Download - Festival of homiletics 2014 lecture
light fires
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tipping point
most exciting time
tipping point
anxiety dropped away
statistics of decline
signs of hope
something happened to me ...
light fires
light fires
of hopeof concernof courage
light fires
WET BLANKETS!
light fires
beginning with your own
light fires
issue permission slips
permission to dance
Did early Christianity have this kind of ecstatic ritual?
Oh, yes. It was a real surprise to me to come across the evidence that Christianity might once have been a danced religion. Certainly, some of the early church leaders thought this was great and spoke of what seems to have been circle dancing, perhaps around an altar.
I was surprised to learn that there weren't even pews in Catholic churches until, I think, the 15th century or so. But in the late Middle Ages you start hearing the church fathers and the hierarchy continually complaining about the custom of dancing in churches.
You wrote something about labyrinths in medieval churches being connected to sacred dancing.
That is a conjecture of one historian I was reading. He said the labyrinths were meant to be danced through in a sacred dance--perhaps initiating new priests and nuns.
But this all gets pushed out of the Catholic churches well before the Reformation, where a number of interesting things take place. One is the dancing manias of the 14th century and later, where whole towns seem to be seized by this irrepressible desire to get out in the streets and dance. It’s been a puzzle to historians for a long time. I think you could rule out any biological causes like some toxin causing these things, which is what historians thought for a long time. It was contagious, but it was visually contagious. Bystanders to these crowds of dancers would be propelled to join in by the music and the dancing.
Why do you think dancing was driven out of the church? Who drove it out?
The hierarchy of the church, because it was thought to be disruptive, for one thing. It was thought to be lewd. That word is used again and again to describe ecstatic dance rituals of many people throughout the world, as European missionaries found them in the 17th through 19th centuries, or the church fathers viewed women dancing in churches in the late Middle Ages. They always said, "Oh God, this is gross or obscene."
Another thing--if the dancing that was going on in the churches was ecstatic, then that presents a threat to organized religion. Whenever people can access deities directly without the intervention of a religious hierarchy, they don't need to have hierarchy so much. So you have a long fight in the Catholic church to suppress what they call enthusiasm, from the Greek meaning "possessed"--having a god within you. If you can do that, what do you need the priest for?
a time to pacea time to march
a time to dance
tipping point
permission to dance
tipping point
What’s missing today is a high-quality discourse on rethinking the design and evolution of the entire system from scratch.
- Otto Scharmer
permissionto dance toa new tune
the melody
of creation
words from vincent donovan
After some time among the Masai, Donovan described, with some disillusionment, the version of Christianity he and other Western, Euro-American missionaries had imported into Africa: “an inward-turned, individual-salvation-oriented, un-adapted Christianity” (8). He became so disillusioned with this approach that he felt the need to move away from the term salvation altogether. One paragraph in his book especially intrigues me:
“Preach the gospel to all creation,” Christ said. Are we only now beginning to understand what he meant? I believe the unwritten melody that haunts this book ever so faintly, the new song waiting to be sung in place of the hymn of salvation, is simply the song of creation.
To move away from the theology of salvation to the theology of creation may be
the task of our time”
a new tune
“salvation” =God’s saving love
for all creation.
Question 1:What is the shape of the biblical narrative?
(A pre-critical question)
Hell
Salvation
History/
The world
Fall
HeavenEden
Hades
Atonement, purification
Aristotelian
Real
Fall
Into Aristotelian
Real
Platonic IdealPlatonic Ideal
Destruction, defeat
Civilization, development,
colonialism
assimilationBarbarian/ pagan world
Rebellion
into barbarism
Pax RomanaPax Romana
Is there an alternative understanding?
LiberationLiberation
ReconciliationReconciliation
CreationCreation
The ever-expanding story space of creation ...
LiberationLiberation
ReconciliationReconciliation
CreationCreation
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permission to dance to a new rhythm
The urgent rhythm of mission in a world facing -
- Environmental catastrophe
- Unprecedented privilege and inequality
- Social, religious, political tension - with unprecedented weapons.
- Breakdown in institutions, including religious ones
we don’t dance to celebrate being out of danger
we dance to survive the danger.
They dance and sing as we arrive.Dust rises ‘round us like rusty smoke.Our dancing crowd moves like a swarmUp the hill, through the village, to the center.Short men smile and clap their welcome.Women sway in tattered skirts.One old woman leaps and spins, Breasts flapping like out-turned pockets,Arms arcing out like wings.She dips, leans this way, that,Eyes wild and alive as a dare.Boys around me fuse like pistonsInto an engine of percussion. They jump and stomp, rise and fall,Feet in complex rhythms Beating the earth-drum with themselvesAs one.
We share the ecstasy of tribal and tribeless finding one anotherAfter a thousand centuries Apart.
Led by the hand, I stoop down, crawl sideways, fingerprinting red dust,Into a Batwa hut of sticks, vines, mud, grass.I, a visitor here, a stranger welcomed, strangely warm,Adjust to the dim and humane light: Reed mats, a torn mosquito net, dirt floor, three stones,A cooking pot and gray embers from the morning fire.I turn, push out, and squint, delivered back into stark midday sun.
QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
A baby cries in fear, Mine the first white face his eyes have ever seen.In light of what has happened, he is rightTo cry, In this, his sad world, and mine, of lightAnd dark.
These little people, small as splinters in the palm of Africa’s pain -Their poor neighbors despise them: smelly, dirty, poor, simple.They have too little water to drink, None to spare for washing.They sleep on dirt, in huts,On land they do not own.When it rains, they get wet.Unowned, they even lack the value of slaves.They do not count.In school, Tutsi and Hutu alike make fun,Reconciled in their shared disdain,And so Batwa seldom last more than a year or two In school,If that.
The chief, named No-Name by his parents, Gathers us beneath a kind of trellis.Speeches are made. People clap.Eyes meet eyes. Shy smiles form.Gifts exchange. My eyes brim.Somehow they know I am hereTo keep a promise and saveMy soul.
QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
They sing and dance again as we depart.For a while I join them stomping in the rising dust,Wishing I could stay.What are they singing? I ask.The translator by my side leans toward me:They are singing a good-bye song, he says.The Batwa sing and dance when guests arriveAnd when they leave.They sing and dance when they have food, he says,And when they hunger they sing and dance.They survive, he says,This way.
The rhythm and dance of mission ...
Joyful singing as defiance
Upraised hands as protest
Movement as resistance.
permission to dance with new partners
old silos
Imagine an emergence/convergence
- Progressive and post-Evangelicals
- Missional mainliners- Progressive Catholics- Activated Anabaptists
and peace churches- Ethnic churches
...organizing for collaborative action!
permission to dance with new freedom
new joy
improvisationin ecclesiology
liturgycatechesis
formationgovernance
ministry
permission to dance
to a new tune
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permission to dance to a new rhythm
permission to dance with new partners
permission to dance with new freedomnew joy
light fires
issue permission slips
light fires
issue permission slips
invite others into the interpretive
community
Interpreting what Christian faith will
mean, be, and do after the fall of
Christendom and its structures ...
What our faith will become ... what it can
be ... is not pre-determined. Our
choices will affect the outcome.
The kingdom of God is not a matter of food
and drink ...
The kingdom of God is not a matter of food
and drink ...
circumcision, holy days, priesthood, animal sacrifice, holy
temple, holy city, dietary laws, isolation from the other ...
The kingdom of God is not a matter of food
and drink ...
buildings, budgets
deficits, hierarchies
plans, pensions
The kingdom of God is not a matter of food
and drink ...
doctrinal disputes
power struggles
desperate attempts
buildings, budgets
deficits, hierarchies
plans, pensions
The kingdom of God is not a matter of food
and drink ...
doctrinal disputes
power struggles
desperate attempts
fear
playing it safe
running for cover
buildings, budgets
deficits, hierarchies
plans, pensions
The kingdom of God is not a matter of food
and drink ...
doctrinal disputes
power struggles
desperate attempts
fear
playing it safe
running for cover
buildings, budgets
deficits, hierarchies
plans, pensions
personal ambition
political games
trivial pursuits
The kingdom of God is not a matter of food
and drink ...
doctrinal disputes
power struggles
desperate attempts
fear
playing it safe
running for cover
personal ambition
political games
trivial pursuits
hostilityconflictanger
buildings, budgets
deficits, hierarchies
plans, pensions
The kingdom of God is not a matter of food
and drink ... but of justice
peace
and joy
in the Holy Spirit
light fires
issue permission slips
invite others into the interpretive
community
light fires
issue permission slips
invite others into the interpretive
communitybeg
innin
g with
yours
elf!