Psalm 24

Proper 10 (15) - Year B
All Saints - Year B


Here comes a 40-day-old baby and we image a fanfare of doors opening.


An unresolved task of the church is to move from the particularity of Jesus to every child, including those who have grown.

Wherever formal or informal discrimination shuts doors on people for simply being, the church is complicit in that discrimination if it is not actively breaking discriminatory laws or attitudes. No matter the number of resolutions passed or encyclicals published, a closed door closes a ministry of Jesus.

This is a fun and exciting passage even though it seriously mistakes a baby or a messiah for a battle-hardened king. This error has been compounded down through the ages as the church, as an institution, becomes ever more institutionalized with bigger doors to slam on some and to open for a privileged few while most just watch from afar.

As an alternative to mighty doors, you might want to consider returning to a paganish Candlemas nicely positioned astrologically and lift a flickering candle for the fragility of a babe-in-arms—all of them.

 

As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience

 



 

Parallel universes are fun to think about and even to explore. The gift of parallel expressions runs deep within ourselves.

Hands and hearts can all too easily be false and deceitful, can cheat and seduce. To journey well to the depths of creation's purpose is to not be weighed down with these encumbrances that block our vision of footholds in slippery places. May we accept the help we need from GOD and from our fellow-travelers with GOD to put these behaviors down that we might wake up and lift up peoples and cities.

Again and again it would be possible to compare administrations that see their survival being based on cheating and seducing the populace into believing the true to be false and vice versa and the honest to be unpatriotic seducers and vice versa with moving toward a bringing together of creation and history.

Entering the temple is a repudiation of the partial. It gives us a much larger and better picture of ourselves than our usual smaller loyalties to stuff and nonsense.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/july2003.html

 


 

Psalm 24 or Psalm 85:8-13
2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19 or Amos 7:7-15
Ephesians 1:3-14
Mark 6:14-29

Dancing David
Stumblebum Uzzah
Beheaded John
Face-saving Herod
Plumbline holding Amos
Fearful Amaziah
Destined Christ
Promised Holy Spirit

The earth (see above for its variety) is G*D's and all that is in it (even the female not mentioned above).

Lift up your heads, O David, John, Amos, Christ, Holy Spirit! and be lifted up.

Lift up your head (__your name here__)! and be lifted up.

Imagine even Uzzah, Amaziah and Herod able to lift their heads, for all are chosen in Christ. Imagine the hardest person you have to deal with. Their head, too, will be lifted. There is no stopping the results of steadfast love and faithfulness, righteousness and peace. They will not stop at such nothings as political promises and betrayal, falseness and war.

Lift up your heads, O Uzzah, Amaziah, Herod! and be lifted up.

- - -

nothing tries so hard
to be something
when all that is needful
is nothing

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html

 


 

What do we know about those who make it to prominence? Their hands and hearts are purely practical. They will do whatever is necessary to arrive at their goal and then do even more to keep it and even more to secure it.

All “acts of necessity” are finally called “blessings from the LORD”. Taking advantage of neighbors turns out to be taking advantage of G*D. Such is the company of those who seek the glorious and unending G*D - Mammon. Please look at stanza 4 of Philip Appleman’s poem, Five Easy Poems for Pagans.

In today’s political/economic realm we hear these ancient words anew:

Lift up your heads, O gated community!
and be lifted up, O golden job creators!
that glorious Mammon may come in.
What is Mammon’s glory?
A plutocracy, strong and mighty,
a fascism mighty in efficiency.
Lift up your heads, O gated community!
O golden financiers!
that glorious Mammon may come in.
What is Mammon’s glory?
The God of Prosperity,
is the king of gold.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/07/psalm-24.html