Gene's worship service included a wonderful meditation -- about fish in water and birds in air -- about how God fosters our own nature. Gene posed the question at the end of the meditation, "What has God given us to day to help us be more fully ourselves?" We said that we found patience in Psalms, something of ourselves in the Sedgwick book, joy and challenge in watercolors, community in Bible study and in-person worship, time to oneself for a caregiver, and earnest responses of students to their teacher's assignment.
Yr. D theme: Living into the Journey with God Class: Marilyn, Nuno, first year; Christine, third year; Mariel, Gene, fourth year; Scott and Susan, co - mentors. Absent:None.
Christine made an interesting observation that she is learning to see text the way she sees images.
Of the first year readings, Nuno said that he appreciates more the musicality of the Psalms and their intended role in corporate worship. Marilyn loved the descriptions. That God isn't mentioned in the Song of Solomon doesn't mean that God is absent, as the poetry expresses a bigger love, a pure love. Marilyn wrote that the love "ennobles, consumes, and glorifies" its object. Nuno also found this book of the Bible is a "tender" counterpoint the purity culture that many churches promote.
Of fourth year reading in Timothy Sedgwick's book, we heard that he elevates the monastic lifestyle. We had some discussion of what we liked and disliked in that. We also had some discussion of Sedgwick's take on the word "vocation."
Using chat, we constructed the lines of this prayer:
Lord,
We pray for peace and unity of the church;
courage to live the lives we have committed ourselves to as Christians;
faith and courage to do the right thing despite personal consequences:
to speak truth to power,
to be bold witnesses to Christ's love in how we live our lives,
to support universal human rights and advocate for those who lack power,
to be kind to those who are unkind,
and to find the strength to continue to love even though it is difficult.
7 comments:
Year 4 read the last two chapters and appendix of Sedgwick’s book “The Christian Moral Life.”
In Chapter 5 - “The Practices of Faith” - Sedgwick discusses 4 types of religious disciplines that were developed in the philosophical schools of late antiquity and adapted for use by early Christian converts:
(1) Meditation and contemplation - like prayer; use of image (kataphatic) or sound (apophatic).
(2) Examination (of our lives) such as dialogue, Socratic Q&A, reading or hearing parables like the Good Samaritan which lead back to meditation, contemplation, and prayer.
(3) Denial and the simplification of life: purgation - fasting, sexual abstinence, mortification - and ascesis, disciplining the flesh.
(4) Action, as in performing duties, obligations, or “sacramental” acts - feeding the hungry, tending the sick, welcoming the stranger, etc.
Sedgwick then demonstrates how the Eucharist incorporates all 4 disciplines:
(1) Meditating on Jesus’ command to remember his body and blood.
(2) Examining our lives in the light of the pascal mystery.
(3) Fasting before taking communion.
(4) Partaking of the bread and wine in community, recalling the Last Supper.
The author cites Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s warning that worship can become idolatrous as it did in Nazi Germany, when Christians bowed to authority and refused to welcome the stranger. Sedgwick finds a parallel between that world and the fragmented world of Gen Xers.
In Chapter 6 - “The Call of God” - Sedgwick relates that his most important decisions were not rational moral judgments about what to do, but were rather his response to a call he heard as an invitation to enter into a way of life he calls “hospitality.” He recollects examples over the past 2,000 years of difficulty in perceiving the call of God, and the danger in equating “vocation” with the religious profession. He prefers the term to mean a “way of living.”
Sedgwick says that Christian ethics is not about forming a single, universal, once-and-for-all account of what we should do - it’s not a moral handbook. At the center of Christian ethics is a life transformed in relation to God given in and through Jesus Christ. The covenant that gives wholeness to life is most poignantly revealed in voluntary poverty and hospitality, first of all in the family, then expanding outward to embrace the other.
And now for the Appendix…..
To provide some historical context to the themes of the book, Sedgwick presents different perspectives of Christianity as a practical piety grounded in the Christian story. This was first developed systematically by Friedrich Schleiermacher, then by Karl Barth, and later in the theology and ethic of Stanley Hauerwas. Modern Christian thought attempts to make sense of faith in terms of piety rather than in the context of Neo-Platonic cosmology. God is not directly accessible through the natural world, but only through religious piety. Hauerwas saw Christian faith as narrative identity, and at the center of this story is the renunciation of power as the instrument of history and a means of achieving identity.
Narrative Theology and Practice
Events in life generate conflicts; these act upon us, and we respond. In narrative, plot drives character development. In scriptural narratives, conflict between human priorities (idolatry) and desire to do God’s will (faithfulness) develop and reveal character, as in Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac. The adequacy of narrative identity is its ability to make sense of things. For Christians, our lives are open-ended, unfinished, in progress - always eschatological narratives.
Understandings of God
Root metaphors are unifying analogies that draw together narrative understandings and everyday practices. Examples of Christian root metaphors are: the vision of God, the kingdom of God, justification by grace, eternal life, theosis, covenant, love, freedom, and liberation. Thomas Aquinas, in light of Neo-Platonic cosmology, read the scriptural narrative as creation, fall, and redemption - all come from God, all return to God. Protestant thought rested on the metaphor of justification by grace. Contemporary understandings are more theocentric. Instead of God as King or Ruler, God is a friend, co-creator, who invites us to participate in his creation.
The root metaphor in this book is covenant of hospitality - covenant as the experience of God in human relationships, and hospitality as the difference at the heart of this relationship. “Identity is given in difference.” Thus we are continually drawn outside of ourselves into the mystery of being. The author concludes with this: “More than an argument for the metaphor of covenant of hospitality, however, the purpose of this book is to offer an account of the Christian life that may serve in the deepening of practical piety.”
As I reflect on this book, especially the final sentence, I see it as a kind of scholarly sermon, a warning and exhortation to young seminarians who are on the cusp of making very serious decisions about the rest of their life. Like an OT prophet, Sedgwick urges his readers to abstain from sexual immorality, to practice spiritual disciplines, to seek the riches of God and not the emptiness of worldly wealth, to recognize the danger of idolatries - even religion and worship - and to remain faithful to a commitment to live hospitably, even in an inhospitable world, and be the change they hope to see.
Year 3 MacCulloch Chapter 20, Protestant Awakenings (1600-1800)
-Protestants and American Colonization
-The Fight for Protestant Survival
Focus Question: What aspects of North American Christianity’s growth are most evident in your religious heritage?
As I’ve read through the various histories over these 3000 years of Christianity, the thought of how fortunate I am to have been born in a time, and place, where I can “flounder” in thoughts and beliefs relating to or deciding upon religion, theologies, and practices. One of the aspects in north America’s Christianity affording this benefit is the idea of “freedom of religion”, which derives via the Rhode Island colony tolerating “others’” practices and soon after William Penn and the formal documents governing his colony of Pennsylvania” thus leading to our founding fathers looking upon that as a guide to inclusion in the constitution of our nation.
A “hard to come to terms with” realization , a continual processing, is the depth at which human oppression continued with native Americans and the slavery perpetuation with “clarifications” being put forth such as baptisms for slaves required they didn’t ask for freedom from their masters or ....
During much of the time periods throughout history it seems it’d be frightening if you didn’t state your beliefs or conform to the ideologies of the Emperor or leader of the day. It could bring horrible harassment, torture or death your way. Seems a frightful and stressful way to live in love or peacefully bringing up family and tending to extended loved ones. Perhaps the “American” way of accepting churches/belief systems creates laziness ...if you don’t have to commit perhaps there isn’t a true relationship with God.
I’ve always felt like God was there for me. In my “untrained” faithful mind. Like my parents, whom I could always go back to if/when needed. As I grew toward attending church, reading scripture, and participating in community events and fellowship activities, I began wondering “what could I do for God?” I had decided I wasn’t sure I had been doing anything for God.
EfM has caused me to embrace “observation” in or on words as opposed to “observation/study” of or via visual images...contemplate broader topics, through prayer and meditation. In other words take a body of text and stare at it in the same way I have done with paintings, sculpture, mechanical art....a different kind of “knowing” becomes forefront in your mind.
After reading Hebrews and Powell's chapter about it, I feel
Amused by Powell's analogy of Hebrews to the kind of film that critics love that no one goes to see. Hebrews is a sustained argument, filled with learned allusions and a kind of Hebrew Platonism (with "earthly" and "heavenly" subbing for "physical" and "ideal"). But it's generally not all that inspiring. No great stories.
Bothered by some lines in Hebrews that say you've used up your free passes if you fall away from Christianity. You can't go back. Powell cites a dozen passages in other books of the New Testament that refute those lines. For one prominent example, the apostles themselves denied Jesus and came back to the faith.
Confused by Powell's response to "supersessionism," the position that Christianity supersedes Judaism. Like Powell, I see that as discourteous to Jewish friends. I'm not so convinced by Powell's assurance that Hebrews doesn't really go that far. Powell suggests that it's not bad v. good, but good v. better.
Delighted by the motif of "journey" in the letter. The author imagines the old traveling tabernacle more than the temple. The motif fits our EfM theme for the year.
I love Christine's note about learning to look at text the way she looks at art.
Christine wrote:
EfM has caused me to embrace “observation” in or on words as opposed to “observation/study” of or via visual images...contemplate broader topics, through prayer and meditation. In other words take a body of text and stare at it in the same way I have done with paintings, sculpture, mechanical art....a different kind of “knowing” becomes forefront in your mind.
Yes, same here. It reminds me of those strange, 2-D optical illusions that look like squiggly lines but the more you stare and learn to look through the flat 2-D surface, the more the 3-D scene pops out. That's what EfM has helped me do OT, NT, church history, and theological writings.
A lament, a song of thanksgiving, a hymn of praise.
Hymns or songs of praise, Psalms of YHWH's Enthronement, Individual and Communal Complaints, Individual and Communal Thanksgivings, and the royal psalms. All different types of messages, all to inspire hope, strengthen faith, and proclaim the glory of God. The way the Psalms are organized reflects the way they are needed and then what follows as an answer to prayer. A problems exists, a prayer is offered, blessings received for which we give thanks and then praise for God's gifts and power.
Complaints -
Psalm 3 - Lord how many are my foes.
Psalm 5 - Listen to my words, Lord. Consider my lament.
Hymns of praise -
Psalm 19 - The heavens declare the glory of God.
Psalm 34 - I will glory in the Lord.
royal psalms -
Psalm 21 - The King rejoices in your strength, Lord.
Thanksgivings -
Psalm 23 - The Lord is my Shepherd
Psalm 30 - I will exalt you, Lord, for you lifted me out of the depths.
The Psalms mention fear the comes from all around, part of the human condition.
The Acts of Justice show the character of God. Lord, I love the house where you live, the place where your glory dwells - Psalm 26.
The Song of Songs can be seen as a theology because it describes a purity of love beyond all other. It is considered a sacred text because of the love that it describes. It describes a love that ennobles, consumes, and glorifies. It describes a love that renders all that is part of life perfectly beautiful and in harmony with the heart.
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