Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Pentecost + 3 - Year A

Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Many of us have been attending or following the Wisconsin United Methodist Church trial of Rev. Amy DeLong this last week. It is good to have that completed so wonderfully well with the trial court bringing a restorative justice decision that so minimized a so-called "penalty" that it actually became an Opportunity. Rev. Amy has been asked to lead the conference where it has not been able to go on its own - to find unity in inclusiveness.

Up to this point, the Wisconsin Conference has been very narcissistic, just like "spoiled children whining" [The Message]. Everyone has gone their own way, picking one out of many streams of tradition that suits an individual's bias, and demanding it be the only legitimate way to interpret the future. This is like trying to drive forward by only looking in the rearview mirror. There is not going to be a pretty outcome.

Captive to ideology, both left and right, it becomes impossible to recognize the release of "power" ["dynamis" - inherent power, power residing in a thing by virtue of its nature, or which a person or thing exerts and puts forth]. Everyone has been captured by their own "Law". This is a continuation of Mt. 5:18, in the Common English Bible, that indicates Law functions "until everything there becomes a reality". In the meantime Law, whether yours or mine, blinds us to a reality already among us (the rapture has already happened, G*D's presence is already here - listen to Janet Wolf). When we take our eye off the miracle of reality, we are ripe for capture by one Law or another, masquerading as some end-all or be-all.

Here are two signs of health from the just concluded trial.

A trial court able to bring a restorative justice opportunity instead of a "penalty" and  A T-shirt graphic by Rev. Amy that doesn't demand she be you or you be she.

With these we can dance together rather than demand another dance for us by shooting at their feet.

be clear

Pentecost - Year A

be clear

your words are

revealing 

a deep heart’s core

varietal

gifts and skills

ministries

each building on each

vocation

comes and goes

common good

lingers sweetly

law

gathers fear in one place

grace

sends peace forth again

clarify

dreams and prophecy

reveal

torah’s reincarnation

1 Corinthians 12:3-13

Pentecost - Year A

1 Corinthians 12:3-13

To say “Jesus is Lord” without using that phrase “for the common good” is a misuse of the affirmation.

That same process needs to be in play when it comes to claiming a vocation. If you see “Jesus is Lord” standing behind the building of community, it also stands behind an individual’s participation in that community.

For a moment consider that every vocation has aspects to it regarding: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment, and interpretation. Every vocation can help build the common good and some folks will even say every vocation reveals that “Jesus is Lord” when that common good is actually built.

This is built on the understanding:

• Jesus is Lord comes from Holy Spirit.
• Common good comes from Holy Spirit.
• Activity/Vocation comes from Holy Spirit.
• This connects Jesus with communal common good and individual vocation as long as one understands and values Holy Spirit.
• Otherwise just go ahead and build the common good by attending to the virtues of your task.

Psalm 104:24-34, 35b

Pentecost - Year A

Psalm 104:24-34, 35b

If we are going to see G*D as reliably creative, we will soon find ourselves moved aside from partnership with G*D to someone who sits up and begs (v 28). We become dependent upon G*D to the exclusion of being able to stray from the orthodox, official, tradition claimed to be the guarantor of our next handout.

Thus we don’t mention sin and wickedness in verse 35a. We need to ban even half-a-verse that takes the focus off of verse 31 - “The glory of God—let it last forever! Let God enjoy his creation!” [The Message].

Where did these consumed sinners and wicked folks come from? The same place as Cain and Seth’s wives? The image of G*D from creation?

Pentecost is not about praise, praise, praise in a secluded room. It is about face-to-face encounters with that which is different and finding a common link between. A too happy Psalm puts more focus on tongues of fire and less on tongues of reconciliation.

Acts 2:1-21

Pentecost - Year A

Acts 2:1-21

Amazing how surprised we can get as we gather for one purpose and a Python comes out of the sea to collapsingly announce, “It’s” time for something completely different. Why were the disciples gathered? Not just to huddle together, but to honor the tradition of Pentecost, otherwise known as Shavu’ot (rejoicing not just in Passover/Exodus from Egypt, but the giving of Torah - not simply the narrow Books of Moses, but the entire body of Jewish teaching - that organizes a new community). Judaism 101 says: “It is noteworthy that the holiday is called the time of the giving of the Torah, rather than the time of the receiving of the Torah. The sages point out that we are constantly in the process of receiving the Torah, that we receive it every day, but it was first given at this time. Thus it is the giving, not the receiving, that makes this holiday significant.”

Gathered for honoring the giving of Torah (translating G*D-speak to human community organizing) there is a surprise that the theory of constantly receiving a given Torah involves such as ourselves. On this day of translation another giving begins to be received. A gift of languages (translating human experience to human experience) sets folks on growing another branch of a beautiful tree meant for the healing of the nations.

To hear Torah and more than Torah in one’s own language is a soul-stirring moment. It brings out the best in us to hear G*D’s mighty works of power - forgiveness, mercy, steadfast love. These contine to break new territory, to not be bound by the usual limits that separate us.

To hear Torah and more than Torah in one’s own language, can also scare the bejezus out of us and set up resistance to such weak elements when we have staked our lives on our own power, privilege, entitlement.

Between growing Torah and limiting it, we find the responses to this roomful of yeasty people who throw open closed doors to turn strangers into friends by giving themselves away - not insisting others learn their language, but starting with the language of the other.

Question: Is the given gift of Pentecost received into your life everyday? Which strange Neighbor or literal Enemy have you spoken with in their language that they may hear the power of forgiveness, mercy, steadfast love? It may draw you closer together or it may cause a greater rift. These outcomes, however, are not at issue. Our only question is whether we will receive and act on a waiting new gift or be satisfied with the old ones.

Pentecost/Shavu’ot, calls us to receive something already given - a latent translation, experience to experience, of a larger vision than simply repeating today, that everyone, everyone, will be whole and whole, again.

John 20:19-23

Pentecost - Year A

John 20:19-23

What is recorded in the scriptures has a rhetorical purpose - to persuade you to orient your heart and life in a particular direction. It would be good to have that up front rather than at the tail end of this significant passage regarding the continuance of people’s experience of Jesus past the mystery of an empty tomb.

A key, because it is prominently mentioned twice is the issue of “Peace", “Relax”, “Settle down”, “Chill”, or whatever the latest word is to reduce tension. Tension only heightens battle lines and is not helpful in relationships unless it is used to further investigate the relationship and resolve the particular tension at hand.

Secondary is the issue of “belief”. Here it is evidence based belief that shapes a direction of action. At this remove we have turned the action into a correct answer to a confirmation regimen or assent to membership. Our divorcing of belief from action is one of the hallmarks of a hierarchical institution and/or fundamentalistic literalism.

So, hooray for Peace. Hooray for action based on experience. Use care regarding free-floating belief.

ultimatization

Easter 7 - Year A

ultimatization

from my experience
to a universal theorm
enlarges perception from
real molehill to fantastic mountain

inquiring minds
are easily tempted
to find an easy way out
of this fiery ordeal or that

desire protection
call out for assurance
for power that abides now
and doesn’t fade into the distance

temptations arise
busy work even good work
distract us from fears and hurts
so rise up and settle back to reality

life goes on
avatars come and go
and go and come and go
and you and I are next in line
 

1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11

Easter 7 - Year A

1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11

Anyone here surprised at the “aft agley”ness of the world? Anytime you set about trying to create something in the image of a community it seems there is going to be at least one pyschopathic personality amongst the creative “our”.

If you wish to connect whatever gets defined as a “fiery ordeal” with Christ, that certainly has the potential to sharpen one’s sense of meaning. If you find another way to look at fiery ordeals, that is also alright. One of those other ways is the simple one of “discipline yourselves”.

Keeping faith with one’s grander meaning and larger view of the world takes much joyful discipline. If it is simply discipline we find ourselves with a dour mein. If only joy, there is no connection with reality. Here it is helpful to keep this oxymoron of joyful discipline in creative presence and tension with itself.

If you need some form of restoration to justify your suffering, then eternal glory may well be a helpful way to go. Simply know it is not the only option available. Eternal crucifixion is a far side, and yet still a side, of what may eventuate. In addition there are good old “lukewarm” ways to ignore any correction needed to move beyond the current scene.

The due time for exultation is not Tomorrow or Rapture Day in a couple more months. Exultation can only be a present action. Likewise, restoration is present oriented. We don’t have to think of these as earnings based on gritted teeth, but living in the model of Jesus’ life. This is not “test”, but growth. If you are not growing as you take a test, you are just repeating the past. In some ways tests are the logical next step of becoming.
 

Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35

Easter 7 - Year A

Psalm 68:1-10, 32-35

“O G*D, when you went out before your people, when you marched through the wilderness - the earth quaked, the heavens poured down rain....”

Images of earthquakes and rain are images of rebirth. It is through a crack in a cosmic egg that the light gets in, that new images become available. The old must be left behind. A shakenness, a chaos, predates a subsequent round of new solidity. Rain touches the seed within and we shift and blossom again.

Don’t ask when, simply now that now is an acceptable time to appreciate a quake and a flood that provide a new place to stand and bloom. [given the spate of tornadoes and the need to breach some levees to save others, this may be difficult imagery, but transformation never seems to arrive without difficulty]

Acts 1:6-14

Easter 7 - Year A

Acts 1:6-14

“When will you restore the kingdom?”
“When will I experience power?
“When will we feel protected?”

This you don’t know, won’t know.

All that is available is to be a witness of a better way. In simply following where this leads we will stumble, again and again, into protected space, with renewed time, revealing expansive resources.

Here the methodology contained “prayer” and focusing on the “all” of a community, not a privileged portion thereof. Enjoy your methodology to cast a vision beyond our current horizon and to enact some portion of such largess.
 

John 17:1-11

Easter 7 - Year A

John 17:1-11

A long operatic or western death scene can go on interminably. There is just that one last word or recapitulation that needs to be gone over. The past and present is never seemingly enough, there needs to be an Aesop’s moral added in.

If Jesus is going to “ask” for us, why must we ask, seek, or knock?

If we cut to the chase we might hear, “Protect them”.

If you were to trust that you are protected/assured, what might you be bold enough to try that so far you have been able to avoid? What trouble would you risk in and for life?

This begins to push at us as it has been weeks since Easter and the images are beginning to fade. Where we had initially begun to catch a picture of Jesus protected from death’s finality, we are feeling our own frailty again.

Instead of putting on armor as protection, how about the invisible cloak of glory within and all about that pulls and pushes us toward a better future. Might “glory” tie us back to the energy of an empty tomb and energize us toward a freedom to engage others “as we are” - one.

Imagine an invisible glory that, instead of allowing us to skulk among others, would better reveal ourself? Danger Will Robinson, you are closing down again, rolling a rock over emptiness rather than reveling in it, remember your cloak that isn't.
 

just because

Easter 6 - Year A

love
love me
love me by
living your best

love a mystery
too easily named G*D
until such a mystery
becomes such a reality

love a self
as a neighbor
and a clanish one another
that hates to love an enemy

in such
loving and living
we invest our time
and move through space

of course
such is dangerous
for suffering does not direct
our response to deep assurance

and when in the course
of all too human events
we shift to larger loves
belovedness is revealed

living one’s best
just because
gladdens all hearts
to love expansively
 

1 Peter 3:13-22

Easter 6 - Year A

1 Peter 3:13-22

“Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good?”

Well, anyone with a me-interest larger than a your-interest.

And so the necessity of a statement that has enough experience to know how real it is that good intentions are no guarantee of security - “You are blessed whether or not you suffer as you do what is right”.

Be ready to keep on doing what your gentle and reverent hope leads you to, even as demands are made to prematurely prove or reluctantly deny your hope.

If I might argue with Peter for a moment, baptism does not save. It sets one on a course of living out an assurance of belovedness.
 

Psalms 66:8-20

Easter 6 - Year A

Psalms 66:8-20

Blessed be [G*D], because he (sic) has not rejected my [our] prayer or removed his (sic) steadfast love from me [us]. ~Psalm 66:20

Whether a personal or communal prayer, it is that word “because” that sticks in the craw. I got the “love” I bargained for for myself or ourselves, but it remains eternally suspect and fragile. It continues to need positive results. For in another moment we may be cursing G*D when we find ourselves not rescued on our terms.

Escape from Egypt and Wilderness, Wildfires in Alberta, recent record floods of the Assiniboine and Mississippi rivers, and winds throughout the American midwest all bring forth individual foxhole prayers and blessings.

How will G*D continue to prove to be a G*D worth blessing? By continuing to show how exceptional we are - we can let a roulette wheel ride on red for 47 continuous turns and we win each time. Odds be damned. Realistic projection be damned.

Is it “hooray” for thick times and “boo” for the thin? Doesn’t this make G*D captive or me entitled? Might this be the flip-side of “If you love me, says Jesus, you will keep my commands”? Now, how do we step outside this house of religion built on so many conditions? It is as though Easter has been commodified. Only six weeks out from the astounding, dumbfoundingness, of “empty” and we are trying to stuff ourselves with the empty calories of privilege.
 

Acts 17:22-31

Easter 6 - Year A

Acts 17:22-31

Paul notes how religious folks are. Indeed, we don’t seem to be able to help ourselves from doing religion. It is a handy way to try to pass on to others any numinous experiences we have had.

A difficulty comes when our religious attempt to articulate a larger reality begins to take itself too seriously and restrict any further experience of a more expansive way of living. Religion starts with a helpful impetus - to share - and little-by-little puts up road-blocks to something new to share. So Paul notes the impetus and notes that the shrines established after the first experience no longer carry life forward.

The processes Paul indicates are still worthy ones. Working within space and time we are shaped into search engines for that which we may become. Searching for, groping for, finding even, even becoming what we find is identifiable with what it means to live and move and have being.

And so, identify your current shrine and begin to step outside its limits. Repent. Break the power of denial. Say No to that which claims your soul for itself. Upset the status quo.

In anticipation of another later saint: Religious people throw off your chains. All you have to lose is stale air, dirty water, and shiny objects that distract you from loving life.

John 14:15-21

Easter 6 - Year A

John 14:15-21

So what are Jesus’ “commands”?

Here are the basics and they all relate to love (G*D’s nature and name - according to Charles Wesley).

Love G*D!
Love Neighbor!
Love Self!
Love Enemies!
Love One Another!

Look at the interpenetration of these. On the day you know them, you will know you’re in the swirl of love beyond definition - I’m in G*D, I’m in you, G*D and you are in me. Those I love will be loved by others; the others I love will be loved by you.

These loves are what abide. Bless them by opening your abode to be their abiding place.
 

today's rapture

Easter 5 - Year A

today is a day
claimed to be
first of all
end of all

will trees be planted
pruned or uprooted
will outcasts be welcomed
redeemed or executed

participatory decision-making
shapes our shape
interpreting pasts
anticipating futures

farms bring forth
seed and weed
cities bring together
saints in training

heaven to earth
G*D in all
all in G*D
today’s rapture
 

1 Peter 2:2-10

Easter 5 - Year A

1 Peter 2:2-10

G*D, cornerstones, spiritual life, etc., etc. are all in the eye of the beholder.

Destiny? Fate? Original Sin? Circumstance? Nature? Nurture? Training? all can be attributed to actions and their short-term consequences (if any).

Of course assigning meaning is a dangerous path to travel down. It is awfully easy to assign anyone who does life differently to one scrapheap or another and claim it to be their fate. It is likewise all too easy to move from judging people to assigning a date and time for an end-time. Likewise, how hard it is to not pat ourselves on the back and claim G*D is on our side, we’ve been blessed, and so the inescapable conclusion is that we are predestined as part of an elite 144,000 out of all the people who ever lived.

Two important keys wrap around this passage:

Verse 3: “If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good” you will be able to escape the destiny mode.

Verse 10b: ...once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” and if such change can be mine, it can be anyone’s at anytime.

Remembering these bookends may help put what comes between them in a better light. Without these comforting arms we get pretty privileged and exude exceptionalism.
 

Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16

Easter 5 - Year A

Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16

Yes, in extremis we run to G*D, to a source of meaning, to our last best hope of refuge.

Yes, we implore, we promise, we bargain, we resign ourselves in any number and combination of ploys to get what we want.

Yes, we continue to commit ourselves well past any reasonable suggestion of whatever would pass for success in this plight.

And still we need to change. We even die. Prepared or not, here comes a next test of what we believe and what we will do to confirm that belief or modify it or reject it.

So, sing your song of constancy. Parade your surety. Just know it is a moment. We can sometimes look back and be a psalmist and sometimes we look back and say, “What was I thinking?”

Wherever you find your refuge these days, may it include justice for others who are not able to have that same sense of protection from prosecution.
 

Acts 7:55-60

Easter 5 - Year A

Acts 7:55-60

A violent end of life is always dramatic.

• I see something you don’t see.
  
• Look, you see it, too.
  
• We can’t or won’t.
  
• If you won’t stop poking us, we’ll stone you.
  
• Stoning is hard work, don’t get your robe dirty.
  
• I still see something you don’t.
  
• Perhaps one day you will join me rather than discard me.

And so the ministry of Jesus followers in Jerusalem begins to close. What opens is the experience Saul had of the lynching of Stephen. This experience of pre-emptive forgiveness echoes in Saul and readies him for conversion - that which he was adverse to, becomes dear. Now Saul become Paul has two dear ones - his previous Jewish family and his subsequent Gentile family. Paul moves back and forth between these loves doing his best to live as forgiven of Stephen’s death. Paul’s emphasis on Grace continues to crack the Law Code.