Two part series:
The Royal Imposter or the Sneaky God Moving Among Us
Speaker: Dr. Teresa Stricklen
The Rev. Dr. Teresa Lockhart Stricklen is Associate for Worship in the Office of Theology and Worship of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in Louisville, Kentucky. Before going to the Office, she taught preaching and worship as an assistant professor at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She has also taught at Vanderbilt Divinity School and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
Have you ever thought of God being like fairy tales’ royalty who disguise themselves as peasants in order to find out what’s going on their kingdom so that they can help their people?
Thurber Thursdays is an adult community gathering and growth time that is open to all. The evening program begins at 19h30; reception to follow the lecture.
17 October
Jesus preached that the basileia (Kingdom) is at hand—right here, now, moving among us, but the sovereign movement of God in the world (the real definition of basileia) is shadowy, cloaked in mystery, hard to see, yet seen most clearly in Jesus Christ, who, surprise! was God in the flesh, the risen Lord whom we continue to encounter in Holy Spirit, The biblical images/stories will include:
- Jacob wrestling with the man/angel/God –that slippery character!
- the shekinah glory of God, the mysterious presence in fiery cloud cloaking the divine
- the weird stories of how God works—i.e. Joseph, Moses, Ruth, Abigail, Jeremiah, Paul, etc.
- Jesus’ crucifixion/resurrection and the trickster motif of that
24 October
The second lecture in the series will help us identify this slippery character called God in our everyday life today, who is like Macavity, the Mystery Cat in T.S. Eliot’s poem. We don’t see God, only the trace evidence of God’s having been on the move among us, and this trace evidence comes amidst the stuff left behind by human beings, too. This begs the question of how we know something is of God. Here, the church helps us with characteristics that follow the work of God in the world:
- the epistles’ lists, which aren’t always altogether helpful,
- Jesus’ parables about the kingdom of God
- the church’s testimonies (“Yeah, that sounds like God”)
- what brings life for all (not necessarily for ourselves) in the midst of death and our culture’s death-dealing ways
Dr. Stricklen will also be the guest speaker at the ACP Fall Retreat to be held 25-27 October at La Clarté-Dieu. More information here.
