Bellissima

Praise God

...on both our houses

Found this interesting for its reflections on gender and biblical and trinitarian models

I am writing my theological reflection on my ministry experiences over the last few weeks for college. I have just begun to realise the interactions that would have been impossible had I not been ministering in a mixed gender team. I am coming to understand the practical implications of partnered ministry in which both men and women work today in response to the Missio dei.

There would have been particular outreach opportunities that I could not have involved myself in had it not been that I was accompanied by a man and similarly we would never have been able to reach out to the young girl had I not been present. Now how to express this as just a tiny aspect of what I learnt without getting too fired up on the issue?

I am exploring adaptation and inculturation but I suspect that I am going to conclude that the church must be in constant dialogue with those to whom it reaches out. I am finding I am growing increasingly uncomfortable with terminology such as 'marginalised' and 'reaching out'. Who are the reached? I was changed too by my interactions? Who are the real marginalised now that the church seems to sit on the periphery of everyone's vision, perhaps we are in a better position now to engage than we ever have been, we understand better how marginalisation feels. Am I just reflecting in a way that is typical of someone inhabiting a post-modern universe? Flips - lots to think about but the occasional blogging distraction helps.

A Pastoral letter from the Bishop:The proposals endorsed by Synod invite us to affirm that women have a full, honoured and appreciated place at every level of that one church. We are invited to advance under God’s guidance and call, proclaiming that half the human race are not disqualified from such full participation simply because of the way God has made them. The catholic faith is based upon inclusion through grace.

CONSIDER STANDING FOR GENERAL SYNOD

Miranda Threlfall-Holmes at Gen Synod
Can you see yourself in a role like that?

Please read Alistair's pastoral letter on the diocese's thoughts regarding women bishops.

I have been contacted by Christina Rees who is hoping that people with views sympathetic to women bishops will stand for General Synod in the Autumn. This is something within the horizon of my thinking but I can not consider it because I fall between the system, if you like, not quite laity and not quite clergy because I am in training but I can put a plea out to those of you who can gracefully present your views for the full inclusion of women in the church to consider standing for General Synod.

That is what I am doing here.

Your new Diocesan synod, voted in in Autumn, will debate and vote on the the proposals for women Bishops and the 'protection' of traditionalists. Christina explains how 'Some dioceses may also choose to cascade the debate down to deanery synods, but it is required that all diocesan synods debate and vote upon the proposed legislation.'

2/3 (30/44 dioceses) must approve the legislation for it to go back to General Synod for final approval. If you have any worries that traditionalists will not be catered for, please read Bishop Alistair's letter, they will be supported and he is right in not wanting to create the two-tier church that would be the result of what many traditionalists were hoping for. We need people on Synod who can communicate the fair and reasonable approach that the church is hoping to take on the issue of women bishops with grace and clarity. Could that be you?


Aside from standing on General Synod, there are other things you can do like writing to the Bishop of your diocese to show your support for women bishops, or asking people you know who are enthusiastic about women bishops to stand.

Look at your diocesan website for whom to contact and look at the Youtube clip below if you think General Synod might be for you.


Here is a special site set up by Synod with information


This is information for laity


This is information for clergy


This is what it all entails


This is about the electorate

Leaflet in full

You might be able to print off and give this leaflet to someone


Or encourage them to watch the clip below



PLEASE CONSIDER STANDING FOR GENERAL SYNOD

How to speak with humility and confidence?

Not wanting my theology too fluffy but also not prepared to say I understand where the end of the ball of wool finishes. 

I am trying to decide on a contextual theology model. I have to write about my two-week work placement with the marginalised. I visited refuges and volunteered at a drop-in centre. I went out onto the streets and entered homes that were not homes, not recognisable to me anyway. I stayed put and invited in others, for shelter I hoped, again it might have been challenge where it was supposed to be comfort. I am interested in power and powerlessness. They drop-in, the territory is the church's. When we visit the hostel or refuge, are we 'dropping-in' or just 'dropping by'? Who is guest and who is host? Who learns from whom? Who is left changed? Do I shape their sense of a gospel or do they shape mine? And/Both

In all this thinking and reflecting on inculturaion, adaptation, translation, how much is inserted, how much need not be because God, if we only stopped to watch him, is already at work before we got there?

I came across this and it seems to promote a humility and it leaves me wondering about everything really -
Emmmm.

'Hierarchs, theologians and men of power are eager to say “the last word” and yet it may be better to be very hesitant in saying the last word on Christology.'

My Gospel, Right or Wrong: The road less travelled

My Gospel, Right or Wrong: The road less travelled: Very funny, a bit of light relief from all the reading I am doing at the moment on mission and evangelism.

h/t Gill

Gift

I do not know how to thank the anonymous gift-giver, the 'well-wisher' who very kindly sent my family and I a voucher for a Tesco's shop, so I would like to say a great big thank you here. It could be you have followed our journey through the blog.

THANK YOU

At first I must admit I stared and I stared at your handwriting.

Perhaps you are one of the people I texted with an update of our situation, my goodbye and 'thank you for your friendship' which I really might have neglected a little in the recent busyness.

I then wondered if you were one of those ebayers who who have collected either plastic shiny toys that the children have surrendered to the great down-size or garden equipment that we can not take with us. Maybe. We had lots of opportunities to share our story with these people we would never otherwise have met and listen to their stories too: a man from Leeds who simply enjoyed the drive and collected a £2 tricycle, a woman expecting her second baby and thrilled with the nursery furniture. Tonight we're expecting someone who is even prepared to pay as much as ten pounds for a huge tree stump. Our computer monitor only raised one pound. There's no making sense of people's needs, all so individual.

You could be someone from one of the churches we have made relationships with, perhaps our sending church.

Ever the pragmatist, my husband told me not to stare too hard at that handwriting and just accept. It is free grace! And I was rather reminded of the way that as Christians we can have a tendency to scrutinise and intellectualise, complicate and struggle in acceptance of the great gift that is Jesus' sacrifice for us, that like that Tesco voucher, freely given, by that 'well wisher', we are invited simply to enjoy and live it out!

Bless you!

Laughing with Jesus

I presented 'Two Ways to Live' the other weekend at church and I am still reflecting on how I feel about taking part in that presentation of the gospel. I have a lot more unpacking to do. It takes me back to the months where I wrestled with writing a defence of Penal Substitution in the face of contrary emphases. This was a theological exercise. It made me appreciate the many faceted gem that is the atonement. All of this makes me continue to explore how the gospel message should be summarised, which can not be a bad thing. With 'Two Ways to Live', my brain is forever racing ahead of itself with caveats, caveats is perhaps not the right word, but there is so much more I feel needs saying than Chapman's neat illustrated tract can capture about the mercy of a loving God and his plan for the entire cosmos.

So as I sit rather muddled by these things and the experience of my presentation of this model the other weekend when I was left wanting to say so much more, I find some consolation in the following which i really recommend you take a look at.

The Laughing Jesus

Flips...

Just between you and me, things are feeling quite weird here. Weird as in unsettled, good in a way, but all a bit too 'liminal'. I feel like I have spent more time on the threshold of other things, without ever really arriving this past few weeks than ever before. It feels like a foot-tapping kind of restlessness, a not knowing, a waiting but not knowing for what I am waiting, kind of waiting...

We are inbetween lots of things and settling on the present is challenged when you're being asked to constantly make decisions about the future.

The children are leaving one school, visiting the next one for half a day, whilst I am meeting the Head of the school they will probably go to in a year's time.

We are selling one house to rent another, whilst asking questions about the next one where we will live for three to four years.

It all kind of goes against how I deal with things. Since God burst into my life eight years ago, as I experienced a kind of spiritual renewal (words don't work here), I have been slowly giving up my tendency to plan and organise the future since becoming more open to this God who can change the best laid plans of men and women and 'mouses'. 

The last two weeks has also given me cause to reflect on how this sense of 'unfinishedness' is a condition of the vocation. There is a real contrast between planning worship, open to an extent, to allow for God to meet with people however he plans, but still shaped, orchestrated... and living alongside the marginalised. In the work that I have been doing, which strangely is not best described by the word 'work', but I am having trouble settling on a word that captures it, there is never any completion, only trust and prayer and waiting and the agony of your own inadequacy.

I can only pray that the man with the agonising 24 hours ahead of him will make it through. I imagine all sorts of things I could have done after the encounter. I could have texted him encouragement on the hour, every hour for the next 24 but I couldn't and shouldn't, I could have offered to stay with him and pour all the temptation down the sink each time he reached for it, but no, this is not for me to do. So there is only trust and hope  and prayer.

I imagine all sorts of rosy-coloured endings to situations I have been in, with the girl I was so worried about turning up to church and the community embracing her and everything beginning to change for her.

I dare to pray for healing and transformation and sudden illumination, I know it can happen but I also want to pray for people to be given strength to sustain, patience to sit it out, forbearance to just carry on...it could all take years. So there is a struggle here too. How bold should I be? And the community pray that I forget, move on, let it go and I will get better at this but at the same time, I do not want to get better at this...

...so I am beginning to realise the cost. And God is good because for me this realisation has come slowly. At first it all seemed like such an awesome adventure and it was all such a blessing and all that theological education felt like such a privilege but the learning and the growing and the pruning and the shaping of these more recent days has all felt rather more brutal.

The differences that make a difference and the differences which don't

Tom Wright is certainly worth listening to here if only for his comments about rock 'n roll and Thomas the Tank Engine. He has certainly got a way with words. He also encourages us to have the real debates: about headship, for example. Bravo Tom Wright.

Unity?

Bonhoeffer explains unity in these terms:
The unity of the New Testament is not "one theology and one rite, one opinion upon all things both public and private, and one mode of conduct in life," but rather "one body and one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. . ."^{(The communion of the Saints, p.137).}


Are we them aiming for something impossible in our attempts to please all the people all of the time? Can our decisions to consecrate women as bishops also make provision for those, whom for theological reasons, can not accept their leadership? Are we attempting a unity that can never be and are we not united by something all the more crucial and cruciform?

Are we getting lost in the minutiae and losing the big picture?

Church mouse has been keeping us up to date with the latest news at General Synod.

Jesus

...really like this response by a person responding to Brian McLaren's blog.

I like the explanations of the Nicene creed and the way Jesus' actions are explained: It also helps me to think through further my feelings about some people's resistance to calling God - Father. Thoughts still formulating on that front. However, I pray to 'Father'.

Gary Leonard

Who is God...
God lives in an eternal Triune relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As such, God is a relationship of love. As such, God is love. In the Incarnation, it is Jesus Christ who revealed the Father to us; otherwise we would not have come to know God the Father, as 'Father'. Lack of a full appreciation of God as being a Triune ... See Morerelationship of Love, and lack of truly knowing God as such, and the core of the soul as such, can lead the church to a tendency away from self giving to others and towards acts of affliction. It is out of this being as Love that the Son of God in obedience to the Father became a man; that is, the event of the Incarnation. This was an act of self giving unconditional Love. The church needs to understand the nature of such Divine Unconditional Love; the Love of God in His acts and in His being. In this context, in understanding Pentecostal Christian Spirituality, we need to understand what it means to be in the image of a Triune God of Love.

Fundamental to our Pentecostal Christian Spirituality is the expression of our Trinitarian faith and which is most clearly found in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed: ‘We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ; the only begotten Son of God, begotten from his Father before all ages, Light from Light; true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance (homoousion) with the Father; through whom all things were made: who for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was made flesh from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose- again according to the Scriptures and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of God the Father. And he shall come again in glory to judge both te living and the dead: his kingdom shall have no end. And the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. And in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We confess one baptism for the remission of sins: we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.’ It was formulated by the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., definitively enlarged by the Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D., and confirmed by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D.

Athanasius, a key architect of the ‘Nicene Creed’, stated that “it would be more godly and true to signify God from the Son and call him Father, than to name God from his works and call him Unoriginate (ie Creator). This is a pivotal statement for our Christian Spirituality in the worship of our Triune God of grace. It presents the core of our starting point in understanding of Christian Spirituality as grounded in the Trinitarian and Incarnational being of God. It is important in our Christian Spirituality who we are worshipping and who we are praying to. Thus, in our access to the Father, we can know God firstly from a point within Himself and in the relationship of Father-Son.

On this ground we can appreciate the revelation content of the Incarnation; God as he is ‘for us’ and ‘toward us’. We must keep our understanding of the Triune existence of God and the event of the Incarnation together and in balance. It is from the Father-Son relationship that we have knowledge and access to the Father. We cannot really know God from a point outside Himself and from creation. Although we can appreciate the works of God from creation; creation is that which is not God. This is a critical step in moving to our Incarnational understanding. Accordingly, the statement found in the Nicene Creed of ‘one being with the Father’ (gr. homoousion of the Father-Son) is critical to our Christianity. Jesus Christ is God-Man. ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.’ As such, God shares in our humanity. God is ‘for us’: “I will be your God”. To believe in Jesus Christ is to believe in God Himself. In his book Trinitarian Faith T. Torrance notes, “the homoousion applies to the relation between the incarnate Son and God the Father. That is to say, it grounds the reality of our Lord’s humanity and of all that was revealed and done for our sakes by Jesus, in an indivisible union with the eternal being of God.” (TF page 135). This is a key link in going to work out the nature and significance of the Incarnation and the meaning of our exalted humanity and exaltation; “You will be my people.” The Incarnation of God reflects a twofold movement. Torrance notes, “For Athanasius this meant that the mediation of Christ involved a twofold movement, from God to man and from man to God, and that both divine and human action in Christ must be regarded as issuing from one Person. Here we see again the soteriological significance of the Nicene homoousion.” (TF page 149). These two movements must be kept in balance: “only God can save but He saves as man.” (TF page 149). Thus, in this twofold movement of the event of the Incarnation we see the movement a) from God to man- only God can save (but saves as man), and b) from man to God- man is atoned and exalted.

The Incarnation means that God took up, lifted up, all of our humanity in the whole life of Christ. This has implications for our salvation insofar as what is assumed is saved. Also, if there were not the Incarnation (in the context of homoousion) then we have an external moral justification: “the atoning reconciliation must be understood as having taken place within the personal being of Jesus Christ as the one Mediator between God and man, and thus within the ontological roots and actual condition of the human creaturely existence which He assumed in order to save.” (TF page 158). As Christ is Victor and has triumphed, “we may partake of his divine life and righteousness.” (TF page 161). We are exalted as a new humanity with Him. We are set on a new basis.

In the Incarnation, Christ in substitution became both “High Priest and Sacrifice, the Offerer and the Offering” (TF page 177). Finally, as Torrance notes in the “wonderful exchange: this was the redemptive translation of man from one state into another brought about by Christ who in His self abnegating love took our place that we might have His place, becoming what we are that we might become what He is.” (TF page 179).

In this sense we see the Trinitarian and Incarnational understanding of the Christ event. In the downward movement and upward movement we have “descent and ascent, the death and resurrection, the humiliation and exaltation” (TF page 180). He came down that we might go up (exalted). Christ is the Grace of God. As Simeon said, “my eyes have seen your salvation”. This understanding of the Incarnation overcomes the dualistic views of the intelligible and sensible realms inherited from Greek philosophy that has crept in our modern thinking. The Incarnation reflects the union of God and creation in the One Person, Jesus Christ. We can know God as He has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ and in the relationship of Father-Son. This is whom we now participate in the Spirit. Holy Spirit touches our lives as we cry ‘abba’ Father.

Drinking with potential parishioners

Last night my husband and I went to a few pubs in the area where I am pursuing a curacy. It felt good, (we think). We were more aware of our surroundings and even our conversations as we sat with a mind on the idea that these places could become our locals, even places for outreach and get-togethers. We stopped to read noticeboards and chatted with people behind the bars about the area. Discerning God's will can be a lot of fun!


It was a bright and sunny evening and we tried to imagine the place in the rain too. We stopped to gaze in at the town's nightclub and my husband just about prevented me from talking to the local police as they walked by. I wanted to ask them a few things, but perhaps another time. I can get a bit carried away.

We have a few questions now about schooling for the children and where we are going to live but little by little the pieces seem to be falling into place. I have learnt however that everything can change when you think you have all things settled. I never would have thought that this summer we would be selling our house and moving to student accommodation, for example, so I am learning never to plan too far in advance, which is really rather funny for the girl who always used to have a ten year plan!

No go zones?

 Cartoon Church Dave Walker

It feels really weird to think that when I am a vicar there exists the possibility there will be 'no-go zones'. It might feel quite radical to be seen in the diocese of one of these parallel places that opts out.

I am not suggesting that I had better watch where I buy my sandwiches. But imagine if you will a situation where a friend seeks you out to perform the marriage ceremony for her son but they live in a diocese where they have opted out of the geographical parish, does this mean that it would not be allowed?

This idea has been proposed but might never get voted through. The blog below is very helpful on this front for the latest Synod discussions, as is Thinking Anglicans.

'General Synod blog'  say

... there are aspects of this Synod that will be very difficult for some of us, and we would all be grateful for your prayers. Please pray especially for those who feel themselves to be under attack for their beliefs over the next few days, and for all of us that we can be open both to the Holy Spirit and to each other as we try to figure out where the Church of England goes next.

Here is the Revision Committee Report and the Draft Measure and an order for the debate.

Some ideas being considered are

 - the creation of additional dioceses for parishes where there will be no women bishops or priests operating. These dioceses will exist in parallel with the current geographical dioceses. A PCC will be able to vote for its parish to join these additional dioceses.

-  PCCs are to consult with electoral roll members before requesting episcopal ministry from a male bishop.

 - For those who seek the services of a suffragen Bishop because they do not want episcopal oversight from a woman this delegation of episcopal functions is for the purposes of sacraments and other divine services. It seems they are removing the phrase “the provision of pastoral care to the clergy and parishioners”. 'Pastoral care' is wider and could be used to support ministries other than sacraments and divine services. But I wonder whether the narrowing to particular functions will force some dioceses to join those parallel places where no women in dog-collars are to be found!


- Compensation to be made available to those who resign from ecclesiastical service before the measure comes into effect.

I remember, it cost the Church of England a small fortune last time. It is strange I always think that we throw money at an issue of theological 'integrity', at a matter that requires careful pastoral support and thinking. As a church we do not surely conform to the world and its compensation culture and yet we use money here. I guess, it will be argued that this money is the stipend that would have been paid had these people continued in the ministries they are leaving, they will take up other ministries, no doubt, and so the money enables them to do this more easily. Is that the reasoning?

Sharing the gospel in ways I had never anticipated

So here I am merrily reflecting on these things...how we share the gospel by action and proclamation and God has the two diverge.

...wondering about passages like Milbank's in GSMisc 956 Sharing the Gospel of Salvation

The task of Christians is not to persuade others of the truth of the gospel story through propositional argument (which, he claims, always carries undertones of violence) but to “out narrate” other, rival and less attractive narratives. Christians must so live out their faith, in communities which embody the gospel (especially in practices of worship) that others are attracted by the sublime beauty of God reflected in the Church. Conversion, he suggests, is a matter of “taste” – but in a much more profound sense than that expression is usually used.


Generous Love speaks helpfully of ‘embassy’ and ‘hospitality’ as two ‘heart’ movements of the mission of God: embassy, as the necessary consequence of the outward moving nature of the love of God expressed most fully in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and in the work of the Holy Spirit; and hospitality as  the welcome and openness that is at the heart of the God who is love. Both these movements should be observable in the life of Christian communities as they relate to those amongst whom they live, not as means to an end, but as a natural outworking of lives oriented to the gospel.

Missio Dei – the outward movement of the God who is love towards the creation that is the focus of that love. From this understanding of the nature of love and truth in Trinitarian relationship comes an approach to mission that gives the Church a central role but one which is subordinate to the overarching and prior mission of God.


Sharing the gospel is always done in the context of the lives of other people who are created in the image of God. There is always a context of place and time, of relationship, of history and of mutual knowledge or ignorance. Without a whole hearted attempt to enter into such contexts, the risks of the gospel being misunderstood, unappreciated or rejected outright are greatly increased. ‘Guarding the treasure that has been entrusted to us’ is not a responsibility to be taken lightly and for the treasure to be appreciated and desired requires as much understanding of situation as can be achieved.



Last night for our homeless audit of the city streets, we assist a girl who is in serious difficulties. Confidentiality requires little detail but I hasten to add that I had never anticipated that I would be sharing the gospel message with someone in rather broken but seemingly effective sign language.

This week Jesus' mandate to give away your coat kept cropping up and it would seem he was preparing me for the loss of mine last night. Hopefully her hospital bed was warmer because of my jacket.

So with the awesome privilege it was to serve this stranger with whom I felt so deeply connected, I learn that there are opportunities for both these things to happen with the prompting of the Holy Spirit - by word and action  - where word is action and action is Word!

Know and tell the gospel

I am interested in how we tell the gospel in a simple and straightforward way. In the middle of all my experiences of the gospel as social action, I will take part in a workshop exploring the gospel as an act of proclamation.

Andrew Walker's 'Telling the Story', explores how,

Walter Brueggemann has recently reminded us...that the noun 'gospel' in the Bible, euengelion, is not merely a rhetorical declaration of glad tidings but a message of great import. This message he says is linked to the Hebrew verb, bissar, 'tell the news'. The gospel, therefore, is not only the eternal message of the Christian faith: it is both the story and its telling. It is only by telling the story that the message becomes gospel.

So how do we proceed?

There are various ways of telling the story and I wonder, of all the models out there, which we should be using? I suppose much of this depends on context and those to whom you are telling the gospel narrative. Denominations have their favourite models. Sometimes it can all become a little political, or at least certain treatments of doctrines: 'the work of Christ' can overemphasize different aspects of the atonement at the expense of other facets of the beautiful gem that is the work of our Lord and Saviour.

I have been considering Chapman's 'Know and Tell the Gospel' and his images that accompany the narrative. You can have a look at this here.

I rather like this from Andrew Walker. It does not reduce itself into a series of straightforward diagrams like Chapman's. However, I like the focus on the cosmos in Walker's narrative and the emphasis on God's love.

What do you think?

1. Outside time and space there is God who is good and lives in loving and perfect communion as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 
2. God calls time and space into existence with the creation of the cosmos out of nothing, and like its creator this universe is also very good.
   Creation includes the formation of our world, where human beings are made in the image of God. This gives them the power freely to follow or reject him. 
3. Humankind, however, wilfully rebels against God. This results in enmity between people and God and the estrangement of all creation from its source - this is so because human beings, as 'matter made articulate', betray all of creation. 
4. God takes the initiative to end this estrangement, because his nature is love. First he chooses a human tribe, the Jews, and he establishes a special relationship to the whole world, he enters the physical universe through the incarnation of the eternal Son. He is joined to created matter - human nature - in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. 
5. Jesus achieves God's desire to restore the broken communion between himself and creation through the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension. 
6. During his lifetime, Jesus Christ calls disciples as the authentic witness to and co-participators of his work. Through them he institutes a Church, an ecclesia - the people of God. The people of God, in all generations, do not merely follow their founder, but are organically linked to him by divine favour, though not by nature. This is accomplished by the Holy Spirit, who is sent by Jesus from his Father after the resurrection. The Holy Spirit constitutes the Church. 
7. The people of God, under the Spirit's guidance, are the bearers of the good news of God's restoration of the world through Jesus. They are the bearers in the double sense that they are guardians of the apostolic 'deposit of faith', and the tellers of the story. 
8. The good news will not end like the final chapter of a book, because it is a never-ending story which continues beyond time in everlasting communion with God. But it will reach its fulfilment at the end of time, when Christ will return in glory so that 'God may be all in all'. 

 Have you any other resources to suggest.

Here is a video by Tangle

I am not too sure about the body and soul dichotomy at the beginning, or am I just over-interpreting?

Okay - get real!

For the next two weeks, I will work across some ministries in the city whose focus is the homeless and the marginalised. Last night on my way back from church, I had words with Jesus and I was not praying those polite, British, Anglican prayers that I sometimes have a habit of praying. I was actually simply telling him that I am really pretty scared. I was lamenting a little bit, reminding him that I am only little: 5 foot 2, and really rather naive. I was telling him that I was expecting him to fulfil his promises to me, show me what I need to see and lead me, minister through me and keep me safe. I was reminding him that I need to change, yes, but also there is a certain continuity to be preserved too. In amongst all these missions, auditing the streets for the homeless until the early hours, and visiting different outreach programmes, I still need energy left over for my children and my husband. I am asking him that I might return home not too full of words describing my experiences but with listening ears to hear how the day has gone for my husband and family who have been getting on with the ordinary everyday things of life, without me.

I am not particularly proud of my fear. I am setting my agenda and needs before Jesus, asking that he might have me transfer back into family life after the intensity of the days that I will be having without too much trouble. I ask anyway because he loves me in my weakness.

It feels like this is the real stuff now. So I can exegete the Bible and put a service of common worship together and all of that honours God but this has a different feel about it. I am interested in the differences and the similarities between ministries of proclamation and teaching and discipling the Christian community and those ministries of reaching out, social mission, acts of kindness and intervention covered in prayer without any specific explanation of the reason for the hope within that leads to these actions.

I hope to write a thesis pulling on wisdom and the psalms - what has God got to say about the condition of the human heart and about our joys and laments?

I hope to engage with missiology and contextual theology, how do we do God in practical ways?

How do we accommodate ourselves to the context we find ourselves in and challenge it at the same time?

Expect busy blogging over the next two weeks as I pull out some of these themes. Be aware that a lot of what I write will be in the wake of some very real emotions. Please feel free to challenge my thinking so that I might grow.

What's in a name...Tabitha/Dorcas

The reader must observe names in Scripture because they often carry metaphorical meaning. To preserve meaning in the Greek, the Aramaic name changes. Cephas means rock in Aramaic but Peter means rock in Greek and with Tabitha (Ταβιθά), meaning 'gazelle' in Aramaic, to preserve this meaning, her name becomes Dorcas (Δορκας) in Greek. Strelan describes how 'there was a degree of ambiguity about the gazelle...'it was not a consecrated animal [but] belonged to the category of “clean” animals.' Her name perhaps prepares the reader for the ambiguity that is going to follow for the Christian community over clean and unclean foods and future exemption from the Mosaic food laws. Her location in Joppa draws further attention to her ambivalent status living as a Jew on the edge of Judea's territory. Hers has been a fringe social status as a woman and possibly a widow. Her location and name prepare us for Peter's visit to Simon the Tanner, unclean because of his work with animal skins. It is from his roof that Peter will have the vision to kill and eat in defiance of the food laws and so understand God's plan to advance the Kingdom to the Gentiles through Cornelius. Raising Tabitha prepares us for God's extension of God's promise from the consecrated and clean (Jewish), to the unconsecrated and unclean (Gentiles). She crosses both categories as the gazelle.


Luke's interest in women
Some commentators point out that Tabitha' s name, meaning gazelle, is in keeping with a tendency to name female slaves after animals. It is interesting to think about what should be made of Tabitha's status: this Jewish Christian, likely wealthy and possibly widowed woman. Widowhood, womanhood and previous enslavement would have certainly given her empathy for the marginalised. Tabitha's ministry consists of clothing the widows with garments that she has made. She exercises a ministry of compassion through her gifting, which anticipates Cornelius', who gives alms (10:2).

However, it could be that Luke is hinting to her position as a leader in the church. This could be behind his reference to her as a disciple. Witherington believes that her body being laid out in an upper room of a house the reader assumes to be hers, hints at her status as a leader of this house-church whose upper room would have afforded that degree of privacy also prized in Acts 1:3, 13 and 20:8. Craven & Kraemer believe that she might have been as much mourned by the widows because of their loss of 'a leader of the Christian community' as she would have been because of her support of them through her means. Her status as a Christian leader takes on further significance when one considers that she is presented to the saints and the widows, where perhaps by its inclusion, the saints refers also to men whom she might have impacted through her teaching, although this can not be substantiated from the text.

I am led to read commentaries with a hermeneutic of suspicion similar to Anderson's, if those commentators overemphasize Tabitha's deeds at the cost of her designated status as a disciple of probable financial independence. It is interesting that Tabitha's care of the widows is described as a good work and her discipleship status often overlooked. When men have a ministry of this kind they are called deacons (Acts 6) but interestingly not in the text itself, only in the later commentary upon it. Like Junia's apostleship (Rom 16:7), Tabitha's discipleship has been much overlooked and impacts the gender debate about women's roles in the New Testament.

Conclusion
In this pericope I am interested in the dynamics of status. Peter's status as an apostle imbued with the Holy Spirit with specific ministries is made clear by his patterning the healings of Jesus. The glory is ultimately Christ's but Peter's calling and commission in Jesuss name is demonstrated here. For Aeneas his status amongst his community is restored, he can now make his own bed; be responsible for himself in a way he was never able to before and this is emphasised by Peter's very practical command to him on his healing. Tabitha's status is complex and the church's treatment of her over time has often been influenced by culture and ideas about gender. Perhaps ultimately we are to marvel at the status of those witnessing these miracles both then and now. The outer garment Tabitha would have stitched for each of her friends is symbolic of the cloak of Christ which becomes clothing for new disciples 'born'. Ultimately the consequences of both these healings is a turning to the Lord in faith for those who witnessed (9:35) or heard about the miracle (9:42). It is God who is glorified.

Some reflections on the beautiful anointing Mt 26:6-13

It is interesting that this pericope explores opposition between Jesus and his very disciples who differ in their interpretations of the woman's act.

Matthew's use of the anointing

Jesus and honour

Perhaps the woman is not fully cognisant of the symbolism of her act. It could be that she is conveying the high honour with which she esteems him. Psalm 23 describes how 'You prepare a table before me/ in the presence of my enemies;/ you anoint my head with oil;/ my cup overflows'. That the reader is to think about this psalm seems more obvious on inspection of the consequences of Jesus' rebuke. Her honouring of Jesus contrasts with the dishonour the disciples extend to the woman and moreover, to Jesus himself. The Psalm describes 'the presence' of 'enemies' being simultaneous with the anointing and with Judas likely one of the rebuked, Matthew (26:14) positions Judas' plan to betray Jesus to the priests (whom the reader encountered in the scene before the anointing), as occurring immediately after the anointing, so that treachery brackets the episode on both sides, making the woman's candour all the more audacious in comparison to their clandestine conspiracies.

Jesus as Messiah

Hooker dismisses commentators' suppositions that because 'Jesus' body was not anointed [and] caused his friends and disciples distress [they] came to interpret this incident as rectifying the omission.'¹ The anointing functions to do much more than this. With messiah connoting 'anointed one', there is a symbolic significance that would have been intentional and understood by early readers. Platt invests the woman's action with significant symbolism, declaring,

For us, it says unequivocally that woman (and it is especially notable that she is not named and not given individuality, but is indeed Woman standing in the prophetic office for Israel) anointed Jesus as the Messiah of the House of David.²

Matthew would trust that early Jewish readers would read the woman's act as an allusion to Jesus' messiahship. Hers is a metaphorical consecration of him as King. In the Old Testament we have the king who is 'the LORD'S anointed' (1 Sam. 24:10; 2 Sam. 19:21; 23:1; Lam. 4:20) but also the 'anointed priest' (Lev.4:3; 6:22), and a prophet whom 'you shall anoint' (1 Kings 19:16). Matthew presents Jesus as the eschatological fulfilment of all these offices.

Jesus' death

It is Jesus, however, who provides us with the hermeneutical key for any interpretation of her act. Her act is to be interpreted in terms of what it is saying about his future work, his death. Whilst she might function as a symbolic conveyor of Jesus' Christological status, France describes how 'Probably without realising it, she had provided a pointer to the theology of the cross.'³ His death will fulfil the Old Testament prophesies to which Jesus has alluded (Isaiah 53, for example). Jesus is anointed before he eats, as was the Jewish custom for esteemed guests, but more significantly, he is anointed before his burial, because executed like a criminal, he would be denied anointing after death. To communicate this, Matthew omits the other gospel writers' descriptions of the women attending the tomb for the purpose of anointing his corpse (Mk 16:1; Jn 19:39).

Significantly, the woman, in this pericope, communicates by prophetic action, what the disciples are still failing to comprehend, despite Jesus' words, that he must suffer and die in order to rise again and reign in glory. Her actions signify that 'Jesus is the messianic King whose throne is a cross'.⁴ The scene exhibits a kind of dramatic irony because the readers of the gospel are aware of the significance of her actions, but the disciples are not.

Hermeneutics

Differences of interpretation are an event of the pericope itself. 'Jesus' speech covers half the pericope',⁵ and where the disciples respond, dissension is found. The reader confronts how contentious issues of interpretation can be. The significance of the act for post-Easter Christians is lost on the disciples who object with righteous indignation because the ointment could have been sold to generate income for the poor. In turn, they cause Jesus to become indignant as he rebukes them for 'bothering' or 'troubling' her (v. 10; the Greek idiom also at Luke 11:7; Gal 6:17, is a strong one). However, by its extravagance, her act challenges the reader too. Matthew describes Mark's 'nard' as ‘very costly ointment’ (v.7). πολύτιμος (very costly) is the same word Matthew uses to describe the pearl in 13:46. Its cost reinforces further the sacrificial nature of the woman's act; its magnitude. Just as the merchant would have sold all he had for the pearl, this woman is described as having given 'all' that she could. This takes us in turn back to Matthew's description of Jesus having given 'all' his teachings and prompts us forward to his final action, his giving all for us in his sacrifice on the cross, in which all his teachings find their fulfilment. Is Jesus, in turn, asking us whether we are offering so costly a sacrifice of praise and if not, then why not?

The disciples are puzzled by it but perhaps have more reason than us, not yet living in the light of the cross and resurrection. What Jesus decides is a good work or beautiful thing, they conclude to be a ἀπώλεια, the same word Matthew uses for 'perdition' (7:13), perhaps communicating the irony, that in her anointing of the only one who can forgive sins, this supposed 'waste' is actually her way of marking her gratitude for her forgiven state. She communicates something about our state in Christ too and what it cost. Like us, she no longer has cause to fear perdition. If she is consciously signifying her recognition of his messiahship, she acts as a foil to the disciples, who having spent so much time with Jesus, still fail to recognise his true status. It could be that Matthew wants the reader to wrestle with his/her own estimation of Jesus as well.

Conclusion

Only known as γυνή (woman) because Jesus insists she is remembered for her action, our worship of Jesus must reconcile, that whilst differences of interpretation about who Jesus is will manifest themselves in the ways that we worship and even in our very denominational differences, worship of Jesus requires us to acknowledge him as a crucified and risen King, Prophet and Priest. He is the fulfilment of all our hopes, to whom we give our very essence, our very all, so that if we are really leading a cruciform life, we will seek to love as Christ loved and he 'loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God' (Eph. 5:2). It is in this that our identity lies.

1Hooker, Gospel According to St. Mark, 330

2Platt, 'The Ministry of Mary of Bethany', 30

3France, The Gospel of Matthew, p.974

4Davies & Allison, Matthew, p.448

5Davies & Allison, Matthew, p.441

How to be a Christian in the workplace

Nope, I do not think that this is what my lecturer meant...