Yr. B, Wk. 23: Paul's Legacy, and Legos

Scott improvised worship from the Psalm appointed for the evening, Psalm 95, with a reading from Jeremiah, the book assigned to First Year students for the night. Jeremiah 15.5-10 develops the lovely image of a tree that sends its root out underground beside a stream: even in dry times, it has what it needs to grow. We gave answers to the question, "What has been your 'root?'" Several of us agreed with Mariel that "little things," performed in ritual repetition, can ground us for our days. Susan draws nourishment from being absorbed in art class each week; Erica feels the same about her handcrafts, adding that she also finds refreshment in the changes of seasons. Gene "deals in problems all day," so he has learned to cultivate his gratitude.

[Class: Christine, first year; Mariel, Tom, Gene, second year; Erica, third year; Scott and Susan, mentors. Absent: Christine, Tom.]

Christine sent word to us that she's keeping up with reading and will post comments to our blog, soon. She adds, "The funny thing, or observation, I’ve come to realize about my quiet self is that I am wanting to blurt things out during service at church, though in fairness our Rector often asks has anyone...? Or does any one know...? Also, I can’t get the Feminist Perspective book by Yee out of my mind."

Mariel was delighted to recognize a great deal of Ephesians from the use made of it in our prayer book. Disturbed by the phrase addressed to wives, "Submit to your husbands," she researched the passage and found that earliest sources present that phrase in a longer context with the previous sentence, making a single admonishment to both wives and husbands to mutually submit to each other, i.e., to share and respect each other. Gene was fascinated to see the parallels between Colossians and Ephesians; minus any references to specific matters of a church, the parallels suggest that Ephesians was written to be a general epistle for many churches.

Mariel was confused by a sentence in Ephesians that seems to equate greed with idolatry; Susan and Scott leapt on that, because the fourth year reading of theologian Timothy Sedgwick emphasizes that very point: "sin" in its larger sense is always "idolatry," a misplaced love. We all discussed that concept: what we love is what occupies our minds, our time, our habits. That should be God.

Erica reported on the decades leading to the Protestant Reformation. Her wide - ranging survey covered a conflict between mysticism and reason; persecutions of Jews and outliers whenever a wave of Black Death made people think God was punishing the community; the humanists' critical view towards authority, calling into question doctrines not supported by scripture, such as purgatory. Erica was struck by John Wyclif's statement that "the true church is invisible," a phrase that we discussed. We also discussed the tendency of Christians to want objective criteria for judging the true devotion of other Christians. (This was a problem with the Puritans, Scott noted.)

Nearly all these themes came into play when Mariel wondered what makes our current Book of Common Prayer so different from the one in 1928. Here's a more complete answer, with help from Forward Movement's book Inwardly Digest: the 1979 version grew out of research during the post - Vatican II ecumenical movement of the 1960s, drawing on a better scholarly understanding of worship in the earliest centuries of the church. The language was modernized; choices were multiplied; emphasis on sinfulness of the believers was lightened; the role of the priest was lessened and the participation of the worshipers, increased.


We took photos for use in an upcoming EfM flier.


Theological Reflection

For our source for a theological reflection, Erica brought a pair of volumes called "The Brick Bible," old and new testaments. She had never looked inside them, almost dreading what she might find: she knows a boy disturbed by what he sees in these books, though her own sons have impressed adults with their Biblical acumen from recalling incidents illustrated in these volumes. It's "brick" because it's all posed with LEGOS! 

We gathered around the books with delight at the author's ingenuity. We looked up certain passages just to see how Legos could handle them, such as the rush of demon - possessed swine off the cliff. In our exploration of our thoughts and feelings about the books, we discussed these questions:

• Is a Lego Bible a "mockery" (as an online reviewer claimed)? We decided on "lovely and campy," and also agreed, even if it is a joke, God has worked through "fools" and through flawed artists before.
• Is the Lego Bible a "dumbing down" for children? We decided it's not really for children, except "when used as directed!" Also, we decided that frank versions of the stories, at least for older kids, are better than the sugar - coated Sunday school Bibles we remember from pediatricians' offices.
• On the other hand, is a story enough? Do we need images to "get into" them? (Cf., lectio divina is a Benedictine process for us to do exactly that -- and we have a workshop on that March 2 at St. James)
• Thinking about the boy "disturbed" by the graphic violence executed on Lego figures, we thought of how we all projected ourselves on toys and items in our worlds when we were small, so that what happens to them in play is more real -- more immediate-- to us than, say, a narrative from the Bible or the news. (Does the same mechanism apply for adults to icons and objects in the church -- the Host? the Cross?)
• Do these crude and colorful reenactments of Biblical stories continue a line that stretches back to ancient carvings, medieval mystery plays, and stained glass windows?

We came to these "implications for action":

• That the artist took ten years to complete this project makes us think it's no joke, but a calling. Are there any such "callings" in our lives? (Scott proposed that a parent's grown child was / is still a "calling.")
• Lego of our own lives. (Note: I think that may have been a pun; I don't recall why it's on the board! - SS)
• Play is a form of learning; in fact, we can't learn without play; and, furthermore, we are engaged in play when we do a TR!

Collect for Playfulness
Abba, our Heavenly Father: You taught your disciples with surprising parables and outlandish similes, and you said that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who retain qualities of children; let us in our daily lives remember to do what gives us joy, that we may manifest Your Spirit through delight and creativity. Amen.

See a post on my personal blog that relates: "Playing's the Thing."

Next Week: Our readings are for Week 24 (Isaiah + in year one; Philippians + in year two; "A House Divided" in year three); Gene will bring food; Christine will lead worship; Tom will bring a source for the TR.

Yr. B, Wk. 22: Discernment and Memory

Erica led worship with a reading from Isaiah, silent contemplation, and a prayer for discernment. While we enjoyed Mariel's sandwiches from Panera, we answered Erica's question, "What are you anxious or excited about in the near future?" Her own answer concerned the first step in a process of discernment that begins for her at the Cathedral this weekend. We will remember you in our prayers this Saturday, Erica!

[Class: Christine, first year; Mariel, Tom, Gene, second year; Erica, third year; Scott and Susan, mentors. Absent: Christine, Gene.]

We've entered a new unit for the year, one focused on integrating belief, behavior, and doctrine.

Our discussion of Diana Butler Bass's essay "Believing" (from her book, Christianity after Religion) veered from skepticism to grudging acceptance of key points. Some of the confusion came from reading her summaries of others' positions as her endorsement of those positions. Mariel reported how reviewers of Bass's book, reading the same data and anecdotes, split into two camps: "it's all anecdotes, no hard data"; and, "it's all statistics, no anecdotes!"

Scott speaks for himself in this summary: When I called myself a fundamentalist, what I believed represented the finishing line, and keeping the "faith" was, in Bass's words, a "rearguard effort" to defend my position: if I "backslid," I lost eternal life. But fundamentalism, as Bass points out from history, is a recent phenomenon in the church. When we restore the more traditional focus on how we believe, the creed is a starting place, "to faith" meaning to trust as we grow, discerning God through experience, relationships, and habits of devotion and communal worship.

Responding differently to the same data or experience or text turned out to be the theme of the evening.

TR

Our Theological Reflection began from the action source, as Susan told us an anecdote concerning ants and fleas and a friend who may have been jealous. We were all able to buy into the thoughts and feelings she'd had at the time, and our metaphor turned the story into a more objective one: It's like someone remembers an event in a way that we do not.  When we looked into tradition for a relevant analogue, we hit on the four gospels, memories of Jesus's earthly ministry from different angles. (see image)


Sleepy, we left it to Scott to create a collect from the strands of the discussion before and during the TR:

Collect for Discernment Lord Jesus, our Way, our Truth, our Light, we remember Your earthly ministry through four perspectives in the gospels, and we experience You today in relationship to our fellow creatures: As people of good will can regard the same texts differently, and as fact and falsehood vie for our attention through the same media, give us wisdom to discern Your purposes for us, with humility to join those who disagree with us at the same table. Amen.

Next Week: We're brown - bagging for dinner; Erica will provide a source of our TR; Tom is leading worship. We'll read what's assigned for week 23.

Yr. B, Wk. 21: Isaiah, Galatia, and Russia

Class: Christine, first year; Mariel, Tom, Gene, second year; Erica, third year; Scott and Susan, mentors.  Absent: Tom.

Susan led the devotion for early evening from the Book of Common Prayer. During our brown bag dinners, we shared updates on what we had done during our snow day the week before.

Students had a lot to say about two weeks' worth of readings (but see detailed responses from Mariel and Gene printed in last week's "snow day" blogpost).

Naturally, considering Pauls' strong personality, first comments concerned him, branching off into discussion of his struggles to create churches and then to redirect their faith away from naysayers who insisted on circumcision and dietary laws. Those branches provided ample themes for connections to other years' readings. One offshoot was Erica's discussion of the development of the church in Russia, stemming from the monarch's conscious choice of Orthodoxy over Roman Catholicism, preferring image - and - aesthetic involvement over words and argument.


TR

Scott chose a reading from the past week's assigned Gospel lessons to begin this week's Theological Reflection. Mark 5.24-34 concerns the woman with the flow of blood who touches the hem of Jesus's garment to be healed. 

We identified different phrases of the story that struck us this time; we identified the larger context; we explored in theological terms what this one story says about the world, at least as the woman perceives it; and we found experiences in our own lives that connected to the woman's experience. 

From our discussion, we gathered insights and focused on what we need to do going forward. We wondered why Jesus bothered to stop, since the healing had already been achieved; and we imagined how, in a culture that considered such a woman "unclean," her audacity to reach out to touch the teacher would strike the crowd. One of us remembered a sermon when the priest likened the woman's faith drawing power from Jesus to a ladle, an open receptacle that draws water from a well. Here's our collect:

Collect for Healers and Healing
Lord Jesus, when the crowd pressed you with their demands, you stopped to listen to the woman whose faith, drawing power from you, made her whole; may we also be sensitive to those around us, that we might be instruments of your grace to others; and may we be humble to admit our need to reach out for your healing power when we are broken.

Next week: We all read the common reading for week twenty - two (RRG, 130ff) an excerpt from a book by historian Diana Butler Bass, who will be in Atlanta March 24. Mariel brings food for us; Erica leads worship; Susan will bring a source for theological reflection. 

Read Scott's blogpost "Believing and Beloving" about the Bass piece, posted in 2015 after his first reading it.