Philip Kakungulu engaging with refugee children as part of his peace ministry
Recently I made a new friend on Facebook, Bill Salyers. He is well over 90 years old, and he shared his journey of life. I was just blown away at how much we can accomplish in a life time. He mentioned that he was at the Kings Creek Baptist Church, one of the very first oldest Baptist churches in the U.S. Northwest, long before the region became the U.S.
He did mention how he had also related with the Presbyterians. Right there he caught my attention because for so long I tried to enter into the Presbyterian Peace Making circles with no success. He told me a story from decades ago about this Presbyterian pastor in Urbana who made a startling statement that he “did not believe in prayer! But believed in God when he prayed!
So I shared with Bill my recent discovery of the revival of prayer, with thanks to Dr. Andrew Decort for this wonderful nurturing. In fact, let me share this with you as it totally changed my life and made a lot of sense in my ongoing grasping of the shalom vision of the kingdom of Christ.
Prayer is not a pious, private and/or religious performance detached from the rest of our lives and the world. Prayer comes alive when we pray not to or for but with Jesus. The disciples did not pray to, or for Jesus, they prayed with the Man! Meaning there is a level of practice and action that goes hand in hand with prayer! Therefore, prayer cannot be detached from the rest of our life. Prayer is the simple but courageous and creative act of patiently opening our entire being to God. Prayer is our presence with God which transforms who we are and how we live with others. The practice of praying with Jesus is therefore about what we do with our most precious resource – our attention. We become what we pay attention to. So I asked Bill, “Do you now see that it is only through this prayer that animates our desires and imaginations and our decisions and actions, it is only though this prayer with Jesus that we can truly minister love in our hurting world. In fact, Martin Luther King, Jr. reminds us that prayer is not a substitute for action, but it is the essential source for action. No wonder in Luke 18:1 Jesus tells us; “PRAY AND DO NOT GIVE UP!” Where there is no action there is no prayer. In the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6.9-13 Jesus evokes 6 primal questions for our flourishing:
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount from “The Chosen,” Season 3, Episode 1
#1. “Our Father” — WHO IS GOD? The revelation that God is our parent is what helps us to avoid false familiarity with God which turns God into a coping mechanism for ourselves and a weapon against others. This was the downfall of the religious leaders of Israel, and therefore, Jesus tells them in Matthew 3.9, “I tell you that out of these grave stones God can raise up the children of Abraham.” Competition hinders the revival of prayer! In fact the cost of competition is that we all lose. Understanding the father heart of God is what frees us! Many prayer lives are dead today because of the violent cost of competition! “We stop to focus on the
Shalom vision, and we see each other as the problem.” Personal or group Antagonism — I oftentimes teach about this in our conflict transformation trainings as I explain how conflicts go from constructive to destructive.
#2. “Hallowed be thy name” — HOW SHOULD WE TALK ABOUT GOD? This holy mystery strips us of our certainty so that we find God afresh. The word “hallowed” means “greatly revered and honored.” If certainty is part of our prayer then our lives are devoid of God’s awesome wonder! I also discovered that the opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty.
#3. “Your Kingdom come” — WHAT DO YOU WANT? Here Jesus baits our imagination and ignites our desire by inviting God’s empire on earth. This is God’s dream for the world. As you can see, when we pray with Jesus, our dreams and desires find direction and energy for shalom. The human heart is so deceitful and desperately wicked that it is imperative to pray with Jesus so that our dreams and desires can find “Kingdom direction.”
“Sermon on the Mount,” painting by Carl Bloch, 1877.
#4. “Give us our daily bread” — HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH? God invites us into a vision of abundance that focuses on our daily bread with others. This helps us overcome consumeristic indifference and the excess which causes us to hurt each other so that often we can’t even sit at the same table. Acts 2.45 says, “They sold their properties and possessions and shared the money with those in need.” The church in Acts embraced the vision of abundance that stems from praying with Jesus!
#5. “Forgive us as we forgive others” — HOW DO WE BEGIN AGAIN? Here we discover that forgiveness is our liberating power for new beginnings. Forgiveness is not a superficial special blessing from a mighty man of God or fasting for new doors. God is not interest in fasted days but in a fasted Life.
Consider Isaiah 58:1-6; [1] “Cry aloud, spare not; Lift up your voice like a trumpet; Tell My people their transgression, And the house of Jacob their sins. [2] Yet they seek Me daily, And delight to know My ways, As a nation that did righteousness, And did not forsake the ordinance of their God. They ask of Me the ordinances of justice; They take delight in approaching God. [3] ‘Why have we fasted,’ they say, ‘and You have not seen? Why have we afflicted our souls, and You take no notice?’ “In fact, in the day of your fast you find pleasure, And exploit all your laborers. [4] Indeed you fast for strife and debate, And to strike with the fist of wickedness. You will not fast as you do this day, To make your voice heard on high. [5] Is it a fast that I have chosen, A day for a man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head like a bulrush, And to spread out sackcloth and ashes? Would you call this a fast, And an acceptable day to the Lord? [6 ]“Is this not the fast that I have chosen: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the heavy burdens, To let the oppressed go free, And that you break every yoke?
This part in the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us as we forgive others”, interrupts our shame, resentment, and revenge. But as we can see in Jesus’s own example, this kind of prayer life is disruptive to the status quo and does not go unopposed. We must not stop at forgiveness; we must prevent the painful cycle of our internal conflict from escalating (here Peter is a classic example).
Therefore, he calls us to the next level of revival in prayer;
#6. “Do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from EVIL” — SO THE Question here is, CAN VIOLENCE SAVE US? (Violence here to mean every human struggle to hope including Mimetic Desire) Can violence fulfill our calling? As I just said above here, in a more classic way we see the example of Jesus’s closest follower Peter being in totally a different state of mind. Peter interrupts Jesus like many of us do. He is ready to fight for Jesus and his kingdom. For Peter and as well many of us today, violence is the addictive short cut out of our distress and ultimate expression of loyalty. This violence is the sin of evangelicalism. You know, Jesus had affirmed Peter’s confession and declared this confession to be the cornerstone of the Kingdom upon which the gates of hell will never overcome! Then almost immediately afterward Peter, like many of us, exclaimed, “This will never happen” (Matthew 16:22). We also, like Peter, are outraged by Jesus’s sacrificial vision of ministering love in a hurting world, and we exclaim and continue to tell Jesus “This will never happen.” We will never carry our cross.
But on the night of Jesus’s arrest, this Peter, rather than staying awake and praying against his temptation, checks out and sleeps. He deals with his distress by avoiding it and blacking out.
This Peter was there when Jesus taught the crowd to pray; “Do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil,” but like many of us Peter was physically there yet he was somewhere else in his soul. Peter’s mind was still running on Jacob’s ancient operating system of grasping power and crediting God with the spoils. Peter was still convinced violence was the way of salvation. Peter was acting like a Zealot. he did not deny Christ because he was afraid of the Roman wrath—Nope! As a result of his lack of prayerful vision with Jesus, in the end we see chaos unleashed as Peter spins with temptation. Peter is so enraged by Jesus’s non-violent response that he denies knowing him and breaks down with bitter weeping. Meanwhile Judas sells out Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, then commits suicide.
So many decades ago when that Presbyterian pastor in Urbana said he does not believe in prayer, we can typically understand why! He did not learn the actual Gospel of Christ!
We have entered the age when the Gospel of the Christ must be brought to bear, and it is all the wholeness of Peace, my Friends. We call it Shalom.
Philip Kakungulu is one of our Peace Warriors and co-editor of the Global Peace Warriors website. A citizen of Uganda, Philip has engaged in peacemaking and conflict transformation in many countries in eastern and central Africa and even around the world. He is currently working on drawing together a network of peacemakers across the continent and diaspora called African Peace Warriors. For more about Philip, click here.
NOTE: To check out Andrew Decort’s book, Flourishing on the Edge of Faith: Seven Practices for a New We, click here. Decort digs so deep into this prayerful Vision of Shalom, providing the outline related to the Lord’s Prayer that Philip uses as the structure for this blog.
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