Tennessee-West Kentucky Conference offers seasonal Bible study

The Tennessee-West Kentucky Conference of The United Methodist Church is providing a Bible study for its members.  The title of the work is "Abide in Christ."  It is available as a free download here.   The study has provisions for either individual or small group study.

Abide in Christ is based on the Farewell Discourse of Jesus found in John 15-17.  This body of material contains Jesus' final words of encouragement and instruction to his disciples before his arrest.This passage contains the longest teaching by Jesus in all the gospels.  There are more verses here than in the Sermon on the Mount.  In John's gospel, Jesus has come to a point where he recognizes that he has very little time left with his followers, and he has so much more that he wants to say  And so we have this material before us.

 The study makes provision for examination of the texts, for questioning the meaning of certain passages, and for reflection on what these verses might mean in the life of a modern-day disciple.

The design of the study is that it be used between Easter Day and the Day of Pentecost.  But it is easily adapted to a shorter span.  I encourage you to take advantage of this new offering by our Conference leadership and spend some time with what we might call "Jesus' final instructions."

 

A matter of balance

I regularly pass by a church that was formerly a United Methodist Congregation.  It has apparently joined in the disaffiliation madness that has infected our denomination.  The sign out front of this building is brick with metal letters attached.  I won't use its real name, but the church has struck the word "United" from its sign, so that the posting now looks something like this:

WESLEY
                          Methodist Church

I think that the appearance of this sign is a metaphor for this entire movement.  It is out-of-balance.  It is asymmetrical.  It is also just aesthetically unpleasing.

The impatience and often irrationality of the Disaffiliation Movement continues to fracture our denomination.  The movement depends on misinformation, outright lies, and an angry, mean spirit to accomplish it ends.  The movement's short-sightedness will leave us scarred for a century to come.

And its legacy is also a sense of ugliness.  It drags with it a lack of balance that betrays an absence of planning.

I am not much for bumper-sticker theology, but this church sign really tells me all I need to know.

Palm/Passion Sunday

Palm/Passion Sunday: I remember the first couple of times I heard that term.  It refers, of course, to this day, the Sunday prior to Easter Day. It is a kind of expedient.  It recognizes that there are a lot of people who will attend church today and observe The Triumphal Entry.  Then they will stay at home and not come to church again until next Sunday, when they will join in the proclamation of Easter.  They will skip Holy Week, and Good Friday in particular, and therefore move from celebration to celebration, from joy to joy, without experiencing any of the anguish of the Upper room; Gethsemane; The Betrayal; The Arrest; the various trials before the Sanhedrin, before Herod, or before Pilate; The Flogging; the Via Dolorosa; The Crucifixion; or The Entombment.  So many people will refuse to recognize these terrible moments.  They move from Palms to Lilies.  They ease from Sunday to Sunday without a lot of discomfort at all.  I had a dear friend and active church member who said of Holy Week, “I just can’t stand to think of Jesus in a situation like that.”

As I said, I remember the first couple of times I heard of “Palm/Passion Sunday.”  I was horrified.  Now you must realize that this was early in my ministry.  My idealism was still running at a fairly high level.  I have come to understand that there are reasons beyond spiritual laziness why folks might not be in church on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday or for other Holy Week observances.  So, while I don’t see it as the best of all possible worlds, I have made my peace with Palm/Passion Sunday. 

It starts off with The Liturgy of the Palms in all three years of the Revised Common Lectionary Cycles.  It then moves to the Liturgy of The Passion, where in one form or another it rehearses the death of Jesus.  Folks use these two elements in varying ways, but at the core is a lifting up of both Triumphal Entry and the Death of Jesus.  And, it may be that such a day encompasses the gospel in a way that we don’t see on a garden-variety Sunday.  So, ambivalence and all, Happy Palm/Passion Sunday.

As I said, I remember the first couple of times I heard of “Palm/Passion Sunday.”  I was horrified.  Now you must realize that this was early in my ministry.  My idealism was still running at a fairly high level.  I have come to understand that there are reasons beyond spiritual laziness why folks might not be in church on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday or for other Holy Week observances.  So, while I don’t see it as the best of all possible worlds, I have made my peace with Palm/Passion Sunday. 

It starts off with The Liturgy of the Palms in all three years of the Revised Common Lectionary Cycles.  It then moves to the Liturgy of The Passion, where in one form or another it rehearses the death of Jesus.  Folks use these two elements in varying ways, but at the core is a lifting up of both Triumphal Entry and the Death of Jesus.  And, it may be that such a day encompasses the gospel in a way that we don’t see on a garden-variety Sunday.  So, ambivalence and all, Happy Palm/Passion Sunday.