outWORD by Matte Downey

I recently attended a lecture on Narrative Hospitality by Richard Kearney. It was inspiring and thought-provoking in many ways. He told about his work which seeks to foster reconciliation through the exchange of stories. [1] His ideas on the nature of hospitality reminded me of some study I had done on the topic a few years ago which helped to broaden my thinking about the whole concept of hospitality. We often think of hospitality as opening our home to people, but it is much more than that. There are basically two expressions of hospitality. In the first, we invite people to share in our experience. This usually takes the form of having people over for a meal, giving them a place to sleep in our home, or involving them in something we are doing. The second type of hospitality is that which requires us to enter someone else's experience. This happens every time we visit someone else's home or experience a context or culture which is different from our own. This second...

Our contexts have major implications for how we live our lives and engage with our world, that much is obvious. However, we sometimes overlook how much they inform our concepts of God. For those of us occupying the central or dominant demographic in society, we often associate God with power and truth. As a result, our theology is characterized by confidence, certainty, and an expectation that others should be accommodating. For those of us living on the margins of society, our sense of belonging stranded in ambiguity, God is seen as an advocate for the powerless. Our theology leans more toward inclusivity, and we talk less about divine holiness and righteousness and more about a God who suffers. On the margins, the priority is merciful and just action, not correct beliefs.  There are significant theological incongruences between Christians who occupy the mainstream segment of society and those who exist on the margins. The world of theology has been dominated by Western mal...

The Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament, sometimes gets a bad rap. So much violence, so many harsh judgments and prophecies, so much bad behaviour, so much patriarchy. At first glance, it seems to paint a rather unattractive picture not only of the people of God but of God himself. But if we look a little closer, we find that things are not always as they seem. Take patriarchy, for example. Patriarchy is a societal and familial system in which the father and the eldest male are the authority figures. The first-born son dominates the family in power, wealth, and privilege. It is a system very unfriendly to women and anyone not lucky enough to be the firstborn male. And this objectionable, unjust system seems to lie at the very foundation of Judaism and Christianity. What is one to do with those pesky patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? The first thing we can do is note that while patriarchy is the context of the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it is not t...

A group of us have been working through the fascinating book of Revelation. It has been enlightening in so many ways. I liken it to walking through an art gallery filled with images which, at first glance, seem bizarre and unrelated, but after spending some dedicated time with the works of art and taking in a guided tour with an art historian, you start to see how the pictures fit together and play off each other. In the visions and images of Revelation, Christ and the world are revealed in both new and yet familiar ways. Revelation is divided into three sections: God speaks to the churches in the city (chapters 1-3), God judges the Great City (chapters 4-18), and God redeems the Holy City (chapters 19-22). [1] Each of these sections begins with a vision of Christ, a reminder to the hearer/readers that whatever strange and horrible visions may follow, the One who is, who was, and who is to come, the Lamb who was slain, remains on the throne, at the centre of it all. Reve...

Image from skinnyartist.com Here is a summary of the talk I gave in our faith community on Sunday, October 5. Power and jealousy: these are not really popular concepts in our culture. We have seen too much abuse of power, I suspect, and jealousy (the green-eyed monster according to Shakespeare) is something we all want to avoid. But despite the fact that these two words leave us with negative or at least mixed feelings, we find them associated with the name of God in the Hebrew Bible, so let's take a little closer look at them. Power (El Shaddai): Edward Abbey says, "Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best." That's a pretty negative view of power. Ghandi presented a more nuanced view. He said that, "Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective than the one derived from fear of punishment." Power in itself is n...

Image from thebooksoffoundation.blogspot.ca Sorry for the lag in posting. It has been the season for house guests, family events, starting new courses, various meetings, and travel. So it's a week later than it should be, but here is a summary of the second talk I gave on Names of God . This time I decided to tackle the recurring phrase, "The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," which appears often in the scriptures, especially the Hebrew Bible. Once I got into it, I realised that I could only really cover one name at a time, so here is my take on what "The God of Abraham..." means. The first task when exploring this phrase, at least in my mind, is to familiarise ourselves with the story of Abraham (who starts out as Abram). You can read it in Genesis 11:27 to the end of Genesis 23. After this, the story switches to focus on Abraham's son, Isaac. It would be best if you took the time to read it yourself, but let me offer a very brief summary here. God ca...

Hello, my name is Matte and I am a student. Seems fairly straightforward, right? Not really. You see, I have been reading the story of Abram again in Genesis, and I noticed a thing or two about the difference between what we call ourselves and what God calls us. Abram's name meant "exalted father." He did pretty well with the exalted part (had a knack for getting rich and for the most part, enjoyed a good reputation), but the father bit...it just wasn't happening. If Abram were to introduce himself to us, it might have sounded something like this: Hello, my name is Abram, and I grew up with a father who didn't follow through on what he said he would do. Genesis 11:31-32. His father set out for Canaan but settled in Haran , which was about halfway there. Hello, my name is Abram, and though I have a lot of potential, I find it hard to leave everything behind and pursue the call of God. Genesis 12:1-6. He left his home, but not his family behind, taking his nephew wi...

I had an a-ha! moment this week. I was sitting in my Tuesday evening class, listening to a lecture on source criticism in the Hebrew Bible. It is much more fascinating than it sounds, really. We read through a few passages in Genesis, observing the parallel stories and contradictions between them. This leads one to conclude that several sources were used in compiling the book since the style, vocabulary and details are quite different in different sections. The point is not the different versions of one story, but why the compiler felt it necessary to include multiple stories. It is not hard to see that each story reveals a different aspect of God's character in some way. These writings were never meant to be accurate scientific documents or historical databases, they were recorded to show us who this God is and how he interacts with humankind. At one point, someone asked a question about the story of Abraham and Isaac. The ears of my heart perked up immediately. I have al...