Following up our notes (see 9/8) on Genesis 1 and 2/Exodus parallels, and our discussion (9/12) of the plagues as "Counter-Creation" or destruction...
Nahum Sarna:
"Biblical religion revolves around two themes: Creation and Exodus, The former asserts God;s undivided sovereignty over nature; the latter His absolute hegemony over history" (p,1)
Read Sarn on Genesis/Exodus conenction:
If Exodus is so steeped in Genesis...is it (and Genesis with it) also anyhow tethered to....
....... Revelation? (Explore! Maybe here, here and here...and See page 493 of your Janzen book..... Hmmmm)
If so, is the Exodus event/motif (or the Genesis>Exodus, Creation>Liberation theme) in one sense the central narrative ("pivotal event...dominant motif" -Sarna, p.1; "seminal event," -VanDer Laan video) of Scripture/history?
What then of Jesus, the New Moses, New Creation, New Liberator From Bondage, New Overseer of Tabernacle, etc)?
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"WATCH WITH ME": TODAY'S VIDEO
"time began with the exodus" (Today's VanDer Laan video notes.
"the religious calendar and all its rituals and practices are all reinterpreted in light of the Exodus. The New Year is changed to the spring; the weekly sabbath is rationalized as being grounded in the liberation from Egypt rather than Creation" (Sarna, p. 3) Liberation from Egypt/Exodus =Creation
The whole
Passover/Watch Night (topic of today's video; the say after Passover/Rosh Hashanna
serves as a kind of New Years/Start of the calendar, new beginnings atmosphere...see:
2 Jewish New Years - Passover (Pesach) and Rosh Hashanah
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TWO IMPORTANT TERMS WILL USE FROM THIS POINT ON:
1)COMMUNITAS:
definition:
Communitas (click)
What does this "Council of Elrond" scene from "Lord of the Rings" have to do with the our theme?Well, for one, "you need people of intelligence on this sort ofmission....quest....thing.":
That's communitas..
Alan Hirsch discussed fear of failure at Catalyst’s second lab. Here is what he said:
Victor Turner is a cultural anthropologist that studied the rituals and rites of passage for young African boys into manhood. The ordeal the boys would endure through their rite of passage created a bond deeper that community. It created communitas (takes community to the next level and allows the whole of the community to share a common experience, usually through a rite of passage).
Journeys of adventure can change you significantly.
One of the most profound sense of communitas in the US was 9/11.
In the Bible, when David was in the cave with his band of warriors, communitas was created. When Moses and the Israelites wandered the wilderness for 40 years, communitas was created. The exile formed communitas. Jesus and the 12 disciples were a journey of communitas, so was the group of 70.
The Church in the west is in big, big trouble. The Church is fine in the east. The early church and the Chinese church grew exponentially (BOOM!) despite their persecution. Mission is risky. If you create a community that avoids all risk, the people are stifled.
In trying to reach men particularly, we can learn from this. We can journey together. C.S. Lewis says, “Women are face-to-face creatures, and men are side-by-side creatures.” There is something about a bonding experience that we can learn from, experiences like Habitat for Humanity.
Creating artificial environments at church do not prepare people to cope with the rest of the week. Middle class has an obsession with safety and security. The problem is that we undermine our ability to engage the real world. No wonder we form religious enclaves. We easily forget the good things that God has done for us when we are in a safe zone.
Take some journeys. You can change the world. LINK
Also:
The terminology comes from Victor Turner’s study of rites of passage - the process by which members of a group make the transition from one social status to another. ‘Liminality’, as Hirsch explains it, refers to periods of seclusion from the group and ordeal - for example, the trial by nature that young boys must go through out in the bush before re-entering the village as men. ‘Communitas’ is the intensified, unstructured and egalitarian form of community that develops in liminal situations. It is found in the early church and in churches that are suffering persecution. The Hirschian argument is that this condition should be normative for the missionary people of God.
The question, of course, is whether it is possible to live in a perpetual state of liminality. The exodus and the exile were unsettling and formative experiences, but they were spasms in the history of the people of God, thresholds, transitions in and out of a state of being settled - and ideallysecure and prosperous - in the land. LINK
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2)LIMINALITY:
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