Yr. B, Wk. 17: Church Buildings, Building Church

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Worship and Gathering
Before worship, we held up our ailing friend Pete, Marilyn's little dog Ocho, and concerns from last week.

Jessica led us in prayers for evening time, including O Gracious Light. Her gathering question got us laughing when she asked us for clever ads. Examples for some reason mostly dated from three to five decades ago, e.g., plop, plop, fizz, fizz... where's the beef?. Jessica told of Kit Kats, and the Taco Bell chiahuahua has fans in Susan and Marilyn. Scott relayed an interview with a "hot-dogger" who drove Oscar-Meyer's Weinermobile for a year. Does Starbucks misspell names on orders just for the social media exposure from annoyed customers? Nuno wonders.

Living Faithfully in a Multicultural World, Unit 3, Developing a Sustaining Spirituality:
1st yr: Jessica; 2nd yr: Susan; 3rd yr, Pete, Nuno, Marilyn, Kathy ; 4th yr, Scott. Mentors: Susan and Scott. Absent: Pete.

Discussion of the Readings

Kathy started discussion by agreeing with MacCulloch that a church's architecture can have a great influence on the worship experience, for good and for ill. We shared our experiences with a church shaped like a UFO, a 3-D crucifix that looks like jacks, and an Anglican church in Quebec City that covers every surface with words -- teaching Scott that worship is not, or should not be, so bound up in what we read and say. Marilyn commented on church spires, rare in CA and ubiquitous in the South. Kathy remembered one in Port Gibson MS with a pointing finger at the tip. [Photo: from Scott's bike ride through Port Gibson MS in 1992.]

Both Y1 and Y3 dealt with the construction of awe-inspiring temples for worship that also siphoned off wealth from the laity to aggrandize religious leaders. Corruption and hypocrisy were as common to the priesthood in the days of Samuel as to the Church of the the Medieval era. "We make a mistake when we try to separate our church from the scandals of church history," Nuno said, "because hypocrisy is what [atheists and agnostics] see when they look at us." We should all make a point to know about it, and we should tell how God works us through it. Priests were "celibate out loud but not in the dark," Marilyn quipped.

Susan with Acts and Scott with McIntosh both spoke of the church's growing because of strong spiritual experiences, not primarily because of arguments and logic. Reminding us that "it's the journey, not the destination," Nuno noted how spirituality and strong bonds formed among pilgrims even if the tourist attractions were dubious: in this way, the church was built.

Another theme emerged from Jessica's reading, as she took Collins's suggestion to read separately the two opposing strands merged in the Biblical text about David and Goliath. It was eye-opening. Kathy said, "We have to remember, the Bible is not just a book, but a library."

Theological Reflection
Pinch-hitting for Pete, Nuno hit a double with two poems alluding to the Crusades. We were drawn to a line about "heretics who believe" in a context that suggested these were insane people. Our approach moved quickly past ideas of outliers whose beliefs were violent or harmful -- Eric Hoffer's "True Believers" and the Heaven's Gate cult -- to thinking of outliers whose beliefs became orthodoxy: Christians, but also proponents of germ theory.

We found many connections:

• Culture: The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity (Yeats)...Edward Murrow – exposing Joseph McCarthy for liar and demagogue...Play Inherit the Wind in which the Clarence Darrow figure breaks down the resolve of the fundamentalist politician and jury...The trope of the insane person who’s really the hero in movies mostly in the 70s They Might Be Giants… One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest… King of Hearts… Total Recall…
• Tradition: John the Baptist… Jeremiah… Desert Fathers and Mothers… Russian Orthodox tradition of Holy Fools… St. Paul “fools for Christ” ... Shaman/witch doctor... Christ opposing the orthodoxy of Pharisees and Sadducees... madness as demon-possession

Looking for insights, we collected these: Error of self-assurance, we fall into bad traps and patterns … truth from people who look outside themselves for what the truth is (empirical evidence) ... Our words for outliers all stem from roots that mean "self" -- Idio – auto – heretic -- suggesting a deep-seated belief that someone disconnected from community is a danger. (Are the outliers of our tradition -- John, Jesus, hermit saints -- so disconnected?)

Scott took suggestions from everyone to compose this collect following class:

Collect for the Outliers Creator outside of creation yet in our hearts: prophets speaking your word were cast out by their peers, while your Word, casting out spirits, restored demoniacs to reason: we pray that our habits of study and worship together will make us sensitive to earnest outliers, that we may be receptive to genuine insight and wise in our responses to the deluded. To Father and Son through the Spirit we pray, Amen.

For Next Week
We do readings for Wk. 18, including the "respond" section of the RRG. We hope that Pete will be back to share his source for a TR; Kathy will lead worship and ask a gathering question.

Everyone: Mark EfM - January 30 on your calendar. Henceforth, during only the last week of every month, we will meet on Monday instead of Tuesday.