Faith Spirituality & Culture SLIDES

Picking the eyes out of this fantastic blog post and comments on Open or Closed Communion by Mike Morrell…

Byzantine/Anglo-Catholic liturgist Richard Fabian makes a brief-but-compelling case for reversing the well-tread order of Baptism and Eucharist in his essay First the Table, Then the Font.

“If the Church wants to insist on a closed, bounded-set meal based on one night of our Lord’s life, shouldn’t it work equally vigorously to celebrate the scandalously inclusive, no-strings-attached manner of eating our Redeemer practiced during the vast majority of his public ministry?”  (…& even Judas got a gig at the last one!)

“I long to see creative, prophetic acts of public worship, like my friend Lucas Land proposes in Eucharist as Eat-In. If we unshackle Jesus from our exclusionary practices, the transforming love of God can spill into the streets and the ‘profane’ lives or ordinary people – through our supposed ‘means of grace’ that we keep shut up.”

“william cavanaugh explores the eucharist as an antidote to consumerism in his book Being Consumed.” – lucas

“So what do we do with this today? We make it about meticulous introspection before we sip a cup (or down a shot glass of grape juice) and eat a crumb. How atomized, individualized, and modern! I don’t mean to diss personal introspection for personal sin, but I feel like it’s become – literally and morally – “Honey, I shrunk the Eucharist.” It’s become a notional meal, a gesture of a meal, and our interpretation of Paul’s warnings in 1 Corinthians have likewise become individualized and not communal… (My scholarship on this is primarily informed by Australian scholar Robert Banks; his ‘Paul’s Idea of Community’ and ‘Going to Church in the First Century.’ Also BW3′s ‘Making a Meal of It,’ and for contemporary autobiography, Sara Miles’ ‘Take This Bread: The Story of a Radical Conversion.’)…

So for today: If we’re to have a redacted ritual (which I recognize is a practical necessity in many cases), it should be real bread (preferably baked by a congregant) and real wine, the Table should be open to all, but with increased responsibility placed on those who are known by the community, that the Body be properly discerned. This would doubtless extend to the Body partakers as they moved from curious to committed, and became better known themselves. But ideally – once a month maybe? – mission third way communities should host block parties, Love Feasts, that are healthy locally-produced potlucks where the neighborhood is invited. It’d be a come-as-you-are affair, but with Eucharist – thanksgiving for God’s bounty and gratuitous presence in our midst – as the center.

That’s what I’m working with these days anyway…Lucas Land has many more developed thoughts on this all the time via his What Would Jesus Eat? blog.”  - zoecarnate

“To my mind, it’s a distraction to talk about “inclusivity” as if our Table practice were about being nice, or friendly. The fact is, we need strangers, because eating with the wrong people changes everything for the faithful– not just for the nominal outsiders and sinners whose presence is, at best, tolerated. We find salvation in eating with strangers: “Blessed be God the Word, who came to his own and his own received him not, for in this way God glorifies the stranger.”

The single best way to know that it’s Jesus’ table–not ours— is the presence there of someone completely inappropriate.” Sara Miles   (see Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion)

The Pragmatism of the Didache:  The Eucharist as you’ve never heard it before… Carl Gregg

Marriage as understood today is in fact a mismatch of various Roman customs, Christian principles, legislative reforms and societal norms. As such, any attempt to protect ‘traditional marriage’ as something concrete and constant is misplaced.

http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/17929

In this vein I put together my own ‘Hail Mary’ which uses some bits of the traditional Catholic Hail Mary Prayer and the Litany of the Blessed Virgin.

Luke 1:26-38 : The Angel Gabriel Visits Mary
Luke 1: 39-56 : The Magnificat “Mary’s Song”

Reflection:

A Revolutionary ‘Hail Mary’ Prayer

Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.

Behold the blessed and perilous path of women who dare!

To risk shame and death at the hands of male honour and announce to your family, your betrothed, and your village (occupied by a foreign power), that you are possessed by the Spirit and impregnated with the impossible.

A peasant virgin to raise up a child to the throne of David!

Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

Impossible fruit!

Fruit from nowhere?

Fruit from Mary, a virgin child?

Fruit from a barren old, Elizabeth?

Fruit from Nazareth?

From a nobody from nowhere,

who reckons herself with the lowly!

But this nobody knows the songs of her culture!

Songs of fruit from nowhere!

Songs of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, the mother of Samson, and Hannah,

And so she sings her own anthem of revolution,

Sings the world upside down,

Sings the impossible into being.

Magnificat!

Holy Mary, Mother of God,

Mother of the revolution,

Queen of prophets,

Nemesis of Kings,

pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

That we may also say yes to life in the face of death.

That we may too give birth to a miracle.

Amen.

1. The Beginning: Prepare the Way: Discipleship is a Road Movie  Mark 1:1-2
2. Understand Location: Where am I? Mark 1:1-13
3. Find New Direction: Where am I going? (Repentance/Conversion) Mark 1:4-5,14-15
4. Initiation: Get Wild & Baptist /Temptation
5. Hear the Call (Vocation): Mark 1:16-20; 2:14  plus Temptation..
6. Leave your nets.
7. Hooking the Big Fish
8. Fight: Mark 1:21-28; 3:1-6
9. Make Peace: (Reconciliation): Mark 2:15
10. Feast and Fast: Party Hard: Mark 2:18-22
11. Glean Break the Law: Mark 2:23-24
12. Redefine Family and Culture:  Mark 3:13-35; 6:1-6
13. Flight/ Retreat
14. Learn from the Land: Mark 4:1-34
15. Cross to the Dark Side (Relocation): Mark 5:35-41; 6:45,47-48
16. Fear Not
17. Straining at the Oars:
18. See and Tell Amazing stories :  Mark 6:12; 3:13-14
19. Heal and Exorcise: Mark 6:7-13
20. Feed People: Mark 6:30-43; 8:1-21
21. On Suffering and Death: Mark 8:31-38; 9:30-32; 10:32-34
22. Saving and Losing life: Mark 14:8
23. Great Service:  Leadership and Greatness
24. Putting Last Things First
25. Pray Demons Away: Mark 9:14-29
26. Include people who are different: Mark 9:38-41
27. Confront Sexism: Mark 10:1-12 sexual power, minorities.
28. Celebrate, protect and learn from Children: Mark 10:13-16
29. Better Deformity than Conformity
30. Let Go of Money, (Redistribution): Mark 10:17-31
31. Handle Power: Mark 10:35-45
32. Sense-sational:  Ears that Hear, Eyes that See, Tender Hearts See the Great Structures 13:3
33. Turn Tables/ Blockade/ Occupy:  Cursing Figs
34. Watch The Figs:  Considering Figs
35. Enough to Violence
36. Stay Awake
37. Flee Naked: Mark 14:51-52 on failure  http://www.redletterchristians.org/confessions-of-a-failing-radical/
38. Confront Denial: Mark14: 66-72
39. Find Hope to Start Again, Resurrection and Renewal: Mark 16: 1-8a
40. Ecstasy and Trauma: Mark 16:8

Post Script: (41?) Taking Poison /Handling Snakes …Escapism and Betrayal: Mark 16:9-2

“that space where common sorrow could be drowned in common passion.”

Beautiful.

- Michael Frost Facebook status update