Isaiah 52:7-10
Christmas (Proper 3) - Years A, B, C
How beautiful within a manger, a slum, community, church, or home is the presence of one who not only walks with beauty but lives in peace.
May your feet quickly bear your comforting arms where they are needed this day. What check do you need to write? What protest do you need to participate in? What restitution do you need to make? What forgiveness needs offering or accepting?
Living in peace puts us in the strangest of places during officially designated “holy” holidays. If you come to Christmas Day and know someone has something against you, go quickly to ask for a gift of reconciliation.
May your feet quickly bear your comforting arms where they are needed this day. What check do you need to write? What protest do you need to participate in? What restitution do you need to make? What forgiveness needs offering or accepting?
Living in peace puts us in the strangest of places during officially designated “holy” holidays. If you come to Christmas Day and know someone has something against you, go quickly to ask for a gift of reconciliation.
As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience
How beautiful within a manger, a slum, community, church, or home is the presence of one who not only walks in beauty but lives with peace.
May your feet quickly bear your comforting arms where they are needed this day. What check do you need to write? What protest do you need to participate in? What restitution do you need to make? What forgiveness needs offering and accepting?
Living with peace puts us in the strangest of places during holy-days. If you come to Christmas Day and know someone has something against you, go quickly to them for the gift of reconciliation.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/december2004.html
Isaiah 52:7-10 / Isaiah 9:2-7 / Isaiah 62:6-12
Sentinel and "Son" and Light get paralleled here. The qualities of one run into the qualities of the other.
The authority of each grows continuously. It is only in this constant growth that the possibility of endless peace comes to pass. Our tendency is to plateau our growth (for shorter and longer terms) and at each we not only consolidate our gain (light the path we have come by), but we lose sight of our journey and settle for a present peace based on the past that can't bear the weight of tomorrow's realities without more growth.
A call comes to move beyond our current plateau, to "build up" the road to which we have set our foot. A light dawns, a sentinel calls out, a child pushes the boundaries to say, "Ensign Pulver, here, its time for more life than this old bucket or plateau can hold! We'll seek it first in anti-authoritarian silliness which is appropriate to Holy People, the Redeemed."
What's going to allow folks to join in with the next stage of journey. Well, there will be false promises of peace at the next plateau and that will pull some folks on. Some will get lonely when others have journeyed on and begin see the road isn't quite as rough as they had feared. Some won't ever move and they'll be buried in their grave to mark this plateau. Some will hear a sentinel "son" of light singing for joy about that which is yet to come, no matter what plateau we are on.
As we near a time of celebrating birth of a prince of peace who will need to grow into and past that designation, it will help if we recognize that the sentinel, "son", light of old are yet floating around in our gene pool, in what it means to be created in the image of GOD. They are part of us and it is appropriate to allow them to be born again within us. May we use Christmas to not only celebrate a past birth, but a present birth of ourselves.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/december2005.html
Isaiah 52:7-10
Psalm 98
Hebrews 1:1-4, (5-12)
John 1:1-14
Sing! Rejoice!
G*D has done marvelous things
G*D is expressing steadfast love and faithfulness
G*D will act with righteousness and equity
These three can be present simultaneously and yet be experienced sequentially. These can mark stages of faith in G*D, as well as in ourselves. It is not contradictory or heresy to either conflate or sequence these qualities.
For this day we conflate. We see peace running over the mountains, already accomplished. We see the feet of peace in the footprints of prophets - imprints of G*D's very being. This word of peace (grace and truth) yet stands against every attempt at diminishment.
We see the persistence of light, of memory of good creation, of anticipation of transformation of packets of light into waves of light and from that energy to the matter of our lives. We see the dynamism of the present between "in the beginning" and "they all wear out" as selection and being selected work on each other.
We see the long-ago speaking of G*D shine above and in darkened streets of potential. Creation is seen in re-creation.
A child is born! Every child born, bears G*D's imprint. How various is G*D! How versatile is G*D! Of course a manger holds G*D. Of course both shepherd and magi can see G*D in a manger. Of course you are an imprint of G*D. Of course we can see G*D in each other.
- - -
in the beginning was a word
today word becomes flesh
tomorrow flesh becomes a new beginning
every word, flesh, beginning
is a celebration and a mourning
as each opens new worlds
and closes others
our call from long ago
and unto eons
through birthing and birthing
is to ascend
to enflesh word
to begin with flesh
to speak a new beginning
is to move on
past past words
past current flesh passing away
past even a new beginning
is to be between
a lens for ancestors and descendants
to better see one another
and be at peace
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html
How beautiful are mountain feet running to announce peace.
How beautiful are manger feet walking to live peace
We sing for joy amid past ruins as we live our hope for restoration.
We sing for joy amid present ruination as we live our hope before resurrection.
Whether from the past to the present or from the present to the future, we see and invest in health and wholeness for ourselves and all.