Youth and Adult Study – Week 1

Prayer –

God of all Knowledge and Experience:

Thank you for this opportunity to gather and be your people in this time and in this place.

Open our hearts and minds to your word for us today and always. Help us to carry what we learn and what we experience into the world to your honour and glory. In Jesus Name. Amen

Scripture –

Genesis 1:1-27 –

¹ In the beginning when God created^[a] the heavens and the earth, ² the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God^[b] swept over the face of the waters. ³ Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. ⁴ And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

⁶ And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” ⁷ So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. ⁸ God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

⁹ And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. ¹⁰ God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. ¹¹ Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. ¹² The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. ¹³ And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

¹⁴ And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, ¹⁵ and let them be lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. ¹⁶ God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. ¹⁷ God set them in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, ¹⁸ to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. ¹⁹ And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

²⁰ And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.” ²¹ So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good. ²² God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” ²³ And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

²⁴ And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so.²⁵ God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make humankind^[c] in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth,^[d] and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

²⁷ So God created humankind^[e] in his image,
    in the image of God he created them;^[f]
    male and female he created them.

Matthew 28:1-10, 16-20

²⁸ After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. ² And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. ³ His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. ⁴ For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. ⁵ But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. ⁶ He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he^[a] lay. ⁷ Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead,^[b] Galilee⁸ So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. ⁹ Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. ¹⁰ Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

Introduction –

This is a four week course on Christianity and the Church, its sacraments and living together as Church. The first week will serve as an introduction and the next three weeks will deal with three aspects of the life of the Church:

1. proclamation of the word, including thinking about worship, scripture, the sacraments and personal spirituality
2. community, including the history of the Church, the organization of the Church (polity) and the importance of fellowship/community to proclamation and service
3. service, including justice, peace, grace and how the Church practices justice in the world.

The course is based on the same premise as my doctoral work – “Church is defined as the people who gather to tell the story (evangelize) by living the story.” This opens up some pretty obvious questions. That is the story? And what does it mean to live the story?

Starting with the second question first, the Church lives the story in three ways: by proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ in worship and elsewhere; by working together in community, in worship, prayer and in mutual care, and by serving the community by caring for the needs of the hungry, the thirsty, the sick and the imprisoned (Matthew 24).

The story starts with the God who created the heavens and the earth. It goes to the fundamental question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” The answer in the story is because God wanted something to be in relationship with or to love and love God back in return. This is the root of the metaphor for God as parent, father and mother (Luke 13, Matthew 23). So God “emptied” a place and then placed a universe inside that place and called it good. How did God do this? That’s the first part of the mystery, science gives us some answers but as of yet not all. But the point is the “how” is not as important as the “why.”

The story continues when God chooses a people to be his people and to demonstrate to all nations what a relationship with God entails. The people God chooses are a group of slaves descended from a man names Abram, whom God calls Abraham. God rescues these slaves from their captivity and leads them through the wilderness to the land God promised Abraham.

As the people live in the land, God reminds the people of the Covenant they made with God and live within through Priests and Kings and most of all through Prophets. Prophets are men (and perhaps women) who are called by God to bring his message to his people in good times and in bad.

Roman Empire

But death can never have the last word, and Jesus was raised up from the dead to prove that death is not the end, that God’s dream for the earth expressed in the story of Exodus and the word of the prophets continues and that the world is on its way to perfection. The end of the story is when all creation is transformed by God’s love so that it loves God back in the same way God loves all of creation.

So the story is rooted in God. The Church has traditionally understood God as “Father, Son and Holy Spirit.” Or Creator, Word and Helper. Or with other metaphors of one essence in the form of three persons. Which is frankly very confusing. So why do we put ourselves through this sort of thing?

First because we our Christians and we have to account for the role of Jesus Christ and what his life, death and resurrection has meant to the Church, means to us as individuals and as communities in our world and what it points to in the future.

The power of the story, at least the story in the Gospel accounts in the Bible, is that Jesus is God coming into the world to stand in solidarity with us. That God through the life of Jesus experienced everything that we as human beings experienced, up to an including death. And that through his example we can know God better. Which is one of the reasons that we read from the Bible and especially the Gospel accounts of Jesus weekly in worship (more on this next week).

Another issue is that Jesus is still present to us, even if he is not bodily present in our time, in the form of something called the Holy Spirit, or the Advocate, or the Helper. The Holy Spirit is present throughout the Bible, is part of God’s creation of the world and is present at Jesus baptism as a symbol of God’s presence.

So the image, metaphor or symbol of the Trinity is an important way of understanding how God is related to us.

One final element  that is important to remember is that God is not a person or an individual. God is one but God is also a community. We see that when we see that human beings are made in God’s image, male and female. One person does not reflect God, a married couple reflects God’s image to us better. One of the great metaphors for God is found in the concept of Perichoresis. This is a Greek word and people have given me grief for using this word in the past because who wants to learn Greek? But I love this image because the root word means dance (actually it also means to perform a poem out loud from which we get our English word chorus). But the image here is of a dance or the pattern of the dance as the dance partners move together. God is a community that is constantly expressing its love for itself through the motion of a dance. And inviting us into that dance to participate fully. And that is to me the most important meaning of trinity and why we need to maintain this image for God despite the fact that many people find it confusing or upsetting.

Closing prayer – Sit silently for a moment. Become aware of your breath. Imagine God is coming to you with each breath in. Imagine you are responding to God with each breath out. Let go of your cares and just be with God for a moment. … When you are ready say Thank you God, Amen.