An Interruption

Pentecost +4 – Year B

An Interruption

We are moving to another side, from full-time intentional interim/transitional ministry to retirement.

One of the realities of this is an interruption in routine. As we move from the eastern side of Wisconsin to the western side the first of next week it will take a bit to get computers set up again and my laptop is old enough to not have wireless in it. There are also some travel plans in the offing and so I expect to not be posting here until August.

Given the reality of interruptions and how novelty can rearrange patterns, there is the possibility that this particular sharing of thoughts is finished. We will see. The most I will commit to at this point is having a message on the first week in August 2009 to give an update of plans.

Thank you to those who have contacted us over time.

May you take something to eat as you arise again to life and use the energy to actually "do what you do do well".

take care
  dream strong
  smile gentle
and so go well.

Wesley
 

2 Corinthians 8:7-15

Pentecost +4 – Year B

2 Corinthians 8:7-15

We just completed a successful Capital Fund Campaign. Our scripture theme was 8:12 (CEV) – "It doesn't matter how much you have. What matters is how much you are willing to give from what you have."

The practical use of this passage is thus validated. A part of every encounter with the holy includes, but goes beyond the practical. For instance, the very folks who responded well to verse 12 would have a most difficult time with verses 13-15. Their individual/personal concept of fair stops short of a communal vision of fair. If it should come to actually sharing their surplus and having their deficit covered by others, there would be great grumbling about "socialism". Corporate welfare seems to be alright, but not sharing with the poor. A capital campaign to benefit themselves seems to be alright, but a straight up equivalent for the poor is out of the question, and these are good and generous people. Without lessening our tendency to greed, part of the difficulty is the inability of the whole system to adequately frame the issue.

This is a difficult concept for disciples of any era – from perceptions of Cain regarding Abel, to responses to a woman anointing Jesus, to commitments by Ananias and Sapphira, to any who are hearers but not doers, to the Laodiceans, to prosperity preachers, to profit-first economists, to you and me.

It is so difficult to see what we can do and so easy to see what we can't do. From there it is no stretch at all to cocoon ourselves. Come quickly disaster. Come strongly enough that we will learn.
 

Psalm 130

Pentecost +4 – Year B

Psalm 130

In keeping with freedom from bondage we hear here of forgiveness – one of those wonderful mysteries that can free two through one act.

When forgiveness becomes our habit, rather than a periodic act of last resort, we find the kind of wholeness implied in worship – the return of worth-ship, worthiness to a broken, partial, bondaged life. When forgiveness and wholeness are not the result of worship, worship is present only in spelling and will take your money and leave you worse off than before.

Hope and be unafraid. Hope expresses steadfast love. Hope is powerful and redeeming. Hope is forgiveness enacted.
 

2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27

Pentecost +4 – Year B

2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27

My sorrow is the greatest sorrow. Had I the power, you would moan and cry out my loss.

I would probably not return the favor and attempt to see through your eyes or walk even a block in your moccasins.

These issues of loss are certainly, to use a quote of the day, opportunities for positive motivation (see reference). By synecdoche, David's grief came to be a national grief – like the Bush/Cheney response to folks attempting to terrorize with airplanes became a universalizing of personal response.

All of us would like to universalize our experience. Often we are able to do so, at least with our coterie. It is this attempt that leads us all into harm's way, preparing the universalizing mighty to fall. In just a moment longer David's lust will have the same universal nature as his sorrow and lead to more death. The danger of privilege-of-feeling moves from arena to arena. Eventually parents fall into the trap over their children and the medically impoverished can go to any extreme.

Truly my sorrow is a significant sorrow. As truly, my sorrow is only one of many. Misused it becomes constrictive for others and myself. Used well it becomes a wounding turned healing.
 

Mark 5:21-43

Pentecost +4 – Year B

Mark 5:21-43

Continuing the parabolic nature of actions as well as words, Jesus again crosses to "the other side." That would seem to make this side the other side. Once the disorientation settles a bit we see that folks are bound here as well as there.

A Gerasene demoniac; a woman with a twelve-year-long hemorrhage; a girl bedridden to never arise again. Bondaged, one and all. Ched Meyer's ground-breaking work – Binding the Strong Man – could also have been titled Releasing the Other Side.

The demonic from the other other-side is privileged to deal directly with his experience of blessing and mercy. Folks on this other-side seem to always have to filter it through faith language and in so doing distance themselves from their experience (individually to go in peace; communally to be silenced).

Yes, different occasions require different duties, consistency is not all that great a virtue, but note how the energy drops when "faith" enters as a primary way of engaging life. It turns life over to someone else, ordinary life is returned to as the end-all and be-all of our engagement.

A storm erupts for the disciples on the way to the other other-side. A storm is set up to erupt for Jesus after returning to this other-side and will commence immediately hence in Nazareth.

If you have experienced a blessing of freedom arrived, tell it. Life is not just a matter of "our" faith and if it is strong enough we'll get what is desired and be satisfied until a next moment of crisis. To cut the faith talk and go with the experience base is to re-create the joy and energy of finding ourself in G*D's image (healed and released, whether cured or not – imprisoned or not).
 

Pentecost +3 – Year B

Did Jesus' followers moan this poem's antecedent as he slept through a ship bucking the wave?
Did the Philistines chant so upon Goliath's fall?
Did Paul see the Corinthians as fallen, needing a revival of the heart?

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
by Walt Whitman

I.
O CAPTAIN! my captain! our fearful trip is done;
. . . .
     But O heart! heart! heart!
     O the bleeding drops of red!
     Where on the deck my captain lies,
          Fallen cold and dead.

II.
O captain! my captain! rise up and hear the bells;
. . . .
     O Captain! dear father!
     This arm beneath your head;
     It is some dream that on the deck
          You’ve fallen cold and dead.

III.
My captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still
. . . .
     Exult, O shores! and ring, O bells!
     But I, with silent tread,
     Walk the spot my captain lies
          Fallen cold and dead.

Upon arising, a word of peace and challenge from Jesus. Would Goliath ever offer such? Paul, too, has his poem seeing more in the Corinthians than they yet see in themselves. Who commissions you to be a "poem"? Is part of your "peace" no master, no God? On the sea of chaos we dream our fears and they melt our realities. Only O Love will float our boat.

TO YOU
by Walt Whitman

WHOEVER you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,
I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet
         and hands,
Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners,
         troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,
Your true soul and body appear before me,
They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work,
         farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking,
         suffering, dying.

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be my
         poem,
I whisper with my lips close to your ear,
I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than
         you.

O I have been dilatory and dumb,
I should have made my way straight to you long ago,
I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted
         nothing but you.

I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you,
None has understood you, but I understand you,
None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to your-
         self,
None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in
         you,
None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never
         consent to subordinate you,
I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, God,
         beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself.

. . . .

 

2 Corinthians 6:1-13

Pentecost +3 – Year B

2 Corinthians 6:1-13

There is a time for everything under the sun – Paul's been reading his Ecclesiastes again – now is the acceptable time to commend myself/ourselves as G*D's partner(s) whether right or left-handed, honored or dishonored, anonymous or famous for more than 15 minutes.

Of course paying attention to the details of how that partnership gets enacted will be of the utmost importance. Will truth be told and hearts opened more consistently than not? In hard times; tough times; bad times; beaten, jailed, and mobbed times; working times, fasting times will we recognize our companionship with G*D and one another? Or is our partnership with G*D only acknowledged in smooth times.

When such truth and hearts grow, Expansive and Expanding Love grins all over itself and the rest of creation. We might even want to go past an emerging church into a Spacious Church. Wouldn't you rejoice to be a part of a Sixth-Degree-of-Separation Spacious Church?