Of Forests and Trees. Elijah.

Sh.


Write the phrase "What Are You Doing Here, ________?" on small pieces of paper or index cards, filling in the name of each of the members of your group in the blank. You will pass these out toward the end of your group time.




Thaw

• What does Fall mean to you?

• What has most stayed with you from Sunday?
• Would you consider yourself a person who willingly enters the silence of God, answering tough questions about your true self, your true motivations, or are you someone who avoids it?

Read

• 1 Kings 19:9-14
• Thoughts?

Leader note: Many of the rabbis wrestled with this passage and felt that, rather than the "still small voice" many of us have grown up talking about here in verse 12, that the text instead is communicating in the ancient hebrew a "sheer silence". The New Revised Standard Version captures this idea, while most other translations, likely in order to remain logical about the sound being something heard (versus silence being not heard) hang on to the quiet-but-not-quite-silent idea. This may be a topic for discussion in your group, but this study, and the Sunday message, are predicated on the idea that the minority of Rabbis had the right idea.

• Moses had served on this mountain long before. The wind and earthquake and fire all harken back to the powerful display of God's presence the Israelites had seen as Moses went to receive the Law and the covenant renewal. Would it be disappointing to come all the way to the mountain of God and be faced with sheer silence, and questions about your real motives?
• Why does Elijah answer the same question the same way twice?

Leader note: It would seem that if God asks the same question again, God wasn't satisfied with our answer the first time. It would go well to truly reconsider even our most sincere reasoning if asked to give an answer for it twice.

Read

• John 4:13-20
• When Jesus starts to deal with her real issues, how does she respond?
• We can use theology or doctrine to distract from the work God is really up to in our life. What else can we use?

Leader note: This woman, who tries to shift the discussion to religion when asked questions about her real life, is very likely a wounded, disappointed soul who has been passed around and beaten down. Don't think of her as a woman who shops men and can't commit over the long haul  She would have had no such power in the first century. She has been divorced, or widowed numerous times. And now the man who is with her won't marry her for some reason. She has no roots. She is really at the mercy of a patriarchal society. Jesus isn't likely accusing her as much as trying to get her to be real about how hard life is, and about her pain.

Discuss

• Why do we avoid the sheer silence even though it's there we can finally get real?
• As a group, watch this scene from the Matrix. In it, the character named Cypher is betraying his friends to the sinister Agent of the Matrix. A sophisticated network of computers and machines have taken over the world, keeping humanity asleep and feeding off their biological energy. But in order that the sleeping humans remain good sources of power, their sleeping minds are placed in the Matrix, an incredibly detailed simulation of real life. Cypher, and his friends, have awakened and are trying to save the world. Cypher comes to believe waking up to what is true isn't worth it.

Read

• Hebrews 4:12-13
• Thoughts?

Leader note: Remember, the "word" of God here is the the "Logos". This isn't simply the Bible. It's the Wisdom of God. Christ, as in John 1, is the Logos. Christ is God's Wisdom and Message. As you think of this passage, give the text its breadth.

• Do you think of God as primarily building you to make you what you are, or cutting through and subtracting things to make to what you are? A combination?
• What does your personality and age and upbringing have to do with your answer?

Apply

Leader note: Pass out the cards you made which ask each member by name, "What are you doing here?"

• How might this phrase help end an argument, or deescalate your sense of upset at something political or relational, etc?
• How might this question, if answered honestly in the moment, help you begin to see how often you are trying to relieve pain under the guise of something else?
• How might your group help you begin to enter into sheer silence, listening for this question of God's, to get to what you are really trying to do, or avoid, or cover over in fear?
• Consider this question a mantra this week. Allow God to ask it in the silent spaces you will pursue. See what you learn about God and yourself and share it with the group next week.

Of Forests and Trees. Third Way

Everyday of our life is full of countless decisions. A half dozen or so in the last few moments just to get you to the point of reading this.

How do we make decisions? How do choose whether to do

this 

or 

that?

In your group discussions, see if you can find Christ as less the figure who gets us to not do one thing in favor of another, but more so one who teaches us how to think and decide what's best, what's wise and what's loving. Regardless of the options presented.

Thaw

• What process of decisions led you to NC?
• How did you choose your current home?
• What do these decisions tell the group about you if anything?

Read

• Matthew 5:38-41
• Thoughts and impressions?
• There are of course many layers of interpretation to this famous text. How does it speak to there being more than two options?

Leader note: Consider that when struck in the face the two clearest reactions to decide from would be hit back, or get away. And these are solid options. Fight or flight have gotten our species pretty far, thank God. But Jesus is teaching a middle path, a Third Way, which is predicated on understanding the context and a desire not to succumb to the evil happening to us. In this, the one hit forces the dominant hand of the assailant, the hand reserved for more esteemed things, which levels the playing field if he/she throws another punch. Jesus, in one interpretation, says here, "Don't just hit back or run away. Calmly make them treat you like an equal. Assert your and his equal humanity."

• What does this passage teach us about decision making even when things are dire?

Discuss

• About what age did your children, or you as a child, find a "do this/don't do this" world largely unrealistic?`What changed in your opinion?
• Why do we continue to look for either/or decision making even when it struggles to fit real life circumstances?

Apply

• What are some decisions you are facing and feel stuck in an either/or?
• How can the group help you think about some other ways forward?
• How do we know if we are entertaining a legitimate Third Way?

Leader note: You may find that the group needs to dig in here. Any third option is a third option, but Christ isn't trying to make our decision tree bigger when we face a crossroads. This is about recognizing that the Third Way will look like him. Try and help the group see that the Third Way will be recognized as being comprised of, among other things, 

others-centeredness, 

self-sacrifice, 

human dignity, 

generosity,

forgiveness,

peace in the face of aggression or narrowmindedness,

wisdom that will matter for generations, 

actions which don't harm others, 

vulnerability for the sake of others, 

etc. 

There may very well, in the Third Way, be less money, more difficulty, etc. But "less fun" isn't a necessary marker. Even when the Third Way scares us, the ride is a fun one in its own right. Perhaps your group could comprise a list of markers to look for when making a decision and use it as something of a litmus test when life shows up!

Of Forests and Tres. Lamentations

Plopped right in the middle of the writings of prophets is a book titled "Lamentations."
It's a book of complaints. 
Of confession, accusation and yet, somehow, hope.

LAMENTATION. 

From Latin lamentationem,

"wailing, moaning, weeping,”

The book in the original Hebrew language is called Eichah, the first word of the book. It means “how?” The book flows from a word, and finds its identity in, the questioning of pain, grievance, sin experienced and caused. Right in the middle of prophecies about all Israel was to be, and what God is doing in their midst, is a collection of grieving, moaning and asking How? How can this be?

As a group, consider together that which needs grieved, confessed, felt and thought of clearly and empathized with. But only in coming out the other side with a stronger appreciation for the hope we share.


Thaw

• What most stayed with you from Sunday?
• What grievances, frustrations, disappointments and pains do you carry with you habitually?

Leader note: You may wish to point out that these are things which happen to us, or that we caused in others. We often carry a little of both.

Read (various readers, or take turns in circle)

• Lamentations 1:1-5
• 1:11
• 1:13
• 1:16
• 1:18
• 1:19
• 2:11
• 2:15-16
• 3:1
• 3:4-5
• 3:10-20
• 3:21
• 3:22-26
• 5:1

Discuss

• Thoughts?
• What is the significance of both God and humanity committed to remembering in the end?
• Read verses 3:22-24 again. What value might it have in a book about grieving and disappointment that the literal central passage of the book reads this way?
• Why might it be important to confess while complaining?
• Why might it be important to be hopeful while despairing?

Apply

• How can you make a remembrance of the goodness of life, and of the Source of life, the center point of your disappointment? What works against this?
• Is there something in your life you have never grieved? Why do you think this is?
• Have you ever done the work of allowing God to show you what's real beneath how you've gotten used to explaining your pain?

Leader note: This is a bit tricky to work through for many people. The idea here is that many of us are so used to using only the rhetoric of pain, or the most illustrative ways of explaining our suffering, that we haven't thought about how we are actually doing or what really happened. "She stabbed me in the back." "He was a terrible father." "I never amounted to much." "I treated him like $%^&*" The examples are endless. In each, there's something of substance, veiled by words that are, at one point, not as real as they've come to seem. Help the group value a precision of words in their grieving, and even in their confessing, that helps get at what really happened so that real grieving,  real apologies and reconciliation and hope, can occur. But it may be wise to table this work until later if you don't feel your group has been together long enough to trust each other to do it in a group setting. Allow it to happen organically if you can, and as a leader, only as you have done the work yourself.

• How might our remaining hopeful in our own pain be a way of being a loving person?
• What does lament have to do with serving others?