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Great job drawing the Statue of Liberty on Scriblink, our online whiteboard!How many knew that the statue was (in part) based on Moses?
We introduced Bruce Feiler's concept/book: Moses: America's Prophet.
This would be a great assignement to pursue for your "Adventure."
These videos, and more, as well as excerpts from the book are all on the
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Today's video on The Exodus and the "Dance Party on the Beach" is not online in any form (though you can buy it as episode 5 on this DVD). The points to remember are how this was the seminal/foundational/formative microcosmic event of (perhaps all) Scripture, in that:
1)It presents a pattern and prototype of any deliverance from bondage/slavery; and every "way out" (Ex-Odus)
from an old way/world to a new way/world. We had some good discussion about "in-between times" in our lives that we recognized (maybe only in retrospect) as pivotal and formative. Crossing the sea is often meant to call to mind crossing a barrier (remember the Jordan River video from Week One) into a while new world, creation or order; from allegiance to forbidden gods to The One God. Jesus is seen in Matthew as the New Moses in that just as Moses led God's people out of bondage to an oppressive ruler/"king" (Pharoah) and an empire that infected them (Egypt), so Jesus leads God;s people out of spiritual bondage to an oppressive ruler/"king" (Herod) and an empire that infected them (Rome). This is a classic intertexting/hyperlinking/parallelism.
2)It is really the first time God's people are formed/forged into a community; they have "been through stuff together" and are inevitably bonded and changed through a corporate experience. Thus:
3)Also, remember (for the test) the Jewish tradition that the Kingdom of God functionally, and for all practical purposes began (or landed in a foundational way on earth) when God's people there on the beach danced and sang, "The Lord is reigning" ( Exodus 15:18 )...remembering that "reigning" could be translated "King" or "Reigner". Thus, God's Kingship "began" when God's people publicly recognized it after seeing God in action in dramatic way as King. Vander Laan: "The Kingdom begins when God acts"
...Exodus 15:18:
DROP-DOWN BOX:
- "The Lord is reigning from this point onward."
- "The Lord is King from this point onward."
We expanded our definition of "communitas" from last class via this short clip from Alan Hirsch:
For more on Alan Hirsch see several excerpts of his I added to Tuesday's blog post here.
His website is HERE
We summarized several possible adventure projects so far:
- Source Criticism/ JEDP, your own observatiuons on different literary styles, sources, terms in Exodus or Deuteronomy
- -"Justifying God": reckoning honestly with how to understand God doing apparently "unGodlike" things in Exodus ( allowing enslavement, killing, advocating killing, judgement on Egyptians, intending to kill Moses, etc.)
- -Janzen's thesis that Exodus is fundamentally about ":a change of masters" (see p. for starters
- Case study/analysis of Moses: as a leader, or as a person; perhaps as a case study as a leader in communitas (definition here, see also "Moses aqnd communitas articles here and liminality (see definition here, also see "40 years of liminality") More on those terns next week. Though: Why is Moses (unexpectedly) not mentioned as often as one would think in the text?
- A book report/review/critique of Bruce Feiler's "America's Prophet: How the Story of Moses Shaped America." Lots of starter info on the "Moses and America" tab above, a
- -The "life-saving role of women" (pp. 39-40)
- -Kinship societies (Israel) vs. Power-based societies (Egypt) (p. 36)
- -"Absence of God"/Lament/"They cried out" (p, 52)
- -Civil disobedience, genocide,apartheid (pp, 36-42)
- The role of music/worship (especially Exodus 15.
ON THAT LAST TOPIC:
For anyone who has ever/even wondered why churches call the music part of a worship gathering the "worship time":
Read and interact with this.
A strange shift began about fifteen years ago,
Ask most evangelical or charismatic Christians in USAmerica about the place of "worship"
in a gathering. For some strange reason, the word has come to be synonymous with "the songs sung early in the meeting."
"Good morning! After the worship, the children will be dismissed, and Pastor Steve will share from God's word"
We even call the person leading the singing the "worship leader."
Whazzup with that?
Of course, this definition is foreign to Scripture, and to the church in all history and places..until our lifetime in the West.
Google "worship is not music" for some clues as to how this hijacking happened.
Related:
Why do we also thing a "worship" gathering (after the music, or "worship set")is for teaching?:
In the early church the public worship of the church was a prayer of praise and thanksgiving directed not to the people but to God. Seeing worship as prayer is a paradigm shift from the current presentational notion of worship. Today worship is frequently seen as a presentation made to the people to get them to believe in the first place, to enrich and edify their faith, and to bring healing into their lives. But the ancient church did not design (a contemporary word) worship to reach people, to educate people, or to heal people. Yet in their worship, which was a prayer of praise and thanksgiving offered to God, people were indeed nourished by offering God’s mighty acts of salvation as a prayer to God for the life of the world. The point is, of course, that worship as prayer shapes who we are. But how so?...
-Robert Webber, Continued here, ht; Len
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| image borrowed from the post, "Cavinism as 'The Big Tent?'" |
Later, as we were signing, she said "I wondered wbat happened. You said we should sign after worship, so when we didn't sign after worship, I figured you forgot."
I had ansolutely no idea what she meant.
Then it hit me. In many circles (and in her previous chiurch, the songs that are sung early in the gatherings are called "worship" or the "worship time" or "worship songs." So she thought i meant "after the music," and I meant "after the gathering (Of course, my definition was ecen more problematic)..
It is unbelievable that so few ever even notice, let alone challenge, this common practice in contemporary church. As I blogged a few years ago:
A strange shift began about fifteen years ago,
Ask most evangelical or charismatic Christians in USAmerica about the place of "worship"
in a gathering. For some strange reason, the word has come to be synonymous with "the songs sung early in the meeting."
"Good morning! After the worship, the children will be dismissed, and Pastor Steve will share from God's word"
We even call the person leading the singing the "worship leader."
Whazzup with that?
Of course, this definition is foreign to Scripture, and to the church in all history and places..until our lifetime in the ... continued
So I was thrilled to catch Dan Kimball's post below (the "worship=music" reference is so accepted and entrenched that in spite of this post below, Kimball has another post called new worship music "Radiant")
I would love to get this topic on the table. It's not just semantics. Well, actually it IS..but semantics matters.
Kimball:
Should the church accountant be the one called the "worship pastor"?
The title of this blog post and question that I ask is not one I am totally serious about - and not really suggesting we actually do call the accountant the worship pastor. But I do have the question of how we have overwhelmingly defined "worship" to primarily be music and singing.
I have become very aware of the power of words—and the power of defining words. In the Christian culture we have created I don't believe we can ever assume anymore when we say the terms "gospel", "Jesus", "salvation", "inspired", "evangelical", "evangelism", "missional" etc. we all mean the same thing. I have learned (and sometimes the hard way) that you need to be asking definitions of terms with specific meaning to understand how someone else uses a term that may differ from your definition.
One of these terms is "worship".
If you were to ask most teenagers and young adults what comes to their minds when they hear the word "worship" it will likely be singing. I understand why they do, as we have pretty much defined worship to them over the past 20 years or more as worship = singing. Now it is totally true that we worship as we sing. But that is only one aspect of worship. We have subtly taught (in my opinion) a reductionist view of worship limiting it primarily to music and singing as what defines the word and practice.
I try to pay attention to reasons why we define worship mainly as music these days. And it is not too difficult to discover. What do we call the person in a church who leads the band or singing? It is normally the "worship pastor" or "worship leader". When our music leaders say, "Let's now worship," that is when the singing begins. When a sermon begins or when the offering is received we often don't say ""Let's now worship" like we do when the singing starts. When we think of Sunday gatherings of the church and when does worship happen, we generally think of the singing - not the teaching or the sacrifice of people who are worshiping by volunteering time in the children's ministry or other things happening. You look the Christian albums and as we call them "Best of Worship" or "Worship Greatest Hits" that reinforce the idea that music is the primary—or even only—form of worship. I just read on a Facebook post how a group was bringing in a guest person to "lead worship" and of course this guest person was a musician.We constantly, constantly reinforce by how we use that word casually all the time that it primarily means music and singing.
I Love what St. Mark Thomas posted on my original post:
Mark Thomas said...
- I teach a lot of younger people about worship and what it means. I usually start in the Old Testament and end somewhere in Revelation (chapter 4 or 5) are great examples of crazy and wild "throne room" worship. One thing that I always stress is that worship is not exclusively music. That worship can happen anywhere and not just the first 20-40 minutes of a Sunday/Saturday/Wednesday church service. In fact, there is no such thing as a "worship song"! A song is simply a song, a tool. One must be in the attitude and in the Spirit for the song to be even used in worship. Otherwise it's nothing different than what we might hear on our top 40 radio stations on any given Monday/Tuesday/Thursday/Friday. Does anyone still listen to FM radio? Worship (and revelation) happens when we're in a place of incomprehension, bedazzlement, and transformation. It has to. What do you expect after meeting God face to face and giving Him all the glory? -Mark Thomas ---
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In addition to your fist Three Worlds Project due next class..
I will check on your journals next week.
Do your vest to be up to date on Exodus chapters 1-15, and reading Janzen Parts 1-3
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