Yr. B, Wk. 20: Snow Day! Send your comments

We had a snow day. Please email Scott your comments about this week's reading for posting below. Here's a photo of Scott's beloved Mia on her new furry rug in front of the heat grate.


Next week, we go ahead with the readings assigned for Week 21, which include notes for all of us on page 125 in the Reading and Reflection Guide, and a challenge to create your own "rule of life" on pp. 126-127. The other assignments will carry over from last week: Brown bag dinner. Scott will bring a TR (probably from Wednesday's reading in Mark 4.21-34 about the woman who touches the hem of Jesus' garment); Susan will lead worship.
2nd Year Comments about 1 and 2 Corinthians: Gene sends these thoughts:

Having read 1 and 2 Corinthians before, 2nd Corinthians now makes a lot more sense knowing about the multiple letters and the possibility of these “lost” books might be contained in the letters we do have. Understanding that the different parts of 2nd Corinthians could be read separately makes sense to me.
Although it is very clear what was going on at the church in Corinth when 1Cor. was written, trying to figure out exactly what was going on at the later time is difficult. We know that someone treated Paul very badly, we don’t know the nature of the grievance, only that the person was disciplined by the congregation. There are also the “super-apostles” which Paul sarcastically mocks, while spending a great deal of time defending himself and his ministry.
While what was going on in Corinth in the later years is a bit of a mystery, it obviously had Paul very upset as his defensiveness shows. Paul has clearly lost some control of the church in Corinth and is desperate to re-establish control.

Mariel sends these thoughts:

I’d never read these two letters from an understanding of their historical background, and this new perspective really heightened their meaning. The theology does not interest me as much as the social, political, and historical context, probably because the theology isn’t new (anymore), but the circumstances of the letter-writing is new, at least to me. The disjointedness of 2 Corinthians does seem to point to a compilation of parts of separate letters, which helps in understanding and appreciating how it sounds to our modern literary ears.
Powell does an excellent job of laying out the major themes and structures of the two pieces, as well as pointing out their peculiarities. Understanding the possible sequence of letter-writing between Paul and the Corinthians helps create the bigger picture of their struggles and Paul’s frustrations.
I felt especially fond toward Apollos, who was apparently a very gifted speaker and well-educated Alexandrian Jew, who may have inadvertently caused a popularity contest in the church at Corinth. Luke praised Apollos as a bold, eloquent speaker who powerfully refuted the Jews on the question of Jesus as Messiah (Acts 18). Was Paul jealous of Apollos’s ability? Or did Apollos let his pride from the adulation of the Corinthians sow the seeds of discord - Team Paul v. Team Apollos? I imagine this dynamic has played out many times in the history of the Christian church. I can almost hear Paul chastising Apollos and telling him not to return to Corinth, but stay with him in Ephesus, until he (Paul) can sort things out.
There’s so much to cover in all this material I could go on until after midnight (and someone falls out a window), but I’ll try to focus using the ABCD method:

• A - Amazed at....the beauty of the poem/hymn to love in 1 Cornithians 13. It doesn’t sound like Paul. It sounds like either he’s quoting a well-known poem/song, or it’s simply that he inserted a page from a hymnal that he thought would be a great way to make a point. Or maybe he wrote poetry on the side...? (nah)
• B - Bothered by...the fact that Powell completely avoids the subject of homosexuality. Not important? Too much of a hot-button issue? Publishing company wouldn’t allow it? I’m surprised he didn’t try to compare the social-political context of the 1st Century Greco-Roman culture with modern-day attitudes and practices (e.g., ordaining openly gay priests and bishops, blessing same-sex marriage). How times have changed! I would have preferred that Powell address this change in attitude, regardless of how one feels about it.
• C - Confused by...Paul’s glorification of celibacy. Not a very good Jew. It was their duty to procreate! (Still is, among the Orthodox.) This seems like the one area that Paul could not boast in fulfilling the commandment of God to be fruitful and multiply, so he went the other way. Weird.
• D - Delighted by...the honest portrayal in the letters of the conflicts, arguments, misunderstandings, attempts to realign attitudes, and general chaos that embroiled one community in the early Christian church. Not much has changed. We still take sides, cling to our prejudices, argue vehemently against “others,” and change our allegiances to leaders as they turn our fancy. Reading about the troubles in the church at Corinth makes me feel a strong kinship with these early Christians.

Paul is certainly one of the most complicated, passionate, single-minded, fascinating figures in all Western history. I wonder how many more scholars and students of the NT will turn their gaze on his letters, and continue to argue with him, and each other, in the years to come? Myriad, no doubt!

Scott's 4th year comments are at his personal blog. See Jesus Saves -- But How?.

Yr. B, Wk. 19: Blurred Boundaries and Cocoons

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


Tom brought us Mediterranean chicken kebobs and salad. Gene led worship from the Canadian BCP service for evening. We shared what we had done with the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.


Discussion of Readings
Christine, absent, sent us her thoughts about her reading this week:

Briefly my reading from Yee was a chapter written by Vanessa Lovelace, "Intersections of Ethnicity, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation.”
The chapter discusses/illustrates the way masculinity and femininity are portrayed in the Israelite culture, the portrayal of Nations and boundaries, geographical and social in the writings of the Deuteronomistic History (DH), the books of Deuteronomy and Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings.
“....intersection of gender and nation in the particular formation of an Israelite identity..” Erin Runion, feminist Biblical scholar critiques interpretations of the covenental relationship between YHWY and Israel as relying on dominant gender binary constructions.
These intersections in the DH are demonstrated in a number of ways, “to include the portrayal of sexual relations with foreign women as a threat to Israel’s identity, the feminization of foreign men, and violence against women as a means for constructing the ideal Israelite masculinity.”
I am hopeful to send forward more details of the reading as it is enlightening and disheartening all at the same time. The abundant violence against women is much to contend with and to add to that the metaphorical consideration of Nations considered as “women who have been violated” and the boundaries of the Nations being determined by violence against women (the rape and killing of non Israelite women when overtaking other nations).

Gene questioned Paul's admonishment to the Romans that they respect the laws of the Roman government, as it was ordained by God. We discussed why Paul would be confident in that. Martin Luther King, Jr. came up in that discussion, as he advocated openly defying the "laws" of Hitler's regime and the Jim Crow South, because, in the words of Augustine, "an unjust law is no law at all." Mariel wanted more from Powell's chapter about the background to the Romans' civic and religious life, but was overall delighted by the layout of the chapter, making so clear the through - argument of Paul's treatise.
Erica was disoriented as MacCullough's history backtracked to the oriental orthodoxy of "the new Rome" in Constantinople. She shared with us some related experiences about her Baptist mother's falling in love with iconography, and Erica's own visit to the glorious Hagia Sophia. She longed for pictures: the content of the chapter was better looked at than read.

Susan and Scott talked about the power of liturgy to "discipline" us, to transform us over the long haul. In liturgy, argues McIntosh, we participate in Jesus's resurrection. (See Scott's blogpost about McIntosh and the paragraph by Smith that follows: "How Episcopalians Believe")

We all responded to the reading by James K. A. Smith at the end of the Wk. 19 chapter of our Reading and Reflection Guide. Mariel saw Smith as a snob; Susan drew attention to the footnote where Smith makes clear that it's the intentionality of liturgy that he's advocating, not elimination of guitar music or spontaneity. Susan also testified that the liturgy and music, strange at first, drew her into the church. Tom looks for a balance between worship and performance, and told us how Fr. Daron responded to Tom's admission that the repetition of morning prayer sometimes is "boring": it's a formative discipline, and the fact that you persist even while your mind wanders, is exactly the point of it. Gene and Erica agreed that the church could do a better job of explaining to visitors what we do and why. (That might be a ministry for EfM graduates?) For an example of how different worshipers come to the same material in different ways, Erica shared an eye - opening experience with a book that she had found uplifting and inspirational: others in her church group were profoundly disturbed by the same text, perhaps because they had not the backgrounding of EfM to break them into other ways to read Scripture.

TR
For our theological reflection, Mariel brought a short essay by the man who penned the screenplay for Ron Howard's 1980s movie COCOON. Younger than 40 years old then, he wrote about characters in their 80s; now 80, he makes some observations about emerging from "cocoons." What emerged from our discussion, however, was the continuity between what went into the cocoon and what comes out. We started, then from a position statement: "Becoming the person God wants you to be, you will still be yourself."

Our thoughts on theological implications reminded us of Scripture: how Paul was just as driven and militant as pre - Damascus Saul; how Jesus emerged from the tomb changed, yet still bearing the wounds of the crucifixion; and the parable of the prodigious plant that grows from a tiny mustard seed. In our culture, 12 step programs build on the knowledge that we will never wake up changed; change comes through daily discipline, and it's never final.

By coincidence ("God's puns," said Chesterton), readings assigned in the Prayer Book since Tuesday have related directly to our TR. In Mark 4.31-32, Jesus says The Kingdom of God "is like a grain of mustard seed... smallest of all... yet ...becomes the greatest of shrubs... so that birds of the air can make nests in its shade." Friday's readings all related to Saul becoming Paul. Also, writing in Ephesians 4.24, Paul admonishes Christians to "put on the new nature," to put aside "bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander" and to be "kind..., tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you" (4.31-32).

Collect for Those in Cocoons
Eternal, unchanging God, gracious and merciful: Your Son, resurrected, still bore the scars of His Crucifixion, and your servant Paul fought for Jesus as zealously he'd once opposed him; as we seek to realize the potential in ourselves planted from the beginning, let us not resist pain of necessary pruning and discipline, but let us trust that we will be more fully ourselves as we become the people You want us to be.Amen.

Next Week: Brown bag dinner. We do readings for Wk 20; notice the paragraph "For All" in this week's RRG. Scott will bring a TR (probably from Wednesday's reading in Mark 4.21-34 about the woman who touches the hem of Jesus' garment); Susan will lead worship.

Yr. B, Wk. 18: Kings, Romans, Mystics

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

Mariel prepared worship with the theme of "thanks and praise for God's bounty," including Psalm 145.14-19 ("You satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing"). While we ate sub sandwiches, chips, and hummus that Scott brought, we answered Mariel's question about anything in the past week that was a new experience for us.


Christine opened our sharing about our different readings by saying how good it feels for the pieces of Scripture she's known to come together in this cover - to - cover reading of I and II Kings. The reading concerned Solomon and the division of the kingdom. The more she heard from others, the more connections she found between this ancient history and later elements of our tradition.


Mariel was struck by Paul's use of the metaphor of "slavery" to Christ in a letter addressed to Romans, whose militaristic culture thrived on, and despised, slaves. She noted that this included exploitative sexual relationships, too. Christine brought in issues of forced labor under Solomon that led eventually to rebellion; and also to Solomon's exploitation of a harem full of women to make diplomatic agreements with other kings.


Erica enjoyed MacCulloch's focus in chapter 12 on ideas rather than politics. She especially enjoyed reading about women empowered by their mystical visions, wisdom, and artistry to be venerated. Listening to Erica's discussion, Christine was reminded how the idea of the Temple evolved between the time of Solomon and the time of the writing of Kings to become, not just the place where the national god resided, but a place of prayer where worshippers connected to God.


The fourth year chapters were all about connecting to God. What is "revelation?" McIntosh's bottom line is that God still speaks to us -- through our relationships with God (cultivated in habits of worship and prayer) and with others, and through our experiences (viewed through the lens of Scripture). Christine related this to the professional prophets, advisors and critics to kings, who tried to discern God's purposes. Mariel shared a quotation from Paul about God's "unsearchable judgements and inscrutable ways."


TR
Erica brought an evocative poem that we read in English and heard in the original Spanish: "I am not I" ("Yo no soy yo") by Juan Ramon Jimenez, translated by Robert Bly. After we all found ways to buy into the experience of feeling divided in ourselves in ways suggested to us by the poem, Susan had us explore that image of division -- Erica provided us the Jungian terms for a "persona" or public self, and a "shadow" side.  [Image: "The Road to Emmaus" by Daniel Bonnell.  Our discussion of walking alone, not recognizing God with us, brought this image to mind.]


Collect for Discernment and Self-Knowledge
God of unsearchable judgements and inscrutable ways: You speak within us and walk beside us, while we, like disciples on the road to Emmaus, perceive ourselves to be alone. Keep us mindful of verities unseen beyond our ability to express, that we may be comforted and rejoice in our interconnectedness to You and all our fellow creatures.

Next Week: Tom brings dinner, Gene leads worship, and Mariel brings the TR.

Yr. B, Wk. 17: Paul, and a Detour

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

We had dinner from our brown bags. Erica led worship. At her prompting, we shared blessings of the past week or so.

Reflecting on readings for the second year group, Gene brought up "levels of authenticity" in the letters supposed to be Paul's, especially the story of the false "3 Corinthians." Tom observed that judgement of the letters comes from whether they are "congruent" with what we already know of Paul. Mariel was struck by the lengths of these letters, so much longer than those by contemporary Romans, such as Cicero. She also cited Powell's description of how physically hard it was to produce such a letter. Rough drafts would have been on clay tablets.

Mariel repeated the observation that Paul changed the message of Jesus to the message about Jesus. She relates this to the story of Paul's change on the road to Damascus, and the transformation of the church in Acts.

Erica admitted that the chapter in MacCulloch was "a slog." She was stuck most by learning that marriage was not a sacrament, original. She enjoyed the amusing story of aggressive monks who would destroy villages to produce more wildernesss. Originally, she reports, parishes were to be three miles apart.

Erica said that Paul's personality shows in his letters. Susan pointed to his persistence. Mariel observed that "Paul OWNS his contradictions." Tom observe that Paul takes his own prejudices and puts a "God stamp" on them. Tom got some push back on this. Erica said, "Every prophet, every preacher does that."

Susan and Scott reported from fourth year about MacIntosh's book. Read Scott's blogpost about it.

We did not read the RRG's section on "Spirituality and Theology," but it speaks an important idea: we believe in order to understand, not the other way around.

Gene's TR was from a memoir and movie about a dying church's infusion of new life through the arrival of immigrants from far away. Our metaphor imagined a wrong turn that takes us to a holy place.

Collect for Life's Journey
Almighty God, who makes all things new: Like Paul on the road to Damascus, our expectations may blind us to Your vision for our world and you purposes for us; Open our hearts so that, whatever path we take, our eyes will behold the wonder and mystery of your ways: they are not our ways! Amen.

[Photo: Caravaggio's "Conversion of St. Paul"]

Next week: Tom will bring Mediterranean food; Mariel will lead worship; Erica will bring a TR. We do the readings for Week 18.