We conclude our worship series on The World Cup and turn our attention to Marion Grau, a German theologian who teaches in Berkeley at Church Divinity School of the Pacific. Grau’s writing invites us critical rethinking of binary concepts that have dominated much of Western Christian thought.
Outline for World Cup
- June 15: Genesis 1.1-2.4a (Brazil – Ivone Gebara)
- June 22: Genesis 22.1-14 (Ghana – Mercy Amba Oduyoye)
- June 29: Genesis 21.8-21 (Croatia – Miroslav Volf)
- July 6: Romans 7.15-25a (USA – George Tinker)
- July 13: Genesis 25.19-34 (Germany – Marion Grau)
Think about your own experience with birth order. How has your birth order affected you?
Read Genesis 25.19-34 .
This story weaves themes of survival and trickery and deceit and power. Some read Jacob as a trickster. His name literally means supplanter. Lewis Hyde writes, “Trickster is the mythic embodiment of ambiguity and ambivalence, doubleness and duplicity, contradiction and paradox” (Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art, 7). We often assume tricksters to be beyond the love of God. We say All Means All, but not tricksters too? What good news, if any, do you find in this? How is God at work in this messy drama? God blesses one of the twins…who would you expect to receive the blessing of God and why?
Finally, as we come to a close of the World Cup, what insights will you carry with you from our study of the rhythms of faith from around the world?