the old bill

winnipeg's barber photographer

While looking for old photos of Knox, I came across thework of Peter McAdam a barber in downtown Winnipeg in the 1920's and 30's - who produced some breathtaking photos from that era.  First is Unidentified woman and child at Winnipeg Beach, 1927., Second is Unidentified workmen having lunch on Main Street, 1922,  Third is an astonishing one of the War memorial at Portage Avenue and Main Street, circa 1935, and the Fourth is a view past third Knox church View to Donald Street and Ellice Avenue looking northwest, 1923. [click on images for larger view]
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unexpectedly elijah

Doing narrative worship this morning on Elijah.  As the service began I was just about to explain how in Jewish tradition Elijah comes unexpectedly, as a beggar, a madman, a scholar... about the empty chair, and Elijah's cup.  Just about to explain when the side door bursts open and a kind of street person comes in and sits in the front row just in front of me.  Well not really a street person because he's dressed quite well.  A young guy with longish black/dark hair and a very long black coat, down to his ankles, and dark sunglasses.  He looks quite happy during the first hymn, and before he sits down he blows God a big kiss. I catch his eye briefly and he gives m an odd wry smile.  A few minutes later he says in a loud voice "glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit" and then says something more, something I didn't quite grasp.  And suddenly he was out the door and gone.  I went on to explain how Elijah comes, as a beggar, a madman, a scholar... this time wearing a long black coat.  And somehow looking exactly the way Elijah would look.   So we just kept on going.  Nice to have an unexpected visitor once in a while. . .  

Why we do narrative worship at knox

Once upon a time there was a story.  The story was connected with God, the story was God and God was the story.  Everything happened through the story.  When the time was right, the story took shape and lived among us, the characters emerged, the plot unfolded.

The story took a few different forms.  In one, the young woman, unmarried and unsullied, is impregnated by God,.  Her bewildered man enters the story by doing nothing, contributing nothing to the pregnancy.  It’s not his child. For the rest of the story he stands outside the plot, helpless, hapless.  A bit part.  He follows the government’s directives, returns to his hometown for the census, but , in a typically male way, he forgets to make arrangements.  When her water broke, they had no where to stay, the inn filled with the wealthy and well organized. And so this Divine-human baby was born in a barn. There, amid the dung and vermin and straw, the story became human.  The woman could nurse the infant story, breastfeed the infant God. All the man could do was wrap the child in rags, lay him in a feeding trough.  Ironies abound. The holy in dung.  Peasant child gives birth to God. Man relegated to bystander status. The story is not his to control.

In another form most of the same characters appear. The young woman is the same. Unmarried and expectant.  This time though the man is old and not merely bewildered, he is ashamed.  Again they return to his hometown.  But his mind is not on her.  His perseverates on what to tell the censusman, how to explain this, er, delicate situation. This time when her water breaks, he can only find a cave for shelter. Utterly embarrassed he leaves her, wanders into town, knocking on doors, looking for a midwife, and misses the Entire Event. Different forms.  Same story.

It is, by all accounts, an astonishing tale. A story of how God’s own story broke into our own cycles of myths, contained and predictable.  Bewildered, no longer in control of the plot, we find we are but characters in God’s narrative. Entrances and exits we have but not editorial control.  Yet we are also the woman, surprised and naïve, somehow giving birth to the Holiest of Holies.  The recipients of wonder.

The plot has many unexpected turns.  The narrator becomes a character in the play.  The author comes to his own characters, but they don’t recognize him. Worse,  they reject him.  The narrator seems to have lost control of the plot at this point, he tries and tries to explain the plot to the characters, explains it to them in simple parables and folk tales, but they’ll have none of it. They know two things:  One is that they are independent thinkers, not two-bit characters in a dimestore novel.  And two, if they somehow are characters, well that Character is certainly not the Narrator.  The Narrator would have a much deeper voice, and probably a pen in his hand at all times.  He wouldn’t hang around with sleazebags and such.   He’d do book tours, and give important lectures to intelligent people.  He’d know far better than to put his trust in a ragtag band of losers …. 

So his own characters plot together and put the Narrator to death.  They kill the Author.  Surely that proves their independence, once and for all. They are free Characters.

All the markings of a tragedy.  But the story still has twists and  turns, and, without giving the whole plot away, the Narrator returns to life. It is his story, after all, and in his story such things are quite possible.  And the Narrator begins to unfold his tale once again.

We enter the story, find ourselves in this confusing landscape of competing narratives.  Some choose to follow the bewildering tales of the Narrator, far-fetched though they seem.  Others say there is no narrator, and if there ever was, he is dead now.  No, those were simply the old tales.  We write our own stories now. . .

And that is why we celebrate Narrative Worship at Knox.

Confused?

Come and find out more.  Second Sunday of every month.

This Sunday we're looking at the stories of Elijah.

growing