Chocolate for Lent
Week Four -- Group Encounter
View Movie Clip
Scene: Vianne tells Anouk the story of her grandparents.
Discuss
1. In the chocolaterie, there are several things that spread an air of mystery: the spinning plate, the hint of secret ingredients, Vianne’s “I know your favorite” approach. Do you think these are just a game, a clever marketing ploy, or do they have more sinister undertones? If the latter, what makes you think so?
2. How do you react to Vianne’s “pagan” roots? Do they make you feel curious or uncomfortable? If you met her or someone like her, would you want to know more or would you back off?
3. When you meet someone with a religion or belief system other than your own, do you first notice similarities or differences? Why?
Ponder and Share
Take a little time in silence to think about any experiences you have had with other religions or alternative therapies, or even with different branches of Christianity. Share your reactions to that experience:
4. What are the things that have made you feel uncomfortable about them?
5. What have you learned from them?
Brainstorm
6. On a sheet of paper, draw two columns: “Attractive” and “Off-putting.” Put yourself in the place of’ someone in today’s society, someone without a faith of his or her own, “shopping around” to find something to believe in and somewhere to belong. Imagine yourself in this person’s shoes (maybe you can think of someone you know) as he or she visits different churches, explores other faiths, or tries out alternative therapies.
Then under each column write down the things you might encounter in the people who belong to these various groups, the way they practice their faith, the way they behave towards you, and the dynamics of the group. What might entice you to get involved or might put you off?
Optional extra question
7. Go through with a highlighter pen and mark those that apply to your church in particular.
View Movie Clip
Scene:
Ponder and Share
8. Have you ever “helped someone to understand they were not welcome”? It may not be as reprehensible as it sounds; chances are that you have had to do so for one reason or another. If so, why? Is there a way of doing so that still respects the person’s dignity?
9. Josephine accepted Serge’s apology, but she refused to return with him. Does her refusal to go back mean that she really did not accept his apology?
Brainstorm
Roux (the river rat), with long experience on the margins of society, expects that people are going to either accuse him, or try and save him: “Which idea are you selling?” If we have any real belief in the Christian message, then it follows (right?) that we believe it can save people and therefore we do want to share it.
10. What conditions can we put in place to ensure that we share our faith in a positive and not a negative way? Make a list of attitudes that encourage faith sharing that is appropriate as well as effective.
Meditation
READER 1: Mark
Ponder in silence
Why do you think Jesus put loving God as the first commandment? After all, most of His teaching was supremely down to earth. Might He not have said that the most effective way to show your love for God was to love your neighbor? Is there anything about the process—about being in right relationship with God first—that enables you then to relate to our neighbor with a more loving attitude?
READER 2: St. Francis of
Brief pause for reflection
READER 3: The following reading shows how radical and revolutionary the gospel is. When truly practiced, it will be quite evident even without words: Matthew 5:43-48.
Brief pause for reflection
Prayer
Lord, we acknowledge that who we are speaks much louder
than what we say, or even what we do.
Help us to accept ourselves fully as God accepts us,
so that we may accept others fully as God accepts them.
Help us to forgive ourselves fully as God forgives us,
so that we may forgive others fully as a token of the forgiveness God wants them to receive.
And help us to be quicker to celebrate difference than to condemn it.
In the name of the loving, forgiving, accepting Christ. Amen.
To Continue Your Reflection
Reread Matthew 5:43-48.
What on earth does Jesus mean by that last statement this passage, “Be perfect”? To be honest, I’m not sure (And I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone else who really knew, either.) But I think I can be pretty certain, based on the other things Jesus said and did, about two things it doesn’t mean.
It doesn’t mean that only people with an unblemished record can get into the
It doesn’t mean that anyone is even likely to achieve perfection. Jesus’ model prayer makes that clear: “Forgive us ours sins, as we forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation” (Luke 11:3-4). He told the religious leaders of the day that for all their law keeping they were like “whitewashed tombs” (Matthew
So why did he say “Be perfect”? Was He brainstorming? Did the gospel records get it wrong? As I said, I’m not sure. But one thing I have discovered: these outrageous, unexpected sayings of Jesus have an immense value, because what they do is stop us in our tracks and make us think.
If it’s impossible to be perfect, then why advocate it? Well, maybe to make it unequivocally clear that living life God’s way is not about achieving a passing mark There is no “70 percent needed for a passing grade, 95 percent for distinction.” It just doesn’t work like that.
And thank goodness it doesn’t. For if it did, we would be forever evaluating how well we were doing trying to gain “brownie points,” checking our grade average. We would be forever looking inwards.
Read Mark 12:28-31.
The essence of a perfect life, as Jesus makes supremely clear, is about looking upwards and looking outwards.
Yes, there is some looking inwards to be done. Because as Jesus also makes clear we are to “love our neighbors as ourselves.” In those two words, Jesus demonstrated that He understood, centuries before Freud and Jung had drawn breath, what whole libraries of psychology and self-help books have tried to say since: that in order to love and accept others, you need to love and accept yourself. And to do this you need to know yourself as one who is forgiven.
This is where the circle returns to the beginning. Because in order to love and understand ourselves, in order to love and understand others, we need to know unequivocally that none of us is perfect.
None of us lives our lives with perfect wisdom and compassion. None of us never tires or becomes fed up with our nearest and dearest. None of us fulfills our potential. None of us has a perfect grasp of the truth.
Years ago, my father said something that stuck in my mind. He remarked that if we did meet someone perfect, we’d never recognize it. I think he was probably right. Because when it comes to it, we have a pretty odd idea of what perfect is. We expect the physique of Michelangelo’s David, the brains of Einstein, the charm of Princess Diana, the compassion of Mother Teresa. We make an assumption that perfect people would be good at everything, that their bodies and their behavior would conform to some norm of beauty. Perfection would mean perfect conformity. And so, not surprisingly, we all secretly feel that if we did meet someone perfect, we would instantly dislike her or him.
I think, though, that what my dad was trying to say was that perfection would mean being perfectly and wholly yourself; quite unique in how you looked and what you did and thought and said. (I have since discovered that the original Greek word for “perfection” used in this verse has more to do with maturity and fulfillment than with bring unblemished.)
I don’t think any of us totally achieves this maturity. I suspect, though, that the ones who come nearest to it are those who would never in a million years imagine themselves to be so. Those who are so accepting of themselves—of their gifts and strengths and of their flaws and failures—that they can happily get on with looking upwards and outwards without thinking about it. I suspect that the ones who come nearest to perfection are not the ones we envy most, but the ones who most make us feel good about ourselves.
And I bet, although I have no theological evidence to support this, that if we did meet someone perfect, one earmark would be his or her ability to laugh at himself.
Pause for Thought
As you go about your daily life this week, look around you for those who may be nearer to perfection than you had ever suspected.