Year A - 3rd Sunday of Easter or Assured 3
May 4, 2014
Acts 2:14a, 36-41
To everyone who lives in Judea or Jerusalem, is a pretty grandiose introduction. Likewise with the entire house of Israel. I'm here to express surety and that has a certain amount of persuasive power. You should believe things known to be true: I know Jesus as Lord and Messiah: therefore you should know this, too.
See how well this works, some 3,000 people agreed to the point of baptism (not legally binding as it is today). Presumably folks were not caught up in crowd pressure, but were called. (This is an out, though, for those whom Peter was not able to reach with his extravagant rhetoric.)
While it may have been this easy, the odds are that the response is out of proportion with the stimulus. This makes a good story.
Today is a "dialog" set up as a result of an intervention by Love Prevails last November. A task force with no known LGBTQ presence has set up a panel "dialogue" about "the gays". Not an auspicious beginning. It should be interesting to see people dance around the United Methodist weird-speak of "incompatibility with Christian teaching" (Note: original language was about "Christian doctrine" and was changed to the more generic "teaching" a day after the "doctrine" language was passed. Folks caught on early that they the doctrine language would not stand scrutiny and fudged to the generic and highly interpretable "teaching".)
LovePrevailsUMC.com and LovePrevailsUMC on Facebook and Twitter will be looking to see if there is a miracle that happens from a benign panel to a conviction of needed repentance for 42 years of intentional discrimination and a commitment to change the current harmful legislation. This is no more a long-shot than Peter's speech leading to 3,000 spontaneous baptisms.
[Note: One of the clearer tweets about the live streaming "die-a-log" — Soulforce: "This is not a first step or just the beginning or historic day. This is going sideways not forward. We need leadership."]
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Monday, April 28, 2014
Luke 24:13-35
Year A - 3rd Sunday of Easter or Assured 3
May 4, 2014
Luke 24:13-35
Eyes open? Recognize what is around you? And it's gone!
Now make meaning out of that.
From ignoring to questioning and dismissal, we come to a time of Wow! Well, now that we take time to consider, we remember being attentive all the way along and ready to receive any good news in the midst of our personal tragedy. What an amazing time we had and we will hold on to it forever.
Ahh, yes, revisionist history — a long and many-storied tradition.
Now we are in the process of making daily bread more sacred than it is by its very nature. Somehow or other what was missed at Thursday night's repast is now reinterpreted. Of course it is not just us looking again, but a duly authorized interpretation — G*D says this is what it meant and you always knew it.
Love Prevails is currently at a denominational meeting of the Connectional Table (implementers of General Conference past). After attending their last meeting in October (being a cause of an agenda adjustment) and a series of letters back and forth since then, we are present, again, to continue the work of removing discriminatory legislation from the United Methodist Church. There is work to do as the church institutional has responded to a new opportunity to get better by repeating processes already accomplished in the 1980s.
There is a sense that the Connectional Table is still all wrapped up in their immediate concern about loss of membership and not clear about the mercy and compassion they have received and so can't see where it needs to be applied. After the discrimination is finally off the books, we can fully expect the Connectional Table to take credit for working toward that all along.
May 4, 2014
Luke 24:13-35
Eyes open? Recognize what is around you? And it's gone!
Now make meaning out of that.
From ignoring to questioning and dismissal, we come to a time of Wow! Well, now that we take time to consider, we remember being attentive all the way along and ready to receive any good news in the midst of our personal tragedy. What an amazing time we had and we will hold on to it forever.
Ahh, yes, revisionist history — a long and many-storied tradition.
Now we are in the process of making daily bread more sacred than it is by its very nature. Somehow or other what was missed at Thursday night's repast is now reinterpreted. Of course it is not just us looking again, but a duly authorized interpretation — G*D says this is what it meant and you always knew it.
Love Prevails is currently at a denominational meeting of the Connectional Table (implementers of General Conference past). After attending their last meeting in October (being a cause of an agenda adjustment) and a series of letters back and forth since then, we are present, again, to continue the work of removing discriminatory legislation from the United Methodist Church. There is work to do as the church institutional has responded to a new opportunity to get better by repeating processes already accomplished in the 1980s.
There is a sense that the Connectional Table is still all wrapped up in their immediate concern about loss of membership and not clear about the mercy and compassion they have received and so can't see where it needs to be applied. After the discrimination is finally off the books, we can fully expect the Connectional Table to take credit for working toward that all along.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
1 Peter 1:3-9
Year A - 2nd Sunday of Easter or Assured 2
April 27, 2014
Holy Humor Sunday
1 Peter is not my usual go to for something light.
Image yourself actually being born through emptiness. How strange, but is it knee-slapping hilarious?
By great mercy (creative conception)
we are born in living hope (midwife’s hands)
through a resurrection (empty tomb)
into bright and stolid paradise (back to here and now)
There were trials (labor pains, breach position, C-section)
strengthening caterpillars and chicks (don’t help them out)
and trials continue (refining decisions)
Though you didn’t set up this system (you don’t see and get it)
you can redefine it (love that draws a larger circle)
and claim it now (already receiving an outcome of trust)
No, probably not, hilarious. Smirkily ironic? Probably. Enough to get 15 minutes of relief from chronic pain? Probably. Go back over that again - What images Peter uses! I didn’t think he had it in him. But then I sometimes don’t think I have G*D’s image in me, either. Somehow in wrestling together, these moments, when we call a mutual time-out to laugh at how silly we are being, give us what we need to reenter the fray.
Psalm 16
Year A - 2nd Sunday of Easter or Assured 2
April 27, 2014
Holy Humor Sunday
“I keep the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.” (verse 8)
Ordinarily one would think that one couldn’t move because their way was blocked by something in front of them, blocking their move. Even a knight of chess that can move around corners can have a way forward blocked.
Traditionally the right hand is an offensive hand, the left being defensive. Right, sword; left, shield. What is it that is offensive but doesn’t move? Doctrine? But that is a different kind of offensive.
Theory: G*D is our right-hand plumb line, holding us true to living an image of steadfast love.
Reality: we try to be G*D’s right-hand, a pleasure forevermore, and thus not dispensable in the great Correction Day.
It is perversely funny the way we try to wheedle our way into grace.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Acts 2:14-32
Year A - 2nd Sunday of Easter or Assured 2
April 27, 2014
Holy Humor Sunday
“Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I have to say.”
Even taking cultural norms into account, we have here a basic discrimination at the start of the Pentecostal movement—men are privileged.
There is nothing like taking a series of selected quotes, piling them together with a narrative they never had and passing it off as gospel truth. I don’t for a moment believe that David foresaw a resurrection of a Messiah. At best a Messiah would be a longer-lived version of David ruling from a political/military/economic throne. Death and resurrection would not apply.
In today’s world it is getting easier and easier to use Peter’s technique to sell everything including a War on Easter. In fact it is getting so easy there is an app for that.
Monday, April 21, 2014
John 20:19-31
Year A - 2nd Sunday of Easter or Assured 2
April 27, 2014
[Can hardly believe it is time to be back to only four lections per week—hope y'all survived the onslaught last week. ~Wesley]
Holy Humor Sunday
Jesus the Jester was well known to the Disciples. That was one of the problems with taking notes on his various teachings. You’d be jotting down class notes and then Jesus would throw in one of his parabolic koans. There was no choice but to stop to get your bearing again. He always seemed to quiz folks on the stuff that got missed after one of his switcheroos.
This accounts for some of the missing sections in stories about Jesus’ life. Fortunately we have found some additional notes from several of the Galilee Shore Irregulars. They never made it all the way to Disciple, much less Apostle, but their notes do fill in a few things as they were only focused on getting the facts, not trying to jockey for position on Jesus’ nearly non-existent curve of a grading system. Being beloved this week and behind his back the next seemed to distract those who had enrolled and paid full tuition. The Irregulars could just focus on getting everything down to take it home and go over it later.
Tam, son of Raziel, and others did write down other “signs” of life, they just didn’t survive the editor’s focus on believing without actual experience.
Tam reports:
Then, Jesus, Blessed be He, said to Thomas, “Put your finger here in my wrist, or foot, or side. Don’t doubt it is me.”
Then, Thomas reached out to Jesus wrist and put his finger in the hole. There was a loud buzzing sound and Thomas jerked his hand away.
Then, Jesus said, “Gotcha!”
Then, Thomas said, “Yo, Jesus, you got me good! High five, bro.”
Then, Jesus said, “Let’s hope future generations will be as shocked as you and shift from their expectations about the way things are always done and come to appreciate a Great Joke.”
Sunday, April 20, 2014
1 Corinthians 5:6b-8 (Easter Evening)
Year A - Easter Evening or Opened Heart Evening
April 20, 2014
Is Easter a leavening agent, so but a little is needed in the presence of food and water to raise a large life? This asks an open heart to provide the right warmth for yeast and sugar to interact and grow.
Or is Easter artificially induced hot air to puff things up for an hour and have it gone by only three holes into the televised Sunday golf game.
We are to be part of a new batch of G*D-partners, rich in premeditated mercy and intentional forgiveness. This is how we demonstrate our shift from malice (conscious or not) to clarity and brightness.
May the celebration of continued possibilities live on past today. This evening is an opportunity to commit to urging one another toward tomorrow.
Psalm 114 (Easter Evening)
Year A - Easter Evening or Opened Heart Evening
April 20, 2014
Just hours ago we used this same Psalm during a Vigil. Then we hinted at a new symbol that stands between the Edenic rivers in Genesis 2 and a river of life in Revelation 22—a river flowing forth from what was thought to be an empty tomb. I haven’t found a graphic for this and don’t have that gift. Anyone out there able to try to put into visual form the mystery of tomb silence and river gliding on?
Moving from rock to water pooled for us to live by still seems a valuable image and another way of asking whether our heart is more open this evening. Are you less stony and more limpid?
Isaiah 25:6-9 (Easter Evening)
Year A - Easter Evening or Opened Heart Evening
April 20, 2014
As a partner with G*D and Neighb*r we can ask in this night whether one more tear has been wiped away from all faces with tears. There may not be smiles yet, but there can be one less tear. There is still enough for everyone to participate in a feast.
Those without tears sustain a shroud cast over all others and will drown from the inside, not another flood. Dives will finally give up their place at the feast. While always welcome in a community not under their control, they may not be able to accept that welcome for a long time.
To tear off a corner of the shroud to dab someone’s tears is a participation in the rebuilding of community—a connexion restored. So claim the feast for someone else as they claim it for you. Together we will walk together in the cool of the evening and G*D’s tear will turn to an enormous grin bigger than a circus tent.
Luke 24:13-49 (Easter Evening)
Year A - Easter Evening or Opened Heart Evening
April 20, 2014
A vision of angels by any other name is a vision of life. We are not stuck.
And yet we are slow in agreeing to get unstuck. 7 miles at 20 minutes per mile is a 3 hour, 20 minute conversation. Did the women get it right? Did those who went to see miss something?
How slow our hearts are to be opened. How many Easters have come and gone since you have revisited the silence of Easter, the imagery and symbolism of Easter, and the community of Easter. So has another Easter worn off already?
We could have another long conversation about whether we are to return to Galilee or remain in Jerusalem. Here Luke sets up Pentecost by staying while other witnesses have folks by the seashore. Where was the fish eaten?
We are slow enough to get hung up on the details and miss the meaning of the forest.
The only question this Easter Evening is whether our hearts are any more open tonight than they were in the morning. This is a daily question. A more dangerous way to ask this is whether we experience any more power to see that “repentance and forgiveness of sins” is proclaimed/lived? This is dangerous because it puts more emphasis on the judgment of repentance and less on forgiveness just because. Religious power structures have always arisen at this divide.
So back to this question: is your heart any more open tonight than it was this morning?
Matthew 28:1-10 (Vigil)
Year A - Easter Vigil or Hopeless Hope Vigil
April 19/20, 2014
As dawning arrives we hear again that we have been looking in all the wrong places for a next foothold. We’ve been projecting the past into the future without taking into consideration that it must pass through the catalyst of today.
Come, see the grave of yesterday. Set a new goal among the people, Galilee is just one of its names. The community you are living in now is a Galilee. See it anew.
Fear and Joy is better than fear alone.
As a duly authorized rock ready to die to your formulaic rules, be transformed to water to refresh dry bodies. There is work to do together for this rock will need water from another to sustain itself. Together we go forward.
Wherever you may be this day, May your Fear and Joy dance together until both, assured, leave the floor together, refreshed and refreshing.
And it was evening and morning, one more day.
[Locally we are expecting rain to begin for the day just after dawn. For the moment I will take that as confirmation of rock to water—may the cooling waters come down and April showers open tombs bring fruitfulness in their time.]
Psalm 114 (Vigil)
Year A - Easter Vigil or Hopeless Hope Vigil
April 19/20, 2014
Morning will soon be breaking. The vigil is close to an end. Saturday is nearly Sunday.
What might be expected now that the spell of specialness has been broken. A new path where not was seen? A new impossibility of hard-as-flint rock in a dry and thirsty land becoming a pool of water for a dry tongue in a dry body. Out of nowhere, an empty tomb fills to overflowing and rolling every stone away, reshaping them into a multitude of cornerstones and keystones and just lovely little stones in their own right.
Is this a forced conversion to meet a soon to rise sun, because physics will out? Has our slow movement borne fruit? How long is the half-life vigil effect. By Sunday night this will probably have to be revisited.
For now, rock to water seems sufficient to hold and gaze softly upon. More questions will come, but, for now, a breath in, a brief hold, and release. And again. May we soon breathe together.
Romans 6:3-11 (Vigil)
Year A - Easter Vigil or Hopeless Hope Vigil
April 19/20, 2014
Oh, right. To be born is to die. Belovedness does not exempt us from being buried, becoming as nothing. Belovedness does not promise surprises will only be appreciated.
If there is something worth pursuing, it is going to be something larger than one life can give to it.
The projects we sign on to don’t stop with asking our all. They need more than our all, they need all our all and more. In case that wasn’t clear, they need our corporate all as well as our personal all. So what community we are joined with does make a difference. How inclusive will that community be will be a measure of the worth of the endeavor. A narrow slice of life, like preaching to the choir, has a certain amount of appeal, but if that is all there is we find it soon grows thin.
To claim our death is to consider ourselves dead to narrowness and alive to the surprises that “more” brings. It’s challenges enliven us. This sort of death is worth diving into to see where we surface later. Blessings on your dive.
Psalm 98 (Vigil)
Year A - Easter Vigil or Hopeless Hope Vigil
April 19/20, 2014
And so we begin to hum a new song. A bit of meter, a heard tonality comes around. No words but music begins. Sort of like the sea with gentle lapping and thumping breakers. Sort of like a misty rain and drenching monsoon. Sort of like a meadow breeze and mountain gale.
A new song will probably mean many shifts. Judgment, even on the basis of righteousness and equity will have to be rethought. The whole atonement business will finally go bankrupt. There are more things that will have to go. What is not so clear is what the results of a new song will be. About all that is sure is that another vigil will be needed when these new shifts grow old and confining. So we are dealing with the latest new song, not a final new song.
See, hope is creeping back in. There might be more after this more. How’d that happen?
Zephaniah 3:14-20 (Vigil)
Year A - Easter Vigil or Hopeless Hope Vigil
April 19/20, 2014
Judgment removed.
With it gone, enemies are, what, also removed?
With judgment no longer on the table, what happens to the enemy known as myself?
Now, perhaps, “fortune” can be rediscovered. Creed and culture have defined meaning for so long, it will be a new birth to look again for “fortune”—Middle English, from Anglo-French, from Latin fortuna; akin to Latin fort-, fors chance, luck, and perhaps to ferre to carry — more at bear.
There are no straight lines with this sort of fortune. We are to deal with what comes our way as best we can at the time. This means bearing much that can’t be sorted out or understood.
There is no final measure to some absolute good fortune or relative to anyone else. If chance and luck and bearing up are what lies ahead, it will be important to have folks to share with. To share their fortune and to share mine with them. From each according to their fortune and to each according to their lack thereof. In time this won’t balance but it will suit us to a fair-thee-well.
That misspelling may be one step too far but this far into a vigil brings enough disorientation to finally be silly, grin at it, and let it be. The vigil is not clarifying, excusing, explaining, or bringing a final meaning. Judgment removed.
Psalm 143 (Vigil)
Year A - Easter Vigil or Hopeless Hope Vigil
April 19/20, 2014
Having met the enemy, my spirit faints within me. Actually it fainted a long time ago which is why the enemy turned out, again, to be me.
I remember my hopes and expectations and dreams of conquest. And now out of warranty, a body of work dumped in a cave and soon to disappear, this empty tomb has become a Pit. There is no teaching available that I have not taught. There is no promise in preservation. Every refuge has a force-field around it set to my wave-length.
Now, when G*D cuts off my enemies and my adversaries, I am cut off, too. It is almost enough to make one wryly grin at the way the world goes round, we force meaning from it like juice from an orange, and when we drink it it tastes like urine.
So it is time for a reset, a reboot, a resignation.
It has been awhile since hearing echoes of steadfast love. It has probably been steadfast while I’ve been battling myself, but there is a sweetness to just the cadence of the phrase. It is a waltz not a marathon. Within its syllables lies “morning” heard here in the night.
Yes, maybe.
Ezekiel 37:1-14 (Vigil)
Year A - Easter Vigil or Hopeless Hope Vigil
April 19/20, 2014
There is no question that I am a valley of dry bones. No matter from what perspective, I am very dry. No more ranting sweat. No more sad tears. Dry. Dry.
Lungs dry. Breath dry. Skin dry.
It is not Jesus who has gone AWOL (Absent WithOut [my] Leave), it is I who have been buried by my expectations, my loss of privilege, my claim of dominion.
Can these bones live again? Well, I don’t know and neither do you. Perhaps there is only a decision to not go AWOL (Absent WithOut [my] Life).
Eyes, so dry, blink for relief, blink again, clouded sight, blink and blink and blink some more. Maybe. Maybe.
Psalm 42 and Psalm 43 (Vigil)
Year A - Easter Vigil or Hopeless Hope Vigil
April 19/20, 2014
I say to G*D, “Why have you forsaken me?”
I say to my soul, “Why are you cast down?”
As with all “why” questions, there is no adequate singular response.
Continue the vigil past these questions. There are only a magical number 7 more to go. I suppose it is good to know that this is drawing to a close. As with any therapeutic intervention, this vigil may not come to anything before it is time to close. So, one more step. Why? Well, why not?
You’ve paid deeply to come this far. And yet is it always an option to not hold any longer, but fold. Blessings on your decision.
Ezekiel 36:24-28 (Vigil)
Year A - Easter Vigil or Hopeless Hope Vigil
April 19/20, 2014
I’m getting closer to moving on, but moving on not as simply as a minion.
A new heart brings a new relationship.
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