Isaiah 12

Proper 28 (33) - Year C

Isaiah 12 or Psalm 98

We are often more ready to sing a new song or to say thanks after there has been some evidence of a significant change or freedom where before there was only resignation and restriction.

Before that we are in the land of hope and faith and love, but quietly so. Perhaps we can hum a line, but a full-throated song or statement simply seems out of place.

So what are you using as evidence that allows you to sing out. Are you fortunate enough to have practiced singing thanks so you can do it at the drop of a hat or in the face of even worse disaster than you have so far known? Are you one who needs piles and piles of evidence, and even then doubt it will hold, and so, at best, can whisper a bit? Some of these differences among us can be attributed to personality, experiences, and expectations. Some goes beyond any explanation.

May the day be soon upon us when we can agree and participate in the singing of praise, the avowal of transformation.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/november2004.html

Isaiah 12 or Psalm 98

"You will say in that day: Give thanks…."

Do you trust that day will come? If so why not give thanks now as well as then?

Trust and thanks are antidotes to fear. Trust and thanks are rope and winch lowering and raising a bucket of joy into the wells (plural) of salvation. Trust and thanks free us from the control of anger and fear of anger.

In preparation for a focus on thanks-giving and thanks-living it might be helpful to focus on its twin of trust. Trust lays the groundwork for the courage it takes to sing a new song in an old situation. Trust breaks fear's grip. Trust is another way of spelling salvation from that which looms over us and another way of spelling health or wholeness pulling us past any rough spot we face.

- - -

I give thanks
you – give thanks!

so we move
from experience
to rote requirements

forgetting
my thanks is mine
forgetting
your thanks is yours

thanks becomes a technique
we apply to intolerable situations
as though going through this motion
we will change the unspeakable
from fearful to our advantage

starting with thanks
we can go anywhere
with strengthened trust
we are truly at home
wherever we are
and whenever

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html

I like moving away from anger and toward comfort. Whenever such happens, an extravagant response seems to be in order - forgiveness of Self and Neighbors and G*D.

We are all in this together and we all take the consequences of poor choices. We also reap the difficulty of repairing our relationship after digging in our heels with our respective and incompatible choices.

Moving from dealing with an angry G*D to a comforting G*D throws us off our game and we overcompensate from blame for absence to praise. This misses the interrelationship aspect of G*D, Neighbor, and Self.

Perhaps this is all said too soon as Chapter 12's song of thanksgiving is to be "recited in the ideal age" (The Jewish Study Bible). We are certainly not at such an age. Our season of Pentecost began with great hope that we might get there. The first chapters of the the Book of the Acts of the Apostles had people's coming together who would otherwise be discounted by one another. Here at the end of another Church Year we are getting apocalyptic, disappointed that what started out as anti-Babel (universal response to great deeds) has again devolved into threat and a set up for a need to jump back into Advent thinking.

So, yes, in an ideal age my forgiveness will sound like praise. Until then my praise is tempered by the the inability of Self, Neighbor, and G*D to come together. I'll take my blame in this, but I won't excuse others more than myself.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/11/isaiah-12.html