Sunday School class March 22, 2020



Good morning, happy Sunday! Everything is new and getting newer day by day. I've never done this before, but I'm going to blog our Adult Sunday School class as a covid-19 shelter in place experiment. If it works, great. If it doesn't work - - and as yet I've no criteria or standard or feedback process or quality check for finding out - - I'll try something else. 

My title at HNEC is Priest Associate, which is, as typical, a retired old parish priest, and means I'm there to help in any way the rector needs an ordained helper. At HNEC I oversee adult Christian education. With a few other responsibilities, that includes leading the Adult Sunday School class, which happens to be my favorite thing to do. 

 From our Sunday worship bulletin, we open with the Collect for the Day:

 Gracious Father, whose blessed Son Jesus Christ came down from heaven to be the true bread which gives life to the world: Evermore give us this bread, that he may live in us, and we in him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

We like, or at least I like and it's often my practice, to invite the class's attention to the collect, its theological assertions. I already did that earlier this week, but again, a collect is a short prayer, classically consisting of three parts: Address to God, Petition (not always but usually just one "asking"), and Closing, generally in the name of the Trinity. This collect fits that mold.

 For a Church whose theological bent has been described as lex orandi lex credendi, the law of praying is the law of believing, that is to say, you can ascertain our theology by coming to worship with us; because what we believe about God is found in what we do and say and sing and pray when we gather for worship. In that vein, this collect is rich with theological assertions. 

 Here are a few things this collect asserts about God, i.e., are therefore our theology. We believe:

  • God is gracious, full of grace.
  • Jesus is God's beloved Son.
  • Jesus came from heaven to earth.
  • Jesus came as Bread, food to feed us.
  • If we ask, God gives us the Body of Christ in the form of bread. For us, that is the Bread of Holy Communion.
  • We partake of Jesus by consuming Him.
  • Ingested, Jesus becomes part of us and we of Him.
  • Jesus lives eternally with Father and Holy Spirit.
  • Jesus participates in ruling over creation.

Observing the collect and applying lex orandi lex credendi, you will have your own list of theological assertions that are not necessarily the same as what I discern.

 If somebody brings the daily quiz from Sunday PCNH, we begin with that, and our class of Bible-loving Episcopalians nearly always comes out with an A-Plus. But I don't have the quiz this morning, so we'll go ahead without it.

 Everybody has a Bible and a worship bulletin with the Bible readings printed. Generally in Sunday School, we read one or more of the Bible lessons appointed in the lectionary for the day, and explore at least one of them in some depth, chasing things down in the Bible and talking about what we find. I always try to arrive with guidance to help us use our Time profitably and make our study as exhaustive as time permits as well as interesting and especially Fun.

 We are flexible though, and if someone arrives with a question or something they'd like to discuss, that takes precedence over whatever was my lesson plan.

 This morning, I myself have a question and something I'd like to discuss. I'll introduce it here, inviting anyone who may be reading this at home, to go through your own thought and "discussion" process. In Time, if this home isolation continues long, maybe we can develop a way to converse back and forth on Sunday mornings.

 My question is the issue of theodicy. If God is all powerful and all good, as we teach and believe, why does God allow such as covid-19 to come upon the world?

 The question arises in my mind because in worship service last Sunday we prayed a litany (petitions with a standard, continuing response from the People, such as "Hear us, Lord"), asking God to intervene in the covid-19 pandemic; but especially because I read on the Fox News site yesterday, a question and response from Jim Daly, "Where is God during the coronavirus pandemic?". I copied his essay and have it pasted below, for reference and consideration during this SS session. My own thoughts follow. Maybe we can find a way for everyone who's interested to share thoughts and response. As always in our discussions, we respect the dignity of every human being; no slamming each other, no rebutting, just sharing.

 Copy/paste from Fox News contributor Jim Daly:
In times of great crisis, it’s natural and normal for people to ponder and pose any number of questions. Lately, I’ve been asked how an all-powerful God would allow the coronavirusto wreak such havoc clear across the world.
This virus has claimed the lives of thousands and ravaged hundreds of thousands more.
Many people want to know why God won’t stop it. Where is He in the middle of this global pandemic?
Theological questions of this nature have been asked, I suspect, since the beginning of time. Unexplained tragedy, unspeakable suffering and inconceivable circumstances of all kinds have marked humanity down through the years. It’s actually only been in recent years that we’ve enjoyed relative peace and prosperity across the globe.
Crack open a history book and you’ll soon discover that as dire and as difficult as things may seem today, the world has faced much worse in the past.
One of the deadliest pandemics occurred between A.D. 249 and 262, when up to 5,000 people in Rome died – per day. Incidentally, while many non-Christians concentrated on saving only themselves back then, it was the Christians who remained and served those who were suffering.
Back in the 1600s, there was a Lutheran German pastor named Martin Rinkart. He found himself ministering in the midst of horrendous famine and disease. At one point, he was the only pastor left in his town and conducted up to 50 funerals in a single day.
Yet, the world may never have remembered Rinkert, if not for him writing the well-known hymn, “Nun danket alle Gott” – otherwise known as, “Now, Thank We All Our God.”
As a Christian, I believe God is in the middle of everything – the good and the bad – and yes, even COVID-19. As sovereign over all things, He remains in full and complete control.
To be clear, no evil comes from God – but nor can any evil happen without His permission.
Despite all the strife and suffering, God is there – because He is everywhere.
God is currently in every hospital, strengthening doctors, nurses and medical personnel as they treat the sick and comfort the dying.
God is working through the government’s response to this crisis, providing President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence and the Coronavirus Task Force wisdom and guidance as they plot and plan their attack on this lethal pathogen.




More fr















If you look at the massive humanitarian effort that’s unfolding not only in this country but all across the world, you’ll see God — often in the form of His devoted servants — in the middle of blood drives, food donations and churches and businesses that are opening their parking lots for drive-through testing locations.
The English writer C.S. Lewis attempted to tackle the theological and philosophical conundrum of God’s role in suffering in many of his writings, but especially in his book, “The Problem of Pain.”
He posed the question somewhat differently, though, when he asked rhetorically, “The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.”
The answer to that question is easy – I just don’t know. But I do know that suffering is a bit like exercise – it either makes us weaker or stronger – it doesn’t leave us the same. When the coronavirus crisis passes – and it will – the question will be whether we’re stronger or weaker for having endured it.
By the way, here is what you should know about Martin Rinkart’s famous hymn, a tune we sing in a spirit of gratitude, often around Thanksgiving: It was written in the midst of the great plague he and his countrymen were enduring, proving once again that struggle and suffering may knock us down, but God will always be there to lift us up when we turn to Him, whether in this life or the next.
My own response is that perhaps Jim Daly's question is moot in that God's Being is other than we conceive and imagine God to Be. That we theologize, do our God talk, perceive God in certain ways does not determine Whoever or Whatever, to Moses from the Burning Bush, spoke of self as I AM that I AM. I will Be what I will Be. What we ask and expect of God, of whom one scholar said that God's one characteristic is Grace, is not necessarily God's self-realization and expectation.

 How do you visualize God? 

Is it possible that we misunderstand God, that we have theologized God all wrong?

 What is God like? A theologian's response might be that God is not "like", God IS.

 Do we visualize God who fits our needs and wants? Wouldn't that be a human construct of God?

 If in your quest for God you conclude that God is other than, does not BE, what you've always believed, wanted, needed, expected God to be, are you willing to face that?

 Do we look at heilsgeschichte, our holy stories, our history with God, and learn from that, what God has been like in God's relationship with creation and with us, corporately and individually? 

 What might our history of God's interventions or noninterventions tell us, history with nature and the world, history with each other, history of good, of peace, of war, of pandemics, epidemics, plagues, of evil including God's intervention or silence in human evil such as, in our own time and hemisphere, Showa, the Holocaust? I'm thinking of Elie Wiesel, his writings, his memories, of a nine year old boy in a German concentration camp swinging from the gallows, writhing as he strangles to death and someone in the crowd asking "Where is God? Where is God now?" and someone else pointing to the still warm and swinging body of the now dead child and saying "There. There he is." 

 Catastrophe, not only the catastrophe of human evil, but also and perhaps especially  the catastrophe of evil in the nature of things such as a virus, a plague from rats and fleas, or a volcanic eruption, a tornado, a wildfire started by lightning strike, a flood, a hurricane, an earthquake, a tsunami that kills hundreds of thousands of people - - the theodicy question is invariably raised: How can a loving and powerful God permit such things to happen? Where is God?

 The answer, an answer, my postulation, is perhaps God is other, perhaps God does not BE, who or what we imagine God to be; and my observation is that we seem not to learn this from history and experience, why? Why ask about God instead of about ourselves? Well, for one thing, to ask and quest and think challenges our True Religion. But the earth is no longer flat. The firmament is no longer a huge blue bowl implanted with tiny lights and holding back the waters. Perhaps we need new conversations with and about God. Theological discourse. Prayer and Reason.

 This from me, to whom the opposite of Faith is not Doubt, but Certainty. I'm not smart but I am curious and I am open. My quest for God and for whatever Pontius Pilate meant by "What is truth?" is defined by inscription in the lintel over the library door at one of the theological seminaries where I studied: Seek The Truth, Come Whence It May, Cost What It Will.

What do you think? Not what do you think about what I think, but what do YOU think?!

 Is Jim Daly's question answerable? Is it even the right question?

In the Episcopal Church, Questions and Discussion are often more important to us than Answers.

 TW+

 Art displayed, pinched online, all three represent Moses encountering God in/at the Burning Bush