Romans 8:12-25
Proper 11 (16) - Year A
Assurance is an active state of soul. The spirit "bears witness". Where once there was doubt, it is now clear G*D's "children" can be raised up from the very rocks -- they can include such as ourselves.
Life is transformed when assurance kicks in. It is not just a matter of words or doctrine. It is an experience like unto the transformation of futility into hope.
Folks who are assured, children of G*D, apply hope to their situation and transform it. So, what situation are you facing? Busywork? Overtime? What difference does it make? One more day?
Our waiting is also active. Our hope is not a sitting back and passively resting while transformation goes on. Our patient waiting means we go ahead, moving toward our vocational call no matter what the obstacle. The patient part means the same as persistent. [Note: the etymology of "patient" - Middle English pacient , from Middle French, from Latin patient-, patiens , from present participle of pati to suffer; perhaps akin to Greek pēma suffering (Mirriam-Webster Online). The American Heritage Dictionary Online says "endure" instead of "suffer".] So, hope; so, transform your situation.
The assurance of the love of GOD "always hopes, always perseveres" (1 Corinthians 13:7 NIV).
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/july2005.html
"I don't think there is any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times....the joyful anticipation deepens" [The Message]
This is a call to persistence in the moment. To have a joyful anticipation (perhaps any anticipation at all) is to be able to look at where we are and know we are already moving on. To so know is to see movement where otherwise we would appear to be stuck in repeating the past.
To see movement gives us the opportunity to join it. To join a movement gives us courage to prod, push, and pull the movement along one more notch until, bam!, more than can be expected bursts forth.
The images of birthing are helpful here. Don't forget that the seeming stuckness and frustration of transition portends not only unimaginable labor but abounding joy. May we, like every hopeful generation, see ourselves ready for the movement of new birth and be willing to take our next breath and push for all we are worth. It is worth our work to get to better times for ourselves and for others and for all of creation. "Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not." [Galatians 6:9 KJV]
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/july2002.html
Living and dying are not easy categories. In the midst of life we are dying and in the midst of death we might live. There is no hard and fast here. Even death isn't death with resurrection and reincarnation lurking about. Even life isn't life with temptations and numbness lurking about.
Suffering and glorification are two other words that mess us up. We tend to absolutize and eternalize and finalize these when their fluidity is what marks them. There are those who glorify their suffering and others who suffer glory.
Waiting and hoping continue the pattern of never quite being sure we have said what we want to say.
Wherein lies the border between adoption and redemption?
Enjoy the tentativeness of your experience. It sets us free.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/july2005.html
Yes, let the righteous shine -- but not at the expense of those not yet righteous or deemed never to be righteous.
We have a long-standing tendency to idealism. Somehow or other, we yearn for days to come where all choice is taken from us so we won't even consider an alternative because such might eventually, incrementally, lead us elsewhere, astray. Likewise, we dream of days of non-complicity wherein evil is externalized and we are implicitly innocent.
Truth be told, I hold invasive weed and intentional wheat in tension. Neither can be denied its present reality. So was a first garden and so a future garden already holding an unrepentant thief.
Beware enthusiastic righteousness (even G*D's) rooting out all but itself -- it is unbalanced with only one leg to stand on.
- - -
what's G*D doing
at the bottom of the ladder
while angels climb
up and down down and upangels are a diversion
while G*D sneaks up
as imagination soars
with the ladderangels bring not messages
from above
but store promises
with the raintogether they fertilize
our present
to bring forth much future
growing uppromises spoken
are carried on high
to baptize tomorrow
resurrect a day after
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html
How do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?
How do you find a word that means Maria?
A flibbertijibbet! A will-o'-the wisp! A clown!Oh, how do you solve a problem like Maria?
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?["Maria" from The Sound of Music]
"All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy." [verses 22-25, The Message]
May you hold yourself open for a surprise beyond your expectation. This is where we find energy to live, give, and love. Hold out your hand, a moonbeam is waiting for you.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html
Paul seems to have forgotten the parable of wheat and tares. Somehow he sees what he thinks is a way to separate spirit from flesh. Such utopian attempts have long been made in every religious tradition.
It was laborious to separate the cotton from the seed until a gin (engine) was invented for that purpose. Paul seems to think he has invented an equivalent to separate the spirit from the flesh, the wheat from the weed. The Spirit of G*D calls to the spirit of you and perhaps me. In this call only our spirit responds. Pretty neat.
There is still something, though, that reminds Paul (some “thorn”?) that he was still waiting for some adoption of his weedy parts that would redeem them. And so, finally, Paul’s wheatie Grace and weedy Law was going fall back upon hope rather than some technologically neat theology that G*D could and would only be praised by spirit.
Even creedal repetition of “Abba! Father!” is grounded in hope rather than guarantee of this being an “Open Sesame” mantra. And so we continue to labor and groan with wheat and weed and self and other and new creation and hope and, and, and.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/07/romans-812-25.html
So, sisters and brothers, we are not called to live according to our past, for this is a way to irrelevance and death. But, if you forgive the deeds of the past, you will live. For all who are led by G*D’s mercy are freed. In this freedom you are to release your slavery to the past. Adopt the future!
To make this shift is to participate in a creative force that is willing to move through difficulty, suffering even, for a larger purpose. It is this revelation of something better that moves us beyond all-things-being-equal and on to living for ourselves and the next generations.
We waited long for this revelation that we have a part in tomorrow. We were caught in the futility of coming to a better place by using the same old processes. Hope has been reborn for us and we are willing to risk what we have for what we anticipate is arriving.
It was not just ourselves that was groaning, awaiting a birthing of a new way of relating to our past and to one another. All of yesterday and today have been moving toward tomorrow. Now, together, we are able to each be beloved for the gift we are — the gift of who we have been and all it has taught us; the gift of who we are and of our deep questions; and the gift of yearning for more.
This hope organizes our health. It is not yet seen, but already is at work changing patterns and engaging us in the patience necessary to act boldly without relying on immediate results. We are making adjustments in life-long habits simply because our health depends on it.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/05/romans-812-25.html
Yesterday there was to have been a meeting hosted by the leadership of The United Methodist Church’s Connectional Table and the Executive Committee of the Council of Bishops that invited 3 groups advocating for a release of mission and ministry in The United Methodist Church by removing the fearful language that categorically discriminates against LGBTQ United Methodists and 3 groups attempting to maintain and strengthen the current restrictive legislation. Additionally there was 1 group invited that represents the 100 largest United Methodist congregations.
The result was that the only the first 3 groups arrived (Love Prevails, Methodist Federation for Social Action, and Reconciling Ministries Network).
The agenda was pitiful and still was tried to be carried out when less than half of the invitees bothered to show up and they were all folks who had had to gird their loins to be present, one more time in the face of those who desire their exile and will go to any lengths to achieve purity at the expense of another’s very life.
If you want to focus on groaning currently going on, that can be done at quite a distance with news about shooting down a public airliner or a ground invasion of Gaza. For those in The United Methodist Church, it will be important to attend to your groaning sisters and brothers and a variety of gender identities lest your concern for those far away is undercut by your lack of concern for those near by. In other situations the undercutting would go the other way, but today, in The United Methodist Church, the delay in honoring our baptized LGBTQ siblings affects every part of the denomination.
Join the groaning that there is so much trickle-down fear and cowardice from church leadership and the need is so great for trickle-up courage from everyday folk. Attend to this video report after the above fiasco of a meeting where absence was yet another face and form of violence.
http://loveprevailsumc.com/2014/07/18/reflections-on-july-18th-meeting/
Then you might appreciate this reflection by on the video report by Jeanne Knepper, one of many LGBTQ saints, that speaks to a watchful and waiting hope:
Trickle up, trickle through, trickle, trickle moves the water as it undercuts, as it undermines, as it overwhelms the dam, the damn dam. And when the water gushes through, when the Spirit flows, the dam believers will wonder, "Why didn't we see this coming??" Because, fearful friends, you were afraid to go near the water, the water of Life, offered so very freely, for so many years. Love Prevails.