intimately for yourself. (Suggestions for how to use this book are provided in chapter one.)
It is said of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola that you do not so much read the Exercises as you make them. So also with this retreat. In this sense, you might think of the chapters that follow like a recipe for a meal. You are meant to make the recipe, and it is in the hands-on sifting, mixing, kneading, baking, and, above all, eating that the beauty of the recipe is experienced. In a way, the recipe should fade away and eventually disappear. There is something much more than the recipe to discover. The words on the page are to be transformed into something felt, handled, touched, and experienced personally.
ENCOUNTERING JESUS
John said of Jesus Christ: “We have seen his glory” (John 1:14). He wrote of a Word “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which have looked at and our hands have touched” (1 John 1:1). This is meant to be your experience too. The invitation is to a genuine koinonia or fellowship “with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3).
Our hope is that this small retreat might help you to deepen your personal response to Jesus. As you follow Mary of Bethany in prayer, you can encounter, with her, the presence of Christ in the midst of your real life and experience today. He comes to you in your home too.
We witness in Jesus Christ the eternal Son of God, begotten of the Father from all eternity. As he “became flesh and made his dwelling among us,” so we are privileged to see in his every word and action the very heart of God (John 1:14). The disciple Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us,” and Jesus replied, “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:8-9).
So, as we follow Jesus throughout the Gospels—as we see him heal Peter’s mother-in-law, teach the multitudes on the mountain, rebuke the religious leaders in the synagogue, cleanse the temple in Jerusalem, and so on—at each and every point we are seeing heaven on earth. The implications of this are profound for us as we read the Gospels and encounter Jesus with the disciples at Bethany.
With every gesture and every utterance, Jesus mediates God to us. Heaven and earth are uniquely joined right here. This invites our close attention.
AN OPENING IN HEAVEN
This is what Nathanael discovered when he first encountered Jesus. Jesus was not only “the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote” (John 1:45). He was the new Bethel, or house of God, the place where Jacob’s ladder eternally rests: “You will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on’ the Son of Man” (John 1:51; see Genesis 28:12). Here in Jesus Christ, God made flesh, heaven stands open and will remain open forever. Jesus is that opening in heaven even now as we open the Scriptures.
Augustine once described the Scriptures as “the face of God for now,” and he urged us to “gaze intently into it.”1 What did he mean?
You and I were each made to see the face of God, and every Christian heart longs to be able someday to look into the face of love itself. Every human being was created in innocence and purity to walk with God as in a garden. The great promise is that someday we shall be washed, cleansed, and restored by grace; we shall be made fully capable of this. Meanwhile, where do we look to find the face of God turned toward us? Again, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father,” says Jesus (John 14:9).
We must look to Jesus. And where do we find him today? Because “the Word was with God, and the Word was God” and because “through him all things were made,” there is nowhere in all creation that God is not speaking, where the Word of God is not articulate (John 1:1-3). “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). And God has spoken in the past “at many times and in various ways” (Hebrews 1:1). He continues to speak in nature, in history, in human experience, in all these ways. We should always, everywhere, be listening for what God might be saying to us. All this speech belongs to the one eternal Word who has become human for our sake.2 But all these modes of speech are still only like whispers that have now been gathered into “the full volume of the divine voice in the world” in Jesus Christ.3 To listen to Jesus, we turn to the Scriptures where he is decisively revealed. In the union of the word written and the Word made flesh, we encounter God himself today. Here we may still find Jacob’s ladder joining heaven and earth.
This means we need to pay attention to everything about Jesus. What Jesus is doing in the Gospels he is always doing. Heaven is still open here in Jesus at every moment we encounter him in holy Scripture. The eternal Son of God, the risen and ascended Jesus Christ, is with us now as we read the Gospels today.
If he is the incarnate Word of God, the eternal Son, then he can never be simply past tense.4 He was there in the village of Bethany in the first century. He is here in my room now as I turn the pages of my New Testament.
By the Holy Spirit, the past and present are fused in the burning heat of God’s revelation in Scripture. This is what Jesus promised in the sending of his Spirit: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you” (John 14:18).
JESUS IS PRESENT NOW
This means that as you read about his visit to the home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus—at the very moment you are reading—Jesus is as present now, as really and truly present to you, as he was to them. These were real events in time and space, a history as real as the moments we live today. Jesus was there and then. But as the eternal Son of God, he is also here and now.
When we speak a word today, the sound of it rings out for a moment and then quickly dies away and all is silent once more. A spoken word is like a word written on the sand. The wind or the waves come over it, and soon enough it disappears. It is not so with the words of Jesus Christ in the Gospels.
These words once spoken have not decayed or faded away. They have no diminishment or half-life. They continue to ring out with the same volume and intensity as when they were first spoken. There is a vernal freshness and eternal wellspring to the words of Christ in the Gospels. This is what Peter meant when he described our spiritual life as having its origin “not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God” (1 Peter 1:23).
Imagine ringing a bell, only to find that the sound keeps on ringing and ringing and ringing. The note once sounded just keeps on going. That is what the word of Christ in Scripture is like. No mere past tense. No antiquarian distance. It is all happening now in real time. And it is the communion of persons: Jesus is alive, and he is speaking with you.
This is why you can pray with Mary of Bethany. As you substitute yourself in the place of Mary, you will find in each encounter that the face of Jesus is turned toward you. You are being addressed personally. These words are meant for you.
SEEING THE PLACE
Sometimes we may form indistinct or hazy images in our minds as we read the Gospels. The narrative hovers in midair somewhere, as something far away and long ago. There are no crisp edges or vivid colors. We are perhaps overfamiliar with the words. Or we read more or less passively, without making the effort to see, hear, and feel what is happening, experiencing the narrative as real.
There is a danger here that we will not sense that what we are reading is just as real as what is happening in our day-to-day world right now.
We have both worked for many years mostly in academic contexts. But we have also done some work in the arts. Carolyn has written a play, and Bruce has worked on a film, and we have done a few other creative projects. It has been a real eye-opener, literally. These experiences have changed how we read.
Recently Bruce worked as a historical expert for a documentary film crew in Britain. They consulted him for their reenactments with surprisingly precise questions: Would John Wesley be wearing a wig in 1767? Would it be shoulder-length? What color would William Wilberforce’s frock coat be when he went to meet John Newton? What tune should be used for the congregation singing “Amazing Grace” in 1773? Would they sing in a call-and-response format? Who would lead? Was there an organ?
All of a sudden, the demands of the medium asked more of his imagination than he had needed to give before, despite years of reading. The demands of the creative, artistic format made him realize that he had not fully seen or heard or felt what he had studied. His images were still gauzy and vague. This experience exposed that even his work as a historian had not gone deep enough if he had not fully imagined his subjects—picturing them vividly to himself in their context.
So, in this retreat, we will be asking you to engage your imagination to see, hear, and feel as vividly as possible the Gospel accounts of Mary of Bethany and her encounter with Jesus. It really happened. Everyone would have smelled the food in the kitchen. The light would have come in at an angle through the window and lit up Jesus’ face as he taught. A fly might have crawled along the windowsill. Perhaps Simon Peter cleared his throat, or a cart clattered by on the cobblestones of the street outside.
