Isaiah 5:1-7
Proper 15 (20) - Year C
Proper 22 (27) - Year A
For a simply ecstatic starting point of cry after cry of “Let it be!” some expectations of being began to emerge from their interactions: Justice/Righteousness.
When what is experienced is bloodshed and a cry of anguish, something is wrong and needs to be set aright. Here the first response (like the first stage of grief, is denial — “Let it not be!”
Of course that is not a response that settles anything.
In the midst of vineyards invading a land of milk and honey, previous bloodshed and cries of anguish had arisen from the previous tennants. Now, instead of overrunning others we are running headlong into one another. Another model is needed.
For the moment image a bi-layer, extended release Mucinex pill:
http://www.wesleyspace.net/resources/Mucinex.png
What might be added to basic justice/righteousness to extend it? Mercy/Forgiveness?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/08/isaiah-51-7.html
Ooooo! That smarts!
GOD "looked for a harvest of righteousness and heard only the moans of victims."
The moans of my "victims" rise to heaven.
Perhaps next time I should call down the angels to do them in that I might keep my hands cleaner. But that is no solution - so saw Jesus and even myself when I am honest about it.
There is no way to stop the moans other than to stop the victimizing.
Am I listening?
Is the church listening?
Is the United States administration listening?
So, how do we help the listening process without beating folks up and yelling, "Listen up!"?
Let us know what your contemplating of this comes up with. You may be the voice of G*D for me and for others.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/october2002.html
Isaiah 5:1-7 or Jeremiah 23:23-29
What has happened to the rainbow?
The garden didn't work out. East of Eden didn't work out. Now the vineyard isn't working out. One would think that a God that filled the heavens and earths would better get their way without the threat and bombast. It turns out that rainbows simply work better than fists.
Whether yelled with passion at the top of one's lungs or whispered quietly, there doesn't seem to be a way to get around the reversal of intention.
Justice is to avoid bloodshed, to resolve issues, but we choose to go without justice and to roll out red carpets (red with the blood, sweat, tears, and toil of the poor and weak).
Righteousness is to comfort, but we choose to wait for the cry before acting.
Will the hearts of the prophets ever turn back to justice and righteousness? Will prophets forever take the easy way of shading the truth about justice and righteousness, of deceiving themselves first and then the rest of the people.
Antidotes to these usual ways of living begins with dreams that radically call forth justice and foster righteousness. Dream and tell your dream. Dream and tell your dream. Dream a dream big enough to have heaven come on earth and tell that dream. Dream a dream large enough to clarify and live "enough". Dream a dream that shatters our usual ways of doing business without justice and righteousness.
Dream and dream again. Speak your dream abroad. Act on your dream as though it weren't a dream. Live your dream to the hilt and watch your dreams increase.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/august2004.html
Isaiah 5:1-7 or Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Walls and hedges of protection are valuable gifts. Within these we are able find a source of steadfastness for ourselves and a place of refuge for regrouping when life happens. These protective gifts can be personal as well as communal.
The downside is that we begin to rely on these levee-type boundaries as the end-all and be-all of living and they begin to constrain us or to over-comfort us.
Like a nautilus that doesn't grow a new chamber, our very protections from external dangers turn to become a restraint on internal growth and maturity. If we don't make room for more than what we learned in Sunday School as a youth, we will remain spiritually stuck at that point.
As consoling as a hedge can be when we need escape it can turn us into spiritual couch potatoes, never willing to risk the fear and trembling of salvation. We take our comfort and look for more and more of it. Without knowing the limit of enough comfort. It becomes ever so much easier to avoid using our little gray cells.
Thank goodness for communal boundaries of such as 10 out of 100s of "commands." Thank goodness for the comfort of steadfast love that hedges us round.
Woe for thinking any number of commands will suffice for adequately participating in the messiness of life. Woe for choosing more and more and comfort over enough and reality.
If you were to name your place of safety that allows your prophetic side to take the risks it needs, what would you name?
If you were to name your place of imposed boundary that keeps you from maturing, what would you name?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/october2005.html
Isaiah 5:1-7 or Jeremiah 23:23-29
From the Fantasticks comes a wonderful little ditty, Plant a Radish, about planting cabbages and getting cabbages, with vegetables there's never any dobut, but with progeny all bets are off. This latter day parable might be sung to G*D in regard to having planted a vineyard and expecting a vineyard, only to have conveniently forgotten that we're dealing with human beings here, images/progeny -
"While with progeny,
It's hodge-podgenee.
For as soon as you think you know what kind you've got,
It's what they're not!"
We don't do justice very well - either for ourself or, most certainly not, for others. The same goes for righteousness. Think back as far as creation stories or only as far as last evening to see what I mean.
Lighten up, G*D! Your expectations are just that, and unrealistic to boot. You have filled all secret places and have been present with the deceitful dreams of false prophets. If you are not going to turn us all into puppets (no long term fun in that because there would then be no audience to amaze) it is time to get real in real time. What do we do now is a far more fruitful question than what we should have done differently back then (though the diagnostics of historical inquiry can be helpful in energizing different choices). Blame is no where as helpful as, "Well, given this, where to from here."
- - -
things haven't gone
the way I expected
so I'm going
to rip and tear
that which I desired
I'll make it desolate
because that's what I am
so quick to pout
when discouraged
so fast to apply a vacuum
where nothing can exist
except huge amounts
of boredom
revenge and angst
in so recognizing
ourselves
we name our creator
in whose image
we live and move
at least gasp and pine
how convenient for us
but a time has come
to be saviors of G*D
living and moving
today and onward
to have the student
teach the teacher
so all might learn
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html
Isaiah 5:1-7 or Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20
Psalm 19 or Psalm 80:7-15
Philippians 3:4b-14
Matthew 21:33-46
World Communion Sunday, by its very existence, recognizes that there are incompatible differences between those who sacramentalize a eucharist in Jesus' name. We emphasize different commandments and so are constantly balancing and rebalancing our boundaries.
Putting the Exodus and Isaiah passages together we find less emphasis upon the specifics of thundering commandments, than on what G*D expects to be their result -- justice (Isaiah 5:7).
Left on our own, we are afraid - who can keep every jot and tittle? But seen as precursors to a longer prophetic justice (thus the vineyard images in these pericopes) we are able to keep on.
In this light, the Psalmist is correct to see the commandments as clarifying - "Here is an example of justice: honor those who have gone before." In keeping that which builds justice we find a great reward, one worth pursuing with all our energy. It is also this that connects us with Prophet Jesus - identifying a great justice and what stands in our way of moving toward it.
- - -
listen to another parable
what is going to happen
to those in the tale
just so it will happen
to you and your family
as we project
so we are
change an expectation
and you change a course of history
facts are not immutable
or determinative
listen to a parable
live a parable
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html
Must be the Dog Days of Summer, Jesus is looking to burn up the earth, Isaiah is prophesying destruction for a vineyard, the Psalmist recognizes similar destructions have fallen upon the land and pleads for new light, and the letter writer to the Hebrews recounts a cloud of persecutions witnessed. The sweat of our brow is soaking inward, softening the mind and clouding hope.
It is hard enough to do justice when comfortable. When the hot stickies of Sirius joins with the heat of Sol, it is easy to let a bit more of justice slip away - who has the energy to do elsewise?
It is hard enough to be consciously moving toward being G*D (righteous) when comfortable. When the heat humidity index hits the danger level, we hide further away from our self and one another - who has the fortitude to resist absence of intention, we can hardly move ourselves?
So it is that no matter what our call, it is trumped by such little water droplets in warm air and by the driest of heat rising beyond the bearable.
But we know that, so why don't we factor it in to our rhythms and our awareness? Can you look just one more time at what is going on around you and to offer a cup of cool water to someone in need, a refreshing word of support to a whole group prohibited from simply being? Yes, you can! Bloodshed can be stanched by justice.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/08/isaiah-51-7.html