Psalm 36:5-10
Epiphany 2 - Year C
Verse 5: Your steadfast love (belovingness) extends to the heavens.
Verse 10: But limit that to those who “know” you, who are “upright” in heart.
This movement from the constant to the provisional happens all too easily. One process through which this occurs is the escalation from flattering a king/G*D to sick sycophancy. This losing touch with reality poses problems of being able to clearly see the situation we are in and how to deal with it constructively. Our temptations are then to take over and judge who knows G*D and is upright in their heart or to become passive, waiting for a deus ex machina to arrive from up there somewhere.
Epiphany is an attempt to clarify what is before us. All too often we take a simple revelation of belovedness and turn it into ritual, judgment, or partiality otherwise known as prejudice. For now let’s take this section of the psalm as a warning that we not see more than is present (a weak G*D needing our flattery or a strong G*D that gives up on belovedness in favor of judgment).
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/01/psalm-365-10.html
G*D saves everything alike. What is the alikeness here?
The Message puts it nicely,
G*D's love is meteoric,
G*D's loyalty astronomic,
G*D's purpose titanic,
G*D's verdicts oceanic.
Yet in G*D's largeness
nothing gets lost;
Not a human, not a mouse,
slips through the cracks.
The rythym here is lovely. How does not slipping through a crack relate to being saved along with everything else? The negative and the positive should be able to assist one another to a larger picture.
But how is everything alive alike? What is everything's claim to salvation or divinization? Listen to Hildegard of Bingen: "Every creature is a glittering, glistening mirror of divinity" and again "Every creature is a ray of G*D."
Look up panentheism (careful on the spelling) to find out more about all things in G*D, G*D in all things, and G*D working through all things. Then do some browsing in the material supplied by Matthew Fox.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/january2004.html
G*D's steadfast love is showered all over the place. It doesn't make any difference where or who one is or whether we are talking a human being or a mountain - that love is a given background.
Why then the plea that it continue. Is it not rock solid? Why in particular would those who know G*D need continual assurance? Are we the most tempted to ignore it? Are we the most likely to subvert it into power for ourselves? Are we aware of how much we are in debt to it and can't ever quite hold our heads up on our own?
For folks who claim to know something so extraordinary as a source of steadfast love, we seem to keep losing our way within it. We imagine it to be limited and we need to scramble for our share. We suspect that the future may be different than the past and that we will find ourselves not being uniquely privileged by our knowledge. We fear that it is too good to be true and since we obviously need it, it may, as obviously, be turned to greater and greater expectations that we cannot live up to and we will lose love.
Why might you plead for more steadfast love for folks who are exactly as we are? Might it an attempt to lull G*D into setting us as the standard, thus protecting our rights forever? Obviously we are upright of heart, was there ever a doubt, and if that is the criterion, we get the love we need. Too bad about those others that didn't do as we do.
- - -
extend to heaven
an upright heart
until
an upright heart
becomes heaven
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html
In the first verses we find "personified Transgression" living through those who listen to it. There is mischief afoot.
In the final verse the "evil doers" or "moral midgets" are found sprawled on the ground having tripped over their own mischievous feet.
Hints about how to avoid this comeuppance are found in the middle two verses. Here we are reminded about the value of a solidly grounded sense of rightness with judgments based on firm foundations and oriented toward the long-term. Here we know that salvation is universal; it is for all and won't be complete for me until it is complete for you and other parts of creation. Here we have affirmed love that is steadfast, regardless of any separations to date. Here we are called to be sources of refuge winging hope to the despairing.
In this middle section we have a protocol for water changing to wine, scoundrels turning round right, and apathy become advocacy.