In the Beginning 08: The Melodies

In his sermon today, Tim described 3 melodies that show up and repeat throughout the book of Genesis: creation & blessing testing & failure  de-creation & re-creation  What is your response to these melodies? What thoughts, feelings, or questions are provoked in you as you consider them throughout the Genesis stories, either as Tim outlined them, or as you see them in other places?  Where else do you see these melodies? In media? Books? Stories from your family? Etc? Can you mark the presence of these melodies in your own life? Which feels most present right now?

One of Tim’s slides posed a question that, alongside all of us, the Genesis characters are asking: "what can make us safe & happy; help us flourish and find wholeness?”  The answer he gave was: “each other…community, friendship, & neighboring.”  What’s your response to the identification of this question? Is it one you can identify in your own self & life? Do you see it in the lives of others? Do you see it in these stories? To what extent do you feel a part of authentic community, friendship, and neighboring? Where and how have those things been built?  Do you see ways in which community, friendship, and neighboring have helped you to feel safe and happy? To flourish & find wholeness? If so, how so? If not, what do you make of that? If you would answer this question (“What can make us safe & happy; help us flourish and find wholeness?”) differently than Tim did, what would you say?

Toward the close of his sermon, Tim said, “In a world built on Babel’s tower…, the Church is meant to be a garden…this, I think, is why the Church still matters.”  Presumably, you think the Church matters too, since you’re a part of this group, Redemption Church, and the global Church. Why do you think it is that the [global] Church matters?  In what ways does the Church matter for you personally? Does the global Church matter in ways that are different from the ways in which Redemption Church matters for you?  In what ways does the global Church matter beyond your own personal experience of it? What about Redemption Church?  As is true of all of us individually, the church sometimes builds up, cooperates with, and defers to Babel. What emotions surface for you as you think about that fact? Do you tend to think of the global Church more as allied with empire or a hopeful contrast? Why do you think that is?