Isaiah 62:1-5
Epiphany 2 - Year C
Indeed, no one can keep silent. Every breath is a political statement. We are helping or hindering the future each moment along the way. The intensity and duration of our intention is beside the point. Simply being is speaking loudly.
Parents of the children massacred in Newtown, Connecticut are not going to rest in parenting those who were killed and those still living, are not going to put down their promise to keep children safe.
Here are 3 links of the best coverage to date about this engagement. This is political action at its best. Do note, however, that every decision to rest or not to rest is a political action. This is neither a good or bad reality, it is simply the way it is. So be thankfully, gracefully, and boldly political.
If you would like to help turn forsakenness into delight but don’t know where to begin, go to the Sandy Hook Promise and bring it to your community until something else becomes clear as your call to be intentional about assisting in the transformation of the world. [Note to United Methodists: political action is discipleship for the transformation of the world, you are just doing yours through the lens of Jesus while others are using a different lens.]
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/01/isaiah-621-5.html
For whose sake will you move beyond silence?
For whose sake will you spend extra energy?
Not much going on until those questions are addressed in our lives.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/january2004.html
We dare not be silent for the sake of a place of Peace. There is so much unrest and wrong that silence is not just turning a blind eye, but actively sticking a stick in whatever sight is left. Silence is a catalyst that amplified the wrong. Silence is an exponent of unrest, raising it more quickly than it might otherwise rise.
A new name is needed in the difficulties of the day - a name that names what might yet be rejoiced over. This name holds a future of active peace and justice, not just a holding tank keeping unrest and wrong at a minimum.
Again and again we are called to call out Delightful and Heart-of-My-Heart. For our sake, as well as Zion's, we see what can be built on, not just what must be restrained, and we can call that out.
As you look at your community, your relationships, what will you so name?
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any last words?
rosebud?
rejoice?
pardon, were those first words or last?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html
For whose sake will you not shut up? Let us count those who covet our voice.
Yes, the list will extend past our ability to count and also reveal our bias and our blindness. It is important to start anyway. Are you willing to list 5 for whose sake you will not be quiet.
Here are five to get the ball rolling, add five more and send the list on to others. It would be interesting to see the results of several lists after they have been added to a dozen or so times.
- those diminished by others for their sexual orientation
- those constrained by mental illness
- those victims at every level by war (including those perpetrating such)
- those who simply hunger and thirst
- those whose words are but shadows of their thoughts and feelings
and yours?
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To what end will we speak up? That those spoken for, and all, might see themselves crowned with beauty, delighted, and in community.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html