Psalm 130

Lent 5 - Year A
Proper 5 (10) - Year B
Proper 8 (13) - Year B
Proper 14 (19) - Year B


From our perspective "waiting" and "hoping" are nearly interchangeable. Try this in your own vocabulary - this next week switch what you usually would say. If your usual conversation uses a lot of "hope," try using the "wait" word. How does that change your interaction with others.

This psalm also gives testimony to G*D's character. G*D is disposed to forgive. Is that your first thought about G*D or does your first thought run in another direction. I hope it doesn't get into the Left Behind mentality.

This characteristic of G*D might shed some light on the hope/wait pair. If G*D's character is that of forgiving do we need to "hope" for it or "wait" for it. This gives a sense of where the two are not interchangeable.

Here is an intriguing question: Of all the various ways in which G*D's character has been described, which one is at the top of your list? This will set the tone of our various interactions with G*D, with ourselves, and with others.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/june2003.html

 


 

Hope - wait. Wait - hope. Chicken - egg. Egg - chicken. Heads - tails. Tails - heads. Love - marriage. Marriage - love. Horse - carriage. Carriage - horse. Creator - creation. Creation - Creator. Where does this end?

Check out "Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope" by Joan Chittister. Try this on for size: "Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside us to get better. It is about getting better inside about what is going on inside. It is about becoming open to the God of newness. It is about allowing ourselves to let go of the present, to believe in the future we cannot see but can trust to God. Surrendering to the demands of the moment, holding on when holding on seems pointless, brings us to that point of personal transformation which is the juncture of maturity and sagacity. Then, whatever the circumstances, however hard the task, the struggles of life may indeed shunt us from mountaintop to mountaintop but they will not destroy us.

"We always think of hope as grounded in the future. That's wrong, I think. Hope is fulfilled in the future but it depends on our ability to remember that, like Jacob, we have survived everything in life to this point -- and have emerged in even better form than we were when those troubles began. So why not this latest situation, too? Then we hope because we have no reason not to hope. Hope is what sits by a window and waits for one more dawn, despite the fact that there isn't an ounce of proof in tonight's black, black sky that it can possibly come."

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/august2003.html

 


 

Having just had a colonoscopy adds a whole new level of enjoyment to this psalm of the depths.

There is a persistence to life that just doesn't want to quit. Whether stillborn or still going strong at 90 there is a desire for attentiveness to the particulars of life. Pay attention! Someone, pay attention! Even little gremlins in the depths of bowels desire attention.

One of the processes we keep forgetting about is the need to attend to all of life, from the depths to the heights. In our celebrity-oriented culture where possession is key to happiness it is important to pay attention to not only the particulars that demand our attention but to the larger issue of steadfastness with the parts not being attended to.

An editorial yesterday caught my attention as it reflected on the bad deal of coming bankruptcy legislation coming from Washington D.C. The vision included a return to post Civil War times of "debt peonage" where certain people can accumulate other people - not blatant slavery, but its capitalist equivalent. This sort of thing happens when the crying-depths of the citizenry are treated as a wealth producing mechanism by the rich or rich-envious.

Our antidote to this sort of depersonalization is connection with "steadfast love" for those in the depths whether they are the minority of the day or not. To persist in love is to actively participate in shaping decisions that honor the cries from the depths -- no matter from whom they come or how inconveniently they arrive.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/march2005.html

 


 

Psalm 130 or Psalm 30 or Lamentations 3:23-33

We, created in the image of G*D, have the power to forgive, to redeem. Will we be generous with this power?

We have the experience of renewed health after illness and, by extension, of resurrection after death. Will we extrapolate from our experience in our interactions with others or limit it to ourselves?

We have a new day in which to move beyond our prior responses to life, not trying to clone our experience but build on it. Will we stretch to a next layer of life that is both higher and deeper than where we have been and include others in that?

Knowing we have an option beyond yesterday and today opens to us a basic understanding of life -- life-long learning. We can take the generosity of our ancestors who took things as far as they could and now push things as far as we can that those who follow will be grateful for our generosity that has so blessed them. We can. Will we?

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/july2006.html

 


 

Psalm 130
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Romans 8:6-11
John 11:1-45

The church in Rome might also hear that to set the mind on death is to focus on flesh and to set the mind on life and peace is spirit work. These things are not one-way orientations. If we take death as an advisor for what to pay attention to in life, we might name death a spiritual advisor. Likewise, life and peace find their context in death, what transforms it, redeems it, resurrects it.

And so Ezekiel's bones cry out as much as the spirit of the Lord. Lazarus' flesh cries out as much as do Martha and Mary and Jesus. Out of the depths comes a cry for new life and that is tied in with forgiveness.

The Lord needs to deal with forgiveness issues with those lying in the valley of dust. Jesus, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus have forgiveness issues with one another. Forgiveness is still a key element in our lives and deaths that desires resolution beyond every opportunity for resolution. A key question: how we are doing with our forgiving and receiving of forgiveness?

- - -

O so slow we are
to establish a relationship
on and in and through
forgiveness

justice calls for it
and justice grinds slow
but it does surface
even from the dead

forgiveness drives
a hard bargain
as steadfast love's
altar ego

it will not give up
until satisfied
slow or fast
eventually

leaving us a choice
cooperation early
prolonged resistance
but no choice

bones will rise
flesh will be unwrapped
death becomes spirit
peace becomes flesh

fear not O crier
from deep places
there is forgiveness
wait - hope - redeem

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html


 

Psalm 130 or Psalm 30
2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27 or Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15, 2:23-24
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
Mark 5:21-43

"Test your genuine love against the earnestness of others."
"If eagerness is there, your gift is acceptable."

Needs around us have hastened to make themselves known. These are givens in our lives. The options regard our response.

Are we as eager to live alongside a need, taking it to our hearts, as such needs are revealed everywhere they travel? Here is a test worthy of our lives. It is a test that is as communal in nature as it is individual. Encouraging one another to do well, even to share our insights with one another, is acceptable morality in this test.

Question: Where do abundance and need meet?
Response: _______________________

If it helps you may want to also make this an open-book test as well as a communal one.

- - -

sensitive to word and touch
we journey toward a great getting-up day
when and where
our eagerness is sufficient
for earnest need

attentive beyond death
we settle in to days no more
no more mourning
riling to despair
no more no more
holding us back

in moments of generosity
we undertake a beginning desire
little by little
through this year
according to what we have
abundance in need

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


 

Psalm 130 or Psalm 138
1 Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (11:14-15) or Genesis 3:8-15
2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1
Mark 3:20-35

Who is in and who is outside of family? This question continues in the political realm. We are determined to have a leader over us who will lead us into war unending and more taxes for the poor. Patriotism is the measure of family.

This question continues in the relational realm. We are determined to have internal secrets that heighten our fear to the point of one lie leading to a next. Your lie justifies my lie and mine, yours. Co-conspiracy is the measure of family.

This question continues in the relgious realm. We are determined to have it both ways - G*D's love is steadfast (enduring forever) and doubtful (do not forsake me). We cry to be heard even if all we have to say is confession, appealing for forgiveness with a claim it is for G*D's glory rather than our benefit. Justification is the measure of family.

This question continues in the realm of identity. We will continue to be who and what we are. If not in this world, we will claim it in eternity - never letting go. Pride and greed are measures of family.

This question continues in the realm of biology. We will choose to protect our own, blood being thicker than water. When one is in danger we will gather to rescue them from themselves. Genetics is the measure of family.

And then the questions get deeper. Who is my family beyond all our usual measures? Those who do not give up on hope of better than we have! This cuts across all political, religious, personal, and racial/cultural lines. Here we find common cause in families trying to hold on to the purity of appearances or the openness of new learning.

- - -

I give thanks with all my hearts
strung out with commitments
to you and you and you

voluntarily enslaved to you
my heart knows liberation
because of other commitments

so many families I already have
rubbing each other the wrong way
dividing and falling

so many families I dream of holding
creating dancing imagining
fertilizing each other as well

pray may our frictions
not bring burning heretics
but pentecost wonder sharing

my village of families
invites your village
to an easy evening

kings and slaves dissolve
creator and creation resolve
division questions salved

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


 

Psalm 130 or Psalm 34:1-8
2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33 or 1 Kings 19:4-8
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51

Somehow our desire and greed for life has gone bitterly astray. We run until we are surprised by a noose disguised as a tree; until we fall exhausted of all reserve; until we find ourself in the disinterested grasp of despair; until our waiting only brings forth more waiting.

So it has been for us and for all of our image (read G*D). The imitation of our own image imagines another way beyond the stillness of an overly humid day with a hazy gray sky hanging featureless over our heads.

This alternative presses back against the anger of unmet desire and greed - limiting it to this day, this moment; presses back against our thieving actions until they come out another side as sharing. In shorthand, we "live in love" and shift our experience from claiming others as our daily bread to being such daily bread - unconcerned for cosmic, heavenly authority for so being, and simply believing/claiming/acting eternally in each moment available.

- - -

["-- Who can tell truth from falsehood any more?
I say it, and you feel it in your hearts:
no man or woman on this big small earth."
- e.e. cummings]

am I not
but the gene pool
of mother and father
narrowed down
to one option
masquerading
as all other options

am I not
a feast
for generations to come
opening a broadening way
willing one form
to dive deep
into each next

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html


 

Cry
Cry with others
Cry for one's self
Cry simply because it is appropriate to the situation.

Wait
Wait with others
Wait with one's self
Wait simply because . . . .

Into these conditions of crying and waiting comes a dawning of awareness that they are not done in isolation. It takes awhile to come to this, but the background noise of the universe is not only T=2.735K (cosmic microwave background) but steadfast love (redemption's background).

Immersed in this background, crying and waiting find their fulfillment.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_03_01_archive.html


 

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.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html

 


 

Ah, sweet anticipation!

If you read The Neverending Story (the two color print version) or Momo by Michael Ende (and of course you will run right out to do so) an encroaching dark is the depth from which the Psalmist cries.

This dark is offset by a coming to terms with one's own power and an appreciation of time. This is a preemptive forgiveness that brightens one's eye for both the availability of the moment to be significant and a morning brightness to be considered as real, not a false dawn.

When our anticipation meets our power, the redemption available from steadfast love breaks the bounds of the personal and encompasses the communal. Our seemingly small and brave decisions have immense opportunity to affect a whole community. What joy to be able to participate in such a larger redemption.

This may be an equation that is the moral equivalent of e=mc(squared). r=pa(squared) or redemption equals power times the square of anticipation.

Do you think there is a downside to this equation – like, with radiation, an atomic bomb versus a cancer therapy? Imagine a stereotypic TV preacher using this formula for their own aggrandizement. Is there a boundary that would be appropriate to put in place around this formula to both enhance it and lessen an opportunity for misuse? [Might it be an intentional, communal anticipation of a day when such would no longer be needed?]

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_08_01_archive.html

 


 

Hmm, is your experience that forgiveness is based on your promise of subsequent reverence (a most interesting motivation for such a basic) or that forgiveness is a developed response or habit?

Is there steadfast love but only conditional forgiveness? Just how does that work?

Oh, yes, right, this is a cry from desperate depths. From such a spot we are willing to try anything. A foxhole prayer doesn't rely on a consistent view of life or self or G*D. All that is important is getting out of the current bind.

Jesus was in a tough spot with a request to come and risk stoning. Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were in a tough spot with death on the near horizon. Ezekiel was in a tough spot, facing questions far beyond any adequate response. The Psalmist was in a tough spot. You and I find ourselves in tough spots.

How we see the world around us is crucial work and doesn't come easily. All manner of shortcuts attempt to divert us from seeing the basics of life. Steadfast love, yes. Forgiveness, yes. Deep despair, yes. Waiting and watching, yes. Now take this handful and toss them up into the air. Which comes to earth most easily? Which skitters around? Are they the same weight or circumference? Which has a gravity pull stronger than the rest? Which is background and which foreground. Is one a better lens through which to view the others?

- - -

In or out of extremis
we yearn for connection
beyond judgment
beyond forgiveness
waiting and hoping
for new light
steadfast
steadfast

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/04/psalm-130.html

 


 

Out of the depths, we cry for intervention. When things are at least passable, we don’t.

Of course G*D marks iniquities, even color codes them. And yet we stand. Obviously iniquities are not all they are cracked up to be – eternal.

So G*D sees your iniquity and raises you two forgivenesses. This abundance boggles our minds and we ignore the second one. We insist that one iniquity only takes one forgiveness. Unfortunately we don’t see how our iniquity is not just with G*D but with Neighbor and One Another. We need that second forgiveness, and more, to be able to go to make amends and even to forgive those who won’t forgive us.

Blessings on being bold enough to claim both your iniquity and a most generous forgiveness.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/06/psalm-130_27.html

 


 

There is not much worse than being rejected by your family. Being sent into exile as a person with no family or nation calls everything you know about yourself into question. It is a great temptation to do whatever you need to do to get back in the good graces of your identified primary unit.

It is this threat of psycho-social death that allows discriminations and official harm to continue past their time. We aren’t up to challenging that which needs challenging because the cost to us is too great. Mostly we will not abide exile.

This is the great iniquity: that we saw harm going on and we did not oppose it for fear that we would be ostracized.

Forgiveness, then, is tied with returning to an opportunity for confrontation and doing so.

This is not a matter of waiting, but of proceeding. May you hearken again to your favorite prophet of days gone by or of the present. In renewing your relationship with one who claims harm is actually happening and points to where good might yet flourish, you, too, are redeemed. Blessings.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/06/psalm-130.html

 


 

with no where to turn
a cry arises
neither bidden nor
involuntary
wherefore art thou

my need demands
a hearing
there will be no rest
until there is a faceoff
and someone blinks

I know I’m an underdog
in this context
but wobbly knees
are strengthened
for the stakes are high

my claim is not innocence
for there is none
but an honored hearing
a remembrance
presumed forgiveness

a standoff continues
waiting upon waiting
hope within hope
assumpton beneath assumption
as dark turns to morning

no more keeping of fouls
piled unbearably
on one party
we are in this together
freely bound

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/08/psalm-130.html