1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Epiphany 2 - Year C

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

I haven’t said recently, “Let Jesus be cursed”. In fact I don’t know that I have ever said it. I certainly don’t intend to say it.

I have, from time to time, conveniently put Jesus out of mind. I have played one thing he said off against another. I have used my gifts for my own purposes rather than some degree of common good.

And the difference between the saying and doing is exactly the degree of hypocrisy in my life. How about you?

After such a generalized confession let’s get down to a seemingly small point — gifts are allotted to and activated by G*D. If you want to say Spirit, that’s fine. These gifts appear to be distributed in mysterious ways that we too easily chalk up to some spiritual plan.

Of interest here is a sense of continual shifts in gifts as call after call comes. Sometimes that is a re-call (no not a recall, a re-call) and we deepen the arena in which we are gifted and called. Sometimes our gifts and call broaden from one arena into another and we put one call down to pick up another.

This is prima facie evidence that gifts and call are living entities. As the spirit chooses, we claim, gifts and calls are allotted and activated. There is no room here for such discriminatory legislation to deny to a whole class of people what is clearly given - a gift and a call. For forty years the United Methodist Church has denied this piece of biblical wisdom, that gift and call need to be evaluated on a basis beyond whether or not a person is affectionally oriented toward a person of their same gender.

Mary saw a gift and a call in Jesus and put him in a position to acknowledge and act on both. Water not only revealed belovedness, but water revealed better wine than could be expected - a party reveling in community and relationship could be extended.

It might be said that the sign here is not water to wine, but the revelation of a gift and call not previously activated. When this sort of integrity is shown, we are speechless and simpy stammer out that some great thing must have passed by here (listen). In the midst of your wearlness may you still sing your gift, your call.

Psalm 36:5-10

Epiphany 2 - Year C

Psalm 36:5-10

Verse 5: Your steadfast love (belovingness) extends to the heavens.

Verse 10: But limit that to those who “know” you, who are “upright” in heart.

This movement from the constant to the provisional happens all too easily. One process through which this occurs is the escalation from flattering a king/G*D to sick sycophancy. This losing touch with reality poses problems of being able to clearly see the situation we are in and how to deal with it constructively. Our temptations are then to take over and judge who knows G*D and is upright in their heart or to become passive, waiting for a deus ex machina to arrive from up there somewhere.

Epiphany is an attempt to clarify what is before us. All too often we take a simple revelation of belovedness and turn it into ritual, judgment, or partiality otherwise known as prejudice. For now let’s take this section of the psalm as a warning that we not see more than is present (a weak G*D needing our flattery or a strong G*D that gives up on belovedness in favor of judgment).

Isaiah 62:1-5

Epiphany 2 - Year C

Isaiah 62:1-5

Indeed, no one can keep silent. Every breath is a political statement. We are helping or hindering the future each moment along the way. The intensity and duration of our intention is beside the point. Simply being is speaking loudly.

Parents of the children massacred in Newtown, Connecticut are not going to rest in parenting those who were killed and those still living, are not going to put down their promise to keep children safe.

Here are 3 links of the best coverage to date about this engagement. This is political action at its best. Do note, however, that every decision to rest or not to rest is a political action. This is neither a good or bad reality, it is simply the way it is. So be thankfully, gracefully, and boldly political.

Clip 1

Clip 2

If you would like to help turn forsakenness into delight but don’t know where to begin, go to the Sandy Hook Promise and bring it to your community until something else becomes clear as your call to be intentional about assisting in the transformation of the world. [Note to United Methodists: political action is discipleship for the transformation of the world, you are just doing yours through the lens of Jesus while others are using a different lens.]

John 2:1-11

Epiphany 2 - Year C

John 2:1-11

Jesus meets his disciples as one follower brings another to experience what they have witnessed. A short while after (a proverbial three days) this new band is invited to a wedding and Mary has her last recorded words, “Do whatever he tells you.”

What Jesus says is, “Belovedness is everywhere.” Water was turned to Baptism; Water is now turned into Wine. Just so suddenly are two primary sacraments presented in John.

In the beginning was belovedness.

All things are made through belovedness.

Light and John and Baptism and Disciples and Wine, all belovedly made.

• Missing a light at the end of your tunnel? Look for belovedness here and now.
• Wondering about your identity? Humbly proclaim more is already here.
• On a quest for meaning? It is nearer than breath, ready to be revealed.
• Lacking community? See more in others than they see in themselves and risk having more seen in you than you can now see.
• Feeling a deficit of resources? Our fear of scarcity is self-imposed, when sharing occurs wine freely flows.

These matters are revealed to servants, not stewards/masters. This is not a miraculous sign or wonder. It is a simple picture of how the world can work when our desire is for experiences of shared belovedness. Who needs hope, identity, meaning, community, resources in this day? Someone in your family, neighborhood, political boundary, elsewhere on this beautiful blue dot in an immense universe, or yourself?

Good wine is for now. Cheers!

a dove descends

Epiphany 1 - Year C

filled with expectation

we look for external forces

to bring Jerusalem

another is coming

with fancy brand-name shoes

to slam dunk our salvation

some other we is bound

to claim our stuckness

and claim our allegiance

surprised am I

when instead of wholeness

I’m dashed

filled with expectation

I look for internal authority

to change entrenched systems

bootstraps are meant for pulling

just one more tug will do

well perhaps one more

I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and 

Doggone It, People Like Me!

look out world, change is here

what could possibly go wrong

I’ve repented and forgiven

go me

filled with expectation

waiting proceeding

waters break

Acts 8:14-17

Epiphany 1 - Year C

Acts 8:14-17

Again a distinction between the outward sign (baptism) of an inward grace (spirit). This gives rise to recognition of Christmas and Easter Christians as well as Anonymous Christians. There are additional questions to be raised about being baptized as a group (Samaria) in distinction to baptism as an individual. How public or private can baptism be envisioned? Is it an eternal sign always affirmed and defended or more practically acknowledged in some situations but not others? Arguments about baptism as an expression of faith or a prerequisite of effective evangelism continue.

And so a secondary question about the efficacy of prayer after baptism, as well as that of prayer prior to baptism. How does prayer fit into hearing and accepting? Into spirit reception?

This gives rise to questions about tertiary signs as well, such as the imposition of hands. If a bishop should have their hands blown off by a mine (as so many still do today [mourn mightily]) would the touch of an arm stump allow a similar completion of a circuit from said bishop to prospective ordinand? It is so easy to get side-tracked into formalism and repetition of the past. [Reminder: Peter and John were not bishops and there was a bit of a gap between Bishop John Potter/John Wesley and Francis Asbury - not to mention other unorthodox carryings-on that have been incorporated into the hagiography of our day.]

These four verses paint pictures that spark more questions than they resolve. This is a good thing. 

Psalm 29

Epiphany 1 - Year C

Psalm 29

Psalm 29 has a whole series of images regarding power and control. Somehow or other G*D’s power and violence is to be a source of our peace. 

This is the equivalent discontinuity that William Lloyd Garrison was reported to have talked about in the opening  segment of The Abolitionists on PBS and here paraphrased: Liberty built on a document that allows a marginalized and discriminated against 3/5ths people to be property cannot long endure - its internal contradiction will be its own downfall. From the teacher’s guide to this program we read: As John Jay wrote in 1786, “To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused.” [Here is a link to a piece by Garrison about his understanding of abolitionism and a video segment dramatizing it. 

How is it, again, that G*D can “peacefully” enslave some for the benefit of his flatterers? This internal contradiction eventually leads to the rise of the “Nones”.

Isaiah 43:1-7

Epiphany 1 - Year C

Isaiah 43:1-7

1) You are beloved: it is elemental to your being, no matter your length of life.

2) You were formed and the former can reject you or redeem you: it’s about the former, not the formed, based on claimed eternity.

Are you going to go with statement 1) or 2)? This choice isn’t just semantics or an illusion based on foreground/background alternation.

Problem: How did I get to be so blessed that a claim of first-cause would lead a creator to give equally created others or whole nations in return for me? This locks me into a relationship of shame that I would need redemption and a great contortion to swear fealty to my big brother manipulating things from afar.

Problem: To claim that we are made for someone else’s glory evidences a great lack of “we”ness or revelation of “our” image. This grand beginning of community extended and welcoming folks to a party becomes a patronizing patriarchy. Reduced from being a responsible party to having no authority breaks whatever potential relationship of growing together there might have been.

When between a rock and a hard place, there is more contentment in belovedness than there is comfort in being an object subject to the timing and whim of another. This suggests a theology of belovedness lives deeper than one of redemption. If so, atonement is constituent of creation, not subsequent to it.

The above seems a bit much. It might easily fit into a charge of over-reaction except that the season of Epiphany is all about over-reaction. We might call it the Magi Syndrome — taking one piece of information in one country or arena of life and extrapolating it for another country or all of time. Hopefully you still have a bit of the Magi in you that will carry a sense of connection past usual boundaries.

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Epiphany 1 - Year C

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Ah, baptism, held so dear by the church as a branding of the soul! Baptism, a sacrament of privilege and power, a sign of belonging to the in-group.

Truth be told you can pour all the water in the world or immerse to the depths of the ocean, but without belovedness awakened there is nothing but baptism’s shell.

The most beautiful of liturgy and prayer might be sung by angels or chanted by saints, but without belovedness awakened there is no baptism.

If I have the most blessed baptism, but have not belovedness . . . .

To go into all the world, baptizing, is to announce and awaken belovedness. Baptize when requested, but always, always, announce and awaken belovedness. This is an appropriate response to people’s expectation of something better in the midst of another fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.

stars and dust

Epiphany - Year C

we look and squint and peer

ahead and around

trying to spot tomorrow

all too often we project today

in and out and about

until new is only repeated old

Magi point a difficult way

over hill and dale

testing hypothesis and theory

connecting stars with power

upstairs and down

we see change but don’t

in a royal setting royalty is 

over and again

king can only beget king

when at first we don’t succeed

ever and anon

we read our tea leaves another time

if continuation is not the only story

now and then

dare we risk an alternative

deeper than crowned privilege

through and through

soul rises like persistent grass

starshine twinkles until we smile

off and on and on and off

our star stops here

gifts are divested and invested

each and every

to build another road

dust off your inner-Magus

abra and kadabra

live for the joy of a better way

Ephesians 3:1-12

Epiphany - Year C

Ephesians 3:1-12

Paul as a child of the Magi (who knows whom they “visited” along the way):

Mystery was made known to me by revelation. Generations before the Magi, interpretation of mystery was not known. Now it is known that even before his birth the Gentiles knew of someone beyond kings, power, and privilege. This knowledge is worth a long and dangerous journey.

As a descendant of the Magi, I, too, have been given a gift — grace to share — no one is outside the boundless experience of grace. My responsibility for my gift of grace is to share it that it not remain a secret. A mystery continues, why did it took so long for us tackle service, offering one’s self, which opens a bold and confident access to creation and G*D.

As a seeker, a descendent of the Magi, a spiritual scientist, what gift is revealed in you and through you? Are you willing to give it away?

Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14

Epiphany - Year C

Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14

Give to each justice, wholeness.

Each of us are called to engage others as if we were both poor, 

   extending the mercy we have received.

Then mountain tops will not be removed, but roots will filter rain.

Then the cause of the poor will not be pre-judged as lazy.

Then the seasons will bind the generation.

Then water cycles will nourish land and sea.

Then care and peace will flourish.

Of course this can all get truncated by looking to my tribe to be at the top-of-the-heap. It is always good when oppression stops unless it is stopped by self-oppression. Those who have been designated winners and losers can always try to privilege or excuse themselves and return to dividing-the-spoils.

Reclaiming a place-at-the-table is not the same as claiming a priority among the others. Magi honor others — this may that be our model for interacting between cultures and classes within cultures.

Isaiah 60:1-6

Epiphany - Year C

Isaiah 60:1-6

What is this “glory” that revives a community? Here is an overly simple response — an ability to look up and look around.

We tend to be so focused on survival needs (sometimes beyond survival, as in climbing some proverbial ladder to success that always needs a ladder extension) that our nose to the grindstone precludes an ability to look up. These are in some sense mutually exclusive and any contortion to have them be simultaneous only hurts. Imagine the old workaholic mantra actually being accurate: “Keep your feet on the ground, your head above the clouds, your nose to the grindstone, your shoulder to the wheel, your finger on the pulse, your eye on the ball and your ear to the ground.”

Basic to keeping up with the continual changes of life is an ability to look up from our preoccupations and expectations and to look around at the consequences of our past decisions and evaluate what still needs doing. This looking will clear our cobwebs (clouds), allow persistence in the face of discouragement (grindstones), inform where force can be applied to an appropriate lever set on a fulcrum again a blockage (wheels), evaluate the health of a whole system in the face of a temptation to dissect (pulses), attend to details that bring a vision to fruition (balls), and attend to what is coming as well as what is already present (ground of being).

Starting anywhere else than looking up and looking around turns clouds, grindstones, wheels, pulses, balls, and ground into a hammer that sees everything as a nail. These all play their part but are only parts to a larger, more unified process.

Wisdom, down through the generations, counsels appreciation of verses 4-5:
look up—>look around—>thrill and rejoice—>abundance is present—>share—>proceed.

Well?

Comments Compiled

In the for-what-it-is-worth department, 10 years of kcmlection.blogspot.com lectionary comments have been compiled into a table by chapter and verse at wesleyspace.net/lectionary/biblebooks.html. If you have an interest in seeing comments from three-years apart next to each other you can visit the table and marvel at how perspective and perceptiveness have changed (spiritual/psycho analysis will be gratefully received). [Note: New postings are still found here by date as the current Year C will not be added to these tables until the end of 2013.]

There is also a listing by church year of Friday condensations at wesleyspace.net/weekly/weekly_condensations.html - this is still under the cloud of possible revision of format, but the link should hold for at least the last three years of Friday musings. There are more beginning condensations scattered through the 10 years of jottings that may be added in as time and energy allows.

If there is a format that would be more helpful than these or improvements to either or both that might be made, please do leave a comment on the web, reply to the listserve, or send a note directly to me at wwhite(at)wesleyspace.net

Thanks.
Wesley White

Matthew 2:1-12

Epiphany - Year C

Matthew 2:1-12

Who dares star-gaze? They will be called malingerers, day-dreamers. Yet to gaze afar is to also look critically for a fulcrum spot in the present. From afar folks may better see beyond their own culture and a new opportunity for an unfated future. Through spotting unknown stars they may better appreciate the mystery of a manger being about more than feed and water.

Still there is a cultural residue as the scholarly magi and our own blind spots seek in a castle for what can only be found in a manger. When stripped of our habits, our dreams see the underbelly of assumed privilege and power and we leave there by a different route. At last we remember again — revolution happens from the bottom up: period.

So dream a little dream — this one from Carly Simon: Let the River Run with its refrain:

     Let all the dreamers

     wake the nation.

How far will your dream, your gazing afar take you? Into halls of power and out again? Into mangers near and far? Deep within your culture and comfort or quite beyond?

Your response will be told in the gifts you bring and give away.

found

Christmas 1 - Year C

as usual
questions are engaged
a community thinks together

every year
a reunion of hearts and minds
rekindles soul energy

where else
would one be than at a revival
of tradition and possibility

understand this
increasing in wisdom
doesn’t happen accidentally

treasure this
a joy of learning is
a joy of living

Colossians 3:12-17

Christmas 1 - Year C

Colossians 3:12-17

Behind every manifestation of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience is a participation in love, no matter how reluctantly or dismissive. Love here is defined as that which holds everything together - it is the graviton of spirituality.

This last paragraph on gravitons from Wikipedia indicates some problems:

     ”Most theories containing gravitons suffer from severe problems. Attempts to extend the Standard Model or other quantum field theories by adding gravitons run into serious theoretical difficulties at high energies (processes involving energies close to or above the Planck scale) because of infinities arising due to quantum effects (in technical terms, gravitation is nonrenormalizable). Since classical general relativity and quantum mechanics seem to be incompatible at such energies, from a theoretical point of view this situation is not tenable. One possible solution is to replace particles by strings. String theories are quantum theories of gravity in the sense that they reduce to classical general relativity plus field theory at low energies, but are fully quantum mechanical, contain a graviton, and are believed to be mathematically consistent.”

Likewise, most spiritualities containing love suffer from difficulties of definition, interpretation, and implementation. We go along thinking we understand love and can either fit it into a definition or recognize it when we see it. Then along comes death and all of a sudden we can see love where we never did before or a love we thought we could rely on turns out to as frail as everything else.

Return again to this unsentimental definition of love: that which binds everything together in harmony. Don’t focus on the binding together but the result of harmony. You may want to browse again The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse.

Psalm 148

Christmas 1 - Year C

Psalm 148

Thank G*D.
With more than I have, I thank G*D.
We are where we are, with options yet available.
We are where we are, for the moment and a bit more.
Indeed, “thanks” is an appropriate response to the surprise of life.
Possibility has been risked and raised and won.

The above is from an experiential approach to Christmas or other thin event. It does vary from an assigned liturgy giving direction and interpretation to yesterday and today. How would you transform an apology for G*D into a paean of moving on? To not make an attempt at a translation is to get lost in the some shouldness of what Christmas ought to be without actually moving it into place as an on-going birthing leading us to a next plateau.

1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26

Christmas 1 - Year C

1 Samuel 2:18-20, 26

Presumably an experience of a surprise such as G*D incarnate in creation is not a once-for-all moment. An infant that is not stillborn, grows - hopefully in relationship to G*D and Neighb*r as well as in stature and girth. 

While yet in Christmastide, within the proverbial 12 Days of Christmas, we hear about the imperative of growth. Our tendency may be to revere the traditions of Christmas when the challenge before us is that of reinventing it beyond rote.

Samuel grew. Jesus grew. And you? Or, put another way, have you stopped? How do you know?

Here’s a thought experiment for you. Instead of considering atonement to be about the cross, what if it is about a manger? To grow up “blessed by G*D and popular with the people”, as The Message has it, are we not talking about an at-one-ment? Evaluate this proposition: Atonement is incarnational, not crucifixional.

Titus 2:11-14 & Hebrews 1:1-12

Christmas Eve/Day - Year C

Christmas Eve Titus 2:11-14

Christmas Day Hebrews 1:1-12

Where did the gift of surprise and choice go so quickly. The gospel lessons are poetry and story. By the time we get to the epistles we are confronted with the didactic and doctrinaire. Christmas moves from a particular to the general only with a great deal of danger to its own integrity.

We hear about incarnation being a source of atonement, “God has appeared, bringing salvation to all”. This act of G*D soon gets shifted to the crucifixion, “[Jesus] gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity”.

What begins with the fulfillment of a promise to our ancestors, becomes, all too quickly, angels not announcing G*D’s work but “worshipping” some idolatry of an eternity beyond flesh and blood birth and life.

Be careful what gets ingested along with all the sweet carols of Christmas. Is it just a set up for a later atonement or sufficient for such in its particularity?

Luke 2:41-52

Christmas 1 - Year C

Luke 2:41-52

Here is another creation story, birth story. Instead of going for registration, Jesus goes for Festivities and finds in them a larger story than they knew they carried.

Wherever you search for someone dear to you, you will find them searching for themselves even as you search for them. Of course you return the favor while being searched for.

No wonder searchers don’t understand, even as they draw near.

Now to carry this insight into the rest of a new year. We all search for and are searched for. Remarkably in these infinite searches, what is found has more in common than in difference. Here then is our covenant for the year: that we will treasure one another. Blessings in letting your treasure show and the treasure of others be honored by you.

Luke 2:1-20 & John 1:1-18

Christmas Eve/Day - Year C

Christmas Eve Luke 2:1-20

Christmas Day John 1:1-18

In those days the word was with G*D/Emperor Augustus.

All the world should be acknowledged as G*D’s/registered as Augustus’.

Joseph/John/Shepherds were sent as facilitator/witness/announcer of a new Word.

In these days we are still caught between Love and Power.

Many claims are made upon us and in our name.

A choice remains about facilitating, witnessing to, and announcing the best we know.

Choose well this night, this day.

a christmas before christmas

Advent 4 - Year C

disquieting news

doesn’t call for resignation

questions unresolved

seek interpretation

even afar from circles intimate

we seek our wise woman

and find their wisdom

deeper in than expected

future calls to future

it’s alright come out and play

blessing is sung

to and through us

mercy as far as eye can see

justice through and through

Hebrews 10:5-10

Advent 4 - Year C

Hebrews 10:5-10

Did Jesus offer his body any more than did Mary? We get weird around military deaths and laud and load them with automatic bravery and sacrifice, even calling it ultimate sacrifice.

How might we rebalance our vision of G*D somewhere between a possibility laden creation and a last day reduced to judging? It might have something to do with understanding how bodies bring forth life. Which is more Mary’s forte and Jesus’ teaching. It is only later that we hit on a deathly cross being of more importance than a feeding trough birth. [Image receiving communion from a manger rather than an altar - This is my body. . . .]

Luke 1:46-55

Advent 4 - Year C

Luke 1:46-55

Confirmation of an experience is helpful. Remember back to verse 29 — Mary was deeply troubled by being pregnant. By verse 34 she was questioning, “How can this be” or “Why”. Some form of resignation came in verse 38, “Let it happen”.

Within days Mary set off for Aunt Elizabeth’s. Everyone needs a confessor beyond their immediate “family” (a spiritual director from a different tradition is almost necessary). Here, again, Mary found love without expectation hedging it in.

Given this journey it is no accident that Mary’s song is both uplifting and challenging. Her phrasing soars and her content is prophetic. Isn’t this also the way we respond after giving and/or receiving support based on glimpsed but yet unseen abundance? So give; so receive; so sing.

Micah 5:1-5

Advent 4 - Year C

Micah 5:1-5

Sometimes we are simply stuck and cannot get out to a comforter with perspective. When everything has been tried and there is no where else to turn, the last resort is an appeal to the future. May something be born out of this failing!

Our anticipation of Christmas is better oriented to failure than to success. We have done everything we knew to do and it came up short. This recognition is prelude to a wonderful surprise, unanticipatable. To make lists and check them twice is antithetical to the surprise of real Christmas that occurs every day. A new incarnation rises from an abysmal defeat. Without prelude and against expectation, peace breaks forth to affront the principalities and powers who will do all in their power to run the cycle another time.

At some point the bullies will get it. Keep a symbolic Bethlehem alive in your time and space.

Luke 1:39-45

Advent 5 - Year C

Luke 1:39-45

There are times in life when we are mobilized to react with haste. Had John Wooden been available as Mary’s coach, he would have counseled, “Be quick, but don’t hurry.” After her haste Mary comes to John’s ancestress, Elizabeth, speaking as Yoda, “Quiet she is, trusting full.”

The odds are that this was not the first time fetus John had leapt. So let’s take a little focus off an apology of coincidence and put it on a gift of insight or discernment. May you be quick to spread a blessing. It will land where needed.

Philippians 4:1-13

Advent 3 - Year C

Philippians 4:1-13

Broods of vipers are not only found in outsiders seeking to come in, but within a flock as well. Euodia and Syntyche are archetypes of every church split. Having been so close when some slight difference is magnified into a bright line of division.

Given that such dissension is not unusual and even can be helpful in moving everyone along, who is this unnamed “loyal companion” called upon to assist Euodia and Syntyche? Having inhabited the role of intentional interim minister, I see this anonymous one as a patron saint of interim ministry.

With the work being outlined as the 5 tasks of an intentional interim: returning folks to community through a reestablishment of a common vision [(1)remembering who we have been & (2) determining who we want to be], redefining gentleness [(3)a key leadership trait], practicing prayers of  thanksgiving [(4) reconnecting with an experienced antidotes to divisive worry], and having peace stand guard at hearts and minds [(5) preparing space for a next generation]. Intentional interim Ministers do this work of salving distressed congregations through G*D who strengthens and beautifies.

Even as Advent has both a backward glance and forward glimpse of a larger picture than a pointillist’s present stroke, so, with Euodia and Syntyche, we remember past cooperation and look for a more mature consolidation of community.

Isaiah 12:2-6

Advent 3 - Year C

Isaiah 12:2-6

An interesting phrase: “G*D has become my salvation”.

Compare and contrast that with another statement: “G*D is my salvation”.

If salvation is connected with some form of wholeness, might we say, “G*D and I are becoming whole together”? What shifts in our addressing life if salvation is a process rather than either an accomplished end to be remembered or some result to be anticipated. This makes Advent more process oriented than focused on some external mechanism having left the stars and arrived at our humble abode. 

Zephaniah 3:14-20

Advent 3 - Year C

Zephaniah 3:14-20

“Judgments removed here! Get your judgments removed here!” This would be a winner of a marketing campaign. Zephaniah is one testimonial for this way of wrongs being set right, whether they were initiated by you or against you. Our imaginary fears based on gleeful judgment could then be set aside.

Yes, this is supposable. Who wouldn’t want their shame to be turned into praise and renown?

Well, it turns out that there is no business like denial business. We seem to prefer continuing to be judged and to judge ourselves most harshly. Relying on external judgment turns out to preferable to taking responsibility for the consequences of not changing the present. Likewise, having been socialized into a niceness that cannot be lived up to every hour of our day has made us guilt addicts.

It may be that we have had our eye on the wrong prize. Having fortunes restored is not a large enough vision to pursue. Rather there is a more compelling picture available when we deal with being in the midst of our story and knowing that we are not alone [17a]. Before we know it we are in medias res of a story with no beginning. The outcome is not any more certain but the journey is less lonely.

Luke 3:7-18

Advent 3 - Year C

Luke 3:7-18

Living expectantly is a good thing. We can do so from a positive or a negative position. Whether expecting the worst or the best, our expectations do change our engagement with the world around us.

Expectations are motivational and perhaps a more discriminating reflection needs not to be between worst and best, but whether an expectation is based on something approximating reality so that we are not just operating habitually in a glass-half-full or half-empty manner. Can we expect either or both the worst and the best, not just one or the other, and begin to see which better fits a particular situation?

John is recorded as mostly being a worst-case motivator. As we move toward another shift in consciousness, my hope is that we not get stuck with wrath as our major source of energy to change. What about being motivated by love — as in love G*D, Neighb*r, S*lf, One-an*ther, and En*my? This seems to be more where John points as a revelation or recognition of an energized spirit even as he seems stuck on bad news as his way to get there.

So what is on your horizon? Disaster? Good Fruit?

sequence

Advent 2 - Year C

order up

forgiveness prepared

feasted upon

sated

pay up

repentance offered

generously tipped

energized

Philippians 1:1-11

Advent 2 - Year C

Philippians 1:1-11

What are the limits of grace and peace. They are for the moment offered to the folks at Philippi. What about the churches listed in Revelation 2-3 and the warnings given to some?

If you are interested in being a messenger of creation-wide health, you may want to tack this prayer up and begin to memorize it as deeply as you can.

My love is intended to abound more and more, both in experience and understanding, that with clear conscience and compassionate conduct I will value that which really matters. My intention is to be rich in the harvest of justice that has ripened within. Amen [Meaning: this will please me, my Neighb*r,  and whatever of G*D that can be known]. 

Luke 1:68-79

Advent 2 - Year C

Luke 1:68-79

G*D blessed through forgiveness. This passage suggests that such forgiveness was only mediated through an authorized route. Those who went before only had a promise of mercy extended to them. We, however, are the ones who experience this freeing.

All those who would rather live with a promise of mercy instead of that promise’s fullfillment - raise your hand. I trust that included you as living in a promise is no easier or harder than living with mercy that brings a clarifying light to keep us from excusing ourselves because we are confused or whose feet are mobilized to dramatize a way of peace in a time of no-peace. I trust you would have also raised your hand had the question been about a preference to live in merciful forgiveness. As has already been posited, they each are worth a hero’s quest.

To be clear-headed is no easy task. To trust what you see to be reality-based is not easy. And to follow where peace beckons is not only not easy, but very difficult.

Note: Usually a Psalm is found on these Wednesday postings. This is an insight into the energy level of a Psalm. Where a prophecy is occuring, it can easily take the form of a poem, either patterned or free-form. Even the most prosaic of prophecies is poetic. Listen to how prophesy rolls off the tongue no matter what its form or content.

Malachi 3:1-4

Advent 2 - Year C

Malachi 3:1-4

Judgment needs a press secretary to spin the need for judgment. Knowing that the only outcome expected from Judgment is that we don’t measure up, we are tempted to believe there is no out from Judgment. At best it is a refiners fire that removes those parts that don’t measure up, even if that means there isn’t much left. Somehow or other cutting off pounds of flesh is supposed to make us better. Presumably once the soul has been disected out it will only reproduce after its own kind.

There are a lot of questions about a model that disavows choice and time. Somehow only good choices will be made. Somehow, in a moment of judgment, all is made clear so good choices are the only choice available.

So we prefer waiting for judgment rather than be proactive in building the kind of community that will honor, understand, encourage, and challenge its individual parts as well as itself through opportunities to further mature.

It would help if we were to remember that an anticipated messenger is none other than ourself and our neighbor. Proceed to attend to the message you are passing on.

Luke 3:1-6

Advent 2 - Year C

Luke 3:1-6

At the direst of times a word is always present: “Forgive—this is the preparation needed for a new creation.”

In this scripture we hear it in the midst of occupation by an empire. In the midst of other empires, including the current one, this same word can be heard. Each and every time, though, there is an argument over the mechanism authorizing forgiveness. In this case a process of baptism and repentance are the necessary ingredients for a meal of forgiveness. There are those who claim the mechanism necessary for the result. Really?

In the presence of an American empire that threatens with a variety of powers from nuclear to economic, a word of forgiveness is still present as every sea rises and every coast recedes, weather patterns shift and drought and rain change places. Whatever the way in which forgiveness might take place, it moves us closer to wholeness and health.

To preemptively give up a claim of privilege is a way of forgiveness. This takes years of practice and comes with no guarantee of technically swaying the present. Forgiveness is the advent season of healthy living. It has happened all along and is done in preparation of this and a next opportunity.

sign gazing

Advent 1 - Year C

sign up here

for the sign of your life

time will show

an heightened awareness

of sign behind sign

until sign is no more

and space

lovely shiney space

will polish any sign

so blindingly bright

it can’t be missed

but is routinely

finally massive speed

limits the trap

unexpectedly sprung

we zoom past siren ads

zip beyond deep thoughts

and bounce to a close

lift your soul

deepen your trust

teach an unknown

again learn for a first time

dreams lead home

thanks shake loose

how many weeks of signs

are needed

to see anew

a month of Sundays

even if none

gaze gently

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Advent 1 - Year C

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Here is a question for the year: No matter what the season, are we actually experiencing an increase of abundant love for one another and for all?

This will call for individual work (prayer) and communal work (restoration).

If we can make some progress on this during the coming church year we will find our hearts strengthened for more years of building on how far we have come. Is this or is this not a time to go beyond the making of a resolution to the implementation of steps that will help us arrive.

This quote may help us: “His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.” -Lois McMaster Bujold, writer (b. 1949)

Psalm 25:1-10

Advent 1 - Year C

Psalm 25:1-10

What promise are you looking for? Two typical ones are being triumphant or living faithfully. 

This psalm seems to be most interested in winning over others by having picked or been picked by a most powerful god or totem.

Key words here include trouble, shame, guilt, guarded life, and some sense of eternal truth beyond local reality.

If these become less important we can jump to the end of this pericope to focus on what it takes for us to develop and continue in a sense of being a part of a whole - being humble. Here the focus becomes our faithfulness, our promise fulfillment, our covenant, our word. This doesn’t focus on guilt or prevailing. Rather we look at simply using our gifts.

Jeremiah 33:14-18

Advent 1 - Year C

Jeremiah 33:14-18

Justice delayed is said to be no justice at all. Apparently promises live in a different arena of life for here a delayed fulfillment of a promise is called righteous.

David is to provide justice (no delay) and to exemplify righteousness (great delay). David, like all of us, is made of such competing values.

Even though justice and righteousness have been pulled apart here to look at a tension between them, the use of parallelism would mean that one can’t happen without the other — they reveal one another.

So, given the opportunity to look back over yesterday or this day, how have justice and righteousness operated in your life? Have the been separated or not? If there has been separation and you desire to begin shifting to have them parallel one another, you may want to simply consider who might be in an unsafe place and to join them in their danger that you might better advocate as an ally.

A weekly evaluation of the relationship between justice and righteousness in your life and practice at bringing them ever so much closer to one another promises significant changes after a year. Is this a promise you are willing to trust and try?

Luke 21:25-36

Advent 1 - Year C

Luke 21:25-36

Signs are present. Signs come in innumerable guises. Some will see them as a destructive judgment. Some will see them as next opportunities. Some won’t see them at all.

Those who are able to see through their hard-wiring or experience will be able to shift. Some will flee from wrath. Some will walk boldly forward.

Signs not only come to be present, they fade from their once presence. Signs are as frail as the leaves of a deciduous tree - spring green, productive day-after-day, celebrative in completion, and fertilizing the future. No one of them is normative.

If not signs, what may stay with us? We can claim it to be words, but they are just signs of signs. It is not the “words” here that are lasting, but what they describe — alertness to how to honorably stand and assist others to do the same.

Clarifying and strengthening an ability to stand, clear-eyed, is worth a year’s endeavor. Can you imagine how individuals, congregations and other communities might grow by the end of November next year by working on this orientation rather than on mediating words? Neither can I. But it sounds worthy of our best.

a voice crying

Pentecost Last - Year B

there is no end

to beginning anew

as long as

we don’t stop

to proclaim truth

eternal

when here

becomes as there

we’ve seen clockwise

turn counter-clockwise

for there becomes

here

Revelation 1:4b-8

Pentecost Last - Year B

Revelation 1:4b-8

On a culmination day when thanksgiving in the present might be the case, we are still looking forward. Look  to the clouds, notorious for their chageability, everyone will see a cloud that looks like Jesus, even those who are against him. Good luck with that. Claiming Jesus is like catching a cloud formation and freezing it into place. Even then, take three steps to the right, and its gone.

More to the point, incarnationally G*D is with us, already. Any waiting on our part is an excuse to not make the changes available to us to join the healthy of every tradition. With time up for this year, we will give it one more try to see if we can live in the present without a diploma. We have been in medias res and we continue to be in the middle of a story. No artificial final Sunday will change that. Onward to our most realistic of seasons - Advent.

Psalm 132:1-12, (13-18)

Pentecost Last - Year B

Psalm 132:1-12, (13-18)

The last Sunday of a church year might be thought to be a resting place. We’ve worked on peace for generations now. Surely one more year would have seen us arrive at a time for sabbath.

The Psalm anticipates an eternal monarchy, the best governance available for eons. At some point, though, recognition was bound to happen that the end-all and be-all of our relationship with G*D is not keeping current classes going in perpetuity, albeit with the poor getting enough bread to subsist on, which isn’t always the case.

If the best we can do is to have “The Lord rise up and go to a resting place” we have missed much in the way of growing into G*D ourselves. This is a static image that time cannot abide. And so in our end is our beginning — G*D is loose. Get a head start on Advent, begin your yearly game of hide-and-seek with G*D, Neighb*r, and Y*ourself today.

2 Samuel 23:1-7

Pentecost Last - Year B

2 Samuel 23:1-7

Can one rule over another justly? I expect you know that is an extended oxymoron.

A larger question is how we can assist one another to live justly. This takes the best of each of us, even from those who model simply ruling over others.

If you are looking for an everlasting covenant that orders and secures all things, you’ve mistaken David and Pilate for Jesus. Order and security are ultimately unjust. Just note the ending that those the orderly and security-minded consider to be thorns in their side are summarily thrown aside. Order and security demand G*D to be on their side. No rising up of the youngest or most unexpected will be allowed.

On this culmination of a year’s work toward being a bit more whole, we have a passage that warns rather than congratulates us. David is putting the best spin he can on his short time as king, but it can’t cover-up the disaster to come or the difficulties so easily forgotten. This spin doesn’t bring a webbed marvel, but only dizziness for being so out of touch with our realties.

May you imagine a much better covenant than order and security even if it breaks your heart at being so distant.

John 18:33-37

Pentecost Last - Year B

John 18:33-37

A most intriguing passage for a Sunday traditionally called Christ the King. This is a series of direct questions with slippery responses.

“Are you King of the Jews?” [In a context of Roman occupation, what would any response to this question mean?]

“Who’s asking?”, asks Jesus. This sends us on our first trip. The question is no longer that of hierarchy, but behavior - “What have you done?”

And Jesus spins around again. “My kingdom is not from this world.” So does this respond to the first question about kingship or is it a one-hand clapping statement? Kings are very much of this world. They can’t be king without the world allowing it. What is this other world?

Pilate took the bait with a presumption that this was a response to his first question. “So...you are a king!”

“You keep harping on power when I’m talking about an authenticity or truth beyond political or religious privilege,” clarifies Jesus.

Conveniently the lection cuts Pilates retort of “What is truth?” as he spins to leave the room. So Pilate doesn’t have to hear Jesus mutter, “The truth is you are Governor of Nothing and never will be the King you desire to be.”

Whether you call it Christ the King Sunday or the Reign of Christ, Jesus says you got it wrong and the church won’t be a source of healing until it puts such arrogance away. This is especially the case when the following week we claim the failure of kingdom talk with the beginning of a needed Advent or start on a different journey than the crazy-making one of repeating doctrines as if they were factual.

all fall down

Pentecost +25 - Year B

look out

a stone wall

meticulously made

all foundations squared

each arch keystoned perfectly

is on its way down

“good walls” don’t make “good neighbors”

what is thought to be walled out

isn’t what is walled out

that desired to be walled in

can’t be kept in

walls are fantasies

we justify boundaries

when we fear everything’s not alright

temples

show our fear of G*D

borders

show our fear of Neighb*r

and sure enough

tear down a wall 

and fighting ensues

we will prove our premise

foundations will shake

when stones fall

and yet

this is but a beginning

of a new way

enclosed garden

wide wide-earth

again friends

Hebrews 10:11-14, (15-18), 19-25

Pentecost +25 - Year B

Hebrews 10:11-14, (15-18), 19-25

What a huge stone is repetition. Sisyphus knew all about this. And yet this story is not the end of the story, but a beginning of new insight that doing the same thing over again expecting a different outcome just won’t cut it.

So how do we resolve a Gordian Knot of Sisyphean fate?

Pay attention to our current heart, our lived experience. It is through our flesh that our spirit will be freed. This experience is our hope - our resolution that we will not repeat intermediary responses but provoke new love, new deeds of common good.

May you be a Jesus to those in your life who play priest over others.

1 Samuel 2:1-10

Pentecost +25 - Year B

1 Samuel 2:1-10

A prayer is a psalm, a song of the heart.

Try this one from Jim Taylor . . .

PSALM PARAPHRASES

The Lectionary suggests 1 Samuel 2:1-10 as the psalm reading for Sunday November 18. It’s supposed to be Hannah’s song, celebrating her pregnancy, but aside from verse 5 which refers to “the barren” bearing children, it sounds to me more like the victory cry of a triumphant military general. I tried to recast it (rather loosely, I admit) as a woman finally becoming a mother.

Oh, my God, what’s happening to me?

I feel new life moving within me.

It kicks my kidneys; it compresses my bladder;

I love it!

They said it couldn’t happen.

They said I would never have a child.

Now they have to eat their words.

Ha!

I thought it was my fault.

I wasn’t trying hard enough.

I didn’t realize God couldn’t act

       until I quit trying to run things my way,

       until I quit playing God.

God helps the helpless; the rest just help themselves.

My clock was running out;

Menopause lurked beneath the bed.

Then it happened -- the spark of life!

I don’t know what lies ahead –

       it may be heaven, it may be hell.

I don’t care; I’m committed.

I’m committed to life; I’m committed for life.

There is no turning back now.

I know, beyond any flicker of doubt,

       that this is what God intended for me.

My child may be a genius or a dunce,

       a cello virtuoso or penniless poet…

But God will watch over her.

God will give her the strength I cannot give.

I had lost hope.

I shall call her Hope.

For this and other paraphrases, you can order Everyday Psalms through Wood Lake Publications, info@woodlake.com or 1-800-663-2775.

1 Samuel 1:4-20

Pentecost +25 - Year B

1 Samuel 1:4-20

One of the biggest blocks to moving ahead is our perception that day follows day, year follows year. Eventually we are reduced to tears. We loose track of what we have (a loving Elkanah) and can’t see that we will have to give up that which we have yearned for (a potential Samuel).

Do apply the stages of grief to this short story.

After doing so, don’t confuse getting through a grief with a particular result. Finally going in peace with a promise of fulfillment is not the same as arriving at some “due time” that is your due. Playing the grim-determination-of-the-soul game is no guarantee of getting what you desire. While rejoicing in a Samuel, I can still refrain from buying into Hannah’s process of wanting something she promises to leave behind if only her want can be fulfilled.

Do apply the placebo effect to this short story.

After doing so, don’t confuse effect with cause.

Mark 13:1-8

Pentecost +25 - Year B

Mark 13:1-8

I've been off lection task for a week plus. I come back to find the stones of scripture and tradition seeming larger than before my break. How can they be addressed with such small resources as reason and experience? Where is an entry spot into some larger meaning they represent and cover at the same time?

There is comfort in hearing that they are not so huge. My fears make them larger than life but the reality is that not one word of scripture or stone of tradition will remain to block what is aborning. Both the scripture and the tradition record where we have been in our search for meaning. They report a portion of our journey, but are not predictive of what's next. Moving into and through a next good dark night will mean raging against residual luminescence. As the poet says:
          Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
          And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
          Do not go gentle into that good night.

Beware. Many will claim to be a voice of tomorrow while consolidating today under their control. Many will discount new birth out of fear of the discontinuity it brings in its wake. But the end of yesterday is but the beginning of the birthpangs of tomorrow. There is no easier way through.

What a welcome back - large stones that aren't. How disorienting; how hopeful.

Psalm 146

Pentecost +23 - Year B

Psalm 146

Which of these qualities ascribed to G*D is most important to you today? 

For how long has that been the case? 

Do you feel a new arena beginning to open?

G*D is:

faithful forever
does justice for the oppressed
feeds the hungry
frees prisoners
opens blind eyes
lifts the fallen
honors the good
protects strangers
sides with orphans and widows
brings down powers

Which do you ascribe to or aspire to? 

For how long?

What arena of life needs to be added here?

Ruth 1:1-18

Pentecost +23 - Year B

Ruth 1:1-18

1st rule: Don’t disappoint by Dying.

   2nd rule: Go back Home.

      3rd rule: Secure Borders.

         4th rule: Break Boundaries.

            5th rule: It’s OK to go Back.

               6th rule: It’s OK to go Ahead.

                  7th rule: Determine your limit of Determination.

Now which of these is most important? When? With Whom?

Mark 12:28-34

Pentecost +23 - Year B

Mark 12:28-34

It is always tempting to cut to the chase. What is the most important commandment? What is the main thing that is supposed to be the main thing? What’s the basic principle here?

Unfortunately there is nothing that is singular. Note this from an article about Gravitational Singularity: “The two most important types of spacetime singularities are curvature singularities and conical singularities. Singularities can also be divided according to whether they are covered by an event horizon or not....”

There may be no other commandments greater than “loving” G*D and Neighb*r, but there will be those that will be similar to them in particularity instead of generality. After all loving Neighb*r looks quite different through the lens of Obama or Romney or you or me. And so it is with some generalized love of G*D.

The most that perhaps can be said here is that physical symbols and decision-making processes cannot take the place of relationships. When we base our interactions on some form of power, we have missed something “more important”.

May you continue to question your religious tradition about what in the world general commandments mean in a particular situation you are facing.

make an entrance

Pentecost +22 - Year B

remember your entrance

life has been going on

plots have been laid down

new lines are available

not all is clear

blind spots raise tension

denial blocks opportunities

hope rides on anyway

help is always in order

even as it is out of order

clenched teeth are one option

calling out another

the needy call out the healthy

will they be left to beg

will mercy be chosen

will partnership die aborning

the world stands still

as pre-existing conditions

meet new occasions

and spin off new duties

what is your claim

your analysis of need

what is your gift

your mercy quotient

to see past a script

to see again for a first time

to edit the present

to revision the future

hark - a new line

shifts settled plots

from tragedy to comedy

remember to enter

Hebrews 7:23-28

Pentecost +22 - Year B

Hebrews 7:23-28

We do look for immortality. We look back and see how many have gone before. This is discouraging for our sense of importance and star-power. If we are a part of this parade, “Another one done gone” will be said of us, too. If we look ahead we see how soon we will shift position within a cloud of witnesses - from active to supportive - we could become even more discouraged.

So it is we are drawn to concretize ideals and models of permanence. We are also creatures of habit and so our ideals are shaped by our past as well as a vision of a preferred bright future glimpsed through unpolarized and darkened glass.

It was once easy to envision Jesus as a High Priest writ large. But a question needs raising: “Any progress been made in 2,000 plus years?” Does a model of external authority, expanded to also be an excellent and expansive authority, still work in a quantum oriented world. When sun and moon and stars were seen to orbit around us, this model may have had some redeeming quality. But now seeing ourselves in an outer spiral arm of one of billions of galaxies and gazing into what were previously unseeable fields, the whole book of Hebrews needs a make-over. Go ahead, add your version.

Psalm 34:1-8, (19-22)

Pentecost +22 - Year B

Psalm 34:1-8, (19-22)

Affirmations are a good way to approach life. It is far better to say what you trust to be the case than to mutter about what you don’t believe. For one thing it’s simpler, fewer moving parts. To say everything that isn’t takes far more energy than to claim the little that can be be put forward.

An exception to the general rule of affirmation is affirmation based on moveable ground. This results in a sense that if you just say it forcefully enough, it is bound to be true even if it contradicts what was said just a moment ago. So it is that we are saved from every trouble. And now every trouble plus this one. Oh, and this one. No matter what the trouble, don’t complain, be radiant. G*D gets us out of every mess someone else gets us into.

This is a Psalm that could have been written by Mitt Romney. No one who runs to him to invest will lose out. Everyone who follows will prosper. What do you need to hear, that is stated. What does G*D need to hear, it is already said.

The Psalms are political/theological writing. They put forward a point of view of a plan, control, and claimed success. Unfortunately these posit more than can be known. Don’t lie through your teeth (verse 13) is a much harder standard than no profanity (same verse). Clean language does not indicate a clean heart.

Go ahead and claim G*D is in the midst of every trouble, just don’t err on the side of saying G*D is some transcendent get-out-of-jail-free card you carry up your sleeve to pull out in extremis. Make your affirmation, live it, and take the consequences that come with a still growing creation.

- - - - - - -

Note: Relatedly, this excerpt from Jim Taylor --– “If there’s a belief system operating here, it’s that I -- whoever I am -- exist separately from the world around me. The laws that apply to everyone else -- human laws or natural laws -- don’t apply to me. I transcend them.

       “It’s such a universal belief that I wonder if it influences our religious faith. Almost every religion imagines its god or gods as transcendent. They live on Mount Olympus or in heaven. They don’t grow old or catch colds. They live beyond our petty limitations.

       “After all, why would I want a God who is less than I am? If I can think of myself as above the realities of my world, wouldn’t any god be more so?”

Job 42:1-6, 10-17

Pentecost +22 - Year B

Job 42:1-6, 10-17

No matter what the apparent disadvantage, to thine own self be true lest you simply follow the money. This is no easy matter when an adversary cannot be thwarted. Whether we are talking blindness, happenstance, or a kingly god to deal with, the reality of honorable loss is an Eastern trait to be affirmed and nurtured.

The storyline is that one will literally get twice what was taken away. Blessed are the blind for they are such good musicians and blessed is parenthood a second time around.

It’s a nice story all too easily bought into. Somehow we keep ending up with a prosperity gospel which does not speak of reality rightly. Instead of this being a wonderful set-up for a punchline that G*D is Awesome!, we might more simply pay attention to what is available for us to do in any given moment. Claiming harm when harm is done is a righteous act. Knowing when we are in beyond our knowing is a grounding in the face of a tree of temptation. Track the process of yesterday’s blind man and Job, not some magical resolution.

Mark 10:46-52

Pentecost +22 - Year B

Mark 10:46-52

Imagine what it would be like to be walking down the street and for someone to overhear your being identified with a specific congregation. Now imagine their response, the equivalent of a knee-jerk exclamation, "Hey You! Member of XX congregation, have mercy on me!"

Why do we make it so hard on folks to know what they might expect from us?

Well, for one thing, who wants to get called out with an expectation of making a difference right here, right now? The risk of failure to live up to another's expectation is high.

If we were to find ourselves in this setting it would be easy to pray in Jesus' name, thinking that would take care of it and we could go on our way. The model here, however, is more relational than technical. Would we have the wisdom to first ask, "Hey, yourself, whatcha want?"

Having found this out, now we can engage more constructively with an immediate band-aid or building a communal response to a systemic dysfunction.

First things first, what is your congregation known for? Without this who would know to engage you with expectation?

Psalm 22:1-15

Pentecost +20 - Year B

Psalm 22:1-15

Who can be saved? Surely not me from this Laurel and Hardy mess.

I have giggled, and now I weep.

I’ve come through so much. We have come through so much. Is it only to find ourselves on the scrap-heap of history and hope?

There is never enough wealth. Never enough power. Never enough prestige. Put simply, there is never enough.

A wrong question keeps being asked: “As I push you out of the way, I wonder how G*D will help you?”

Better questions are: “Why do I find so much pleasure in pushing you down?” or “Am I my neighbor’s?” or “What is my relationship to you?”

Having lost a neighborhood where we can walk and talk in the cool of the evening, how do we reestablish neighborliness, a neighborhood, and neighbors?

Some old understandings of behaving well — no stealing, no lying, etc. — serve well, but with a periodic psychopath/sociopath rising up with with followers excusing their bad behavior in light of their supposed cause, more than behavior control is needed. Unfortunately the something more that is needed is difficult to attain and maintain — perspective beyond one’s own experience and speculations.

Without a glimpse of a larger community with significant interactions, we keep falling back into easy answers — wealth trickles down rather than building up, so I’ll keep mine for me. Wealth proves G*D provides for those who persevere in hard work, so keep yanking on your bootstraps. Wealth is evidence of wisdom, so listen to your betters. Et cetera, et cetera, and etc.

Job 23:1-17

Pentecost +20 - Year B

Job 23:1-17

Today my complaint is bitter!
What must I do to assure something better?

Groaning is not enough.
Contend!

But contend where?
With whom?

Arguing and debating is slippery territory.
Even integrity is not enough here.

Sparks don’t illumine far in a deep darkness.
But we glimpse enough for now.

From dark chaos we have come; to thick darkness we return.
From ashes you have come; to ashes you shall return.

Treasure what little is known.
Here we stand and from here we leap.
 

Mark 10:17-31

Pentecost +20 - Year B

Mark 10:17-31

Interested in eternity? Pay attention to now.

If you are interested in more about finding the whole in a part, I recommend this short blog by Jim Taylor.

Interested in lasting wealth? Be generous with currency in need of constant replacement ($1 bill estimated life span is 4.8 years; $100 bill is in use for 17.9 years - according to the US Federal Reserve)

Pursuing happiness will have something to do with coming to terms with parts and wholes and what Eugene Peterson calls the “Great Reversal”.

Hebrews 1:1-5, 2:5-12

Pentecost +19 - Year B

Hebrews 1:1-5, 2:5-12

The authoress of Hebrews claims a Son is more persuasive than a Prophet. In the end, it turns out not to be the case. Jesus as prophet is still a better image than “son of G*D”. It turns out that G*D does not have an exact clone, reflection, image — even that of Jesus.

There is also an attempt to make Jesus a better messenger than angels. It turns out that people don’t listen, no matter what the supposed pedigree of the messenger.

Finally we don’t see the past, present, or future worlds under the control of our better angels. The same goes for Jesus. It has taken more than two centuries, but it is clear that building a theocracy in the midst of a fallible world fails as ever greater claims need to be made connecting rulers with their identified overlord. And, soon or late, the faults of temporal leaders are projected on what is more and more seen as an idol. When this happens both fall and fade.

No amount of scriptural jujitsu of some subjected suffering becoming an atoning action will lift such a limited theory into the realm of eternal truth. Religious spin is no more persuasive than political spin. Eventually you can’t even fool some of the people.

Let’s go back to the deleted first verse of chapter two with a key clarification: Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have “experienced”, so that we do not drift away from a “deeper wholeness”.

Psalm 26

Pentecost +19 - Year B

Psalm 26

Need vindication for some awkward situation? Attend to your integrity.

This Psalm is one list of values and behaviors. It is neither an all encompassing list nor one that pertains to everyone. Our call, here, is to see a movement and then to evaluate whether it would be helpful for current needs.

A key repeated word is “integrity”. This ancient Hebrew word comes from a root that points at a completedness, a having been single-mindedly used up in an endeavor. It has been additionally translated to indicate: completedness, fullness, innocence, simplicity.

This makes it easy to sound like a broken record: “I, I, I.”

It is less easy to claim integrity simply by living as though it were true. This political season shows how easy it is for “integrity” to flow into self-aggrandizement, speaking of oneself in the third person, and going negative on others.

One needed measurement of integrity not often used is that of blessing. One of integrity’s first acts is blessing G*D and Neighb*r in a given situation. This is an indication of being full of blessing from having been blessed. It is a sign of assurance.

This becomes clearer when we paraphrase the last two verses:

I remember being graciously healed and claim this as my way ahead.
In the midst of many options, I choose a foundation of blessing from which to encounter life.

Job 1:1, 2:1-10

Pentecost +19 - Year B

Job 1:1, 2:1-10

This passage concludes with “Job did not sin with his lips”. How many ways have you avoided sinning? and how many ways have you sinned? Let us count the ways.

There is an old saying that “sticks and stones may break bones, but names will never hurt”. Here it is loathsome sores may afflict, but lips will never sin.

To go beyond the physical, what about questions? Can we say that “questions may discourage, but responses can remain gentle”?

More to the point, what is a difficulty that you are facing this day? Have you considered a different response than your usual knee-jerk one? This passage can come alive if we take a look at a disconnect available between stimuli and response. This is deliberately phrased in the plural for what it is we face, as almost anyone can deal with one cause and one effect. It is when the stimuli of life gang up on us and reinforce one another. Can’t you just hear the Tester or Confuser orchestrate this:

Stimulus 1, enter stage right.
Stimulus 2, enter stage left.
Stimulus 3, enter by wire from above.
Stimulus 4, enter on elevator from below.
Stimulus 5, enter from upstage.
Stimulus 6, enter through the 4th wall.
Stimulus 7, enter from within a sense of privilege.
Actor, Ad-lib.

And our perfect storm of excuses for having returned a tit for a tat swirls on and on. It is good to pull out for generations.

When a next question comes, what will be your level of defensiveness? And another, how might you detach the stimuli from your response?

Mark 10:2-16

Pentecost +19 - Year B

Mark 10:2-16

It is important to identify your source of authority. Pharisees asked a question and Jesus began with their standard source — “according to Moses...”.

Given that we all operate out of a variety of authorities, depending on circumstance and need, it is always interesting to note which authority is standing behind your latest question.

Back to the story. Hearing a standard Pharisaical response, Jesus basically says, “I’ll see your Moses and raise you a Creation.”

Do jot out your best guess about another 3 interchanges between the Pharisees and Jesus. It is all too easy to stop with Jesus trumping the Pharisees and that’s the end of that so we’ll now turn to the disciples sometime later. Pause. How would the Pharisees have responded to Jesus attempt to predate their contract to replace it?

Now, for part two of the extended story. Can you see the brokenness of divorce resulting in two children crying after a disagreement? Yes it is hard words about divorce and adultery are recorded, but that is the emotional setting, not a doctrine. So what to do? Condemn them both to no community-recognized relationship commitment? Pick them up, like little children, wipe away their tears, and reclaim them as beloved of G*D? Something in between?

From a test comes an affirmation. See it under light and apply liberally. Repeat.