Sunday School Questions: Watsah Messiah?

This Sunday, November 30, we’ll be putting the finishing touches on our sparkly red and sparkly gold Temple, made of cardboard, paper-maché and water-based paint–an important prop for our upcoming Christmas Pageant (on Wednesday, December 24 at 4 pm – never too early to plan ahead!). And we’ll be talking about how the Temple, after having been built by Solomon, then destroyed by the Babylonians, was eventually re-built after the Israelites returned from exile.

And since we begin Advent this Sunday, we’ll be asking the kids about the word, “Messiah.”

What does Messiah mean? (“one anointed with oil by God”)

Who is called Messiah in the Bible? (more than just Jesus and more than just Israelites)

What sorts of people are called Messiah in the Bible? (leaders of all kinds, people who DO stuff)

What does it take to become a Messiah? (need to be anointed with oil by God)

Aren’t we all anointed with oil when we’re baptized? (yep)

Aren’t we all Messiahs? (yep)

What does that mean for how we live our lives? (uh…)

Soulwork: The Lucifer Effect

This Sunday, November 30, at 9-10 am and the following Wednesday evening, December 3, 6:30-7:30 pm, we conclude our four-week Soulwork series entitled, “Be Not Conformed.” For the first three weeks, we discussed Walter Wink’s “Powers” trilogy of Biblical scholarship investigating questions around the reality and morality of power–earthly and divine–as illuminated by the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

For our final discussion, we will look at the recent book, The Lucifer Effect, by Stanford psychologist, Phillip Zimbardo–the man behind the famous “Stanford Prison Experiment.” For info about Zimbardo, the Stanford Prison Experiment and The Lucifer Effect, click here. And here’s a quote from Zimbardo’s book, subtitled, “Understanding How Good People Turn Evil”:

ADVENTures! (Get it?)

To celebrate the first Sunday in Advent, St. Bede’s will be hosting its annual ADVENTures! on Sunday, November 30, following the 10:15 am service. There will be wreath-making materials on hand… Advent calendar materials on hand…

And all will be invited to help bake and decorate Christmas cookies, which will be frozen and then later thawed before being given to inmates of the San Mateo County Jail on Christmas morning. Senior Warden Jeanne Cooper has spear-headed this operation for us for years and testifies to how meaningful it is for these inmates to receive hand-made Christmas cookies on Christmas morning.

We will also be boxing up the piles and piles of baby and toddler clothes we’ve collected over the past month to send to the Lakota people of the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. And if you’ve still got new or gently used little kids clothes you’d like to donate, please do so by this Sunday. (For more on our Lakota Children’s Clothes Drive, click here.)

It’ll be an ADVENTure!

(har, har, har…)

Sunday School Questions: The Temple Destroyed

Last week during Sunday School, we discussed King David and King Solomon, the founding of Jerusalem and the building of the first Temple. We also began construction of a replica of the Temple out of cardboard and paper-maché. (All while singing, “If I Had A Hammer.”)

This Sunday, November 23, we will continue to work on our Temple while also discussing how the Babylonians destroyed Solomon’s Temple and burned Jerusalem and took the Israelites into exile in Babylon. And we will ask the kids how God could allow such a thing to happen. After all, God told Solomon to build the Temple in the first place and said it would be God’s house on earth, the most holy place–the Holy of Holies–where the Israelites would go to commune with God. So how could God let it be destroyed? What were the Israelites to do? What would we do?

Speaking of Politics & Religion…

Here writes a married gay man and devout Roman Catholic:

How do those who are ready to live in this modern world coexist with those who still believe that it is not only misguided but evil? And, of course, vice-versa? There is only one way. That way is to agree that our civil order will mean less; that it will be a weaker set of more procedural agreements that try to avoid as much as possible deep statements about human nature. And that has a clear import for our current moment. The reason the marriage debate is so intense is because neither side seems able to accept that the word “marriage” requires a certain looseness of meaning if it is to remain as a universal, civil institution. This is not that new. Catholics, for example, accept the word marriage to describe civil marriages that are second marriages, even though their own faith teaches them that those marriages don’t actually exist as such. But most Catholics are able to set theological beliefs to one side and accept a theological untruth as a civil fact.

This balancing act, which this author calls “modern,” one might also call, ancient–in reference to Jesus “rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” and “to God what is God’s.”

Or, recalling Queen Elizabeth and Richard Hooker, one might simply call it, Anglican.

Politics & Religion Mix

Last night, during our Seekers Dinner, the 10 of us present discussed questions of how our faith does or does not affect our political opinions and our decisions in the voting booth. As such, we spent much of the evening trying to determine how or if a particular candidate’s religion or lack thereof would lead us to vote for or against him or her. We also wondered whether our religiously-informed ethical opinions could somehow be separated from our sense of what “works” best when it comes to government. And we reflected on larger questions of political power, including the question of how power is apportioned in the Episcopal Church and in other Christian denominations as well as other religious organizations. What do such churchly systems of power and authority have to do with the Kingdom of Heaven?

As you might guess, it was a wide-ranging conversation and we probably asked many more questions than we managed to answer. One thing was settled however: Our group (and our parish as a whole) includes representatives from throughout the political spectrum (not to mention the theological spectrum). But despite all that political and theological diversity, we can still happily break the two cardinal rules of a well-mannered dinner party by zestily discussing both religion and politics.

We say it during the Eucharist on Sunday and it is no less true at these Seekers Dinners and throughout our shared life at St. Bede’s–Out of many, we are one.

Lakota Children’s Clothes Drive

All this month, St. Bede’s has been collecting new or gently used clothes suitable for kids 6 years and younger–particularly baby and toddler clothes–to send to the Rosebud Lakota Sioux Reservation in south central South Dakota.

This past June, when our Youth Group visited the reservation (which encompasses the single poorest county in the United States), the kids did a lot of work helping sort clothing donations for distribution at a clothing bank run by our host, the Methodist charitable organization, Tree of Life. And the kids discovered that although Tree of Life received many, many boxes of clothing donations from all over the country, they received very few donated items of clothing suitable for babies, toddlers and small children. The kids also noticed that some Lakota moms would wait around at the Tree of Life clothing bank, sometimes all day, in the hopes that a couple of pieces of small children’s clothes might be put for distribution.

Given this high demand and low supply of clothes for babies, toddlers and small children in the reservation, we thought it would make sense to collect from among the members of our congregation as many articles of such clothing as we can–as well as money for the postage to send it all to South Dakota. Thus far, we’ve got boxes and boxes of the stuff piling up in the St. Bede’s office. But we’re still looking for more, with the expectation that we’ll be boxing it all up in preparation for mailing it off to Tree of Life on Sunday, November 30, following the 10:15 am service.

So if you’d like to contribute to this clothing drive, please do so by bringing clothes or money by the church office prior to November 30. And if you plan to be in town that Sunday following Thanksgiving, please plan to stick around after the 10:15 am service to help us sort and pack up all the clothes to be sent to the Lakota people of the Rosebud Reservation.

Bede’s Blog’s “Personality”

I just plugged Bede’s Blog into this site to get its diagnosis of the “personality type” of our parish’s nascent web-log. Here’s what it spat back:

The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications. They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality.

Evangelism = Experience Shared

Breen Mullins has sent along a link to a blog-post by The Rev. Terry Martin, an Episcopal priest interested in re-imagining the word, “evangelism.” Martin argues that we should “dump the junk,” get rid of all the old baggage clinging to the concept and move on to a purer notion of evangelism–as an expression of our experience of God. Martin writes:

It brings to mind the story in John of the blind man Jesus healed. The Pharisees interrogated him and his parents, until finally, in frustration, the blind man declared, “Whether Jesus is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind, but now I see!” We speak from our experience.

Experience. I want to suggest that experience needs to be the other “E” word. It is our experience of the healing power of God’s love that is the primary motivation for our evangelism efforts. Without that, we don’t have much to share.

Good Wine, Good Food, Good People

This past Sunday evening, about 20 Bede’s folk gathered to taste wines and eat finger foods as part of an event originally donated to the St. Bede’s Auction last June by Bill Harris, Bret DiMarco and Jeanne Cooper. Donors who purchased admission to the event enjoyed fine and affordable wine, good company and some delicious food, including Jeanne’s “Smoky Cranberries.”

Click below for recipe and wine list, with commentary.

David and Solomon’s Ancient Kingdom

This past Sunday, our kids discussed the Bible’s account of the beginnings of the Kingdom of Israel, including King David’s founding of Jerusalem and King Solomon’s construction of the first Temple. And then the kidsconstructed (out of cardboard and paper-maché) the building blocks of a replica of Solomon’s Temple, which, according to the Bible, was ultimately destroyed by the Babylonians about 2600 years ago.

The next day, Monday, Nov.17, Jeanne Cooper (Senior Warden and stalwart Sunday School teacher) noticed this article in the Chronicle discussing the controversial archeological evidence for the Bible’s account of the reign of David and Solomon, the founding of Jerusalem and the building of the Temple. Here’s an excerpt:

Garfinkel believes the city provides evidence that King David ruled a kingdom from his capital of Jerusalem. Some modern scholars have questioned the biblical account of David’s kingdom and even whether he existed. Although it is not clear how the Sha’arayim relates to David, Garfinkel says finding a Judean city along the ancient highway to Jerusalem that appears to have been a fortress on the western border with the Philistines indicates a kingdom with a developed political and military organization that was powerful enough to include a major fortified city.

Seeking, seeking, gotta keep seeking

Our next Seekers Dinner is tomorrow night, Thursday, November 20, 7:30 – 9:30 pm. Contact Jamie at jmcelroy@stbedesmenlopark.org if you’re interested in attending.

In the wake of the recent election, I’m thinking it might be fruitful to discuss questions of religion and politics and to what extent our faith may/can/should/should not influence who and what we vote for.

More Bede’s Blogs

It seems there are more Bede’s folk who have blogs of their own. In addition to Jeanne Cooper and Mike Graebner, Jiffy and John and Michael Chen have blogs chock full of their musings and insight. So I’ve added them to the Blogroll on the right side of this page. Check them out. (I’ve also added links to online versions of the NRSV translation of the Bible, the Revised Common Lectionary and the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.)

Teens Preach: The Parable of the Talents

Yesterday, nine of our Youth Group kids helped deliver the sermon as part of our Youth Lead service. An excerpt is below, and the complete sermon follows after the jump. (Click here for background on the parable of the talents and here for pictures depicting the Youth Group’s “creative process.”)

The master in this story may be greedy, but at least he’s honest. When the slave who got one talent comes back with nothing gained, it was because he knew that the master is a greedy man who “reaps where he does not sow.” But the master pushes back against his somewhat lazy actions by saying, basically, “I know that I reap where I do not sow, so you could at least have tried to make more from what you had. Either way, I’m still a greedy person and you’re still a slave. Burying your problems in the ground doesn’t solve that.”

A lot of times, I feel the same way as that slave, don’t you also? There are probably countless times in your day when you are tired and don’t feel like doing something, like listening to a group of random teenagers talk about a passage from Matthew…

Youth Minister Manifesto

On of the eve of our first Youth Lead service of the new program year, and as we begin our preparations for this year’s Christmas Pageant, it seems appropriate to provide a systematic theological argument for offering Kids Lead and Youth Lead services throughout the liturgical year at St. Bede’s.

The short version: We’re not interested in being cute or building the kids’ self-esteem or giving the kids something to do during the service. We think they have something crucial to teach adults about Christian faith that only they–as children–can illuminate

Click here for the long version. A taste:

Given the Israelite and Greco-Roman context, Jesus’ teachings regarding children—as will be shown—are quite radical. Indeed, as contemporary American Episcopalians considering Jesus’ teachings on children, we would do well to reflect upon the extent to which we share the negative assumptions regarding children that were common in the Greco-Roman and Israelite communities of Jesus’ time and place—that they are physically and mentally weak, that they speak foolishness, fail to plan thoughtfully; are fundamentally ignorant, capricious, quarrelsome, and lacking in the virtue of reason; and most crucially are in dire need of strong discipline and guidance if they are to attain the ideal of adult male community-member in good standing.

Soulwork: Powers, Principalities & Walter Wink

Last week, during our Soulwork sessions on Sunday at 9 am and Wednesday at 6:30 pm, we began a four week series investigating questions of how our Christian faith can help us understand the uses and abuses of earthly power.

For these first three weeks of the series, we are focusing on the “Powers Trilogy” by theologian and Biblical scholar, Walter Wink. And for the final week, we will look at The Lucifer Effect, the recent book by Stanford psychologist, Phil Zimbardo, subtitled, “Understanding How Good People Turn Evil” (based upon research that began with the famous “Stanford Prison Experiment” and more recently when Zimbardo studied the abusive behavior of members of the American armed forces at Bahgdad’s Abu Graib prison).

We took a look at the first of Wink’s Powers series, entitled Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament last week. And this Sunday, November 16, at 9 am and Wednesday, November 19, at 6:30 pm, we will be discussing Wink’s second book, Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces that Determine Human Existence. (We will then move on to Wink’s final Powers book, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, before wrapping up the series with Zimbardo’s work.)

From Wink’s second book, click below for a quote we’ll be discussing during this week’s sessions:

Sunday School Questions: Why a Temple?

During Sunday School, we’ll be talking about King David, King Solomon, the founding of Jerusalem and the construction of the first Temple. And we’ll even begin construction of our own Solomonic Temple out of cardboard and paper-maché–which will serve as a key set-piece during our upcoming Pageant on Christmas Eve.

As such, we will be asking the kids about the importance of special, holy spaces. Why did Solomon build the Temple? Why did the Israelites feel they needed to build such a thing? Why do we build churches? Are they really necessary? Isn’t God everywhere? Can’t we talk to God or listen to God or worship God anywhere? Why do we feel that we need these special buildings to know God?

Writing the Youth Lead Sermon: A Peek Behind the Curtain

During last Friday’s Youth Group sleepover, St. Bede’s teenagers wrote reflections on this Sunday’s upcoming Gospel lesson (the Parable of the Talents). And this Sunday they will read those reflections as the sermon this Sunday, November 16, during the 10:15 am service. Here are some pictures of them all hard at work–prior to playing video games, eating ice-cream cake and watching a movie. (Click here to read an excerpt from one of their reflections.)

“Religious” vs. “Secular”: A Distinction Without a Difference?

In anticipation of next week’s Seekers Dinner at St. Bede’s on Thursday, November 20, 7:30 – 9:30 pm, (contact Jamie at jmcelroy@stbedesmenlopark.org if you’d like to attend), check out this fascinating essay by Timothy Fitzgerald over at The Immanent Frame (a blog of the Social Science Research Council). Here’s a taste:

My argument is that “religion” is not a stand-alone category with its own distinctive referent but is unintelligible without simultaneous cognizance of those practices which in any strategic context get put in the category “non-religion,” which is the bottom-line meaning of “secular” in modern rhetoric…

The religion-secular binary usually takes specific forms of separation and mutually-displacing opposition, such as religion versus politics, or religion as distinct from the state, or religion as opposed to science, or religious education against secular education/law etc. …None of these terms has any essential meaning, they are constantly subverted in a range of practices in all societies where the distinction is part of the dominant ideology, and yet the boundaries between them, and the contested places where they ought or ought not to be distinguished, are defended passionately.

These rhetorically-constructed distinctions between the religious and what falls outside religion (which logically must be non-religion, or domains and practices which are deemed to be non-religious) are supported by other problematic binaries such as natural and supernatural, inner and outer, spiritual and material, soul and body, private and public, metaphysical and empirical, faith and knowledge, and arguably female and male. All of these binaries, taken on their own, one by one, are inherently problematic, but they operate in circular fashion to keep the semantic chain rolling. Each binary displaces the other in a continual displacement of meaning.

He Got Rhythm… and Études

Pianist Thomas Pandolfi will perform great works of the past 150 years, ranging from the romanticism of Liszt and Chopin to the jazz of Gershwin: this Saturday, November 15, 7:30 pm as part of the Arts at St. Bede’s series. Tickets are $25, $18 for students and seniors.

The Washington Post calls him, “an artist who is the master of both the grand gesture and the sensual line.” Click here to listen to Pandolfi playing a portion of the Gershwin medley he’ll be performing Saturday.