Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Week 5:

 Terms quiz is True/False, and is here.

2nd version of "Bartender" Venn it!--More background:

Godhaunted Dave Matthews: Bartender and The Maker

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Followup to the Christian TV Kingdom count:


popoff:  -----------------------------------------------------------

   

Suffering: remember how quiet the room was when I told the story about the retreat speaker whose wife left him, best friend killed himself, and house burned down all in one week? (story told in video on Moodle forum 1)

Remember my big green book whose big message is: "You never know what someone else is going through in their timeline?  Here's a link about it:

Centerfolds in Big Green Theology Books

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PSALMS
PSALMS are the Jewish prayer-book   that the early Christians used.  What's wonderful, refreshing, honest...and sometimes disturbing  (to us in the West) is that they cover the whole breadth of life and emotion.  They are all technically songs and prayers..  But note how some weave in and out from a person speaking to God, God speaking to a person, a person speaking to himself.  Somehow, Hebraically, holistically, it all counts as prayer.

...And as "song"  Note in your Bible that several psalms have inscriptions which give the name of the tune they are to be prayed/sung to.  Some seem hilarious, counterintuitive, and contradictory, but again not to a Hebrew mindset and worldview, with room for honesty, fuzzy sets and paradox:

  • Psalms  (click) with the line "Destroy my enemies", "break their teeth!!" ... To be sung to the tune of "Do Not Destroy"  !!  (Psalm 58:6)
  • Psalm 22, a depressing ditty about someone in the throes of rejection despair and death.  To be sung to the tune of "Doe in the Morning"   ??

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Note that "Do Not Destroy" is the exact title of the song that Psalm 58 is to be sung to...a song that says "Destroy them..Break their teeth in their mouth , O God" .. I'm not making this up..see the inscription in your Bible(: Anyway, i thought these boxes of sporting goods were quite hilarious...wonder what happens if you try to destroy them?..



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Note: we didn't show this..probably will next week.  If you are thinking of writing your signature on Psalm 22, it may help to watch now..
In this video (and in the new book by Sweet and Viola), Sweet makes the case that"the greatest song ever sung" was Psalm 22.....and the singer was Jesus:  (
The Greatest Song Ever Sung from Marble Collegiate Church on Vimeo.




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Can you name contemporary songs where the music doesn't seem to fit the lyric?  Down lyrics to upbeat music?  Vice Versa?  How might that  be healing/helpful/Hebrew/holy?  and not Hellenistic?


Remember the Bono quote:

Click here for the audio (or watch here on Youtube) of this delightful statement by Bono:

"God is interested in truth, and only in truth. And that's why God is more interested in Rock & Roll music than Gospel... Many gospel musicians can't write about what's going on in their life, because it's not allowed .  they can't write about their doubt....If you can't write about what's really going on in the world and your life, because it's all happy-clappy... Is God interested in that? I mean, 'Please, don't patronize Me! I want to go the Nine-Inch-Nails gig, they're talking the truth!
-Bono

From a 2003 discussion with New York Times, more audio here
"The Jewish disciples all worshipped Jesus, and some of those worshippers doubted."  (matthew 28:17)

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There are several ways to categorize the psalms.

The first is the way the Bible itself does: Psalms is broken down into 5 "books"  Hmm, 5...does that sound familiar?  Name another book with 5 sections and suggest an answer for "Whats up with the number 5?"
Note the 5 sections are not comprised of different kinds/genres of psalms..but the styles and kinds are "randomnly"
represented throught the book..
kind of like life..


  Here is one way to categorize the styles and genres:

 Walter Brueggemann  suggests another helpful way to categorize the Psalms. (Note: this is part of Moodle homework)
 Orientation:
o      Creation - in which we consider the world and our place in it
o      Torah - in which we consider the importance of God's revealed will
o      Wisdom - in which we consider the importance of living well
o      Narrative - in which we consider our past and its influence on our present
o      Psalms of Trust - in which we express our trust in God's care and goodness

q        Disorientation:
o      Lament - in which we/I express anger, frustration, confusion about God's (seeming?) absence
§       Communal
§       Individual
o      Penitential - in which we/I express regret and sorrow over wrongs we have done
§       Communal
§       Individual

q        Reorientation/New Oreientation
o      Thanksgiving - in which we thank God for what God has done for us/me
§       Communal
§       Individual
o      Hymns of Praise - in which we praise God for who God is
o      Zion Psalms- in which we praise God for our home
o      Royal Psalms - in which we consider the role of political leadership
o      Covenant Renewal - in which we renew our relationship with God
                                          -Bruggeman, source Click here.

 note how astonishingly HONEST the prayer/worship book of the Jews (and Christians) is!


We'll spend some time on the "three worlds" of Psalm 22, which Jesus quotes  honestly  on the cross:
Here (click title below) 's a sermon on Psalm 22, which is another amazing psalm to use in a worship setting...How often have you heard "My God, My God, Why have You forsaken me?"   Or "God, where were YOU when I needed you!!"
  (see 
Sixpence and God both sneak a smoke  




and 
"Is there such a thing as Christian music?")
  in a church song?


Yet how familiar is the very next psalm: 23.


Life is both Psalm 22 and 23...sometimes on the same day, in the same prayer.
If we think both/and...we think Hebrew.









Here's a link with several of the stories and illustrations I talked about tonight Iike the speaker who said "I almost didn't come tonight",,

 

Click the title: 

"The Lord Be With You...Even When He’s Not!"

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Jesus died naked..but not in Christian art and movies

I am not here to offend anyone unnecessarily.
But I believe Corrie Ten Boom was right and right on:

Jesus died naked.

Even the (very conservative)Dallas Theological commentaries assume this, so this is not just some "liberal" agenda:


"That Jesus died naked was part of the shame which He bore for our sins. " -link


Which means this picture
(found on a blog with no credit)
is likely wrong(Jesus looks too white).

...and largely right (What Jesus is wearing).

I answered a question about this a few years ago, I would write it a bit differently know, but here it is:

First of all, it is probable that (again, contrary to nearly all artwork and movies), Jesus hung on the cross absolutely naked. This was a typical way of crucifixion, to increase the shame factor. Romans might occasionally add a loincloth type of garment as a token concession and nod to Jewish sensitivity; but not very often, it would seem. Of course, once we get past the emotive and cultural shock of imagining Jesus naked, we realize that if He indeed die naked, the symbolism is profound and prophetic: In Scripture, Jesus is called the "Second Adam". As such, it would make sense that He died "naked and unashamed." We are also told that "cursed is he who dies on a tree." The nakedness was a sign and enfolding of shame and token of curse. And the wonderful story of Corrie ten Boom and family, told in the book and movie "The Hiding Place," relates. One of the turning points of her ability to endure the Ravensbruck concentration camp, particularly the shame of walking naked past the male guards, was her conviction that Jesus too was shamed and stripped naked before guards. "Finally, it dawned on me," she preached once," that this (shaming through nakedness) happened to Jesus too..., and Jesus is my example, and now it is happening to me, then I am simply doing what Jesus did." She concluded, "I know that Jesus gave me that thought and it gave me peace. It gave me comfort and I could bear the shame and cruel treatment." 
continued

More:


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Psalm 22 possible chiasm: Death is off the table.


LHooge posts:

Psalm 22 – “My God, My God, Why hast Thou Forsaken Me?:


.
This Psalm has 2 parts.  The first part is a chiasmus.  The second part is not. 
The chiasmus has a famous beginning (“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken Me?”), a good center, and a nice end. 
Here’s a basic outline of the chiasmus:
A:  A cry for help:  no answer
B:  Israel
C:  Personal (an “I/me” section)
D:  Bulls, lion, bones
E:  Dogs, ‘pierce’, bones
F:  A prayer for God’s help
E’:   - , sword, dog
D’:   – , lion, oxen
C’:  Personal (an “I/me” section)
B’:  Israel
A’:  Cried for help:  heard
I particularly like the connections through D2, E2′, E’2”, and D’2” :  …  think ‘sharp’, as in e.g., ’teeth’, as in ‘open lion’s mouth’.
Interestingly, D3 and E3′ (“bones”) have been left unmatched in E’ and D’.  I wonder why?  Is it because of the section’s closer association with death?  If so, then ‘death’ is absent in the latter sections.  …  Death is off the table.  Life is in play  …  ?..
        -CONTINUED HERE
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Related to video:
click:

My Dress for Sale on EBay...Finally!

 

 



Kubler-Ross stages of grief..link



Many artists who are Christians would serve as anointed bridgebuiders for honest worship gatherings...if churches would allow them: Bruce Cockburn ("Whatever was God thinking of?" is honesty not blasphemy, but simply honesty (T Bone Burnett, Alice Cooper (actually admitting sexual and demonic temptation.)

The most haunting, devastating, barely listenable (which is why I regularly listen to it, and use it as a call to prayer and honesty)song I know is by Michael Knott, madman-genius-Christian of the voluminous catalog...whether under his own name, Lifesavers Underground, LSU, Cush...
Here's the song:
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Double

you're sittin' there wondering why is it like this
and the whole world's crazy and the earth is sick
and someone's yelling from the bathroom door
the toilet's overflowing on the floor
and the one by the phone 
says i cannot hear
while the one by the jukebox spills his beer
and the man on the pinball hits sixteen mil
someone ducks behind the counter to pop a pill
and you reach in your pocket to see if there's more
and the biggest bill falls so you're left with four
and you're too gone to look but you still try
then you see it in the hand of a great big guy
who looks just like he'd kill you fast
and you think for a minute
you let it pass

and the stool falls over when you set back down
it bumps a mean pool shooter from across the town
he misses his shot - it's all on you
and with your last four bucks you know what you'll do
sorry man can i buy you a drink
and he shakes his head and says, make it a double

the next thing you know you wake up at home
and the little one there won't leave you alone
she's awake and hungry
she needs some potty help
and you remember what happened last time she tried it by herself
and your wife says hurry, we're late for church
and you can barely see
and your head still hurts
and the preacher starts preaching
and you feel remorse
he's got five little kids and a big divorce
and your wife looks down and says she don't know how
he's been her guiding light for ten years now
and his marriage is over, it's barely alive
and how in the world will ours ever survive?

-Knott

The juxtaposing of "church"world and "real world" is too close for comfort...and offers little; as does a pastor's divorce. The sharing and prayer time after the stunned silence that song creates would inevitably be life-changing... BUT is this version ready for church? Note the slight (but HUGE) Lyrics change:



Once, our  church did complaints/laments colored markers on posterboard.
Photos here, click twice to read and weep...and laugh!:





But most of us do it less officially, and more often,...in prayer, even if unarticulated/wordless.

Complaints/laments/questions have to surface somewhere.  So we might as well be honest andelevate them. pray them post them, sing them....prophetically write them on subway walls or church halls.

The
Complaints Choir
movement, let along the psalms of lament,

suggests that an outlet must be found, and can be not only threrapeutic/healing, but evangelistic/missional.


SO It hit me last night, as Rabbi Adam was talking about the Jewish homesickness for the temple,
that no non-Jewish person can know what that feels like.
As he was speaking to our class, I quickly found and projected  this photo  of some of us in front  of the Temple Mount, and it nearly brought him to tears.
[hhn669508244_1570115_9866.jpg]

.

The rabbi has not yet been to Israel.
(but Israel has been to the rabbi).

He misses a place he's never been.

With one exception, I  can only miss places I have been.

He misses a place he's never been.



 - הקרן למורשת הכותל המערבWestern Wall Live Cam 





UNTIL we interpret all of a scripture as in large part as a lament/grief that the temple..or something/somebody?Somebody is no longer there/here....we miss the point


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Great column by Carolyn Arends in Christianity Today, especially re:
 1) intertextuality, language and culture ...and "getting the reference"
 2)Jesus' use of Psalm 22 on the cross (Though amazingly, no reference to another CT article [web only] earlier this year, which surely helped inspired it...the Psalm 22 sections are very similar..probably got edited out).
Excerpt:
......Maybe the most significant reference I've missed has to do with Jesus' final words on the cross. That awful cry—My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?—has haunted my struggle to understand exactly what transpired (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34). Was Jesus, for a devastating moment, utterly alone and without hope? How that cry is processed has all sorts of implications for theology—not least for the way we conceive of the Atonement and of the relationality of God's triunity. More personally, it shapes the way I perceive my own experiences of abandonment.
I've known, in a vague way, that with his cry Jesus was quoting the beginning of Psalm 22, a passage so familiar to his friends that to utter the first line would have been tantamount to reciting the entire thing. Psalm 22 is an anguished prayer of David, spoken as a godly sufferer awaiting deliverance. It's the most frequently quoted Psalm in the New Testament. And its parallels to the Crucifixion are chilling:
A band of evil men has encircled me,
they have pierced my hands and my feet.
I can count all my bones;
people stare and gloat over me.
They divide my garments among them
And cast lots for my clothing. (vv. 16b-18, NIV 1984)
The psalm is so shot through with suffering, it's hard to imagine any more appropriate reference Jesus could have made. But it's essential to know that the only thing in Psalm 22 that runs as deeply and vividly as the speaker's pain is his unshakable hope:
You who fear the Lord, praise him! …
For he has not despised or disdained
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help. (vv. 23a, 24, NIV 1984)
Both Matthew and Mark note that some of the onlookers misunderstood Jesus' cry, mishearing the Aramaic word for "my God"—Eloi—as Elijah. I wonder if, in including that detail, they aren't cautioning us to pay attention to exactly what Jesus is saying....
 -  Christianity Today, LINK

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'"________keeps us alive with hope" (fill in the blank)



"Lament keeps us alive with hope
           when the temptation is to surrender to a defeated numbness."
-Brian J. Walsh, in a discussion of Bruce Cockburn's "Humans" ("If Bono is right, and Cockburn is a psalmist, then Humans is a collection of psalms of lament" ) in terms of BruggeIn this video (and in the new book by Sweet and Viola), Sweet makes the case that"the greatest song ever sung" was Psalm 22.....and the singer was Jesus: 
 (more info, see  "The Lord Be With You...Even When He's Not!" and posts tagged "lament" below).



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N.T. Wright on Psalms: "some people are so wicked that we simply must wish judgment upon them"


Excerpt here

Interview in Christianity Today:

How does Jesus' entrance into human history affect how we read the Psalms?
Since Jesus was raised from the dead, the first Christians understood that he was the expected Messiah. So their approach to the Psalms had to be reconceived. We have to assume that as good Jews, the first Christians were praying the Psalms day by day, but now with this wholly new and unexpected focus.
It was actually quite disorienting. Instead of the temple, Jesus is the place where God has decided to dwell on the earth. And since the Spirit has been poured out upon the church, somehow God's presence is everywhere, rather than concentrated in one place. The Psalter needed to be re-read from top to bottom and radically refocused around Jesus and the Spirit. This made the first Christians newly aware of Jesus' personal presence in their worship and prayer.
Much of the Psalms, especially the songs of lament, can be unnerving. What should we make of these raw, brutal pleas? Can we pray, with Psalm 139, that God would "slay the wicked"?
Almost all human beings find themselves overcome, from time to time, by extreme anger and hatred. It is not that these emotions should determine how we live. But we must have a way of saying, "Yes, that is actually where I am right now." And the safest and best place to do this is in the presence of God. The Psalms offer us a way of worshiping God amid any and all emotional states.
Also, the Psalms promote a hyperideal hope for the world. They help us see that God wants a world in which there will be no evil. If there is injustice, if the poor are being oppressed, then it is right to pray that God will rid the world of that. Part of our reaction to the so-called "cursing Psalms" is that we think the modern world basically has the problem of evil solved. The Psalms bring us up short and say, "No, evil is real, and some people are so wicked that we simply must wish judgment upon them.  more

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Our church may not go as far as incorporating the "Hymns to Swear By" byPádraig Ó Tuama, (though we probably should be that bold and insurrectionist).  

  
But we will no doubt glean lots from the section of the Rollins' "Insurrection" book ("The Centrality of Absence," p, 175ff in which we are introduced to an example from their catalog.   About one song, Rollins comments, "this is not simply a song about suffering and the sense of cosmic homelessness--is is sung from that space (177).

Here's the song, but you are probably not ready to include it next Sunday.
Which is precisely why you should.

(P.S. Just tell your team it's called, "Maranatha," ....doesn't that sound safe enough?(:
Maranatha from Peter Rollins on Vimeo.






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Moodle forum 1
Click here if you want  to see the complete class summary blog post.
Focus of your post, however, is on the half-hour session we did  on psalms.Here below is a slightly different version of  part of this week's  in-class presentation, filmed for an online class. It's a  multipart  video (6 parts, but only a half-hour total! Watch it in order) by Dave Wainscott (and a few friends) on Psalms and Lament.   You may not need to watch this if you took good notes in class.

Post below your best summary (fairly detailed this time), and also include your response/feelings, especially about lament and imprecation (and especially about the song in video 6.





part 2:
  
part 3:
  
part 4:
  
part 5:
  
part 6: Finish with this song, which Dave prepared you for in part 6:
  






Metallica/lament


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Four of you texted me about golf clubs and atonement.
The answer is here.
I left you hanging with this:
"Jesus died on the cross........................... to trick the devil"

If you want to get ahead for next week on this theme, see:


Matthew 12:28 

( Luke 11:20)

Mark 10:45

Luke 4: 1-21

 John 1:4-5

John 12:31-33

Romans 5:15-21

Romans 8:31-39



Romans 16:19 

1 Corinthians 2:6-7 

2 Corinthians 10:3-5

Ephesians 1: 19-23

Ephesians 4: 7-10 

Ephesians 6:12



Colossians 1:13-14

Colossians 2:8-19



Hebrews 2:14

1 Peter 3:21-22



I John 3:8 



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S

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 Remember, if you're not set on Philemon or Esther for your signature,
you can do Psalm 22, which we studied quite a bit tonight



  • • Module 6: Status and Worth in Community •
    Homework:
    Preparation Reading:
    • Reread Genesis 25:19 – 34; 27:1 – 28:5; 37; 41optional
    • Fee and Stuart ch 6. "The Question of Historical Precedent." (pp 112-131).<skim
    • Reread Acts 1-9optional
    • Reread 1 Corinthians 12 – 13 <optional
    • Hauer & Young ch 14, “Ephesians: He is Our Peace” (pp. 301-303 only)<delete
    • Ephesians 5:21 – 6:9<focus .
    • 1 Timothy 2:8 – 15; 5:3 – 16; 6:1 – 5
    • Read Esther or Philemon >optional (entire- with thesis statement, outline and rough draft)
    • The Serving Leader, pp.72 – 106 (review)
    Preparation Assignments:
      • Take notes on Preparation Readings for in class  quiz.<will be on the "signs" used in class. Heavy clues given in class Week 5.
      • Complete and bring initial Thesis statement and minimum 3 paragraph outline based on your rough draft and signature assignment worksheets and bring them to class.<optional

    Students can manually mark this item complete: • Module 6: Status and Worth in Community • Homew...

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