‘People are looking for experience’ and ‘Jesus offered/s experience, and through that experience comes transformation, the transformation that comes from encountering God’s Kingdom’ are words that mean a lot to me.
It has been quite a journey for me this week. I have felt fed with good spiritual food. Food that will sustain me and food that will enable others to be sustained also.
The memory that came back to me of offering the experience of being anointed with oil, while holding a large nail, and hearing the words of blessing on one good Friday has been probably the most profound service for me. The opportunity for worshippers to experience the physical/touch – the nail, the oil, the smell – the scented oil, the spoken word – blessing, the visual - the colour, colour of mourning of the black cloth draped on the very large cross at the front as they came forward for anointing, hearing – the story again added to and lived by the other senses. Being touched, the emotions and senses being stirred, brought many tears. I had forgotten that service until reminded again this week. How rarely that multisensory experience has happened in my ministry. It is something I longed for but didn’t think I had the creative talent to pull it off. I see now that it comes from within the text. My age, or that of others is not the issue, my lack of expertise in the techno world is not relevant though my desire to learn those skills has increased as I see the value of them to open up scripture in an amazing way. My life’s experience is not important, everyone who has encountered God is hungry to find more of God in their lives but don’t know how. Just reading a devotional each day loses its satisfaction in a world that offers much more than just the written word, even for older people unless they are locked away from any technology at all. Especially when one hasn’t been taught to look behind the text for the real life experience of senses enabling new and deeper understanding.
This last week I have discovered a new language with which I can share this good news with others. For a long time I have been aware that people learn differently and for a long time I have struggled to find ways that touch everyone not just those who learn through hearing or even seeing.
This new language that I have found through living the text has been a gift to me on my journey.
When I read the passage such as Isaiah 61, I can experience anew the smells, the texture, the story, the feelings, the sight, or insight that is present in God’s written word. Through this I encounter God’s heart.
40 years ago this week I came into a relationship with Jesus. I didn’t know it was Jesus at the time, my name for this other was God. This happened in my flat alone when I was in my early twenties. I knew very little about church having attended Sunday School very briefly as a child then again when I was thirteen. I used to walk a couple of kilometres over the tram line to attend church twice a week, Sundays and Wednesdays. I was looking for God, I had been God conscious from a young child in a family that wasn’t. I had also gone to the YWCA in my teens. I learned years later that both the members of the youth group and those at the YWCA had prayed for me, but never invited me into their group. Still with this yearning to know God, in my twenties after making many mistakes in my life I attempted to read the tiny, small print bible I had received when the queen visited in the fifties. I began at the beginning as you do. Didn’t have a clue what it all meant. Then one day I cried out to God and said to whoever God was, to take over my life, I was making a mess of it. I knew instantly something had happened. I found the church where my parents had been married and I had been christened and spoke to one of the Priests. Fortunately for me he understood that I had encountered God in a spiritual way and immediately put me into a Bible study group with all older people studying Isaiah in King James Version. All head knowledge of course and an incomprehensible (to me)language. I guess that was all there was in those days. I bought my own bible, RSV and read it avidly, joined a group in that church that worked with leather dressed bikies, the beginning of my ministry. I cooked for them and supported the leaders in there work with them. Over the years I have been hungry for more knowledge of God and the Bible. I eventually learned who Jesus was and have continued for follow him for 40 years. Over those 40 years I have longed for others to discover what I have discovered, that God gives a garland for ashes, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
This is the God that I follow and want others to know about.
I am reminded once again that opening up the text for others will enable them to discover new truths for themselves without having to look to others for it.
This learning has become a tool which will enable me to help people plunge the depths of scripture in a way that will give them confidence to do their own searching, not looking to others to give their interpretation, and which will be life changing.
It is a tool that I can use for people already in relationship with Jesus and for those who aren’t, to help them find a way into the story that might have otherwise been foreign to them.
I can imagine as others hear of these ways to encounter scripture, there will be an excitement to share this with others, hey, worship will be different, bible studies or bible encounters might even seem appealing, sharing one’s experience with others might not seem so scary.
I am grateful for this week, it is probably the best take home learning I have done in many years of ‘doing’ courses, trying to improve my ministry skills for the sake of the kingdom and those I minister to and with and for myself.
Thanks everyone for your input during the week and thanks to Steve for your willingness to make this journey, when it wasn’t the norm, so that I and others could benefit from hearing how to experience God’s love for us in a deeper and more transforming way.
Hi Sandy,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your story of the Good Friday that will stand in your memory forever. I was able to visualise it (and even detect a hint of the scent of the oil) through the words you used to describe the scene. But how much more it must have meant to you because you didn’t just read words about it (as I did) but were present and heard, saw, smelled, touched and tasted it all for yourself. You made the comment that you’ve longed for more of this, “but didn’t think (you) had the creative talent to pull it off”. While I suspect that’s probably not the case, the wonderful thing is that we DON’T have to pull it off ourselves. The whole idea of ‘curating worship’ (Jonny Baker) means that we can tap into the almost bottomless creative resources that often lie dormant within our congregations. The challenge as well as the joy is that this is collaborative work, the task of the curator being to “enable a group to develop something creative together rather than to realize their own personal vision” (Baker, 8). Which, as Baker goes on to note, isn’t easy as it cuts across control but with the great benefit of providing opportunities for new levels of trust. I suspect that giving this opportunity to your congregation may do exactly what you long for, namely to “help them find a way into the story that might have otherwise been foreign to them”.
Blessings on you and all your senses!
Hi Sandy,
ReplyDeleteIn your blog, you were commenting about ‘creative talent’ and you noted that ‘I see now that it comes from within the text’. For me, that’s a very important thought because so often we may be tempted to think that it’s ‘down to us’ to make the text speak to us and our people. Again, given that the text is living, and that God is creative, we can rely on His text to do its job. Our part, as I see it, is to join the existing conversation with our own unique God-given creativity. The article by Rose on ‘conversational preaching’ with its focus on ‘personal experience’, p.124ff, is important; also Jonny Baker’s article ‘Throwing the hand grenade…’; also Lecture Block 7 on Storytelling fitted in well here.
Although you wrote, ‘My life’s experience is not important’, I found your comments beginning with ‘40 years ago this week…’ very important and well worth sharing. As I see it, people may dispute our theology, but they cannot dispute our story, and your story was real to me.
It seems to me, that if we bring an open heart and mind to the text, God can and will speak to us. This can be liberating if we are prepared to let God do His part rather than us just bringing all our own preconceived ideas and laying them on the text as if we are the experts because of all our own study and personal effort.
(comment made on Ken's behalf by Steve Taylor)
Thank you so much for your reflection. In my opinion, you hit the nail on the head with the key elements from your journey during the intensive, ‘People are looking for experience’ and ‘Jesus offered experience, and through that experience comes transformation, the transformation that comes from encountering God’s Kingdom’. Wow! It seems to me that so much of the intensive delivered on just that: an experience that transforms and through providing glimpses of the Kingdom of God. Jonny Baker talks about this, ‘In art and worship people want moments of epiphany where a connection is made, where the soul is moved, the presence of God is sensed as opposed to just thinking that that was a nice set of ideas we explored at some rational level’ (Curating Worship, 75). I really appreciated you weaving your personal story of faith into your reflection. I was challenged to reflect on the moments where Jesus has come to me and I have felt His breath drawing me into more of His plan and purpose. Your story brought back memories of those moments in my story, and for that, I am grateful. Thank you again.
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