These are questions that comes up often, “Why is there suffering? Why does God allow it to happen? How does God address it?”These are good questions. Questions that will be addressed at our next Speaker Series Event on May 1, 2016. We will gather for a potluck dinner, then our speaker will focus on this. Our speaker will be Dr. Meghan Henning, a professor at University of Dayton who has written extensively on this. She will be approaching this from a biblical perspective. The title of her talk is Bodily Suffering in the Ancient World and the Bible: Jesus the Physician or the Christ Who Suffers?
In a message she sent to me, Dr. Henning shared that her talk “…will be an interactive journey through ancient conceptions of sickness, disability, and suffering, that will invite participants to think about the way we understand suffering in our contemporary context…
“We will not only explore popular ancient concepts of bodily suffering, but our own theological understanding of bodies that suffer. The sources from antiquity beg us to examine our own context and ask whether our own culture still holds some of the same ideas about suffering bodies as broken, weak, unnatural, abnormal, or dysfunctional. We will also think together about the counter-cultural message of bodily suffering in the Biblical texts, and how we can embody this ethic in our own communities as we and those around us suffer.”
There will be more information coming in next week’s newsletter about the event, but I want to make sure you mark your calendar now. Dr. Henning will also be leading a Sunday School class on May 1.
Let me share with you another reason I am excited about this event – I confirmed Dr. Henning several years ago in my first congregation – not that I take credit for her theological training beyond teaching her Luther’s Small Catechism. But I will say that it makes me happy to see this one who was a teenager in my class now using her gifts in Theological Education. I am confident that you will enjoy her presentation.
Peace,
Pastor Charlie