AEF-Lauren Winner

I haven't had much time since I've been back to finish posting about the specific speakers I heard at the AEF conference. This will be the last post specifically about the conference but I will continue to use this forum to work out some of the issues that were raised.

Saturday morning Lauren Winner was the keynote speaker and her session was entitled, "The Call and Recovering our Hebrew Roots". I was really looking forward to this presentation due to an increased interest in finding how we can connect to the faith of the first century.

Winner began by talking about the problem of supersessionism. This is the heretical idea that the Old Testament is no longer necessary because of Jesus. Winner stated that it is important for us as followers of Jesus to affirm the ongoing relationship between God and the Jews. This past week I needed to focus on the idea of Jesus being known as "Christ" or "Messiah". It occurred to me that these titles as much as anything else are the ties that bind the first and second testaments (I know this isn't a great revelation but it is something I've needed to help with my own bent toward the Marcion heresy).

Winner focused on two important aspects of Jewish culture that most of Christianity has unfortunately abandoned. We have, to our loss, forgotten the practices of Sabbath and bereavement. I have posted earlier on the fact that we as Christians need to rediscover the practice of a Sabbath rest and much of what Lauren presented is contained in that post. One thing that I thought was very important was that there are two basic commands of the Jewish Sabbath, no work and being joyful.

Lauren’s focus on the mourning process was very insightful. One of the observations she made was that death has been moved to the peripheries in our culture. The mourning process has been shortened so that the living do not have to dwell on the dead. One the other hand the Jews have a mourning calendar. At every step of the way the community is involved in the bereavement process. After a family member dies they begin a one week period of intense mourning where they do not leave the house and cover all the mirrors with black cloths. They also begin saying a short prayer that must be said with their community twice a day. After the first week the community arrives at the house and takes the mourner for a short walk to symbolize that normalcy is slowly creeping back into life. The mourner then takes another month where they attend no parties and listen to no music. They then take a year of recognized mourning. Lauren described this as a “communal choreography of mourning”. Instead of pushing people back into “normal” life this is much more natural and healthy process. Frederica Matthews-Green said that the Eastern Orthodox church has a similar mourning calendar. I think back on the mourning process Jenn went through when Lisa died and I see how our society has tried to do everything it can to avoid being faced with death. Just like everything else, we want to expedite a process that needs to take its time.

These two specific practices are great examples of how Western Christianity has adapted to culture rather than transformed culture. We have replaced the Sabbath with the weekend. We have replaced a “communal choreography of mourning” with individual suppression.

I couldn't help but notice the similarities, which I am assuming are intentional.