Members of The Episcopal Church gathered for the “It’s All About Love: A Festival for the Jesus Movement” in Baltimore, Maryland from July 9th-12th this summer. The festival was a part of an ongoing revival in The Episcopal Church and this year evangelism, racial reconciliation and creation care were highlighted.
The Rev. Eric McIntosh, Canon for the Beloved Community Initiative, says “It was an amazing festival. If I had to use one word to describe it, I would say: joy. It was absolute joy. I thought that everyone there was not only expecting to get joy but was already ready to put their joy into it.”
At the festival, Canon McIntosh presented his work on “Reading the Bible Through the Beloved Community Lens” to a full room of about one hundred people. By the end of his presentation, Canon McIntosh observed that “It was clear that everyone wanted to keep going, to continue this conversation.” After the presentation, he was invited to continue the conversation in seven cities across the United States.
His presentation centered on demonstrating how reading the Bible with a Beloved Community hermeneutic challenges and expands a typical American reading of Scripture. Canon McIntosh observes that as Americans we read Scripture from a place of power and challenges us to ask whether that is a good place to remain as we interpret Scripture. While we as readers and interpreters cannot change the makeup of the society we’ve been born into, we can adopt different lenses and expand our view of what God might be revealing to us in Scripture. Canon McIntosh captures this vision by saying, “So, part of the conversation is how do we do this? How do we acknowledge who we are and how we have been formed when we arrive at Scripture? But then, do we limit ourselves by only that gaze? Or do we ask ‘God, how else shall we gaze?’ because, after all, we do not know everything there is to know about Jesus and Scripture says we won’t until the end. So, we always have room to see Him more, see Him differently.”
One of the passages of Scripture Canon McIntosh used to demonstrate this hermeneutic is Psalm 23, highlighting verse 5 towards the end of his presentation (“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”) “As Americans, we think of it as “for me” and we often want to pause there and say ‘Look, enemy, my God is better and bigger than your God. Look what my God does for me and is not doing for you. You’re god is not doing this for you like my God is doing this for me’ and that is a very erroneous way of looking at it. Since the table is prepared ‘before me in the presence of my enemy’ that’s a moment that God is giving us to offer fellowship instead of war.” Canon McIntosh included a picture of the communion table at this point in the presentation, observing that “That’s the table prepared before us in the presence of our enemy and at that table we can find fellowship, we can find forgiveness, we can find salvation and our enemy can find God.”
Overall, the “It’s All About Love: A Festival for the Jesus Movement” was a time of revival, mutual joy and encouragement as well as a time of learning from one another. Canon McIntosh’s presentation on “Reading the Bible Through the Beloved Community Lens” was an impactful contribution to the revival and inspired many across the country to want to continue the conversation.
Canon McIntosh can be contacted at emcintosh@episcopalpgh.org