Festival of homiletics 2014 lecture

light fires

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

32

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

45

permission to dance to a new rhythm

permission to dance with new partners

permission to dance with new freedomnew joy

light fires


light fires


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 ...


and drink ...

circumcision, holy days, priesthood, animal sacrifice, holy

temple, holy city, dietary laws, isolation from the other ...


and drink ...

buildings, budgets

deficits, hierarchies

plans, pensions


and drink ...

doctrinal disputes

power struggles

desperate attempts

buildings, budgets


plans, pensions


and drink ...

doctrinal disputes

power struggles

desperate attempts

fear

playing it safe

running for cover

buildings, budgets


plans, pensions


and drink ...

doctrinal disputes

power struggles

desperate attempts

fear

playing it safe

running for cover

buildings, budgets


plans, pensions

personal ambition

political games

trivial pursuits


and drink ...

doctrinal disputes

power struggles

desperate attempts

fear

playing it safe

running for cover

personal ambition

political games

trivial pursuits

hostilityconflictanger

buildings, budgets


plans, pensions


and drink ... but of justice

peace

and joy

in the Holy Spirit

light fires



community

light fires



communitybeg

innin

g with

yours

elf!

Festival of homiletics 2014 lecture

Spiritual

Transcript of Festival of homiletics 2014 lecture