It has been fun and inspiring assembling this great group of contributors for The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Today we conclude our week of reflections with a double shot. Our two writers are friends of mine whom I knew at different stages in my life.
Jared Taylor was one of my best friends in elementary school, through to high school. Over the years we shared a love of many diverse things: David Letterman, Sega, and the sadly underrated band King's X. Asking him to participate in this project was the first time I had communicated with him in several years. It was great to rekindle the friendship.
I met Micol Cottrell while attending the University of Waterloo in the Religious Studies program. We had many classes together (some of them way over our heads!). We shared countless meals together: at Mel's Diner, UW's Ground Zero (which was always supposedly struggling, yet always full), and Philthy McNasty's after 19th century theology. It is great to see him flourishing in his ministry.
-Matthew Kieswetter
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Sirach 39:1-10
The moment came that I knew was going to be powerful. The Communion liturgy began. I sat down on the long grass that was more used to horse racing than worship. As we joined in the words printed in the order of service I looked around at the over 12 000 people sitting in circles of six to ten people. It was awe inspiring to be part of such a large worshiping congregation. Then I looked around at the people in my group: my wife, a friend and her child, and three strangers. There was the wonderful intimacy communion can often foster. In our circles we broke bread, poured wine and juice, and shared in this ancient meal. Words from different traditions and in different accents were spoken. Young and elder and people of different denominations joined together in a deeply sacred moment.
This past summer I went on a pilgrimage to the Greenbelt festival in England. It’s worth looking up: http://www.greenbelt.org.uk/ Greenbelt is a 40-year old annual arts, faith, and justice Christian festival. It attracts over 20 000 participants, involves over 1 500 volunteers, and hundreds of presenters. At the festival there are dozens of events happening at any one time from early morning into the late evening. Musicians are playing, speakers are talking about theology, social justice, church policies, interfaith dialogue, different style of worship are happening, and so much more. The festival attracts people of all ages, from a wide range of denominations and those without denominations or churches. At one point during a multi-sensory High Anglican Eucharist service mixed with rock music my wife pointed out a middle aged nun in full habit bouncing around as she sang an Aerosmith song beside a teenager with green spiked hair. The festival draws together a wide range of people each delving into their faith, searching, exploring, and sharing community with one another.
It was the openness, searching, and sharing that has really stuck with me. What makes Greenbelt possible is people sharing where their passion and their chasing the Spirit is leading them. For some it was in doing social justice, others it was being musicians, others it was creating post-modern forms of worship. There was an explorer’s edge to the festival that drew people together.
That sense of exploring and chasing passion and the Spirit is what is at root in today’s reading from Sirach. The one who devotes herself to the study of the law, we are told, will seek the wisdom of the ancients and the wisdom of prophecies – that’s wisdom past and wisdom present. He will listen to the wise and the challenging. She will seek the hidden and obscure. He will travel in this quest and seek the God who made him.
Our faith often personifies wisdom as something fluid and vibrant, life-giving and life-altering. Wisdom is a wild woman yelling out in the market (Prov. 1:20). The Iona community in Scotland uses the wonderful image of the wild goose to describe the Spirit/Wisdom. We can grapple with Wisdom like Jacob grappled with God, we can grow in Wisdom, but we can never control Wisdom.
At the core of Greenbelt was the post-modern faith’s assertion that faith isn’t about getting all the answers right but about journeying with God, chasing passions and the Spirit. At the festival I was reminded of the powerful experience that happens when we are open to one another, our beliefs, our passions, our expressions of worship and faith. There were things said in talks that I didn’t agree with, and worship elements that I didn’t find engaging. But I was moved by experiencing and exploring what is meaningful, grace-filled, and holy for other people. I was invited to be open, to seek Wisdom and the Wild Goose like movement of the Divine.
That openness to the Spirit, to wild wonderful Wisdom, is what is at heart in the World Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. When we dare to go beyond our own comforts and traditions, our own beliefs and circles, we can experience the ungraspable Holy Wisdom that refuses to be bound in one place – that Holiness that inspires us, challenges us, and leads us into deeper relationship with God and with one another. When we come together Holy things happen. So whether your faith wears a habit or spiky green hair, whether you want to sing Aerosmith and U2 in worship or Amazing Grace may God bless us in the quest of chasing after Wisdom, in being challenged, opened, inspired, and led by the Divine. May God draw us together to share and grow because God is in the journey and the relationship.
God bless,
Rev. Micol Cottrell
Micol Cottrell is minister of Allenford and Park Head United Churcheshttp://www.greenbelt.org.uk/
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John 4:27-42
The Woman at the Well: the Sequel (John 4:27-42)
So who’s in and who’s out? That’s the important question, isn’t it? If I’m the one who has everything right, how much deviation from my own beliefs and practices do I tolerate before I write people off as destined for eternal destruction?
Of course, I’m referring about the attitude of Jesus’ disciples, not my own. (right?)
The Woman at the Well: Part I is a very personal encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman. From the Jewish perspective, the Samaritans were way off base. They were a deviation from Israel that went back more than a thousand years. They had intermarried. They had worshipped foreign idols. Their scriptures were incorrect. They worshipped on Mt. Gerizim instead of Mt. Zion. Generations of ingrained ethnic and religious hatred is summarized in one understated sentence fragment: “for Jews do not associate with Samaritans.” (v.9)
In Part II – today’s reading – the woman returns to her town and tells of her encounter with Jesus. Her message, found in verse 29, is simple but telling,
“Come, see a man who corrected my improper theology and religious practice. We should behave more like the Jews in order to find God’s favour.”
Okay, that wasn’t her message. (Although - interesting side note - Jesus does speak of theology and side with the Jews on the issue of the origin of salvation.) But here’s the real message she takes with her:
“Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”
The woman’s message is personal and it inspires action (“Come!). Both are points worth exploring. But what should stand out most is that the message is about Jesus. We can go one step further in this case and say the message IS Jesus. Literally. In the flesh. Come meet Jesus!
You cheated on your husband? Jesus.
Your scriptures are wrong? Jesus.
You worship the wrong way? Jesus.
You hate your ethnic enemy? Jesus.
The only starting point for any of these discussions is Jesus.
As usual, Jesus disciples’ are in for a lesson. They were “surprised” when they saw Jesus talking to a Samaritan woman. No doubt, her gender and ethnicity generated equal offense. But Jesus, being Jesus, has a profound message for them:
“’My food,’ said Jesus, ‘is to do the work of the one who sent me and to finish his work … open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.’” (v. 34-35)
Wait – “finish the work of the one who sent me”? Are we talking about the Samaritans here? God can’t have been at work among the Samaritans. They worship on the wrong mountain! Their scriptures are wrong! God loves us, we hate them, therefore God must hate them too! If any field is “ripe for the harvest” it’s the Jews, not the Samaritans.
But our story doesn’t leave even a moment for the disciples utter a reaction because, sure enough, Samaritans coming back to the well in numbers to meet Jesus and bring him back to their town. “And because of his words many more became believers.” (v. 41)
Jesus’ reaping and sowing pep talk was both an immediate prediction about the Samaritans, and a grand revelation about God’s work and plan. This gospel, so powerful it would soon spread around the planet, took a short test drive to the next town over. And Jesus’ own disciples were surprised.
Where would it surprise me to find out God has been at work? Who is the most unlikely group of people? The surprising message of the gospel is that God has already been at work there.
Compared to any other religion or people group, Samaritans were the closest to Jews in belief, practice, even geography. This story should remind us that we have a fallen tendency to hold the most enmity for people who are the most like us. It’s fun to debate the differences between Roman Catholic and Orthodox, charismatic and cessationist, Calivinist and Arminian, Baptist and Anabaptist; but may we never forget that, no matter how big the issue, the only starting point for any of our discussions is Jesus.
-Jared Taylor
Jared Taylor is the Pastor who looks after weekend services at The Meeting House, a Brethren in Christ church with locations around Ontario. He also blogs about church music and production at Amplify.
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