Working Notes
by
Sylvia Dooling
*A Time to Embrace, and a Time to Refrain from Embracing*
This lesson is filled with massive amounts of Scripture ’embracing” Jesus’
last days from Palm Sunday through his death. This is a wonderful
opportunity to spend time reading and thinking about what Jesus endured for
us.
The material Ms. Bostrom provides helps us to understand the church’s
celebration of Holy Week. As with the other lessons, we come away from this
session knowing more about the substance of the church’s worship.
There are several things I would like to bring to your attention as you
prepare to lead this study.
1. A more accurate translation of the scripture used in ‘The Breath
Prayer” would be: ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the
LORD.” It is important to memorize scripture accurately. I am not sure
why the authors of this lesson have changed LORD to ‘God’s name.”
2. Page 43In addition to the author’s description of baptism, the
scriptures give us a fuller definition in Romans 6:4 ‘we have been
buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was
raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in
newness of life.”
3. Page 43 The Season of Life: A Time to Embrace, and a Time to Refrain
from Embracing: This section of the lesson uses Joan Chittister as a
resource.
The VOW board has already drawn your attention to Joan Chittister in its
evaluation of this year’s study.
‘She is a Benedictine nun, a speaker at the 2003 Presbyterian
Women’s Churchwide Gathering, and social psychologist. She is also
the author many books including ‘There is a Season and In Search of
Belief. In the latter book Chittister reworks the Apostles Creed
giving a detailed account of her own religious beliefs. She denies
many biblical beliefs of the Church including the atoning work of
Christ on the cross. She mangles the two natures of Jesus Christ
(fully God and fully man) writing of the Jesus of history
metamorphosing into the Christ of faith (p. 134). Chittister often
destroys the personhood of the Holy Spirit, referring to him as the
‘life force” and an ‘electric charge animating the world at every
level” (p. 162). This author’s material is inappropriate for a
Christian study.”
4. Page 45 Suggestions for Leaders:
Under Responding with Our Lives, a resource is recommended called,
Praying with Our Hands: (Woodstock, Vt.: Skylight Paths, 2000).
Interestingly, that is not the complete title. The book, written by Jon
M. Sweeney, is entitled Praying With Our Hands: 21 Practices of Embodied
Prayer From the World’s Spiritual Traditions.
The book’s dust cover includes this statement
‘Here are twenty-one simple ways of using our hands to speak to God,
presented in word and image. These spiritual practices are from a
broad range of religion traditions-from Anglican to Sufi, from
Buddhist to Shaker.”
Given this fuller description of the book, is it a resource that you
would want to use to lead your women in this Bible study?
5. The Closing Prayer is a good resource to use however, the last
sentence of the prayer reads ‘Blessed are we who come in the name of the
Lord.” Within its biblical context, the people shouted this statement
during Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem. It was fulfillment of an
Old Testament passage (Psalm 118:26). This, by the way, is the second
time this verse has been changed within this lesson to give it a
different meaning. This practice is, to say the least, confusing. The
text should read, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who
comes in the name of the Lord!” Matthew 21:9, Mark 11:9, John 12:13 and
Luke 19:38 read, ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the
Lord!”
For clarity, this text is best left within its scriptural context.