signs

Advent 4 - Year A

times up

signed or unsigned

choices lie at hand

angel signs

are iffy signs

believe it or not

prophet signs

are always later signs

well I’ll be

kingly signs

are muddy signs

allowing high handedness

shiny signs

are distracting signs

can you be sure

speculative signs

are partisan signs

all too sure

times up

what sign

will you choose

uncertain signs

are our only signs

and choices are here

beneath signs

a breathless sigh

awaiting your choice

a saving sign

a damning sign

times up

a waking sign

a sighted sign

a chosen sign

a named sign

a G*D with us sign

a fleshy sign

we have met the sign

and it is us

a consummate sign

 

Romans 1 :1-7

Advent 4 - Year A

Romans 1 :1-7

How would you measure your spirit of holiness? For Paul it apparently is only recognized in resurrection. Going off to prayer, standing up to temptations, affirming one’s belovedness, accessing an appropriate parable for the moment, healings, feedings, etc., etc., wouldn’t be holy in and of themselves - only in the light of resurrection.

So, will only passing a pearly gate give credence to your otherwise mundane holiness? That seems a bit iffy for ever being able to confirm your holiness.

Perhaps your holiness will be acknowledged if you insist that those who are not of your particular faith are constrained to become just like you? If you can get a modern-day Gentile to obey your faith, you must be holy?

What say we take a step back and not do so much claiming of authority. It may be that holiness is not measurable or a commodity which one can have more of than another and thus lord it over them. In a Gumpish sort of way, holiness is what holiness does.

So at this last minute of Advent, don’t just stand there - do something. Practice, as they say, will bring its own reward. Oh, wait, I mean perfection. Isn’t that what is meant by holy - not fleshy, just spiritual.

It sounds like Paul maybe meant to start his letter, “I, Paul, friend of Jesus, write to you who need to be servants of Jesus.” While it doesn’t sound as nice as his second draft, authorized authorities can and do take some liberties with liberty.

Are you holy enough yet to belong to a Holy Club? Well, keep trying, you’ll be on the guest list one of these days.

 

Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19

Advent 4 - Year A

Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19

Here is a strange request for a sign: Let your face shine.

Could be talking sun-god

Could be talking justice

Could be talking Buddha happy

Could be talking anger

Now, since G*D and you are related, what would it mean to a wobbly old world for your face to “shine” no matter what is going on about you?

Go ahead - - - - shine!

Isaiah 7:10-17

Advent 4 - Year A

Isaiah 7:10-17

We aren’t often asked to name our sign from G*D. I expect each of us would have a difficult time coming up with something and so be tempted to turn it back to G*D, “Go ahead, G*D show us what you want to show us.” A lack of taking responsibility for our part of an interconnectivity with G*D is Eden-long.

So, what does G*D show? A baby, conceived and born the ordinary way, with a strange name, diet, and eventual ability to choose.

What do we get hung up on? A baby’s genetics (read up on parthenogenesis).

What do we miss? A perspective naming an expected and desired relationship - G*D with Me, with Us. A turning everything into a feast of metaphoric milk and honey. A remembrance of walking in the cool of the evening with G*D.

Who is the young woman bearing G*D’s sign? You.

Who is the baby related to G*D? You.

Who participates in a promised paradise filled with milk and honey? You.

Who walks and talks with the Common Good? You.

If you don’t recognize yourself in this description, odds are you are as close to a fall as was Ahaz.

 

Matthew 1:18-25

Advent 4 - Year A

Matthew 1:18-25

Last chance to prepare for a surprise greater than a great surprise 2,000+ years ago. If we are just getting ready to reenact a past surprise, don’t be surprised if we are not only not surprised but more jaded than before.

Question before us: What will it take for you to birth G*D in and through you?

Too much emphasis has been placed upon some creedal theory of virginity. Where we missed the boat was trying to get a compelling symbol put in place. Whether you take the Isaiah quote as being about any young girl giving birth or a virgin doing so, the deal is not that of virginity. What is crucial is the ordinariness of any girl or the absolute surprise of G*D working directly through a single lowly virgin.

You, of course, could fit either of these categories - simply ordinary and simply surprising.

So, pay attention to your dreams this week. You may catch where your ordinariness will be just what is needed to shift a world’s perception. May you acknowledge how surprising your life really is and begin to play to that.

May your dreams reveal to you that you are with child, pregnant with possibility that is quite ordinary and equally surprising. There is actually much power to simply be who you are, an ordinary surprise ready to be sprung on an unsuspecting public. Imagine, acting on a sense that G*D is with you will surprise the rest of us to acknowledge G*D is with us, too. 

 

James 5:7-10

Advent 3 - Year A

James 5:7-10

Want to practice strengthening your heart? Don’t grumble. Holding back a grumble is a good isometric exercise.

Want to be ready for a better tomorrow to arrive today? Be prophetic about values having particular outcomes (you can’t talk a good game and not play it and then expect your pious words to have more power than your questionable action). Prophesying can’t be done without a cogent critique of today and how we got here in dynamic tension with a stronger evocation of a preferred future.

So, exhibit some patience toward yourself as you have patience with one another. When you skip a day and let a grumble pass without it exercising you or you fall back into securing life by means of current resources, simply recognize it and get back on the wagon.

So, know, also, that suffering is part of heart-strengthening. To cross the threshold of tomorrow, today, takes a quantum leap of energy and that some of that energy is generated from suffering as well as from vision.

Still the Advent question comes - for what are you preparing the way?

Are you willing to give up a correct and self-evident answer for a right relationship?

Are you willing to stick your neck out on behalf of others and tomorrow?

Psalm 146:5-10

Advent 3 - Year A

Psalm 146:5-10

Without a context, this is just praise in the air. Verse 3: "Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help", gives us some traction.

With verse 3 we can begin to make comparisons and make sense of a better way of living than that where princes are known to adjust everything to their own benefit. Now we can begin to line up qualities under princes and under G*D's Image.

     Princes                           G*D

     promised happiness     present happiness

     resigned                         hopeful

     monarch                         creator

     favoritism                        justice for the oppressed

     more for me                    food to the hungry

     security                           prisoners freed

     poverty                            health care for all

     oppressed                      lifted up

     entitled                            caring

     outcast                            hospitality for strangers

     classism                         vulnerable honored

     temporary                       sustainable

During Advent we light candles to catch a glimpse of a new light, a new way of doing business with one another and creation.

Suggested Activity: Sit comfortably before a lit candle - gaze open-eyed at the flame. Note the colors, the flicker. Feel and smell the warmth. When you have it well seen (at least 2 minutes), gently close your eyes and see it anew. Look beyond what you see with your eyes closed. The not yet is yearning to draw close to you - listen to its whisper, anticipate its being revealed. When you sense what the not yet has to say to you, simply say, "Thank you" and return to your time and space to begin making one change that will help the not yet become more firmly established.

Isaiah 35:1-10

Advent 3 - Year A

Isaiah 35:1-10

Fear closes eyes as well as hearts.

When fearful we need to encourage one another to open our eyes even when know we will find our fears confirmed - there is a lot of really nasty stuff out there.

We will also find that the nasty stuff is not a last word. It is still possible to choose. We can choose to open our eyes and that's worth rejoicing over, even if what we see is still bad news.

Intentionally opening our eyes, we may also glimpse transformation going on all around us. Perhaps not large steps, but transformation, nonetheless. Not only can fearful people open their eyes, but folks who have felt helpless find they can stand straight and strong and tall and by such say a clear and firm, "No", to evil. Those who are able to speak their "No" will also find the words and music to sing a larger "Yes" to good.

Believe it or not, fear is catching. When we are fearful the world around us is fearful - streams dry up, storms increase, and the surface shakes. Fortunately, opening eyes is also catching.

Mostly, though, with eyes open we can see a next step where before we were stumbling in the dark. This next step is a Holy Step. Even if we can't see further than one step, it is enough.

Advent is a time of practicing opening our fearful eyes and taking a next Holy Step.

Matthew 11:2-11

Advent 3 - Year A

Matthew 11:2-11

What are you looking for? A miraculous sign? A guarantee of comfort?

What we are to be looking for is a prophet, a vision that will take our all and more.

No matter what their heritage or tradition or style or anything else, prophets revive our memories of who we are when we are at our best and point in a direction where we can put our best to work.

Whether Baptizer John knew it or not, he triggered memories of healings and revolution by the poor. We do not need to be constrained by our current situations. Healing can come. Release can come.

John pointed folks who had their memories revived toward Jesus as a way of engaging their renewed hope with their current reality.

So, this Advent season, what is your best ancient memory that you have put aside as no longer possible or practical?

May you find a prophet to follow who will allow the best hope in you to be engaged and to again lead you to participate in changing our present caughtness.

In another day or two, I'll tell you about one of my prophets, Amy.

for what

Advent 2 - Year A

prepare ye

an end to all so far known

is in the offing

never is it the same river

that is stepped into

prepare ye

broods of vipers and oligarchs

will have their night

safety in numbers

is no safety

prepare ye

fruitless trees and old forests

face the same fate

a greed of entitlement

spreads quickly

prepare ye

yet seedtime and harvest

continue

each newly sprung

surprise

prepare ye

an unexpected shoot

from a long-dead stump

greens and signals

deep surprise

prepare ye

stand with arms widespread

defend and deliver

hope joy peace trust

all else falls

prepare ye

Romans 15:4-13

Advent 2 - Year A

Romans 15:4-13

Posited perspective: The past was written that we might find our commonality today. Well and good, has it worked out?

Rather, a more fruitful mantra is "welcome as you have been welcomed". This anticipates a future commonality breaking into the present.

There are some folk who have not been welcomed well. Their behavior reveals that lack. Welcome them anyway, for you have been well welcomed.

There are some folk who have been welcomed well but for whatever reason have not received that welcome. Their behavior reveals that lack. Welcome them anyway, for you have been well welcomed.

A stimulus or a response to poor or generous welcoming is not predictable. There are some folk who overcome an unwelcoming beginning and those who are thankful for the welcome they have received. There is not an automatic response to welcoming. When a positive response is available to a welcome it can come in an instant or in stages.

Nonetheless, there is a bed-rock need of welcoming as broadly as possible and then to go beyond what seems it is possible to welcome. This is the key to this pericope, "For G*D's sake! Welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you." Substitute "forgiveness" for "welcome" and you'll see the connection. Try "be merciful to" as another alternative and the connection deepens.

Whether believing or not - joy, peace, and abounding hope are revealed in how we experience being welcomed and how we welcome. Act as though you were introducing these qualities as greater than your own entitlement. Could you be the equivalent of Baptizer John preparing a way for joy to flourish, peace to be grounded, and hope to bounce around? -- Well, yes. -- So?

Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19

Advent 2 - Year A

Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19

Presumably John's call of "Repent" will eventuate in some "Peaceable Kingdom".

What will be the hallmark of such an outcome?

Justice followed by Righteousness. (NRSV)

Wise Rule and Just Rule (The Message)

Finally, a Jubilee followed by additional Jubilees on an accelerated schedule.

With this picture of the goal, what is the next practical step needed to be taken to bring that kind of wisdom, justice, and healing orientation into our present? What needs to be said out loud and acted with boldness to establish a beachhead in today for tomorrow to become established?

Isaiah 11:1-10

Advent 2 - Year A

Isaiah 11:1-10

A "budding branch sprouts from old Jesse's stump". Yes we refer to Jesus when we read this, but Isaiah's followers turn out to not be so sure. Jesus, in the line of prophets has helped us along, but look around. See any Peaceable Kingdoms? How about spots where hurt and destruction are not so obvious? Not being sure about such a budding branch seems pretty reasonable.

For the moment let's presume that a revelatory experience has convinced you that Jesus is that budding branch. As the church seems frailer and frailer, more and more stumpish, a disciple of Jesus now becomes a budding branch that can move on from that which faltered. This is more than Rethinking Church, it is transformative community.

Whether it is a wet Baptizer John or a desiccated old Jesse Stump, both look beyond the present to something coming later. You're a late arrival, even if not the latest, and it is time to judge the traditions that have come down to us, winnow them, and begin being fruitful by adding some new fiery Holy Holly Spirit manure to past understandings that still have a sense of expansive and expanding love in them. It is also time to be ready for more than contemporizing tradition - to be ready for a new incarnation that may include you.

Stand up. Signal. A Merciful Glory nears.

 

Matthew 3:1-12

Advent 2 - Year A

Matthew 3:1-12

Here are two responses to the nearness of heaven come to earth:

• Repent

• Receive the "fire" of Holy Spirit

One is claimed to be more powerful.

Question: Is this a necessary sequence? Repentance is required for Holy Spirit fire? Is it an implied prerequisite to, "Follow me".

Regardless of how that is responded to, there is a basic duality here of gathered wheat or burned and scattered chaff that seems to be done away with by Pentecost time and a Holy Spirit that simply tells of Wonder and cuts through all language divisions.

Question: On what basis would a Holy Spirit not be conferred? Preordination? Resistance?

Whether one receives some form of Holy Spirit there is encouragement here to live well, fruitfully. A metaphoric fire from Holy Spirit burns wastrel trees and the fire from those burning trees, in turn, refines others. Around and around we go.

Question: All this may be helpful at the beginning of a movement. What happens after years, decades, millennia of there being no discernible connection between repentance and good fruits, between Holy Spirit fire and abominations? How do these play as part of a play filled with tree-trimming, unstoring creches, and heart-warming noels?

While this passage may have other helpful attributes, but it mostly helps us reflect on a past presence of G*D, not one still before us. At this point it would be more helpful to reflect on the genealogy that begins Matthew and to draw it from the point of Jesus through Pentecost to the present time and asking the question of what folks faced in their day and how they persevered. In anticipating a new heaven and a new earth we could use those reminders and a discerning of what our current situation is and how we might persevere in the midst of us until a surprising new presence becomes known to us.

Question: Given what you know about the lived situations and culture around you, how evangelistic is this passage? It has a feel that it is for the insider.

A note from the Wesley Study Bible: "Wesley connects this "fire" with "love". . . .(Notes 3:11)". Is this some sort of "tough love"? Does this modify the passage enough to suggest that John has a limited view of Holy Spirit and fire/love that will also show up when he sends his disciples to see what Jesus is up to? If there is room for modification because this is more about a projection of John than an experience with Jesus, what does that mean about how you would preach this in 2010?

cloudy weather

Advent 1 - Year A

a cloud of unknowing

descends this time of year

between babel reversed

and manger potential

each cycle promises clarity

asks us to practice questions

about plodding clocks

and jumping tomorrow to today

we hear about choices

divisions being paramount

between who is lost

and who finds paradise here

new mountains arise

even as old ones stumble

promising swords demise

and plowshares ascendency

in between such eras

confusers seeks certainty

without lasting gladness

and common good peace

unknowing is a standard path

to knowing what time it is

a time for honor

and a time for honoring

waking to northern darkening

or southern lengthening of day

we thank dark clouds

and flashes of insight

no one knows day or hour

a mountain of peace is established

an exile is broken

and love overflows law

a once and future advent

prepares such as we are

to open mercy clouds

and become its rain

 

Romans 13:8-14

Advent 1 - Year A

Romans 13:8-14

Jesus doesn't know chronologic time. You, however, know kairotic time.

This is the time to wake from our cultural comfort of pleasure in privilege. We are to live honorably with every one, even those who might be taken away from Paradise Earth newly Heavened.

In clock time there is always an excuse as to why we cannot love beyond our current limits. In honor time it is always time to get on with not only doing one's best living, but doing so publicly.

With ticks and tocks we are working with escapement mechanisms that are always running down. Even batteries have their limit, solar chips their length of life, and mainsprings their fatigue point. This is similar to every law, whether social or physical, it sets limits and pushing those limits wears it out.

Fulfilling the law, rather than keeping it going, is a relationship with others that does no wrong. We don't have control about how the other party is going to act, but we are capable of choosing to first do no harm and to, secondly, do good (love) to others, and thus exemplify or fulfill our creation responsibilities and image G*D.

So how does a refrigerator chart look to you for the week so far. As you tick off the harm you could have avoided and the good you could have chosen, have you seen an improvement over the week? If not, extend the chart to Pentecost last year - progress has been made? Do you have to go back as far as Easter of some previous year to be able to note some movement toward using love to fulfill law?

There is certainly Advent work to practice. If you don't already have a chart, you may want to choose to engage growing in love through a practical use of a chart.

Psalm 122

Advent 1 - Year A

Psalm 122

One taken; one left. This is a formula that begs for revision. In this Psalm the movement is from "I" to "we". This begins giving one hint about the intent of Advent - to move us from our divided, individualized lives to that of community.

This process moves from the first two verses of Psalm 122 to the last two. For community to be realized there needs to be an understanding of being joined with others for a common good of peace. For the sake of family (self), neighbors, and G*D we not only say "Peace" but seek the good upon which it is based. Words and actions need to come together.

One of the practices of Advent is that of tearing away the excuses we have cultivated that separate our words and intentions from our actions and results. When we have reduced our hypocrisy we will find that we are able to interchange "I" and "we", for to live for one is to act for the other.

Isaiah 2:1-5

Advent 1 - Year A

Isaiah 2:1-5

The mountain of the "Lord's House" shall be established as the highest. Either things are moving to Tibet/Nepal or some cataclysmic event will uplift the land of Israel (making it unfit for both Arab and Jew?).

Of more import than such literalistic playing, nations and peoples cowed or awed by such an event of power leads to a new kind of arbitration (not between two adversaries, but between the two and a mutually perceived greater need). In this setting, swords for blood can become plows for produce. War qua war becomes no longer possible. In psycho-social terminology, what meme is large enough to capture the imagination of fearful adversaries and lead them so see both their survival and well-being depends on agreeing to a larger vision?

Do your best to state clearly and concisely where common good resides. This is the high mountain that has been cloud-covered for too long. When it comes clear we can see we have been struggling over piddly, middling matters. Advent is a time of clarifying better goals and beginning to practice moving in their direction.

Matthew 24:36-44

Advent 1 - Year A

Matthew 24:36-44

 Whew! "Christ the King" Sunday came and went without King Christ coming on a cloud. It still holds: no one knows what time holds. One can claim "The Father" knows best or just knows, but even G*D seems to have a rather elastic sense of time (which takes some of the humor out of life, if timing is a key basis for humour).

Being swept away by flood isn't all that different from being swept off one's feet in an expansive and expanding love. We are disoriented and reoriented, all in one fell swoop.

It would appear that being captured by the Love of Jesus is not a universal. One catches it and one does not. Keep alert to the option of being captured by love rather than anger or irrelevancy. Help those around you to so keep alert. You can help one another with expectancy so when you run into expectancy fatigue, your friend can expect for you - and vice versa.

- - -

If you are looking for a daily advent resource, you are welcome to consider the WUMFSA Advent Reflections for 2010.