One in four of my church members have been to one of our new prayer meetings.  I think that is excellent.  In fact, I think that most ministers would drool at the possibility.  Unfortunately I had to kick today's lot out early as I had a crisis phone call half way through lunch, but even so, it was a good experience.

On Saturday we were served a breakfast of warm croissants, orange juice and fresh coffee, while we chatted for half an hour before we prayed around fellowship topics.  Today we prayed for half an hour and then dined on enough 'bring and share' food for a small army; thankfully I had made a cauldron of soup, otherwise there would have been one disgruntled punter!

One or two other people have expressed an interest but couldn't make it, so we could be up to almost a third of the church soon...

Obviously we have to see if we sustain the momentum or if these go the way of the more traditional church prayer meeting.  I hope not, because as time goes on I get more convinced that it is when we share time and food together that prayer emerges, not that when we pray the result is fellowship.  There is big, tough stuff for this little church to deal with this year and we need to be there for each other in it.  Whether that should mean filling the minister's freezer with left over sausage rolls ready for next time, I'm not so sure, but to share and care leading to prayer - yes, that sounds good to me.

In a paper I was reading this morning, which turned out to be not a lot of use, I found this quotation from Karl Barth...

Paul sets out from the very place where the pentient Judas had tried to turn back and reverse what had already happened.  He begins by doing what to Judas' horror the high priests and elders had done as the second links in the chain of evil.  He fulfills the handing-over of Jesus to the Gentiles: not this time in unfaithfulness, but in faithfulness to Israel's calling and mission; not now aiming at the slaying of Jesus, but at establishing in the whole world the lordship of this One who was slain but is risen.  Judas... begins the true story of the apsotles in the sense of Mt. 28:19, the genuine handing-over of Jesus to the Gentiles.

Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol 2 Pt 2 p 478

 

This intrigues me - and takes my mind off what I'm meant to be thinking about, but never mind.

Matthew certainly has a repentent Judas (Matt 27:4) whilst Luke does not (Acts 1:18-19); yet while Luke has spontaneous eruption of guts, Matthew requires suicide by hanging to invoke divine curse (Deut 21:23).  Matthew's potter's field becomes a burial place for foreigners (Gentiles), Luke's is simply the Field of Blood.  In historicity we have a mismatch that is not easily reconciled, needing either an unrepentent Judas or a hanging to keep him under curse.  Whether curse = eternal damnation I don't feel qualified to judge, though that is the understanding I've been taught through the years in respect of Judas.

I don't quite know why I have a soft spot for Judas, and I don't know quite why I keep trying to find a loop hole for him.  Perhaps it is because I know that there have been times when I've behaved not a million miles differently from him.  Perhaps it is because I've always intuitively believed in general, not particular, atonement.  Perhaps it is my secret yen for God to be a universalist even if I'm not.  Or perhaps I'm just an incorrigble heretic.

Whatever the truth may be, I find Barth's perspective intereting.

After being entertained by the responses to one word in my last post - which I dare not repeat, even in quotation marks and with formal Chicago 15th B referencing, for fear of the wrath of Sean ( ;-) ) - I began thinking of the words, phrases and grammatical inaccuracies that really niggle me and wondering what does the same for other people.

Two words which really irritate me are 'methodology,' used when the intent is 'method' rather than its correct usage as 'the study of method,' and 'problematise' (or 'problematize' more often because we absolutely must use American spellings at every opportunity) which seems to be used pretty loosely to mean anything from critique to analyse to trying-to-sound-impressive-when-i-don't-quite-know-what-to-say.

I'm not keen on 'unpack' used when someone means 'could you explain that to me in more detail' and never really got to grips with using 'over against' which seems to be theological speak for 'as opposed to' or 'in contrast with.'

More generally I get annoyed with people saying 'different to' when correct English is 'different from' and 'similar to' and when people merrily interchange colons, semi-colons, commas and full stops saying "I never really know which to use."  Simple.  Use short sentences!  Or, simple: use short sentences. Or, simply use short sentences.  You get my drift!

I am told that it is now acceptable to boldly split infinitives; quite how one 'boldies' in a splitting manner, I have yet to grasp, and I continue to be irritated by said practice.

Some colloquial idiosyncracies that grate include double negatives, as in "I ain't got none" (ergo you must have some), the use of 'them' when the correct word would be 'those,' as in "them chairs" when it should be "those chairs," and adjectival poverty, such as the midlands use of 'nice' and Warrington use of 'gorgeous' for anything positive (or, worse, in the negative 'not gorgeous' - as I once heard said to a misbehaving child, "that behaviour is really not gorgeous.") .

But top of the irritants has to be the north west, and especially Warringtonian/Mancunian confusion of the words 'lend' and 'borrow' - expressions such as "can I lend your book?" or "I borrowed you my pen."  The correct answer to "can I lend your book?" would, presumably, be "to whom do you wish to lend it?" As for borrowing someone my possessions, that is just plain nonsense!

Anyone want to add what annoys them?

By default, this is becoming a new modus operandum for 2008.  I have a number of women who work part time or are younger retired, and a number of others who are currently off work with long term medical conditions.  The former have cars, time and flexibility, the latter have empty days, cabin fever and lots of anxiety.  So, the plan is simple - get a car load of them, find a cheap cafe or a pub with a good lunchtime deal and take them out.  No holy holy stuff, just practical caring (I just remembered I didn't say grace today, oh how evil a minister I am!  Not.).

I also from time to time do home communions, always taking someone with me because it is the church (fellowship) not the minister who. theologically, does this.  Yesterday the person I was visiting invited me for lunch, which was, afterall, far more communion than a bit of crumbly bread and a sip of juice.  We chatted about this and that, and support and love were shared.

What I hope, as I build and extend this model a bit, drawing in those for whom an evening meal or a weekend brunch might be better, is that rather than building little cliques, people will begin to do the same for each other, building relationships and growing in community.

I have never liked the cup of tea with the old lady model of pastoral visiting, which feels artificial and unhelpful.  The host, on their best behaviour gets out the china cup for the 'vicar' and after the designated 30/60minutes including a prayer of the 'we four and no more variety', the vicar leaves.  Whilst I do appreciate that good pastoral relationships can be built from regular, cyclic visitation, I was never, ever, visited by a minister, and it isn't something that I find in my gifting.  But getting groups of folk - 2's and 3's - to talk and encourage each other on an ad hoc basis, seems to me a workable middle course.

Of course this could prove disastrous for my waistline, such as it is, but it seems a good cause... 

The title of a paper I found, written by E Harris Harbison and published in Church History in 1952 which sounds as if it pulls together some of my ideas and questions.

The writer described a similar situation to the one in the Gilkey paper I posted on yesterday, then goes on to consider what this might mean for the writing of history.

He begins thus...

If we ask what effect all this has had upon the actual writing of history, upon those who make their living by historical teaching and research, or what effect it may be expected to have upon them in the visible future, the answer may simply be "none."  The ordinary professional historian is usually a practicing positivist.  If he has a philosophy of history, he feels uneasy about it, particularly in the presence of his colleagues.  Carl Becker once wrote that he would "not willingly charge a reputable historian with a Philosophy of History" - and a Theology of History would probably be an even an more heinous charge.  But historians are remarkably sensitive to what goes on across academic fences.  At one time or another they have owed much, both in the way of conceptual framework and of methodology, to Renaissance Humanism, Newtonian physics, Darwinian biology, Freudian psychology, and recently, the social sciences.  It is not beyond possibility that they may be influenced sooner or later by what transpires from the camp of theologians.

Church History Vol 21, No 2, Jun 1952 p102-3

 

He then offers four effects which he perceives as 'already becoming clear'

1. A new interest in the history of the Christian understanding of history
2. New insights into the history of Christian thought and institutions
3. A more sympathtic approach to the treatment of Christianity by secular historians
4. An increasing tendency by Christian historians to make their Christian presuppositions more explicit

Half a century later, I wonder what he would say about these ideas.

My recent reading on Bibilical hermeneutics (Murray Rae) suggested use of theological categories for interpretting history.  This idea - which was intriguing - seemed to be presented as novel, yet reading papers published 25-50 years ago, it is all already there.  I am not sure that an interest in the 'history of Christian understandings of history' is all that well established, let alone that there is all that much recent work (though obviously I'd need to check that out).  There is some interest, for sure, but not loads.

I'm not totally sure what he means by item 2, but it seems to suggest studies in the theologies of the great and good - Luther is given as an example.  Certainly there is always this kind of thing going on, and the Paternoster series of Studies in Baptist History and Thought in name as a minimum, and I'm sure more so in fact, fits this category.

Item three, I don't feel qualified to comment upon, though a recent conversation with a practising Christian Church Historian and theologian elicited a comment to this effect.  It will be interesting for those alive a century from now to see how sympathetic or otherwise historians are in recording events early this century, espceically where religious fundamentalism is involved...

Lastly, I am far from convinced that his fourth suggestion is evident in the Baptist history I read, or certainly not in the sense of an evident eschatalogical viewpoint or use of theological language or concepts. 

The paper ends with these sentences...

Whether [a Christian understanding of the 'meaning of history'] will appreciably affect the writing of history in the next generation may depend upon the turn taken by world events.  A tragic turn will almost certainly increase the numbers of those members of the historical profession who seek the meaning of tragedy in the Christian understanding of history

op cit page 106

 

Post 9/11 and 7/7, post Rwanda, post tsunami, post the African AIDS pandemic... how much tragedy does it need?  And would it now be a Christian 'meaning of history' that would be adopted?  And if so would that be a western Christian view?  I guess Harbison could not have conceived the multi-cultural, pluralist, post-everything situation of the early 21st century.  I am not convinced that, beyond a few 'narrow shallows' who see all tragedy as 'signs of the end times' (or, in the fictional world of Messiah, create tragedy to endeavour to hasten the end) that this is so.

So, overall, I am none the wiser on 'how' to write history that is more helpfully, overtly theological, only aware that there is a long line of others who think/thought it ought to be feasible!