already

Year A - Epiphany Last or Mountain Top to Valley

March 2, 2014

already

this week

we are all

do and don’t

our core

is riven

to the core

odds are

tomorrow

repeats today

and yet

sometime hence

breakthrough

clouds break

to reveal

a sun

clouds reveal

our name

beloved

we rise

committed

treasuring

light

bone-deep

secure

we go

to act

in silence

unseen

pleased

pleasing

who knew

we do

enough

2 Peter 1:16-21

Year A - Epiphany Last or Mountain Top to Valley

March 2, 2014

2 Peter 1:16-21

Ahh, yes, my Majestic Glory trumps your minuscule myth. You will do well to attend to my Shining Light so you will eventually understand your interpretation is so puny and partial.

Wonderful way to make friends and influence people: might makes right.

Where did this start? Transfiguration?

For folks who were raised to not fear and hold a vision until is is ripe, we easily turn into know-it-all bullies claiming G*D is only on our side (a most interesting dismissal of a Holy Spirit sent to challenge our convictions).

Would that Peter’s mind was a bit more cloudy.

Psalm 2 or Psalm 99

Year A - Epiphany Last or Mountain Top to Valley

March 2, 2014

Psalm 2 or Psalm 99

2:1 - Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain?

99:1 - The LORD is king; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!

There it is — the great duality that immobilizes. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, a devil and a deep blue sea, we are frozen in place.

Plot or Tremble, its all the same. The only alternative is serving or extolling the most powerful avenger and quickest to wrath.

Exodus 24:12-18

Year A - Epiphany Last or Mountain Top to Valley

March 2, 2014

Exodus 24:12-18

This is a cloudy passage.

1) Moses ascends mountain and cloud covers mountain for six days

2) G*D speaks to Moses from cloud on the seventh day

3) Moses entered cloud and ascends mountain

4) Moses was on Cloud Mountain for forty days

Here we have a mysterium tremendum et fascinosum all jumbled together. A cloudy ascension occurs both before and after a “Seventh” day and is included in some “Forty” day package. Mythic stuff, through and through.

Having a cloudy life might be one way we describe a dark portion of our time; a dark night of the soul, so to speak.

This very same cloudiness is also a locus for insight, direction-setting, and vision-questing.

Trying to put all this into words fails us, time after time.

Immediately after this numinous affair we have the building of a portable Cloudy Mountain. Sometimes this Ark of Covenant is understood as Jesus, a new Law-Maker. On a Mount of Transfiguration folks make much of a Jesus shining rather than the cloud speaking. Working in images is always interesting. Do you try to hold Moses and Jesus together or not? If so, why? If not, what do you do with the six days and seven, the mountain and cloud, the law and prophets?

Matthew 17:1-9

Year A - Epiphany Last or Mountain Top to Valley

March 2, 2014

Matthew 17:1-9

We are never by ourselves alone. This story starts with a sense of isolation.

Then: in the thin place of thin air a moment of deeper vision arises.

Often we think this is a matter of Jesus changing, when it is a time when Peter, James, and John catch something they were not able to do 6 days earlier. Earlier Peter scolds Jesus for dealing with a reality beyond Peter’s vision.

Now they see in another way. Transpose verses 2 and 3. Peter, James, and John caught a picture of Jesus connected with the past/future and not just in the moment that is so fragile and such a temptation to protect. This appearance of Moses and Elijah transfigures their vision of Jesus.

Such an experience, though, doesn’t remove our desire to maintain a breakthrough moment by institutionalizing it. However, it does make it possible not to get stuck there. Even as buildings are proposed to be raised they are about to be razed with a word that transforms—Beloved.

Imagine for a moment that this inclusive word does not separate Jesus from Moses and Elijah but connects Peter, James, and John with Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. Read “my Son” (sic) as “my Creation” that includes you.

Given our usual separation, dissection, and analyzing, this unitive moment is overwhelming and folks fall over.

“Get up. Forward.”

And when we look again we see another, yes, but cannot forget that they contain their past as well as the seed of who they will become. We see them and more than them.

This is not a tale that can be told without privileging oneself, but it can be remembered. Later, at an auspicious time, we can tell of this time and one more layer of connectivity will surface.

Remember your moment(s) of inclusive connection, of transformation. Apply what you remember to the dynamics of this passage. When the time is right—share.

1 Corinthians 3:1-11, 16-23

Year A - Epiphany 7 or Guiding Gift ⁷

February 23, 2014

1 Corinthians 3:1-11, 16-23

Jesus says, “But I say to you . . . .”

Paul says, “Don’t you know that . . . .”

The import is similar; there’s a change coming. The locus of authority is different.

It would have been interesting sit in on the discussion of why the elision of verses 12-15. In these verses everyone is responsible for their own consequences. Decisions, choices, actions can build on the givens differently. Folks will have to work out whether those are determinative of outcome.

If the outcome is some “worth” of outcome, everyone would seem to be in trouble. If the outcome is based on an hospitable, generous, merciful G*D (one step beyond a Christ), then even those temporarily or periodically on the outs are now and forever welcomed in.

This is worth a wrestle. While doing so you may find yourself pondering verses 22b-23.

But I say to you and don’t you know that there is danger in neat little analogs. They usually extend too far or stop too short. How do you read: all belongs to you —> you belong to Christ —> Christ belongs to G*D —> ??G*D belongs to “all”. It is intended to be this circular? Is this one step too far? Is it still far too short?

Psalm 119:33-40

Year A - Epiphany 7 or Guiding Gift ⁷

February 23, 2014

Psalm 119:33-40

If we want to pretend that the Psalms are only about personal piety then it will be helpful to have a sense that the statutes being talked about here are communal actions. Even when we try to escape being complicit in the current status of the common good by appealing to personal responsibility, the corporate and inter-connected realities of life will not be silent.

Remembering that there is no uniquely singular part of life, we reflexively read every singular reference with a plural cast.

This is particularly true with verse 37: “Turn my eyes away from looking at vanities; give me life in your ways.” [NRSV] Left alone our eye moves from vanity to vanity, finally noting that all is vanity. Joined with one another, creation and G*D we find a way to a tree of life—mutually.

When talking of the law, it is never just about my escaping judgment. It is always a communal context. The earlier we can catch this the easier life becomes.

Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18

Year A - Epiphany 7 or Guiding Gift ⁷

February 23, 2014

Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-18

And the connection between “wholeness” (perfection) and “holiness” is what?

Again note how this wholly holy is connected to the common good.

Leviticus is very much a tribal book that lays out the boundaries of this particular tribe. It will be necessary to continue pressing our tribal nature to expand past our self-imposed limits of care. What does it mean to not demean anyone into a position where it is alright to steal from them or for them to steal to live? What does it mean to not slander another tribe in toto or in part (think here of Native Mascots)? What does it mean to not take vengeance upon an enemy or a tribal neighbor?

This is not just an individual morality, this is deep work of nurturing seeds found in a ground of all being that they might be for themselves, others, and next generations.

Here is holiness—love your neighbor as yourself.

Matthew 5:38-48

Year A - Epiphany 7 or Guiding Gift ⁷

February 23, 2014

Matthew 5:38-48

You have heard a lot of things. I have heard a lot of things. Together we have heard much. For the most part we hear what our culture tells us. This is the water we swim in and we are receptive to its norms of what can be heard and said. That which is outside our culture base has a difficult time being recognized.

So we are thankful for travel. It exposes us to additional realities that begin to whisper about the strength and limits of what we know. We are thankful for people who disclose(t) what they are experiencing so they are less a projection of our own valuing or dismissing of them. We are thankful for teachers who lead us to simply listen before we react.

It is in this vein that Jesus is our travel guide, our scout into lives beyond our own (the universal ally), a teacher raising questions about the connection between our feelings and thinkings.

It is in this vein that congregations are to assist all the gifts present to be honored and enacted as well as be open for additional gifts they don’t yet know how to identify or know they need. If the common good is to grow more common it needs everyone to be a leader, to use their gift(s).

It will be important at this point to note that the word translated as “perfect” in verse 48 comes in both plural and singular fashions. When referring to an injunction to you to be perfect, it is plural. You are to do this “perfection” in union with others. When the body has assisted each part to be as whole and mature as possible, then we get to the singular “perfect” that describes G*D. This perfection is not some ideal, but a communal connexion that is deep and wide and ready to be more of both.

A key to the communal nature of the command to be “perfect” or “complete” is found in the other use of this word in Matthew, 19:21: Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. [KJB] (of course we will have to debunk “heaven” as being elsewhere). Until the common good is the background for our living, we are not maturing.

This same lesson can be learned just by listening to these various examples from another land; the land where G*D’s journey to wholeness (“heaven”, if you will) parallels our own and vice versa.

Deuteronomy 30:15-20 & Sirach+15:15-20

Year A - Epiphany 6 or Guiding Gift ⁶

February 16, 2014

Deuteronomy 30:15-20 and Sirach 15:15-20

Deuteronomy 30:15—See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.

Sirach 15:15—If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice.

Deuteronomy 30:19b—Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.

This seems so simple, so linear. In reality it is difficult to see choices as we are so constrained by our culture and experiences. There is so much outside our attention that we seldom come to a clear choice.

Even when we hear, “But I say to you . . .”, which clarifies that there is now a choice to be made, our go-to position seems to be, “I’ve never done it that way before” (which means I don’t see the choice you are claiming is present).

If it is a matter of life or death, how do teach each other and continue learning about the reality around and about that pushes us through a current understanding to an expanded vision? Until we realize we are our own worst enemy when it comes to choosing, we won’t put in place those processes whereby we keep open to a new option that deepens our own spirit and draws us closer together.

Blessings on having the eyes of a Magi to see a new star and choose to follow.

Matthew 5:21-37

Year A - Epiphany 6 or Guiding Gift ⁶

February 16, 2014

Matthew 5:21-37

“But I say to you . . . .” are words of great relief.

We know the human propensity to tangle itself up with accreted rules and regulations. These are like a lid on a pressure cooker with a clogged vent pipe. Eventually there will be an explosion.

It turns out that these five words are not license for taking all limits off behavior or even constraining such further (don’t forget this formula can make things even more difficult—moving from overt murder to implicit murder through gossip). These words are an antidote to violent revolution.

To hear “But I say to you . . . .” is to be able to reflect on our current state-of-affairs, how we got to the current impasse, and back off enough to reconsider where the common good comes into play again with all we have learned since the introduction of particular creedal controls.

An obvious next step is to move this from the realm of external authority, “Jesus says . . . .” to participatory prophecy, “I say our rules are causing us self-harm. It is time to look at our relationships again in light of what it means to be created in G*D’s image, singular and plural.”

Without this phrase we serially recognize how much we have bought into what J. B. Phillips once described as Your God Is Too Small.

“But I say to you . . . .” is relief; it gives more elbow room.

Isaiah 58:1-9a, (9b-12)

Year A - Epiphany 5 or Guiding Gift ⁵

February 9, 2014

Isaiah 58:1-9a, (9b-12)

Live your reality, don’t hold back. We need many analyses of our situation. Easy answers and deeper responses help one another clarify where we are and are not.

If we are interested in participating in divining a movement beyond our current limits it is important to draw near to a creating, repenting and resurrecting G*D. This will let us be honest about the way in which we excuse our oppression of others because of our particular religious practices, theories, creeds. To use the fasting example as a stand in for any and all ritualistic responses to lived experience shows how in our fast from available food we can so easily begin to blame those without food for their hunger.

If fasting doesn’t sensitize us to another’s hunger so we will share our bread, our space, our time, then our analysis is only blame, not change.

Receive this blessing:

     May your light gently and gradually dawn

     and be received as healing 

Matthew 5:13-20

Year A - Epiphany 5 or Guiding Gift ⁵

February 9, 2014

Matthew 5:13-20

Prophets are salty and enlightening. Priests and Ordinary Folk also carry saltiness and enlightenment with them—it is just not as focused, public, and consistent. This is an import of verse 20 asking for exceeding care for creation and all its fiddly bits.

These edgy qualities need nurture for them to fulfill their potential in us. There are many traditional, cultural, and political boundaries to prophetic living and so it is important to have a continuing vision that salt and light are critical to the life of the world. It is all too easy to let this vision be worn away by the cares of the day.

Please don’t get hung up with the fundamental mistake that keeping rules keeps us safe. This is about attending to the gift given us to clearly look at the way we are doing business with one another and making those eternal adjustments that continue our connection with the good-doing that reveals present glory to and in all.

teaching how to teach

Year A - Epiphany 4 or Guiding Gift ⁴

February 2, 2014

teaching how to teach

We look around and look around

and look around again

how are we to judge that other person

what is our beginning supposition

can we see them as co-heirs

are they more poor than we see

can we understand them to be stregthened

by the losses they have experienced

can we see them as inheriting our fruits

and so we engage to mutually learn humility

can their lights be seen as bending toward justice

with a common goal to us but a different path to walk

can they possibly be as merciful as we are

or are they incapable of receiving forgiveness

can they gaze upon a clear view G*D

while we see the back of their head in our gaze

can they be a peacemaker with those

we cannot yet talk with or have given up on

can they really be persecuted

not just be a victim whiner

can we see them in steadfast light

our peer by whom we are judged

if so so be it

if not pity us

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

Year A - Epiphany 4 or Guiding Gift ⁴

February 2, 2014

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

The message about the cross — live your life as deeply and widely as you can and then que sera, sera — is foolish to those whose life-force is fading and are scared of suffering or fear itself, but to those who are interested in gathering more energy it is a joining with G*D and Neighbor in everday living.

From this starting point we are able to take another look at wisdom, good ol’ Sophia herself, “Grandmother” in many indigenous traditions. We won’t be fooled by scripture/reason or tradition/experience when we insist that all four are needed in addtion to the glue of humble/service.

Even if we get into the fancy language of wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, redemption, holiness, dikaiosyne, hagiasmos, apolytrosis, consecration, justification, ransom. purity, or whatever, we won’t be fooled by letting projected outcomes control our choice to be loving and merciful in the moment.

Blessings on being able to translate “cross” into “choice”.

Psalm 15

Year A - Epiphany 4 or Guiding Gift ⁴

February 2, 2014

Psalm 15

We continue to promote your use of Jim Taylor’s paraphrases of the Psalms. Here is his version of Psalm 15:

1   Your doors are always open, God; 

     You have no locks or fences.

2   Anyone can walk in --

     Anyone who does no harm to others, 

     who holds no grudges, 

     who rejects pretense and sham.

3   Your guests have no double standards;

     They will not double-cross a friend for their own gain, 

     nor sow dissension among their colleagues.

4   Yet they do not simply tolerate whatever comes; 

     They steer clear of evil causes. 

     They keep their word -- even at personal sacrifice.

5   They do not see money only as a means of making more; 

     They will not seek profit from the plight of the poor and helpless. 

     They are not fickle or changeable. 

     They will not do anything to cut themselves off from your company.

For paraphrases of most of the psalms used by the RCL, you can order Jim’s book Everyday Psalms from Wood Lake Publications, info@woodlake.com.

The question of who is “in” is a never-ending list. It is far more direct to ask, “Who won’t be welcome?” To this question there is an easy one-word response: Nobody.

A basic presumption here is that being made in the image of G*D means that everyone will eventually wrestle their way through the various dualistic choices set before them to choose that which is not split from itself — steadfast love with the rest of creation. To separate from others will be no more thinkable than chopping off your hand for a misdeed going back to one misapprehension or another. Body, mind, spirit, and relationships are all in this together and placing the blame on a hand for an intention’s error is both inappropriate and ineffective.

So see the blessing in others and accept the opportunities set before you.

Micah 6:1-8

Year A - Epiphany 4 or Guiding Gift ⁴

February 2, 2014

Micah 6:1-8

One way of approaching a public reading of the scriptures is to have them be read as part of a larger conversation. If we expect folks to make connections from disconnected readings we are not paying attention to the way folks work or learn.

Here it would be helpful to remind folks that contention is not an automatically bad thing. Too often we prefer “order” to “change” and turn any “differences” into “nice”.

So:

1) Note the tradition of G*D and creation being in contention. This means they are fruitfully engaged in figuring out their relationship and the future.

2) Now we can hear Prophet Micah set up the situation (Micah 6:1-7) and his summary of principles (Micah 6:8) upon which to engage a next stage of clarity (confrontation’s purpose).

3) Then we can hear Jesus say: Micah’s principles needs some additional flesh on them. Here are some applications of them regarding the way we look at others and see the blessing they carry with them (Matthew 5:1-10).

4) With Jesus, we need to hear that these blessings pose a danger as well. If we are going to take them seriously, they will put us athwart the political, economic, and moralities of the current time. (Matthew 5:11-12).

5) More than hearing is need. We need to return to Micah 6:1-2 and risk contending with one another and with G*D. This feedback loop of contentious setting, statement of principles, practical application, engaged risk, and a return to a review of the contention now — is important. Cutting it off at just hearing the principles or applications is to weaken and kill the dynamic of change in favor of stifling order.

Matthew 5:1-12

Year A - Epiphany 4 or Guiding Gift ⁴

February 2, 2014

Matthew 5:1-12

Large crowds followed Jesus for his teaching and healing. You can decide the proportion of followers. We suspect it was for the immediate healing, not the long-term life-changing teaching.

It is reported that Jesus saw them and went up a mountain. Was this a retreat to an attempted retreat? How far up did he go? The higher he went the fewer people would follow.

At some point Jesus sat down. We do not know how long he sat. Long enough for the stragglers to arrive? Long enough for an internal clarity?

Strange how Jesus refers to folks as “happy” those who most would characterize as troubled or unfortunate (CEB note).

Verses 1-10 are of a piece - pronouncement of happiness and a reason for such. Verses 11-12 is a different animal and is worth a deeper look as it shifts from the general “Happy are people...” to the specific “Happy are you...”.

People in the pews need to hear this distinction so they can see the blessing in those they might otherwise overlook and also hear their particular call to be prophets. In a sense a priest can only be a Priest if the people are being Prophets. These two functions can then inform one another. If the priest is trying to get others to be priests, the church ends up being an echo-chamber rejoicing on every street corner that it isn’t like those other miserable SOBs.

What, then, will the prophets do about the hopeless, grieving, walked upon, hungry and thirsty (ref Luke’s version here)? How will they see mercy, purity, and peace in others that may be even greater than their own?

Here is a test: Does Leviticus exercise you more than Matthew 5-7? If so you may be a church-gate-closer rather than a Sermon-on-the-Mount-door-opener.

we are left

Year A - Epiphany 3 or Guiding Gift³

January 26, 2014

     we are left

there is no covenant

made eternal in the heavens

that shapes our present or

revisions our past

only a steadfast love

through ages and stages

of current decisions

wrestled in time

season and locus

to have it else

requires a creedal response

imposed past its prime

a procrustean bed

to shape all comers

into what they are not now

nor ever will be

never denying a stoop of age

a straightened spine

to love what is

without selecting

parts from the past

hopes for a future

conversing consulting

conferencing contending

delving deep within

widening engagements

to love what is

before a conception

through gestation

facing a stillbirth

just because or because

in crowning or casket

now and ever now again

unexplainably hurtful

unexpectedly kind

we see through mercy

a mercy premeditated

bone deep and tender skinned

unlimited by experience

and finding such over and over

there is and is and is not

a limit by our worst

a possibility of our best

unconstrained by death

uncelebrated by resurrection

we covenant

to not covenant away

steadfast love

to engage to grow

past our past

beyond our future

a still small voice

gracious in welcome

gentle in parting

and so

ipso facto

alakazamaruski

we dare soften our gaze

both the inward and outward

to see again what we forgot before

our past brought us here but can't carry forward

our intentions await a decisional power of will and way

we are left with nothing to call upon than to live present love

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

Year A - Epiphany 3 or Guiding Gift³

January 26, 2014

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

“United in the same purpose” is a rallying cry of prophets attempting to blow open a rigidified religion and of priests attempting to narrow faith to rules. It is no little thing, though, to ask about the purpose of unity.

A call for “unity” usually comes with a threat of “schism”. Those two are used in tandem to keep everyone off-balance. If you want a contemporary view of how these rallying cries are used, purchase and read a just released book that is already sold-out at Amazon: Queer Clergy: A History of Gay and Lesbian Ministry in American Protestantism. You can also get an autographed copy directly from the author R. W. (Obie) Holmen. Here you will find documentation about how the “gatekeepers” of the church alternately use “Unity” and “Schism” as propaganda tools to perpetuate the power of the past against resurrectional sightings leading us past the past. My review of this book is found here.

Now, back to the text. Christ can’t help but be divided if Christ is to minister to all the different realities in people’s lives and the life of the world. It is exactly this variation that led to the crucifixion of Jesus. So many saw the way Jesus treated others differently than they would that he was a universal affront. There was no way to control the power of a steadfastly loving G*D than to deny it and the ultimate denial we have available to us is death.

Do you want the cross to have power? Constraining or liberating?

The power of the cross turns out to be no power. The power is not in a cross but in a life lived in response to lives. The power is in a process of becoming wholier than our present wholeness, or “being saved” (not once and always saved). Remember back to the Matthew passage for this day and the processes of “proclaiming” and “healing”.