Psalm 66:1-12

Pentecost +20 - Year C

Psalm 66:1-12

"The theme of this psalm is not obvious . . . .", The Jewish Study Bible. So we continue the mystery of dreams. "The exodus-conquest theme may hint at the theme of the return from exile and re-entrance to Judah (... a common symbol for the return in postexilic times...)", ibid.

Praise G*D.

1. We have been kept among the living while bad things happen to ordinary people.
   
2. We have been tested by fire.
   
3. We have been grounded like a bird in a net, trapped with no way out.
   
4. We have been subdued.

          - - - (dream-like jump) - - -

11. We have come to a spacious, prosperous place.

When we can't explain the various incongruities of life we are tempted to put it all on G*D - the pains and the joys, the testings and the blessings. None of this "proves" G*D. What lies behind our insistence on making sense of the world, even if it takes projecting experiences onto G*D? It would seem we are still in the midst of a dream.

Keep singing a better tomorrow. When we find ourselves there, perhaps then we will see beyond our multiplicities of experience and better understand this and other praise psalms.
 

Jeremiah 29:1-7

Pentecost +20 - Year C

Jeremiah 29:1-7

We dismiss folks by calling them dreamers, out of touch with reality. Jeremiah's letter recommending people flourish where they are, opens him to the accusation of being a dreamer.

Does Jeremiah not know our human response to having a perk taken away from us? We are supposed to get angry and work assiduously to regain the privilege and garner more! Or so says our Snake Self when not in healing mode.

In exile many perks are taken away. And it is not just the quantity of loss but the quality. Our native tongue and all the memories it carries is lost. Our favorite seasonings, not to mention our favorite foods, are lost. Relationships, standing, and class are all lost. Some losses bind us to the past.

As we attempt to get our minds and hearts around questions of subversion of our vanquishers, our enemies, along comes this dreamer, Jeremiah, with his letter asking us to simply flourish where we are - fearful and lost. At bottom Jeremiah dreams for us a different present and future than we have for ourself. Our vision is to continue the past, to return to where we were and the power we had. Jeremiah's dream is about cutting the immigrant's nightmare down to size by noting all the reality of loss and moving on. Some losses open us to the future.

Whatever has been lost, has been lost. Spending energy on it in regret and grief, in fantasies of revenge and return, turn out to be counter-productive. The loss cannot be put back together again, no matter how many king's horses and king's men are put to the task. All that is left for us is to put our best toward a better tomorrow for our captors as well as ourselves. If we are in it for only ourselves, we will simply repeat the cycle of violent competition and a zero-sum power game.

For what are you being called, counter-intuitively, to help flourish by remaining true to what is better for all and not just yourself?
 

Luke 17:1-19

Pentecost +20 - Year C

Luke 17:1-19

The space between wake and sleep where drowsing, active-dreaming, springs to life is a critical creative space. Here the interface between Samaria and Galilee is just as creative. You might want to consider where a creative interface is for you - it may be geographical or relational, perhaps it is is an art form or a time of day - and intentionally and regularly engage it.

Here, in the in-between, the least likely avenue to spiritual growth shows up. In this case, outcast lepers come out of nowhere [where in real life would lepers be waiting just inside the boundaries of a village - wouldn't you expect them to be at some remove?]. Lepers become judges at the gate and might bring an appeal for healing from any number of perspectives. Here the healing rubric is, "mercy" and raises a question of whether the dreamer will be mercy-full - full enough to have it overflow.

In this dreamtime, a community of lepers could be made up of Jews and Samaritans. Their common exile binds them together in much the same way that folks from differing religious groups have more in common with those with similar experiences in a different religious group and be in closer accord with them than with someone else from their religious group who hasn't arrived at a similar values package.

Whether the lepers were all Jews except for one Samaritan or all Samaritans, sending Samaritans to Jewish priests would have no meaning to the Samaritan. It takes an especially active dream to have a/the Samaritan return to Jesus, as though to a priest, to say "Thank you", to offer "Praise/Sacrifice" for completed healing.

And so, in a daze, Jesus reflects that a faithful, trusting, relationship - regardless of its religious orientation - is a source of healing. Quite a dream - healing goes beyond ritual, expectation, or privileged religious affiliation. The faith of a faithless person is a wonder to behold.

May you dream strong dreams of new ways of being together. This sort of dreaming will lead you to situations as equally strange as Jesus and the lepers - all healed, mysteriously on a hidden journey, even if through ways passing strange and beyond our usual sense of reality's limits. As you enact your new, strong dream, may you hear, "Go, on your way; your dream has made you well."
 

imagine more

Pentecost +19 - Year C

you don't need more
trust, hope, memory, opportunity
but more imagination
wouldn't hurt

imagine the energy
grass growing through cement
mustard seed-sized faith
juggling mulberry trees

imagine the integrity
in serving one another
telling truth today
investing in tomorrow

imagine laments forgiven
songs of old sung again
foundations rebuilt
villages honoring children

imagine continuing conversions
ancestors still alive in hearts
gifts rekindled for common wealth
forgiveness defining faith and love

energy aplenty
integrity deep - deep
forgiveness ready at hand
conversion tying past to future

we don't need more
unless imagination has died
mouldered by marketing
surrendered to entitlement
 

2 Timothy 1:1-14

Pentecost +19 - Year C

2 Timothy 1:1-14

I remind you to rekindle the forgiving gift of G*D that is within you. [vs.6]

Don't be a coward and let it go for nothing. [vs 7]

Be not ashamed of forgiving, even those who don't know what they do. [vs 8]

You have a holy calling to further G*D's expansive and expanding love. [vs 9]

Fragile life can be strengthened well into the future through forgiveness unto resurrection. [vs 10]

This reception of forgiveness is worth building a life on. [vs 11]

Trust the forgiveness you have received on your Damascus Road. [vs 12]

Hold to the standards of trust and love. [vs 13]

Guard these standards that reveal the Holy Spirit in each one. [vs 14]

- - -

How do you read these words in our day? How do you keep this pericope from being all about salvaging past doctrines and never getting to trust an on-going conversion through the reception of forgiveness and then being radical in extending forgiveness to anyone and everyone?
 

Psalm 137

Pentecost +19 - Year C

Psalm 137

Remembering forgiveness unlimited, we now weep at what has been lost. The music of our lives that brought us to dancing together, has been lost.

In this strange unforgiving space we are asked to sing of forgiveness out of a reserve we do not have and we find we have lost the words - we don't want to forgive our captors. Our good right hand of fellowship through restored community has withered.

No matter how we intend to honor our heritage of forgiveness, the words just don't seem to come - our mouth is dry.

Our lack of forgiveness has us wishing harm not only upon our current enemies but all their children, not just the first-born.

Yes, we are in Babylon. Weeping. Unforgiven and unforgiving.

To return to health we need this lament. May we see what we have done and are doing to ourselves and not take that out on others. Let us Remember Forgiveness and build Zion anew right here in the middle of Babylon - it is a reliable, long-term, tool still available to refugees from Eden and Everywhere.
 

Lamentations 1:1-6

Pentecost +19 - Year C

Lamentations 1:1-6

How lonely sits a city that once was full of forgiving and forgiven people. How like a bereaved spouse, enslaved by depression. Bitter tears are wept; no comfort is afforded. Friends have become enemies. The felt experience is that of exile, suffering, servitude, and sleepless stumbling.

Even the roads to the city mourn for there is no festival of forgiveness to draw people together. Priests falter, children grieve, it is bitterness all around. Transgressions remain transgressions and a multitude suffer for want of forgiveness.

Lament wherever you are, this fate does not wear out or run down - it waits for a first moment of fierce rectitude that excuses a next and next. Where preemptive mercy and forgiveness falter, self-inflicted disaster eventually destroys every empire built on market greed and self-righteous revenge.
 

Luke 17:5-10

Pentecost +19 - Year C

Luke 17:5-10

[verse 4] "You must forgive!" ~ Jesus [4 BCE - ?]

[verse 5] In response to this dicta, Jesus' friends responded with equal intensity, "Increase our trust!" (our ability to persistently forgive before, during, and after repentance has been requested).

[verse 6] If we are not careful what follows is seen only in terms of religious jargon regarding "faith." In light of the action of forgiveness, we only "do what we ought to do" when we forgive. The mulberry talk and slave/master imagery can take us pretty far afield if they are not linked more closely than the NRSV heading of this section, "Some Sayings of Jesus". These might be isolated sayings but these sayings take on greater significance if they are recognized as reordering our community life. This reordering is very difficult work for the injuries and difficulties we want to heal are so deeply rooted and grow back so quickly that we need to practice the trust involved with forgiveness and, then, practice it some more.
 

better now?

Pentecost +18 - Year C

a future projected
is a present in need
of a changed past

our accretions
can do us in
immobilizing

imagine again
how differently
we might have decided

there were choices
whether felt or not
our response was not necessary

imaging again
we have more choices
than we are willing to make

we know this
from our dreams
of justice implemented

while fearful
in the present
seek also contentment

when these inform
one another
new choices arrive

not only choices
but new refuges
new authority

changed expectations
change behaviors
toward one another

even Abraham
will follow Lazarus
with a cup of water

in the name
of a better future
we live better now
 

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Pentecost +18 - Year C

1 Timothy 6:6-19

Enough can be enough when it comes to food and shelter and money. More than enough, though, gets in the way of other qualities where enough is never enough.

Has there been enough kindness shown yet? How about enough peace experienced or justice enacted? Will there ever be enough consideration given to the poor? What is the limit of an expansive and expanding love?

When we begin trading in commodities it turns out that enough is never enough. We are measured by an ever expanding base of quantity and coming up short of the elusive enough. This understanding leaks over into the qualities of life of which there really never is enough and we will cut any of their corners in order to receive more of the marketable goodies we desire.

Since those arenas in which enough will never be enough to deal with the latest reality are so important and so vulnerable to subversion, it is important to address the issue of how to deal with matters where enough can really be enough. Here the quality of the day is not a sense of authority to order arbitrary limits on enough or to find a refuge of off-shore tax exempt storage of commodities to add to enough. What is needed is a sense of contentment able to see through the masquerade of adequate diets and housing and income playing the pity game and needing just one little bite more, an extra room, or 10% more income.

Researchers tell us that it is not an absolute amount of money that brings "happiness", but where your money ranks in comparison with others. Simply having more than so-and-so brings the happiness of status, fleeting as it is. This however is not the kind of contentment that needs consideration. Here we have a reference to the Buddhist understanding of non-attachment - being content apart from the standard measuring tools. Contentment is a spiritual gift much needed in today's world of warring words setting family member against family member.

Better than, "Don't worry, be happy" is "In all things, contentment".
 

Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16

Pentecost +18 - Year C

Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16

It is helpful to not only know your "authority" (acts of increase in the world), but also your "refuge" (fleeing the world). If these get too close to one another, pride and privilege may rear their heads. In a trinitarian sort of way we need to have our authority, refuge, and contentment (to anticipate tomorrow) all playing nicely with one another and differently based.

Remember your refuge from days past.
Identify your refuge in this day.
Anticipate your refuge in the predictable future.

Within any of these there can be a base from which to do your guerrilla work. Any of these can be a temporary shelter from the consequences of having applied your authority to situations at hand.

A mystery is how we will operate in the not yet, for, here in the middle of the story, evidence of love can get shaky - as well as protection and what we might consider rescue or honor. What used to satisfy our longing for assurance falls apart as another rough beast approaches. In a current uncertainty and our longing for certainty, we are, again and again, trusting where there is no trust at hand and rising from having been treaded upon (various "Tea Party" followers may want to revamp their attempt to avoid being tread upon to what a new community would look like after this particular empire vanishes, is trodden out as a result of having been divided from within).

If a refuge is not providing a re-launching pad of better living together, it is only hedging out particular evils of our day and providing them an opportunity to regroup and come back with more of their friends. So a refuge is not comfort so much as a healing scab and re-learning that we might return to the engagement of life.
 

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15

Pentecost +18 - Year C

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15

What timing G*D has! Surrounded by Babylonians. Confined in the Palace. Comes a vision larger than fear, larger than enemies (external and internal), larger than impotency, larger than silence.

Surrounded by external enemies, confined by internal enemies, Jeremiah buys land about to be worthless. This purchase is to be hidden and sealed until a time when it might be returned to the light of day and the equivalent of a Jubilee happens - land is returned to previous owners.

This is a wonderful stewardship story. This is a story for the Palestinians of our day. Jeremiah would recognize their loss of land, hidden and sealed, for a later time. May that later time be a sooner time - blessings and peace upon the latest negotiations.

How far ahead are you seeing? Can you see beyond the downfall of current empire? Your usual investments are going to be worthless. What investment will see you through worthless times to a time of renewal and restoration, restoration and renewal, Jubilee? You did know that Jeremiah is the prophet we need to be listening to today? What, you didn't? It's not too late to get thrown in prison for telling the truth or traveling to Washington D.C., on October 30 for the Rally to Restore Sanity. No, those are not equivalents, but they are related.
 

Luke 16:19-31

Pentecost +18 - Year C

Luke 16:19-31

Can you trace back your sense of where authority lies? There are many overlays that will have to be discarded on such a journey. Before moving further a key decision is whether or not it is sensed that a change is needed. If it is, one does not have to travel any further than their present understandings to be authorized to act. If satisfaction, for whatever reason, has set in, you can track an authority back through many generations to Moses and the prophets or to creation and creator before them and never get to an authority authorizing this particular change.

If we are busy defending "what is" as the end point of time or that it will be too risky to move from what currently is, there is no authority, no matter how miraculous or strong that will do to move us off of our present square.

If we see that change is needed to get to a better place, we can get by with an ordinary understanding such as the one my brother sent today regarding math and history as authorities: "Anyone who mentions tax cuts with deficit reductions are idiots, and should be thinned from the herd. It seems simple math, as well as historic perspective has been lost to the Right wing."

Unnamed rich people, unable to see a poor person, are not good candidates for seeing a needed change. They have come to understand the present rules and to shape them to their attain their privileged positions. So intrenched is this privilege that they try to order Father Abraham (euphemism for G*D) to serve their thirst for surface comfort. Even when called on that, they try to help their own class, unable to see the need to help the poor (which would help heal their own). [Note Paul Krugman's editorial, "The Angry Rich", in today's NYTimes.]

We need to develop a way of looking that used both eyes to have a three-dimensional view of life. What will actually help our own group and others? Helping the rich (trickle-down theory) has yet to do anything to the divisions and to really help the poor not still be the poor. Helping the poor, on the other hand, actually does help the rich return to community. As you choose what charities to give to, what causes to support, look for those that emphasize the least. This is not just for their assistance, but your salvation/wholeness.
 

The Commercial Spirit

Pentecost +17 - Year C

The Commercial Spirit
Meister Eckhart

As long as we look for some kind of pay for what we do, as long as we want to get something from God in some kind of exchange, we are like the merchants. If you want to be rid of the commercial spirit, then by all means do all you can in the way of good works, but do so solely for the praise of God. Live as if you did not exist. Expect and ask nothing in return. Then the merchant inside you will be driven out of the temple God has made. Then God alone dwells there. See! This is how the temple is cleared: when a person thinks only of God and honors God alone. Only such a person is free and genuine.

= = = = = = =

tiny inside merchant
price tagging life
50¢ for learning math
75¢ for a loving partner
$300 for military security

how do you do it
commodify life
$4 for a janitor
$6 for a doctor
$200 for a CEO

it seems to change
with your desires
$10 for Milwaukee Braves memorabilia
$15 for a Winnebago Sightseer
$100 for bypass surgery

until there is nothing left
but to earn twice as much
for half the satisfaction
invested in manipulated chance
with no way around death

a better economist
values differently
$50 for you
$50 for each
$50 for me

sending prophets
to ensure profit
through regulations
beyond desire and
dishonest wealth
 

1 Timothy 2:1-8

Pentecost +17 - Year C

1 Timothy 2:1-8

Pray for everyone. Paul goes on to specifically include praying for people in high places, people who otherwise might not get prayed for. This might be considered to be a prayer for an enemy, someone whose dishonest wealth has led to a dishonest spirituality and a keeping of the one who is praying poorer and poorer.

The emphasis upon "people in high places" is an appropriate reminder that the prayer behind the prayer is revolutionary. It is hard to live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity with all division and inequality of resources that is required to keep people in high places. The lifestyle they have grown accustomed to and want more of requires some to be physically, psychologically, or socially enslaved, hardly a quiet and peaceable life.

G*D does desire everyone to be saved and to come to the "knowledge of truth" which is that we are called to pray without a prayer behind the prayer of overt argument or passive-aggressive anger at the divisions between us.

While traditionally read as leaders are more sons of God than anyone else and so support them with prayer and praise just like you would a God, we can still hear echoes of a more radical call from G*D and Jesus to break down the dishonesty, the hypocrisy of wealth, and all that supports it.
 

Pentecost +17 - Year C

Psalm 79:1-9

Even when comeuppance has arrived for dishonest wealth or dishonest spirituality, we are still trying to wheedle G*D to be on our side and to return us to our most dishonest time when we had the most wealth or the most comfort in ignoring one another.

Bottom line here is, "Sic 'em God!"

Beneath the bottom line is, "Forgive us so we can get back to our dishonesty."

The pericopes this week have been tough for folks to hear, even folks who are diligent is opening themselves to an examen.

Can you be honest about dishonest wealth in your congregation without it leading to a drop in financial giving? Can your fellowship address dishonest spirituality and keep everyone participating? Odds are, if you are not a leader, your talk about these matters will find you ignored or asked to leave. If you are a leader, confronting dishonesty will bring about less followers and less money. Is getting back to being honest in church too difficult for the moment? When will it get any better? Is it worth doing anyway?

Examen your self. Examen one another. Rejoice when you have come through. Change when you have been caught out.
 

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

Pentecost +17 - Year C

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

In The Jewish Study Bible the versification is different, 8:18-23. Don't trust any classification system. All of them will too soon lose the poetic soul of the experience written of as they divide, and divide again, a whole experience - dissection cannot find a soul.

Just before these words at hand (8:13-17), Jeremiah is informed of G*D's decision to put an end to the people - to harvest them (and not in a good way).

I like the translation of verse 18 in The Jewish Study Bible. They note the meaning is uncertain, which always give a bit of liberty.

"When in grief I would seek comfort,
My heart is sick within me."

Jeremiah has heard extremely bad news and is looking for an out and only finds tears available to him. And this is confirmed in verse 21:

"Because my people is shattered I am shattered;
I am dejected, seized by desolation."

There is no healing balm available to the poor - the poor in G*D but rich in various idols.

Only weeping is left.

The spiritually poor lose track of G*D and their own Self. This shows up in the way they deal with One Another, Neighbors, and Enemies. They are already in exile before they even know exile to be a vague, far-off possibility that they will not be able to avoid.

Well, Friends of Jeremiah, a dishonest spirit is as troublesome as dishonest wealth. They go together. Whichever comes first, the other is sure to follow. So, given where we are and the predictability of another exile for any nation claiming to be a city on a hill, a beacon, without actually doing the hard work necessary to have us simply be a neighboring city and to only be a steel against which another's flint is struck, it is time to weep.

We are harvesting the accumulation of dishonest wealth and dishonest spirit. This is worth weeping over as we are too far gone to reasonably shift gears. In fact the pace of a coming exile is increasing. Those with ears can hear it grinding and slouching forward. Be not surprised. Simply do the cleansing work of weeping that keeps clear a larger vision beyond this particular desolation and grief:

Peace and Joy abound
take all you need
and a little more
to pass around

 

Luke 16:1-13

Pentecost +17 - Year C

Luke 16:1-13

Given: Wealth is inherently dishonest. To accumulate wealth in our world is to do so at the expense of the poor. No matter what the economic system, there is none that is sacred, discrepancy of wealth requires keeping the poor poor. Remember the kicker, "You cannot serve G*D and wealth".

How then does one make friends through the use of "dishonest wealth"?

Is it to use the same amount of smarts but for what is right (as The Message would have it)? This is to again focus on individual salvation and to lose track that we are all in this together - as G*D's creation, we can't have it otherwise.

Honesty requires that we see our economic lives in light of the well-being of all the people and the environment. Whether you have much or little of the dishonest wealth, if you are not using what you have to look to the well-being of others, your own attempt to bridge the gap between G*D and the Bank (a helpful image from The Message), your own well-being (present and anytime afterward), is diminished.

The process of debt-forgiveness here outlined is still a good one and needs to be further used. You may want to look again at the canceling of international debt as a cause to support (Jubilee: USA Network).
 

a motley crew

Pentecost +16 - Year C

what a motley crew assembles
around a dynamic person
when folk are seen
for who they are
they gather
in abiding hope

powerful people
make gracious hosts
for unexpected guests
seeming to manufacture
more something out of nothing
even from absence beyond nothing

sometimes something is food
and sometimes food beyond food
a healing in and out of time
folks are free to wander away
and be rejoiced over
at every small and large return

poor plans can be improved
beginning intentions strengthened
fears reduced
hopes bolstered
relationships mended
mercy extended

and so Jesus and Jeremiah
Psalmist and Paul and You
and even I
are birthed to new life
nurtured to a next stage
harvesting joy along the way

what a motley crew assembles
in bible, imagination, and here
seeing beyond our differences
of caste and class and past
to what we may yet become
each and all together

for those who wander
and return to wander again
for those who steady
and risk their place
settle in to one another
rest and rise
 

1 Timothy 1:12-17 14

Pentecost + 16 - Year C

1 Timothy 1:12-17 14

How does one save a sinner?

• There is an internal prompting - a prodigal child gets hungry enough to humbly return.
• There is a faithful waiting - a prodigal parent actively scans the horizon for a sign of return.
• There is threat of worse to come - a hot wind is about to blow (talk about your global warming!)
• There is renewal against all odds - fortune happens.
• There is gratitude - mercy is received.

Different sinners respond to different stimuli.

Paul says there was already a saying out and about (perhaps even seeded by Paul himself) that explains Jesus - he's a sinner saver. This matches up nicely with people who consider that they need to be saved in order to arrive at eternal life (a supposed high value goal). Together, mercy offered and mercy received, a strong bond is established.

In every age there are those who don't emphasize eternal life as a major goal. They are far more focused on a present paradise than on a postponed promise. What value might Jesus have if it is not sinner saving for some later time? Is it enough that faith and love that are in Jesus simply were shown to one and all (some able to receive and some not)? This is not conditional, that it needs to be accepted to be fulfilled, but simply what Jesus does and invites others to also do - trust and love.

This passage is tightened up if verses 15 and 16 are deleted. They are tangential to Paul being strengthened (as a current witness, not for eternal life) and praise of a changed life flowing forth.

This also is worthy of acceptance: Jesus lived in this world with abundant mercy, abundant life. Those able to receive it were blessed and shifted from violence to non-violence that the abundance of life might be maximized. This application of mercy to violence brings eventual wholeness - not automatically, but holistically. So it is that Jesus is less about outcome and more about process.

It is helpful to meditate on the difference between Paul's statement of Jesus's mission (saving sinners for eternal life) and John 10:10b, Jesus' understanding of what he was about (abundant life). What is the interplay between abundant life, eternal life, and present life? Obviously abundance can overflow into some forever, but focusing on the overflow isn't quite the same as attending to the regular flow.

A case in point is my mother who finally died last night. Her work attended to the present without much talk about eternity. Each of her children and grandchildren experienced her as being on their side (that's a lot of differences to be affirmed, mercy to be extended). Her goal was to be engaged with the life in front of her and to encourage growth. Not much, perhaps, but well done and people came to overflow their bonds and bounds.

Psalm 14

Pentecost + 16 - Year C

Psalm 14

Behavior shapes thinking and thinking shapes behavior. We have known this for a long, long time. So how do we learn to pass a test that comes around every time we might "assist the plans of the poor"?

There is an article about learning in Tuesday's New York Times, Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits that suggests:

1) We change our location of study so the same material is presented in a variety of settings. We need to assist the plans of the poor in our family settings, friendship circles, work places, political conversations, etc. To limit our advocacy to one arena is to only study in one place. Our retention of the issue and our effective engagement lessens if we only address this matter at, say, the macro political level or at, perhaps, the personal.

2) We mix our studies together in the same way an athlete will vary their training for strength and endurance and quickness and particular skill drills. There are many aspects to assisting the plans of the poor and we are called to engage our assistance from personal, sociological, economic, political, educational, etc angles. Each facet will have something to add to our learning.

3) We use wider comparisons and fewer intensive immersions. Our brain and heart can pick up underlying patterns when we see the plans of the poor through the lens of ethnic women, white males with a privileged way, hungry children, etc. Each time we look again, we appreciate more deeply the way poverty is entrenched and how we seek to personally avoid it, even at the cost of someone else being poor.

4) We space our learnings rather than cram. Each time we revisit an task such as assisting the plans of the poor we find we have forgotten something and need to relearn a part of our world and work. This makes forgetting a part of long-term remembering. Each time we are surprised that poverty is so stark and pervasive, we have an opportunity to re-learn our place on G*D's side.

5) We seek out tests. The heightened engagement with a test assists us in learning. Like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, "testing not only measures knowledge but changes it - happily in the direction of more certainty, not less." This is not teaching to the test, but using tests to reinforce the learning - there is a significant difference. A key part of the test is where we find ourselves - face-to-face with the poor or just talking about them.

6) We need to pay attention our motivations, who are we are trying to please by learning how to assist the plans of the poor and for whom are we trying please by avoiding or failing this test?

Anyway, intentional foolishness does us no long-term good (for ourself or anyone else). There are ways of shifting to wisdom. Let's help one another so shift. The plans of the poor are a catalyst that will return us to a healing community and the fortunes of all will rise as we engage and implement those plans.
 

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

Pentecost + 16 - Year C

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28

For what have you "purposed" and refused to turn back?

For those who are reformers and reformers of reformers in a later day, we have moments of putting all our eggs in one basket and claiming that a given decision or action will make all the difference, for eternity. Each time we have done so, we have found we were incorrect. Things can still get much worse than what we take to be the worst. Conversely, in the midst of the most darkness there are sparks being nurtured into flames and new illumination to guide us out of our present trap.

This process of making a particular, or series of particulars, into a universal pronouncement is so familiar to us that we project it on to whatever is our god of the moment. Yes, we would disclaim ever being be tricked by a momentary god, but when tracking our lives (individual and corporate) we find we talk a better game than we live.

It is important to hear, "...yet I will not make a full end." Even as we heighten our present insight into eternal pronouncement, we are called to remember that "this, too, shall pass."

Now, back to work - hold firmly to your current wisdom while also holding it lightly, that it might better inform.
 

Luke 15:1-32

Pentecost + 16 - Year C

Luke 15:1-32

Just how small a percentage makes something invisible or is an acceptable loss or collateral damage? Is it 50% (children), 10% (coins), 1% (sheep), 0% (sparrow/hair)? Homeopathically, is there such a thing as too much dilution?

This last week I received a church newsletter in which the pastor's column echoed the grumbling of the Pharisees and scribes. It seems that, for this pastor, some "original revelation", confirmed by later creedal/legal formulations, should have kept the ELCA and Episcopal Church, and all others, from self-destructing (his analysis) over "homosexuality". He claimed that schism over a mere 1% of the population, gay men and lesbians, wasn't worth the loss of church unity. Yes, I responded as softly as I could [that his work with a majority 99 would bear much good fruit and that my work with a minority of 1 would bear much good fruit] and hope you will continue to respond to such statements that come your way - letting them go by does no one any good.

Definition of "neighbor" seems to be an on-going issue in our lives. We cycle through which group is currently not included in that understanding. How near a dweller does one have to be to be a neighbor? Do they need to have 100% of the same characteristics as myself? How about 75% of a religious belief? 50% of cultural referents? 25% of food preferences? 10% of disposable resources? 1% of humor style? Less than 1% of a political bias? At one point or another we have drawn circles to keep everyone out. How very Jr. Hi. of us. Corporately, a lack of neighborliness keeps us less than the sum of our parts.

The passage moves from grumbling to celebration, rejoicing, and a question for us is how we might do the same - individually and communally?

Where was the turning point for you? Was it in the finding (at the end point)? Was it in the anticipation of a welcoming (that which can't yet be seen)? Somewhere between?

As this is being jotted my mother is completing her journey amidst us. Breathing is erratic. Some are hanging on every breath. Others are away enjoying a beautiful day. Will there still be neighborliness, given different choices, when all is said and done and immediate tears wiped away? Will a blame spot be chosen to set up one way of responding being the right way? Will we appreciate different gifts and needs and stages of faith? Will lamps be lit [resources, time, and energy used] to bring together all those who have been dropped along the way.

Pentecost +15 - Year C

Pentecost +15 - Year C

knitter together
unraveler

we pause
amidst

for knitting - thanks
for unraveling - thanks

for more of the same - yes
and even more - yes

in this flux
we live and move

and have our being
with pump and pause

stone-picker
weeder

resist evil
in every guise

garden-planner
sower

nurture another
with many guides

earn and invest
give and invest

give back
and go on
 

Philemon 1-21

Pentecost +15 - Year C

Philemon 1-21

Verse 6: "I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective when you perceive all the good that we may do for Christ.

Verse 7: "I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother."

Verse 8: "For this reason, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty...."

Verse 21: "Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say."

How does your expression of trust become "effective"?

Philemon had the specific issue of slavery before him as an arena in which love might be expressed. The particular has to do with one Onesimus. Is Onesimus already one of the saints for Philemon, in which case Paul's admonition, command, isn't needed? Is Onesimus, at best, a second-class saint and the cultural mores take precedence over a new inclusive community? In such a case Paul does need to reframe the range of "neighbor" to Philemon.

This raises issues of the base range of who is considered a saint, who is a neighbor, and is very important and cannot be left to a quiet, patient love, but to a loving command.

There have been all manner of distinctions made as to who is a saint and who is not; who is in and who is out. Paul leaves it at the same place Jesus does - you are to do more and greater things than you have done before, than others are up to at the present time. Whatever the particular current issue dividing the body -- theological (Arminius v. Calvin), identity (sexual orientation), economic (class), cultural (immigration), . . . . -- a question of what is "greater than the status quo" or what passes for common-sense must continually be raised.

= = = = = = =

Yesterday Amy Someone asked about the comment made here three years ago and asked about including it in her sermon. Here is the link to the last comment we made: Philemon, 2007.

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

Pentecost +15 - Year C

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

Verse 16: Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. [NRSV]

Imagine you still have "unformed substance".

This is not an easy one, so try it again: Imagine you still have "unformed substance".

Part of the difficulty of this creative pull into new being is that it is found between the many (sands) and the one (I am with you!). That which we might become when we grow up is as open as open can be (all the days) and as sharply drawn as anyone would want (days formed for me).

From this personal moment: our grandchildren, ourselves, and my mother, in the good hands of Hospice, are all beholding our unformed substance. Our days and day are as natural as can be in this day. But if we were caught here forever, how sad. The young ones would not grow in grace. We older ones would only have our alzheimic memories. And the ancient of days would have only darkness.

Imagine you still have "unformed substance". What's next? What's not possible?

= = = = = = =

Verse 16: Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them. [KJV]

"Unperfect" here refers to an embryonic state in the process of being wrapped or folded together. We might be aided with an on-going appreciation of the unperfect folding and unfolding of stages whether currently in what might be called pre-life, or life, or what might be called post-life.

A blessed "unperfection" or "unformed substance" to you.

Jeremiah 18:1-11

Pentecost +15 - Year C

Jeremiah 18:1-11

So good of G*D to give direction to a revelation, a looking at the world and seeing new connections. It happens a potter's house is a great place to find metaphors. Any number of them have been noted.

A significant part of this passage is the implication that we might also be called by G*D to specific locations where a revelation might be caught. Consider all that has needed to conspire together to get you to the spot where you are. What important metaphor can you look around and see at hand or listen to right now and hear a new melody? Can you remember to repeat a search each of the next four hours?

Not so good of G*D to give direction to a grand curse, a looking at the world around (one's image) and attending more to a wobble than a graceful of line. A potter's house is also a great place to find fired up certainties whose only possible change is that of breakage.

May you learn from G*D that changing your mind about the good you intended is not a healthy response, no matter what the provocation.
 

Luke 14:25-33

Pentecost +15 - Year C

Luke 14:25-33

Let's see, Jesus can affront and confound people just by standing still, when invited in, by stopping mid-stride, praying, wandering off by himself, and observing others. An equal opportunity challenger, was Jesus. Observing that trait of his, we would naturally try to get on his good side or at least evade his gaze should it drift in our direction.

Unfortunately, his gaze is as erratic as a prison searchlight should be. Here we are all marching along. A cadence has been set. Then, mid-stride, Jesus throws everyone off stride.

"Is death your advisor?" he asks. Later rememberers of this moment put that in terms of his own death on a cross, but he probably simply said, "What does your death tell you it is important to be about, that you might see life more clearly and act more compassionately?"

The implication of his brother/sister/mother/father talk is that Advisor Death (precursor of the Holy Spirit later sent to advise us) will let us know that there is something more important than family/church solidarity. Blood and Creedal lines are not all they are cracked up to be.

Can you hear Jesus say, "Look around. What is more important for you than simply being in the good graces of the folks standing next to you in this crowd and thinking, thereby, you have pleased me? Why are you following? Get moving!"

It is easy to read the moral of this section as through a Lenten lens, through a perspective of financing the church - give up your possessions. It is appropriate, in light of the prior questions, to ask about where you will "invest" your life. This then reads, "Do you want to join me on this Way to G*D? Invest fully in life (which means risk fully)."

= = = = = = =

On a more personal level, as the Power of Attorney for my mother's health care in a family of five siblings, there is a sense in which everyone in the crowd was just invested with the Power of Attorney for their own and each other's health/wholeness/salvation. And, not surprisingly, everyone took it so that the various component parts could not carry on as they had with their various accepted positions or divisions of labor - sort of a variation on the Tower of Babel where all the different languages become all the different stages and paces of those involved and, as a result, don't easily mesh. It is risky business to have a whole crowd become invested with the equivalent ordination pronouncement, "Take thou authority . . . ."

We are doing well in working together, beyond blood and creed, for a common goal of a comfortable transition to a next stage of life, but this passage has taken on a new glow for me in light of the world around. That actually happens a lot, but this is an easily noticed shift. What new aspect of this pericope have you noticed?

occasionally

Luke 14:1-14

on one occasion
the expected did not

an invitation
became a test

internal not external
monitored none the less

without a change in expression
plop - a test

evaluate
question

no question
take and heal

note turning point
and teach

a meal is a banquet
to be honored so

relate honestly
eat healthily

don't steal another's place
don't pile your own plate

honor and health
need intentional integrity

which does not expand
power and waist

but extends a beginning
invitation and welcome

to each and all
beyond any one occasion
 

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16

Pentecost +14 - Year C

Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16

Need an out from being hypocritical? Try Verse 1: Let mutual love continue.

Of course this presumes that some mutual love has been going on within one's selves and/or between folks. Being hospitable is an antidote for hypocrisy, a division within one's self - what is said and what is done.

Life's messengers are entertained when that which has been divided is again joined together. When complicit in torture and we finally stand against torture (physical, psychological, any) we entertain angels. When complicit in not holding one another tight through any of the demon dialogues mentioned in Hold Me Tight and we hold again, forgive, bond, and otherwise keep love alive, we entertain angels. When we cease to be complicit regarding the coin of the realm and its attendant greed, we entertain angels.

Bottom Line - It is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by regulations. (v. 9) This is the better living we anticipate, not after death, but right now.

Psalm 81:1, 10-16

Pentecost +14 - Year C

Psalm 81:1, 10-16

Take one

O that folks would listen to me - that I would be understood for what I meant, not what I said or did or didn’t say or didn’t do.

G*D seems to feel that having brought folks out of Egypt that G*D would never again have to face the cry, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately. Well, imagine that, G*D and G*D’s image seem to have a lot in common.

Never in G*D/Israel connections has so much been offered to so few.

It would appear that if praise is going to be freely given, there must also be the possibility of not following every command performance to give gratitude.

Take two

Yesterday my mother had a stroke (bleeding kind, not clotting kind) in a very difficult spot. Surgery intervention is out. Doctor’s prognosis is not good for recovery. As a family we are working on our response. Thank goodness she was as independent as she was to have the appropriate things in place for not playing the resuscitation game.

Hear this Psalm in a mother’s voice -

Sing aloud to Mothers Anonymous, our strength; shout for joy to every Mother of G*D.

I am your Mother, who brought you up out of every trouble you have gotten yourself into. Open your mouth wide and I’ll put another gingersnap in it.

“But my children did not listen to my voice; even my favorite would not follow my wisdom.
So I gave them over to the school of hard knocks, to follow their own counsel.
O that my children would listen to me, that each one would walk in my ways!
Then I would quickly subdue their enemies, and turn my hand against their foes.
Those who are after my young-ones had better watch out, for a mother’s wrath brings doom forever.

But my prodigal dear, I will still feed you with the finest oyster stew, and with crumbcake from scratch I would satisfy you.”

Jeremiah 2:4-13

Pentecost +14 - Year C

Jeremiah 2:4-13

If G*D were domesticated we would be wrong to stray. A tenting G*D, however, both wanders away and intentionally moves on. In such an image we also wander away, when we are not intentionally moving on.

While G*D’s complaint about those G*D brought on Exodus has some legitimacy of folks no longer being on the same page, a question must be asked about who has wandered and who has stayed the same.

Imagine a Living G*D who has moved further down the line and a people who are still reacting out of the rituals of the past. Might the people be considered to have “moved far from G*D” simply by staying still? This can be seen as a difficulty of our being able to keep up.

One reason for looking at things this way is that G*D is described as a fountain and the people as leaky cistern diggers. A fountain is moving, a cistern is still.

So, from the other side, our danger is not hewing to past movements of G*D, but failing to keep on moving with G*D. Courage friends. It is time to strike out again for promises larger than can be held in today’s hands.

Luke 14:1-14

Pentecost +14 - Year C

Luke 14:1-14

What a gift - silence. In its presence all is possible, renewal and healing are approachable through new avenues.

To be bound up in our joints is to not be able to move. It is like the childhood game of Statue, at some moment we take a shape and are frozen. A word in the midst of our silence is needed.

Jesus question about the lawfulness of healing or curing implies that the law can be construed, if not literally quoted, to restrain the bringing of new life. In the face of such laws sometimes the best one can get is silence so that a good can be done.

It must be noted that acting in the midst of silence runs similar dangers as being in a closet. Sometimes a glimmer of intended integrity can occur, but it is always in the context of a danger of someone coming out of a trance or later remembering and seeking revenge.

In other contexts, a meal, that same silence holds dangers even for those who are privileged. Determining the etiquette of space not always self-evident. It is all to easy to usurp someone’s space and you will pay for it, then or later. Jesus’ comment about assuming a lower place is the equivalent of acting in the midst of silence. There is freedom in both silent space and lower place - freedom to act, freedom to model better living, freedom to expand love.

At a non-traditional wedding yesterday, I was privileged to read a translation of 1 Corinthians 13 by one of the partners. It began:

If I speak in human language or in that of the messengers, but do not have love (the love that is passionately committed to the well-being of the other), I am a resounding piece of copper or a clanging cymbal.

They felt it important to say more than the standard “love” and assume everyone present would know what they meant - the love they wanted to participate in and that Jesus demonstrates in this pericope is “the love that is committed to the well-being of the other.”

You may want to write that down so that every time you hear someone talking generically about love, you can remember the kind of love in which you are looking to participate in your space, your place.

twofer

Pentecost + 13

twofer

= = = = = = =

How
You
Project
One
Concept
Rite
Into
The
Ether

= = = = = = =

teaching what is teaching
uncripples
teaching what is teaching
shifts power
teaching what is teaching
convicts certainty
teaching what is teaching
rejoices

Hebrews 12:18-29

Pentecost +13

Hebrews 12:18-29

Living G*D’s are always dangerous. They leave chaos in their wake. Rules are made and remade. Rituals come and go. What will satisfy a Living G*D won’t satisfy a reformed Living G*D that recognizes the previous way of doing business was no longer satisfactory for either G*D or creation or creature.

You thought the threat of fire next time was tough to bear up under, that’s nothing compared to the blaze of requirements of this reformed Living G*D. In retrospect it seems that it was easier to deal with animal sacrifice for behavioral issues than it is to deal with doctrinal sacrifice for theological issues.

To circle back to the gospel lesson, can you hear Jesus talking to both the Living G*D of his tradition and the reformed Living G*D he was experiencing - and using the term hypocrite? You can’t really talk about hypocrisy of priests without also talking about the hypocrisy of the power they represent or mediate.

Give thanks or else, is not a comforting word. Blessing on you for being able to give thanks by simply seeing life beyond wrath and calling out those who limit us to a fear-based approach to life. Blessings on you for being able to give thanks even while seeing the end of life as subservience and randomness and colluding with it. Blessings on you for being able to give thanks while convinced there is no hope and nothing to trust. Simply blessings on you for your thanksgiving, regardless of its etiology or degree.

Psalm 71:1-6

Pentecost +13

Psalm 71:1-6

Peterson's The Message translation of verse 1:
"I run for dear life to God, I'll never live to regret it."

This is probably, literally, a running in fear. But put the emphasis differently and "dear life" takes on a quality of life we claim as desireable.

What are you running for?

For dear life, away from something fearful to you, and by default your running takes you toward G*D?

For "dear life" which is sufficient in itself and is always found in G*D (you don't have to go anywhere or even toward something).

It is in this second reading in which we find our regrets fade away. If we have acted for "dear life" in the occasions we find ourself, we have life in such abundance that no regret will steal some of it back.

Yes, the Psalm goes on to put the onus of our salvation on G*D (and, of course, the blame if we don't sense it). The Psalm goes on to praise, praise, praise.

Hear again the first verse, "I run for dear life within G*D, I'll never live to regret it."

There are many paths to "dear life." May your "dear life" bring you joy.

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Pentecost +13

Jeremiah 1:4-10

It would be helpful to extend this passage to verse 19. Left where it is, Jeremiah is given words, but when further queried by G*D Jeremiah responds in pictures and is then given words to describe the scenes. This distinction between the doctrine of words and the experience of pictures is important for those of us who dabble in biblical metaphor.

Most of us can confirm that there has been an energy within that has been working its way outward and now cannot be restrained. It is a gift that now seems it couldn’t be otherwise. This gift must have been with us from before we were even thought of (read Azimov’s Foundation Series). It is of such intensity that we will now hold to it through thick and thin. And so Jeremiah rises and stands.

My hope and prayer is that more folks would have this sense of being part of something larger and be about the business of using their gift to engage a larger community in making the changes needed for all involved to continue. Stability is not the hallmark of a long life, appropriate adjustments mark the successful individual and culture.

At the same time that there is good energy here, there will be trouble later with Jeremiah being dismissed and ignored. And now at a much later date, there is the danger of taking Jeremiah's images too literally and to mean the same thing in days to come. There are none who can hold the whole world in their hand (or mouth). In the words of a song by Bob Franke, we are all bottom-feeding catfish, “for everything falls, after all.”

Jeremiah looks realistically at the world around him and sees transitions of power. If you were to look around you, what would you identify as shifts in power - might they have to do with identity politics of gender, race, culture, orientation? might they have to do with political and economic consequences of their philosophies being taken to the extreme? might they have to do with a lack of resources (both amount and distribution)? might they have to do with a fear that we are going to fall, after all, and so our task is to live well with reality rather our denial of it in favor of one religious insight or another.?

Luke 13:10-17

Pentecost +13

Luke 13:10-17

A question has arisen regarding whether Jesus can be hypocritical? A good bit of this depends on how one sees Chalcedon - now calcified or not? A reference book I find helpful is John Hick's, The Metaphor of God Incarnate in which he describes the difficulties theologians have today, regardless of their stripe, in justifying the divine/human uniqueness of Jesus and Christ. Hypocrisy is a justification of the past and a fear of changing it.

One story that comes to the fore is when Jesus dismisses the Syrophoenician woman and her daughter, only to recognize his hypocrisy when hearing her response. In the gospel lesson for this week, those who hear Jesus response are not able to recognize their own hypocrisy and to change directions.

Having light feet is one helpful way to reduce one’s hypocrisy level. Folks whose feet are stuck in one concrete or other and whose mouths deny this reality, seem unable to dance away from hypocrisy and reform their lives.

Luke 13:10-17

Pentecost +13

Luke 13:10-17

Life brings opportunity after opportunity to respond to what is before us, rather than what is already past. A built-in response, even from such a revered place as doctrine, seems to continually miss the mark. If we substitute any systemic response for that of paying attention to what is needed now, we eventually run afoul of the hypocrisy demon.

To know a rule without the ability to recognize when to use it and when to ignore it begins to put us in a box that will eventually, in turn, be used to put everyone else in a box and relate to them as less than human (otherwise they wouldn’t be in a box).

So it is that Jesus [read, “you”] is able to see a woman in need of an encouraging word (a first step toward a healing word - a healing word that would allow a scan of a larger horizon than the dirt at her feet).

Jesus could have joined others in the hypocrisy box, simply by having his eye on G*D’s judgment and rule from yesterday that would constrain us today. Instead, Jesus actually saw a woman first, rather than a set of rules that would dim her in his eye (each layer of rule further obscuring her presence and reality) and perhaps make her invisible. Instead, Jesus was looking around him with an eye to G*D’s mercy. Instead of dimming the woman, she began to become brighter and clearer. Jesus was able to see the straightness in her bent form and to call it forth.

It is noteworthy that the issue of hypocrisy is connected with shame. The approach to rules first, rather than mercy, is meant as an insulation from engaging life. The rules simplify our life and we all participate in them to some extent (they do keep traffic moving). And to be caught out, when we thought we had our protection up, failing in basic care for one another, we are ashamed - partly for the good we could have done, but didn’t, but mostly for having trusted our rules and finding that they didn’t keep us from getting called out - the Living G*D we thought we had under control is moving on leaving the husks of rules behind.

It seems our lives are complex enough that there is hypocrisy in every life. At stake is the amount and the arena of our hypocrisy. A part of our task is simply to be aware of the many avenues through which we are hypocritical and to begin lessening how much we have in a particular arena and to reduce the fields in which we are active. This is both individual and communal work.

In this story shame will lead to revenge for having been shown to be out of touch. An important question for every day is how we gauge our hypocrisy level. Can we even see that we have one? Is it high enough to keep us blind to the needs of people as we “should” all over them? Is is low enough that we can better see folks and move toward them with mercy? May you be blessed with a bit less tolerance for rules for the sake of power than yesterday and a bit more mercy toward all than you thought you had - and the same tomorrow.

sigh

Pentecost +12 - Year C

I came to bring fire
but I didn't
sigh

sigh
baptism absent
and so I wait and wait

people project peace
coming from me
but no

divisions
are as natural
as the generations are long

cloud on the horizon
rain is coming
oh my

earth
seems stable
but given enough time

seasons spin around again
never the same
ever

and
I didn't
bring a fire
 

Hebrews 11:29-12:2

Pentecost +12 - Year C

Hebrews 11:29-12:2

Blessed are those who are persecuted for their faith. Twice blessed are those who later have someone join them to continue faithfulness in the face of persecution.

Should you pay attention to the host of ancestral models, everywhere you look there will be a challenging forerunner in the faith. While you won't be breaking any new ground, you may be able to heal some old ground simply by continuing the ancient tradition of taking any consequence that comes along by way of holding to any of the myriad ways of justice and release from captivity (your own or someone else's). As long as there is a continued need for justice to be enacted, there is an ancestor still uneasy apart from your joining them on the journey of life.

The promise here is not that we will be the final iteration of faithful folk that will complete all those who go before, but that we are on the same journey. Should we not complete a task, we will have the privilege of joining a cloud of witnesses, encouraging those who come after us to pay attention to the justice needs of their time. This is helpful in that there is a benefit from simply running as faithfully as we can. We may find ourselves blessed with the completion of a task. We may find ourselves blessed with taking that task one step further along the way to completion. Either way, we find ourselves blessed simply to do what is ours to do - regardless of the outcome.

So, who is your avatar in the faith? Gideon, Deborah, David, prophetesses? To note this person is to discern the arena of your faithfulness. May you go pro in your field of faithful endeavor. You may still be an amateur in some other arena, but improving your ability to be just in a particular life issue is possible and desirable.
 

Psalm 80:1-2, 8-19

Pentecost +12 - Year C

Psalm 80:1-2, 8-19

Hey, G*D, stir up your might, get out of bed, run here, and save us!

You've done it before. Time to do it again. Your indolence is responsible for our peril, so get a move on.

We're finally and really sorry - yes, we know you've heard us say that before, but there really is a wolf at the door this time, dressed in pig's clothing no less, eating the fruit of the vine - so help us now and we'll tell everyone what a great gal you are, uhh, great guy, uhh, great god you are.

If I were G*D, I'd go back to bed. But, the persistence of these bloody mosquitoes (images) is great. I guess I'd get up, but grudgingly. Would I believe them? Nope. I know them too well, they are in my image after all. They will continue to want what they want when they want it. So, let's set up the toys for them to knock over again - someday, they'll grow up, at least that hope is still holding, though it is fragile.

How about you? Will you get up for such as are running the world down while expecting a miraculous pick-me-up at the end?
 

Isaiah 5:1-7

Pentecost +12 - Year C

Isaiah 5:1-7

Must be the Dog Days of Summer, Jesus is looking to burn up the earth, Isaiah is prophesying destruction for a vineyard, the Psalmist recognizes similar destructions have fallen upon the land and pleads for new light, and the letter writer to the Hebrews recounts a cloud of persecutions witnessed. The sweat of our brow is soaking inward, softening the mind and clouding hope.

It is hard enough to do justice when comfortable. When the hot stickies of Sirius joins with the heat of Sol, it is easy to let a bit more of justice slip away - who has the energy to do elsewise?

It is hard enough to be consciously moving toward being G*D (righteous) when comfortable. When the heat humidity index hits the danger level, we hide further away from our self and one another - who has the fortitude to resist absence of intention, we can hardly move ourselves?

So it is that no matter what our call, it is trumped by such little water droplets in warm air and by the driest of heat rising beyond the bearable.

But we know that, so why don't we factor it in to our rhythms and our awareness? Can you look just one more time at what is going on around you and to offer a cup of cool water to someone in need, a refreshing word of support to a whole group prohibited from simply being? Yes, you can! Bloodshed can be stanched by justice.
 

Luke 12:49-56

Pentecost +12 - Year C

Luke 12:49-56

Division and separation are creation-long experiences. Formless void and darkness are separated from light, a garrulous and day-long absent G*D is separated from said image of same and they from their garden chatting place, languages are separated one from another, unclean shellfish are separated from clean sheep, Samaritans are separated from Jews and Gentiles, and the list of separations can continue and continue to today's religious-right identity politics of separationing gay from straight.

Yes, Jesus continues, and even provokes, division and separation. His attempts at clarifying meaning seem to automatically provoke. With Jesus as forerunner of our faith, it is little surprise that we continue to provoke one another to the point of division after division and separation after separation - how many Christian sects are there - as many as the stars in the sky or sand in the ocean (a promise to Abram and Sarai fulfilled?).

Instead of presuming there is no way around some of our disputes (even though the best that might be done is to manage them, not to dispel them) there is here room for us to ask some clarifying questions. What are our divisions? Are you sure? Is there somewhere greater to which our current separating smallnesses might be led? If we are just disputing to dispute because what we are disputing about doesn't really amount to a hill of beans in a larger reality around us, the refining fire of this recognition will exacerbate our stress immensely.

Can we look at ourselves with the same clarity we apply to clouds? Who among us is a nimbostratus? a cumulus? a nacreous? What clarity will resolve long-standing divisions and which will finally bring a needed separation? These are questions for whole religious traditions, as well as a congregation/parish, and an individual.

I expect that dealing with an issue of clarity will also have its dark side as it expands a yearning to have simple resolutions to complex issues. Clarity can also energize precipitous action in the expectation of dealing with ongoing polarities, once and for all.

Said anew, "You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to clarify your present time and your present life?"

This issue of clarity is the issue, not the fire next time or instituting our own current personal or cultural bias.
 

or not

Pentecost +11

do not be afraid, y’all
a good pleasure of the universe
is present
ready or not

this treasure tugs
at our heart and hearts
anticipating only readiness
like it or not

much has been given
entrusted even
much is to be given
required or not

no solemn assembly
can avoid harm and do good
no ritualized offering determines
justice or not

beauty shines forth
honor replaces sacrifice
health is purposeful
thanks given or not

this moment clarifies hope
expanding love well beyond faith
toward a preferred future
seen or not

gazing into Sagan numbered stars
digging a deep and firm foundation
conjures promises and possibilities
prepared or not
 

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Pentecost +11 - Year C

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Take 1

By faith Abram and Sarai set out. If you are not up to the faith standard, there are still hope and love and additional ways to journey.

Try this variation: Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the love of things not seen. Even without assurance that hope will be fulfilled, one can still hope and still love.

Whether by faith, hope, love, or some other path, we can still desire a better world than we currently find. Of course it will require changing ourselves as well as the world, since we are still very much connected. It does open the possibility of modeling the changes we desire.

Whether working from a position of assurance or hope or love or something else, have at it so that you can be grounded in this place and not need some other in which to live and move and have your being - here is enough.

Take 2

Yes, yes, yes, faith is directly connected with assurance and conviction. That is exactly the problem. Anything outside of faith must be prohibited for assured faith is convicted and convinced that it is the totality of what is possible.

Faith is the source of approval, so faith must be secure for all time.

It is in this sense that faith is connected with an other-worldly heaven. Faith and Heaven - between the two of them there is no other option than the option of what is currently understood to be faithful and heavenly by those who control access to either (as either implies both).

Watch out for an unashamed God insisting on faith and offering a heaven, someday. There you will find an idol, secure, never-changing, ever pure. There you will find Crusades and Inquisitions.
 

Psalm 50:1-8, 22-23

Pentecost +11 - Year C

Psalm 50:1-8, 22-23

Time to stand and deliver - no not robbery, or hard work and a positive attitude, or a birthing technique - thanksgiving as participation in life.

This thanksgiving way of life ought to be sufficient by itself. Does it really need some quid pro quo of salvation to improve it or make it worth doing?

No, thanksgiving doesn't need any frosting to make it palatable - it is, in a very real sense the whole of a dessert course. At the end of a meal or a day, it is thanksgiving moments that are retained in the memory and satisfy the soul. So often we begin days and meals with high expectations we shape into ritualized thanksgiving. But until they have been concretized and brought home in dessert and dream time, they are but techniques designed to soothe sound and fury (see verse 3).

Yes, start with a blessing but don't end until it has been transformed into a thanksgiving.
 

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20

Pentecost +11 - Year C

Isaiah 1:1, 10-20

Right thinking is concerned with getting rituals correct.
Right action is concerned with getting justice correct.

There is nothing to keep these from working together. However, the witness of religious history is that religio/politico rituals keep trumping elementary justice, religious laws keep trampling lived experience. Were this not the case, the prophetic tradition, a third of the TaNaKh, would not have the continued presence and power it has.

In this adversarial setting, G*D has seen a larger picture, "though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow". And so a question: given this eventuality, to what are we called to attend and practice?

Do you want to participate in the "snow/wool" conclusion or the "scarlet/crimson" resistance? If the former, here's the agenda:

• do no harm
  
• do good
  
• seek justice
         rescue, defend, and plead for
         the oppressed, orphan, and widow

This is importantly different from other approaches such as the General Rules of the United Methodist Church:

• do not harm
  
• do good
  
• attend to the ordinances of God
         public worship, Word (read or expounded), and Lord's Supper
         private prayer, searching Scripture, and abstinence

Again, these can work together. However religious prohibitions/ordinances, in our day against Gay and Lesbian Christians, seem to keep tripping up that which is for the "good of the land", the commonwealth of G*D, and a healthy connection between thinking and action.
 

Luke 12:32-48

Pentecost +11 - Year C

Luke 12:32-48

We are still echoing the issue of testing in the prayer the disciples asked for without knowing what they were getting into. There are several hooks into the testing motif in this passage. For today we'll look at the test of independence or interdependence. Here is an extended quote from Richard W. Swanson in his Provoking the Gospel of Luke.

Sell your possessions.

Give alms.

This second bit of advice is palatable enough. Giving alms is an expected part of Jewish life. Every Sabbath includes the giving of tzedekah; every year includes structured times to remember the importance of such obligations. The bite comes when these two injunctions are linked to each other: sell your possessions in order to give alms. This envisions a radical sort of interdependence rooted in exchanged poverty.

It reminds me of the Lakota practice of giveaway.

After a death the bereaved family gives its possessions to their neighbors and family. Stated in more revealing terms, the family gives itself to its neighbors. If the family is to go on, the neighbors will have to carry it. Which, of course, is exactly what is required at such a moment. The giveaway reveals a basic truth of human life: no one can go on unless carried by neighbors. This is not a truth unique to a time of bereavement. Death just reveals what is always true: human life is a team sport.

The Lakota know this, and practice it, now as always. Jews know it, too. Worship requires the gathering of a minyan, a group of sufficient size to create a community. Study requires a partner, a chaver, someone who will sharpen the insights and deepen the comprehension, someone who will challenge and support. There is an old saying: One Jew is no Jew. Only in such a community could anyone (notice the number) give up everything and still have everything she needs.

--> "Radical interdependence rooted in exchanged poverty."
--> "Human life is a team sport."

How might these images inform your reading of this passage that gets judgmental and expects everyone to be at the same level of learning and experience at the same time?

• So is the Prayer the disciples asked for, for them or everyone?
  
• Is this extension, for the disciples alone or everyone?
  
• Is your preaching this week for the congregation or everyone? [Warning: if your preaching is for everyone, including the congregation, you will likely have some upset congregational members.]

 

and it is evening

Pentecost +10 - Year C

and it is evening

wise or not
this night
begins another day
today's soul
is laid to rest

all we have prepared
is laid to rest
our judgments
our lack thereof
is laid to rest

wise or not
all together
Ephraim Israel
Admah Zeboiim
are laid to rest

compassion continues
and steadfastness
brings old sorrows
home to be
laid to rest

wise or not
gather to offer
thanks beyond measure
and even this
is laid to rest

thirsty lands
hungry people
satisfied
fallow
laid to rest

wise or not
seekers above
greedy for glory
and entitlement
are laid to rest

lies rest
anger wrath malice
slander abuse
are laid to rest
for an eighth day
 

Colossians 3:1-11

Pentecost +10 - Year C

Colossians 3:1-11

If we were to intersect this passage by Paul with the Sermon on the Mount by Jesus we would get a different feel for the import of this passage.

The first part tends to set us in the direction of splitting body from spirit and claiming spirit takes priority. All this talk about above, not on earth, hidden, and glory tend to separate us from ourselves and to try to get us to do the behavioral injunctions in the last part of the passage at a surface or temporary level (just until some revelation of Jesus - second coming in some perspectives).

If we were to bring the Sermon on the Mount to bear on the first part - so we are setting our minds on such earthly issues as poverty (whether communal or spiritual), mourning, peace-making, being persecuted for doing good - when we get to the no lying part (no anger, wrath, malice, slander, abuse) we would know that there is a depth of integrity that we need to attend to that will take all we have to give and then some. These are issues that are not going to go away soon - they are intimately tied up with who we are becoming right here in Paradise and not just practicing for some future Glory.

The Message comes closer here as we try to reveal Christ present, not wait for Christ to come. We are called to become better, not out of fear of G*D's anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abuse, but because it is where our blessing, happiness, journey is going.
 

Psalm 107:1-9, 43

Pentecost +10 - Year C

Psalm 107:1-9, 43

Let the redeemed give thanks - whether they should have needed to be redeemed or not.

There are folks who are outcast because of their very being, according to one religious source or another. They don't need redeeming for their being and yet they are outcaste (caste-away) far enough to feel that way.

In recent days, comparatively, the ELCA has "redeemed" some of its years of discrimination and loss of pastoral gifts and graces from gay and lesbian sisters and brothers. The Presbyterians, even more recently, are following at their pace. The United Methodist Church still has a goodly way to go to find their strength in using all the gift and graces available to them.

The pastor of a local Reconciling in Christ congregation in the ELCA recently returned from a convention in Minneapolis and I thought part of his newsletter reflection should be shared more widely as we continue to grow in wisdom and give heed to gathering the scattered.

I come away with a new appreciation that much of our Holy Scriptures was written for persons who are on the margins of the world. Here is a small list: Hebrews as slaves in Egypt; Hebrews wandering in the wilderness; the people of Judah in exile in Babylonia; Psalms for all occasions including sadness and loneliness; Lamentations as cries of many hearts; words to Gentiles who were considered unclean and outside God's love; a voice touching the lives of lepers excluded from community; words of acceptance addressing women and children rather than men.

How many times have you come to church wondering if anyone understood how you felt? It could be your sexual identity, your loneliness, your struggles with depression or other emotional health issues, the daily struggle with unrelenting chronic pain, unemployment, struggles with family or spouse or partner, grief at a recent loss. The Word of God is spoken to those who most need God's living presence. The Word of God is not meant just to bless those who are already blessed. It is meant to cut to the heart of our very existence, with our deepest pains and longings heard by God, and to bring us to God's word of new life and new hope in all circumstances. Many who are with us at any worship or gathering are living in the margins or feeling that way.

Which part of you has been marginalized? Who in your larger family has been marginalized? As you give thanks for the expression of G*D's steadfast love in your life, may you know there to be enough to share with others.
 

Hosea 11:1-11

Pentecost +10 - Year C

Hosea 11:1-11

The more I called, the more they ran -- this seems to be every parent's/prophet's experience at some point along the journey.

Many of us have been on both sides of that divide. Some of us still prefer one side over the other and operate out of that preference. There are inveterate callers and knee-jerk runners-away.

I've been led with "cords of human kindness" and experienced some of them as shackles. Our "spiritual care" for one another can be pretty heavy, laying all manner of expectation and reservation of acceptance upon us. Greg Brown's song Driftless has a line about this:

Have I done enough, Father,
can I rest now?
Have I learned enough, Mother,
can we talk now?

Yet, thankfully, the impulse to keep everyone a thankful third-grader who would never respond like that older teen, can keep us going long enough to move past a need to control things like setting a fiery sword at Eden's gate. With blessings aplenty we don't give up on folks. With high hopes we just can't bring ourselves to separate from one another, no matter how disappointed we have been.

In our family, my dearly beloved often has been heard to exclaim, "I don't know how we are going to get through this (whatever was having its day or season), but I'm going to keep loving you." Simple words; profound words.

May you be returned to your "home" (which may be different than where you thought it was or who else is there) in such a way that you can move on into the next stage of your life and your relationship with other family members, near and far.
 

Luke 12:13-21

Pentecost +10 - Year C

Luke 12:13-21

Remember last week - moving from prayer about testing to some stories about testing? Well, this could be a sermon every week - making "faith" real. Again this week we hear about the testing process.

Don't we all search around for an authority that will back us up? The very source of rules we complain about constraining us, unfairly we think, we turn around and use to defend ourselves. Can't you hear the explosion in the heads of a stereotypic biblical literalist if they heard Jesus say to them, rather than to a monetary greedist, "Friend, who set my reported words as a judge or arbitrator over you? - get a life!" A key here is the word "friend". Both the literalist and greedist are looking to get their way - their interpretation verified, their wealth justified, their independence affirmed. A key way out of the self-imposed bind the questioner raises is a return to community rather than see oneself as deserving of more than enough. "Friend" is an excellent starting spot for bringing a difficult word and leaving open an opportunity for more. Here's an irreverent blog posting that you might find reflective of the tone of Jesus here.

Rules and regulations, like other little consistencies, are also hobgoblins of "little minds, adored by little statesman and philosophers and divines.  With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do" [a little RWEmerson quote and visual definition] and aren't both the brother and rich man looking for "nothing to do" but walk around a self-serving "heaven" all day.

Since it is so difficult to see oneself as "rich/deserving", I look forward to a literalist or greedist responding about my unconscious appeal to authority [well, I look forward to this, a little]. This will help in my waking up to what it might really mean to take my focus off having all rules benefit me so I don't have to consider "being rich toward others", or, from last week, "keep us forgiving others and safe from ourselves" [Message variation].
 

Revealing G*D

Pentecost +9 - Year C

made in G*D's image
is no easy road
steadfast anger
roils relationships
steadfast mercilessness
marches and marches
steadfast love
sneaks in from time to time
it is no easy road
revealing G*D

pray your life forward

a preferred future - revealed
an earth-based paradise - reset
secure - repast repast repast
open to change - renewed
tested and unbowed - reliable
 

Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19)

Pentecost +9 - Year C

Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19)

"Christ" is a special code word. While not supposed to be compared to philosophy, if Christ does not captivate our philosophical bone and bent, this Christ may not survive the rough and tumble of life or it may become uber-philosophical and codify all contradictions away.

"Christ" as a category is not to be deceitful. The most adamant Christ-followers seem willing to stretch anything in order to accomplish a goal of more baptisms.

"Christ" and human traditions are put in conflict with one another. Hard to know what "fully human" means if human experience is to be so heavily discounted. This justifies cultural missionaries.

"Christ" is exempt from the elemental spirits of creation. Hard to know what "fully divine" means if creation is not to be listened to. This justifies environmental rape.

"Christ" is G*D's excuse to forgive. Remember how unforgiving G*D can be - No Mercy, No Forgiveness. This feels like face-saving. Poor old G*D can't just start forgiving again or showing mercy again - some intermediary step was required by G*D and Jesus fit the bill. Consider that the whole bloody atonement thing is about G*D looking good in G*D's eyes and isn't about Jesus at all. G*D could have said, bring me a hundred more foreskins (1 Samuel 18:12-30 - since G*D has been acting like Saul, G*D might as well use a Saul-like subterfuge) and felt justified in getting back on the steadfast love wagon. Or simply, again, acknowledged not living up to G*D's best, repented behavior, regretted absence, set another sign alongside a heavenly bow, and proceeded - imagine such a one acting on one's own for one's own integrity.
 

Psalm 85

Pentecost +9 - Year C

Psalm 85

In Hosea we hear of G*D running out of mercy.
Here we hear of G*D's anger to generations.

Look around. There is good warrant for those perspectives.

Look around again. What is an antidote to a lack of mercy and an abundance of anger? The Psalmist suggests it is steadfastness. The generalized particular is a steadfastness of love. I suspect that any steadfastness might do and that we might need to model this for G*D.

Here is an extended quote from Wikipedia that synopsizes the conclusion of Leonard Bernstein's Symphony Number 3 - Kaddish that pushes in the direction of Nikos Kazantzakis' Savior's of God and the role children have in waking sleeping parents.

III : Scherzo - Kaddish 3 - Finale. Fugue-Tutti

The scherzo is a fast-tempo dream sequence. God has fallen asleep and the narrator paints a dream. God is no longer in control and the narrator has full power to bring God on this journey through his own imagination. The speaker begins by painting what God has made:

This is Your Kingdom of Heaven, Father,
Just as You planned it.
Every immortal cliché intact.
Lambs frisk. Wheat ripples.
Sunbeams dance. Something is wrong.
The light: flat. The air: sterile.
Do You know what is wrong?
There is nothing to dream.
Nowhere to go. Nothing to know.

The narrator then proceeds to show God that he is in control of this dream.

Now behold my Kingdom of Earth!
Real-life marvels! Genuine wonders!
Dazzling miracles! ...
Look, a Burning Bush
Look, a Fiery Wheel!
A Ram! A Rock! Shall I smite it? There!
It gushes! It gushes! And I did it!
I am creating this dream!
Now will You believe?

A burning bush and gushing rock refer to some of the miracles described in the Old Testament. The narrator next places a rainbow in the sky, in parallel to the story of Noah, when God placed a rainbow in the sky to institute a new covenant with man. In loud triumph and anger, the speaker declares:

Look at it, Father: Believe! Believe!
Look at my rainbow and say after me:
MAGNIFIED ... AND SANCTIFIED ...
BE THE GREAT NAME OF MAN!

After showing God the problems in the world, he helps God believe in the new arrangement. The music builds to an amazing climax, crowned with the entrance of a boy's choir singing the phrase "Magnified and sanctified be His great name, Amen" in Hebrew.

The pace of the music slows down, as the narrator has finished his dream. He wakes God and God then confronts the reality of the image. The narrator, satisfied that God has seen His errors, beams:

Good morning, Father. We can still be immortal,
You and I, bound by our rainbow.
That is our covenant, and to honor it
Is our honor ... not quite the covenant
We bargained for, so long ago.

The narration ends with a commitment from both sides, God and Human, to "Suffer and recreate each other."

Though there is a resolution to the struggle, the music does not end triumphant and grand. Instead, it ends in a final kaddish by the choir and the final chord is dissonant, suggesting that all is still not right and more work must be done.

= = = = = = =

Steadfast love is not easy work. G*D tires of it and retracts mercy and indulges in anger. Yet, it is our birthright and the image of our creation. Great imagination and deep community is needed for those times when steadfast love falters. May steadfast love be shown you when yours stumbles. May your steadfast love support another in their time of drought. As Red Green has been heard to say, "Remember, I'm pulling for ya. We're all in this together!"
 

Hosea 1:1-10

Pentecost +9 - Year C

Hosea 1:1-10

If you were to look at your family, congregation, community, nation, world - to what image would you compare them that would identify a blockage keeping them from where they might be, were that not present? For Hosea it was a distraction of where their eye landed without their even being aware of it. G*D called everything that wasn't focused on G*D, whores. A convenient digital response of all or nothing.

We do have problems with sexuality in general. Some later interpreters of Gomer denied she was promiscuous before or during her marriage with Hosea. The New Interpreter's Dictionary notes, "Augustine argued that she abandoned her life of harlotry before her marriage; Jerome claimed that her marriage to Hosea remade her "chaste." Luther stated that she was a pure woman who only took on the name of "harlot" as a metaphor."

Regarding their daughter, Lo-ruhamah or No-Mercy, The Message reveals this as a reality of G*D, "I've run out of mercy." In G*D's image, we all run out of mercy. What happens then? Can mercy be transferrable - when one runs out of mercy another can re-infuse them with it? Can we be merciful until mercy returns to G*D?

Well, there is a whole story to go, but for now we need to hear Jesus re-telling Hosea's story right after his teaching of prayer. Is the giving of forgiveness directly tied to the reception of such? If G*D holds back mercy, will mercy be learned?

Again, what image would you use to compare the various parts of your life, given that they could be so much more were it not for that particular impediment? Is whoredom or idolatry still the way to talk about the self-imposed limits? What other options are open to you? As we image our response, we are given a glimpse into where our call might be.