Twelve Hymns Project: What is this place

Text: 1 Cor 3:16

Every fall we have an Inquirers Sunday school class.  It’s open to anyone, but geared for adults new to the congregation.  It’s basically an overview of how Mennonites approach Christian faith, plus an introduction to how this congregation does church together.

Most years I use HWB 1, What is this place, as an opening meditation for one of the sessions.  I suppose I could make these newcomers sight read it to see if they can handle the harmonies, but it’s a test I myself would fail, and is likely not a seeker friendly approach.  We do hope some of these folks stick around.  So we look at the words.  We read them through, we talk about how they reflect our theology.

“What is this place, where we are meeting, only a house, the earth its floor, walls and a roof, sheltering people, windows for light, an open door.  Yet it becomes a body that lives when we are gathered here, and know our God is near.”

The hymn poses a question that it proceeds to answer.  What is this place?  The response de-emphasizes the role of the building as the church.  Followed by an emphasis on what makes the church what it is – people, gathered, who give their attention to the nearness of God.

When Paul wrote to the Corinthians saying “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirits dwells in you?” all of those “you’s” were plural.  All of the depth of meaning packed into the temple, Paul taught, was embodied in the gathered community.  The Spirit dwells in our relationships.  This place is a meeting house for the church, for you plural.

We’ve been looking at the stories behind the hymns we’ve chosen as our top 12.  But the…

Twelve Hymns Project: When peace like a river

Text: Job 29:1-5; 30:16-20

In May of 1373 Julian of Norwich was deathly ill.  Close enough to death that she was given last rites.  No one knows what Julian’s birth name was.  She was an anchoress, meaning she had anchored herself, stationed herself, within a small church cell, itself attached to the larger building, like a barnacle on a rock, or a ship.  This was common in the late Middle Ages.  She had chosen a solitary life of prayer and contemplation, committed to staying in that particular place.  It was a tiny world spent mostly inside the anchorhold, food and water handed in through a window.  But it held a promise of opening one’s mind and soul to the vast expanse of Divine reality.  This is the life Julian had chosen, or the life that had chosen her.

Her cell was attached to the Church of St. Julian, which is where she likely got her name.  The church was in Norwich, England.  Julian of Norwich.

Along with her physical ailments, Julian had been overwhelmed to despair by sin.  It consumed her thoughts.  She felt so deeply about this, she wrote there was no harder hell than sin.  That sin itself was hell, inflicting its own awful suffering.

She was 30 years old, and deathly ill.  While receiving last rites, the priest’s crucifix raised above her, Julian experienced a series of visions lasting several hours.   During this time, she felt engulfed in the love of God.  Just immersed in love.  She saw a vision of Jesus saying to her the words she became most remembered for.  Jesus said to Julian, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

It was an overpowering mystical experience that stayed with her the…

Twelve Hymns Project: My life flows on

Texts: Psalm 46; 2 Corinthians 5:16-6:2

Sacrament

Back in the fourth century the great North African theologian Augustine wrote that a sacrament is “an outward sign of an inward grace.”  It’s a phrase that stuck.  Many Christian denominations still use this as a definition for sacrament.  An outward sign of an inward grace.

Through the centuries the Western Church developed the rituals and meaning of sacraments, eventually recognizing seven: Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist or Communion, Reconciliation or Confession, Anointing the Sick, Marriage, and Holy Orders or Ordination.  These signs are outward.  They are enacted, spoken, even tasted.  They involve material reality: water, oil, bread and wine, bodies.  Through these things, one experiences the Presence of God, an inward grace.  Eventually the church taught that although not everyone had to receive every sacrament, the sacraments were necessary for salvation.

It’s quite a thing for an institution, and its leaders, to hold the means of salvation.  To be the access point for experiencing the grace of God.  That’s a lot of power.

During the 16th century various Anabaptists questioned and ultimately rejected this notion of salvation and the sacraments.  They still practiced many of them, but debated whether they were “ceremonies,” “witnesses,” or “mere symbols.”  The Anabaptists emphasized the life of the Spirit rather than the authority of the institution.  The broader Protestant idea of the priesthood of all believers taught that one need not go through an ordained priest in order to have access to God’s grace.  All this led to a greater leveling of power, a democratization of the sacred.  Later generations of Anabaptists, from whom Mennonite come, rarely used the language of sacraments.

More recently, in 21st century North America, we’re reconsidering the sacramental.  Marlene Kropf, a leading voice in Mennonite worship, has proposed the idea of “Singing as a…

David Denlinger  |  FIVE OBSERVATIONS FROM MY YEARS ON THE BIKE PATH

I’ve encountered Joel a few times on the Olentangy bike path, and I think that’s what prompted his asking me to share five reflections about my bicycle commute to work.

Judy and I first encountered bicycling as a way of life during my postdoc in the Netherlands in the early 1970’s. That was the first time we saw paths dedicated to bicycles.  We didn’t have a car nor did we need one. We went everywhere, rain or shine, on our bicycles, and in those short days of the Dutch winter I went off to the university in the dark and came home in the dark.

When we returned to the U.S. and lived in the Boston area I continued to ride by bicycle, but riding down Massachusetts Avenue never felt very safe.  So, we’ve been excited to see the construction of bike paths take off in the U.S., and now that a bike path is complete from Worthington to the university and beyond, I can use a bike path nearly the whole distance of my commute. Unlike the Dutch, I’m a fair weather rider so I don’t do it every day, but I sure do enjoy it when its not too cold, too wet, or if the day’s activities don’t call for too formal attire.

So, here are my five observations from the bike path:

1. It’s fun—much more fun than driving!  At the end of a day I actually look forward to hopping on my bike to go home.  It’s a feeling I don’t get when I get in my car to drive north on Rt. 315!  Plus, it’s a good way to incorporate exercise into my day.

2. I see deer with their fawns, an occasional fox or coyote, evidence of beavers,…

Texts: John 14:15-17; Acts 1:6-14

Last Friday the New York Times published an essay titled “We aren’t built to live in the moment.”  The authors point out that none of the things we’ve previously proposed that set humans apart from other animals actually do.  It turns out language, tools, cooperation, and culture aren’t unique to us.

But, they argue, there is a defining characteristic that sets us, humanity, apart: “We contemplate the future.”  They write: “Our singular foresight created civilization and sustains society. It usually lifts our spirits, but it’s also the source of most depression and anxiety, whether we’re evaluating our own lives or worrying about the nation. Other animals have springtime rituals for educating the young, but only we subject them to ‘commencement’ speeches grandly informing them that today is the first day of the rest of their lives.”

The essay goes on to weave insights from psychology, brain science, and various forms of therapy to make its case.  Much more than looking back at the past, we seem to direct most of our mental energy toward anticipating the future and adjusting our behavior accordingly.  We do the things we do and feel the things we feel because of the kind of future we anticipate, sometimes the one just seconds ahead, sometimes years and decades.

Our future mindedness impacts even the way we form and reform memory.  Rather than being an archive of past events that remain stagnant, the brain has a way of continually rewriting history.  New contexts, and the kind of future we anticipate add fresh content to past events and change the way we remember them.  The essay states: “The fluidity of memory may seem like a defect, especially to a jury, but it serves a larger purpose. It’s a feature, not a bug, because the point…