Ahem!

Yesterday in class we had a session with John Bell from the Iona community who is currently in Australia as Artist in Residence at the Centre for Theology and Ministry.

John led a session with the Theological College community on the topic of Reclaiming the Bible as the People's Book, which was quite stimulating, with various practical ideas on how to bring the Bible to life for members of our congregations.

One exercise he did with us was to name 4 different characters from the gospel narratives and allocated each one of us to one of these characters (my character was Matthew the tax collector). He invited us to reflect, using our imaginations, on what we thought this character would be like- all the kinds of things that we aren't told in the gospel accounts. He then gave each of us a picture postcard (face down to start with) and invited us when we looked at our picture to imagine that this was a picture of our character... and how did this picture change the image we had of our character?

He then invited us to turn our cards over and spend a few minutes in silence, considering these implications. When I turned my card over, I nearly had a fit. My "Matthew" was the torso of a very built man, (who had probably overdone it a bit on the steroids)- HYOOOOGE muscles, and gnarly veins all along his arms and pecs... wearing a brief g-string and a torn singlet which exposed a very well defined set of abs... and there was obviously a woman standing behind him, reaching around with her hands all over his chest (and I think one hand was tweaking one of his nipples through the singlet).

Our Professor of Old Testament was sitting next to me, and started giggling like a schoolboy when he saw my picture... and when we were invited to discuss our reactions with the person next to us, my comment to my discussion partner (a female on my other side, not my giggling professor) was: "hmm... I would certainly pay my tax if he were the tax collector!"

John later asked the group "did anyone have a picture that was radically different to what you originally imagined?".. and when I shared my picture, everyone in the room collapsed in hysterical laughter, and made comments such as: "make sure you get that card back from her, John".

One of my other professors commented to me later about how amusing the situation was, and how well my 'performance' suited the moment (as everyone was laughing as I gave my card to John to show around the room, I fanned myself with my hands to stave off an apparent 'hot flush').

Overall, the exercise was an interesting one in overturning our preconceptions (which are often mis-conceptions) about characters in the Bible; and some of the other cards associated with different characters stimulated some very deep thought and discussion. I think I will have to start collecting some pictures like those to create a similar resource to use in my future teaching ministry.

...and as I said in conversation to a friend afterwards, I don't think I need to point out that although beefcake may be fun to look at some of the time, as a general rule I tend to find brains (even up to the point of being nerdy) far sexier than brawn. See my earlier post on this subject.