Eucharist

My church celebrates the Eucharist on the first Sunday of each month.

We also have a food collection the first Sunday of each month.

Seeing as how the early church conceived of Eucharist as a justice moment that fed the poor in the community, perhaps having people bring their donations forward to a basket as they come forward for communion would make that connection, bring justice back to the Eucharist, and encourage more donations, since the donation would be part of the ritual and not just something to put in a box in the Narthex on your way into church.

In fact, I think I might email my minister about this.

Worship and Culture

The Nairobi Statement on Worship and Culture suggests that worship should be transcultural and counter-cultural.  Worship should be transcultural in its embrace and usage of elements of worship that are universal and present in most of Christian worship, emphasizing grace, such as Eucharist, water symbolism, the cross, resurrection, among other themes and symbols.  Worship should also be counter-cultural in its capacity to resist elements of culture that are damaging and run counter to the messages of the gospel that are threatened by a culture in its time and place.  Worship must be justice-oriented in this manner and be able to address issues (such as immigration, feminism, the drug war, etc.) that may not be easy to talk about, but are important to living the gospel and embracing radical equality in Christ.

Feminist Theologians

VBS: Art of the Annunciation

Rossitza Schroeder is another great professor at PSR.  I took her "Art and Christianity" class my first semester in seminary.  Byzantine art is her specialty.

Video from Into the Wilderness.

Time

1. Describe and distinguish the different characteristics of polychronic and monochronic time.  Give an example of how the awareness of this cultural complexity influences the ways in which you approach worship planning and leadership?

Different cultures perceive time differently.  Perception of time monochronically is linear and indicated by language used around it: saving, spending, budgeting, using, etc.  People who understand time monochronically will be punctual and allot specific amounts of time for specific purposes.  People who understand time polychronically understand time more generally and relationally.  Such individuals value how time is spent and will often be “late” to an event in an effort to give time to a relationship, to their self, or to other priorities.  In planning worship and in leadership, it will be important to understand these two categories and what it may mean for planning events and for their attendance.  It will also mean that while some people prefer structured worship that adheres to monochronic understandings of time, others find more meaning in worship experiences that leave room for spirit-led uses of time and the materials of worship.  Understanding the dominant paradigm within a congregation will help me to understand how to best plan, as well as how to understand those who may not perceive time in that dominant paradigm.

James Cone

“Jesus is not a proposition, not a theological concept which exists merely in our heads.  He is an event of liberation, a happening in the lives of oppressed people struggling for political freedom.  Therefore, to know him is to encounter him in the history of the weak and the helpless.  That is why it can be rightly said that there can be no knowledge of Jesus independent of the history and culture of the oppressed.  It is impossible to interpret the Scripture correctly and thus understand Jesus aright unless the interpretation is done in the light of the consciousness of the oppressed in their struggle for liberation.”
James Cone

Benediction For an Earth Day Service

I created an Earth Day service for my church this year.  Some things were dropped because of scheduling and other reasons, so I wanted to share this benediction that was dropped:

God’s created people:

God called creation good.  Hear this as a call to be stewards of the earth and to commit ourselves to restoring to goodness our sick planet.  Remember that God has no hands but our hands, no face but our face, no landfill but our landfill, no compost but our compost, and no breath of fresh air but those that we breathe in.  May we continually breathe in the Holy Spirit and receive God’s blessings.  Go forth and create goodness with God!

Amen.

Christianity and Art

ITW doesn't yet have additional Bible study videos posted online, so I thought I would share something else somewhat educational.  This video talks about Christianity in art, including much of the symbolism used that may or may not be apparent.  Enjoy.

Tradition

"The ethical implications of a shared narrative require critical attention on the part of preachers, practitioners, and teachers of the Christian community. What we revere as holy can assume profane dimensions. Tradition can lead to idolatry, the antithesis of the esteeming of the being of God and the other."

— Heather Murray Elkins, “Altar-ing the World: Community-forming Word and Worship,” in Preaching in the Context of Worship, ed. David M. Greenshaw and Ronald J. Allen (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2000), 19.

VBS 3: Holy Eating in Luke With Sharon Fennema

Dr. Fennema teaches Worship at my seminary and also directs our on-campus worship (among other things).  She, like all of my professors, has an impressive academic background that is outshone by her wonderful presence and justice-filled spirit.  She creates original and meaningful worship experiences, as well as beautiful altar art.  Please enjoy her "unit" in VBS.

You can find out more about this community here:  Into the Wilderness

Oh, Jerusalem

If you haven't heard Lauryn Hill's Unplugged, you should.  It's all Christian in nature and while her theology is different from mine, she has an undeniable gift for melody and lyric.  I recommend a listen all the way through in order to get her stories with her music and understand her journey.

This is one of my favorites.  I will share some music that is spiritual for me.  While this one is pretty surface-level religious, not all of it is.

Bible Study Reflection: Luke

Here's more VBS!

If you'd like to check out this online community, you can do so here:  Into the Wilderness.

Lectionary Wars

I am preaching again in a couple of weeks and so I'm looking through the lectionary.  For those of you who don't know, the Christian tradition uses what it calls the lectionary to determine what scripture passages to preach.  Protestant traditions generally use the same lectionary (with some variance).  It's on a 3-year cycle (A, B, and C).  Each Sunday will have assigned texts.  Many churches use the lectionary and will consult it to decide which scripture to preach on.  Each Sunday has a few options that can be used in conjunction (as they generally are in the Roman Catholic tradition) or individually.  The offerings generally include passages from the Hebrew Scriptures (including one from Psalms) and the Christian Testament (including a gospel passage and epistle).

ANYWAY.

I'm looking through the lectionary and this week's selections include David's discovery of Bathsheba and a Psalm declaring non-believers to be categorically evil.

And I'm imagining all of the terrible sermons that are being preached on these passages, knowing that many traditions will try to defend David's kidnapping-and-raping-esque antics and condemn our "faithless" country for its secularism.

And it's making me sad that Christians are justifying ugly interpretations of my scripture to support damaging theologies and hateful worldviews.

Anyway.

What Do I Know?

http://seekinguncertainty.tumblr.com/post/85359003384/mini-sermons-meditating-on-what-do-i-know-by

Adult Vacation Bible Study 2: Luke with Dr. Jan Jan Lin

Jan Jan was my professor for Intro to the New Testament, which was a great class.  She's very knowledgeable and a great resource.  I'm excited that I will be going to the Holy Land on an immersion trip co-led by her in January.

Colonialism

"European Christianity is a dangerous thing. What do you think of a religion which holds a bottle of gin in one hand and a Common Prayer in another? Which carries a glass of rum as a vade-mecum to a ‘Holy’ book? A religion which points with one hand to the skies, bidding you 'lay up yourselves treasures in heaven,’ and while you are looking up grasps all your worldly goods with the other hand, seizes your ancestral lands, labels your forests, and places your patrimony under inexplicable legislations? A religion whihc indulges in swine’s flesh and yet cries 'Be ye holy, for I am holy.’ A religion which prays against 'those evils which the craft and subtlety of the devil or man worketh against us,’ and yet effects to deny incantation, charms or spells and satanism– a religion which arrogates to itself censorial functions on sexual morality, and yet promotes a dance, in which one man’s wife dances in close contact, questionable proximity and improper attitude with another women’s husband. O! Christianity, what enormities are committed in thy name."

— Mojola Agbebi, from his Inaugural Sermon in the “African Church” (1902)

Biblical Authority

“The doctrine of biblical authority has generally functioned to assure not the continuing importance of widely attested or programatic themes in scripture, but rather the divine inspiration of the tenuous and the marginal.  Indeed, from just a superficial overview of Christian history since the Reformation, the invocation of the tenet of biblical authority has been remarkably negative; that is, it has been employed most often to exclude certain groups or people, to pass judgment on various disapproved activities, and to justify morally or historically debatable positions.”  –Mary Ann Tolbert

Just as a reminder, I know that many of my non religious friends like to group Christians/religious folks into the same category.  Not all Christians use the Bible like a weapon or give it literal authority, nor do all science-minded folks agree with how science has been used to advance weapons technology and use drone strikes to kill innocent civilians.  

Please remember that your own experience of religion is only your own and is limited to your own families and social circles and the folks you like to listen to on the radio/TV.

Mary Ann Tolbert

“…orthodox Protestant doctrines of taking the Bible as ultimate authority in all doctrinal matters cannot itself be verified by the Bible.”

–Mary Ann Tolbert

Vacation Bible School Reflection 1

I think I like this more than the first lecture itself.

Reflection after the first lecture.  Some very good additional information about the Gospel of Luke, its authorship and themes, and how it compares to Matthew.

Into the Wilderness Community

Alfred North Whitehead

"Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development."

— Alfred North Whitehead (via observando)

(Source: observando, via sacredsecularity)

Vacation Bible School Lecture 1

This is the first Vacation Bible School lecture by Rev. Dr. Jay Johnson, professor of Theology at Pacific School of Religion and ordained Episcopalian priest.

The lecture focuses on The Gospel of Luke, but also begins with introductory information on the Bible (how it is organized, dated, etc.).

The video is not well synced with the audio, but it is the audio that is mostly important.

The video is from Into the Wilderness Community.

I intend (after today), to post the Bible study videos on Mondays, Wedensdays, and Fridays.

Vacation Bible School for Adults

I'll be posting stuffs here.

Me Church

Ratio

"Liberated ratio achieved an unanticipated importance. Its free use created an atmosphere of truthfulness, light, and clarity. A fresh wind of bright intelligence cleared up prejudices, social conceits, hypocritical properties, and stifling sentimentality. Intellectual honesty in all things, including questions of faith, was the great good of liberated ratio. It has belonged ever since to the essential moral requirements of Western humanity. Contempt for the age of rationalism is a suspicious sign of a deficient desire for truthfulness. Just because intellectual honesty does not have the last word on things and rational clarity often comes at the cost of depth of reality, we are not absolved from our inner duty to make honest and clean use of ratio."

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Thomas Aquinas

"[Thomas Aquinas] is clear that in a conflict between authority and conscience, it is conscience that we are to follow. Conscience may turn out to be mistaken. It may even turn out that our sin and stubbornness have distorted our conscience, so that it is our own fault when conscience gives us the wrong answer. Still, the right thing to do is what conscience tells us. Bad judgments will need to be corrected, and if we have contributed to them by our own sin, we may expect punishment for it at some later point, but we must not obey anyone who tells us to go against what our conscience tells us now."

— Robin W. Lovin in An Introduction to Christian Ethics: Goals, Duties, and Virtues

A Test

Meal Prayer

Because I like writing prayers, I guess…

God of Process

We are grateful to be gathered together in love and friendship, for God is Love and Jesus is our friend.

We give thanks for the abundance that is before us.  We ask that you would bless this table and those around it, that this food would nourish and strengthen our minds and bodies and do us the good that we need.

As we gather, the way that Christ gathered with his disciples, with those downtrodden, with those who society said were not fit to share a meal with, we remember our Lord and his radical sense of justice.  We hope to develop such spiritual acumen and to serve our God as Jesus did.

Still Speaking God, we ask that your voice would be clear to us, that we may follow your lure and act in ways that are in accordance with your will.

We pray to you in the name of all that is holy.

Amen

For Thought

"Destructive criticism finds as little to hope from in the discovery of new documents as do advanced ecclasiastical views."

— J. Rendel Harris

This is a very important reality in modern religious America, yet I fear that very few people understand what is meant because our churches do so little to bring the scholarship that ministers get in seminary into the churches.  Many people know what their churches want them to know, but are super unfamiliar with other viewpoints.

For instance, many churches teach that the Bible is anti-gay.  I can make some compelling arguments why that is not the case and refute the scripture passages that people use to support anti-gay viewpoints.  I doubt, however, that many folks from conservative traditions have heard the pro-equality side (while I have certainly heard the anti-gay biblical arguments).

Many of our churches do a very good job of articulating doctrine... of explaining to congregants what the church believes and why it believes such things based in scripture.  This may not be done overtly, but it is done.  Those churches, however, are not good at branching out.  They are not good at telling people what other people might believe based on the same scripture passages or what scholars think of these passages or what political and cultural realities might be influencing a biblical author's position or....

You know, just scholarship, frankly.

Scholars consider a whole bunch of things when they consider a text:  The original language; the political, cultural, regional, etc realities that might influence the text; other texts from the same period and region; other texts that tell the same story and the similarities and differences between them; the authors (not just who churches say authors are) and how their vantage point may skew their telling; allusions, analogies, and other literary devices that change the meanings of stories in ways modern readers may not pick up on because of our very different context; the ways that stories may be nonliteral because an author is trying to make connections with other biblical characters (SYMBOLS AND METAPHORS); how numbers might be used in symbolic ways that are not factual; how stories may be retold less accurately because of the winning voice; how certain acts and characters may be more countercultural and radical than we consider today because of our current context, ETC ETC ETC.

These are all things that many churches gloss over in favor of a simplistic reading that gleans a literal meaning (one that is skewed because of our 21st century lenses, right off the bat).  Yes, it is easier.  Yes, it makes arguing for particular interpretations much easier.

AND IT IS A TOTAL DISSERVICE TO THE GOSPEL, WTH.  Would you go to a doctor who had a degree in philosophy or none at all?  Not unless that doctor had a medical degree, too, right?  Why would you go to a church led by a dude with a degree in finance?  That sounds weird to me.

I don't pretend that my academic background means that I totally understand the Bible.  I don't.  It's a big library of books that are super complicated and old and removed from my time and place and whose historical journey has many gaps and breaks.  Many great people have devoted their lives to studying one small portion of the Bible and still don't feel that they totally understand.  I will say, however, that I think my academic background will get me much closer to the meanings that were intended by my biblical authors than I would with my high school education or with some other degree and I am so glad that my denomination requires ministers to be educated in fields that are relevant to ministry.

And I think it's wrong to lead religious communities without getting educational backgrounds that can help you help your community.  You don't have to be educated to be Godly and you don't have to be Godly to be educated...  but I think both together make for the best communities.

Gender and Translation

"… They pioneer a characteristic feature of Syrian Christianity, reference to the Holy Spirit as female. Grammatically, after all, ruha, the Syriac word for spirit, is feminine, although later Christians found this disconcerting and from around 400 CE arbitrarily redefined the word as masculine in grammatical gender."

—

Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, 183

People who like to define God as male are pretty good at creating silly reasons for doing so, when in fact, much of the gender derivation we find in modern Bible translations comes from the grammatical gender of words in the languages of the texts.  People do this with the Bible, yet if we were going to argue that because the word for “book” in Spanish is masculine, that all books are male in nature and then derive qualitative meaning about knowledge being masculine, people would think we were ridiculous... because the grammatical gender of words is about grammar, not about values.

Genders of words are meaningful only when we want them to be.  No one thinks there is meaning in the gender of the word “backpack” or “toothbrush,” but when it's God, it seems to matter a lot more.

That being said, when a word for God or Spirit is feminine, plural, or some other “way” that is against preconceptions about God (these things totally happen in the original Bible languages, guys), the Church has no problem arbitrarily redefining things to meet its own needs for patriarchy, just as it had no problem shutting women out of ministerial positions once the church started becoming more mainstream... because after all, in order for a faith to be socially acceptable, it must more or less adhere to the social values of the time.

…and then the Church loses the radically inclusive Jesus that turned up the tables of institutional religion and its tendency toward legalism and turns its back on the spiritual gifts of women.  At the very core of my being, I feel Jesus would be deeply bothered by how religious institutions have denied the spiritual gifts of women by restricting women to particular roles in society and family.