spirituality

Advent 2: “Peace” Group Video Chat

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The lessons focus on significant words of the season. They are arranged: 1. Hope, 2. Peace, 3. Joy, and 4. Love. However, feel free to arrange them according to the Advent practices of your congregation.

Prep

Imbed the two videos into your video conferencing software. Watch this video to learn how to share video on your Zoom call. Create three screens with the texts for Isaiah 9:2-7, 11:1-9; and Luke 2:8-14.

Getting Started

Welcome all guests. Conduct a brief time for introductions of new participants.

Briefly review the scope of the study and The Bible Project. Speak about expectations regarding group dynamics, such as honoring one another with respect. What video conferencing protocols do you need to agree on?

Offer an opening prayer.

Prompt discussion: When you hear the word “peace,” what comes to your mind? What feelings or memories are evoked?

Digging In

Introduce the video: “Peace” is a very common word in English. It means different things to different people. It’s also a very important word in the Bible that refers not only to the absence of conflict but also to the presence of something else. In this video, we’ll explore the core meaning of biblical peace and how it all leads to Jesus.

Watch the video.

Following the video, note key ideas such as the Hebrew word, “shalom,” and the Greek “eirene” meaning wholeness and completeness; Jesus gives us his peace; we are called to be people of peace. 

Invite participants to offer comments and observations on what they saw and drew. Discuss: “Shalom,” means “whole,” describing peace within oneself and peace between people. What is the connection between inner peace and outer peace? Can we have one without the other? How can we be people of peace without promoting compassion, justice, and unity?

Display the screen with Isaiah 9:2-7.

Introduce Isaiah 9:2-7. The covenant people are in exile in a foreign land, a condition the prophets said had resulted from their disobedience to God. Now, the prophet announces that God is extending peace and reconciliation to them through a new ruler. 

Invite volunteers to read Isaiah 9:2-7.

Discuss: What emotions do you detect in the reading? What does peace mean for the prophet? Why do you think the promise of a new leader evokes promises of peace? When have you felt that way about new leadership?

Display the screen with Isaiah 11:1-9 and ask volunteers to read aloud. What does the image of the peaceable kingdom mean to you? How does this passage express peace as the absence of conflict and the presence of connection and completion? What steps have you taken this week to make the world a more peaceful place?

Introduce the Vulcan hand greeting by watching the video below:

Practice making the Vulcan greeting with words of peace. Wonder together how such a greeting can be one of the tools for making peace. If your congregation passes the peace during worship, talk about ways to live out that greeting.

Concluding Options

1. Discuss: Where in your life do you experience connection and a sense of completion? What factors contribute to your peace? What hampers your sense of peace? How can you make peace in such circumstances?

2. Discuss where peace needs to be restored in your life and in your community. List your answers as a petition to God. Circle one thing on the list. Prayerfully consider what practical steps you or your community can take to bring connection and completion to that one fragmented place.

3. Display the screen with Luke 2:8-14 and ask volunteers to read aloud. Wonder together why the angels announce peace to the world at Jesus’ birth. How does Jesus connect you with God’s peace? What is it like to have peace with God?

4. Play and sing along to Cat Steven’s Peace Train.

Prayer

God of peace, you have promised the end of conflict on earth, yet the world is still at war. Give us the resolve to be people of peace wherever we are and with whomever we meet. This we pray in the name of Jesus christ, the prince of peace. Amen.

Sunday school, Yes or No?

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I’ve been thinking about the problem of Sunday school as two related yet distinct realities.

It seems to me that the original Sunday school was more of a tutoring strategy than a school as we imagine it. It was a wonderful strategy for teaching street children and others how to read (the Bible). Poor children who worked six days a week could not attend day school, so Methodists created SS.

Over against the SS as a strategy is the so-called schooling model. The first half of the 20th century saw the church’s dedication to the schooling model, including teacher professionalization/certification, school accreditation, parent commitments, and so on. With a nod to the scientific method, churches adopted the broad contours of the schooling model without full-on adopting the model. In other words, the 20th century Sunday school was never a school. The burgeoning SS classrooms of post-WW II had little to do with progressive trends in education being adopted by the church. Yet today, many SS persist with little consideration of the latest advances in childhood education, with so many seeking resources for entertaining their children instead.

So as a model, the Sunday school is dead for the most part. Where the Sunday school persists, it either exists in large churches whose budgets and volunteers still prop it up or as a strategy that hearkens back to its earliest days. Some churches have found clues for the SS strategy’s fruitfulness from its early days, namely teaching children how to read. Literacy, cultural literacy, reading the times, and practicing ways to respond motivate the SS strategy. 

How might recovering the SS as strategy, tutoring children and others how to read—how to read their lives, the world, and the Scriptures—affect the church and its prophetic call?

Choose Joy and Love

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“Live in joy and in love, even among those who hate.” – The Buddha

The Buddha’s words are a challenge and a goal. In a world that seems full of discord, where people prey upon our fears and hatred is sensationalized, it is difficult to remain joyful and loving. But it is not impossible. We can choose to practice joy and love every day. We can choose to respond to others in joy and love, even when they choose hatred.

Choose Joy!

Joy is more than being happy or always up. Joy is an internal sense of well-being and hope. Even when life is difficult, you can still find joy in life. If you are feeling joyless, take steps to bring joy back into your heart.

  1. Begin and end each day with gratitude and a renewed commitment to look for joy.
  2. Surround yourself with people who make you happy.
  3. Choose experiences and activities that bring you joy.
  4. Smile and laugh out loud.
  5. Watch a cute or funny video or program.
  6. Listen to music and dance.
  7. Go outside and enjoy the natural world.

Choose Love!

To love someone is to honor them as a person of value. There are many kinds of love. For instance, the love we have for a significant other is different than the love we feel for our parents or children. What does it mean to love all humanity, even those who hate? Jesus said, “Love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.” We can choose to show kindness to all people and consider their humanity.

  1. Pray for the people with whom you disagree or who treat you badly.
  2. Debate the issues and refrain from attacking the person.
  3. Spend as little time as possible with people who are not kind to you or who give you negative energy. Do not give up on showing them compassion and respect.
  4. Spend more time with the people who love you.
  5. Say “thank you” when someone does something nice for you.
  6. Show compassion and give support to people in need.
  7. Forgive and graciously accept forgiveness.

If you want to know more about living into joy and love, contact me. I can help you!

Immersion or Sprinkling?

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One of the questions at baptism: immersion or sprinkling? For some people, immersion is desired because of the symbolism of being buried in a death like Christ’s. For others, sprinkling is the chosen mode because God’s grace is sufficient, regardless of the amount of water used.

It’s also an important question for your Christian formation efforts. What’s preferred? An immersion into the life of faith? Or a sprinkling, a little bit of this and a little bit of that of the faith?

I can hear it now: with the busy-ness of families today, the best we can hope for is a sprinkling. So we’ll keep on doing what we’ve always done, even though church members only appear at the church door once a month or less.

Sprinkling is the problem for most churches. It’s resulted in shrinking rosters, disconnected generations, alienated families, and the opinion that church is just another option for our consideration. It’s like being vaccinated; we innoculate people against the church by giving them a little bit of church. No depth, no breadth of practicing the way of life Jesus calls us to.

Let’s imagine immersion: Choose an event in the life of the church. The baptism of a new Christian, for example. Decide that for five weeks, you will prepare the congregation to receive the new member into the life of the church through an immersive event.

Identify the date, the Scripture for the day (maybe Ephesians 2:1-10), and select a key verse (v. 8: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God). Next, count back four Sundays. Imagine an event or series of events that immerses your congregation, all ages, in baptism through the key verse. You’ll need a team of helpers and a space. You’ll need water, blue fabric to simulate water, water music (Handel?), a baptism hymn, white fabric to make stoles with baptism designs, and so on. You’ll need a catchy way to memorize the key verse, repeated every week, and included in the worship service as a call to worship or affirmation of faith. You’ll need construction paper and envelopes to make welcome to the church family cards for the newly baptized. You’ll need willing people to tell their baptism stories and openly reflect on the meaning of being saved by grace through faith, a gift of God. You’ll need to display all creations in a well-traveled route in your building, prepare members of the congregation, young and old, to read, sing, and participate in the worship services.

For four Sundays, you welcome all ages into the space with an invitation to be immersed in a significant teaching of the church, to practice living what it means to be baptized and belong to the church, to exercise the memory muscles of the congregation so that the words and hymns of the faith become part of who you are.

Then, on the day of baptism, celebration! The whole congregation rejoicing with the newly baptized. Words of promise, words of hope delivered in sermon, hymns, and greeting cards. Does it require planning? Yes. Effort? Yes. Collaboration and cooperation? Yes and yes. But what a payoff!!!!

Your congregation will never forget baptism or that time they practiced hospitality and radical welcome. That’s how immersion can change your church! Give it a try! And let me know how it goes.

Living While Aware

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What if the spiritual life was merely life, a life lived in awareness? Thomas Merton once said, “Before you can have a spiritual life, you’ve got to have a life.” Being spiritual is not about disengaging from daily living. It is more about engaging fully.

In his book, On the Brink of Everything, Parker Palmer writes, “The spiritual journey is an endless process of engaging life as it is, stripping away our illusions about ourselves, our world, and the relationship of the two, moving closer to reality as we do.”

When we notice our world, people around us and our own being, we are practicing the spiritual life. The Spirit engages us in our moments of awareness. When we get too busy, too caught up in just moving from one activity to another, when we pass others by without a glance, we lose the ability to hear and see – to notice.

Thomas Merton’s story of his epiphany is an excellent example of living while aware.

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.…

“Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time…. But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.” (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander)

Those of us who aspire to live spiritual lives push ourselves to do spiritual practices. In a society where activity is more valuable than being, we criticize ourselves for not spending more time with God—reading sacred texts, praying, meditating, and so on. I am not suggesting that these things are unimportant. On the contrary, research shows that these downtime activities are healthy. However, when we stress over them and berate ourselves for not doing them enough, we lose the benefits (spiritual and physical).

Perhaps the best practice is simply living while aware. We are always doing something, even if we are just sitting. We are breathing—how often do we take notice of our breathing and give thanks for the air that gives us life? When we are out in the world, do we notice—really notice— the people around us? Do we see them as Merton describes them, “walking around shining like the sun?” When we look in the mirror, do we see in ourselves the image of God?

Living while aware opens us up to the mystery and sacredness of everything.