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Lectionary - November 2005 |
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November 6, 2005 - Year A - Pentecost +25 Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25 or Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16 or Amos 5:18-24 Choices bring with them two realities. One - they are chosen on the basis of some combination of inertia from past choices and expectation of future realities. Two - their consequences on a line of tradition or limitation on perceived next options can never be fully known at the time of the choice. As we move into this week we are sensitized to the pushes and pulls that will bring us to a new day. A mystery of awareness of choices stands before us. May we joyfully enter into choosing beyond the hobgoblin of consistency and the wraith of wishful-thinking. Matthew 25:1-13 Choices come all along the way. They continually need to be made and remade. Nothing is settled, once for all. We see this in our political and economic life. We see this in the advancement of science. We see this in our own habit patterns as we keep an old one going, or begin a new one. As we move along it is important to recognize a dual choice is always being made at any single choice moment. And what a choice moment is a moment of choice! We choose for ourselves and we choose for others. These are not equivalents. They do not constrain one another. We can make a choice without demanding all others make the same choice. We can appreciate the choice another has made and yet go another way. The gifts we have are simply different. Suppose you were invited to a party. Are you the type who would drop what you are doing and live in the moment? Are you the type who would consider the provisions you would need to have at hand to cover the projected needs of the party? This might be a time to look at the Mary and Martha story again and see, on the one hand, five Marys and, one the other hand, five Marthas. Is this really a choice between hands where one is put on a pedestal and one is cast into the fire? How does your praise life go? Do you jump in with both feet and dance up a storm as though praise will never run out? (are you a praise sprinter?) Do you quietly grin and meditate and grin again, savoring each bit(e) of praise? (are you a praise marathoner?) Then, finding you have used up your energy as the life of the party do you "humbly ask for more"? finding you have energy left to help with cleanup after the party do you find that to be another opportunity to grin? How dull heaven without those who leave chaos in their wake and extravagantly burn their candles for the brightest possible light for our present party. How short heaven without those who care for the details that keep the party going as long as possible. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 All Saints who have gone before are defined as those who shift our grief structures. Where once we held deep within us a death instinct we now find an impulse to life. These are matters that go beyond our consciousness. Our fear of engagement with the powers that be fades in the presence of these Saints. Our joy at pushing past our own limited salvation to that of all grows in the presence of these Saints. One important source of encouragement is our experience with the Saints, whether past or present. We are revived in their presence. We move from death orientation to that of life. Count your blessings. Know there is a Saint behind each one. In addition to our thankfulness for Saints of old we are encouraged to so live that we become Saints in our time on behalf of the new. Psalm 78:1-7 or Wisdom of Solomon 6:17-20 or Psalm 70 Usually we think of a voice as active and an ear as passive. Hear that here it is the voice that is still and the ear that inclines. This reversal is the energy that moves the generations forward as the voice is still ahead and our inclination tilts toward it. We have a choice about continuing to incline toward what the voice still has to say or settling for what we have heard so far. May you choose to listen beyond what has so far been heard that the unheard might yet be heard. Let's see how Wisdom's theory goes For want of desire, God is lost. What are you desiring so much these days that when you are involved in it you have no notion of time ("peace is when time doesn't matter as it passes")? Choose that which brings forth this lack of sense of time (loving what you are and do), that moves us into divine space. To incline our desire is to recognize our dissatisfaction with the limits of today. We hear better is yet to come than where we have arrived and feel the present as threat rather than arrival. And so we recognize how far short of immortality we are and how laws do not draw us beyond our present limits but hold us here. We call out, "Come, O God!" - "Come, Messiah!" - "Come Wisdom beyond our present difficulty!" Choose well in which direction you incline your ear. Does present law or future openness offer a larger God with whom we might play? Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25 or Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16 or Amos 5:18-24 Joshua set a choice before the people. Follow the Lord and me or get your own leadership together. As with most crowds they fall back on remembering the best of their heritage so they won't have to change in the present. There were victories along the way (and their subsequent creeds) that were recounted. Conveniently forgotten were the difficulties along the way. To avoid having to really make a choice the folks only remembered the victories and said, "Us, too." Joshua caught this wavering and pressed on to issues of jealousy and not-forgiven to test this one-sided response. The crowd, as with most crowds, didn't really address this but simply affirmed that they were up to whatever was needed. Anyone here heard yourself or someone else being quite positive when it came to changing a habit. We are so full of big-talk. Joshua eventually says, "We'll see. Your real intentions will be witnessed to by your actions". Then comes a test of intentions - actually putting down a crutch you have been using and picking up a new orientation that needs living. This same test is still being put to us. Will we actually live as big as our talk? Well? Amos shifts the imagery from material idols to the idolatry of worshipful praise. Again the test is put. We talk about justice as if it is a light mist and righteousness as though trickling down were sufficient when what is needed is a deluge and a flood. Will we actually live as big as our talk? Well? 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 "Those of us alive will not precede those who have died into eternity." Who is going ahead of those of us who think we have things under control and absolutely know the best way to live? Well, try any given prostitute or collaborator with injustice. How about a starved child, a worthless old coot miserable all his days, or the person who has most injured you? Surely it is just the righteous dead who will rise with Christ and our illustrious selves! It is our brothers and sisters in The Way that Paul is writing about! This is encouragement for those of us still left that if we are persistent we will get in with the good guys, leaving the rascals behind! I think we can encourage one another with these words. Not one will be left behind. GOD desires the salvation of all and will see to it. We live well, healing and teaching wholeness in Christ, not because we are afraid of missing the boat, but because it has more meaning than anything else. On All Saints Day the United Methodist Judicial Council reinstated a pastor who played gaykeeper in a way that attempted to block GOD's desire for all, setting up the heresy that one must be live up to some contrived standard before entering the exclusive fold of "brothers and sisters". May they finally hear that they won't precede anyone. Rats, now I have to affirm that even that pastor and that Judicial Council will join me in a new heaven (that is, Paradise/Earth). I also need to affirm that this affirmation does not allow me to passively allow GOD to do all the work. I am called, again and again, to say that decision was wrong/sinful and work to overturn it even if I will later join those who perpetrated such upon the church in a more visible journey within Paradise. What "Rats!" moment do you have? Revel in your disappointment and move on to live and teach healing and wholeness in a sick and broken context. Matthew 25:1-13 Silly old Bridegroom. Late again. Late to wake up to knowledge being set loose ("Hey, where are y'all?). Late to wake up to the futility of genus-cide ("Oops, here's a rainbow to make up."). Late to wake up to laws and favorite kings being a basis for long-term community ("You, Prophet, its back to work for you.). Late to wake up to embodiment ("Rats, I was hoping it wouldn't come to this."). Late to come to the bridal party (make up your own reason). Silly old me, waiting with all my alter egos conversing with one another. Part of me in a hurry to get there, not waiting for milking to be done or burials to be accomplished, just rushing to the party, oil-less. Part of me planning out the needed provisions and deciding on only enough for myself, no feeding of the 5,000, much less the oiling of 5, for me. If we weren't led to the categories of wise and foolish we could see each operating out of good decision-making. This is the difficulty with this and all the apocalyptic writings, they lead us to divide ourselves from ourselves and from one another based on some particular value of the moment. An ego divided against itself can't stay awake. Perhaps this is to say that a person divided into only their "wise" part, doing their best to reject and repress their "foolish" part, can't stay focused. Tucked safely into another section of Matthew, it could have been that since we know neither the day or the hour that the foolish ones hurrying along snuck in before the door closed while those weighed down with provisions were left behind. We need both the wise and the foolish at different times for different settings. May you be wise as a serpent and foolish as a dove. May you think things through and may you let your heart lead. May you keep awake to the foolishness of judging another since you can't even judge which day or hour is the most important. November 13, 2005 - Year A - Pentecost +26 Judges 4:1-7 or Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18 What has been put into your hand? To what are you putting your hand? Whether passively or actively we have opportunities to have our word of peace, our intention of peace, to be our act of peace. May this week bring you to awareness of your opportunities to heal and be healed of the violence around. If you find you are able to make it to Eau Claire, WIsconsin this Friday and Saturday for a Kairos CoMotion Event with Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, "Forgiveness as Power: Transcending Violence" late registrations are still available through our Kairos CoMotion website or letting us know you are coming. [Note: I don't know what is going on that this posting isn't acting as per usual. Blessings on the electrons and all else.] Matthew 25:14-30 I appreciate a note in The New Interpreter's Study Bible , "Regrettably the parable again co-opts imperial structures. The ‘rich get richer’ pattern encourages disciples to be faithful and ready, But the Gospel has criticized this imperial practice (19:16-22). The parable focuses so much on its message that it overlooks these larger concerns." For some there is no larger concern than so focusing one's life, in religious terms and modalities, that more disciples are made from investing our gifts in their lives. This emphasizes the doing part of our faith structures over the contemplative, maturing aspects. There is a certain frenetic activity that is encouraged here over, also important, "work" that can only be done in withdrawal for prayer and preparation. Sometimes I see the worthless, third servant, thrown into the outer darkness as following the creedal Christ into hell to be a witness there, a disciple to the outcast reminding them of GOD's continued presence even here. Can you envision Job as this third servant? How about yourself (or is this a special charism you hope someone else will receive)? As important as these troublesome parables or allegories have been for many down through the years, there is a place for revisioning them from a post-resurrectional view, a pentecostal experience, or in ordinary terms among the already left out and the already left behind. 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 Those in the dark, intentionally or not, get caught in the great hypocrisy - claiming peace when violence abounds. "Peace", thus used, is the greatest coverup of the greatest sin. For tainted and counter-productive “peace” we are willing to lose just one more and then one more. Seeing false peace requires many concomitant gifts that bolster one another. Paul's list of those gifts, that, when used in concert, allow one to catch a glimpse of true peace under the fog of false peace contains: sobriety, faith and love (paired), and hope (of wholeness, not just anything). What would you identify as a peace-revealing constellation of gifts? At base, we understand, beyond the generations-long setbacks, that we are destined for salvation, "the arm of the moral universe is long, and it bends toward justice" [MLK]. So we are encouraged and so we encourage one another. Put on the good stuff. Pull back the mist of false peace. Pursue that which builds up. Psalm 123 or Psalm 90:1-8, (9-11), 12 When dealing with violence (here spelled, "contempt"), the antidote is not stronger redemptive violence, but mercy. Admittedly this is not effective in the short-term, but the question must be raised about what would be. If we try the redemptive violence in the short-term in order to open the option for mercy to come, our experience is that we get bogged down in redemption protection and never get around to the mercy, for when would it ever be safe to let one's guard down? When it comes to a thousand years equaling one yesterday the whole concept of short- and long-term flies out the window. We either are on the way to being who we desire to be or we are not. An interesting question comes, how to deal with GOD's contemptuous violence toward sinners and other creations that don't or cease to measure up. How does one show mercy toward GOD. I keep going back to Bernstein's Kaddish (sample) to hear the human soothe GOD's fevered brow and to bring rest and sleep to an over-stressed deity. This issue of violence and mercy go back to the Creator and are in our very bones. How long we have been playing this game! How long before our heart is wise enough to regularly choose compassion? Judges 4:1-7 or Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18 We often wait for GOD to get things set up for us. We spend our time and energy attempting to get ourselves in the right position to take advantage of GOD's setup. This attempted readiness seems, more often than not, to have some ritualistic element to it according to the wisdom of the day about how to get on GOD's good side. Barak had it easy. Just go and wait and GOD will manage to have events conspire in your favor. We continue to look for this sort of intervention -- that GOD has things finally set up for us to win (no lottery odds for us, we want to know GOD is not just on our side, but has actually arranged for us to win in the short-run - none of this pie in the sky, by and by, stuff). We find it very easy to be over-reliant upon GOD, exempting ourselves from any responsibility for the events of life. We "rest complacently on our dregs". We can also fall into despair that allows us to simply keep on keeping on in the easiest manner possible -- GOD not seeming to do anything, either healing or violent. Finally the United Methodist Bishops are moving beyond waiting for some deus ex machina and publicly fulfilling some of their teaching function. They recently spoke against a Judicial Council decision denying membership to those who are homosexual read here and are now standing against the Iraq War read here. A question comes about our willingness to join them and push these matters further, with no assurance that GOD's setup is complete. Are we willing to do our part to partner with GOD -- to encourage, push, GOD along and even go so far as to set things up for GOD? Where does GOD behavior become our behavior and where do we need to join saints of old shaming GOD into doing what is right? 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 What is going on in our life influences the way in which we come at a scripture passage -- what we see and hear in it, how it is able to address our life. If we are looking for ways in which it is reflective of or gives us an out from a culture of violence, we will have a particular door opened to our knock. If we are looking for a personal healing, we will find that avenue open. If we are looking for wisdom for a decision that needs making, we will see an opportunity to which we were previously blind. Earlier I found encouragement to expose "false peace" in this passage. Today I am interested in healing. Right off the bat we find an issue of time coming to the fore. We don't need to know, and wouldn't know what to do with it if we did know, ending times. One of the first things we want to know about a time of illness is its expected duration. While there are sometimes therapies to be tried for any number of maladies, there are times when nothing will lead to a cure. We get all caught up in faith issues when we look at healing. Whose faith is operative is an important question at death. In many ways what we have faith in can be the major block to healing or the use of preventive lifestyles. This is why a dramatic willingness of suspension of disbelief is important to the healing process. We don’t need faith’s rules, but its poetry. From a Jewish website: Samuel Taylor Coleridge called drama "that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith." When we sit in a theater, we willingly suspend our disbelief. We know that everything that is happening on the stage isn't real, but the playwright, the actors and the audience all enter into a conspiracy "of poetic faith" in an attempt to bring to life a quasi-reality that will transcend and communicate some perception about life in this world. Unlike other religions, there are no leaps of faith in Judaism. Maybe a couple of steps at the end of a long well-lit boulevard, but no leaps into the dark. Judaism is not so much about belief as the "willing suspension of disbelief." = = = There are so many things that cause us to shy away from GOD's intention of salvation, cure or no cure, for ourselves and for creation. We don't want to get our hopes too high. If Jesus and Paul were brought up in this tradition of disbelief what would it mean in interpreting their words. How important is it to disbelieve in violence as a solution? What drama do we need to understand we are living in to lead us to a poetic faith instead of faith in a fist? How important is it to disbelieve in a need for "good health" before we can be an active participant in salvation? What drama do we need to understand we are living in to lead us to a poetic faith instead of a faith of healthful prosperity? Matthew 25:14-30 Do you know that GOD scatters salvation, willy-nilly, and gathers all that is saved from even the most inauspicious and lost and dark places? If so, what risky investment will you not make in life in general and any life in particular? If not, what rule will you not make up to justify hanging on to what you think you have? If so, you are always on tip-toe to notice this amazing and miraculous process and to participate by being an early adapter to the latest demonstration of mercy. If not, you are always on guard to find the rule that will allow things to go on as they have, even if the good of some has to be sacrificed for the good of the many (naturally including the one on guard). If so, we will cut others in on the deal. If not, we will go it alone. Do you know GOD's journey turns loose of control? Do you know GOD's salvation is available even in deep dark wailing and gnashing places? Whether you prosper or hoard -- salvation is yours. Why not participate in letting loose of resources, entrusting it to the community? This is where the fun of life is, so why hide it away? November 20, 2005 - Year A - Pentecost Last Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 It is easier, I suppose, if unrealistic, to work the analog work of salvation (tuning it in and having it grow through a variety of stages) in a digital fashion (your either on or off, in or out, at any given moment). As we look around this week we can see things in process or as completed. In some sense this is the old argument about predestination in new clothing. Remember that our latest wisdom/knowledge is that life is pushing more life into existence. There is no accounting for the way in which the past is rolled into the present and something new called the future arrives. Pay attention to where you apply the on-going perspective and where you cut things off. This will give some idea about whether you are acting out of an understanding of a Living GOD still at work and people continuing to be able to make new choices or whether GOD is bound by the way GOD has been revealed at sometime in the past, an idolatry of that revelation has been made, and folks are to always be known by who they were at the moment just past. I believe I have made my bias clear and ask what you understand your bias to be. Matthew 25:31-46 Hear this note from The New Interpreter's Study Bible : "This judgment scene (and others like it in chap. 13) has several troubling (and not easily resolved) features. It bullies disciples into faithfulness. it celebrates the imposition of God's empire while the gospel criticizes imperial strategies. It upholds God's justice, but the vision of harsh condemnation is at odds with the presentation of God's inclusive mercy (5:43-48) and with the acknowledgment of God's covenant faithfulness to save Israel (23:37-39)." The issue of bullying continues in the church of our present day. We see it revealed in the machinations that lead pastors/congregations rejecting from "membership" those who, to the glory of GOD, are homosexual in orientation and practice. In days of yore (and still to this day) we have wrestled with this in terms of Gentiles and Slaves and Women and Children and Poor and any other category of otherness you can think of such as divorce, smoking, or use of alcohol. How might a "sheep" feel as they traipse off to green pastures and recognize "goats" grazing on burnt grass? If they are a sheep from the Empire they would feel justified and pleased to be a "sheep". If they are a sheep of Jesus' fold they would weep and go to be with and find the "goats", even as they had been found; they would refuse their benefit and go to share life in solidarity with the goats, to be a Lamb in their midst. So are these Empire sheep we are viewing or Jesus' sheep? Where is your identification? Ephesians 1:15-23 "...as you come to know GOD." What! this is a process? Wisdom and Revelation are still coming clear? Hope will be further clarified? Would that we would take this journey seriously enough to honor the stages of one's own life and the differing stages of the lives of others (including the elements). We are still coming to know, to understand, to live with the presence of a Living GOD and a Living Self and a Living Neighbor. May we continue to “come to know”. Psalm 100 or Psalm 95:1-7a In the midst of life as usual there comes a choice about how to respond to the variety of experiences we have. In the midst of whatever the disaster-of-the-day might be we can choose to see the hand of an avenging, punishing God at work or an opportunity in which the steadfast love of a God might be revealed through our response. These Psalms push us to praise GOD. The choice here is whether we find some appropriate genuflection (an external response relationship directed toward GOD that we might be noticed and GOD might sometime or other come do us some good) or some communal interaction (an internal response relationship directed toward revealing GOD's presence right here, right now). Question of the day: What in the world does it mean to "praise" GOD? How much of this is GOD inflation and how much is GOD application? Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 The New Interpreter's Study Bible has a note: "The result will be a restored experience of public justice." As you look around you do you see issues of private justice or public justice. In some sense this is the question of whether we are putting band-aids on individuals and groups of individuals or finding the root causes of that which plagues many. One of the core values we have lost is a concept of public justice. It has been turned into a "whatever you can get away with" mentality. Justice is now oriented toward the theory of profit for the rich, particularly the corporation, not a prophetic empathy with the poor. It is oriented toward carrying forward prejudices and pronouncements of the past, not a participation in growing into a better future. Are there those who are publicly lost? This is a justice matter that cannot be measured by trickling profits or propping up historic institutions. Are there those who are publicly injured? This justice matter can't be assuaged by private insurance or schism into separate but unequal institutions. Are there those who are publicly weak? Justice is not served by the whole political system that is oriented toward lobbyists and massive infusions of wealth from a few or toward rogue news organizations that bring a preordained political slant. Can you think of an issue that doesn't end up being a matter of justice in this trinity of lost, injured, weak? In an interconnected world it doesn't matter which arena you are working in. What does matter is that you keep "public justice" always before yourself and the rest of us. Ephesians 1:15-23 The Contemporary English Version has verse 23 read: "The church is Christ's body and is filled with Christ who completely fills everything" and notes an alternative reading, "The church is Christ's body which completely fills Christ and fully completes his work." Working with English is sometimes so limiting. How do we express a crucial complementarity such as the relationship between Church and Christ? We tend to get caught emphasizing one or the other when, again, both is needed. You may want to think about your own relationships with others and the way in which the give and take moves beyond those categories. Offering and receiving make no sense without a receiving even while offering and offering even while receiving and none of that is easily held together in language that does not have more ambiguity and poetry in it than our usual conversation holds. For now, pay attention to every alternative reading you can. It is here that things come alive. It is here we are reminded that life happens between our perception and our expression of it. Take courage from the image of the church completely filling Christ. What, now, will hold you back from being so filled with Christ that you go ahead and bring life to life, no matter the risk. Matthew 25:31-46 When is shaped by now. When humanity comes to be human (otherwise read as: When the Son of Man comes in his glory) there will be a recognition of consequence. There is a consequence for seeing ideals such as: There is a different consequence for seeing Hope: Humanity will recognize these two within itself and willingly choose both saint and sinner, both sower and reaper, both past disaster and future hope. In choosing both they both will find their time to be sheep, their time to be goats. Ol' "Solomon" done got it right. There is a time to plow under the previous year's residue to plant the seeds for tomorrow. There is a time to let the land lie fallow, open to the weeds. Until then we cycle back and forth, penduluming nowhere. Until we deal with this duality and stop accepting only sheep, we sow a breeze and reap a whirlwind. Just how far can we go in arguing with scripture? November 27, 2005 - Year B - Advent 1 Isaiah 64:1-9 Advent begins with a dawning awareness of the difficulty facing a new creation to be born in the midst of a new creation. We will need to look at some most difficult realities and still proceed even in the midst of horror at ourselves and others and the world at large. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Steven Donaldson would be an excellent series of speculative fiction to read to get a feel for Advent. Mark 13:24-37 "Advent is a time for Christians, every year, to practice being part of the people of God in a damaged creation. Part of this practice includes faithful and sharp-eyed examination of the realities of life in this world. Part of this practice ought also to include meditation on the situation out of which Jesus spoke the words in this scene in Mark's story. Jesus lived late in the messy aftermath of the Maccabean rebellion, a complicated mix of victory and defeat, of freedom and bondage. Jesus lived in the shadow of the Roman Empire in a family and faith uneasy under foreign domination. Jesus embodied the tensions that lead to the first and second Jewish revolts against Rome.... That means, at the very least, that the Jesus we encounter in this scene is shaped both by the rich, insistent hope of Jewish faith and by the wise realism of Jewish faith.... Christians, as they prepare for Christmas, have a lot to learn about hopes that shatter the skies and about realism that remembers the deep pain of real loss...." Provoking the Gospel of Mark: A Storyteller's Commentary, Year B by Richard W. Swanson "And because it is this generation in which these things happen, it is also this generation which senses the arrival, the advent of the reign of justice and generosity and joy, the advent of the truly human. This is the generation bound in solidarity with all those, in whatever part of the earth or in whatever time, who have stood where we stand, on the brink of history. This advent is not something that is realized in the inward moment of decisions as the existentialists (following John) supposed, Rather this advent is recognized in the public sphere of witness bearing, of martyrdom. For what is at stake here is not simply the fate of the individual, but the fate of God's creation." The Insurrection of the Crucified: The "Gospel of Mark" as Theological Manifesto by Theodore W. Jennings, Jr. Whether through story or manifesto there is the realism of loss in advent. We have lost. Now it is not time to strike back, it is not time to take over, it is not time to add to terror. It is time to watch for the bloom of a new shoot in the midst of destruction and to spent the inconsequential time of nurturing it through the surrounding blight. If we are stabbed in the back while bending over to tend to this new possibility, so be it. We are awake to this fragile shoot of hope more than to the all too real power of a principality. May we be so awake. 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 As in foreground/background studies, grace is most clearly revealed in a time of stress. Just as we are not to sin the more simply for the joy of forgiveness, so we are not to revel in difficulties for the blessing of grace. There are, of course, those moments of grace upon grace, but mostly we recognize grace against a backdrop of some form of suffering (remember, for some suffering is always but a form). Here the parallelism is "the grace of God that has been given" to "strengthen you to the end." Again, grace appears as antidote to giving up in the face of "disaster" (however that is defined). Christ is equated with this process and, so, when we are so encouraging folks, we are Christ/grace to them; when we are so encouraged, another is Christ/grace to us; and when we encourage together, Christ/grace is in our midst. How long has it been since you recognized yourself as graced/Christed? If it has been awhile, grace's half-life may have faded in your life. Time to get prophetic. It is one of the quickest ways to move into harm's way (the status quo being as sharp as any two-edged sword) and to again, joyfully, find your salvation connected with fear and trembling. Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19 Come to save us = = = = = = = It does indeed sound like there is Trouble in River City and that starts with "T" and it rhymes with "D" and that stands for Disaster. Any way you cut it we are in the midst of social disaster. Went to a presentation last night by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney, authors of the new book, "Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy." James Madison is quoted as saying, "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." Is disaster not where we are when no questions can be raised about war, when it is against undefined terror? Come to save us . . . indeed! Elections are participated in by fewer and fewer people and the results are less and less believable with poorer and poorer paper trails. Is disaster not where we are when the truth can't be told about what candidates are saying out of both sides of their mouths and there is a disconnect between their stated intentions and projectable consequences? Restore us . . . indeed! The gap between the rich and the poor increases daily. Is disaster not where we are when the key value is making the rich richer so three more crumbs can trickle off their table to unemployed and unemployable Lazarus below? How long will you be angry . . . indeed! The numbers increase by the hour of those without health insurance or prenatal care. Is disaster not where we are when we deny the human right to a minimum standard of preventive and early care to everyone (not just Western chemical intervention, but Eastern energy adjustment). You make us the scorn of our neighbors . . . indeed! The hungry die by the thousands every day. Is disaster not where we are when the standard of obesity keeps so many so focused on their next unnecessary mouthful that the only distribution of food that means anything is that which brings me tasteless strawberries in winter (with heaps of whipped cream, of course). Give us life . . . indeed! The stupidity of intentional confusion about the human variability of sexuality isolates and destroys our selves, our families, our neighbors, and, eventually, God. Is disaster not where we are when the externals of race and culture and women are presumed cared for, but are only buried the barest millimeter below awareness and old cants againt them are reorganized by the power-brokers into one variation or constitutional amendment or another of "hate the fags." Let your face shine, that we may be saved . . . indeed! Let us be clear about disaster that we might be clear about salvation. This clarity comes with our finally talking with one another and a key starting point is an active Free Press. Be sure to sign up with them. Isaiah 64:1-9 Isn't it lovely to have a God to blame for our ailments. We can speculate that God needed more needing than we needed to need. With this "need" deficit on both sides we bump into that wonderful time when we give first. Now we need to need saving. So we stand afar and cry out our need as a reverse form of praise that we might be given relief. Verse 9 ends with, "Now consider, we are all your people." This is one of those lines that calls for a decision about how it is to be read. In the context of looking for relief from "enemies", is this a limited phrase that applies only to the oppressed feeling overrun or is this an expansive phrase that includes even oppressors? There is an understanding here that God is not as far gone as we had experienced. Here is an available prooftext to see a glimmer of understanding that everyone is in everything together. Ourselves, our enemies, and GOD beyond either, are all intertwined. While appreciating the need to pay attention to context and claim this as a parochial "all", it is helpful to also hear in such a limited context a seed that will later grow to provide a crack in the boundary of me and mine and expand a limited covenant between God and one people. Here I'm willing to see the variety of people that are the Israelites (those who praise "O Lord" and those who need "Father" and those that don't) and hold that as a holographic representation of, simply put, the variety of all people. In the midst of disaster there is yet a whisper of a new way. May we be alert to the whispers in the midst of our own disastrous times and follow where it beckons - to the well-being of all. 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 To be called into a fellowship with such as Jesus Christ is to be called away from some immediately disastrous situation or some current edge that will later come to naught. To get caught up with Jesus Christ is to get caught up with someone who plays with death in a way that is never in fashion if you have any idea at all that you'll sneak through life or if you know you have an advantage. Jesus asks you to put yourself "all in", as in the poker rage of the moment. Principalities and powers can claim that Jesus has thrown his lot in with them, that he finally saw the benefit of Satan's offer in the desert, and can be commodified by them to bolster their control. But they don't know the kind of risk of kindness that they are comparing themselves to and the eventuality that they will be seen for the hypocrites they are. Have you been invited to a fellowship with a living, crucified, dead, and raised Jesus Christ? Be careful if you think you can control where that fellowship will lead. Odds are you, too, will need to learn to play with death without succumbing to its emptiness. Ready, or not, you are invited to play a "losing" hand with a sense of being in a faithful hand. Mark 13:24-37 So we can see a fig tree and figure out the season. In some environs we can see the moss on a tree and tell directions. Those externals are relatively straight forward. If, however, when we look at moral values and connect them with darkened and falling stars, we can still be just as clear, even if any number of desires and philosophic, historic, economic, etc. overlays try to cloud otherwise straight forward moral judgments. Try these tests of moral judgment from Peace March Speech by Dr. Robin Meyers (PDF). How do these look? What morality is expressed through these actions? >starting a war on false pretenses >acting as if your deceptions are justified because you are doing God's will >breaking the very rules you set down for others >claiming Jesus is the Lord of your life, and failing to acknowledge policies ignoring his teaching >ignoring the gospel teaching that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical test >helping the rich get richer by tax breaks >pushing the poor into ill health by insurance policies >winking at the torture of prisoners while expecting not to be tortured >claiming the world can be divided into the good guys and the evil doers >seeing only the good we do and the evil someone else does >creating an enormous deficit that hangs like a great millstone around the necks of our children >using hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out voters >favoring the death penalty, and yet claiming to be a follower of Jesus >dismantling countless environmental laws designed to protect the earth, God's gift to us all >putting judges on the bench who reject people in favor of a constitutional/economic theory |
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