Psalm 50:7-15

Proper 5 (10) - Year A

A Word calls forth each and every piece of creation. Happy and blessed are those who respond to their call and participate in creation.


A Word turns away the limitations of sacrifice. Happy and blessed are those who refrain from ingrained habits of yore.

We are called to affirm affirmations that bring forth and to deny denials that limit and squelch.

Can you name an example of both? Were you able to make them interact in the same arena so a dynamic tension increases your spiritual strength? Or did you come up with examples that didn’t intersect?

Here is one example: affirming universal health care as a right while at the same time providing loopholes that erode a general welfare through giving corporations a “religious conscience” able to withhold certain health benefits or subsidizing corporate profit through ridiculously low minimum wage requirements.

 

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

 

 

The saints, the people claiming to be G*D's people, listen. What do you hear when you listen?

I suppose I should say, "What do you hear when you listen to G*D?" but how can we not hear G*D when we simply listen.

Deep listening clarifies choices. It is remembering and community and hope all wrapped up in a moment.

Want to take a coal to Newcastle or make a ritual sacrifice to G*D? Go ahead. It's a rather innocuous way to spend time. Newcastle has plenty of coal and G*D already has all of creation to draw upon.

All that sacrifice talk does come out of remembered directions and does shape a community in a particular way and does have a modicum of hope attached to it that G*D will be mollified enough to let something by or to get us what we want.

Here, however, we hear a new model of expressing thanksgiving through intentional living and the keeping of honesty, fairness, and promises. To live expansively thankful lives from this day forward is our way of being cared for in the midst of difficulties.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/june2002.html

 

 

Psalm 50:7-15 or Psalm 33:1-12

A Word calls forth each and every piece of creation. Happy and blessed are those who respond to the call, participate in creation.

A Word turns away the limitations of sacrifice. Happy and blessed are those who refrain from ingrained habits of yore.

We are called to affirm affirmations that bring forth and to deny denials that limit and squelch.

Can you name an example of both? Were you able to make them interact in the same arena so a dynamic tension increases your spiritual strength? Or did you come up with examples that didn't intersect?

Here is one example: affirming universal health care as a right at the same time denying corporate welfare as seen in having the government pick up corporation's health care costs.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/june2005.html

 

 

Psalm 50:7-15 or Psalm 33:1-12
Genesis 12:1-9 or Hosea 5:15-6:6
Romans 4:13-25
Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

To Abram and Matthew a call: "go from your country" and "come, follow me" - there is another spot where we will find greater life, greater hope beyond hope. Being open to this call in our own day is part of the challenge for settled individuals and congregations and nations.

This call is not just geographical. The Psalmist and Paul remind us of the changes we need to be making internally that our heritage might be healed, that our distress and sacrifice be swept away by steadfast love.

Whether an external move or an internal one, a key element is transformation from acting out of fear of further distress because our guilt needs to be atoned for by some sacrifice to being proactive beyond fear to ask for what is needed (Tabitha's father and unnamed woman with a twelve-year hemorrhage) in anticipation of steadfast love without retributive punishment needing to occur first.

Note the acceptance of Jesus of the request for him to move, not Tabitha's father or Tabitha. Note the acceptance of Jesus of a touch that slows him during his journey.

Perhaps we might envision a mutual journey - G*D's and ours - not one pulling or pushing the other from where they are, but a mutual attraction and desire to move in common.

- - -

journey without a destination
challenges our control need
even with past adventures
having turned out well
there is hesitation
to trust again

journey without a destination
raises again an insatiable god
testing and testing again
our temptation
to settle
in

journey without a destination
is a realistic assessment of our lot
no matter how we disguise it
change and death obtain
warrants to search
empty lives

journey without a destination
anticipates beyond current plateaus
use of several learnable skill sets
to envision preferred futures
to enact their foundations
to enliven generations

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