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April 4, 2004 - Year C - Palm/Passion Sunday
Wesley White
April 4, 2004
Palm Sunday
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
Luke 19:28-40
John 12:12-16
Passion Sunday
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 31:9-16
Philippians 2:5-11
Luke 22:14 - 23:56 or Luke 23:1-49
Much too much to cover this week. Sort of like Jesus having to recognize that there was still much too much for him to do and so claimed it finished.
May we, in the midst of whatever busy-ness we have, simply claim it finished and move on.
Wesley White
Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29
Steadfast love [of whatever source] endures forever. (v2)
This is the gate of the LORD; the righteous shall enter through it. (v19)
An open gateway is a better image here than simply a gate. It has the sense of always being open. Anything less than such openness moves us in the direction of earning entrance.
You may be interested in the 8 points of The Center for Progressive Christianity. Their original talks about Jesus as their Gate to the realm of GOD. You can read their points and browse their resources at tcpc.org .
Wesley White
Luke 19:28-40
John 12:12-16
When will stoney hearts understand and sing truth to power? After there has been a resurrection.
Of course this implies that things will get quite dead first.
No wonder these are difficult scenes. The palms will turn to ashes before the ashes can intentionally lead us toward resurrection that comes in its own time (3 days or years or generations).
Here we see knee-jerk reactions to immediate hope that someone else will take care of the issues of the day. Come King Jesus and make it all OK for us. Take us off the hook. Now there's a band wagon we all want to jump on.
But there is no white charger here, only a grey donkey. What asses we were to think we can return to our mother's womb and re-enter Eden and nevermore wrestle with what we know about good and evil in the world and in these images of GOD we call ourselves.
Believe it, stones and stoney hearts can change -- do change. But not easily or immediately. In remembering past changes we can anticipate the general theory of change without knowing the details of particular changes or trying to turn that into a technique.
Wesley White
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Listen. From the inside you hear the yearning for security, for ever plus. From the outside you hear constraint from others and all the other limits of life.
Listen. Beyond the inside to know salvation and deliverance are forever -- including now already. Beyond the outside is the generational reality of death and dying -- including now already.
Already saved. Already dead. Listen.
Listen. We hear G*O*D's affirmation and yet cannot listen to it. Evidence of this disconnect is the cry for G*O*D to "Awake!"
We simply seem incapable of listening deeply. Soon we will hear the hubbub of Jesus entering Jerusalem and the yearning for a ruler to take our responsibilities unto themself. Will we listen to the symbol of donkey? Will we listen deeply enough to find our own life, now already?
Wesley White
Psalm 31:9-16
Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress.... save me in your steadfast love.
Can't you just hear GOD reply, "April Fool."
"I already am gracious to you and all. You are already saved."
April Fool's Day comes to puncture our seriousness. It arrives to grant us a renewed perspective. It is so easy to get caught up in the sturm und drang of life and not see our next step so we give it over to some deity or other. Thanks be for April 1 when the court jester can play to our ruling self and point a better way. Would that such were several times a year.
Wesley White
Philippians 2:5-11
Offering oneself without regard to equality, much less advantage, is (as the lection proceeds into verse 12 and beyond) an experience of "working out our own salvation with fear and trembling."
The ideal of simply giving over to GOD that which is GOD's (that is, myself) is one thing that leads to loss of confidence (since we keep failing at that and reserving sections of life for ourselves) and to increase of guilt induction (by having an automatic blame game edge to not listen to anyone else because they are not completely empty of ego and disappear so there is only GOD).
Our experience is that this is not so much an exultation of Jesus Christ as it is a confession of who we have found ourselves to be - full of ourselves.
For whatever we bring of our part of the image-of-GOD to the table, we need to see how it fits into verse 4 and before - looking to the interest of others.
Our experience also can see this not so much an exultation of Jesus Christ as it is a commitment to build up the whole body by taking our appropriate place in such - we too can simply be present as an image-of-GOD without exploiting that reality.
As confession of being an exploiter and as commitment to not exploit any more this passage can lead us in a transformation of our lives. The result won't be glory to us, but satisfaction that we have lived up to that which has been given us in the situations we find ourselves.
Glory to GOD by being real - confessed and committed.
Wesley White
Luke 22:14 - 23:56 or Luke 23:1-49
If we take a Wesleyan Trinitarian look at the last verses we do not see Jesus only dying, but G*O*D and Spirit as well.
In hymnody this is:
O Love divine, what hast thou done!
The immortal God hath died for me!
The Father's coeternal Son
bore all my sins upon the tree.
Th'immortal God for me hath died:
My Lord, my Love, is crucified.
In Luke the rejection, suffering, darkness, and death are not experienced as an absence of the Holy.
Here we can imagine "God the Son" emptying into "God the Father" through "God the Spirit". G*O*D dies, no less than Jesus dies or you or I die.
Where, then, are you commending yourself, committing yourself? Which, I think, asks how you are living. Are you living as noisily as Jesus? This question from the last lines of today's comment by Tom Ehrich: "This is a time for noisy footsteps, for standing up to forces of darkness, for shouts of outrage over what our culture is doing to its people. No more fascination with a fabricated 'passion,' while real tragedy happens down the street. No more pretending that our fortunes aren’t all bound together. No more kisses of betrayal. No more silence."
We get here, in part, by claiming and encouraging one another with our experience that G*O*D is not absent. Beckoned or not, G*O*D is present even in our individual death, our particular darkness, our specific suffering, our unique rejection.
April 8, 2004 - Year C - Maundy Thursday
Wesley White
April 8, 2004 - Maundy Thursday - Year C
Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14
Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
What do you remember that gives new life in the face of claims of something other than new life?
Wesley White
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
Do you feel something has been done to you by your encounter with Jesus? Why did he have to go and model what he was talking about? Surely it would be sufficient to have a theology of servanthood without needing the praxis of it.
Isn't it enough to have an ecclesiology of evangelism without needing the behavioral change of actually loving one another more than we love being right and in charge, all by our self? Might it actually be true that discipleship is less about making disciples of Jesus Christ and more about simply loving one another?
This loving one another might be seen as the prerequisite to going where Jesus is going. Right now we don't seem to be able to take advantage of being there (much less here) without some practice of what "there" is all about -- the presence of G*O*D -- simply loving.
Wesley White
1 Corinthians 11:23-26
As often as you remember Christ Jesus, you "proclaim" [give evidence in your living] resurrection - all that is after death.
Let us "remember" well. Let us "proclaim" well.
Wesley White
Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19
How to respond to a gift of being served? We pay the debt forward, to others.
Gifts of service put us in relationship with one another, provide a covenant framework where we are avowed to one another.
How to pay our vow for the gift of life in community? By expanding said community.
Wesley White
Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14
Passover is often thought of as a sedentary event as we associate it with sitting around table. Remember the injunction to gird your loins and any thing else appropriate to girding such as shoeing your feet and staffing your hand.
We are straining forward, waiting for the starting signal to run for our lives. The table passes our time while waiting, but we must always be ready to leave the table at any moment.
At the least we need to jump up to help serve.
What are you chomping at the bit about? Has it something to do with service or escape. Depending on the situation one or the other is more appropriate. It becomes amazing when both are suitable at the same time - when we can participate in escape (our own and another's) by being of service or our service cannot help but eventuate in escape for ourselves or someone else.
April 9, 2004 - Year C - Good Friday
Wesley White
April 9, 2004 - Year C - Good Friday
Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12
Psalm 22
Hebrews 10:16-25 or Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
John 18:1 - 19:42
Is there more here than suffering, suffering, suffering ala the passion of the Christ?
This question has been thrust upon us. I invite your response.
Wesley White
John 18:1 - 19:42
Let's do a bit of retranslating of verse 36:
"My freedom," says Jesus, "doesn't consist of what you see around you. If it did my followers would act like the military of any nation. But I am not that kind of presence, not a world leader kind of presence."
Jesus' execution was no more or less brutal than that of anyone else who was executed by crucifixion. So violence and suffering are not the categories by which we need to look at this event in our faith.
Rather comes a question of how we live in the midst of violence and suffering. When we can make this shift we are set free to live out of a heart of generous abundance rather than one fearful of ongoing pain. This is not to discount suffering, but to allow it its rightful place in the order of life -- first freedom for living in GOD, then freedom to receive whatever consequence of such living brings, and finally the freedom to trust that all manner of things will be well.
Wesley White
Hebrews 10:16-25 or Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9
Let us provoke one another toward forgiveness.
If we can learn obedience through suffering, can we learn glory through forgiveness? And what will we learn by forgiving suffering and suffering forgiveness?
Wesley White
Psalm 22
This Psalm might better end at the end of Psalm 23 rather than 22.
The movement is not just from a sense of entitlement betrayed to simply saying, "God's everything."
The larger movement is from our sense of broken entitlement to a renewed understanding of our living more largely than we have. It was our initial limitation of scope that led to the cry of abandonment.
Since this is a reflection on Good Friday, the end of Psalm 22 leaves us without ourselves. Everything is God. This is as much as death, to become a proclaiming puppet.
If this is all there is, we have moved from being forsaken as an individual to being forsaken as a series of generations.
We are still yearning for our participation in life and that resurrection is living in light of goodness and mercy, no matter what the consequences. So we have some down time here with this Psalm that is not the end of the story.
Wesley White
Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12
"The Israelites are still the focus in that these verses offer them a revolutionary theology that explains the hardships of exile: The people had to endure the exile and the suffering it engendered because that suffering was done in service to God so that God, through their atoning sacrifice, could redeem nations." [note from NISB]
It is one thing to participate in "suffering" one's self and quite another to attribute it to an outsider on behalf of one's self or others. In either case, though, there are dangers aplenty.
Suffering qua suffering is not redemptive. Jesus' suffering was no more or less than that of thousands crucified then and still killed today for challenging one power structure or another principality. Stand-in suffering is particularly problematic. At the least it is patronizing.
But to suffer in one's self does set up the possibility of redefinition of meaning. To suffer in one's self while assisting another leads to a redefinition of meaning. One of the best commentaries on the whole suffering issue is Frankl's [Man's] Search for Meaning -- "the person who knows the 'why' for their existence will be able to bear almost any 'how.'"
The following is found here [you may want to explore the Irreverent Guide at the bottom of the page]: "The main emphasis revolves around Dr. Frankl's observation that those prisoners who believe they have a reason to live, "meaning" in their lives, were better at doing what it takes to survive their ordeal. Suffering becomes less difficult when there is some purpose to the suffering, or more accurately, when the person doing the suffering believes that there is meaning to the suffering. Here is a concrete example from Frankl's book:
Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how could I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, "What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?" "Oh," he said, "for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!" Whereupon I replied, "You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her" He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice. (Frankl, 1984)
Wesley White
John 18:1 - 19:42
Mark and his ilk claim the women were looking on from a distance; John has them up close and personal. For the moment, following John, we hear about Mary and an unnamed person being joined together in a new relationship.
Who loves ya, baby? Jesus loves you. Jesus puts you in new relationships you never expected.
Today it is officially out that I have been reappointed to a charge I never expected - one that I had served before. Jesus' love of bringing unexpected folks together is most mysterious. What new relationship is Jesus' love for you and another bringing together?
In some way this wrapped the story John is telling. From Mary at Cana saying, "Do what he says," to the loved one, such as yourself, carrying on the story and telling it and telling it, story after story, book after book. In the doing is the telling and in the telling, the doing.
Who's your mother? Who does Jesus love (or who doesn't Jesus love? - seems to be the same response whichever way the question is asked). Who's our sister and brother? Here is a deeper meaning than simple suffering - the cross at work.
April 11, 2004 - Year C - Easter
Wesley White
April 11, 2004 - Year C - Easter
Acts 10:34-43 or Isaiah 65:17-25
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
I Corinthians 15:19-26 or Acts 10:34-43
John 20:1-18 or Luke 24:1-12
We come to the garden alone and leave reconnected with community. Where are other reconnections which is our way of speaking of resurrection in the midst of life?
Wesley White
John 20:1-18 or Luke 24:1-12
Who goes into the tomb first? The men in John or the women in Luke? It is difficult to have it both ways. My bias runs toward Luke telling a better story here, so let's look at the women.
A key difference is between John's sense of being bereft -- so distraught that Mary M. couldn't see straight -- and Luke's sense of awe -- being overcome by a visitation as powerful as the transfiguration scene.
Will people return home amazed from Easter worship? Is that an internal state that depends on what they come with or is that a function of sacramental and preaching that goes beyond what folks are expecting? Obviously a false choice, but will shape what is done by the church leadership in providing common or uncommon ritual.
What would be amazing enough to bring the Easter crowd running back next Sunday so it won't be Low Sunday where we can joke a lot and get away with it because Easter showed we don't have to take this resurrection stuff any more seriously than did the first witnesses? What context and content would move this from an incomprehensible idle tale to revived and changed lives?
Wesley White
I Corinthians 15:19-26 or Acts 10:34-43
This whole business of subjection is open to subjectivity. It is as though, when all things are subjected, we will have a quadrennity rather than a trinity. Where we are headed is more like a square than a triangle. This is not only a resurrection of something Paul might talk about as real life for us, but also for G*O*D.
When all things are subjected then the Son will be subjected. G*O*D becomes all in all with G*O*D's images. Creator, Christ, Spirit, Creation.
As Jung has pointed out the trinity is an unstable figure - waiting to gain that next electron and become stable. I like the energy of the unstable isotope as well as the promised sabbath rest when resolved. [Note to self: you don't know enough physics or chemistry to be thus messing about. It would be better to ask someone who knows more before making such connections.]
The connection from this Pauline stuff back to Luke in Acts might be that all "who believe" receive forgiveness. If we can imagine that is a forgiveness of the whole and not just an incident, this "all" is as sinless as our doctrines claim G*O*D to be and worthy of incorporation as a full "side" of a larger figure.
Wesley White
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Steadfast love endures.
Now if we could get that into our bones we would be able to better interact with ourselves (we are loved) and GOD (GOD is loved) and our neighbors ("they" are loved) and our environment (creation is loved).
We keep forgetting and thinking/behaving as though crucifixion and suffering are just around the corner and that is the end of the story. Easter is a time to simply say, "Love endures." The implications for individuals, congregations, denominations, church universal, and whatever "world" means, are as explosive as e=mc2. This is our constant for a theory of theological relativity.
Lon A Rycraft
Wesley, Faithfully you tell the story, and nowhere on our journeys is the cross found empty without God's steadfast love filling our lives with loops of hope that surround e=mc2 with the connective tissue of strings of love. Sundays lows and highs are only some of the directions we might choose. Blessing and Peace along the way...
Wesley White
Thanks, Lon, for adding loops and strings. All these things, even the fleeting ones, express a hope and connection exploding through and beyond every time and space, every strong and weak event.
Likewise with software images. We remember every iteration as good - Day.1, Day.2..5, Day.3.3.1, Day.4.6.7, Day.5.1.2, Day.6.9.7, Day.7.0, Day8.7.7.7. All are blessed.
Wesley White
Acts 10:34-43 or Isaiah 65:17-25
G*O*D shows no partiality. Period.
Wolves and lambs, sheep and goats, lions and oxen, serpents with apples and with dust, you and me, there shall be no hurt.
Jesus went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed.
We are witnesses of this new way of doing business in Judea and Jerusalem and Gentilia.
And so the last two verses of Acts sum it up: Witness, Feast Together, Forgive. Each of these draw folks closer together and build new relationships. Each adds a bridge across the gaps caused by partiality and restore wholeness.
On the mountain and on the plains Peaceable Living is available.
Wesley White
Acts 10:34-43 or I Corinthians 15:19-26
Partiality is to be tossed out on its ear. Yet, G*O*D's appearance is not to all but only to a chosen few. Apparently our response is the determining factor in regard to G*O*D's presence in our life.
So, who ate and drank with the revived Jesus - the Emmaus folk (Luke 24), 7 of the 11 remaining disciples (John's later addition in chapter 20), perhaps only the 11 alone who were at table, whether eating or not, (Mark's late addition in chapter 16), or the 11 plus their "companions" (Luke 24). And Matthew has no report of post-resurrectional comestibles.
Are the women, first witnesses, able to eat with the guys as their companions or only service them?
If the risen Christ is the "first fruit" and he feeds only those who belong to him, partiality and division are reintroduced. Have we gotten anywhere through this suffering stuff, other than to retribution upon the unchosen?
What a pity to limit things to eating and drinking in this life. Where is the hope of Easter in the face of partiality, spoken against but still experienced?
Wesley White
Luke 24:1-12 or John 20:1-18
With a crowd (well, two or three) we are strengthened to enter where an angel may fear to tread. In Luke, in they go. When one, even one as persistent as Mary Magdalene, is alone it is easier to cut and run quite early. In John, away she goes.
The women, together, got no respect from the disciples. The individual one received an immediate response from a disciple who ran to the tomb.
What is helpful in going in to find out some facts seems not to have been as response-getting as the individual's haste. In some sense, to have corroborating facts lays us more open to dismissive questions while sheer energy motivates.
As we come to Easter, what emotion, beyond facts and figures needs to come to the fore? Can that be expressed in a variety of ways for the variety of people who respond to different stimuli?
What dynamic do you see when you contrast these two passages rather than try to conflate them? Is that a helpful hint about the processes that would be helpful in your situation, with the people you deal with?
April 18, 2004 - Year C - Easter 2
Wesley White
April 18, 2004
Acts 5:27-32
Psalm 118:14-29 or Psalm 150
Revelation 1:4-8
John 20:19-31
Loved and Freed. These two qualities run through our Easter experiences, whenever they come around. Encouraging one another to perceive these gifts leads us back to Easters past and opens us to Easters future that we might presently Easter in their presence.
Wesley White
John 20:19-31
The United Methodist tagline on their publicity for the last several years has been, "Open Hearts, Open Minds, Open Doors - the People of the United Methodist Church" Many times this is false advertising, but it does indicate a significant desire.
Jesus, we say, has opened the gates of heaven to us and all. The Church, we understand, has closed those same doors to one group after another only to have them eventually reopened after hundreds or thousands of years. It is difficult to reconcile these different trajectories.
For today it may be important to return to the song " Imagine ."
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...
Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one
In this imagination the doors of fear might be unlocked and then opened. --Fear for our own survival and that of those close to us. --Fear of someone transgressing some great principle/creed or other. --Fear of questions rather than for answers.
This imagination comes from the Holy Spirit that opens the door for sin that they might leave and the same door that our questions might enter for a response that moves them to a larger question.
Joseph
I am exploring the Acts reading. As United Methodists approach general conference later this month, it seems like a reading that can speak to us (on all sides of the issues we face). We worship Christ who is about new things that seemingly defy human authority; how does one discern if the "leading" that defies human authority is from God or a projection of our own making?
What is the difference between Jim Jones and the Apostle Peter?
Wesley White
Since 1972 the United Methodist church has morphed legislation regarding the civil rights of homosexual persons into a theological dismissal of them as incompatible with Christian teaching.
As I prepare to go to General Conference [GC] and to vote on such "stuff and nonsense" I find my Wisconsin Annual Conference has sent a petition to simply delete the incompatibility language and my Methodist Federation for Social Action has sent a petition to nudge it in a different direction by saying, ""Differences of opinion among faithful Christians regarding sexual orientation continue to deeply divide the church. We stand before God admitting that we have thus far been unable to reach common ground. As we continue to discern God's will together, we are united in declaring our understanding that God's grace is available to all."
I won't have any control over which comes first, one of these or something that equates homosexuality with bestiality. Would you try to pass whichever of these two came up first or choose one and put all your eggs in its basket even if it came up last? So, practically, how would you prepare to stand before the council of GC and say, as Matthew has Jesus say numerous times, "You now have it on the books one way, but I'm saying, 'That ain't necessarily so.'"
Repentance and forgiveness really do defy human authority and can seemingly only be evaluated in hindsight. So let's explore away, witness where we can, and leave it to be sorted out in due time.
Wesley White
Revelation 1:4-8
The Serendipity folks ask: "If asked to share three facts about Jesus that are especially significant to you, what would you say? Why are these facts so important to you?"
\Fact\, n. [L. factum, fr. facere to make or do (place).]
One of the troubles I have with the "factual" approach is that it tends to turn things into morals or lessons. I am going to take it that their question is less about proof and final realities than it is what we make of Jesus, where do we place him in our life's rankings?
Witness, Firstborn, Ruler are John's way of placing Jesus within his understanding or schema. The question is now before us. Are those your categories of significance and do the run sequentially or concomitantly?
For the moment I'll go with Jesus as the Freedom of GOD,
Wounded Healer, and Brother.
The titles we come up with will say more about ourselves than about Jesus, but that's alright for we need to find out more about ourselves.
Wesley White
Psalm 118:14-29 or Psalm 150
Phrased in the singular but understood to be a communal psalm for the Feast of Tabernacles.
= = = = = = =
The festival has a third name -- or the festival par excellence. Hence we add the description, "the time of our rejoicing," when we mention the festival in the 'Amidah and in the Qiddush. The rabbis said: "The Divine presence is not made manifest to man through melancholy . . . but rather joy" (B. Shab . 30b). In the Jewish tradition, happiness is requisite to entering into a conscious relationship with God (Kaplan, The Meaning Of God , p. 225).
This happiness is best expressed through gratitude to God. The Midrash says: "in the millennium all other sacrifices will be abolished, but not the thanksgiving offering; all other prayers will be abolished, but not the prayer of thanksgiving" (Wayiqra Rabbah 9:7). Thus gratitude and thankfulness have supreme value as the essence of religion.
from Guide to Jewish Religious Practice by Isaac Klein
= = = = = = =
While religious praise can become mere emotionalism and miss the actions related to justice and peace here on earth, it is also an appropriate way of ending every moment - with Thanks.
We are called to give thanks in everything, even the provisional. Thanks must be given in seeming defeat as well as seeming victory. Thanks is a good thing to do on a weekend that pales in attendance to Easter. Thanks needs to be given in the context of the community, not simply the individual.
Rejoice. There is prophetic work to be done. Rejoice when such work is completed. Rejoice.
Wesley White
Acts 5:27-32
It's tax day in the USofA.
"We must obey God rather than any human authority."
Taxes are for the good of the community, but they can be misused. The Bible is for the good of the community, but it can be misused. You are for the good of the community, but you can be misused.
Obedience in regard to GOD is good-of-the-community-tropic. It slouches and careens and starts-and-stops toward the good of the community. Along the way it is misused. Along the way it gets back on track again. Continual evaluation is in order.
So how are you using your money these days? How are talking about taxes and how they represent you?
The War Resisters League shows where your federal taxes go:
33% Human Resources
13% General Government
6% Physical Resources
==============
18% Past Military
28% Current Military
3% Iraq & Afghan Wars
The government is charged with Common Defense and General Welfare issues. It might seem that a 50/50 split of money would be appropriate, but that is false. The two systems are related and anything that is not very overbalanced toward the General Welfare is unbalanced. The well-being of the community is the basis for defense. When "defense" comes to the fore, it turns all too quickly from defense to preemption and is a poor basis on which to build community.
Though this country was born in revolution its vision was not perpetual revolution and fighting, but care for one another and others.
What is GOD asking of you in regard to changing our tax reasoning and participation? Imagine investing as much again as you pay in taxes in people who are building community. This wouldn't show up in the tax chart but would put our money where our hearts are and energize our involvement in life.
Wesley White
Revelation 1:4-8
GR
- - ACE
PE
Can't say one without the other.
Another way to say this is to refer to our human needs (for the receiver) instead of holy qualities to be passed on (from the sender) whether we are ready or not.
Try this on for size:
I pray that you will be blessed with kindness and peace
from God, who is and was and is coming.
May you receive kindness and peace
from the seven spirits before the throne of God.
May kindness and peace be yours
from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness. (CEV)
May you receive kindness and peace
from a community within GOD's Commonwealth.
May kindness and peace be yours
from [my name], envisioner of a better way.
Lon A Rycraft
Aloha Wesley,
I have been behind it with a work group, visitors, and a party. Your work has helped me. I will be helping others address our own UCC issues of whose in and whose out on Thursday, your manao, thinking, helps me to remember when we oil the hinges the doors just might swing both ways according to Jesus.
Blessings, Lon
Lydia
Can there be faith without doubt? Thomas asked for proof and Jesus gave it to him. Jesus can take all our doubts. Doubting is OK, it's perhaps even healthy. Yet Jesus acknowledges that the non-doubter is more fortunate or blessed. Believing without seeing is often considered foolish and naive. We always want proof. We want proof that prayer works. We want to understand why it works. Above all we want proof that God exists. Jesus is proof that God exists. Nature is proof that God exists. The smile of a baby is proof that God exists. Yet we always want more proof. The proof is all around us, but most of the time we opt to doubt.
Wesley White
I am well aware of being behind, myself. [How many ways can that be read?] Blessings upon your work with your part of the larger Christian tradition. Now it is finally time to post my daily reflection that has been much belated. To modify the sign at the entrance of Jung's house - "Behind or not, GOD is present."
Persistence to us both and all who need such.
Wesley White
John 20:19-31
Many signs have been written, revered, passed on through scripture. Many more were not so written, etc.
This same phenomena is going on today in the work of the promised Holy Spirit. Many signs are recognized. Many signs are not so.
Listen again to the review of John's Spirit promises to the whole community, not just to individuals:
The Advocate/Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom GOD will send in Christ's name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that Jesus has said to you -- 14:26
When the Advocate/Helper comes, whom I, Jesus, will send to you from the Abba God, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Abba God, she will testify on my behalf -- 15:26
When the Advocate/Helper comes, she will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment -- 16:8
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, she will guide you into all the truth -- 16:12-13
All of this is our experience. Sometimes this is made manifest and sometimes it still remains hidden.
The best way to reveal the spirit is to be a "Wound of Christ." Through our lives others come to believe. Through our lives believers continue to believe.
Live well, Wound of Christ.
April 25, 2004 - Year C - Easter 3
Wesley White
April 25, 2004
Acts 9:1-6, (7-20)
Psalm 30
Revelation 5:11-14
John 21:1-19
Falling down laughing may be an important worship rubric we need to put into our liturgies and constant prayers. What else is there to do when fishies abound and enemies become advocates?
Wesley White
John 21:1-19
Once upon a time, commissioned to "fish" for people, Peter and the Gang went fishing for fish. Another rags to riches story follows. After catching nothing, they catch more than a boatload.
I ask you, where is the fun in this? Able to do nothing on their own, able to do too much with Jesus around directing traffic.
At any rate, the game is changed, the commission altered.
From simply hauling folks in there is a new task of tending the fish as though they were sheep. This is one of the issues the church growth folks emphasize. It doesn't do all that much good to get folks in the front door if you can't keep them from leaving by a back door.
Have you seen yourself as a Fisher? a Tender? other than these?
Perhaps the issue is less in the commission we claim we have and more in the love that sets it all in motion. Do you love Christ with all your heart and mind and soul and strength and do you love Jesus as you love yourself? If so, Fisher or Tender or somewhere between makes little difference and can change in the twinkling of an eye.
Wesley White
Revelation 5:11-14
Back in verse 6 we see a slain "lamb" standing. Something we took for granted, dead is dead, gets a second take. Whaaa? But it is not the same in appearance -- horns and eyes aplenty are now present. This lamb or Lamb that was slaughtered is invested as a presence of GOD, not with angels singing its presence into being, but finally in the voice of all creation from beginning to end, from hell to heaven, from the four-corners of a non-bounded universe.
This is one heck of a double-take. Clarity of insight, of finally getting it, leads to a harmonious cacophony and every other oxymoron coming true as we fall down laughing. We can now see ourselves with these same strange horns and eyes and distinguish tares from wheat without benefit of an "apple." This insight is the work of the people - we don't just worship that limited to being outside ourselves, but that which, panentheistically, is all in all, is also within ourselves.
Fear and awe are not the only emotions that cause us to "fall down."
Wesley White
Psalm 30
Up where the smoke is
All billered and curled
'Tween pavement and stars
Is the chimney sweep world
When the's 'ardly no day
Nor 'ardly no night
There's things 'alf in shadow
And 'alf way in light
On the roof tops of London
Coo, what a sight!
Chim chim cher-ee!
Between times is our usual space -- 'Tween weeping and joy, mourning and dancing, and need and healing.
Coo, what a sight!
Thanks be to GOD for a lifetime of opportunity to practice faithfulness.
Wesley White
Acts 9:1-6, (7-20)
Saul took advantage of the permissiveness of the PATRIOT Act to invade privacy and went after folks with a vengeance and learned, too late for those he had destroyed, a new, greater, way. This might be seen as a retelling of the Jonah story where a desire for destruction of others is paramount and then came a willingness to warn, no matter how reluctantly, against destruction that it might not happen. Jesus says it is this Jonah story that will make sense of the world.
Being swallowed by a whale, being struck blind on the road, challenged by a tablecloth or your own experience of being caught as less than you could be - all these are accompanied by graceful folks, no matter how hesitant, such as "voice of GOD," Ananias, Cornelius, or your own such catalyst.
Wherever one is - Jerusalem, Damascus, Joppa, Caesarea, or a location near you - there is need of a growth experience that brings forth more than we have been.
So, sisters Jo and brothers Jon, let's take a big breath and let it out, slow and long, in a such a way that we are relaxed into AH. Now we're ready for the rest of our story.
Wesley White
Revelation 5:11-14
Just how much is a myriad or a myriad squared? Now, add to that some number of thousands times some additional thousands. What do you get? Is that near or far from all the creatures at this point?
Do all the creatures add but a token amount to thousands of myriads? Do they effectively take things into another dimension?
This is one of the difficulties with evocative, poetic language. It is hard to pin down.
Perhaps we can simply leave it that a song was sung. Does it take an infinite number of Mormon Tabernacle Choirs to have adequate praise sung? Is your lone voice sufficient? Why or why not?
The more the merrier certainly does play to our grandiosity streak. What do you see in your vision of the meaning of life? Do you also focus on quantity over quality when it comes to GOD stuff?
Wesley White
John 21:1-19
The disciple Jesus loved said to another disciple Jesus would ask about loving him - "Hey, it's him again!"
What a communal image. Jesus loves me, I point out the presence of GOD for others. Jesus loves you, you point out the presence of GOD to me and others. Jesus loves them folks and they point out the presence of GOD to you and me.
No names are involved because we all rotate through being loved enough to see beyond our nose. Sometimes it is me and sometimes you.
This is one of the difficulties with various identities of Evangelical Christian, Progressive, United Methodist, etc. that they all keep us from being universally loved. We experience love in only the ways open to our identity. When we can step back from that we grow.
We all need a moment of identity to ground our work and we all need a moment beyond identity to be GOD. Blessings upon us as we walk back and forth over known and unknown territory.
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