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insight into Lent

Keri Wehlander, a gifted liturgist and editor, has written this prayer as part of the Lent worship that comes with this edition of insight. It perfectly expresses the heart space that is Lent.

Beyond the steady noise,
lead us to a dry, desert place –
a place for listening.

Beyond the jostle of chaos,
lead us to a place of open horizons –
a place for clarity.

Beyond our rigid falsehoods,
lead us to a place of ancient light –
a place for transformation.

Beyond the unyielding demands,
lead us to a place of dancing winds –
a place for freedom.

Beyond the endless distractions,
Lead us to a place of fiery mystery –
A place for encountering you alone.

In this edition of CHRISTIAN BOOKS insight, we offer you some resources for the pilgrimage of Lent: a short worship written by Keri Wehlander that you can use in any number of faith community settings; an introduction to a book that through art and reflection truly expresses an “emerging Christian perspective” on the parables of Jesus; a 40-day discipline of scripture reading and experience to lead you to your own “wilderness” insights; suggestions on how to make film a feature of your Lenten exploration; and an introduction to the latest resource in the series “Experience! Faith Formation Curriculum for Adults.”

Lentenship: A 40-Day Reflective Lenten Study Using Scripture, Experience, and Questions

Typically, Lenten studies offer the reflections of another person as a source of insight for the Lenten traveller. Lentenship is a process of self-reflection that leads the traveller through a guided experience to his or her own insights. Of course, the guided experience itself is not neutral. It leads the reflection in a particular direction, attempting to “open” an area of experience as a source of reflection in relation to the biblical text. The insights that emerge will be personal to the Lenten traveller.

In this process, a scripture passage for the day is presented and accompanied by a suggestion for something you might do as a way of opening yourself to the insights the passage holds for you alone. A reflective question follows.

There are three stages to this simple process:

1. Read the passage of scripture given for the day. All of the passages are from The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language and are used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
2. Take time to do the activity suggested as “Experience.”
3. Reflect on your experience, and, if you feel that it would be helpful, make some kind of record of your reflection.

Wednesday February 6
Luke 18:9–14
He told his next story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people: “Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax man. The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: ‘Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other people – robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man. I fast twice a week and tithe on all my income.’

“Meanwhile the tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, ‘God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.’”

Jesus commented, “This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God. If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face, but if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.”

Experience: Today, take time to notice yourself noticing others. Pay attention to the assumptions and judgments you make about others, whether positive or negative.

Question: Which assumptions and judgments do you want to keep; which ones do you want to discard?

Read more >>

Embracing the Wilderness: A Short Lenten Worship, by Keri Wehlander

© 2008 Keri K. Wehlander (www.creativeworship.ca)

Litany
One: As we cease our breakneck pace,
All: we embrace a needed wilderness.
One: As we clear our lives for solitude,
All: we embrace a needed wilderness.
One: As we recognize our deepest questions,
All: we embrace a needed wilderness.
One: As we face our rawest fears,
All: we embrace a needed wilderness.
One: As we discern our need for Spirit,
All: we embrace a needed wilderness.
One: As we discover our heart’s own hunger,
All: we embrace a needed wilderness.
One: As we remember our true calling,
All: we embrace a needed wilderness.

Readings
Jeremiah 6:16
Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.

Luke 4:1
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.

Reflection
The leader may wish to introduce this time of reflection in this way:

“The Lenten invitation to the wilderness may be seen as an opportunity to leave the centrifugal forces of life and enter into a place of solitude and silence. This silence allows us to truly listen for God and to gain the perspective needed to see the path that we have been travelling on. Take a moment now to reflect on what you must do to embrace a wilderness time during Lent.”

Give each person in the group a piece of paper that has the following phrase printed at the top: “To embrace the wilderness, I must…” Ask the group to spend five minutes writing down whatever comes to mind. When the group is finished, ask each person to light a tea light (have people do this one at a time), and summarize what they have written with a word or simple phrase.

Song: “Take, O Take Me as I Am” (John L. Bell and Graham Maule) #85 in More Voices

Prayer
Beyond the steady noise,
lead us to a dry, desert place –
a place for listening.

Beyond the jostle of chaos,
lead us to a place of open horizons –
a place for clarity.

Beyond our rigid falsehoods,
lead us to a place of ancient light –
a place for transformation.

Beyond the unyielding demands,
lead us to a place of dancing winds –
a place for freedom.

Beyond the endless distractions,
Lead us to a place of fiery mystery –
A place for encountering you alone.

Song: “Open Our Hearts” (Jim Strathdee) #21 in More Voices

Blessing
One: God grant us courage
All: as we encounter each challenge.
One: God grant us vision
All: as we weigh our choices.
One: God grant us wisdom
All: as we shape the future.
One: God grant us compassion
All: as we walk with all life.
One: God grant us peace
All: as we meet each new day. Amen.

Lens on Lent: Living Lent through the Frame of Film

A Small Group Experience

It used to be that people would give up things for Lent, including simple pleasures like movies. Perhaps some folks still do; however, rather than giving them up, another option is to take up movies for Lent and make them part of the experience of deepening this season of reflection and discipleship. While I was on ministry staff at Penticton United Church, I created a Lent film series called “Lens on Lent.” For the six Mondays in Lent, I invited people to come after work for an evening that started with a shared meal of pizza. We then watched a feature-length film and, finally, had a 45- to 60-minute discussion connecting the themes of the film with our living practice of Lent.

At the first session, before watching the film, I took time with the group members to remember the traditional meaning of Lent by asking them to call out words that they associated with the season of Lent. This provided a common understanding of how they collectively thought about and lived the season of Lent. These are the kind of words that were offered during that process:

reflection, re-birthing, sparseness, pruning, going apart, God’s presence anew, back to essentials, annealing, loosening the grip and letting go, turning around, looking in and then looking out in a new way, lengthening light, and pilgrimage.

There are many ways we might describe this penitential season. In the context of the film series, this kind of list provided me with a simple touchstone to which I could return and to which we could add words on each of the six movie evenings. It was important that I had a list like this not only so I could keep reminding the participants of what Lent represented in our journeys of faith and spirit, but also as a vehicle for refining and sharpening our appreciation of the season as we encountered the work of each visual artist.

The list of words also functioned as a catalyst and filter for me as I thought about what six films to use in the series. This always felt like an awesome responsibility, both because there are so many films from which to choose and because I wanted to have all six make a significant difference to us individually and collectively!

As I created the series I noticed myself asking a number of questions that influenced the final selection:

• Do these films each lead to a consideration of a major Lenten theme?
• Is there a diversity of style, approach and theme in the final six?
• Can I anticipate a variety of emotional responses from session to session (they aren’t universally dark or heavy, for example)?
• Does, at least one of the films explicitly address the faith issues of Lent?
• As we watch the six films will we be led to examine six different areas of our lives?
• Are these films really fine examples of the art of the filmmaker?
• Is God honoured in these six pieces of art?

That’s the list of criteria I developed for ‘Lens on Lent’. Here are some of the films that I found worked well in the context of Lent over the years I offered the series, plus a few others that have since come along to movie theatres.


A Company of Strangers
Chocolat
About Schmidt
Secrets and Lies
Babette’s Feast
Jesus of Montreal
The Barbarian Invasions
The Station Agent
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Rabbit Proof Fence
Cotton Patch Gospel
Sideways
Sherrybaby
Whale Rider
The Straight Story
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter…and Spring
Crash
Babel
Far From Heaven
Wit
Smoke
Dead Man Walking
My Dinner with Andre
Before Sunset
The Chosen
The Syrian Bride
The Fog of War
Needful Things
The Man without a Past
Talk to Her
Half Nelson
The Lives of Others
Once
Volver
Away from Her
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Juno
Joyeaux Noel
Pan’s Labyrinth

Of course, having titles without information about the films isn’t particularly helpful. I think the best source for information about films, including ratings by all the major North American reviewers is to be found at www.rottentomatoes.com/movies. When you go to that site you will find, for just about any movie you care to do a search on, a quick survey of the main critics plus a synopsis of the film under ‘About’.

I commend to you, for all kinds of good reasons, the possibility of creating your own small group film experience in Lent this year. There’s nothing quite like the meeting place of visual narrative and communal storytelling to elicit the kind of transforming insight and spiritual deepening for which this season is intended.

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From now until February 15, 2008, we’ll send you a free poster for each friend of yours that signs up to receive the CHRISTIAN BOOKS insight newsletter. It’s a thank-you from us for your help in building this network of shared interest.

Once your friend has signed up at www.copperhousepress.com, simply email verenav@woodlake.com with the name of your friend and which one of the posters you'd like. Please include the subject line “sign up a friend” and please provide your address so we can send your free poster(s). We’ll pay the postage.

Thanks in advance for helping to “connect people of the emerging Christian way.”

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A World of Faith: Introducing Spiritual Traditions to Teens
In this time that calls for peacemaking, Carolyn Pogue has written a book for teens, leaders of youth groups and anyone interested in an introduction to the world’s great faith traditions. It provides insight into many of the deeper truths common to humanity. Throughout the book there is a strong message of caring for the earth and for each other. The beautifully designed book includes full color illustrations, interviews with teens, a green rule, and a golden rule for each tradition.

Experiencing Jesus: A Faith Formation Curriculum for Adults

Based on the bestselling book by Marcus Borg, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary

12 features of this curriculum that make it attractive to every Christian faith community:

Complete
Everything comes as a complete kit in an attractive box: 1 Leader’s Guide, 12 Participant Booklets, 1 DVD, 10 full-colour visuals, 1 copy of the source book.

Useable
The Leader’s Guide, which is designed for use by experienced as well as beginning leaders, provides a structure that, through use, develops leadership skills.

Accessible
The insights and teaching of biblical scholar Marcus Borg are open to all small group participants.

Flexible
The format of each session allows for the group facilitator to structure each session according to the time available and the emerging interests of the group members.

Personal
Each group member receives their own copy of the Participant Booklet which gives information about group activities as well as space for written reflection.

Original
A DVD offers 8-12 minutes of completely new material by bestselling author Marcus Borg for each of the 10 sessions.

Visual
Ten full-colour visuals, both traditional and contemporary, open up right brain reflection and visual insights for each of the ten sessions.

Worshipful
The ten sessions incorporate biblical readings, prayers, and sacred symbols into one seamless worship and learning process.

Contemplative
The design of each session creates an environment that deepens personal and corporate spiritual awareness.

Experiential
The study takes seriously the life experience of those involved in learning and creates experiences in the program which take learning beyond the head and into the heart.

Communal
The study process facilitates the building of a learning community where it becomes safe for people to share those things that matter most to them.

Visionary
The book by Marcus Borg plus the group study incorporate insights that are at the forefront of 21st-century Christian theology.

Why the Study of Jesus Is Important, by Marcus J. Borg

From the Foreword to the Leader's Guide for Experiencing Jesus

There are two major reasons that the study of Jesus is central to Christian theological re-education in our time.

The First Reason
To say the obvious, Jesus is important for Christians. He is not only the central figure of Christianity, but is for Christians the decisive revelation of God. As the Word-become-flesh, who dwelt among us, he reveals what can be seen of God in a human life – of what a life filled with God looks like. As such, Jesus reveals the character and passion of God: what God is like, and what God is passionate about. This is who he is for us. He is the revelation, the epiphany, of God.

For Christians, Jesus as the decisive revelation of God is the normative revelation of God. Christians speak of two primary sources of revelation – the Bible as well as Jesus. Both are “the Word of God” – the one expressed in human words, the other embodied in a human life. But the Bible is second to Jesus. When Jesus and the Bible conflict, as they sometimes do, Jesus is normative. He is the normative revelation in light of which other revelation, including the Bible, is seen and tested. In colloquial language, Jesus trumps the Bible.

This does not mean that “only Jesus” matters, and that the Bible need not be taken seriously. The Bible retains its status and importance as revelation. It shaped Jesus – the parts that had become sacred by his time. Moreover, we know about Jesus primarily through the portion of the Bible that we call gospels. The Bible is revelation for Christians. But it is not above Jesus. To echo Martin Luther’s wonderful phrase, the Bible is the manger in which we find Christ.

Because of Jesus’ normative status, how we think of him – how we tell the story of Jesus – matters greatly. It shapes our understanding of God and of the Christian life, for the Christian life is about centring in God as revealed, as disclosed, in Jesus.

Yet the story of Jesus has been and is told in very different ways by Christians. These diverse ways lead to quite different understandings of what taking Jesus seriously means. And thus chapter one of the book on which this study program is based begins with four common ways of telling the story of Jesus and their effects on Christian understanding and life.

The rest of my book describes an emerging way of seeing Jesus and the gospels that is shaped by the historical study of Jesus and Christian origins as it has developed within mainstream scholarship. It leads to another way of telling the story of Jesus, one that takes seriously what we have learned about the nature of the gospels, their historical settings, and their language over the past few centuries of mainstream scholarship.

In shorthand, it involves a “historical-metaphorical” way of interpreting the gospels and telling the story of Jesus. “Historical” means setting the gospels in their ancient historical contexts. It is not primarily concerned with the question of how much of what they narrate is historical in the sense of what “really happened,” though it can address this question with varying degrees of probability. Rather, a historical approach is based on the recognition that these are ancient documents and that understanding them involves the question. “What did these stories mean in their first-century context?” A “metaphorical” approach takes seriously that language often has a more-than-literal meaning. Metaphor is about meaning. And the meaning of metaphorical language is not dependent on its factuality.

For this approach, the gospels (and the Bible as whole) are not seen as if intended by their authors to be literal and factual accounts of exactly what happened. Rather they combine memory and metaphor, memory and meaning. Some of what they narrate is based on memory of events that happened, but all that they narrate is about meaning.

This approach, widely shared by mainstream scholars, leads to another way of telling the story of Jesus. Central to this telling is the recognition that the name “Jesus” refers to two quite different realities. Of course, there is some continuity between the two, but they are not the same.

On the one hand, the name “Jesus” refers to a Galilean Jew who lived and died in the first century, executed by the powers that ruled his world. Often called “the historical Jesus,” this Jesus is a figure of the past. He doesn’t exist anymore. There is no denial of Easter in that statement – only the recognition that Jesus as a flesh and blood person made of protoplasm and corpuscles, a finite being who was born and died and who was limited in time and space, is no more. My phrase for designating this Jesus is the pre-Easter Jesus.

On the other hand, the name Jesus also refers to “the living Jesus,” to “Jesus as Lord,” the Jesus who continued to be known after his death and who continues to be known to this day as a divine reality. This Jesus is “the risen Christ,” no longer a finite flesh-and-blood reality, but a spiritual and divine reality who is one with God. I call this Jesus the post-Easter Jesus.

In this program of study, you will learn about both. I see the pre-Easter Jesus as a Jewish mystic, wisdom teacher, prophet of the Kingdom of God, and movement founder. I see the post-Easter Jesus as what Jesus became after his death in Christian experience and tradition – the living Jesus who is Lord.

The Second Reason
For another reason, the study of Jesus is central to adult theological-re-education. Namely, it can be a means for teaching and reflecting about many of the “big” topics involved in re-envisioning Christianity. Some have already been mentioned:

• God. What is God like – what is God’s character and passion? And can God be experienced and known, or only believed in?
• The Bible and the gospels. What is the nature of our sacred scriptures? Their origin and authority? And how are we to interpret them?

And more:

• The human condition. What ails us? From what do we need deliverance? And what is the path?
• Salvation. What does it mean? Is it about heaven, an afterlife? Or about transformation this side of death?
• Faith. What is faith about? Does it mean believing a set of claims to be true, whether they are persuasive or not? Or does it mean faithfulness – loyalty and allegiance and commitment to God as known in Jesus?
• The Kingdom of God. What is it? Is it about heaven? Or is it, as the Lord’s Prayer puts it, for the earth? And if it’s for the earth, how does it come? Do we wait for its coming? Or participate in its coming?
• The Christian life: what does it mean to follow Jesus, to centre in God as known in Jesus?

And so we welcome you to this program of study. We trust that you will be informed by it and, we dare to hope, transformed.

The Art of Parables: Reinterpreting the Teaching Stories of Jesus in Word & Sculpture, by Charles McCollough

I wasn’t ready to have my relationship with the parables of Jesus transformed from struggle to adventure so dramatically by Charles McCollough, in this new release from Wood Lake Publishing: The Art of the Parables . McCollough makes the point that seeking to understand Jesus’ parables is a joyous, wise, and daunting task: joyous because there is wide agreement amongst scholars that the parables bring us as near to Jesus as we can get; wise because in the parables we come as close as we can to understanding what Jesus meant by the Empire of God; and daunting because ultimately we are left with the task of uncovering the personal insight that Jesus placed for each one of us in his parables.

McCollough is a Boston-based theologian and artist, and brings to the book an extraordinary blend of scholarly discourse and artistic exploration. The scholar in him graciously opens space for the artist to lead us into the truth that “some things in our lives are too deep for words.” Perhaps, in addition to one of the sculpted images you see here, I could give you a flavour of the adventure that awaits you, by offering McCollough’s own review of the tools he discloses to the one who is ready to explore the parables.

Summary of the Tools for Interpreting the Parables

1. Go behind the gospels. The gospel writers often disagreed on a parable’s meaning because they had different goals (theologies). In Mark 13:32–37 and Matthew 24:32–35, for example, Jesus teaches a “lesson” in which sprouting fig leaves are a sign of the coming of God’s Empire. Luke does not include this “lesson.” He does, however, include the Barren Fig Tree parable, which he frames as a story about repentance.
2. Stay flexible when declaring a parable’s meaning. Jesus often left the parables open-ended. We do not have, for example, Jesus’ interpretation of the Barren Fig Tree parable.
3. Look for God’s Empire in the parables. Not all of the parables mention it, but they all point to God’s Empire directly or indirectly, when they contrast it with conventional behaviour or wisdom or other empires.
4. Detect the public (“the nations”) aspect of the parables. Beware of spiritualizing and privatizing the parables to the point that they become irrelevant to the major public issues of this world.
5. Translate symbols; beware of allegory. The parables use symbols, but extended allegories enchant more than they enlighten. They are “over coded.”
6. Beware of blaming “the Jews.” Responsibility for the death of Jesus, and for the deaths of other Galileans, clearly belongs to Rome, and to the high priests who cooperated with Rome, not to “the Jews.”
7. Look at the parables as secular stories. They are not about otherworldly, religious, or cosmic adventures.
8. Note that parables usually end with a twist. Though they begin with everyday objects or events, they usually end with a curve, sometimes even an irreligious one.
9. See parables visually. They are pre-conceptual, immediate picture stories.
10. Enjoy the parables as short, narrative fictions. The “lesson” of the other fig tree (Mark 13:32–37 and Matthew 24:32–35) is not a parable by my definition, because there is no narrative story. But both lessons and parables are fictions that teach the truth.
11. Prepare to make a decision. The goal of parables is not entertainment or intellectual rumination, but the commitment of the hearer to a new way of seeing and living.
12. See the parables as “subversive speech.” They are about subverting the kind of power that is based on violence and injustice. Only God’s Empire of justice, peace, and love deserves our allegiance.
13. Look for God’s Empire to come not in lineal time, but in the hope for justice in all time. Like the Galileans, all innocent victims of atrocities await the day when our faith will bear fruit, when we will have the courage to stand up for them against the tyrants of our age. When this happens, we will experience the real and present Empire of God. The parables, then, are narrative metaphors and similes that were originally meant to shock Jesus’ audience out of their captivity to the empire of Rome. If we take them seriously, they will serve the same purpose today, by shocking us out of our captivity to the empires of the present age.

This is a wonderful resource for small groups in congregations. McCollough’s commentary on each parable is brilliantly illustrated with photographs of the sculpted pieces that he has shaped in response to his own exploration of that parable. At the end of each chapter he offers questions for discussion. Given the resources of text and CD, and the fascinating blend of scholarship and artistry, this resource holds tremendous promise for the upcoming season of Lent and, indeed, for any season of the church year when a group comes together with the intention of coming closer to Jesus and to his vision of the Empire of God.

Charles McCollough is a Boston-based theologian and artist. An ordained United Church of Christ minister, he is a renowned sculptor who has served as artist-in-residence at Andover Newton Theological School. He is the author of several books, including Faith Made Visible and Resolving Conflict with Justice and Peace.

The Departure of a Remarkable Human Spirit: John O’Donohue

Hearing suddenly of the unexpected death of John O’Donohue just after he passed on January 3, brought me to a stop. It didn’t seem as much as four months since my wife, Donna, and I had sat entranced listening to this remarkable Irish mystic, poet, environmentalist, and writer in one of the large gathering spaces at the Greenbelt Festival in Cheltenham, England. Of all the presentations at Greenbelt, O’Donohue’s was the one we have both continued to talk about in the time since we were there.

I need the help of another poet to fully express the wonder we felt listening to this remarkable man of word and spirit. Here’s what David Whyte has written in his memorial to O’Donohue:

He was a rare form of human possibility, a razor sharp intellect married to a far-traveling, Irish articulation and a bird-of-paradise vocabulary that made the listener realize that, until then, they had never listened at all. Like the valley from which he emerged, all the geological and imaginative layers of human experience were present in his speech at once; he could bring recesses and contours in the listener alive that quickened their senses, broke their enclosed imprisoning notions of self, and led them on, up high into that clear western air, listening to the lark calls, letting the wind blow them clean of worry, and returning them to their shadowed, home valley with a strange sense of intention, of courage, and a brave, laughing, almost flamboyant sense of celebration.

If you go to www.jodonohue.com/biography you will find more about his life, his achievements, the celebrations and remembrances of those he touched, and some of his writing, including this selection from his just-published book of blessings:

A Blessing for Equilibrium
by John O’Donohue, from Benedictus: A Book of Blessings

Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the music of laughter break through your soul.

As the wind wants to make everything dance,
May your gravity be lightened by grace.

Like the freedom of the monastery bell,
May clarity of mind make your eyes smile.

As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.

As silence smiles on the other side of what’s said,
May a sense of irony give you perspective.

As time remains free of all that it frames,
May fear or worry never put you in chains.

May your prayer of listening deepen enough
To hear in the distance the laughter of God.

Write to me

If you would like to respond to anything you read in CHRISTIAN BOOKS insight, please be in touch. And, if there is anything you would like to contribute to future editions, send it along. Our goal is to be part of a growing network of Christians who are drawn to a new and emerging vision of the Christian Way.

You can reach me at tims@woodlake.com