My worship class is going to be all about learning the liturgical year (don't fret, ex-Catholics, this is a good thing, and - believe it or not - something we still use in the UCC, we just want to call it something else, the order of worship, the bulletin, whatever, same stuff.)
My spiritual practices class focuses on the inner spiritual life - learning different ways to pray and to connect with our selves and God in different ways.
My history class covers America's religious history. We also focus on the history of a religious institution in our "local history" projects.
Finally, my Old Testament course focuses on... the Old Testament! Which is different from the Tanakh/Jewish Bible, and which can be referred to as the Hebrew Bible, but as we learned today, the Jewish Bible and the OT are in different orders, on purpose. And the Jewish Bible wasn't entirely in Hebrew, parts of it were in Aramaic... So our words fall short as usual. But when I refer to the class, I will generally refer to it as Hebrew Bible, for the sake of trying to respect all parties involved. But I love these books - the Song of Solomon, the Psalms, the heartbreakingly honest poetry in the book of Job... The Hebrew Bible is real and raw and it is life... It says that God is the creator of all, good and bad, and in the midst of all of this, we continue to love our God. These are the books that Jesus and the disciples lived by, they are the roots for everything that has come after... and as the dean said at convocation -
A tree without roots will not be able to stand against the wind.
These are the roots that the tree grew out of, my tree, my faith. And I feel it would be wrong to say that one or the other, in my opinion, is better. Both are absolutely necessary. Both are filled with God's promises, with life. The Old Testament continues to speak alongside the New Testament. So, as you can tell, I'm really excited for that course... because if we just look at the New Testament and say "Well, nothing else matters now that we have this," then we are really missing out, because the Jewish Bible is what Jesus lived, so it has to matter for those of us who believe in the salvation God offers through Jesus... if our faith has no roots, well, we might get knocked over.
Now, all this is not to say that we must still live the Old Testament. Obviously I don't think we should uphold the values of stoning women or disobedient children or what-have-you. But what I'm saying is, the Hebrew Bible isn't old, there is still so much that it reveals to us, so much we will never fully know.
One day we can talk about how much I believe that God's word is still being unveiled to us, that the word of the Lord is not static, but that it evolves, that, as we love to say in the UCC, 'God is still speaking.' But this is already pretty long and it was just meant to be an overview of my classes so... I think I'll go to dinner.
Peace&Blessings
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