Isaiah 51:1-6
Proper 16 (21) - Year A
So you are interested in "pursuit of saving justice," "right living," "seeking G*D," "pursuing righteousness."
Here are two attendant tasks.
First, ponder in your heart your source material. Rehearse again G*D's touching of Sarai and Abram. Follow their journey to Sarah and Abraham. Remember G*D's touching of your life and your journey. Anticipate the touching and journeying of others.
Second, go about your interest with "exuberance and laughter," with "thankful voices and melodic songs." Joy, gladness, thanksgiving, rejoicing, melody, and song will be our modus operandi. For too long we have thought that earnestness was our calling. All along the sudden approach of G*D's justice can only be responded to with some form of dance. If we are going to anticipate this gift arriving swiftly it is important to do so with lightness.
Let others argue about who's in and who's out. As for me and my house - its shimmy, shimmy, shimmy - justice and righteousness are already prevailing for those with an eye to joy, an ear to song, and an eagerness to participate.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/august2002.html
Isaiah 51:1-6 or Exodus 1:8 - 2:10
Look to bricks (our lived reality). Look to a rock (a sign of release).
Look to a flimsy papyrus basket and chaotic waters (our lived reality). Look to the heavens and earth (signs of release).
As we play with that which binds (our lived reality) and that which looses (signs of release) we recognize that these play back and forth in mysterious ways that cannot be well anticipated. A release becomes a binding because of our lived realities (those now in power insist on control through destruction -- Tom Ehrich's comment today includes: "Pharaoh's strategy to secure his rule by destroying other lives wasn't original to him. Killing baby boys was Herod's answer, too. Killing entire families was Hitler's. If you look inside any of the cruelties that plague our world, from genocide to office politics, you will see exactly this: one rules by destroying another, a few rule by destroying many, or many rule by destroying a few."). A captive people leave a country and cause others to have an exodus from their country as they come to claim it. A constitution that frees landholding white males continues seeing blacks as fractional people and women as no one. A wall is built to divide a city and political blocs. A system of intentional racial divide makes law after law to make others powerless. An overthrow of economic colonialism sets up fights and divisions based on religious sensibilities. The list goes on.
That which seems so set in stone falls apart at a moments notice, releasing new life for more folks. Truth and Reconciliation Commissions are set up, pardons are given, amendments are made, walls do fall, etc., etc.
Each of these bindings and loosings and bindings . . . are still being worked out. There is nothing new under this sun.
Listen for the swing of the pendulum that we might do our part to shorten binding times and lengthen loosing time.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/august2005.html
Isaiah 51:1-6 or Exodus 1:8-2:10
Psalm 124 or Psalm 138
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20
There are many gifts. In the Moses story there are folks who have the gifts of disobedience, secrecy, complicity, adventure, subversion from within, etc.
In the Jesus story there are gifts of Baptist John, Elijah, Jeremiah, and other prophets that help to define who Jesus is and isn't.
Likewise there are gifts in each of our lives as we interact with those closest to us, those we yet name enemy, those whose challenge and/or support feed us to become more than we currently are.
There is no one else's story to tell but our own. So the disciples were told not to tell the gift of Jesus, for that was for him to reveal. So no one else will tell the secret of who you are, it is yours to reveal and this is a good time to reveal it.
Are you someone whose gift of compassion will not allow you to go along with the dicta of society? Are you a gift willing to give birth to something new even in the face of overwhelming evidence that such is not desired? Are you willing to be practical enough to let go of your child and gift it another space where it might yet grow, knowing your own space is too risky for it? Are you gifted to reach out to the forbidden and make it your own? Are you willing to participate in the irony of life that flourishes within your own unironic life?
- - -
how shrewd we are
as we look around
to the dangers
and opportunities
to enhance our power
our very shrewdness
turns all too readily
to ruthlessness
we only perceive
as extra shrewd
being so shrewd
we fail to find
the irony in ruthlessness
that destroys
its beginning shrewdness
somehow it is never our fault
that what we have set in motion
will come back to haunt us
through the very structures
of our elite electedness
we move from "us"
who are fearful
to restrictions
that fall apart
at the next "I"