Study Guide to John Shelby Spong A New Christianity for a New World.   ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: Session 5

 

The following materials were prepared by Keith McPaul for his NCNW study group at Maleny, Queensland:

Alternative Affirmation of Faith (NZ Anglican)

Alternative Great Thanksgiving Prayer (NZ Anglican)

Many Paths: Citations on interfaith realities

Finding God (Judah Halevi)

In God's Presence (Majorie Suchocki)

Biblical commentary (John Parr)

Extract from Ian Stuchbury

 

Keith has also provided materials prepared for a preliminary session and for sessions 1, 2, 3 and 6.

 

An Affirmation of Faith

An alternative to the use of the Nicene Creed in the Eucharist in A New Zealand Prayer Book

You, O God, are supreme and holy,
You create our world and give us life.
Your purpose overarches everything we do.
You have always been with us.
You are God.

You, O God, are infinitely generous, good beyond all measure.
You came to us before we came to you.

You have revealed and proved
your love for us in Jesus Christ,
who lived and died and rose again.
You are with us now.
You are God.

You, O God, are Holy Spirit.
You empower us to be your gospel in the world.
You reconcile and heal; you overcome death,
You are our God. We worship you.

 

The Great Thanksgiving

Variations from A New Zealand Prayer Book

Lift up your hearts;
We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God:
It is right to offer thanks and praise.

It is right indeed , it is our joy and our salvation, holy Lord,
almighty Father, everlasting God, at all times and in all places
to give you thanks and praise through Christ your only Son.

You are the source of all life and goodness;
through your eternal Word
you have formed us in your own image;
male and female you created us.

On the night before he suffered
our Saviour gave us this holy feast,
in which we receive the benefits of his passion
and are filled with the power of his resurrection.
In him you have made us a holy people
by sending us your holy and life giving Spirit.

Therefore with the faithful who rest in him,
with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven,
we proclaim your great and glorious name,
for ever praising you and saying:
Holy, holy, holy Lord . . .

Many Paths

 

"Christian tradition provides grounds for believing that faith is gratuitously offered by God to every human being, because God truly wills the salvation of everyone." (Eugine Hillman)

"We explain the fact that the milky way is there by the doctrine of creation, but how do we explain the fact that the Bhagavad Gita is there?" (Wilfred Cantwell Smith)

 

Defining Religion

"Religion is a believing view of life, way of life, and therefore a fundamental pattern embracing the individual and society, man and the world, through which a person sees and experiences, thinks and feels, acts, and suffers, everything." (Hans Kung, 1986)

 

Guidelines for Judging Religions

"What moral parameters do we have for making judgements about the strengths and weaknesses, the good and bad, the right and wrong, in any religion?"

"The unity of love of God and love of neighbour as a criterion for authentic Christian behaviour is not far from the Confucian ideal of jen, which means loving others joyously and with one's whole heart."

Similarities found in other religions may be judged by the following guidelines:

1. A religion is true or worthy or authentic insofar as it helps to give its followers an awareness of what is truly ultimate and most meaningful.
2. To what extent this religion assists its faithful adherents in loving other human beings as they love themselves - with a love that is founded on respect for human dignity and justice, understood as fairness in the distribution of the benefits and burdens of life.
3. A religion's ability to lead people beyond themselves to new levels of consciousness, freedom, openness, hope and confidence in an ultimate order of meaningful existence.

 

Missions

For dialogue with other faiths the first need is to "take off our shoes ... else we may find ourselves treading on other men's dreams ... to ask what is the authentic religious content of the experience of the Muslim, the Hindu, the Buddhist or whatever he may be...to be present with them." (Bishop Cragg, 1956)

"We must plan our mission together and use our resources in the service of a single task. The word 'missionary' will not mean colonialism of any kind but going to one another to help one another." (Archbishop Ramsay, 1963)

"The age of missions is at an end; the age of mission has begun."(Bishop Neill, 1964)

 

Finding God

Judah Halevi (11th Century Jewish poet)

Lord, where will I find You?
High and hidden is Your place.  
And where shall I not find You? 
The world is full of Your glory.

I have sought Your nearness.
With all my heart I called You,
and going out to meet You
I found You coming to meet me.

Marjorie Suchocki

In God's Presence

God is like water, flowing throughout the universe, like an ocean touching innumerable shores. The action of those waves is sometimes like a chaotic clash of elements, whose terrible dynamism reshapes what is and brings new thing to emergence. And the action of those waves is also gentle and quiet, nourishing all forms of existent life. The one form does not contradict the other, nor the varieties in between, for the nature of water is interaction with all elements in its path, taking the nature of each element into account in the resulting action. God is like water.

And we? Are we those shores touched by God, showing in the shape of our sands what we have done with the waves of God upon our lives? And what of our effects in God as our sands find their way into the vastness of that ocean?

All images break down as we push them to their limits. But the force of this image is to give a sense of the very pervasiveness of God, so that prayer, for from being supernatural or even superstitious, simply follows from the reality that we live in - and within - God's presence.

God creates and works within an interdependent universe, both interdependent within itself and with God. The universe is not "finished"; God's creativity cannot be so easily stilled! Stars are yet born, and race toward unfathomable reaches of space. Suns yet burst in fireballs of energy, spawning yet new planets and who knows what forms of new life. In our own small portion of this universe, generation yet follows generation, and we turn life into story, and yet again into history. In such a teeming universe, what is prayer but God's gracious invitation to us to participate in the continuing work of creation? If prayer constitutes our openness to God's own purposes of increasing communal well-being, then prayer is God's creation with us of this very well-being! Prayer is central to the how of God's continuing work in our world.

And so our prayers of confession purge us of blockages against our own and others' well-being, opening us to the transforming work and will of God. Prayers of intercession actively join us with God's will toward the well-being of the greater community, and are used by God to whatever degree possible to bring such well-being into existence. Liturgical prayers express and deepen our communal identities, and can open us to goodwill toward communities not our own. We may yet with God turn this world into a community of communities, rejoicing in identities that are what they are in and through their differences as well as similarities! Then we would be woven into a world with a sparkling story, creating together with God, a new history of interdependent care for one another and for this wondrous Earth.

And prayers of thanksgiving are like breathing spaces in all the work of prayer and the work that flows from prayer. Gratitude shapes and forms us, flows through us and from us, mingling with our sorrows as well as with our joys. Gratitude is the sheer delight of being a conscious participant in the dance of God, the dance with God.

And now, you see, in the end my image of God as water shifts, becoming the image of the dancing God who woos us to partnership through prayer. But shall we not swim in those waters, dance in that dance, and merge all our metaphors together in gratitude to the One who surpasses them all? Oh yes!n So let us pray; so be it; Amen.

Authority over Ignorance and Uncertainty

Bible commentary on Mark 13:32-37 by John Parr.

A watchful faith pays attention to what is happening on the outside, in the wider world, without ignoring the impact of events on the inside - in the common life of believers, in their hearts and minds. Distress and uncertainty can undermine the authority of faith. They make offers of easy certainty attractive(hence Jesus' warning about false messiahs and prophets in verses 5-6, 21-22). And they obscure what can be difficult to hold on to at the best of times - faith, prayer, mercy, justice, and love. A watchful faith holds outer and inner worlds together, confidant that even ignorance and uncertainty can nourish faith.

A Biblical View of the Universe

Rev Ian Stuchbury (This is our Faith, 1990)

To get a sense of the biblical view of the universe, imagine a circular movement with the Son passing from God in heaven and looping back to God after passing through Earth, Hades and the Earth ...

Heaven	God & The Son	ascends to the Father on high
Earth	Son descends from the heavens is incarnated as man dies on the cross	rises on the third day
Hades/Hell	descends to	the depths

 

"It is important to recognise that this is not the language of history, it is an attempt to give expression or 'form' to the conviction of the first Christians that what Jesus had done was cosmic in its significance, and effected all men across the boundaries of time and space. Christ's life could never be fully explained. Have we, two thousand years later, thought of a better way to describe this mystery?"

Jesus the Man Although the Gospels do not try to be biographies in the modern sense of the word, they do present us with all the material we need in order to put together a simple life of Jesus. These accounts are sometimes confusing and contradictory, so it is only possible to paint a series of impressions.

Jesus the Christ To his followers, Jesus was a strange and awe-inspiring character. They must have reflected on what he had said to them during those three years together. What was this 'kingdom', what did he mean by 'eternal' life?

No one image or set of images could do full justice to what Jesus had achieved; so we have in the New Testament and what followed it, a whole series of images. At their root was one central idea: the ultimate purpose and result of the drama of Jesus was the atonement or the reconciliation, which was made possible between God and man. This made possible the 'healing' or 'making whole' between and within men and women. Jesus was seen as victor, as sacrificial lamb, as saviour and deliverer. Jesus had not ushered in a new Jewish state, but the first century Christians believed that he had inaugurated a new order. They had experienced salvation and liberation, not from the outward power of the Roman army, but from the inward powers of sin, evil, and disease.

Send us your suggestions for further supplementary materials!