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Study Guide to John Shelby Spong A New Christianity for a New World.ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: Session 6 |
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Study Guide to John Shelby Spong A New Christianity for a New World.ADDITIONAL RESOURCES: Session 6 |
The following materials were prepared by Keith McPaul for his NCNW study group at Maleny, Queensland:
The Kingdom (selected citations)
Ecology of Jerusalem (Yahuda Amichai)
Extracts from Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Alternative Eucharistic Prayer (Morwood)
Authentic faith communities (Jenks)
Reclaiming the Church (John Cobb)
With Roots and Wings (Jay B. MacDaniel)
An evaluation form has been adapted from the version prepared by Keith for his own group.
Keith has also provided materials prepared for a preliminary session and for sessions 1, 2, 3 and 5.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD, THE REALM OF GOD, THE BASILEIA.
"This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you."(Jn 15:12)
"You did not choose me, I chose you." (Jn 15:16)
"The divine is not presented in (John's Gospel) as paternalistic and condescending: rather the love of God for the world is vulnerable and self-giving (1:11-12; 3:16), calling disciples not into slavish or even childish obedience and servitude but intimate friendship (15:15) ...Being drawn into friendship with God, human beings also become friends to one another ...To abide in love with others is to live together in a community that works to overcome isolation, individualism, and hierarchy. It is mutual rather than condescending, cooperative rather than competitive, non-hierarchical rather than status driven." (Dorothy Lee, 1997)
"Our worship of God, however beautiful, orthodox or whatever, it might be - if it is at the expense of someone else, it is always deficient." (Rev Christopher Heath, 2002)
"We have not found the true God, we have only found the echoes, the footprints that the true God has left, and it's dangerous to identify the God that has to be abandoned if we're to be true to the true God It's dangerous to cling to that old portable idol."
"..our biggest danger is never atheism, it's always idolatry, it's always calling that God which is not God, which is created, which is by hypothesis, which is itself a portable human constructed idol and therefore it's better to be in the dark cloud of atheistic knowing, than to follow a false God."
"How then do we live? I think we live in a state of permanent, expectant uncertainty, and we're to celebrate it."
(Archbishop Richard Holloway, Primate of Scotland, 2001)
"The most fundamental challenge for Australian Anglicans is to find ways of engaging more effectively with Australian society. That engagement will effect not only the external activities of the Anglican Church, but it will also require a fundamental culture change within the Church so that everything that is done in its internal life will serve that external agenda of engagement and mission. The time has come, and is indeed long since past, when all of our ornamental symbolism should be brought into relationship with Australia and Australian society. Plurality is working together with our differences within a framework of a gradation of a gradation of importance and priorities."
Bruce Kaye, A Church Without Walls , 1995.
Ecology of Jerusalem
From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow in the spring.
The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled like a yard.
But doubts and loves dig up the world
Like a mole, a plough.Yahuda Amichai, Jewish poet,1999.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Extracts from Michael F. Moeller, "Dietrich Bonhoeffer: The Child, the Fool, the Sufferer." The article is part of the collection at www.dbonhoeffer.org, and can be accessed directly at www.luther95.org/NELCA/internos/moeller.htm
It is not some religious act which makes a Christian what he (or she) is, but participation in the suffering of God in the life of this world. That is repentance. It is not in the first place worrying about one's own needs, problems, sins, fears, but allowing oneself to be caught up in the way of Christ, into the Messianic event ... The religious act is always something partial, faith is always something whole, an act involving the whole life. Jesus does not call human beings to a new religion, but to life.
[Widerstand und Ergebung, 295ff]
It is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman ... a righteous man, a sick man, or a healthy one. By this worldliness, I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously not our own sufferings but those of God in this world, watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith. [Widerstand und Ergebung, 394]
Reciprocity between God and Human Beings is an important motive in Bonhoeffer's theology. He wrote the following poem from prison on July 8th, 1944. He was hung by the Nazis on April 9th,1945.
Humans go to God in their dire needs,
begging for rescue, asking for bread and joy,
for deliverance from sickness, guilt and death.
All of them do it, all of them: Christians and heathen.Humans go to God in their dire needs,
find him poor, mocked, without shelter and bread,
see him entangled by sin, weakness and death,
Christians stand by God in his suffering.God goes to all people in their dire needs,
fills the body and soul with his bread
dies for Christians and heathen the death on the cross,
and forgives them.[Widerstand und Ergebung, 382]
Alternative Eucharistic Prayer
Michael Morwood. 2001
We give you thanks
Creator Spirit beyond all imagining, for the wonderful gift of reflective awareness
that allows us to recognise and name your presence in our universe.
Everything we have; everything we see; everything we do;
everyone we love and everyone who loves us reveals your sustaining presence
and our total dependence on your presence.
We marvel and wonder at the size and complexity of our universe.
We marvel and wonder at the development of life on this planet.
We thank you that your presence "charges" this life and all that exists.
We recognise that human life gives you a particular way of expressing yourself
and that in us you can sing and dance, speak and write, love and create.Conscious that we live, move, and have our being in you, we give you thanks for people throughout history who have affirmed your loving presence in all people and who have challenged people to give witness to your presence by lives characterised by mercy, gratitude, compassion, generosity, and forgiveness.
We thank you for Jesus of Nazareth who loved so greatly and taught so clearly and courageously that he was able to set people free from images and ideas and religious practices that bound them into fear and a false sense of separation from you.
Through him we have learned how our loving is a sharing in your life.
In him we see your presence challenging us to make your reign on earth more visible.We remember the night before he died, when he took bread, gave you thanks for everything he had, broke the bread and shared it with his friends asking them to remember his total surrender to you and his enduring love for each of them.
This is my body, given for you.Likewise, knowing his life was to be poured out, he shared the cup of wine with them.
This is my blood shed for you. A covenant of love.We believe that like all people who lived in love and died in love
Jesus died into your eternal loving embrace.We are thankful that his story grounds our belief in our own eternal, loving
connectedness with you and our belief that we are in communion with all our relatives and friends who have died.We pray for all who allow the mind and heart and spirit of Jesus to motivate their actions.
We pray that Christian leadership may be open and affirming, creative and challenging.
We pray that all Christians might better recognise, acknowledge, and acclaim your presence in all people, at all times, in all places.
For ourselves gathered here we ask the grace to be who and what we ritualise here:
the "body of Christ",
people committed by our "Amen" to allowing your Spirit
to move freely in our lives.We thank you that we have gathered here as the body of Christ;
we rejoice in the giftedness of each person here;
we are grateful for who we are for each other.We consider ourselves blessed in and by you.
May we be truly eucharistic in all we do.
To this prayer we give our
Amen.
Authentic Faith Communities
Gregory C. Jenks
(Extract from a sermon at the start of a parish ministry. The full text is available on the FFF site as a PDF file.)
Faith is NOT about correct ideas and beliefs.
Faith is NOT about correct behaviour.
Faith is NOT about escaping hell or booking safe passage to heaven.
But . . . . . faith IS ALL ABOUT discerning and responding to God in our lives.
AND we can affirm the place of COMMUNITY in that discernment/response.
Hallmarks of Authentic Community
In his book , "THE DIFFERENT DRUM," Scott Peck identifies seven hallmarks of authentic community. They are not directly aimed at parish community. Indeed, they could equally apply to families or to special interest groups of which we may be a part. Still, they offer some significant points for us to reflect upon.
Inclusive
A genuine community will be inclusive. By deliberate choice it will seek to include people, rather than exclude them. It will be committed to maintaining the bonds with people of various life experiences, even in the face of difficulties that arise from such diversity within its own membership. It will not overlook the real differences between people, but it will find ways to transcend those differences and draw some deeper meaning from their juxtapositioning.
Realism
A fair dinkum community will be realistic. Because of its fundamental commitment to include people from all sorts of life experiences, such a community has available to it the diverse knowledge and skills of all those people. That kind of community stays in touch with real life. When making decisions it can draw upon many more ideas and suggestions than a group of like-minded people will ever have between them
Reflective
A community that is authentic will be one that thinks about and learns from its own experience. All wisdom and insight into our circumstances did not arrive in the van with the movers last Tuesday morning. Most of what we need to know is already available to us if we look back over our experience to date and, being in touch with the stuff of real life around here, address together the next steps in our journey.
Therapeutic
A parish that adds-value to people's lives will be one which is a safe place to make mistakes. We need to be a community where people can explore faith and doubt. A place where people can experiment with what it means for them to be alive and truly human as daughters and sons of God. A place where we can learn to live together while being true to our own selves, knowing that we have a caring and supportive community of faith around us.
Conflict
Such a community is one that knows how to fight well. A community that is real does not escape from conflict. Rather, a healthy community is one that handles conflict with grace. It is a place where there are arguments without sides. Where we differ over matters that are important to us, but do not become tribal factions out to eliminate one another. A community where even - or especially - in our arguments, we demonstrate more wholesome ways of being human.
Consensual
In a community that is adding-value to people's lives, everyone will have something to contribute to the decision-making process. This does not mean that the Priest abdicates his role as leader within the parish community. Rather, that he exercise it in such a way as to draw our from each participant whatever it is that God has entrusted to them as part of the answer to the problem in hand.
Spiritual
When a community can exhibit the preceding traits, there is an experience of God's loving purposes in creation almost palpable. Not everyone will name that experience as we do, but we shall recognise it as an experience of the Spirit of Jesus in our midst. Then our affirmation at the Greeting of Peace will become a tangible reality. Whether it moves others to faith in Christ may not be our concern, but at least they will have been touched for the better by God in and through their encounter with our faith community.
OUR SHARED ROLE IS TO BECOME AND CONTINUE TO BE A COMMUNITY THAT ADDS-VALUE TO PEOPLE'S LIVES BY BEING AN AUTHENTIC COMMUNITY, AND IN PARTICULAR A CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY.
JOHN COBB Jr. Reclaiming the Church (1997)
"We may judge that the changes going on in our world make past forms of Christianity unsuitable and that the potential contribution of Christianity to believers and to the world alike can be realised only through repentance for what we have been."
Unfortunately the Church has forgotten how to think. "Our churches are so unaccustomed to thinking that many do not even understand what it would mean to think as Christians." To be a more relevant Church "simply doing better what we have been doing in the past is not good enough."
"The potential resources for becoming thinking Christians is great. In our pews are people who think a good deal in other areas of their lives. They have not been asked to think about their faith and its meaning for personal and social life. It would not be impossible to ask them to think and even provide opportunities and occasions to think together."
"If we seek the way together, we may find Christ who is the Way. If we seek truth together, we may find Christ who is the Truth. If we seek life together, we may find Christ who is the Life. And the Christ we find will have been the way we have trod in our quest for the Way, the learning that leads to Truth, and the aliveness we will experience as we hunger together."
JAY B McDANIEL With Roots and Wings. (1995)
"A way of living is not just a way of thinking, a way of feeling, or of acting, Rather all three as shown in the circle .
Imagine a circle representing a human life - divided into three sectors within the circle represent the three dimensions of our lives: our wisdom, our states of awareness, and our actions. An internal central circle represents God, the God within us, beckoning us to wholeness and service to others.
Action: Shalom-guided actions; community development
Wisdom: Ecology sensitive theologies and stories
States of awareness: Prayer and meditation
There are four healthy soils in which we might sink our roots:
- the earth;
- the wisdom of our ancestors;
- meaningful relations with other people; and
- the still small voice of God as discovered in silent prayer and meditation.
Community and practice are dimensions of the latter two soils. Without them life is only abstract. With them, perhaps we begin to answer God's prayer in our lives.
Send us your suggestions for further supplementary materials!