[PSST: Command the flesh to be silent! Live, Move and Be in Spirit! (GT)]
Possible Sunday School Topics for the Christian Science Bible Lesson
“Matter” – September 12-18, 2016
prepared by Merrill Boudreaux, CS
mailto:pegasus6524@gmail.com 314-308-1059
P.S.S.T. Golden Text (GT) – Ask students: What is the command in the Golden Text? What are some other names or synonyms for flesh – matter, physical senses, that which appears to the physical senses to be you. Once you have commanded the flesh to be silent, what is left or what is the revelation? You have been raised up out of his holy habitation. What and where is this habitation? You live and move and have your being in Spirit, God. Let’s explore this lesson with the question: How do I do that?
P.S.S.T. Responsive Reading – What preparations should you undertake that lead to the understanding that you inhabit the realm of Spirit? See what Mary Baker Eddy says of her journey of spiritual self-discovery in Science & Health 107:1-6. Look to the Responsive Reading for ideas you might use to illuminate your own journey:
- Make straight in the desert a highway for our God
- Exalt every valley (thoughts of depression or inadequacy)
- Make every hill low (every formidable challenge manageable)
- Straighten out crooked thinking
- When life seems rough, ride it out with Mind
- Why?:
- Behold the Lord God in your life who has a strong hand to hold you, pull you, and sometimes push you
- Why God?:
- Because She was there first, before you, and will always be there beside you
Read together Hymn 224 from the Christian Science Hymnal (below).
P.S.S.T. Section 1 – Another way to defend yourself and affirm that you live in Spirit is found in citation B1. Ask students to interpret that passage with their own inspiration. What does it mean to raise a false report? How can you be kept from a false matter? Remember you are always thinking something. See our Leader’s counsel in Miscellany 210:1-11. See the result in citation B4.
See also the definition of “FAN” in S&H 586:7. What fans do you have for this daily work? Bible, Science & Health, Mary Baker Eddy’s other writings, Hymnal, Lesson Sermon, Christian Science periodicals, Christian Science practitioners, teachers, lecturers, parents and friends, Sunday School teachers. Lots of fanning going on there, and all for you. [See Warren’s PS1 from Cobbey Crisler for more on Christ coming “with fan in hand” to separate the chaff and wheat.]
P.S.S.T. Section 2 – How can your evangelized eye and ear aid you in seeing your spiritual habitation? (B6) Ask students to write for their eyes only what they believe/understand God has prepared for them. What had God prepared for Daniel in citation B7? Was Daniel’s life sustained by matter or by Spirit? Why was Daniel unhurt by the lions? Did he “speak” the language of the lion? Ask students to share a prayer treatment Daniel might have used when communicating with the lions. See citation S10 as an aid.
P.S.S.T. Section 3 – What is the prayer of desire in citation B8? Peace, health, balm (what is that – maybe harmony). Understanding that Hezekiah lived and had his being in Spirit, what was the prophet Isaiah able to do for him? How do you think Hezekiah felt during this experience? What evidence do you have in citation B9? What might tears symbolize? Perhaps cleansing in order to behold a new view, maybe even spiritual baptism. What is being said of Isaiah, Hezekiah, and you in citation B11? The more you realize you are governed by God, Spirit, the more you can heal the sick. (S13) What is your foundation or standpoint? See S&H 239:16 and also 239:5. Read together citations S17 and S18.
P.S.S.T. Section 4 – What do you think is the gospel or good news about the Kingdom of God? It is at hand. You are in it right now. What is MBE’s explanation of the tares and wheat for the Bible story in citation B16? See the S&H portion of this section. Remember you have the fan in hand to winnow thought. What does winnow mean – separate. You have the ability to separate fable from fact. Now where do you live? What are your aids? See Jesus’ admonition to us in John 14:12-14.
P.S.S.T. Section 5 – Read together citations B17 and B18. Can you ever be alone or left alone? On what are you called to obey? (S25) What is a standpoint statement in citation S26?
P.S.S.T. Section 6 – Agree how to make your standpoint or take your stand as an inhabitant of Spirit in whom you live and move and have your being. Read together Hymn 148 from the Christian Science Hymnal (below). Conclude this lesson by reading together Hymn 139 from the Christian Science Hymnal (below) and asking students to state the universal truths about their habitation and results found in this hymn. Affirm that “…peace shall crown your joy-filled day.”
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Hymn 224:
O Lord, I would delight in Thee, And on Thy care depend; To Thee in every trouble flee, My best, my ever Friend. When all material streams are dried, Thy fullness is the same; May I with this be satisfied, And glory in Thy name.
All good, where’er it may be found, Its source doth find in Thee; I must have all things and abound, While God is God to me. O that I had a stronger faith, To look within the veil, To credit what my Saviour saith, Whose word can never fail.
He that has made my heaven secure, Will here all good provide; While Christ is rich, can I be poor? What can I want beside? O God, I cast my care on Thee; I triumph and adore; Henceforth my great concern shall be To love and praise Thee more.
Hymn 148:
In heavenly Love abiding, No change my heart shall fear; And safe is such confiding, For nothing changes here. The storm may roar without me, My heart may low be laid; But God is round about me, And can I be dismayed?
Wherever He may guide me, No want shall turn me back; My Shepherd is beside me, And nothing can I lack. His wisdom ever waketh, His sight is never dim; He knows the way He taketh, And I will walk with Him.
Green pastures are before me, Which yet I have not seen; Bright skies will soon be o’er me, Where darkest clouds have been. My hope I cannot measure, My path in life is free; My Father has my treasure, And He will walk with me.
Hymn 139:
I walk with Love along the way, And O, it is a holy day; No more I suffer cruel fear, I feel God’s presence with me here; The joy that none can take away Is mine; I walk with Love today.
Who walks with Love along the way, Shall talk with Love and Love obey; God’s healing truth is free to all, Our Father answers every call; ’Tis He dispels the clouds of gray That all may walk with Love today.
Come, walk with Love along the way, Let childlike trust be yours today; Uplift your thought, with courage go, Give of your heart’s rich overflow, And peace shall crown your joy-filled day. Come, walk with Love along the way.
[Warren's Met PS1 on Cobbey Crisler's insights into the role of Christ in threshing (divinely sorting-out and separating) mixed-up messes: Atop Mount Nebo in CedarS Bible Lands Park (CBLP) I have reenacted this threshing analogy with thousands of visitors using a small fire downwind from pile a wheat that's mixed with chaff and also with lies and limits written on scraps of paper ready to be incinerated and left behind. This past weekend scores of Bible Conference guests here chose to join me in CBLP for several hands-on reenactments of Bible-based analogies and principles. At Nebo they chose to leave behind their chaff (all lies and limits), as burned-up forever, never worthy of recirculating in their thought or experience. This is always thanks to Christ's (mental) dry-cleaning baptism as described by John the Baptist in Matthew 3: 11, 12. In this threshing analogy (amplified by Cobbey below) all mixed-up messes are best taken to the highest place (God) where the Christ comes with FAN ("separator of fable from fact" S&H 586:7) "in his hand" to "baptize you with the Holy Ghost (Wind), and with fire… burn(ing) up the chaff with fire unquenchable." Matthew 3:11, 12
"Verse 11, John the Baptist speaking) “I am baptizing you with water: but the one who is following me (Jesus)… He is going to baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.”… Let me just suggest something… I think it does help to clarify how we can learn from these illustrations by going beneath the surface as much as possible. For instance, in the separation of the chaff from the wheat there are innumerable things that are required for the thresher to do before the results can be successful… We want to get rid of the chaff and get to the useful wheat. Why must we separate them? They’re all mixed. Take that symbolically. If this is all to be happening within us, this kind of baptism, Holy Ghost and fire, is there anything mixed up in us? Of course not, we’re not mixed up. We’re never confused. We never have arrived at a point where we can’t tell the difference between right and wrong. If some of us, a few of us, have that problem of being mixed up on occasion, then the chaff and wheat are together. Is there a way you and I can get out of that mixed up state? Is this the baptism then that is required as far as our thinking is concerned? In order to begin to sort this process of separation, the thresher must first locate a threshing floor. … It has to be high, and certainly as level as possible. … It would have to be open with minimum obstruction. … Open to the wind.
“Here we are on our threshing floor with all the mixture at our feet. Our first responsibility was to get it up to the highest point where there are no obstructions. That’s very interesting because for anyone who is at some mixed up point in his life, the first requirement is to get up to that point.
“Second, what must be done? What’s the next thing the thresher does? Now he’s up there. It’s a beautiful wind. Is he going to put up a hammock and swing in it? He’s got to do something about the mess at his feet. It’s very exact this illustration. What does he do? He uses a fan. What is termed a fan in the King James Version is not the Madame Butterfly variety, but is like a fork, a pitchfork. He goes right into the mixture of the chaff and wheat and throws it into the air.
“So far, responsibility number one has been ours, to get to the high level in thought, locate the threshing floor. The second responsibility is also ours. To make sure we have that fan in hand to separate the chaff and wheat, to actually dig into that pile and throw it up into the air. But the actual separation occurs by the wind. Not ours. Do you see the difference in the responsibility? The Divine takes care of the separation after the human had gotten to the level where it is willing to work for the Divine and yield to it. The wind, or pneuma, or Holy Ghost, has that defined responsibility of separating the chaff from the wheat in our own thinking.
“Where does the fire come in? If you want to get rid of the chaff, it will be very important to destroy it completely. Because the chaff could, with a change of wind, be mixed back into the wheat. To eliminate that possibility, a thresher will build a fire downwind, the chaff will blow right into the fire and be consumed simultaneously…
“It is through this process of baptism, the meeting of the Holy Ghost and fire, that this deep spiritual cleansing goes on within us."
Book of Matthew, Auditing the Master, A Tax Collector’s Report, p. 15-18, a talk by B. Cobbey Crisler. You can buy your own transcripts of 28 of Cobbey’s talks at a new website: www.crislerlibrary.co.uk Please email your order or inquiry to office@crislerlibrary.co.uk, or directly to Janet Crisler, at janetcrisler7@gmail.com]
