mountain masala

Weekly Lenten Studies / Reflections

What if people stop being able to come to worship? That's the imminent question in this difficult pandemic situation. I was asked to make my Lenten Study "Water for the Journey" available as weekly sessions for easier sharing with people who can't come to a study group. It would also work as an at home reflection. Here are the five sessions for Lent, along with some other resources on the themes.

STUDY 1: CALLED TO FOLLOW - March 8th
Genesis 12:1-4a The Call of Abram and Sarai
John 3:1-17 Jesus and Nicodemus

Download Study_1

STUDY 2: CALLED TO TRUST - March 15th
Exodus 17:1-7 Israelites at Rephidim
John 4:5-42 Jesus and the Woman at the Well

Download Study_2

STUDY 3: CALLED TO GIVE - March 22nd
1 Samuel 16:1-13 Samuel anoints David
John 9:1-41 Jesus and the Blind Man

Download Study_3

Song "Like a Candle"

Also Guided Meditation on John 9:1-12  (PDF)

Here is a self-directed meditation suitable for individual use with an audio recording and an instruction / reflection sheet.

Audio recording - Guided Meditation. Play below or right-click (PC) or control-click (Mac) to download. 8.5mb mp3 file. Duration 8 mins 50 secs.

John_9

Download John_9_Meditation_Sheet (PDF)

A Call to Worship for Dispersed People

We are connected by God's Spirit, hoping for a glimpse of the holy:

the One who brooded over Creation
who engulfed a bush in flame
who made a path through the waters
who rolled away the tombstone

We are connected by God's Spirit, hoping for a whisper of the truth:

the Word who first spoke in the silence
the voice who raged with prophet’s zeal
the host who sang of peace on earth
the teacher who blessed humble and poor

We are connected by God's Spirit, hoping for a touch of compassion:

the tenderness that shaped the human body
the caress that opened eyes of the blind
the soothing hand that brought healing calm
the warmth that embraced lonely and lost

We are connected by God's Spirit, in the presence of mystery:

of One who is
revealed and hidden,
known and unknown
mother and father of Creation
human God-with-us
living Word
eternal Spirit
Three and One

Breathe into us
hope, faith and joy
Breathe into us
compassion, truth and holiness
Breathe into us
reconciliation, justice and peace
Breathe newness of life
as we worship today
in this place and in many places
joined by your Spirit of comfort and hope
Amen

STUDY 4: CALLED TO NEW LIFE - March 29th
Ezekiel 37:1-14 Valley of Dry Bones
John 11:1-45 Jesus and Lazarus

Download Study_4

Also Guided Meditation on Ezekiel - Download Ezekiel - Audio recording to come shortly

A Call to Worship for Dispersed People

Whether you’re in Belair, Brisbane or Bunbury
Whether you’re huddled around a campfire or basking in Broome
Whether you're missing your favourite seat in church or missing your friends

We are one community in Christ

We are nine months old, twenty-nine and nearly ninety
We grew up with the wireless and wireless Internet
We love Beethoven, the Beatles and the Beyoncé

We are one community in Christ

We are straight and queer and all in-between
We are in all kinds of relationships, individual and together
We seek honest friendship and true belonging

We are one community in Christ

We have more questions than answers
We know what to expect, yet we have no idea
We have much hope and a little faith

We are one community in Christ

So let us be reminded that we are held together, even when apart

The One who made our world
and shaped our souls is here
- around us, among us, within us
breathing, beckoning
giving, gathering
claiming, calling

We are one community in Christ

Breathe deeply
Listen hopefully
Look carefully
God is around us and with us.

We are one community in Christ

STUDY 5: CALLED TO SERVE - April 5
Isaiah 50:4-9a Servant Song
Philippians 2:5-11 Christ’s Humility

Download Study_5

A Call to Worship for Dispersed People

Let us take a moment to imagine the crowd of witness who are worshipping today - to be reminded of their faces, to hear their voices, to know that we come to God, each and all, this day. Let us bring our whole selves to God, knowing that God loves us and holds us, just as we are.

To the God of life
let us bring ourselves
some weary, some energetic
some contented, some disquieted
We bring who we truly are

To the God of truth
let us bring ourselves
some trusting, some doubting
our questions and our certainties
We bring who we truly are

To the God of light
let us bring ourselves
our achievements, our failures
our public selves, our hidden selves
We bring who we truly are

To the God of hope
let us bring ourselves
our dreams and visions
our despair, our yearnings
We bring who we truly are

To the God of all Creation
let us bring ourselves
we broken, we blessed
made in God’s image
loved beyond measure
We bring who we truly are
We find ourselves in the company of an unseen host
in many places, and down through the ages
drawn together as pilgrims on the way
We share a common memory and a common hope
Let us offer our worship
and be open to God’s light and life among us.

Lenten Studies - "Water for the Journey"

Here are some Lenten Studies for Year A that I wrote some time ago to be used as part of a visioning process for congregations. They're offered here for 2020 unedited.

They use the themes of water and going to a new place, individually and together, spiritually and in terms of new possibilities.

Feel free to adapt them for your setting.

IF YOU'VE BEEN HAVING TROUBLE WITH THE PDF, THIS IS A NEW SCAN - 8 FEBRUARY.

Download Water_for_the_Journey_PRINT (2.9mb)

NOTE: I have updated the PDF so you can print the pages back to back and it will make a booklet.

Wordles and The Gospel of John

I'd like to think that I was the first person to ever Wordle the Uniting Church's Basis of Union, back in in 2010. I reckon I have a pretty good claim to that. Ha.

Download Basis_of_Union_Wordle

Wordle is a "word cloud" image based on the frequency of words in a particular text. The more a particular word features in a passage, the larger it appears in the image. I recently used this feature in nVivo as part of my PhD research, analysing my interviews.

The Wordle website was developed by Jonathan Feinberg several years ago as an online toole for making these word clouds. The WWW app/format that it was based on is now rarely used - the Java 2D API. So he has created a downloadable application which I tried for the first time today. It works fine on my Mac. But rather than saving the files as PNGs, I print them to disk as postscript files and then resize them in Photoshop for printing to A4 at 300 dpi.

Here are my creations of John 15 and John 14-17 from the NRSV. I'm going to use them together as a visual comparison alongside texts. I kind of like the "In the beginning was the Word" connection, which is actually part of the conext for the use, namely Jesus' words to his disciples framing a Trinitarian context for mission that connects past, present and future.

Download John_15

Download John_14-17

Here are a few other Wordles that I've made.

Download Romans_8

Download Ephesians_1_3-14

Download James

Psalm 103

Hannah's Story

Hannah’s Story

(A monologue based on 1 Samuel 1:4-20, 2:1-10)

It was in the days before our people had a king. Peninnah and I were both married to Elkanah. Oh yes, that was not uncommon in Israel. My name is Hannah, and I was Elkanah’s favourite wife. It was obvious to everyone, including Peninnah. You would think that would have made me happy, but I was deeply unhappy. Peninnah had given Elkanah several fine children, while I had not given him any. Peninnah regularly reminded me of this and said that God was punishing me for some reason.

The times when she was most rude were when we went to the place of worship at Shiloh to offer our annual sacrifices to God. We would always pray for God’s blessing. You can imagine what I always prayed for! But I remained empty in body and in my heart. Elkanah would try to comfort me, but it didn’t make me feel any different.

Teaching Weekend 2015

Rosefield Uniting Church's second annual biblical teaching weekend is coming up on 15-17 May 2015. The focus will be on the Psalms and our speaker is Dr Liz Boase, Lecturer in Old Testament Studies at Uniting College and Head of the School of Theology for Flinders University. Liz is a an excellent speaker. We'll also be offering workshops on praying, singing, seeing and speaking the Psalms. More info soon.

 

Living Into the Bible

Ben Myers recently presented two excellent sessions at the annual Synod meeting on the Uniting Church SA on living into the Scriptures. His first session drew on the "Festal Orations" of Gregory of Nazianzus, a 4th century theologian and preacher. Gregory's remarkable sermons retell the Gospel narratives in the first person, with the hearer being imported into the story, reliving it in the here-and-now. One of Ben's observations was that four gospels are required to provide the fullness of the biblical world that might in a sense, encompass our world, our place, our time.

His second session drew on Athanasius' fourth century exposition of the Psalms. In this instance, Ben invited us to reflect on how we sing our way into faith, and on the Psalms as a canon for the whole of human experience.

This notion of being a people shaped by the Word has long been a theme in Christian education. In his excellent book, "A Pilgrim People" (now available on Kindle), John Westerhoff says "Our identity is dependent on having a story that tells us who we are; our understanding of life's meaning and purpose is dependent on having a story that tells us what the world is like and where we are going... The church is a story-formed community." In this particular book, Westerhoff traces the liturgical seasons of the Church Year as the narrative arc of Christian faith and identity.

In a different sense, Walter Brueggemann, in "The Creative Word", describes how the canon of the Old Testament by its nature is educative in terms of both substance and process: "how the biblical material reaches its present form (canonical process) and the present form that it has reached (canonical shape) are important theological matters that tell us about the intent of the biblical community." Bruggemann then examines the role of narrative, prophetic poetry and wisdom literature as three strands or modes of biblical education. The narrative of the Torah states the community ethos, the prophets disclose the pathos of God and Israel, and the wisdom literature frames the logos, or the sense of order and meaning in life.

 Samuel Wells (with reference to Tom Wright) sees the Christian life as improvisation on/within God's story, a narrative theo-drama in five parts. ("Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics") "It is not the church's role to make the story end well. The church lies within the story, rather than at the end of it." He quotes Gerard Loughlin as saying "When a person enters the scriptural story he or she does so by entering the Church's performance of that story; he or she is baptised into a biblical and ecclesial drama." ("Telling God's Story")

 In his book "Biblical Perspectives on Evangelism", Brueggemann describes evangelism as "doing the text again." There is a wealth of insights here about education as learning to live into and live out of the biblical narrative,  and about learning to acquire a scriptural imagination (see an excellent collection of essays in Duke Divinity School magazine here.) How do we teach in ways such that the biblical narratives form and frame our imaginations? How might we craft learning experiences that derive from "doing the text again" with our own faithful improvisations?

I'll let you know if/when Ben's sessions go online. Ben's excellent blog is here.

Upper Room Disciplines 2013

My free copy of the 2013 Upper Room Disciplines just arrived in the mail. I was asked to write a week of daily reflections. The resource is used worldwide, with the readership of about 60,000 people. I think its the only time in my life when I'll get to be in a book which has Will Willimon as a co-contributor!

The editor and I had a real battle over a number of my reflections in terms of either biblical interpretation or modern application, quite unlike my previous work for the Upper Room on other resources. It was worthwhile, rigorous discussion, and shows how seriously they take their role in producing prayer resrouces that take Scripture seriously. I had done my exegesis carefully and wasn't prepared to back down. It also showed me how difficult it is to work with an editor whom you've never met face to face when the two of you just can't seem to 'get' what the other is saying.

One of the debates was about my writing of a modern parallel of Jesus entering Jerusalem for Holy Week, and making the main figure a female. I was told that someone thought it was a pro-Sarah Palin statement! In fact, it was written just after Kevin Rudd got shafted by the Labour Party. I was thinking about how forces so easily turn against a perceived saviour.

Anyway, my prayers go to the Upper Room team, and to those who might use this resource next year to aid their spiritual journey. Here in Australia you can get it from MediaCom.

[I'm not sure that they'll be asking me to write for this again...]

 

the Bible for idiots who like to watch

jim le page is making a poster of each book of the Bible. they're remarkable. and when i dont like them, they remind me that the book, more so than jim's art, is from a foreign place and time. thanks to maggi dawn via Facebook for this.

 

Vital Congregations Project

Luther Seminary in Minnesota, USA is running a Lily-Endowment funded Vibrant Congregations Project. Someone has identified six critical areas of vibrant congregational life and culture (no, not ten or five - six...). Congregations with these attributes will be studied.

The magic six are (drum roll...) - stewardship; vocation; Biblical fluency; children, youth & family; missional leadership; and Biblical preaching...

I'm not sure what some of these mean (esp 'fluency'), so it will be interesting to see what unfolds with the Project. Hopefully its not just the 1980s coming back, although, let's face it, we do like those big synth sounds and electronic drums...

The big question of course is what kind of thing they're hoping to learn. Is it about what they do, why they do what they do, what processes led to the latter, what enabled those processes to take place, and what they say about the 'identity' of the congregation....??

The Project blog is here.

So many questions....

Vintage Jesus video clips

so glad that the vintage Jesus video clips are on Youtube. not the best quality but there nevertheless. brilliant!