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3.6 Induction into a people
In this session we will see how Atonement and the birth of a new people are two sides of the same thing.
Receiving a new story
Share ways in which you have noticed the content, questions or insights from the previous Module showing up in your lives.
Walk down memory lane
Discuss The Procession by John August Swanson using the following questions:
- What do you see in this image – name as many elements as you can.
- What is happening?
- How are the elements connected? For example, are the Bible stories connected to what the people are doing?
- Does this image tell a story about what church is?
Food for thought
- James says that Jesus intended to found the church, but that this project is not particularly religious or churchy in the way we normally think of church.
- What has being “religious” or “churchy” meant to you?
- How does that align with what Jesus intended?
- Are there ways of belonging to a church community that allow for the possibility of a new unity to emerge that does not involve defining ourselves over against another?
- James explains that what Jesus was doing in founding the church was undoing “existing forms of cultural togetherness”. How would you describe those forms of togetherness or belonging?
Wrap-up question
What are the signs that something like this might be happening in your community?
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In the Discussion Forum of this unit, share ways in which you have noticed the content, questions or insights from the previous module showing up in your lives.
The previous module considered how God continually comes toward us in three ‘moments’ of Atonement: through liturgy; in our bargaining over the small and big transactions of our daily lives; and through persons who unexpectedly convey the warming presence of God’s love. What does this mean in my life? In recognizing these three moments, I think of the turning of the tide, the time when the low tide reaches its limit, just before the high tide begins its return.
At the low tide of Atonement, I see the widest extent of what was covered up on my inner tidal flats. The high and rough places, provocations in my life, appear but without their power to make me defensive. Where I would have gotten my back up at them before, now I remain relaxed. I view these high and rough places, and yet I am content to wait patiently knowing that God’s atoning presence returns silently, through liturgy and contemplative prayer, but also at completely unexpected times throughout my daily life. The returning, atoning flood will wear away my high places as the young life of God’s loving presence washes over them, making them plain.
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I look at the ‘The Procession’ http://bit.ly/1UT66x1 and find all the detail distracting. However, I like the blue shades and the oranges colors. The Romanesque nave in the upper-center draws my eye into the image. Above the nave, the people in the boat make me think of Noah. Altogether, ‘The Procession’ is not one that typically would attract my attention.
As I thought about this picture, I realized that a print of ‘Custer’s Last Stand’ http://bit.ly/1Pdm83i in the room where I’m writing now probably qualifies as the polar opposite of ‘The Procession’. I bought the print of this difficult work long ago because Edgar S. Paxson was a shirttail relative. I see Paxson’s work as a statement about conflict between indigenous peoples and aggressive settlers.
Paxson began his life in a Quaker family in western New York. I don’t know much about his life, but I see the painting’s brutality witnessing to the pervasive woundedness of body, mind, and spirit, the inevitable consequences of war. Nations and once again now caliphates in the Middle East go to war against those they need to see as irremediably other, or ‘who they are not.’
The journey of learning ‘who I am not’ has occupied much of the story of my identity to date with little thought of induction into a people. ‘‘Custer’s Last Stand” where the lonely hero leads the charge to save his people was my ‘social other’ beginning point. However, studying here at Forgiving Victim, I’ve reversed direction to find a new path and now to join a new procession.
This discussion assignment made me remember ‘The Way’ http://imdb.to/1PqZbr7, a movie I saw a few years ago. An American father loses his only son who died walking pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago http://bit.ly/1Qr0vds in northern Spain. When the father flew to retrieve his son’s body in Spain, he decided to have the body cremated and then to complete his son’s pilgrimage. The movie touched me deeply when I first saw it four years ago in spring 2012. I’m re-watching it now, which fits for me with the title of this discussion – “Induction into a People: Walk Down Memory Lane.”
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James truly has an extraordinary talent for pertinent titles, such as “induction into a people”. Or, Rich, to put it into his own words…..”atonement and the birth of a new people are different sides of the same coin. By disrupting our old way of forming unity over against someone, Jesus effected a change at the anthropological level, launching a project called church. What opens up when we can enter into the perspective of the victim is the possibility of being forgiven….when we let go of the victimising way of creating and maintaining togetherness, we begin to relate to other people without the need to gang up in order to survive.”
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Over the years, I have focused intellectually on church hierarchy, buildings, and internal organizational structure. And yet emotionally I’ve experienced an open, loving community through our local parish, which while not always unconditionally loving, keeps on trying.
Father Bob, one of our former rectors, was fond of referring to the church as a hospital for sinners. I remember him preaching that Romans 5:6 was his favorite Bible verse: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” Now comes James adding depth to the context and meaning of God’s atoning project for healing humanity. James shows us that no particular building or place defines a church’s limits. Church is about God’s atoning project, which we experience as the forgiveness of letting go of the need to define ourselves over against one another.
Letting-go forgiveness unfolds over time. In the light of the Forgiving Victim, who alone can help us let go of our need to define ourselves over against one another, Church is present wherever and whenever we open ourselves to the presence and power of God’s constant love. Living into God’s loving atonement gives a real, practical meaning to the deacon’s dismissal at the close of each Eucharist: “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” and of the people’s response: “Thanks be to God.”
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Yes, Rich, the new creation in Christ is an ecclesia or community which affords the possibility of all people being reconciled. Atonement and the birth of a new people are different sides of the same coin. We can live the role of the forgiving victim whenever we find any group of people who create their unity by ganging up against others, and whatever the particular cultural forms are assumed by their identity forged over against others. I think we find this everyday, do we not?
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Yes, Rich, the new creation in Christ is an ecclesia or community which affords the possibility of all people being reconciled. Atonement and the birth of a new people are different sides of the same coin. We can live the role of the forgiving victim whenever we find any group of people who create their unity by ganging up against others, and whatever the particular cultural forms are assumed by their identity forged over against others. I think we find this everyday, do we not?
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3.6 Induction into a people: Wrap-up
As old forms are undone, Jesus makes possible a “complete recasting of the way humans live together.”
What are the signs that something like this might be happening in your community?
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While ‘a group’ is a commonly used term, a sense of shared community very often eludes groups of all kinds. Some groups might look like communities but certainly do not reflect the “complete recasting of the way humans live together.” For a community to emerge from what is socially acceptable and to maintain itself over time, the community requires that group members contribute actively and cooperatively in shared, empathic communication.Our church’s Sunday morning adult Bible study class brings nine to twelve of us together on a regular basis for discussion and reflection. Each Sunday this Lent we’ve been watching five to ten-minute videos focused on “racial justice” from ChurchNext.tv. We each respond to discussion questions with individual reflections. When each person finishes speaking, she then must call on another who is free to speak or pass. It’s a simple procedure that facilitates participation while respecting individual needs. We share personal thoughts, histories and intentions for future action. I shape my responses to include insights I’m learning here at Forgiving Victim eLearning.
These Sunday sessions are “a sign” for me of a recasting of the way humans live together. Our Sunday morning group is a community that gathers faithfully for an hour each week praying for the personal growth, understanding, and change required for a “complete recasting of the way humans live together.”
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That sounds wonderful Rich. The “complete recasting of the way humans live together” really amounts to never ending reflection and the awareness of constantly regressing to old habits and reactions. I think James’s teaching on the necessity of cultivating good habits is very relevant to this. It seems that your Sunday group is quite the opposite to “any group of people create their unity by ganging up against others”.
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