Psalm 5:1-8

Proper 6 (11) - Year C


Knowing ourselves as well as we do, is our praise a joyful expression of the moment or a calculated technique to get something (albeit, later than sooner)?

One way or another, we are still asking an old, old question: “What do I need to do to escape the wrath to come?” We are asking to be led because of our enemies.

What is a better question to ask in this day? What is a better motivation for asking?

These are serious questions as I hold a lamp up to see, a la Diogenes the Cynic, if I can find a person asking a pertinent question.

 

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/06/psalm-51-8.html

 


 

Psalm 5:1-8, Psalm 32

"And here I am, your invited guest – it's incredible!" (5:7) [MSG]

"'I'll make a clean breast of my failures to God.' Suddenly the pressure was gone – my guilt dissolved, my sin disappeared." (32:5) [MSG]

How incredible! Before anything, we have been invited to the dance of life – we are invited and we will continue to be invited.

As invited guests we have a choice to be a responsive guest or a reluctant guest. When the hosts ask, "How are you?" we can take that at face value of their interest and be clear about how it is with us – our self and the host, the world, our self, our neighbors, and others.

We could take it as a polite, ritualistic question and simply care for it with a perfunctory "Fine" or "OK."

One choice leads to relieving the pressures we experience. One choice keeps everything in its current place.

So… How are you? Really… How are you?

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/june2004.html

 


 

Psalm 5:1-8 or Psalm 32

Contrasted with greed's consequence of trouble - an abundance of steadfast love. Between these realities we are birthed, live, and die, and live again to die into life.

We see the consequences of greed in acts of destruction small and large. We distance ourselves from such by looking for a hiding place from which we might glimpse the destruction of others and, at the same time, avoid a common lot.

It is a bit much to follow the advice that the practice of magical prayer and confession will keep all wild things at bay. Better to simply acknowledge that we are in this together and give thanks for all that has been and will yet be.

- - -

rocks and hard places
devils and deep blue seas
remind us
duality is alive and well
in our hyperbolic responses
to everyday life

running between the poles
wears us out
long before any event
eventuates
in such wise as to remind
we did it to ourselves

standing firm
when all is blowing about
is not situational disregard
but learned counsel
steadfast love remains
through and after a winnowing

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html

 


 

It is wonderful to come to an understanding that I have been shown an abundance of steadfast love. Whether this abundance comes from G*D, Creation, Neighbor, You, even a mistake of mine Enemy, or Myself it is wondrous to behold.

Then comes the tricky part of what to do with such abundance. My temptation is to store it away in a big barn and to get an even bigger one, if necessary.

Once in awhile I can restate verse 8 into a more expansive reading of living with abundance: "Lead me, O Lord, in your righteousness and make a way straight from you to me to my enemies that your abundant love might be known in their life as well."

The rest of the Psalm, as written, continues to divide those who have already received a touch of abundance from those who have not yet received that gift. The Psalmist seems to carve this moment of division into stone - the currently blessed are blessed forever and the unblessed will ever be so.

If one can postulate a greater receptivity on the part of Psalmist, from unheeded to heeded, what keeps them from granting the possibility of change and growth to those now deemed enemies? Would the Psalmist recognize a woman with ointment surprising Pharisees and Jesus with an anointing or would the door have been especially barred to her ever having such an opportunity?

Here abundance turns out to be a curse inasmuch as it asks a huge change in relationships that is seldom able to be lived into. May you be blessed with such a curse and the wisdom to better use it.

This quote from Preparing for Christmas with Richard Rohr is another lens through which a lack of grace might be recognized (for one but not for all) and transformed through a different response to our encounter with an amazing abundance of grace.

"It comes like a gentle dew" (Isaiah 45:8). Grace comes when you stop being preoccupied and stop thinking that by your own meddling, managing and manufacturing you can create it.

We're trained to be managers, to organize life, to make things happen. That's what's built our culture, and it's not all bad. But if you transfer that to the spiritual life, it's pure heresy. It doesn't work. You can't manage and maneuver and manipulate spiritual energy. It's a matter of letting go. It's a matter of getting the self out of the way, and becoming smaller, as John the Baptist said. It's a matter of the great kenosis, as Paul talks about in Philippians 2:6-11, the emptying of the self so that there's room for another.

It's very hard for us not to fix and manage life and to wait upon it, "like a gentle dew."

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/06/psalm-51-8.html