January 04, 2004 - Year C - Christmas 2

Wesley White

January 04, 2004

Jeremiah 31:7-14 or Sirach 24:1-12
Psalm 147:12-20 or Wisdom of Solomon 10:15-21
Ephesians 1:3-14
John 1:1-18

Lots of happy, happy; joy, joy going on this week. How, beyond whatever disaster is going on in your life are you able to glimpse beyond to a larger vision?

Is it something personal? something communal? something both? something else? Whatever, may it lead you into a year's worth of rejoicing.

Wesley White

John 1:1-18

Verse 1 & 18 - parallels Word/God with Son/Father. What other parallels would help us so we don't get trapped with the eternal or a particular incarnation? This is worth a year's work.

Verse 18 from The Message raises these questions:

Are you a one-of-a-kind GOD-expression?

Do you exist at the very heart of whatever parallel of GOD makes sense to you?

Do you make GOD as plain as day?

Again, these are worth a year's work. These are class questions to be asked daily and weekly of one another that we might draw near the wholeness of life intended from the beginning.

Ask away. Affirm away. Live it now.

Wesley White

Ephesians 1:3-14

Here is a book title I hope someone will use, "Once and Future Redemption."

Verse 7, "In Jesus Christ we have redemption..." It goes on to use the blood and guts approach, "through his blood."

Verse 14, referring to Holy Spirit, "this/who is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption."

(italics added.)

The Message talks about this "toward" as a "first installment." The New Jerusalem Bible uses, "pledge" and the New International Version speaks of a "deposit". Old fashioned "earnest" money is the picture of the King James Bible.

John Wesley uses verse 14 in two of his Sermons on the Mount. In sermon 21 it relates to the blessing of the poor in spirit and John's connection with the joy of the "kingdom of heaven or of God which is 'within'". In sermon 30 John reflects on the outward, when the world is turning to rend you to pieces - this forward nature of GOD leads us to prayer.

Prophets move toward a dynamic future, not a static past. The energy of movement from where we are to a better place is well grounded in joy and prayer.

As you look back on this past year, how characteristic are joy and prayer for you. I am currently in the midst of two books, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken [Joy] and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Spirituality in the Workplace [Prayer]. Hopefully they will increase my quotients in both these gifts so they will abound the more this next year.

May your Joy and Prayer and sense of "Towardness" grow.

Wesley White

Psalm 147:12-20

Tonight it is very windy here. My beloved is tucked safely into bed, she enjoys the wind. I am still up, I don't care for the wind and when I go to bed I'll put in ear plugs.

Who can account for such different responses the the wind? We can say GOD is behind any event and yet we will find different appreciation levels for said event, even dislike.

What I wonder tonight is the value of ordinances or rules that require everything to be seen in its best light simply because it is posited by some that GOD is present, even in this otherwise undesirable state of affairs. Knowing an ordinance is not very comforting, in and of itself.

For me it doesn't make any difference if it is a winter wind lowering the perceived chill or a spring wind raising a kite to the heights. Wind in its raw state is for me a chaos. For others a joy.

What in your life is on the edge of chaos? Can you preempt it by praise? or by knowing some set of ordinances?

There are some times we simply need to put in ear plugs and wait to play another day.

From last Sunday: the wind blew the Vikings out of the playoffs and the Packers in. What ordinance here is a comfort to the Vikings? Don't you expect that they put in their ear plugs for a bit, will rest for a bit, and only then see what is next.

My current arrogant regime is pretty windy. My church's retrenchment to past creeds instead of present lives is very windy. I'll praise tomorrow, when the wind dies down.

As 2003 goes out like a lion, may 2004 bring us peace within all borders.

Happy New Year! We can still look forward to a time of calm, no matter how windy it currently is. Next year, Jeru-salem! A foundation of safety that will keep us from being blown about by such strange winds of doctrine as are currently pitted against one another.

Wesley White

Wisdom of Solomon 10:15-21

This is a challenge to begin another important year. This year, if not heaven on earth, when?

One key to fulfilling this challenge is to listen for those who are unable to speak (whether from internal or external constraint). We are to loose their tongues, not to interpret for them.

A second key is to patiently assist the young to move beyond baby-talk to plain speech. We are to assist them to speak for themselves, not to speak for them.

Along this journey of growth there will be discards of power and authority and new possibilities and probabilities for new community.

Happy New Year! There is worthy work ahead of us.

Wesley White

Jeremiah 31:7-14

Here is the prophet's vision. Here is a vision worthy to challenge us and call us to repeat it again and again and again.

The prophet can see GOD at work calling exiles home, turning mourning into joy, and sorrow to comfort.

If we do not have this larger vision of satisfaction, we are only prophets in training who have passed courses in gloom-and-doom, but not in reconciliation-and-restoration.

Happy New Year! Lift up your hearts.

Wesley White

Sirach 24:1-12

Believe it or not - Wisdom is to be praised in your life. Creator GOD has sent Wisdom to dwell within the beloved - you and the church community.

Wisdom was sent because it was needed here. We have so often gone off on a wild-haired tangent.

Wisdom was sent because it can grow here. We yet have possibilities to attest to the presence of good old Sophia.

If Wisdom can sing her own praises; and if Wisdom is in you: will you not also join in the singing?

Happy New Year! We can yet be Wisdom's voice in our settings.

Lon A Rycraft

Aloha Wesly,

Hau'oli Makahiki Hou, Happy New Year!

I rarely miss a day of your musings, and often use them as grist for bible study and sermons. It has not been that windy in Kalaupapa, but it has been raining since the new year began. The waters of chaos may end up filling my church with unexpected visitors. I will remember your words as I seek to shake off the doom and gloom of hobbled credos and make preparations for a bit of restoration.

Mahalo nui loa, a very big thank you,

Lon A Rycraft, Kana'ana Hou - Siloama UCC

January 6, 2004 - Year C - Epiphany

Wesley White

January 06, 2004

Isaiah 60:1-6
Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12

Ahh, to see what is coming in the midst of the everyday. This is a moment of eternity. Keep your eyes open.

Can you see, "under light", the reality on which the fantasy is based? In a star? In a baby? in the unclean? in the other? in exile darkness? in any reduction or redemption of oppression and violence? in your life? in the community around you? in dreams?

January 11, 2004 - Year C - Baptism of Christ


Wesley White

January 11, 2004

Isaiah 43:1-7
Psalm 29
Acts 8:14-17
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

How has Spirit entered your life, the life of your community?

Wesley White

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

The presence of the Holy Spirit is first reported in Jesus' life by Matthew and Mark in relationship to the act of baptism. Immediately as he surfaces the spirit meets him. Here in Luke the spirit is evidenced is in relationship to prayer after baptism.

In Matthew and Luke we then head immediately off to the wilderness for temptations. In Luke there is a brief interlude of genealogy as grounding before heading into a time of temptation.

John, is different, with no scene of baptism, only John's witness that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit beyond John's water baptism. There is no temptation scene - Jesus/Word/Christ precedes and takes precedence over any devil or satan without having to prove it through a trial.

And we think we know what is up with all this. Read more about the United Methodist understanding of baptism.

So is your experience of baptism and prayer and temptation more Matthean, Markan or Lucan? or Johanine? or some other expression of good news?

Does your experience reflect your religious traditions? Does your experience yield new insights to old pictures? What difference does your baptism make in your faith, in your life?

Wesley White

To carry the baptismal image a bit further - If you have not already read it, I recommend We Were Baptized Too: Claiming God's Grace for Lebians and Gays by Marilyn Bennett Alexander and James Preston.

You can read an excerpt from the book there as well as hear a couple of reviews by readers.

How does this expand your picture of the power of baptism and have that act pull us into new relationships with one another?

Wesley White

Acts 8:14-17

Over and over we come to the question of Holy Spirit and its presence. Does not the Holy Spirit precede belief, guarding one from being outside the possibility of turning around? Does not the Holy Spirit grow folks from glory to glory, guiding us along life's journey.

A distinction that we may be able to make is about our response to and witnessing to the presence of the Holy Spirit, not whether or not it is present. This is a much more difficult way of going than the shorthand sound bites about whether or not we have received the Holy Spirit (we have).

In this context it we can talk about evaluating reception of the Holy Spirit by seeing and hearing whatever witness is made by folks. I have received that which I can give away. I have not yet received that which I hold on to. How's that for counter-intuitive - way to go GOD!

Peter and John go to add to Philip's work, not to upstage him. Without Philip's use of his having received the Holy Spirit the Samaritans would still be the black-sheep of the family. He returned them to the community, a new community made up of all sides of the family heritage. They still need to claim their part in this new community and when that happens (participating with, not just receiving) the Holy Spirit is evidenced.

So, have you received the Holy Spirit? No, not some creedal statement you can say without wincing. No, not some particular such as sound needing interpretation. Yes, using it as your construct for behavior and meaning.

It is like a reverse domino effect. When the Holy Spirit is received it helps the fallen stand and outcasts return.

Wesley White

Psalm 29

A very muscular psalm. The parallelism in the last verse connects strength with peace. What say you about that connection?

What is the kind of strength it takes to bless with peace? Is it the strength of the top dog looking for glory and honor? Is it the power of natural strength that has dominion over all creation?

As you are still somewhat connected with the resolution time of the turn of the year and everyone getting in a Miss America prayer for peace for the coming year, where do you see your path leading you? Is it to the vulnerability of death or the victory of election? Where do we rest in peace that we might arise in peace?

Important choices are before us.

Wesley White

Isaiah 43:1-7

Love is fearsome. It will throw itself in front of a speeding truck. It will reverse its otherwise hard-held values for the sake of a beloved. It will excuse everything and nothing. There is a wildness about love that cannot be restrained, constrained, or any other way captured.

No wonder the issue of love causes disturbance in systems committed to safety, security, and stability. With the same ease that we conflate Matthew's nativity scene with Luke's, we connect love and sex. If only we can regulate sex we think we can regulate love, and vice versa. So the church might be expected to have its most trouble with gender, race, and sexual expression - all matters of the fearsomeness of love.

So Israel has become an idol for GOD who is willing to whatever it takes to draw such a love to itself. So a variety of things become idols for us, including GOD, that we try to draw unto ourselves.

This is a tough passage that sidesteps a straightforward presentation. What won't you give up for your idol, your love?

Wesley White

Acts 8:14-17

That silly old Spirit, working away, transforming lives, all very unofficial. Fortunately Peter and John were close at hand and had a couple of days to go on over and clarify the issue.

It must have been impressive because Simon who had believed and seen signs and great miracles noted that this laying on of hands was something else again. It was enough to take him back to his good old days of magic. Just lay the hands on the right way and ipso facto, bibbity-bobbity-boo, abracadabra, shazam, and just plain old hocus-pocus, the baptisms and signs and miracles take on the aura of correctness.

Would the Samaritans have been able to come in without getting the Holy Spirit the right way? Is this the new measuring rod, the new circumcision?

You may be interested in an article from the Christian Century from 1990 [Baptism in the Indian Context] that raises some important questions about baptism and culture, an event of separation or human solidarity. It comes out of a context in India related to Hindus. What do you think?

Wesley White

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Do you think Luke had a reason for adding the section that today’s text deletes? It really is an awkward scene in its current location.

Why talk about John’s imprisonment before the baptism of Jesus. It is as if John did not baptize Jesus. John talks about another to come, is arrested, then Jesus is baptized after everyone else.

Is it that into every life a little rain must fall? Is this precursor to Jesus’ own arrest and death?

What would it mean for Jesus to have been baptized by one of John’s followers, and not John himself? Would it have gotten in the way of his praying, his hearing an affirming voice, or being led into the wilderness? Just how crucial is John to the story? Just how important are any of our rituals? Can we handle meaning without a person or and event embodying it? Can we keep meaning from being trapped in such specifics and free to add to life in a number of ways?

If Jesus were baptized by a lesser light than John, would his light thus be dimmed?

How do you wrestle with baptism as a significant point of solidarity with GOD and neighbor and as a point of meaning that could be otherwise named and enacted?

January 18, 2004 - Year C - Epiphany 2

Wesley White

January 18, 2004

Isaiah 62:1-5
Psalm 36:5-10
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
John 2:1-11

Spiritual gifts come in many shapes and sizes. Lists tend to limit them. Presume that the GOD is living and can do a new thing, what new spiritual gifts can you identify this week.

Wesley White

John 2:1-11

Appended is a posting to the Wisconsin United Methodist Federation for Social Action dialogue website.

In light of this text the posting raises a question of whether Jesus would turn water into wine if the relationship being blessed was not heterosexual. Can you imagine that a part of Jesus' hesitation about blessing this marriage was the limiting factor it plays in being able to bless a variety of relationships. Might Jesus have known how overly concrete we can get when dealing with holy texts and thus lose the larger issue of blessing relationships in the specifics of the particular relationship once blessed?

I suspect that Jesus' hesitation was overcome because he simply couldn't keep himself from blessing, willy-nilly, life, because that was why he came (John 10:10) I believe Jesus would have us be more prodigal in our blessing.

- - - - - - -

Here is a letter I wrote to the La Crosse Tribune in response to several articles about same-sex unions. - Deborah Buffton

- - - - - - -

To the Editor:

Britney Spears casually marries a man on a whim and requests an annulment the next day. And yet, I am expected to believe that a committed, loving, and long-term relationship between two women or two men somehow "violates the sanctity of marriage." What is wrong with this picture?

Caring and committed relationships are a social good and a moral good and our society needs more, not fewer, of them. Such relationships strengthen the social fabric of our world whether they are between a man and a woman, between two women or between two men.

In a society where the number of failed heterosexual marriages is frighteningly high and continually increasing, what is the point of standing in the way of committed relationships simply because the two people involved happen to be of the same gender?

Society needs to encourage us all to care for each other. In a world filled with war, violence, and hatred, to create artificial legal or social barriers to caring and loving relationships is counterproductive and, ultimately, immoral.

Wesley White

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

If you have not done a spiritual gifts inventory lately you may want to explore a couple of websites - Reiville UMC and General Board of Discipleship.

These instruments can capture a bit of your spiritual gifts history but cannot predict where and what the next spiritual gift you will have. Therefore it is helpful to regularly check in with these types of inventories and your covenant community to see if you can keep up to date with what is going on in your life.

It is exciting that none of us have all the spiritual gifts and that those we have can be for a time and a season rather than for eternity. If you were to reincarnate as a spiritual gift, which one would you desire it to be? It is also exciting that all of us together have all the spiritual gifts we need.

It takes a village full of spiritual gifts to raise a child. It take a child's spiritual gift to complete a village worth of gifts.

Wesley White

Psalm 36:5-10

GOD saves everything alike. What is the alikeness here?

The Message puts it nicely,

GOD's love is meteoric,
GOD's loyalty astronomic,
GOD's purpose titanic,
GOD's verdicts oceanic.
Yet in GOD's largeness
nothing gets lost;
Not a human, not a mouse,
slips through the cracks.

The rythym here is lovely. How does not slipping through a crack relate to being saved along with everything else? The negative and the positive should be able to assist one another to a larger picture.

But how is everything alive alike? What is everything's claim to salvation or divinization? Listen to Hildegard of Bingen: "Every creature is a glittering, glistening mirror of divinity" and again "Every creature is a ray of GOD."

Look up panentheism (careful on the spelling) to find out more about all things in GOD, GOD in all things, and GOD working through all things. Then do some browsing in the material supplied by Matthew Fox.

Wesley White

Isaiah 62:1-5

For whose sake will you move beyond silence?

For whose sake will you spend extra energy?

Not much going on until those questions are addressed in our lives.

Wesley White

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Verse 7:

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. (NRSV)

Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. (The Message)

What manifestation/doing of the Spirit is alive and well within the person from whom you learn the easiest, who is your hero/heroine?

What manifestation/doing of the Spirit is alive and well within the person most difficult for you to learn from, who is your enemy or betrayer?

Can you believe the same Spirit is in both, working for the common good so everyone benefits? This is difficult. We want to idolize the easy revelation and deny the difficult or misused gift. This gift of dealing with a variety of community members helps us know when the gift we are using is coming from a deep place within and is connected more directly with the Spirit. It also assists us in recognizing when we have had that gift take a detour through our necessity of the day that we use to fool ourself or manipulate others.

In both cases we can better "do what needs to be done" (Powdermilk Biscuit as Spirit) by showing the part of GOD we best image.

Wesley White

John 2:1-11

The following is excerpted from Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary: Understanding the Bible Anew Through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard. They regularly have some interesting material. You may find it helpful.

The six stone jars used for the Jewish rites of purification are of a size more suitable to the temple than for a home in Cana. In any event, they refer to a very prominent part of Jewish life in the first century. They were pre-occupied with the problem of impurity.

This story, then, is really about the collision between the ministry of Jesus and the conventional religion of his time. We could say, lest we think this has something to do with the Jewishness of this religion, that there is always a collision between the ministry of Jesus, or the spirit of the Paraclete that Jesus left us, and the conventional religions of the time. This is paradigmatic collision.

The stone jars are not for wine, but for ritual washing. And note they need filling; they are depleted. Jesus is not rejecting the jars and what they stood for; he is filling them. You could say that he is filling the rituals with meaning and then transforming them.

Three notes in passing: (1) the gentleness of this transition from one dispensation to another. Not a rejection, but filling it and transforming it. A continuity and a discontinuity at the same time. (2) The devout Jews of the time were habituated to these rituals and clung to them, not only because they order life but also because it gave them an identity. So when Jesus begins to offer an alternative, he runs into the fundamental human phenomenon of our clinging to such rituals....

January 25, 2004 - Year C - Epiphany 3

Wesley White

January 25, 2004

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Psalm 19
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Luke 4:14-21

We've heard about the dispute between law and grace. This week we have the opportunity to come at this from a different angle, law and gifts. It's still the big L&G, but nuanced enough to be worth looking at.

I'd be interested in how you see your gifts or someone's gifts breaking open the gift held tight within the law.

Wesley White

Luke 4:14-21

Baptism and first results. Last week we heard John's first event with Cana wine. This week with restoration imagery that leads to exile from home. If we had tracked Matthew it would be picking up J.B.'s emphasis on repentance and sermonizing. Mark looks at a healing.

Two "miracles" and two "preachings." Quite a combo, one leading to the other when done with authenticity.

To focus on Luke, today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. What a day that will be when the poor, captives, blind, and oppressed are restored to community. It will be a day of Jubilee, a year of Jubilee.

Here is a helpful resource for bringing together Martin Luther King, Jr. and Isaiah 58.

Eventually the people of Nazareth caught on that the restoration Isaiah and Jesus have in mind is structural, not just personal. May you and I not give up this larger vision and give in to the McCarthyite tactics of the religious right with their little lists that they are checking twenty-four times a day. Yes, it may lead us to a cliff, but, yes, too, to going on our way which is the way of Isaiah, Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr. -- the way of restoration of community.

Wesley White

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

The body does not consist of one member but of many. At this point the church does not consist of one tradition but many.

This, of course, leads to a variety of disputes within the church - which is the truest of the traditions. Which is the organizing tradition/law that will eventually bring all the others into line with it?

If we go anywhere but a thanks and a pox on each and every tradition we will have fallen back into the letter-of-the-law trap. The blessings of each tradition pushes said tradition beyond itself into the gray area of proto-tradition. The most helpful of the traditions are those which help us see a bit further, hear a bit deeper, walk a step more, stand higher on their shoulders. The most unhelpful start assigning honor and respect - always, of course, assigning themselves the best of show.

Strive for the largest tradition, the widest interpretation, the grandest hope.

Wesley White

Psalm 19

The law, decree, precept commandment, fear, ordinance, revelation, signposts, life-map, direction, reputation, judgment, statute, instruction of GOD is reveled in.

Can you read "Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer" as "The gift of my life is joined with GOD, forever"?

If something like this is at work might we consider that the law stuff is not intended as a stopping point, a being made in to a strict creed forever or even an eternal gazing upon a law enforcing potentate, but an important source of information and encouragement to live to draw near and even become one with GOD and creation and more.

If law does not produce the fruit of gifts lived, it is only a prison, not a seedbed.

Wesley White

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

Again and again I am intrigued by what is not said. In this political season (and all such) what is said is important and what is not said is doubly important.

To leave out verses 4 and 7 is to leave out the details of the communal aspect of scripture. Ezra was not alone on the dais. Thirteen Levites did the teaching.

The passage is hierarchical enough without dismissing key players and narrowing the story to one person. Do struggle with pronouncing the names. Give these good folks the honor of sharing their gifts of support and encouragement and teaching and not letting them get cast aside as though they were less respectable cogs in a larger story. Imagine, if you will, others playing equally important parts without even a mention to be dismissed.

Wesley White

Speaking of "what is not said" here is a link to the Annenberg Political Fact Check site (checking up on media reports) and their comments about the 2004 State of the Union address. You might want to return to their home on a regular basis as part of the strongest temptations is a cone of silence about something or other (usually a consequence) and learning to hear the unspoken is good training for facing-down your next tempation.

Wesley White

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

Knowing where we fit into community is important. Roles are significant.

If we had finished verse 31 we would know that this positioning within community for the sake of the community is important but only prelude to something even more basic -- having our role be connected with our love.

We don't act for the common good only on the basis of what others will get out of our so acting, but because it goes deep within our own life to be grounded with GOD, with love.

Act for good for others only and it won't be long before we get to resentment and hate as we are worn down. Common good needs to take into account the source of action as well as the one benefit of action.

Often we read this passage on a horizontal plane with all the gift connections running back and forth between us. This can get to be rather law oriented and socially determinant. Don't forget to read this from a vertical axis -- a GOD's eye view from above and below.