ONE YEAR MY small group decided to have each member choose a person named or alluded to in the gospels to “follow” during Lent. We researched our people and the customs of that time and reflected individually and collectively on their encounters with Jesus. Then we hosted a community meal for family and friends on the night before Easter. Each member of our group came in character as the person we’d studied and tried to recreate the mood of that frightening, confusing, grief-filled night for followers of Jesus after his death and before his resurrection. After the meal, each of us presented a monologue that tried to project what our person might have been thinking and experiencing at that time.
The attempt to immerse mind, soul, and body into scriptures that I had listened to for much of my life (but perhaps hadn’t really heard) was a transformative experience: It burned away long-held assumptions and revealed new facets of chapter and verse.
The book Creating a Scene in Corinth: A Simulation, by Sojourners contributing editor Reta Halteman Finger and George D. McClain, provides a useful and fun toolbox for small groups, Sunday schools, religion classes, and even imaginative individuals who want their own full-immersion experience of scripture and biblical scholarship. It invites readers to a deeper understanding of the apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth by using role play to “become” members of the different factions of that community as they hear Paul’s words read for the first time. The authors assert that “as we more clearly experience what Paul meant in the first century, we can better understand what his writings mean in our 21st century context.”
In the first seven chapters of Creating a Scene, Finger and McClain explain the dominant social values and norms in first century Corinth, which was under Roman rule and marked by ruthless competition, obsession with rank and status, and public religious practice that mixed worship of the Roman emperor and Greco-Roman gods and goddesses. In an echo of our contemporary global situation, a small group of the elite controlled Corinth, while 90 percent or more of the population lived “at or below subsistence: slaves, freed slaves, and freepersons without Roman citizenship or civil rights.” The authors explore how Christianity gained converts from all classes—and the challenge this presented Paul in teaching the Corinthian churches about mutual respect and inclusion.
Chapters 8 through 17 work through 1 Corinthians, with each chapter including an introduction to the main point of the passage being studied, pointers for understanding the cultural and religious background to what Paul is writing, and prompts so that participants can prepare to react in character as a member of a faction of a Corinthian house church to the reading of that session’s passage. Chapter 18 outlines all that’s needed (including recipes!) to enact a house church agape meal—a profoundly countercultural act in Corinth’s status- and domination-obsessed society.
While working through the entire book calls for real commitment by participants, the benefits of bringing some “play” into the adult learning process and enjoying the authors’ wise, good-humored, and accessible guidance along the way seems more than worth the time and energy investment. A leader’s guide is included with the book and additional web resources are available through the Herald Press site.
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