John 12:1-11

Lent 5 - Year C 

John 12:1-11

We are behind on our postings. The snow pack, rain, and warm temperature conspired this past Sunday to find a weak spot in a basement window and the flood waters rose. All in all not the worst flood, but it does bring opportunity to reconfigure the basement and finally toss some things that have simply been carried along. If we take advantage of this, we will lead a less cluttered life. If we don’t, we will be plotting against Lazarus who scares us with his witness to the uncertainty of our certainties and the possibility of a next chance to evaluate and modify.

- - - - - - -

Have you had a resurrectional experience? One that shifted your ground of being toward receiving the gifts of people as they are able to share their gifts? One that re-evaluates our usual responses in light of the preciousness of time and energy?

If so, you are on someone’s “hit list”.

Your covert or acknowledged adversary might be a supposed comrade or some level of competitor. All you can be certain about is that someone thinks they have a better response to life or a particular occasion than you do.

Given that generalized reality, the poor have remarkable gifts to give that no one would expect. When given wholeheartedly they are highly valued. If we lived only in an economic world, we would say they were costly or expensive. We would also know that you don’t give gifts away as that would lessen the total assets we have without an in-hand quid pro quo.

When we get caught up with the details of this story it is mostly to excuse ourselves from generosity similar to Mary’s. Our details would be different, but not the desire to give the best we have to the creative process in order to encourage it onward.

So, why are gifts from the poor to the poor denigrated? They confront the rich with the reality that they won’t even share with the rich, much less the poor. We so don’t like our certainties to be questioned.

3 Stories

Lent 4 - Year C 

this week

no fragments

not quite

grumbled out

Try three stories by Christy Thomas.

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Lent 4 - Year C 

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Grumbling turns one into a growling animal, not distinctly human. It takes a method of reconciliation to see this otherwise and thus to respond without a mirroring growl. Paul is positing such a reconciliation comes from a specific indwelling of G*D into Jesus.

So long as an uniqueness of Jesus is required, there won’t be any evidence of other similar results through other means. When beginning to learn mathematics, students are asked to show their process under a rubric of one process leads to one result. It is like learning to color within the lines. So it is with these sorts of doctrinaire muttering. Once whispered, it yells at us about perspective and boundary.

While there are some who find the demarcation of one moment to be critical to understanding everything else, we more usually understand there is a progression of development by stages. A particular stage can be summarized, but not contained, in a key person in a timeline. You may want to play around with a timeline of mathematics. 

It is difficult to come up with a timeline of prophets. There are several out there, but they are all within a single tradition [if you know of an interfaith timeline of prophets, please reply]. Anyone want to try to develop a reconciled presentation of the prophetic tradition? After all, reconciliation is ours as well. Is this to be limited to “reconciling” folks to G*D only through Christ, or anyone to G*D through any avenue?

Things get real convoluted and contradictory when we get into parsing what might be behind how moments of inspiration come along. It seems that Paul might have been saying more than he knew when he gets into G*D making Jesus “to be sin”. This seems to raise more questions than it responds to. You might want to delete verse 21 from this text.

Psalm 32

Lent 4 - Year C 

Psalm 32

Grumbling comes easily when we don’t get to take anything we want, when we want. Once begun it is difficult to end. This may be the earliest of temptations - shiny things.

When addressed at its root, dissatisfaction is a blessing as it stimulates our creativity into bringing forth a gift to meet a need and a curse when it gets us into a taking mode.

A basic antidote for grumbling is experienced forgiveness that cuts through a desire for and shifts our desire to. Occasions for forgiveness reveal the nakedness we felt as shame and covers it with belovedness that revels in being revealed as choosers of significance. Those who have been injured and those who have harmed have different choices to make to become one again, but they are equally difficult.

This forgiveness is most easily done eye-to-eye and heart-to-heart. It is harder to do at a distance as we have more excuses not to forgive or be forgiven. Just as participatory democracy is a difficult governing style, forgiveness is a difficult spirit to participate in. Forgiving and a being forgiven call both to be new creations. The intersection of these dynamics is joy—the impetus of creation of new life out of chaotic dysfunction is revealed as forgiven and forgiver stand naked together, unashamed, joyful.

Joshua 5:9-12

Lent 4 - Year C 

Joshua 5:9-12

Prior to manna there was grumbling. There will be subsequent grumblings after the manna served its purpose and ordinary life sets in again. Apparently, there will be grumbling. Even Jesus grumbled in Gethsemane and on a cross.

The Israelites had the equivalent of a 40-year fast. That is now broken. With a variety of food now at their disposal [stolen, mind you, from the Canaanites (Palestinians) whose land they took] they began to settle in to fight with others and among themselves. The disgrace of Egypt may be behind them, but there are future disgraces in the wings, waiting for their cue. Sustained injustice: enter Disgrace and one prophet or another.

For Lenten reflection: what is our relationship with ordinary life and with miracle? Are these participants in a zero-sum game? As long as ordinary life is manageable it is on and miracles are off? When miracles are present, ordinary life is absent? What would connect these to see the miracle of ordinary life and honor it with on-going justice?

It is relatively easy to see what temptations brought us to another moment of Disgrace. It is not so easy to see a needed miracle/grace before its time. Currently, where are you on the seemingly unending journey from ordinary life to miracle and back to ordinary life and around again? What justice matter do you need to attend to in order for ordinary life to move forward without another round of Disgrace?

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Lent 4 - Year C 

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Grumbling is an opportunity for teaching. Not direct instruction, mind you, but a story or three. Grumbling indicates there is some unresolved matter at hand. Conscience or some other cognitive dissonance is at work wondering how to resolve a current unsolvable paradigm or misunderstood proposition.

How can a good guy associate with not good guys and still remain a good guy?

This disrupts our easy categorization of who is for us and who is against us.

Notice how all three of the stories respond to grumbling by ending with “Rejoice with me, there is found joy on earth and reflected joy in heaven!” This enters under the grumbling level to plant a new vision seed that would be automatically rejected had the grumblers been instructed to “Get a life” or “Snap out of it” or “Don’t go there” or “Don’t worry; be happy”.

So, in the next 24 hours you are likely to meet a grumbler. You probably already know what they are going to grumble about since we are such creatures of habit and cultural memes. Try preparing a story now, so you can use it later.

This is good practice for next Lent when we could participate in a discipline of daily developing and sharing stories to counter the common grumbles of our time and location.

Judgment

Lent 3 - Year C 

Judgment

Procrustes 

a fundamentalist’s saint

fit everyone

to a misfitting bed

stretching

cutting

misfortune

brings out latter-day

Procrusteans

judging suffering

blaming

excusing

profit

leads originalist

Procrusteans

demanding return

outsourcing

minimizing

imagine

a meeting between

Procrustes

and Narcissus

sons of water gods

never satisfied

forever satisfied

reflect

on your desire

for others

to be you

eternal change

eternal stasis

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

Lent 3 - Year C 

1 Corinthians 10:1-13

We have had our formative experiences, whether individually or generationally. These are wonderful and cumulative. We rejoice.

Our formative experiences do not hold up over time. We become accustomed to their presence and they turn into idols. We keep applying their specifics rather than their universality. We use them to justify accumulated power and prestige.

Here the specific of sexuality rises up to deny the variability of this gift. Here the presumption that we are the end spot of creation justifies spinning an ancient story for present purposes. Nothing new in this, just that it happened again then and is again now.

We are appropriately encouraged to make choices today, as folks have had to make all along the way. During and after the Exodus folks were no more united than were folk then listening to Jesus or now to testimony about him.

How do we express the freedom to learn more than has been passed on and how do we care for others whose learning goes in a different direction from ours. This tension is somewhat relieved in hearing the many plurals used here that are too easily limited to individual experience. It is also eased by warnings that our most cherished rituals do not bring with them guarantees to protect us from going aft agley.

The poetic reference to a mouse ends with:

Still you are blessed, compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But oh! I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear!

The way out of our various slaveries to the past and blindnesses to the future remains a mystery to mice and men. Caught between dreariness and fear we set up tests of passed on paradigms (a little more manure) and yet unseen growth (a little more time). May you evaluate your data well; may you help us all evaluate our common data.

Psalm 63:1-8

Lent 3 - Year C 

Psalm 63:1-8

I seek

I thirst

fainting

weary

waterless

searching

power

love

blessing

in hand

on lips

finding

feasting

praising

resting

meditating

joy

to this

I cling

with this

I hold up

in this

I live

= = = = =

Alternatively you might want to hear Jim Taylor’s paraphrase:

The third Sunday in Lent, Psalm 63:1-8. Some downtown churches are thriving; many are memorials to a former glory. Why do we maintain them, when they’re so often empty? Because a few people still come there to seek sanctuary.

1   Crowds of people crush me. 

       They bump and bounce my mind; 

       they break my concentration. 

       I feel like nothing more than a means to an end,

       merely a cog in the crunching machinery of a city. 

       I long for the gentle touch of loving fingers, the intimate whisper of acceptance.

2   So I have come looking for you, Lord, in your holy places.

3   In this dimmed light, in this hushed silence, I sense your presence.

4   I wish I could feel you as near me in the rabid frenzy of life in the urban core. 

       I want to reach out and touch you in the marketplace as well as the chancel.

5   Then I will not feel alone; you will be part of every thought and every breath.

6   I will know you at my desk and in my den, in my bed and in my bathtub.

7   Nothing will come between us.

8   And I will hold you close in the forest of my fears.

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

Isaiah 55:1-13

Lent 3 - Year C 

Isaiah 55:1-13

Seeking G*D while G*D is active in ways our senses can appreciate does imply an unceasing awareness. Asking whether G*D is present now, in the midst of this sorrow, this joy, this everyday, does increase our ability to catch a glimpse of G*D.

Of course we usually record our experience as more than a glimpse. We turn a moment into eternity. In doing so we cease asking whether G*D is present as we bask in echoes from the past — after all, we have had our fix and don’t need to attend for just a little while.

It is also worth seeking G*D where G*D is anticipated. Here the accumulated wisdom is clearer. Where is wickedness being pursued, G*D is present. Where widows and orphans are not cared for, G*D is present. Where doubt rises, G*D is present. Where idols reign in marketplaces, G*D is present. Basically, wherever G*D is an afterthought, G*D is becoming more present. The corollary is that wherever G*D is thought or felt to be present, G*D is already moving on.

What kind of perversity is this sort of steadfastness? It is the same challenge every teacher uses. Prophets have simply learned the latest lesson about how to learn about presence. Attend to the present; anticipate more depth than surface; there is more ahead than behind.

Luke 13:1-9

Lent 3 - Year C 

Luke 13:1-9

It is extremely helpful to have a scapegoat. Along comes a hurricane, it must be the fault of those who were killed or injured — recompense in the world. Here is an earthquake, we were hurt and that isn’t right so it must be our favorite out-group to blame — they are even worse than we thought. A flood rises, it is a god’s right to do in everyone for the fault of a few (remember the bargaining over Sodom) — cynics arise, you are right that steadfast love is not what it appears and there will be no pie, by-and-by, but we will all be in a pickle.

Without a scapegoat, a blamee, we have to look more closely at a longer time of reference. When we do so a wider view leads to greater patience and clearer points of decision.

Anyone want to blame the gardener for all the ills of the current state of affairs? If only we had cracked down more quickly and directly, there wouldn’t be the specific disappointments confronting us?

Anyone want to blame the owner or mechanisms of the economy for whom immediate productivity takes precedence over any longer term benefit called common-good?

I am going to die — so... — what do I have to lose to show patience to another and to nurture others at each stage of their growth in wisdom as well as stature? And what do you have to lose? What does our culture have to lose to gain perspective?

this very hour

Lent 2 - Year C 

this very hour

scram and skedaddle

they are out to get you

not realizing they

hadn’t thought it through

all they had was force

applied over time — exhausting

implacable hardness

just can’t keep up

new life casts off

once helpful scabs

yes hardness was once

a lesser evil

but consolidation of lesser harms

escalates back into great loss

to reduce the lesser further

requires greater care of the young

so prophets talk crazy talk

careening through time

bring everyone together

affirm our common need

protecting class status quo

guarantees further woe

cast that demon out

through each healing

until a blessing way

is our blessed way

Philippians 3:14-4:1

Lent 2 - Year C 

Philippians 3:14-4:1

To be mature is to assess situations with a greater number of experiences and evaluative tools. Younger folks are limited in both and tend to be shaped by their circumstance rather than to anticipate choices needed to be made and to make difficult choices regarding the long-run.

Holding fast to what is true to this point does bring a better experiential base than the last time around, but holding fast also locks us in to building today's defense on yesterday’s war. Maginot lines and nuclear weapons simply do not work any more – each was surprised and surpassed by subsequent tactics of speed and non-state attacks.

A clear-eyed analysis is perennially needed. This is the role of a prophet, not of a founder of an institution setting up ritualistic imitations of the past.

It is important to take seriously where folks are oriented. Abram and Jesus are quite grounded in the end game of space and time—Abram with descendants; Jesus with the children (sisters and brothers) of his day. Paul, on the other hand, has us gazing on heaven which will resend Jesus to us rather than on earth and carrying on the Jesus who had already been sent. If earth is to be as heaven, we need to focus on earth and needed changes here.

So if there were one significant issue for you to strengthen the protection of a threatened part of creation, where would you put your time and energy?  It really doesn’t make any difference what your significant issue is as we need folks engaging all of them. Is it around discrimination of a human identity characteristic such as sexual orientation? Is it around common welfare of a labor matter such as a living wage? Is it focused on the environment and monopolized abundance? Is it around a matter for a next generation or a current one? Is it related to spirit and health? Whatever matter you have been gifted with to constructively engage, do it with good prophetic energy. When you are engaged in your arena and others are engaged in theirs, blessings will flow in quite wonderful and unexpected ways. In one way and another the impossibles of being past child-bearing time and even death will find a surprising resolution of birth and rebirth. If there is no significant issue, you have taken your eye off the importance of now and substituted some pie in the sky, by and by.

So be on your way. Do not give heaven or jail a second thought. Do not collect $200. Simply be on your way with your gifts to the part of the common good that is a gift to you. When these gifts join, amazing life burgeons from generation to generation.

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

Lent 2 - Year C 

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18

Visions come in two basic varieties: illusion and illumination. Visions can hide or reveal. It is never easy to know which you are dealing with.

Abram’s vision sets in motion several fateful ripples.

First is assurance that we are of consequence, there is more to come. Here it is a biologic offspring (Ishmael? Isaac? Unnumbered descendants?) To trust this understanding of more to come than can yet be counted on is a significant decision. It merits being reckoned with.

Second, in the missing section, Abram’s life of moving away from circumstance and on to journey anticipates a repetition of this rhythm of being called out and called to by those who follow in Abram’s train.

Third, this note from The Jewish Study Bible: 

“The ritual of cutting animals in half and passing between them is found both in the Bible and in Mesopotamia. The parallel in Jer. 34:17-22 makes it likely that the essence of the ritual is a self-curse: Those walking between the pieces will be like the dead animals if they violate the covenant. In the case at hand, remarkably, it is the Lord, symbolized by the “smoking oven” and “flaming torch” (15:17) who invokes the self-curse, and nothing is said about any covenantal obligations that Abram is to fulfill. This type of covenant is called a covenant of grant, which is a reward for past loyalty, and does not involved any obligations upon the grantee. The same pattern is prominent in texts about the covenant with David (2 Sam. 7:8-16; Ps. 89:20-37).”

     This vision within a vision is an example of prevenient grace. It is a solemn promise of presence no matter how dark it becomes. The very darkness, like a previous rainbow, is a sign that “all shall be well, all manner of things shall be well”. A hazelnut’s hard wall will only hold back descendent upon descendent for a time. The future will entail a dropping away from originating circumstance to unknown bounces and burying to on-going generations. This is beyond any promise we make of participation in this process, it is a light in the dark illuminating something larger than our faith or trust (ready or not, like it or not, there is already a motion carrying us onward).

And so with Abram and Jesus, we, too, announce that, like yesterday — today, tomorrow, and the next day I am on my way onward. May your strewing of blessings be blessed.

Psalm 27

Lent 2 - Year C 

Psalm 27

Where does one turn for a source of comfort and safety when external or internal threats arise? The Psalmist finds their confidence in a context of beauty and inquiry (v. 4).

These gifts of seeking beyond and beneath the surface for context and process lifts a weary or tortured head. Ongoing inquiry and instances of beauty set an openness to actually hear a response to a plea for perspective and plan to move forward.

To see ourselves as fundamentally beloved takes more than being a reflection of who others see us to be (too often as a slave or extension of them). With beauty and inquiry we find our own will and way. Even in the face of violence we can see the goodness of what we mean by “G*D” and our own participation in a larger creation.

We hear of “waiting for the Lord” through “strength” and “courage” (v 14). There is not more strength needed for nor received from an engagement with “beauty” and “inquiry”. Likewise, courage is not found in pulled bootstraps, but in simply following a crack of hope revealed by “inquiry” and “beauty” still present in an oppressive setting. Waiting is not passivity, but active openness to inquiry beyond our certainty or other-definition of self and appreciation of moments or extended experiences of beauty emerging from beneath fear, like grass growing through cement.

Luke 13:31-35

Lent 2 - Year C 

Luke 13:31-35

Dire warnings are all around. Rebecca Ann Parker in her book, “Blessing the World: What Can Save Us Now”, reminds us there are two ways of looking at disaster through an apocalypse lens.

1) We can anticipate an apocalypse and become passive or simply await its arrival to set things straight. 2) We can claim an apocalypse has already occurred and our work is to redeem the current time.

While we usually find ourselves somewhere between a glass more than half empty (anticipating an apocalypse to fill the remainder?) and a glass more than half full (working to remove the rubble and establish community yet available to share the little we have with those who have less?), the addition of perspective on apocalyptic matters does add value to our interpretation of what the next needed thing might or might not be for us.

Jesus is speaking here post-apocryphally – he continues, not in fear of what is to come but in blessing-mode on what has already happened. You can hear the passion for setting things right after they have gone terribly wrong (and aren’t we living in a time when we can say things have gone terribly wrong!). If there is not weeping as we rehearse Jesus’ words about Jerusalem, about our place of living, we have not read them well. This is not a time for a monotone reciting of holy words. Rather our pre-apocryphal resignation or engagement with a post-apocryphal setting will be revealed through the reading of and response to these words: “This place, here, now, arrived at by ignoring/killing prophets and dismissing/stoning those who would bind up wounds! I offer consolation and consolidation as a hen gathers her brood under her wings even as I am isolated/exiled. Yet I proceed in hope that a time will come when you experience a need for blessing to go forward and will remember it is in blessing I have been among you.”

Hopefully we will someday take this symbol of a protective hen 

undergirds us and is more powerfully motivating than a cross.

In so doing we will reveal our orientation at the side of G*D mopping up willful and involuntary messes.

 - - - - - - -

Video bonus of Dominus Flevit

Last Temptation

Lent 1 - Year C 

Luke 4:1-13

having graduated from

a last temptation

after great exercise of wisdom

through ages of learning 

and clarifying of purpose

this framed certificate

is not holding well

qualified to deal with

a last temptation

means exactly that

while it appears

excruciatingly clear

that a last temptation

is not a present temptation

some similarities can be found

a last temptation

is not entirely unique

but the emotional tug

between past and present

seems always weighted

to today’s temptation

a stoney loaf for dessert

a last temptation

was just a set up

to move from power over

to simply implicit power

with no time between

to rebalance awareness

at the time

a last temptation

seemed a big thing

its overcoming

worth stars in a crown

an angel delivered meal

and so much more

for now

a last temptation

is simply that

if anything it relaxes

attention

opening a way for

seven more to enter

successful defense of

a last temptation

opens more fronts

far from expected attack

not even dread came close

to anticipate vulnerabilities

untested

while grateful for

a last temptation

against which to hone

policies and procedures

it is not at all predictive

of unintended consequences

or unrecognized fault lines

so here we stand

a last temptation

passed and past

and proud

only to be schooled

again

and again

a never-ending story

of last temptations

for no reason

for quid pro quo

for proof of G*D

for ever and on

is our opportunity

treading wilderness

a first blessing

shows belovedness

connected with creation

shared in community

anticipated through compassion

regardless of any next temptation

Romans 10:8b-13

Lent 1 - Year C 

Romans 10:8b-13

Three key phrases to attend to:

word of faith

confess with your lips

believe

Word of faith - an external eternal.

Confess with your lips - offer assent for assurance.

Believe - trust there is no advantage to be gained and all are equal before G*D

Our words of faith are incompatible with their words of faith. Battle lines are drawn and friendships quartered over the difference of one little word. So was Eastern Christianity divided from Western and is every schism justified.

Confession with our lips tempts us claim form takes precedence over function. These are never order-able, but always interactive. Here is the beginning of hypocrisy that cannot see itself.

Believing is action based on trust in a wholeness between intention and implementation. To do anything other than both is to deny our earthly and earthy dustiness as well as our heavenly image dwelling within and through us.

Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

Lent 1 - Year C

Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

Note the elisions, this is where temptation goes on.

We say we trust G*D, but we are really expecting that our praise will have an excellent return, just as major contributors to political campaigns expect consideration of their needs. Our trust is to pay off in deliverance, protection, fear reduction, and avoidance of punishment.

See, “Because” we trust, no evil shall befall us. We have G*D’s word on this, “Those who love me (at least flatter me), I will deliver....”

This is an early-in-Lent opportunity to reflect on both our motives and our willingness to fudge our values for an additional perk. Blessings on a clear-eyed evaluation of your relationship with G*D, Self, and Neighb*r.

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Lent 1 - Year C

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Why institute a ritual if not for the temptation to forget.

If ritual were simply something to do for its own sake, life would be rather mechanical. Ritual bridges a positive past experience with its doppelgänger temptation. Ritual is also a bridge to a future by carrying a bit of wisdom from the past along.

Here the ritual is sharing the first fruits of our living in a newly conquered land. It deals with the temptation to forget our history of enslavement. To forget is to set the stage for repetition of history, a falling back into slavery. Remembering we were slaves brings the possibility of continually evaluating our freedom.

Unfortunately ritual is rather narrowly focused. How might the israelites have ritualized their displacing people to make room for them and engage in restitution for themselves and others? Some of it is done with rules about gleaning at the end of a harvest, leaving some for the former owners of the land. But a gleaning rule doesn’t carry the same energy and power as this ritual of first-fruits.

To only remember our own displacement and return without remembering who we have displaced and wants to return, is a set-up for losing a significant grounding and a need for prophets to arise and remind everyone that injustice begun with such as small thing as forgetting all the displaced now threatens to bring a drought that will reduce the first-fruits to the point of famine and another journey to a proverbial Egypt. Forgetting not only dries us up, it dries up the very land.
 

Luke 4:1-13

Lent 1 - Year C

Luke 4:1-13

Guarantee: Get Spirit: Get Tempted.

If there is one thing that the Spirit of Life is not, it is not a guarantee of anything. It blows where it will and in its wake come all the Pandoran temptations to turn from life to death. Somehow or other Spirit, in all its ecstasy, leaves hope behind.

Without hope still remaining, Spirit feels like an answer to prayer and arrives with great transformative power. Imagine the Transfiguration scene from last week and everything works out well — Jesus floats away. Rather death was an intimate part of that event, including the conversation with Moses and Elijah and Jesus’ announcement on the way down the mountain and more?
 
The spirit comes, belovedness arrives and is tempted away from being a grounded self to an elevated sense of self. Why not turn stones to bread or the other way around? Why not use this new charisma to develop a political following? Why not test the boundaries of miracle?

Do note that the temptations will continue to follow any who dare pay attention to the spiritual part of their life. So rejoice in the temptations and learn from them. This removes their power from them and transfers it to you. There is another temptation on its way, are you ready to rejoice and learn? If not, what is Lent for?

Snippets from Luke 9:23-48

Epiphany - Last/Transfiguration - Year C

Snippets from Luke 9:23-48

attempts to save
that which is not lost
fires imagination
tires attention

the presence and practice
of wisdom personified
opens to disclose
while we doze

when attentive
at altitude or dead sea level
life is aglow
future flows

especially the past
pushes us onward
breath by breath
beyond death

until we shine
and affirm dying
scaring brothers
affronting others

there is no time to wait
buildings schmildings
too many unloved
need to be-loved

demons within
powers without
confront
affront

a strong word
and gentle hand
steel us to heal
every raw deal

in battles for greatness
a child’s potential
is welcomed
and becomes
 

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2

Epiphany - Last/Transfiguration - Year C

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2

Paul was not a biblical literalist. There is no report in scripture of Moses' sense of the presence of G*D having dimmed or failed. He was strong enough to complain and ended his days full of vitality. To move from a reference that Moses wore a veil to cover glory to Moses not wearing a veil mistakes and limits the presence of G*D to a moment of ecstasy.

Glory, like gifts, is revealed in different way to different people and at different stages of their life journey. To start measuring the amount and style of glory among us is a battle that, at best, ends up being lose-lose.

G*D is large enough to not require all having the same gift or the same amount/expression of glory, either in the present or at some future time.

We can still have heart, whether we revel in or dismiss Moses. The refusal to admit to cunning is a very cunning thing to do and we all fall short of self-revelation to others. Let's get off this either/or approach to various components of everyday life. An extension of being both saint and sinner is that we are have a whole range of glory from prevenient grace to lived wholeness. Lift up your heart and lift up your Neighb*r's heart — we are in this together.
 

Psalm 99

Epiphany - Last/Transfiguration - Year C

Psalm 99

Changing media changes meaning.

The media of direct experience rumbles and quakes with no advance warning. This primal uncertainty affects our communal relationships. When powerful people rumble and quake we connect the two experiences into prose and poetry in ways that keep us off-balance.

In trying to enlist power to our side, we set up rules about what will placate an earthquake, what will satisfy a king, and what will domesticate a G*D.

Earthquakes still remain beyond us. Kings, over time, die and/or are overthrown. G*Ds become pets we can bring out to scare other people even as we are comforted.

We find ourselves watching out for G*D, not engaging. We know that enough of us together can deal with a king. We have enough experience to know where earthquakes will most likely happen and choose to be elsewhere or build more securely.

The earth quakes and, in our mind's eye, heaven becomes more stable and reliable. We move from shaky ground to a ground of all being, never recognizing how the physical has become the metaphoric and in turn a story becomes a constraint.

Exodus 34:29-35

Epiphany - Last/Transfiguration - Year C

Exodus 34:29-35

To be connected with G*D is to be raised to the heights.
To be connected with G*D is to enter the depths.

We beckon each other, entreat each other, to reveal our best to each other.
We move on to testify and reveal our best to others.
We return to vision and to again go forth.

This rhythm enlightens and energizes all of creation.
This rhythm engages our hopes and fears.

We reveal and are revealed.
We veil and stand naked.
We alternate until we can't tell the difference

Connected with G*D our fear of what is possible is palpable.
Connected with Neighb*r our hope of covenant is constant.

Luke 9:28-36, (37-43)

Epiphany - Last/Transfiguration - Year C

Luke 9:28-36, (37-43)

Those who want to save their life will lose it.
Those who want to save the church will lose it.

These parallel paradigms inform one another regarding the universal found in every particular and the unique in the midst of larger pictures.

When we lose one of these perspectives, we lose both.

In both cases we are caught by any number of temptations to attempt to control an uncontrollable urge of creation or to demystify the mystery of life and relationship. The result of narrowing self or church down to what we can understand or construct to force understanding is stasis or death.

This is the context from 8 days ago. Play with 7 "days" and take away 8. We are back in chaos. Any usual definition of saving will lead us back to a darkness over the deep.

What then will move us on to participating in the ride of our lives, both individual and corporate? Transfiguration. New life. Remembering, "You are beloved" or "We are beloved", leads us back down whatever mountain of remove we have clambered up to get an over-view. To "lose" our temptation to save the unsavable we return from our isolating perch to the rough and tumble of relationship. There are only additional encounters with the brokenness of life to engage in. Parents are disconnected from children, generation from generation, and self from self. In the midst of the discontinuities of life we invite brokenness of every stripe into our experience of belovedness.

All our usual tricks of superstition to shape an outcome - rally hats, deep thoughts, self-abnegation, political power - fall short. It will take a return to the expectation of the unexpected. In this case Jesus calls it "prayer", but we are talking about a water to wine experience, magi to a baby, dignity to the forefront.

The humility of silence is antidote to an aggrandized sense of saving self and meaning. This opens us to extend the reading to "greatness" being that of welcoming potential, welcoming a child, welcoming a return to an 8th day as prelude to another 7 days and 70x70 days.

Transfiguration sees its own loss [vss. 43b-45] and goes ahead anyway. This is its validation, its shift from caution (saving from) to courage (investing in).

Friends, it is time to remember our belovedness in the gift of silence and to return to the noise of life and its potential. Onward.

refugee's refuge

Epiphany 4 - Year C

a prophet’s first work

is a revelation to self

primal distress abounds

attention must be paid

who am I - beloved - really

what is my authority - clarity - really

so many unresolvable doubts

so many predicable fears

identity is refuge

always available in a moment

have identity

will travel

prophets do not reveal G*D

already closer than breath

prophets do reveal distance

from intention to consequence

we hurt the ones we love

when in them we see our captivity

prophets only do their best

to work themselves out of a job

their responsibility is great

even though they cannot be responsible

simply being there and here

their reflective nature is easily dismissed

patiently they give themselves away

insistently they endure hope

all for a moment of insight

put into motion from then on

oh, I have been a child

it is time to be accountable

face to face reveals

the distance we have come

face to face reveals

the distance yet to go

face to face reveals

belovedness clearly

face to face

refugees heal

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Epiphany 4 - Year C

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

Left over from yesterday's comment: Even as I think of refuge as a location of safety it’s origin is as an action - a fleeing, as in fugitive. There used to be cities of refuge, but the real trick was an ability to arrive at them. Once there the possibility of being made new was a possibility. Without this newness the only expectation was that of imminent death, being wanted: dead or dead.

If you are interested in a song about refuge you might try this one from Abigail Washburn, the first of three songs on this tiny concert.

= = = = = = =

To the point today is a question of what stands behind every gift. Paul indicates that our renewal, our city of refuge, the journey of flight from being trapped by our gifts is found in a mystery of “love”. Charles Wesley later described G*D as, “thy nature and thy name is love”. In today’s commercialized world, love is a most transient and misused state of being. We love everything so much that the word becomes but a puff of breeze, a vanity.

Our very gifts cloud our vision. We see through them as a hammer can only see nails. And so the recognition of gifts not our own become lesser gifts. This, in turn, lessens our gift. A function of love, here, is to see through a larger lens how all gifts, all part of the body, play together. It is not that love stands head and shoulders above faith, hope, or a specific gift we have, but it becomes a ground against which present connections are revealed. This is not faith based on past experience or hope of years to come. This is simple connection with on-going creation as revealed in calling each part by name and that name be claimed - light, dark, earth, sea, creatures, clay. This is beyond desire (no gain), beyond force (patient), beyond advantage (kind), beyond success (truthful). When we finally flee the partial, we settle deep into an embrace where there is no I and Thou. And, black hole-like, we emerge as refugee love with new trust/faith and new expectation/hope.

Psalm 71:1-6

Epiphany 4 - Year C

Psalm 71:1-6

A place of refuge is a staging area for a revolution.

May your place of refuge be strong enough to encourage you to stroll out naked to revel in our common humanity beyond the control of any wicked, unjust, and cruel behavior encountered.

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Epiphany 4 - Year C

Jeremiah 1:4-10

Before you were born there was a community awaiting your gift to further connect us and push us beyond our current limits.

This reality keeps being blocked by a sense of an independence that can never allow interdependence to be recognized for fear that it will limit us (scarcity model - there is too little of me to go around) rather than expand us (abundance model - I am more when you are more and vice versa). So we self-censor lest we recognize our need of others.

This is not the least of it, however. We are also so quick to jump on the bandwagon of blame. We will censor unto death those who remind us of the interrelatedness of life and love.

While it doesn’t help to have an irrational sense of overweening power over nations and kingdoms, we can remind one another of the long-term benefit or harm of our current responses to that which happens. Be not afraid to speak of interconnectedness. Don’t claim you are just one. You are one part of a very large body turning toward the morning, no matter how slowly or jerkily, and your vision and voice do make a difference in how well we turn.

Luke 4:21-30

Epiphany 4 - Year C

Luke 4:21-30

—> Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Well, who asked scripture to have a bearing  on life? If this is what we are being called to do, we are not willing to engage. We would be willing to pay for you to share with us gracious words that apply to those who are not present. We are not willing to have ourselves revealed to ourselves. As a result, after due consideration, it is apparent that the only appropriate response available to us is that of rage. So let us help you to the edge of town where you might accidentally be jostled over the platform edge and onto the third-rail of rocks below.

Such a technocratic response has and continues to go on. Self-justified rage and rational final-solutions are happening everyday. This emphasis upon advantage weakens our common bond, day-by-day, until there is nothing left but butter at the base of a tree.

—> Today your hearing fills scripture anew.

An alternative to dragging the past into the present and projecting it into the future as ordained for all time, is to listen again without the ears of accumulated prejudice. If we were to hear that prophets, categorically, are not accepted, we might begin to listen beyond the status quo. Prophets are by their nature of the people they wrestle with. And, even though of the people, stand beyond them as their vision is of a yet-hidden door or crack in a wall that is unguarded by the principalities that have risen to power. With this vision a choice needs to be made about willfully sitting in our own mess or moving on.

If you are interested in pondering this further it might be asked what will cut the Gordian knot found in Kafka’s Door of the Law or what kinetic force holds together the light and the dark, the being touched by the world or the touching of it. Both of these videos are too long for such a condensed blog as this, but so it is today.

scroll

Epiphany 3 - Year C

unroll your spiritual heritage

back and back

and back some more

track back to your grounding

so far back that past

is connected with now

this is a deep source

of good news

for one and all

particularly good news

for all as it ends

the privilege of one

in refinding this gem

we refine our family tree

and mine further ago

older and older gifts

come out like a sun from night

yawn and stretch and glow

until dominion nurtures

a whole body

gifted and giving

flowing out from the deepest well

swells suffering joined

and rejoicing honored

a body of G*D

aEdVaEm intertwined

leading back to G*D

indispensable hearing

eat and drink well

send portions to the poor

this ancient word

so easily ignored

endures - scroll on

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

Epiphany 3 - Year C

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

Some like to talk about “Christ” as a focus of unity. All the various gifts come together in baptism in Jesus’ name. There is no casting out one gift, one human identity. All are one in Christ. Other traditions name other organizational models of unity. 

Wherever one falls on the hierarchy of apostles to tongue talkers, followers of a unity based on “Christ” follow one who claimed an even older vision as his job description. So, religious conservatives and liberals and nones, as wonderful as your speculations might be, how are you doing with the poor. Talking about them or living among and as a poor person does? What excuses of working “for” them from a distance are you using? How are you doing with those who are captive in any number of ways from political exiles to the drug addicted to those bound by their culture to those whose brains are wired differently than most to __________? How are you doing with other engagements with the realities of class differences and other ways we divide people out of community?

Regardless of theology, how do the hungry and thirsty fare when you are around? If they are no better off, “Christ” is not your unity. Is this or is this not the year to actually make a move toward activating a gift of greater connection to undergird and organize your specific set of gifts (yes, your entire constellation of gifts, not just a biggie of a limited list). This scripture passage is not for diagnostic purposes but a call to action. If you take a spiritual gifts inventory and identify your key gift, but have not joined it with the gifts of others for the common good of all, you are a prideful gong tooting your own horn and not caring a whit about mixed metaphors much less continuing a creation of community.

Psalm 19

Epiphany 3 - Year C

Psalm 19

Listening to the Universe (“Lord”, if you like) clarifies how short-run desires have long-term disasters associated with them. While doing one’s best to take a long-view does not assure good short-term decisions, it usually has a beneficial effect.

There are better outcomes by looking long, both fore and aft, and thus better results or “reward”s. Even so, unbidden and unseen errors creep in (some from looking long through short-lens glasses and some from focusing so long we miss an opportunity long prepared for or an opening in anticipation of a next step or two). And so the words of our mouth and meditations of our heart could use a liturgy to raise our consciousness and conscience.

Try this daily for the rest of Epiphany and see what light dawns.

A spirit of life is within me:

     Keep me from stupidly forgetting

grounding good news in reality

     Keep me from stupidly forgetting

being present with the poor

     Keep me from stupidly forgetting

keeping solidarity with captives

     Keep me from stupidly forgetting

removing blindfolds

     Keep me from stupidly forgetting

revealing discrimination

      Keep me from stupidly forgetting

naming belovedness everywhere

     Keep me from stupidly forgetting

sowing and nurturing gifts

     Keep me from stupidly forgetting

today in anticipation of tomorrow

     Keep me from stupidly forgetting

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

Epiphany 3 - Year C

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

We can get very ritualistic about special days. Yesterday was both an American presidential  inauguration public ceremony and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Back much further was Ezra/Nehemiah Day.What is not so easily kept in mind are the movie credits that scroll after people leave the theater. We get what we came for and presume we are entitled to all the work of so many to provide it. So we are entertained and leave. You might want to try staying all the way through the credits as a spiritual discipline of thanksgiving through a witnessing of names.

The elided verses in today’s reading remind us of the mundane (someone built the presentation platform) and the sublime (there were interpreters, translators, to help folks understand what was in that strange and wonderful book of yore). Carpenters and linguists, what a combo, each played their part.

Imagine a movie is being made of your congregation, your community, where would you show up in the credits? This may be where the enduring strength of religion lies, each person doing their part with their gift. Religion begins to slip when the credits are shortened to the pastor and/or board. A community begins to falter when the mayor and/or council becomes director and no one else need be mentioned. In yesterday’s inauguration, President Obama had a couple of refrains. One refrain pertinent to this passage (particularly verses 4 and 7) is “We . . . the people.” The conclusion of that speech points to the work needed to hear an ancient book in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah:

     My oath is not so different from the pledge we all make to the flag that waves above and that fills our hearts with pride. They are the words of citizens, and they represent our greatest hope. You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course. You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time, not only with the votes we cast, but the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideas.
     Let us each of us now embrace with solemn duty, and awesome joy, what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.

Without verses 4 and 7 we lose touch with the power to do more than have a book or founding document become rote after generations. In Epiphany we are called to bring our gifts to a party organized for action. Toss your gifts into the common pot and see how they are strengthened and how they strengthen.

Luke 4:14-21

Epiphany 3 - Year C

Luke 4:14-21

If we just followed the lectionary it would be easy to mistake the setting here to be that of following a wedding in Cana with new wine. Rather this pericope follows a temptation scene in the wilderness.

This is not a significant difference as everything is connected to everything, but it might be asked if it makes a difference if one’s authority is based on a sign such as turning water to wine or a sign of not turning stones to bread? If there is not much difference then Mary can be seen as every bit a tempter at Cana. It is probably good practice to ask where a temptation is sneaking into every situation. This doesn’t mean we will be up to resistance (re: Satan) or compliance (re: Mary). But asking does increase the odds of recognizing a temptation and deciding to follow or not.

Regarding the affirmation Isaiah and Jesus and You and I can make about where we are headed — this often comes after a time of clarifying what we are not going to go. A culling of a variety of powers and privileges lends authority to our organizing principles.

It is instructive to consider what is tempting you from engaging with poor (presence is good news) or those captivated or blinded by one idol or another. It is likewise helpful to add advocacy to presence to move proclamation to action so symbolic oppressed might actually be freedom and the favor of belovedness might be experienced. Odds are our blockage is either accommodation to cultural norms or the fear of losing something felt to be an entitlement (place/class/etc.).

May your job description shine brightly and be a gift where you are.

A Tribute

Epiphany 2 - Year C

just when you think

folks have been recruited

plans have been laid

there’s another call

we are invited 

to step outside

our expectations

to detour

the expectations

of others loom large

and we choose

mutual concern or no

o - we might dither

look for more information

but ultimately

we choose

to choose a detour

and then to deepen it

can feel like a betrayal

of recruits and plans

to choose a detour

and then to deepen it

can open a shortcut

confirming recruits and plans

and so we choose

to make Thunderbird

or Yarden Cabernet Sauvignon

and are defined

water to wine

magician work

good wine

moves us on

so many calls

so many gifts

alloted activated

for common use

let us pause in life’s pleasures

raise a glass of good wine

sup sorrow with the poor

and bid hard times go

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?