Handouts

Poetry - Winter 2010

Preaching Hope - Winter 2010
 

Fall 2009

Fall 2009 we alternated Tuesday evenings discussing English Poetry and the Lectionary Readings for the coming Sunday.

Our aim for the later was to examine the continuity among the lectionary readings and discuss them individually in light of their original context and occasional semantic ambiguities in translation.

Tuesday evenings
7 pm, SMM hall

 
 

Lent 2009

For this Lenten Series we discussed Lectio Divina, using as our guide the book: Praying the Bible: An Introduction to Lectio Divina, by Mariano Magrassi.

Lectio Divina is a preparation for hearing the Word in worship and a personal continuation of that listening.

It is a private, daily two-way exchange between the believer and her God, a heart-to-heart talk in which the God speaks to the reader through Scripture and she answers Him in prayer.

And it is slow, patient and prayerful reading in which you ruminate on the text as if receiving an inward spiritual grace of the Word from the outward and visible signs on the page, and hear God’s Word of love for you.

Tuesday evenings
7 pm, SMM hall

 
 

Adult Education

 

Winter 2010

 

English Poetry

by Patty Sears

In the season of Advent, as we anticipated the birth of the Incarnate Word, I was reminded that Christians have a powerful relationship with spoken and written language, one of the primary ways in which God has chosen to reveal himself to us. We are, as David Jeffrey and others have noted, "People of the Book."

This fall, our parish Adult Education series has included bi-weekly discussions on Christian poetry (see downloads page for links to these past evenings' material).

I began the series with a talk on medieval manuscripts, focusing especially on The Book of Kells and The Winchester Bible. We then moved on to poetry proper, with Anglo-Saxon poems "A Dream of the Rood," "The Wanderer," and "The Seafarer." A romp through Dante's Inferno was followed by a couple of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. On December 15th (7 p.m. at St. Mary's) we will have a lot of fun with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; all are welcome, even if you do not manage to read ahead of time.

We will re-start in the New Year with such authors as Milton, Herbert, Donne, Wesley, Blake, Hardy, and Hopkins, as well as some contemporary poets. You are welcome to attend one or several of the discussions.

Handouts

 

Preaching from Memory to Hope

by Robert Sears

In January we will discuss Thomas (Tom) Long's Preaching from Memory to Hope (ISBN-13: 978-0-664-23422-5). Tom Long was this year's speaker at the clergy conference. He is also an important voice and long-time advocate of narrative preaching. His view is that "to be human is to live a story; to be an ethical human is to be gathered up into a good story" (p. 11).

His book will not only continue our exploration of the Christian story; it also continues to balance the academic and critical with the religious and confessional. What will be very interesting is that we will not only cover essentially what diocesan clergy heard this Fall, but we will also look at what Long, a seasoned professor and renowned American preacher, has to say about some of the latest challenges to living and proclaiming the Christian story

Alternating Tuesday evenings at St. Mary Magdalene

Outline

  1. Jan 19 - Narrative Preaching (p. 1-7)
    • A Short History of Homiletics
    • A contemporary crisis?
    • The past crisis (1950s) and Narrative Preaching.
  2. Feb 2 - Critics of Narrative Preaching (pp. 7-26)
    • Outline of contemporary criticisms of Narrative preaching from the:
      • Theological Right
      • Theological Left
      • Theological Middle
      • Philosophy
    • A look at narrative preaching revised
  3. Feb 16 - No Class because Rev. Robert away
  4. Mar 2 - A Secular Age (pp. 27-41)
    • Secularism defined
    • Contemporary ways of responding to the holy mystery of God discussed
    • Enlightenment and Religious Belief
      • The relationship between Faith and Reason
    • Secularism as losing our mother tongue (religious language)
  5. Mar 16 - Narrative Interpretation of the Bible (pp. 41-53)
    • A Survey of Theories of Interpretation
    • Narrative interpretation of the Bible Eg. Paul Ricoeur
  6. Mar 30 - Suspicions and Conspiracy Theories (pp. 55-64)
    • Sampling of competing ideas and ways of thinking about spirituality
  7. Apr 6 - No Class because of Holy Week
  8. Apr 20 - The Contemporary Gnostic Impulse (pp. 64-78)
    • A prominent contemporary movement
    • Outlining its four main themes:
      • Humanity is saved by gnosis
      • Dislike of incarnation and embodiment
      • Focus on inner self, the “divine spark” within
      • A dislike of embodiment and incarnation, and
      • Emphasis on present spiritual reality rather than eschatological hope
  9. May 4 - Spiritual Climate Change (pp. 79-87)
    • Seven beliefs that characterize the contemporary spiritual climate
  10. May 18 - Liberalism, Orthodoxy, and Gnosticism (pp. 87-106)
    • Three trajectories in theology
    • Discussion of Marcus Borg and the Gnostic Impulse
  11. May 25 - Preaching to Neo-gnostics (pp. 106-110, 125-132)
    • Preaching like inter-faith dialogue and cultural engagement
    • Preaching eschatology, providence and hope, not progress, ignorance, and predictions

 

Fall 2009

Why Study the Bible?

When the penny drops, the Bible suddenly becomes three-dimensional rather than a flat, uniform surface. - John Barton

In 2004 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, wrote a book entitled, Why Study the Past? Williams argues that history is a set of stories we tell in order to better understand our world and ourselves. For many history is, at best, a foreign country, but Williams argues that it is our story, our country. The more we know about our history, the more we understand about ourselves and the world we live in.

Then in a boldness seldom tolerated except from academics and Archbishops, Williams writes: "As I shall be saying more than once, traditionalists sometimes miss the point because they don't expect to be surprised by the past; progressives miss the point because they don't expect to be interested or questioned by it" (p. 3).

Of course, Williams is talking specifically about Christian history, and he encourages people to look at Christian history expecting to be surprised and questioned.

For adult education this Fall we have run two concurrent programmes on alternating Tuesdays. One week we are studying the lectionary readings for the coming week and the other we are looking at different periods of English Christian poetry from the Medieval period forward. I have led the former and Patty, my wife, has led the latter.

Williams' approach to Christian history is illustrative for adult education: Why study the Bible? Why study English poetry? Some may not expect to be surprised or challenged by either, but both can teach us a great deal about ourselves and our world. Both are exciting, foreign, and somewhat exotic countries in which we are free to travel. Our baptism is our passport. When we take the time to explore our country, we learn so many interesting things and we find a great deal of our selves reflected there.

The Christian's story is written in many forms, e.g. history, scripture and literature. Those who know the story know themselves and the Christian world. But with all due respect to G.K. Chesterton, the journey into the Christian story is not a fairy tale. We take with us the eyes and tools of the critic: the historian, the literary critic, and - for want of a better word - the philosopher.

The theologian Henri DeLubac captures well our struggle with the Christian story. It is a balance of the critical and religious. We hold both attitudes and they temper one another.

In the face of documents taking us back to the origins of our Faith, two attitudes confront one another, equally indispensable. The critic must always be afraid of overcharging the texts, of 'making them say more than they do', of letting himself be affected unintentionally by all that has been subsequently got out of them. The religious man, on the other hand, dreads not understanding them in their fullness. The former must shun what is arbitrary; the latter does not want to stay on the surface (Paradoxes of Faith, pp 107f).

In January we will continue with adult education. Patty will continue travelling through the periods of English poetry. I plan to discuss Thomas (Tom) Long's Preaching from Memory to Hope (ISBN-13: 978-0-664-23422-5). Tom Long was this year's speaker at the clergy conference. He is also an important voice and long-time advocate of narrative preaching. His view is that "to be human is to live a story; to be an ethical human is to be gathered up into a good story" (p. 11).

His book will not only continue our exploration of the Christian story; it also continues to balance the academic and critical with the religious and confessional. What will be very interesting is that we will not only cover essentially what diocesan clergy heard this Fall, but we will also look at what Long, a seasoned professor and renowned American preacher, has to say about some of the latest challenges to living and proclaiming the Christian story.

Rev. Robert

 

 

 

 
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