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Lectionary - December 2005 |
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December 4, 2005 - Year B - Advent 2 Wesley White Isaiah 40:1-11 Just under the surface of our business as usual are issues of injustice. A continuing call is to shift gears from that which allows injustice and to grow into that which brings completeness, fulfilling the wholeness implied with caring for the well-being of all. Listen in for that which indicts and that which transforms. This wakeful listening prepares us to remove our self-placed ear plugs of power and control and to awaken our various internal characters to live in unity with themselves and the rest of creation. Wesley White Mark 1:1-8 The presenting issue for which the good news of Jesus Christ is appropriate is that of injustice. Although attributed to Isaiah the first writing reinterpreted by Mark is from Malachi. Hear Theodore W. Jennings reflect on this reality in his book, The Insurrection of the Crucified : "....Justice has been perverted, turned upside down. Indeed two ways of perverting justice are indicated here. One is the provision of a religious sanction for injustice; the other is the cynical dismissal of the relevance of calls for justice. In other words, the one known as Malachi accuses his audience of legitimating injustice in both religious and secular terms. The prophet is concerned, on the one hand, with those who use the name of God to legitimate their oppression of the needy, and, on the other, with those who calculate that no God of justice will be able to interfere with their exploitation of the needy. The collusion of these forces is as common today as it was in the time of Malachi or Mark...." As we listen in to this issue that will crop up in each season, a question must be asked about the ways in which we have been co-opted by these colluding forces. Do we stand with John in speaking truth to power (not to the needy or Gentiles, but to the religious and political powers of every time)? Richard W. Swanson, in Provoking the Gospel of Mark , writes: "The promises that the storyteller calls into the story are thus tense promises, promises that remind the audience that there are promises that God has not been so good at keeping. To call such a situation to mind at the beginning of the gospel of a messiah creates a strange tension in the room. Is this going to be a story that settles old scores and finally makes good on old promises? Or is this going to be a story about how things come up just a little short yet again? Do not assume that you know the answer just because you are a Christian or because you believe that Jesus is the right answer to every question, whether in Sunday school or out." Swanson goes on to ask, "How would the story be told if it were a story of deferred promises that will be deferred yet again? Explore this narrative arc carefully. The standard telling of this scene bubbles with joy and demand. The standard telling is worth exploring, too, but it is easy. There are more surprises in exploring the deferred promises?" So what promises are you expecting that should have been completed by now? Does this say more about the promises or your expectations? Because of the deferment are you ready to settle some scores? Just how difficult is this getting ready and waiting going to be? Wesley White 2 Peter 3:8-15a There is trouble in the world around, there is trouble in the church right here, there is trouble within ourselves. If there weren't this trouble we wouldn't be talking about the patience of GOD and endings of earth and heaven. So, given that there are troubles everywhere we look and that not looking doesn't do away with the troubles, what is the preeminent work we are to be about. Well, while waiting for GOD to do whatever it is GOD's going to do, there is always the work of "peace". From The Hidden Gospel: Decoding the Spiritual Message of the Aramaic Jesus by Neil Douglas-Klotz we hear of peace "which remind[s] us of what persists and what dies in our human existence. While the Western definition of the word 'peace' sees it simply as the absence of war or conflict, the Semitic languages see it as something more profound. Both the Hebrew shalom and the Aramaic shalama derive from a verb that means to be fulfilled or complete, to surrender or be delivered, or to die.... "When one greets another with shalom, shalma, or salaam (the Arabic form), it can be an instant of Sabbath. Both people have the opportunity to remember thier origins as beings whose beginning is ultimately a mystery. This remembrance can help clear away a history of offenses given, received, and perceived. It can produce peace on a very deep level, not by invoking certainty or idealism, but by bringing awareness of uncertainty and the ultimate mortality of all forms...." These words are followed by a body meditation that you may want to institute as an Advent discipline to assist you to be "found at peace". "Return to a quiet place of breathing awareness, feeling the word shalom or shalama riding on the inhalation and exhalation. With this feeling and word, feel the presence of Hokhmah, Holy Wisdom, and greet each aspect of your inner self that you meet. As much as possible, allow each one to participate in feeling the mysterious origins of the universe. Invite each aspect of your self to a table of bread and wine that can fulfill the ultimate desire of each to bring its purpose into being. As you end the meditation, look into the days immediately ahead of you. In what ways can this greeting and invitation enter your interactions with everyone and everything you meet?" Wesley White Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13 Speaking of peace, it is quite one of the most active of endeavors. Peace aids the meeting of love and faithfulness. Without it these two would continue along their separate but equal arcs - each finding a way to avoid the other. Love without faithfulness can wander off in any old direction and faithfulness without love is all too easily stuck. Peace even works on itself and its doppelganger, righteousness. They kiss (to complete themselves, not to betray the other). Peace blesses and is blessed by the easiest way away from peace, self-righteousness that covers up communal-righteousness. Peace kisses past the shell to the place of unity. Peace plays creator between the waters above (righteousness) and the waters below (faithfulness) that neither take over and life can happen between. Peace calls each to its place in the wholeness of well-being. To Peace is to lead an active life, a pro-active life, leading to more life, life in abundance. Advent is a time to practice the presence of peace between our various selves (internal and external). This is a most wonderful time of the year - setting the expectation of Peace that we will work on all the rest of the year. I should have mentioned it earlier, but its not too late to look up an Advent Devotional that is oriented to moving beyond the struggles of life to learn from them a peace that passes our understanding - but not our participation. Wesley White Isaiah 40:1-11 There is a strain within us that wants to read this passage as a warm comfort. A road is built for us to get to God. We'll be like little chicks under powerful wings, taken care of all our days. All we have to do is hold on during our period of supererogatory suffering - no whimpering during our whipping or we'll get wiped out. It appears the road in the wilderness is more closely allied with the interstate system sold as a quick way to mobilize our troops for internal defense when the commies invaded. The road is a way for the Lord to get the penalty to us more quickly so the extravagance of punishment might be escalated and thus end more quickly (or something like that, hard to tell in cases of "this is for your own good"). Somewhere in there is our current Iraq situation. Somewhere in there is the cutting of social services even more drastically than cutting taxes on wealth. Somewhere in there is individualized insurance in corporately run illness care (preventive care is health care, what we have is illness care). Look, people to God are as grass. So what's the big deal. Redemptive violence is the model here and we claim we are made in that image. The comfort here is to roll over and do what we're told. No partnership, no participation, only puppetry. Here is stasis, here is infinite nursing of an eternal newborn. On the surface this is Comfort, with a capital "C". Below the surface we find cold comfort in hot water. Creation is not a smooth marble, but highly variegated. Thanks be for valleys and mountains. May God and all holographic images of same soon appreciate the importance of difference and hurry more toward compassion than a punishingly strict standard that accepts no variation from some idealized, recursive norm. Wesley White 2 Peter 3:8-15a How do you measure waiting? What connection does it have to time? The dictionary says "waiting" comes from older words of "watching" and "awake". Might waiting be a directional focus rather than a moment by moment experience which, after awhile, wears us out to the point we falter in our waiting. Waiting, old-school, awakens us to that which is being watched for. It is not a question of how long until it is here, full-blown, but whether we are paying attention to catch a glimpse of it. In this regard waiting is very similar to hoping for things yet unseen. It takes a great deal of hope to wait creatively, to wait peacefully. So, what are you hoping for, waiting for? A new heaven and new earth? For righteousness to be lived, to be at home, rather than wandering as a potential? Either of these will have an effect of closing off, dissolving, our current situation. And either of these will shift our perspective affect, assisting us to see a new heaven in the old earth and a present righteousness yet able to be drawn from current injustice. If you are interested in a cartoon about time check out ReverendFun. Wesley White Mark 1:1-8 As we look ahead to Jesus' baptism we might understand that Jesus was baptized with a Holy Spirit and there is a hint there about our baptism in a Holy Spirit. Hint number one, Holy Spirit baptism has to do with assurance, not repentance. I, you, anyone is directly related to GOD, to all that is, to the unity of life. This relationship is where we find our wellness. Now, whether one needs repentance before assurance or assurance to leap into repentance is an eternal question that seems only knowable in particular instances where for some it is one way, for others another, and for yet others is either simultaneous or extraneous. Hint number two, Holy Spirit baptism has to do with a willingness to be led into the deep parts of life where temptations are real and where one needs to rely upon a humility gained by repentance and an openness to a larger picture grown from assurance of place and self. Now, whether temptations to narrow life down to one's own comfort and power can be faced down by humility or openness is basically a question of preferred spelling. Hint number three, Holy Spirit baptism has to do with building new relationships, neighbor to neighbor, not just with GOD. Friends, sometimes called disciples, become part of our ongoing life. This is not a baptism for self alone. Hint number four, Holy Spirit baptism has to do with the healing power of repentance and assurance for others. These qualities of deep living are not for self alone, but build community as we mutually heal, now needing healing, now offering healing, now claiming the power of healing, now releasing the power of healing. Hints will go on but this promise of baptism with/in a Holy Spirit is grounded in experiences that expand the meaning of baptism and Holy Spirit and GOD and repentance and assurance and in expansion bring us to imagining a new creation and living its possibility today. December 11, 2005 - Year B - Advent 3 Wesley White Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 Who am I? What fairy-tale archetype is emblematic of the arc of my experience? Is that the Grimm or Disney version? In what ways am I defined by my economic status? my vulnerability to propaganda about war? my participation in a meta-story within and beyond my obituary? my joy and sorrow with another's falling and rising? We listen and listen and listen and between listenings decide. Wesley White John 1:6-8, 19-28 Witnessing is a strange and radical activity in a land made passive by a "Pox Americana". To give witness or testimony here is based on the Greek word "martyria" (yes, the word "martyr comes from this). At base this is "confirming something by referring to one's own experience." What have you experienced so directly and concretely that you would expect martyria to be about life – not death? Can you see it as "living fully in such a way that death is the outcome"? Bishop Munib Younan says that there are three necessary and equal components to martyria: word, deed, and suffering. To speak about an issue, but hypocritically not act upon it – to act upon a matter without educating others about it – or to simply inflict suffering upon one's self or others without proper justification and explanation are all incompatible with the concept of martyria. Indeed, to become a true martyr, one must contribute equally to "witnessing in word, witnessing in deed, and exposing oneself to danger, whatever the cost". If this "cost" so happens to be death, then one will have become a martyr. However, to simply kill one's self in a desperate act of hopelessness does not constitute martyria, but murder – a sin against God in all three Abrahamic faiths. If Bishop Younan's interpretation of "a theology of martyria" is correct, then it's about time more Christians step forward and offer themselves up as martyrs for a true and just resolution to the Palestinian Issue. excerpted from A Call for Christian Martyrdom] Our experience can also be described as what it is we turn our eye toward. To Set Our Hope on Christ, Study Guide for The Windsor Report from the Episcopal Church, USA addresses another issue that needs our witness as it addresses the question, "How can the holiness and faithfulness to which God calls us all be made manifest in human intimacy?" How will you live your experience of the sacredness and blessing of a variety of gender orientations among us? Where else are you witnessing to the light of your experience? Health care? Economic structures? Environment? War propaganda? and on through what seems an endless list of that which would cover the light of creation . . . . Where else are you, at least, supporting those who are so witnessing? Wesley White 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 Test everything! Oh, how wearying to have one's demythologizer constantly on. Diogenes searched for honest folk. Jesus was alert for faith-ful ones. Ann Blair writes of another quest, Mosaic Physics and the Search for a Pious Natural Philosophy in the Late Renaissance . To test everything presumes being cynical or having something to test against. For the moment, discarding the voice of the cynic who tests everything and finds it always comes up short, lets look at this passage for a standard. How about constant rejoicing? Have you found someone who does this or in whom you see this capacity? How does this change you if you should find such a someone or if you never do? Same questions about constant praying? One search that commends itself by not being limited by what we already know of rejoicing and praying is that for persons open to change, those who do not quench a Spirit of new life. It may be that we don't need to parse things out about who has what, and to what degree they have it, in the present moment. It may be that we do need to develop that old educational approach of teaching how-to-learn rather than settling for teaching current information to pass a not-left-behind test. In some sense rejoicing and praying in conventional modes closes us to rejoicing and praying in each context. If you don't use a traditional prayer in a liturgical setting, is the prayer heard? If you don't use a standardized breathy, "Lord, just..." extemporaneous sounding prayer in an pentecostal setting, is the prayer heard? How many rejoicing and praying styles do you carry in your spiritual tool-belt? How much room do you have for a new one? Wesley White Psalm 126 or Luke 1:47-55 There seems to be a time for all things under heaven. Satisfied for the moment,? - hang on a bit and you'll have an opportunity to once again come face-to-face with suffering and need to yet again come to terms with it. Having great difficulty? - uno momento , it will all come 'round right in some valley of love and delight. Seedtime to harvest, powerful to lowly, hungry to full, weeping to joy. There are longer arcs and shorter ones, but they are none-the-less arcs of pendulum periodicity. These seem to go on with some timed frequency beyond our usual ken. Getting in tune with these arcs leads us to participate in them through some planned perturbation. Get ready to participate in moving your life arc and that of all of us together into a new phase. We do this by not acquiescing to our current state and not simply taking the opposite pole. Our call is to holding both arcs within ourselves, being the unity they have fractured from. Jesus leads us into the space between past promises and emerging mercy. Here we travel with GOD, as did Mary and Jesus and others, to bring to limited situations an expanded picture of options. In between we can find healings not bound by distance. In between we can find exemption from laws. In between we can find partnership, not patriarchy. In between we can find our rich selves emptied and our fallow selves cultivated once again. In between we can find a connection between our unique and our cultural selves. How would you describe the arcs you are between? Where between are you? Which way would you ordinarily be traveling? How might you effect a change in that expectation? Wesley White Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 Let's bring together the first and last verses of this pericope. The middle is grand and highly to be adopted as a personal mission statement, but for now the first and last. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me . . . righteousness and praise spring up. While having very specific tasks regarding the oppressed and brokenhearted, the captives and prisoners, the mourners, strangers, foreigners, and thieves, these tasks are to be done in the attitude of righteousness and praise, not one of a fore-ordained agenda or institutional program. The categories of folks mentioned in the middle not simply charity cases. They are sisters and brothers who don't need an iron-fisted prophet to face off against an iron-fisted ruler and culture complicit with same. Repentance might be better thought of as a pull toward a preferred future rather than a push away from a limited past. We turn more easily with a persistent strange attractor nipping at our heels, border collie like, and clarity of identification of how to reduce resistance with a force field analysis, than with a violent prophet set against a violent culture. These two nearly invisible gifts lead us, through alternative routes, to draw near to a choice of non-violence. Wesley White 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 + rejoice - quench spirit + test everything - evil = spirit/soul/body kept sound What equation are you using these days to keep progressing toward wholeness/soundness for self and others? Wesley White John 1:6-8, 19-28 "Adam" was to testify, witness, to the light of creation, a relationship with GOD. Down through the years this has been passed on - "Original Testimony", so to speak. We are all called to the task of Adam and John and Jesus, etc. - to testify to the next, best, part of life. There are different testimonies in different arenas of life. We each have our place to testify - whether from a riverbank or an empty tomb or where you happen to be. This testifying is Advent work -- Remembering back to our Original Testimony that we might Testify Forward. How's it going? December 18, 2005 - Year B - Advent 4 Wesley White 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 Over the last weeks we've moved announcers from fig trees to two tales of Baptizing John to, now, Angelic Gabriel. What or who can't be an announcer (and, no, here we are not referring to announcer tests on ESPN)? We are opened again to the role of announcer for ourselves - you and me and both of us together. Quite naturally or intentionally, we will be announcing all manner of things to the world about how we see the world working (or not) and what hope we are living out of (or not). This fourth week of Advent is a time to wonder what we are announcing through our responses to life situations. This gives us the opportunity to keep on the same track or make a shift. Wesley White Luke 1:26-38 Genesis: "Adam" is made in GOD's image and, like GOD, needs a helpmeet. Luke: "Mary" continues the image of GOD and has a betrothed helpmeet. Where are we to go with this second creation (depending on how you count floods and Exoduses and Exiles and the like - even a seventh creation perhaps)? From a Rib and from a Womb arise new possibilities to help name and help redeem creation round about. Precursors have been days called good and ol' cousin Liz. What a deal. Again we hear that nothing is impossible. What impossibilities will you give credence to this week? What from the past will you point to as evidence that will make sense of your "senseless quest", your "untenable position" (at least as perceived by less active dreamers). Wesley White Romans 16:25-27 What does it take for GOD to strengthen someone besides myself? It takes "my gospel" and "proclamation of Jesus Christ" [NRSV] The Message shifts language and location in this long, long sentence from "my gospel" to "our praise". This raises interesting interplays between "my" and "our". When we are testifying, witnessing, announcing - how much is mine and how much is (y)ours. What can I play with and bring to it my particular experience? To only announce what is ours in common cuts off the growth of the blessing to folks who have not experienced the growth of this common understanding or who have found it to be untrue as expressed in the lives of the announcers. While it can bring the weight of a particular strain of tradition to bolster it round with rituals and expectations, it seems incapable of increasing in glory - sort of like a postcard from travels where no amount of "wishing you were here" photograph can take the place of actually being here and making decisions that affect the "here". To only announce what is mine cuts off the growth of additional layers of meaning found only in rubbing "mine" against "yours" and finding a yet larger "ours". [More poetically put by e.e. cummings as he writes about a kite or a relationship: blue took it my ] Just how "my" is your gospel? how "our"? When it comes to it, how "Jesus"? Wesley White Luke 1:47-55 or Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26 David sees what GOD is going to do through him to make him mightier. Mary sees what GOD is going to do, beyond the blessing she has received, to make all more whole. Both of these are appropriate, from time to time, as we find ourselves intimately engaged in the experience of GOD . There is a call for us to be at the center of the action and to be able to gaze wonderingly and unattached upon it that self-same center. These understandings can swap on a moments notice and also find one or the other as a predominant organizing principle for long seasons of life. So, where is your engagement level during the hour in which this note is read? Is this a new position for you or have you been responding thusly for days and weeks and months and years and decades? Do you sense a shift coming as new experiences bring new perspectives. Last night's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart noted that South Africa's highest court has instructed the legislature there to get on with legalizing marriage between two folks of the same "sex" and this puts America in the position of being less progressive than South Africa. Another way to put that is that we are now more apartheid, using gender as the category of division instead of color/race, than South Africa, who was once the poster-child for apartheid theology. How do you see the issues of gender inclusiveness or diversity playing out in the visions of David and Mary? Are you engaged in helping them come to pass or watching and waiting (expecting) for GOD to care for it? Anonymous What exactly do you mean by God needs a helpmeet? Wesley White When dealing with evocative mythology the category of "exact" is slippery. The imagery here is taken from Genesis 1:26 - "Then God said, 'Let us make humankind [adam] in our image, according to our likeness: and let them have dominion [here "rule" as differentiated in the next creation story of "cultivate"]...." and Genesis 2:18 - "Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner...." Do these passages speak of the same desire for relationship or partnership or helpmeet status? Is partnership innate to GOD and GOD can see this same need in us as we are made in GOD's "image"? Clarence Jordan is explicit in his translations about this partnership with GOD. In other translations it takes a bit more to tweeze it out from covering language. All through the Hebrew scriptures we hear images of GOD and Israel as husband and wife. In the scriptures about Jesus we hear about the Bride of Christ. These are all helpmeet images. Time is short as the snow comes and the day's schedule presses on. Hope this points some directions about what stood behind the helpmeet imagery. I'd be glad for your further reflections on the scriptures for the week as I do think we are partners of one another, as well, and working on our differences can be pleasurable, edifying, and unifying (unlike in our culture's yelling heads who are ostensibly imparting information but are simply parroting propaganda in its worst sense and turning differences into danger and distance from one another). Wesley White 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 Have you ever made an announcement that you were sure about and then found out you had to take it back? We do have a tendency to approach announcements with surety. We may not be right, but we are sure. Appearing decisive and resolute is all the rage. Participating in announcements puts us at risk for getting it wrong. At its best this calls us to practice humility. If we've not had time before we announce something, it is prudent to check as soon as we can to see if we got it right. Always it is easier, in the long run, to 'fess up to an error early on. The longer we put off making the correction the more "sure" we get and when we wait until we can't avoid coming clean it is too late to reclaim our integrity. Here Nathan announces his understanding that David is in like Flynn with GOD. "Go for it, David, you're the man!" Then, that night, correction comes. Next day brings the correction goes forth. Nathan's integrity holds. He shifts announcements as new information comes in. This will hold him in good stead several chapters down the way when he will need to again bring a word of correction to David, this time regarding Uriah and Bathsheba. How goes your announcement integrity. Hopefully you are not waiting until everything is clear to make an announcement because that will be the twelfth of never. Say what you mean and mean what you say until you have additional information and then, like shampoo, repeat the process to remain clean. Wesley White Romans 16:25-27 My life, Jesus' life, the prophet's lives are all oriented to whatever might be meant by the evocative phrase, "the obedience of faith." The first striking thing is the definite article. There does seem to be a drive to unify obedience -- there can only be one response and one focus for that response. There does seem to be a drive to concretize faith - - we do so every so often and call it a creed to which every knee is expected to bow. While many would claim it as simple as faith in a given and following where that goes, to many others including me, that seems all too simple, too good a deal. You don't have to look very far back or gaze too far into the future to note significant changes in what it is that is believable, that to which we would now give our obedience even if we wouldn't have a short while ago and can already see the handwriting on the wall that we won't so live/obey in days to come. Another way to come at this is that the direction of life leads us to engagement, not simply rote response. When we do this we are announcing a different take on reality -- a participation in life, not just a statement about it. What is it you are obeying these days? Is that what you had faith in 10 years ago, or more? How far do you think you can push that same faith into the future without it turning into yet another idol? Wesley White Luke 1:26-38 Jesus didn't seem to talk about his birth as a source of authority. Paul doesn't spend any time with Jesus' birth. What then might be its significance? It seems that Matthew and Luke saw this as a way to contextualize what they had to say about Jesus. The Church (after Constantine) institutionalized a single day of recognition (a birthday party, if you like) for Jesus (was it really based on 9 months after the then acknowledged date of the creation of the world?). Perhaps we might tap into this story through Mary and the angelic recognition that each of us bears within ourselves a “greatness”. Each of us also discounts this greatness. We have a whole series of questions (excuses) why this can't be because if it is true we would need to nurture it and allow it to come to fruition in its own time and then to be set loose from us. For now, know that the power of the Most High has come over you. May you let it be. Now on to the rest of your story and the story of the greatness you birth into this sorry world that holds the germ of creation too lightly and the armament of destruction too tightly. December 24/25, 2005 - Year B - Christmas Wesley White Isaiah 9:2-7 / Isaiah 62:6-12 / Isaiah 52:7-10 Christmas Eve and Christmas Day all get wrapped up together. Use your imagination about the various choices the differing traditions have made regarding text. Do you resonate with your own tradition's choice, or another? Are you drawn more to the eve or the day - - and it was evening and morning the next day? Is Christmas a settled doctrine for you, or a surprising revelation? Wesley White Luke 2:1-14, (15-20) / Luke 2:(1-7), 8-20 / John 1:1-14 Whether we look at the presence of Jesus Christ as being grounded in the nastiest of political/military situations or the grandest of creation settings, there is a basic mystery to be encountered -- the reality of glory among us, of stars and shepherds, of angels singing peace to all and Baptist John announcing light for all, of going ahead anyway, whether in an untenable geopolitical setting or a family that refuses to see who you are. We again wait for the surprise of life being filled with more than that for which we can account. It may come on the eve or the morning of our next day. It may not. To be sure of one or the other takes us out of the arena of surprise and mystery. May we find ourselves alert to the possibility of surprise and open to receive it, however it may show itself, without forcing it to come on our terms or otherwise discount or miss it. Wesley White Titus 2:11-14 / Titus 3:4-7 / Hebrews 1:1-4, (5-12) Living lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly has no reward to be waited for. They are, in themselves, the reward already. If you are hoping for something, the way toward it is to begin living it in the present. We are to be the peace we desire. On the other hand, if you wait long enough and get your timing down right, God will finally come around to sending the cavalry to the rescue. Salvation has nothing to do with our living well, only GOD's living well. With these two comes the joy of discernment, knowing when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. A part of what is behind the differing traditions of salvation is the whole business of incarnation. If it were merely a matter of correct doctrine we would run in one direction or the other. When dealing with real live life, we need to be able to go in either direction with equal ease and even to go in both directions at once, thus confusing the heck out of ourselves and others who look for some seamless garment to throw over every issue of living. Indeed, this freedom is the image of GOD, the reflection of GOD, and whatever glory GOD wields. Wesley White Psalm 96 / Psalm 97 / Psalm 98 Sing to the Lord a new song: Judgment is grounded in equity, righteousness, and truth. (96) Sing to the Lord an old song: God loves, guards, rescues. (97) Sing to the Lord a new song: Remembered steadfast love and faithfulness. (98) If you had to embody one of these songs, which would come first to your lips? This is almost a personality test and it doesn't make any difference whether that is a gift hard-wired or learned through experience. Are you into - judgment on what has already happened? - being proactive in peace and justice ministries? - living as you would have the future become? Thomas D'Alessio How about: Sing to God, for God, What if all else Wesley White Isaiah 9:2-7 / Isaiah 62:6-12 / Isaiah 52:7-10 Sentinel and "Son" and Light get paralleled here. The qualities of one run into the qualities of the other. The authority of each grows continuously. It is only in this constant growth that the possibility of endless peace comes to pass. Our tendency is to plateau our growth (for shorter and longer terms) and at each we not only consolidate our gain (light the path we have come by), but we lose sight of our journey and settle for a present peace based on the past that can't bear the weight of tomorrow's realities without more growth. A call comes to move beyond our current plateau, to "build up" the road to which we have set our foot. A light dawns, a sentinel calls out, a child pushes the boundaries to say, "Ensign Pulver, here, its time for more life than this old bucket or plateau can hold! We'll seek it first in anti-authoritarian silliness which is appropriate to Holy People, the Redeemed." What's going to allow folks to join in with the next stage of journey. Well, there will be false promises of peace at the next plateau and that will pull some folks on. Some will get lonely when others have journeyed on and begin see the road isn't quite as rough as they had feared. Some won't ever move and they'll be buried in their grave to mark this plateau. Some will hear a sentinel "son" of light singing for joy about that which is yet to come, no matter what plateau we are on. As we near a time of celebrating birth of a prince of peace who will need to grow into and past that designation, it will help if we recognize that the sentinel, "son", light of old are yet floating around in our gene pool, in what it means to be created in the image of GOD. They are part of us and it is appropriate to allow them to be born again within us. May we use Christmas to not only celebrate a past birth, but a present birth of ourselves. Wesley White Titus 2:11-14 / Titus 3:4-7 / Hebrews 1:1-4, (5-12) G*D spoke in the prophets. G*D spoke in Jesus (and Joseph and Mary and shepherds and manger beasts and magi). G*D speaks still in you, in me. G*D still speaks in the lives of others. The prophets reflected G*D's glory (remember Moses' veiled face?). Jesus reflected G*D's glory. You and I, images of G*D, reflect G*D's glory. G*D's glory is reflected in the lives of others. This glory of G*D is shown in goodness and loving kindness that does not dwell on acts past, but enhances deeds right now. It has been poured out upon us by Jesus, adding to the pouring out upon us of image at creation, and asks us to pour it out on others. Thus salvation is brought to all. Thus we are active in our waiting. Blessed Creation, Merry Christmas, Joyful Today. Wesley White Luke 2:1-14, (15-20) / Luke 2:(1-7), 8-20 / John 1:1-14 Christmas Eve Day comes as a witness to testify to the light. On this night there will be larger crowds in churches than tomorrow morning. So what light is being testified to? It apparently isn't regular, congregational worship. Might it be spectacle that is being looked to? Something creation-wide, huge? Completed? If this something is to be recognizable, does it have to be on our scale, lived among us? Is that what a child is about, filled with all the expectations of the generations and the parents that this will be the one to do what we have not yet been able to do? And yet we carefully teach each little one to expect to be perfect but to do so within the limitations of our fears, and so not to be able to make a difference. It is amazing that any progress is made unless this is somehow tied up with such a fragile thing as light not being overcome by darkness. Witnesses are needed because when we go to look for the announced difference-maker (in some manger hereabout) one hardly knows where to begin to look, particularly if an on-again, off-again star is not your guide, just some song. Were the shepherds ready to give up when they finally found Joseph and Mary or did they have beginners luck and stumble upon them right away? Was there a relative among the shepherds (another descendant of David's) who had the skinny, the low-down, the right data base to search? John calls out, the angels call out, the shepherds call out, the manger calls out, the light of creation calls out, but we still need to journey to find. May this Christmas Eve set your journey aright and energize you to hear, "Peace to all" and know that "all" means "all". May this Christmas Eve be treasured in your heart and see you through the trials of this next year. May this Christmas Eve help you return to your usual life, rejoicing, glorifying and praising for all you have experienced and been opened to new experiences.
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