The Reason for Spirit Sightings

See the Spirit at Work in the World

by Tim Scorer

How would you like the job of looking for signs of the Spirit at work? Three people with a passion for world stories and for sharing good news have found such work. Sandra Rooney of Cleveland, Ohio USA, Phil Hoffman of Adelaide, South Australia, and Tim Scorer of Naramata, BC, Canada, are all contributors to a remarkable new online resource called Spirit Sightings. Posted 52 times a year, Spirit Sightings is just one of many innovations included in the new resource for congregations, Seasons of the Spirit*.

Every week a new Spirit Sightings posting examines a news event in light of a Bible passage (from the Revised Common Lectionary) for the upcoming Sunday. Imagine being able to share these weekly explorations of life and faith with youth and adult groups. Consider adding the Spirit Sightings issues to the prayers of the people in worship. Think about how this information might mobilize mission/service responses. Not to mention how Spirit Sightings will support and encourage a worship leader, Sunday school teacher or outreach coordinator in their own faith journey as well as in their leadership role.

The potential for the formation of mature spirituality in our adults, children and youth is tremendous: faith in the context of lifelong learning; faith in the context of a worshipping community; faith that makes itself manifest in acts of love and justice-making. How powerful for all ages to share a focus that engages the needs of the world from a solid grounding in learning and worship!

In the following article writer Tim Scorer describes the process by which he finds and develops his 'sightings of the spirit' each week.

The news of the world looks different when I view it as if I'm going to find evidence of the Spirit active in every moment of my life. Even looking through my 'news reading' eyes I might still have noticed this story from journalist John Hooper in Germany, but looking through the eyes of Spirit it immediately jumped off the page of The Guardian Weekly. Hooper was writing about the growth of the Jewish community in Germany. I'd never paused to consider what it would be like to be a Jew in Germany today; but when I actually stopped to think about it, I realized that I was still carrying huge assumptions founded on Jewish experience in Germany during the Nazi era. So it came as a quite a shock to read that Germany has the world's fastest-growing Jewish community.

Between 1990 and 2000, 60,000 Jews entered Germany just from the former Soviet Union, tripling the size of Germany's Jewish population. Reading on, I discovered that the post-communist government of East Germany took the initiative to invite persecuted Ukrainian Jews to Germany as an act of contrition for German treatment of Jews in the twentieth century. With German reunification, this program was accepted by the heads of the German state governments. Furthermore, this ritual of contrition is no half-hearted allowing of Jewish people into modern Germany; it is marked by acts of caring and hospitality that could serve as a model for any state opening its arms to the persecuted of other nations. After crossing the border Jewish immigrants spend five days in transit centers and from there they go to hostels where they take a six-month language course and have access to the German system of health and social security.

Sometimes it's the irony of a situation that really underscores its true significance. In this case the irony really hit me when I read that the Jewish immigrants have to prove to German officials that they are Jewish and therefore deserving of preferential treatment. Sixty years earlier such proof would have led to a gas chamber, not a new home!

This story is an example of the kind of 'sighting of Spirit' that you will be able find on this website. Each week one of three Seasons' writers will be reporting on a Spirit Sighting somewhere in our world. These will be news stories from the world press, offered in summary form and accompanied by reflections that help the curriculum user to connect the story to the curriculum materials and biblical passages of that week.

What would that connecting look like in the case of this story from John Hooper in Germany? This is what I wrote as a way of helping curriculum users to see a relationship between the story and the Bible passage where we read about Jesus accepting an invitation to eat dinner at the house of Levi, one of the rejected ones of that society.

  • Sometimes a story is such an amazing reversal of expectation that it is worth just stopping and allowing oneself to be amazed! Who would have thought that 55 years after the Holocaust, Jews would have to prove their racial identity to German officials so that they could receive preferential treatment? Does 55 years feel like a long time or a short time for such transformation to occur? What forces do you think are at work to bring about such a reversal of expectation?
  • Consider the story as an expression of this week's focus: to follow Jesus to the table of outsiders and adversaries and experience transformation.
  • Jesus accepted an invitation to eat dinner at Levi's house. The Ukrainian Jews accepted an invitation to receive the hospitality of Germany. It is in Jesus' accepting the invitation to dinner and in the acceptance of the invitation to citizenship that the power of transformation is fully realized. What did it take for each to accept the invitation? What is made possible for others as a result of the acceptance?

Do you see here the interplay between story and scripture? Scripture does provide us with a frame of faithfulness through which to experience and view the Spirit in these events. But the stories themselves can be agents for lifting the overly familiar or downright puzzling passage of Scripture off the page and into our lives in a way that can make a huge difference to us. The publishers of Seasons of the Spirit are on to something that will be a wonderful feature of the new curriculum. Spirit Sightings will create an international online community that looks for and celebrates the Spirit's working in the world and in our daily lives. For the one who is just opening the Bible, it will enrich their reading; for the one who is preparing a study or a sermon, it will offer news of the day for illustration; and for the one who is on a journey of Spirit, it will ground their knowing of Spirit in the extraordinary ordinariness of the everyday.

When you go online to the Spirit Sighting of the week you will find three elements: the summary of the story from the news, the suggestions for linking the 'sighting' to the lectionary passage and curriculum materials; and finally, a prayer. I close now with the prayer that accompanied the Spirit Sighting piece from Germany:

O God, Storyteller of all time, We thank you - for the stories that take our breath away, for the stories that inspire us to live beyond our frozen expectations, for the stories that remind us of the power of your transforming Spirit. Amen.

Spirit Sightings, like other Seasons online resources, is available to congregations who purchase the print resources. Any needed passwords are provided in the printed materials for each season and all members of participating congregations are encouraged to make use of these additional online resources.

Tim Scorer has dedicated his life to sharing the good news through teaching, overseas work, program leadership and spiritual direction. He currently leads the Spiritual Direction Pathway at Naramata Centre for Continuing Education, Naramata BC, Canada.

*During February 2000 over 200 churches in five countries field-tested a proposed new resource, Seasons of the Spirit. Diverse regions, economic realities, traditions and ethnicities were included. Test churches formed and shaped the development of the Seasons resources which see their first full use in congregations in September 2002. Seasons is built on the foundation of weekly Bible passages set out by the Revised Common Lectionary and shared by the ministries of worship, education and mission/outreach. The shared biblical basis coordinates the efforts of teachers, worship leaders (ordained or lay) and mission/service coordinators. Instead of 'pulling' in three or more different directions, a congregation focuses its life on themes stemming from the same word - week-by-week and season-by-season. 
 

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