The Menno Melange

In my youth Sunday School class, I gave a quiz today. I’m starting a self-developed curriculum on the Bible, its stories and our ways of reading them. So I thought it would be helpful for me to see where they are at in terms of knowing the familiar Bible stories. The quiz had 5 two-part questions, where a correct answer to either part was worth a point. Essentially there were 10 possible points and it was being marked out of 5. The highest score was 3. See how you do.

Questions

1 a) Who/what convinced Eve to eat the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden?
b) What type of fruit was it?

2 a) Joseph (the one with the technicoloured coat) had a dream where he, his brothers and his father were sheaves of wheat. What happened in that dream?
b) He had another dream about his father and brothers. What happened in that dream?

3 a) What was the name of the king who tried to kill David?
b) That king gave David his daughter as a bride, but for a price. What was that price?

4 a) When Jesus stormed the temple, he freed the animals. What else did he do?
b) What was he carrying in his hand?

5 a) Paul had a dramatic conversion experience on the road. Explain it.
b) What was the name of that road?

I’m not equating faith with knowledge of the Bible, and I wasn’t really surprised or fundamentally dissappointed by the results. I just know that I learned more in Sunday School than these kids did. As a teenager, I likely would have gotten at least 6 points, but I’m quite sure that my Sunday School experience was a bit more intense, or maybe I was just weird and sort of paid attention.

See how you do. Here are the answers: (Take them as they are, I don’t want a big theological discourse over some minute points, as much as I’d likely be tempted to do in your shoes.)

1. a) a snake/serpent/asp (or half a point if you said satan/devil)
1. b) The Bible doesn’t definitively say.
2. a) Everyone else’s sheaves bowed down to his.
2. b) They were all stars/moons/etc. and the rest all bowed down to his star.
3. a) Saul
3. b) 100 Phillistine foreskins
4. a) Overturned the money changing tables
4. b) a whip
5. a) He was blinded by a light (from heaven), fell off his horse, heard Jesus’ voice, led by his friends into town. (If you had any of this, give yourself a point)
5. b) Damascus Road

Feel free to post your score in the comments. There is no judgement here, unless you used an internet search to either find your answers or to verify mine, in which case, consider yourself judged.

A few weeks ago I got a call from one of my closest friends in Toronto that the mother of another friend of mine is dying. I knew her mother had cancer, that it was bad, and that she was moved to palliative care, but according to my friend, it was a matter of days. I left on a bus the very next day to be with them. I was expecting the worst. I was expecting to be sitting in a sterile hospital room, filled with an air of sadness, grief, despair and hopelessness. I was expecting to have to be completely selfless, giving up all my time, emotions and needs for her. I could never have imagined that it wouldn’t be that way.

Dare I say it was fun. I got to spend time with my friends. We cuddled, talked about boys, and watched TV. I cooked for her, played music with her, and shared private jokes. She brought me to their drum circle one night, an awesome evening where the drum beats drown out any worries or sorrows. It was breath taking to see her, overwhelmed by sadness and pending death, dancing carefree to the life-giving pulse that the drum circle created. For that brief evening, she was able to set the inevitable aside and be happy. She was able to take a break from being a caregiver, to being young again. I will never forget that night.

Don’t get me wrong. It was hard too. While I played piano, she silently sat on the bench beside me and cried into my shoulder. I could only hold her. Watching her tend to her mother’s every need, such patience with her mother’s confusion, such strength for her mother’s weakness, such love. Seeing how she would sleep in a little cot beside her mother’s bed, night after night, in the same clothes. Not showering. Not eating much, not sleeping much, only thinking of her mother. Such love. Hearing her play a song she wrote on guitar for her mother the night before, singing it over and over with her hauntingly beautiful voice, lulling her mother to sleep. Such love.

After spending 3 days with her and her mother, I look back on that time fondly. I learned so much in those 3 days. Mainly I learned of a different kind of love. An unfailing, unconditional kind of love for a parent, whose time is ending far too soon. I saw a whole new side to my dear friend, and I can only love and respect even more than I already did, which seems impossible. I only wish I am half the person she is, strong-willed, loving, creative in taking her pain and turning it to exquisite music, and truly beautiful, inside and out.

Wow, I really got to get better at writing more regularly. Will’s making me look bad. And I honestly have no excuse, considering I’ve been out of work for the past 2 monthes.

But! Things are looking up for me. I may have 2 new jobs. I could very well be the organist at a Lutheran church here in Tavi, and work full-time at a horse farm doing barn chores.

In terms of being an organist, my “audition” will be to play at their communion service in two weeks. That’s a little nerve wracking for a few reasons: 1) I don’t know how to play the organ. Yes, it’s the same as a piano (the manual keys, anyway), but I’m lost when it comes to the foot pedals. Good thing that’s not required. 2) I’m Mennonite, it’s a Lutheran church, and so they have a different way of worshipping. There’s a lot of liturgy that’s new to me, but I just love it. It sounds beautiful, and it’s refreshing to worship a new way.

In terms of the horse farm, this certainly wasn’t a job I aspired to do, but after 2 monthes of fruitless searching in areas I am obviously not qualified for, I thought I’d re-visit my past (of working with horses) and enjoy time on a farm again. I just love being around horses, and this way I’ll definately have hours. Assuming all goes well, I will be the only full-time helper, which means I will be there lots. Oh, and I will finally get some exercise.

Speaking of work, my once-a-week job at present, as the music coordinator at a nursing home in town, is going well. I am starting to see the results of music therapy (although I don’t call it that, because I am not a music therapist). There is one man I bring to the piano to sing with, and he generally is quite incoherent, saying sentences that don’t make sense, mixing up words and generally being confused. One day I brought him to the piano, and he started off in his usual way. I would ask him if he knew a song, an oldy that I was about to play, and he’d said he didn’t. For the first few songs it went this way, where he just sat and listened. Then he started to hum along, then sing. His words still were incoherent, but the melody was there. Suddenly, as if the music pulled him out of darkness, when I asked him if he knew “Four Leaf Clover” he said, “Yes, I know that one. That’s a good one”. Then he proceeded to sing along with me, with ALL the correct words. From that point on in my time with him, he was coherent. It was magical. Within the span of perhaps 10 minutes, I witnessed music pull someone from dark into light, confusion to coherency, forgetfulness to awareness. So there IS a point to what I’m doing, after all.

Our musical is still coming along slowly, but we now have 7 scenes and 5 songs. I am in the process of transcribing my songs onto my computer, so we’ll have properly printed music…eventually. It’s pretty exciting.

That’s about it for now. Until my next inspiration to write (or until Will nags me).

Here is the Lenten reflection I gave during a Thursday lunch service during the first week of Lent.

I am taking classes part time to finish my Bachelor of Arts degree. After taking a year off here and there, and switching from Math to Religious Studies, I’m usually a few years older than the average student in my classes, so I usually sit by myself. Sometimes while I’m sitting there waiting for the lecture to start, I overhear what other people are saying.
A few years ago, when the movie The Passion of the Christ came out in theatres, I was surprised to hear a group of guys sitting behind me talk about having seen the movie. One of the guys playfully hit one of his friends, as guys my age often do. A third guy jokingly criticized the attacker and said, “Didn’t Jesus teach you anything in the movie yesterday?” I was fascinated by that. These guys, whose conversations usually cover a long list of other unwholesome topics, went to watch this movie, even though they might get some moral instruction out of the deal.
I decided to see the movie as well, so I talked my dad and brother into coming with me. My dad hadn’t been in a movie theatre since he was dating my mom, and my brother was thrilled to see a movie if it meant someone else was paying for it, but neither of them were prepared to read subtitles all night. We got to the theatre a bit later than we had hoped, so the movie had already started. As we walked in, we saw Judas under the bridge being tormented by his own actions. He had given up Jesus, his teacher, his leader, his mentor, to be arrested, and afterwards, he wrestled with the demons within himself.
The passage in Luke says that the High Priests wanted to kill Jesus, that Satan entered Judas, and that he conspired with them, but there’s one key phrase that I want to highlight, that I think can bring a little light to the situation. Why did the high priests want to kill Jesus? Luke says that it was because they were afraid of the people.
If Jesus was just a wandering maniac, they could have dismissed him. If Jesus was just a popular religious teacher, they would have given him a promotion, but the high priests were uncomfortable with the kind of religion that Jesus was preaching and they were afraid of how easily the people were accepting his teaching. Jesus had new ideas, and he preached against the old structures that had perverted God’s way of doing things. So we can understand a bit why the high priests would want to get rid of him, they got their power from the very institution that Jesus was preaching against.
But why Judas? Maybe he was just an evil man that somehow tricked his way into the group of disciples. Maybe he knew that he could make some money from doing this, so the thirty pieces of silver was what drove him to do it. Maybe we’re supposed to take this passage to mean that Satan took control of Judas, an otherwise good man, and for that time, he had no power over himself.
We see later on that Judas feels remorse for what he had done. Unable to cope with the guilt for betraying Jesus, Judas kills himself. It looks to me that Judas knew what he was doing, but after he realized what it meant, he couldn’t handle the reality of it.
The priests were afraid of the people, but what was Judas afraid of?
It’s easy to pick on Judas, and see him as the bad disciple, but none of them really understood Jesus. Only after he visited them in resurrected form did they understand what he meant about rebuilding the temple in three days, raising himself from the dead in three days. Only then did they start to understand what he meant when he preached about the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom that wasn’t of this world.
There were times when they grumbled to him about when he was going to establish his Kingdom. They argued about who would get to sit on the right hand side of his throne. Some of them very clearly expected Jesus to set up an earthly kingdom, to get rid of the Romans once and for all. That’s part of the reason some of them were following Jesus in the first place. Then we see that Jesus starts talking about dying, about taking up our cross, about being led to the slaughter. How could their new king die before the work was done?
It seems to me that they got tired of waiting. I think that Judas got tired of waiting and wanted to do something about it.
It’s easy to do that. Have you ever got tired of waiting and taken a situation into your own hands? I know I have.
When I was a kid, I would sometimes help my mom with canning preserves, and for some reason it was so exciting to sit there and wait for the seal to pop. So exciting that I wanted to help it along a bit, until mom caught me doing that. Or when a batch of cookies just came out of the oven and I wasn’t allowed to eat one until they had cooled off. I burned my mouth quite a few times because I thought they were cool well before they actually were.
There are lots of times when we want things to happen quicker. We call the mechanic to try to rush the process of fixing the car. Farmers just can’t wait for the right time to take the crop off. Pregnant women just can’t wait for the baby to be born. Young couples just can’t wait until they’re married. There are lots of things that happen according to a schedule that we can’t control.
Judas tried to take control of Jesus’ schedule. He probably thought that by turning him in to the authorities, he could speed up the process. Certainly then Jesus would fight back and throw off the oppressors, right?
Judas gave up on Jesus. Judas gave up waiting for Jesus’ coming kingdom. He couldn’t wait anymore, so he took things into his own power. He gave up Jesus to the authorities thinking that finally Jesus would give up his slow pace and finally take power. When Judas realized what he had actually done. He couldn’t handle the consequences.
Many people use Lent as an opportunity to give something up. They give up a certain kind of food or drink, or a certain kind of technology, and they try instead to focus on Jesus. It’s easy to live by our own rules and our own schedule, but we need to give that up.
Rely on God. Rely on Jesus’ teachings, God’s love and rely on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Don’t give up waiting, don’t give up hoping. Give up your own agendas, give them up to God.
Amen.