Simply Christian Session 10a: Church & New Creation

Opening Prayer:

God of grace and God of glory, wash us with water and the Spirit so that we may be an assembly of believers united in unselfish faith. Guide us as we, the members of your body, serve you in diversity of personality and of tasks. Empower us so that our life together may truly echo your voice and call the world to redeeming justice, transforming spirituality, loving relationships, and inspiring beauty. Through Christ our Lord we ask this, Amen.

Points to Ponder:

The Family of God: “Many people today find it difficult to grasp this sense of corporate Christian identity. We have been so soaked in the individualism of modern Western culture that we feel threatened by the idea of our primary identity being that of the family we belong to – especially when the family in question is so large, stretching across space and time. The church isn’t simply a collection of isolated individuals, all following their own pathways of spiritual growth without much reference to one another”

The Church’s Calling: “Private spiritual growth and ultimate salvation come rather as the byproducts of the main, central, overarching purpose for which God has called and is calling us…The church exists, in other words, for what we sometimes call ‘mission’: to announce to the world that Jesus is its Lord…Those who belong to Jesus are called, here and now, in the power of the Spirit, to be agents of that putting-to-rights purpose”.

Existence: “The church exists primarily for tow closely correlated purposes: to worship God and to work for his kingdom in the world”.

Becoming a Christian: “Christian faith isn’t a general religious awareness…It is the faith which hears the story of Jesus, including the announcement that he is the world’s true Lord, and responds from the heart with a surge of grateful love that says: ‘Yes. Jesus is Lord. He died for my sins. God raised him from the dead. This is the center of everything’”.

For Reflection & Discussion

1) Wright suggests a number of images for the church, including river, tree, family, and body. Which of these (or which other image) do you find most helpful? Why?

2) What do you regard as the purpose of the church?

3) What is “belief”?

4) Why does baptism matter?

5) Were you ever “asleep” spiritually? If so, how did you awaken?

6) What is the proper relationship between evangelism and social action?

Simply Christian Session 9b: Scripture

Points to Ponder:

Love Story: “The authority of the Bible is the authority of a love story in which we are invited to take part.”

The Authoritative Story: “Supposing you went into the sports club, and what was pinned up on the wall was ‘One upon a time…’ and then a long story, which you had to read and then figure out what it had to do with you. Or supposing that the commanding officer came into the barracks one morning and simply told a story. Well, that would be a different kind of authority. The Bible is much more like that and that’s actually a much deeper and richer type of authority.

The Bible in Five Acts: “The Bible is like a great play with five acts. Act 1 is Creation; God made a good world. Act 2 is the entry of evil into God’s world, what we call the Fall or the rebellion of God’s human creatures. Act 3 is the story of Israel, of Abraham and his family. Act 4 is the story of Jesus himself, as the climax of Acts 3 and as the moment when all those stories of creation and fall reach their peak in the death of Jesus and when the resurrection of Jesus re-launches God’s project of creation. But then we have Act 5. Act 5 is the one that takes us all the way through to the moment when God will renew heaven and earth. And that is where we live.”

The Bible Energizes the Church: “The Bible is there to energize the mission of the church. It isn’t as though the Bible simply exists off on the side somewhere, and we are doing whatever we’re doing for God’s kingdom and then the Bible informs us in this way or that. It is rather that the Bible is with us, the book we read every day, the book we read prayerfully and thoughtfully, to listen for God’s word through it. Because the whole point of the story which the Bible tells us that THIS is the story which energizes us to be the people of God in and for God’s world.

For Reflection & Discussion

1. In your opinion, what authority does the Bible possess?

2. What are some of the dangers inherent in biblical interpretation?

3. Why should we study the Bible? What ways of studying scripture have you found to be most helpful?

4. What is the central point in Wright’s argument about metaphorical vs. literal readings of scripture. Do you agree?

5. Describe an occasion when a passage of scripture made a profound difference in your life.

Simply Christian Session 9a: Scripture

Opening Prayer:
O God, we ask you to meet us in the pages of scripture. Teach us how to understand and live by your word. Instruct us that we might act as vital participants in your ongoing story. Amen.

Points to Ponder:

What the Bible DOES: “Unfortunately, battle over the Bible have gotten in the way of people using the Bible for all that its worth, and have kept people from really integrating their reading of the Bible with every other aspect of their Christian life.”

Becoming Agents: “It’s about becoming agents of God’s new world – workers for justice, explorers of spirituality, makers and menders of relationships, creators of beauty. If God does indeed speak through scripture, he speaks in order to commission us for tasks like these.”

The Biblical Text: “It needs to be stressed that our evidence for the text of the New Testament is in a completely different league than our evidence for every single other book from the ancient world”.

Inspired Human Writers: “When we think about the overlap of heaven and earth, we see that the personal characteristics of the individual writers and the inspiration, the breathing of God’s Holy Spirit, were designed not be an either/or, so that it’s EITHER a human book or a divine book, but to be a both/and. The joy of biblical study for me is, not least, that when I’m in touch most with the individual ideas and character of particular authors, then I’m aware of the presence of God with that person and the presence of that same God with me”.

For Reflection & Discussion

1. Differing approaches to the Bible can yield nearly opposite conclusions, especially concerning vexing moral issues.
• What factors shape a person’s understanding of the Bible?

• Might two people of equal integrity come to very different conclusions about the application of the Bible to a particular issue? Why?

• Is one interpretation of scripture as good as another? What controls ought to govern out interpretation of scripture?

• Does anything about Bishop Wright’s approach help you to deal with the fact that Christians sometimes disagree about the Bible?

2. Can you think of examples of the Bible’s power to change lives?

Simply Christian Session 8b: Prayer

Points to Ponder:

Prayer from the Perspective of Option Three: “Many people think that prayer is simply a matter of getting in tune with the forces of nature, of being meditative and quiet and thinking on a different plane. Well, that may be a part of it. Other people taking the route of the dualist option think of prayer as sending am message to a distant God. Prayer really isn’t like that either. Christian prayer is a matter of being in touch with the God who made us and loves, the God who is much greater than anything we can imagine and yet is closer to us than breath itself. It always contains this mystery of awe and intimacy.

God is Not a Vending Machine: “William Temple said, ‘People often say that answers to prayer are coincidence, but I’ve noticed that when I pray, coincidences happen, and when I stop praying, the coincidences stop happening.’ And that has been the experience of many Christian people. It isn’t like a machine where you can just put a coin in the slot and expect God automatically to answer it. That would make God our servant. Prayer is rather an attempt in the power of the Spirit to put ourselves as vehicles of the love of God at his service, only then to discover that God works through us, through our prayer, transforming us, but transforming also the world and the situations for which we pray.”

Overlap: “Christian prayer is at its most characteristic when we find ourselves caught in the overlap of the ages, part of the creation that aches for new birth…by the Spirit, God himself is groaning from within the heart of the world, because God himself, by the Spirit, dwells in our hearts as we resonate with the pain of the world”.

For Reflection & Discussion

1. Use one of the following prayers during the upcoming week:

An Anglican prayer:
Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord;
and by they great mercy
defend us from all perils and dangers of this night;
for the love of thy only Son,
our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The “Jesus Prayer”:
Lord Jesus Christ,
Son of the Living God
have mercy on me, a sinner.

Two prayers suggested by Wright:
Father Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
set up your kingdom in our midst.

Holy Spirit,
breath of the living God,
renew me and all the world.

1 Corinthians 8:6
There is one God, the Father,
from whom are all things, and we to him;
and on Lord, Jesus the Messiah,
through whom are all things, and we through him.

2. Romans 8:26-27 tell us that: “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with signs too deep for words. And God who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

- How might this passage from Romans be helpful to you in moments when you didn’t know how or what to pray?

- What does this passage teach us about the nature of prayer?

Simply Christian Session 8a: Worship

Points to Ponder:

The Heart of Christian Living: “The heart of living as a Christian is worship: the adoration of the God in whose image we are made. People sometimes say, ‘Well, that sounds a bit selfish. You’re just going to stay in church all day and sing hymns. Surely you should be getting out in the world and doing things out there.’ Well, yes. Unless the getting out and doing things follows from worship, it can’t be true worship, because the God in whose image we’re made is precisely the God of generous, overflowing love. And the more that we worship him, the more we are to be people of generous, overflowing love ourselves.”

Worship as Celebration: “There is always a suspicion that…the call to worship God is rather like the order that goes out from a dictator whose subjects may not like him but have learned to fear him….If it has crossed your mind that worshipping the true God is like that, let me offer you a very different model…only two or three time in my life have I been in an audience which, the moment the conductor’s baton came down for the last time, leaped to its feet in electrified excitement, unable to contain its enthusiastic delight and wonder at what it had just experienced…That sort of response is pretty close to genuine worship. Something like that, but more so, is the mood of Revelation 4 and 5.”

Two Spiritual Laws: “It’s one of the great spiritual laws that you become like what you worship. If somebody devotes themselves totally to the pursuit of money, they become avaricious; it starts to be reflected on their face. And it is part of the inner meaning of the Christian gospel that when we worship the true God, the God we see in Jesus, then we become more genuinely human.”
“When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character of the object of your worship…because you were made in God’s image, worship makes your more truly human…Conversely, when you give that same total worship to anything or anyone else, you shrink as a human being”.

For Reflection & Discussion

1) How would you define “worship”?

2) What is notable about the worship described in Revelation 4-5?

3) In the Psalms we find the full range of human emotions and experience and the full range of God’s response to humanity. Have the Psalms played an important role in your own worship and study? If so, how? If not, how can that be obtained?

4) Describe an experience of worship that was especially meaningful for you.

5) How are being and doing related?

6) Some people have argued that worship is an affront to human dignity. Does worship humiliate or elevate us?

Simply Christian Session 7b: Holy Spirit

Opening Prayer
Spirit of God, breathe in our hearts so that we may know which of our yearnings are signs of your presence and summons to your service. Blow through our lives to cleanse us of sin and restore us to right relationship with you and with others. Burn in our souls and empower us to do your will. Amen.

Points to Ponder

Empowered to Carry On the Ministry of Jesus: “The Spirit is given so that we ordinary mortals can become, in a measure, what Jesus himself was: part of God’s future arriving in the present; a place where heaven and earth meet; the means of God’s kingdom going ahead.”

The Point: “God doesn’t give people the Holy Spirit in order to let them enjoy the spiritual equivalent of a day at Disneyland. Of course, if you’re downcast and gloomy, the fresh wind of God’s Spirit can and often does give you a new perspective on everything, and above all grants a sense of God’s presence, love, comfort, and even joy. But the point of the Spirit is to enable those who follow Jesus to take into all the world the news that he is Lord, that he has won the victory over the forces of evil, that a new world has opened up, and that we are to help make it happen.”

Option Three: “God’s Spirit has to be though of in terms of what I’ve called Option Three: the strange overlap and interlocking of heaven and earth. God’s Spirit comes from the future and into the present, and God’s Spirit is the means of joining heaven and earth together within our own lives.”

For Reflection & Discussion

1) What do you expect God’s Spirit to do in your life?

2) Where in your life can you sense a place “where heaven and earth meet”?

3) Can you recognize places in your life where God’s future is already present? Where else would you like for it to be present? What prevents that from happening?

4) If the true measure of personal spirituality is the degree to which it motivates us to do the work of the kingdom of God in this world, how do you measure up? Your church?

5) Do you believe that God’s Spirit leads you? How do you know?

6) In what sense might Christians still regard themselves as being under the Jewish Law (the Torah)?

7) Why is suffering a part of Christian spirituality? What is your own attitude toward suffering?

Simply Christian Session 7a: Holy Spirit

Community Spirit

Read Acts 2:1-21 & 1 Cor. 12:4-13.

- Note that the believers in Acts 2 “were all together in one place”. Is the Spirit given primarily to individuals or to groups?

- I what groups have you experienced the Spirit’s presence? At what times? For what purpose?

- Paul writes that the gifts of the Spirit are given for the building up of other people. “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7). What are some of these gifts? How are they manifested in your church?

- How were the spiritual gifts abused @ Corinth (e.g., 1 Cor. 12:21; 14:12, 17-19, 40)? Where do similar problems occur today? How can they be prevented?

- What spiritual gifts are most needed today?

Simply Christian Session 6: Jesus

Opening Prayer
Messiah of Israel, be at the center of our lives, just as you are at the center of human history. Allow us to play a role in the drama of salvation, just as you are its central actor. Equip us to bear the Gospel to the world, just as you entered the world to bear witness to God’s reign. Amen.

Points to Ponder

What Jesus Didn’t Come to Do: “Jesus didn’t come to give us a good moral example, or fine teaching about true doctrine, or to tell us the secret way by which we could go to heaven after we die”.

Jesus and the Kingdom of God: “When we get Jesus preaching the kingdom, announcing that God was becoming king, what we find is that he was going around doing things. He was celebrating a party, often with all the wrong people, and he was healing people…Jesus was acting as if he had the authority to tell Israel of his day what God wanted to them, and even to say on his own authority, ‘It used to be said like this, but I’m saying it to you like that’. Jesus was behaving with a kind of sovereign freedom within and through the traditions of Israel itself”.

The Meaning of the Resurrection: “They did their worst to Jesus. And Jesus took it all upon himself, and what came out was not that he was crushed and dismembered by it forever but rather that God’s new life emerged the other side. And Jesus in his death and resurrection has thus bequeathed to the world the promise that it will finally be set free from evil because evil played itself out in its last great battle with Jesus himself”.

Jesus’ Vocation and Divinity: “Jesus knew that it was his vocation to go to the place where evil was doing its worst and to take the full force of that evil on himself so that dying under it without colluding with it by cursing his enemies he would exhaust its force and thereby launch God’s new creation”.

For Reflection & Discussion

1. How would answer the question “What is Christianity about”?

2. What is the “Kingdom of God”?

3. What did most first-century Jews expect the Messiah to do? How was Jesus’ understanding different?

4. What is the difference between “resuscitation” and “resurrection”? Why does this distinction matter in Jesus’ case?

5. What one question about Jesus would you most like to have answered?

6. How does the story of Jesus continue the Old Testament theme of going away and coming back, of exile and restoration? Does it change anything about the way we understand that theme?

7. How does (or how might) being a Christian shape your own sense of vocation?

Simply Christian Session 5: Israel

Points to Ponder

Jesus, the Jew: “Trying to understand Jesus without understanding what that story [of Israel] was, how it worked, and what it means is like trying to understand why someone is hitting a ball with a stick without knowing what baseball, or indeed cricket, is all about”.

The Story’s Climax: “It is fundamental to the Christian worldview in its truest form that what happened in Jesus of Nazareth was the very climax of the long story of Israel”.

The Covenant: “The point is that God’s covenant with Abraham is seen as a rock-solid commitment on the part of the world’s Creator that he will be the God of Abraham and his family. THROUGH Abraham and his family, God will bless the whole world. Shimmering like a mirage in the deserts through which Abraham wandered was the vision of a new world, a rescued world, a world blessed by the Creator once more…”

Exile and Homecoming: “Then God does the most dramatic thing: he calls Moses and equips Moses to be somebody who will trust him and obey him and says, ‘You’re going to bring my people out of Egypt, and you’re going to take them back to the land that I promised to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob.’ And so this story of Israel, the character of the people of Israel, has etched into it very deeply that story of going away and coming back again, of exile and homecoming, of slavery and exodus, of feeling that it had all gone horribly wrong and then discovering that through a fresh act of God it was all going to go remarkably right after all.”

King, Temple, Law and Land/New Creation: “Many [Jews in the centuries before Christ] spoke of a coming king, an anointed one, a messiah, who would bring God’s justice to the world at last”.

Israel’s Messiah as Suffering Servant: “And it is the Christian claim that it was this hope of Israel that was fulfilled when a young Jewish prophet called Jesus came into Galilee saying, ‘The time has come. God is now going to be king’”.

For Reflection & Discussion

1. What examples does Wright provide of the “key theme” of “going away and coming back home again”? Can you think of others?

2. Do you have your own story of “slavery and exodus, of exile and restoration”?

3. Why is each of the following important to the story of Israel?

• The King –
• The Temple –
• The Torah –
• The New Creation –

4. What is a Messiah?

5. How is the “Servant of YHWH [God]” described in the book of Isaiah?

Session 4 God

Opening Prayer
Holy One, You are who you are and you will be who you will be. Teach us to relate our lives to you in humility, praise, and gratitude. Empower us to be who you created us to be and to do in this world what you have us to do. Amen.

Points to Ponder

Prove It!: “Most people in the world who actually do believe in God, believe in God as something much greater – someone much greater – than anything that we could actually prove or demonstrate or even explore properly through out own rather puny human logic.”

The Story: “When we find the story of Abraham in the Old Testament, we find that Abraham meets God-or actually meets angels or people who it turns out are God in person. Or think of Jacob, wrestling with the angel-or is it an angel? Is it not actually God himself who has been wrestling with Jacob? Moses is in the wilderness finds a bush that’s burning and yet not being consumed, and he’s told, ‘Take you shoes off because you’re standing on holy ground.’ And in all these stories we see not a God who is remote and detached and barking orders from a great distance, nor a God who is simply one of the forces of nature or perhaps all the forces of nature rolled into one, but a God who is both other than these people, other than the world, and yet present in the world, present to and with the people whom this God has chosen and called.”

Evil: “The problem of evil is for the Christian, as for the Jew, deep and radical. But the picture of haven and earth overlapping, and of God show how being present, mysteriously and puzzlingly within the world, is the context in which the Old Testament Jews and the New Testament Christians grappled with that same problem of evil and came up with the solution which is more shocking and startling than anything else that we find in any other religious or philosophical systems known to the human race.”

For Reflection & Discussion

1) Is there “proof” of God’s existence (p. 55)? Why or Why not?

2) Do you have a picture of God in your mind? What pictures do you explicitly reject?

3) What do you think of when you hear the word “heaven”? How is that different from the description on pp.58-60?

4) What is “Option One” (p. 60)? Why has this option attracted so many adherents?

5) What is Wright’s “Option Two” (pp.61-62)? What are its plusses and minuses?

6) Describe “Option Three” (pp. 63-66)? Why does Wright prefer it?

7) According to Wright: “For the ancient Israelite and the early Christian, the creation of the world was the free outpouring of God’s powerful love. The one true God made a world that was other than himself, because that is what love delights to do. And, having made such a world, he has remained in a close, dynamic, and intimate relationship with it, without in any way being contained within it or having it contained within himself. (p. 65)
· What does it mean to think of creation as an expression of God’s love? What are the implications of that belief for our view of ourselves? Each other? The Earth? How might it affect our own sense of purpose? Our attitude toward work?

· How might this perspective on God move us beyond pantheism or deism in positive ways?