Bible talk

This fall I’ve been able to be a part of the adult forum conversation.  For those of you who have been faithfully teaching Sunday school to our young people and/or unable to make the discussion, here is some of what has been covered:  We’ve been talking about how we read the Bible, what the Bible means to us, and, more specifically, the Bible as literature — a complex, intricate, dazzling, and often puzzling piece of literature at that.  I’ve enjoyed having the chance to teach two of the classes.  One of the classes I brought in 10-12 different pieces of writing that I have around our house, all from different genres: a novel, satire, a letter from a friend, a pictorial history of African Americans, poetry, myths, a political cartoon, a legal document (old version of health insurance policy!), etc.  We divided these up and each person took time to leaf through their writing as well as a passage of scripture that corresponded to that genre.  We then discussed what it was like to see the Bible as containing all these genres of writing and how that affects how we might read it and the expectations we bring to certain portions of scripture.

During the other class session we considered why it is that we have four gospels, four perspectives on the telling of Jesus’ ministry, as opposed to one official version.  Or, another way of asking it would be “Why just four?”  Why not 40?  To note the differences in how each gospel goes about introducing Jesus, we compared and contrasted the first chapter of each of the four gospels — four different ways of bringing us into “gospel,” good news.

John Kampen also taught a class, regarding the relationship of the Old and New Testaments.  He asked us to recognize there at the time of the writing of the New Testament there were many different ways of understanding the present scriptures.

Keith Lehman has been the main teacher and he has led us in different exercises.  This last week he noted that he felt like he was asking us to pull apart the scriptures and see what they look like when we do that.  He also recognized that we may need to spend some time on putting them back together!  During one of the sessions Keith had us look at the biblical flood story alongside the older Babylonian version of the story.  Comparing these two stories helped shed light on the context into which the biblical flood story was speaking to.

Keith will continue teaching this class for two more sessions and then as a closing session on Nov. 22nd I’ll attempt to tell the broad story of scripture and connect some of the dots for how all of these small parts fit into an overarching narrative.

In Article IV of the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective on the Bible it says, “The Bible is the essential book of the church.  Through the Bible, the Holy Spirit nurtures the obedience of faith to Jesus Christ and guides the church in shaping its teaching, witnessing, and worship.  We commit ourselves to persist and delight in reading, studying, and meditating on the Scriptures.”

This class has helped bring out some of the varying relationships we all have with the Bible.  Our backgrounds have a major influence on this since many of us are formed by and reactive to what we have come to see as the good and the bad of how we have been taught to read it.  It may be an interesting Journey Group discussion, or another forum topic at some point, for people to tell their Bible autobiography, how one’s relationship with scripture has changed and developed over the years.  Let’s commit ourselves to persist and delight in how the Scriptures help form us as a community of faith.

Leonard live

This video is of a London performance of Leonard Cohen on this same tour, with the song “Hallelujah.” 

“I do not know if we will pass this way again, so we’re going to give you everything we’ve got tonight.” 

This was how Leonard Cohen started his concert last night in Columbus, which lasted a little over three hours.  Abbie and I have been fans for a while now.  We first discovered him in a sideways kind of way – when we saw the first Shrek movie and were mesmerized by a version of the song “Hallelujah” that played during one of the scenes.  Coming back from the theater that night we did an internet search and discovered it was written by a Canadian folk singer named Leonard Cohen, and we’ve been hooked ever since.  October is Abbie’s birthday month, and the concert last night was a fun surprise gift.    

Leonard Cohen is 75 years old now, so it may very well be the last time he travels through Columbus for a concert.   

His music is good – especially with the nine piece band of extremely gifted musicians that are touring with him – but I think of him more as a poet who sets his words to music.  His songs carry a deep longing for love that shows up in both spiritual and sexual form.  He somehow manages to speak to a haunting kind of loneliness right alongside the playfulness of one who has learned to not take himself too seriously.  In one of his songs he says, “There is a crack in everything.  That’s how the light gets in.”

He is a Jew and his songs contain plenty of biblical allusions.    His song that most resembles a prayer is called “If It Be Your Will” and is the song Abbie and I sang together during my ordination service.  It starts, “If it be your will / that I speak no more / and my voice be still / as it was before / I will speak no more / I shall abide until / I am spoken for / if it be your will.

Some of the most enduring images of the concert for me will be several of his gestures that he made throughout the evening.  As he sang he often went down to his knees.  A review I read before suggested that he was offering each song as some kind of sacrament.  He also gave long bows to each of his musicians when they played solos and when he introduced them.  When he would exit the stage he skipped and danced.  When I am 75, if I can embody that amount of grace, reverence, playfulness, and poetry, it will be a sign that I came through life pretty well.

 

Events in Cincinnati

Starting today I’ll be spending most of the rest of the week downtown at the Convention Center.  The Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) has a conference in a different US city each year and this year it is in Cincinnati.  I first became aware of CCDA while taking some classes in Chicago during seminary days and was impressed with their commitment to improving communities through a holistic approach.  CCDA people thought of ministry as happening right in their own neighborhood.  The eight principles of CCDA are: Church-Based, Presence in the Community (Relocation), Reconciliation, Listening to the Community, Wholistic Approach, Empowerment, Leadership Development, and Redistribution.  CCDA, which is really just an association of individuals, churches and groups around the country doing this kind of ministry, began with the work of John Perkins, an African American from rural Mississippi who decided, rather than leave his community after receiving his education, to come back and help it grow.  CCDA came about as a result of him beginning to pull together different groups with the same kind of vision for ministry.  By way of mission statement:  “The mission of CCDA is to inspire, train, and connect Christians who seek to bear witness to the Kingdom of God by reclaiming and restoring under-resourced communities.”  I’ve never been to a CCDA event and this week I hope to learn some things that others are experiencing in their settings as well as connect with Cincinnati people who are doing this kind of ministry. 

One of the presenters at the conference, Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove, will bring the message this Sunday at Cincinnati Mennonite. 

There are some familiar names who are speaking in the evenings at CCDA in the Convention Center and their talks are free and open to the public.  Thursday evening is Jim Wallis.  Friday is Bart Campolo.  Saturday is Shane Claiborne.  The evening session is from 7-9pm.

Another wonderful, non-related event going on in Cincinnati that you may wish to catch is that Walter Brueggemann, a leading Old Testament scholar, is speaking Wedneday evenings through November 4^th at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Anderson – the church that former CMF pastor Ann Nofziger and her husband Don now attend.  Brueggemann is speaking on “The Other Way.”  Look at the website http://www.onecommontable.com/ for more info.  There is a free meal served before the talk and child care is provided, as well as children’s programming for school aged kids.  Abbie and I went last week and found it to be excellent (including the meal and the child care!).  A little more description from the website: “Forget everything you’ve been taught because there is another way. There is another way of looking at life, families, relationships, careers, and even another way of looking at the bible. Join world renowned Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, for a series of extraordinary lectures using ancient texts that will help us to imagine the world in a different way. In a time when life rushes by and we run like mice on a wheel, always on the move yet never getting anywhere, there is another way.”

Timeline II

Sitting on my desk, finally uncovered after being on the bottom of a stack for a couple weeks, is Timeline II: living echo of Menno Simons.  This is a new resource recently made available from Mennonite Publishing Network.  The first timeline that it is following charted the Anabaptist movement from its 16^th century beginnings through the centuries and showed the points where different groups either splintered or merged (mostly splintered, unfortunately) to form the various Mennonite and Amish groups that exist today.

Timeline II takes a different approach.  Rather than being something to hang on the wall it is an accordion style large booklet with one side of the accordion composed of pictures of Mennonite worship houses around the world and the other composed of historical movements beginning in 1500.  The history part has two columns: on the left it recounts the events of world and broader church history at that time and on the right, larger and more colorful column, it contains maps and notes of what was occurring in the Anabaptist movement.  The first three entries on the left are “1500: Portuguese land on Brasillian coast; 1502: Wittenburg Prince Frederik founds university: Augustinian Martin Luther will be one of the lecturers: 1506: Rome starts construction of St Peter’s, partly financed by the sale of indulgences.”  The first entry on the right, 1519, notes Ulrich Zwingli preaching sermons and reading the Bible together with the young students who will become the first Swiss Anabaptists.  Completely unfolded the timeline is apparently over 100 inches long.  Here is some of what the creators of this new timeline say about the work:

“Many Anabaptists died in direct and well-recorded martyrdom.  Many more toiled on courageously, having opted for the way of peace, many never finding peace again.  Few called themselves Anabaptist or inhabited areas of traditional Mennonite settlement.  Through this extended timeline we can only hope to stimulate awareness that the Anabaptist Mennonite Community is part of a unique, recurrent, and global witness, flowing through time and place…Too often the church commissions only ‘most ideal and moral’ volunteers for mission and service, pulling them back as soon as they show fatigue or doubt.  Mennonites are not unique in that sense.  Their communities grow, break up or stay together like many others do for a wide variety of reasons, such as happy families, safe homesteads, food security, and freedom of thought.  They flee along with others and they live through the same crises of faith.  Many of their personal stories are too powerful to be told, buried with their bearers before they mature into testimonies that can be shared in service of peace.  We hardly have a story tradition to help us come to terms with our very human experience.  We think the best echo of our stories is to be found in solidarity, hence vulnerable meeting with the dignified other, beyond our safe congregational yard.  We want to contribute some stories to help fill this gap and encourage others to share their experience.”  

More info about the timeline, as well as purchasing info if you would like one in your own home can be found HERE.  An interesting note, the website reports “Paper for the covers are fabricated at the 17th century paper mill ‘De Schoolmeester’ in Westzaan, The Netherlands, using timeless wind energy.”

Resolutions

* The memorial service for Jan Abel will be held at CMF at 4:00pm next Tuesday, October 13th. All who attend are welcome to stay for the Community Meal in the church basement afterward.*

Yesterday in the mail the church office received the Delegate Assembly Minutes from the Mennonite Church USA Convention 2009 in Columbus. I found it worthwhile reviewing the three major resolutions that were passed.

One was called Resolution on National Healthcare Policy: Next Step. The resolution reiterates our belief in God’s generous purposes in seeking the shalom of all creation and protecting the more vulnerable. It resolved: “We will ask our members and congregations to urge their congressional representatives to support legislation that would extend access to healthcare to all Americans, particularly the poor and disadvantaged, while we engage local healthcare needs.” On a related note, the Corinthian Plan, which will see that all pastors of participating congregations will receive health coverage, has been affirmed to move forward. It is estimated that this will enable at least 50 current Mennonite pastors without health insurance to be covered.

A second resolution was called Statement Against Human Trafficking, Modern Day Slavery. That statement addresses sex trafficking and labor trafficking and notes that our faith in God who created human beings in the divine image calls us “to join with other Christian denominations in a united voice against the evil of human trafficking.”

A third resolution was called Resolution on following Christ and growing together as communities even in conflict. The resolution noted disagreement and ongoing pain over issues of human sexuality and affirmed the church’s commitment to ongoing dialogue around such issues. By way of follow-up, a group is forming at CMF to brainstorm how we can engage in conversation together regarding our own experiences in relating with gay and lesbian persons and what that means for us as a congregation.

To access the full text of these three resolutions, click HERE.

Another email

Last week I attended the Central District Conference Fall Resource Day. CDC hosts two Resource Days a year and it is a time for pastors to come together and focus on a particular area of ministry, to share together, and to learn about what’s going on with CDC. At an informal lunch conversation we got onto the topic of technology and communication. There were six of us at the table and we each offered our thoughts about the benefits and struggles with using technology, particularly email, but also other kinds of technology, in church life. Here were some of the things mentioned:
- A pastor around 60 years of age reflected on how incredibly much pastoring has changed in the last 20 years due to communication issues. He spends much less time on the phone than he used to (much more email) and feels the loss in relational closeness. He wondered if things had moved too fast for him to keep up and it was time for him to be done, or if things are too email oriented and we should intentionally try for voice, face-to-face, interaction as much as possible.
- We concluded there are roughly three different groups of people in congregations in how they relate with email – those who do not have it and probably never will (mostly older), those who are somewhat or very comfortable with email, and those who are post-email and prefer social networking (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and texting (mostly 20 yrs old and below). How to keep in touch with all three groups?
- We all felt that email takes an enormous amount of time, but has certain advantages, such as being able to communicate with groups of people at a time.
- Most agreed that email can be a poor and laborious way to make decisions when it is a one-on-one situation. Sometimes picking up the phone is much faster and efficient.
- We all felt the church should be a place where we think critically about communication and its effects on our relationships.
- Several of us noted that our worship services use little or no electronic media, such as having a screen to project music or announcements or power point. And we felt that many people in the congregation probably felt pretty strongly about it staying that way. We wondered if people are so bombarded with electronic media in other parts of life that the church becomes a haven and a rest from it.
I was the youngest in the group which meant that email communication was the most normal for me. I don’t know what it would be like to pastor without it. But these are all questions I’ve thought about before and it was great to hear of other’s experiences. Hopefully congregations, ours included, can be places where we use the technology most conducive to good communication and building meaningful relationships that have depth. I welcome your thoughts – by email, phone, blog comment, conversation over coffee, or stop by the office, or text me, or………..

Unofficial blessings

I like blessings.  I like giving them, and it’s pretty cool to receive a blessing too.  It’s one of the powerful things that congregations experience.  In our life together we get to share in blessing new babies, youth coming of age, marriages, ordination, members involved in denominational leadership.  In offering a blessing to something or someone, we get to agree together, in the presence of God, that “This is good,” or “This is holy.”

These past few days I have had the opportunity to be involved in what could be called unofficial blessings.  Last week a woman in the neighborhood died who, although she never came to our Community Meal because of her inability to leave her home, regularly received carry-out meals from friends.  She had requested to be cremated and the family had no memorial service for her.  Last Wednesday, upon request of her friends, and with permission from her husband, we held a brief service of remembrance for her outside her apartment.  We prayed, we thanked God for the blessings of her life, and we signed a card for her husband.  An unofficial memorial service.

At the end of last week a young woman and her boyfriend who live a block from our church and who have been attending Community Meal welcomed a healthy baby girl into the world.  Yesterday Abbie and I went over to their apartment, heard the birth story, and got to hold the child.  At their invitation I also offered a prayer of blessing for the child and them as parents, acknowledging the holy calling of parenting and the blessedness of this child.  An unofficial child blessing.

Both of these things happened outside the walls of the church, and at the fringes of our congregation’s web of relationships.  Does that make them unofficial, whatever that may mean?  It seems that the act of blessing one another often happens in a similar way – outside the programmed, structured nature of congregational life and within the relational world which we inhabit.  Here I’m thinking of blessing in a much broader sense than its ceremonial form – blessing others for the good that we see in them.  I’ve heard some people refer to what we do on Sunday mornings as “just practicing” for the rest of life.  This can apply to the blessings that we offer.

Marking the time

This weekend Abbie and I and the girls will be with my family in Bellefontaine for a time of remembering Belle.  Her original due date was September 21, this coming Monday.  We plan to hold a brief service together and plant a tree in her honor.  With a stillbirth, the act of remembering is unique because, in some ways, there’s so little to remember.  Our physical experience with her was brief – we had about 30 hours in the hospital to hold, bathe, and be with her.  But her presence, and our experience with her, is much larger than that small window.  We opened up a space for her in our hearts, and it remains open.  For me, part of remembering Belle is wanting that space to never shut – to keep carrying it with us.  We picked the name Belle because we liked the name, but we’ve also made the connection between her and the working of a bell – where it is the open space within the bell where the sound resonates.  We wish to have the place that Belle has opened up within us be a place where love and sadness and peace resonate together.  And since part of Belle’s gift to us was moving us down the street into a house with more space (we moved ½ year ago today) we wish for that also to be a place where these things resonate. 

Here is a poem that I wrote soon after Belle’s delivery that we will read this weekend:

Stillborn daughter

Whatever this may be – curse, blessing, strange and

terrible gift.  We carry this treasure, this deep

sadness, in jars of clay.  Already

cracking and held together by

grace.

Theological reflection in Cincinnati

I’ve recently learned of a pretty unique opportunity coming to Cincinnati.  I’m going to sound like a salesman right now.  A congregation in Norwood, Vineyard Central, is hosting a school called Street Psalms.  The sessions include theological teaching/reflection and are a combination of lecture and round table discussion.  The philosophy of this traveling school is to get different practitioners in a room together with a professor and do theological study and reflection on the vocational work in which all people are involved – with a special eye toward how we are embodying Christ’s presence to the marginal of society.

The format makes it quite accessible.  There are six classes and they will meet over the course of three years.  One in the fall and spring of each year.  The first class starts Oct. 1-3 (Thurs – Sat) and all classes will hold this format:  Thurs: 6-9:30pm, dinner included.  Fri: 6-9:30pm, dinner included.  Sat. 9am-3pm coffee and lunch included.  It costs $18,000 to bring this school to Cincinnati, but a generous donor has covered all those expenses.  The leaders are asking that people pay $25 per weekend, which includes meals.  Which means that over the course of the three years participants will experience instruction for the equivalent of 1/2 of a masters degree for only $150.

What I’m interested in doing is getting a group of Cincinnati Mennonite folks to do this together.  I do not see this as CMF participants asking “How can I get more involved with church?” although that may be part of the question.  What this presents is a chance for some CMFers to reflect theologically together on their own unique vocational paths – social work, the corporate world, teaching, health care, etc.  A key question to explore would be how does your involvement in your particular work intersect with your call to love the world as God loves the world?

My understanding is that this can be entered into at whatever level the participant wishes.  If you just wish to come to the twice-a-year sessions and listen and discuss then that is welcome.  If you wish to go more in depth and follow some of the recommended readings and journaling assignments then that is also welcome.  The way that it is chronologically spaced out makes it accessible for folks who are quite busy with life as it is.  I think it’s a good opportunity for those who will not ever attend seminary, but who have a hunger to integrate theological perspectives into their life path.  I’m also looking forward personally to the challenge of these courses.

If you have some interest, a good place to go would be this website: http://www.ctmnet.org/pages/intensives.php

It lists all six weekend courses and gives a link to a syllabus for each course (the readings and work listed is required just of those taking this for master’s degree credit).     

If this catches your eye, then give me a call or email and we’ll talk about it.

A voice stumbling in the wilderness

I had an experience yesterday I’m trying to laugh about that registered somewhere between humbling and downright embarrassing.  I had the morning time open and was able to attend the health care forum at UC hosted by Senator Sherrod Brown.  There was room for about 1000 people in the room and it was packed out.  Senator Brown is a strong supporter of the public option and helped write some of the legislation up for debate.  It got fairly raucous at times, with pro and con folks raising their voices out of turn, but it never got completely out of control.  I was sitting toward the back next to three retired-ageish men who were vehemently opposed to a public option.  I figured this out pretty quickly before the meeting started and had a conversation with them, mostly trying to ask questions about their perspective while noting some disagreements.  At one point well into the meeting when they were standing up and shouting something at the senator – I think it was “HAVE YOU EVEN READ THE BILL??” – I leaned over and said gently, “I don’t think that’s being very helpful.”  They still had a few choice words throughout the time, but when they left they shook my hand and said they were just upset with the ways things are going, but that they did feel there needed to be some changes to current health care.

None of that was the embarrassing part.

That part came right after the meeting ended.  Having various thoughts in my mind, as I was turning around and heading toward the exit, I got pulled aside by a Channel 5 reporter and TV camera.  Cool.  How many people get that opportunity?  When the reporter asked me what my impressions were of the meeting….I had absolutely nothing ready to say.  I stumbled, I bumbled, I mumbled – I probably would have done them a favor if I had ducked out mid-fragmented-sentence so they could nab other people with something intelligible to say.  Part of the mental freeze was that the question was so broad and vague.  Hmmm.  What was my impression?  How do I summarize this is in a few sentences?  And where am I supposed to look while I’m talking, anyway?  Another problem was that I just plain wasn’t prepared to debrief at that point.  I mumbled some things about appreciating Senator Brown for dealing respectfully with people and thinking that some people were being unhelpfully disruptive, but none of it was at all coherent enough for even a soundbite.  Yikes.  What is wrong with me?  Why didn’t I seize the moment?  The moment seized me, then kicked me in the butt.  I’m a failed voice for health care reform.

As happens with these things, we review that moment, that opportunity, in the moments and hours that follow and try and figure out what we should have said, or, what we hope we can say right now if someone were to give us this chance all over again and come up to us with that microphone and camera.  Oh yes, that was just practice.  Now what would you really like to say?  What I should have said, I decided, driving on the way back to the office, was pretty simple.  I would like to have said something to the effect that part of the reason I came to this forum was to see what kind of support there was for the public option and that it was clear from the time that there was strong support, but that the most vocal people are those who are opposed.  How hard is that to say?  A nice, concise clip for the evening news that is personal and truthful and would help people who weren’t there interpret the news of it.  But, this was not a situation of second chances.  Rather than looking forward to watching the evening news, I spent the first couple hours of the afternoon hoping that none of my stumbling would be exposed for the viewing area to see (it wasn’t).  Not even the best editor could have made heads or tails out of it, I’m sure.

So, I’m trying to laugh about it.  HA.  There’s a start.  It brought to mind that verse from 1 Peter: “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have.” (3:15).  Whoops.  Sorry everybody.  There’s always a next time, hopefully.  Hey Channel 5, I think I’m prepared now.