Reflections for Milestone Sunday: Blessing our 18 Year Olds With Prayer Shawls
Idols & Distractions
This is our last Sunday exploring the activity of the Holy Spirit in the stories of the early church from the book of Acts. When Amanda and I met, this story from Acts captured our imaginations.
I wonder, why are there so many idols in Athens? Why do the Athenians spend so much of their time chasing after something new? And why do they have an idol to an unknown God? It sounds like they must have a god or idol for everything! They had all their bases covered. They should have been feeling content and secure. But they still had an altar with the inscription “to an unknown god” (Acts 17: 23). Why?
Deepest Longing
We read in the text that the Athenians spent much of their time seeking after the next new thing, every new idea, movement, philosophy and trend. There must be a God somewhere for what we need. They seemed to experience restless dissatisfaction, a first century FOMO (fear of missing out), and so they lived this frenetic kind of quest for something new to fill the void.
And yet, whatever new ideas and experiences were out there to be sampled and tasted in Athens, its citizens still seemed to experience emptiness–an ache or hole that needed to be filled. There was something that still eluded them, something they still longed for.
In Psalm 135: 15-18 we read,
The idols of the nations are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but they do not speak;
they have eyes, but they do not see;
they have ears, but they do not hear,
a nose, but there is no breath in their mouths.
Those who make them
and all who trust them
shall become like them.
The Athenians were not going to fill that emptiness, that ache, that hole with a god made of wood or stone, or silver or gold. Because what they longed for was deeper than that.
Do you see any parallels to our time? Many of us can relate to FOMO. Emptiness. Dissatisfaction. Longing. Wondering if there isn’t something more that we are missing. But we can’t quite explain it or describe it, or fully understand it. Maybe we don’t even realize it.
And we can certainly relate to a whole pantheon of options out there to make us feel whole. There are lots of influencers out there who peddle ideas, philosophies, diets, fashion, entertainment, products, experiences. But most of their trade it would seem is in dissatisfaction. Convincing others that they are not enough. That something is missing that will make them feel more whole.
And we, like the Athenians, chase after all kinds of things to fill the emptiness: we keep busy, we work hard, we serve faithfully, we seek credentials and education, we follow distractions, we seek pleasures–feel good moments, we consume food or drink, clothing, possessions–something to make us feel whole. And yet nothing quite fills that void.
We all have the same basic human needs, whether we acknowledge them or not. Those deeper relational needs won’t be filled or satisfied with things we consume or experiences we chase after.
- We long to be seen
- To be heard and known and understood
- To be fully known and still to be respected, valued and loved with unconditional positive regard
- To have meaning and purpose
- To have a sense of self, autonomy
Paul recognizes the void. He tells the Athenians, what you worship as an unknown god, I proclaim to you as the God who made the world and everything in it. This God that I know does not live in shrines made by human hands. I know a God that can fill the emptiness. The God I know is dynamic, relatable, like a parent to all people. This God is your home.
Home is in the Heart of God
I love the way this passage ends. In the midst of a pantheon of gods in the city of Athens, the apostle Paul affirms the Athenians in their searching for the divine, by declaring that God is indeed “not far from each one of us. For ‘In [God] we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). The Psalmist affirms that even before creation, the divine was “our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever [the divine] had formed the earth and the world” (Psalm 90 NRSV).
When a flock of geese flies overhead we hear honking. Some people think they honk to encourage the weaker flyers or to signal when they are ready to change places in the v-formation. But maybe they are giving directions–honking out the way to go. One of the amazing features of Canada Geese is their ability to find their way home, to the nesting ground where they hatched.
Wendy Miller describes the “friendly and rhythmic honking…of Canadian geese signaling to each other” while they navigate their way north, as being “a God-made-but-hidden homing instinct, their honking a kind of companioning, one bird signaling direction to another on the long flight home” (Wendy Miller, Jesus Our Spiritual Director: A Pilgrimage Through the Gospels, 17). This is the way to go.
The homing instinct in migratory geese serves to teach us about our own longing to unite with the divine. Wendy Miller goes on to say that this “yearning for home is embedded deep within our being”, but that all too often we are blind or deaf to the signals (Miller, Jesus, 18). Just as each Canada goose has a homing signal that directs it back toward its birthplace and original nesting ground, so too we humans have a sense of being drawn back to something familiar.
It’s that imprint of the divine, that trace of the holy that lingers within each of us. It is this familiar, remembered sense of a divine home and origin to which we long to return all our lives. First century Christian Augustine said it this way, You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.
To your 18 year olds I say, today we are reminding you of that imprint, that spark, that seed of the divine within each of you. Consider this church community and your families to be among the most significant influencers out there, with a profound message. You are beloved. You were born in the very image and likeness of God. You carry within you a spark, a seed of the Divine that puts you in touch with the deepest wisdom, gives you access to unconditional love. Your breath is a reminder of that very essence, that Spirit within.
We know the God Paul is talking about. We know a God for that! We want you to know that you have a home in God. Wherever you go, and whatever you do your deepest identity, your clearest sense of who you are comes from being at home in God.
Celebration
We have a very special tradition and ritual that we get to celebrate today as well. Our practice at St. Jacobs Mennonite Church is to present a special prayer shawl to the youth in our community in the year that they turn 18 and graduate from highschool. This is a significant milestone along life’s journey. It marks an official entry into adulthood, and sometimes a transition to further education, career training and leaving home.
As a church family, we want to wrap each of our 18 year olds in the assurance of God’s Holy Spirit poured out. As we present these shawls, we do so as a sign that no matter where life leads, God will be with them. And we also commit to gathering around them as a cloud of witnesses in the stands –cheering them on to grow in faith and step out into the world as God’s beloved children. We want to be a community in which these young people can belong, find welcome, home and God’s abiding love.
There are five youth receiving prayer shawls from the church this year. So I invite them up now.