Luke 1:68-79
Advent 2 - Year C
"Christ the King" - Year C
On this last Sunday of another church year that we wrap in a victory of hierarchy reclaimed, it is important to remember the prophetic tradition rather than the priestly/kingly.
Have you learned a bit more this year about not having enemies, even if they should still have you? If so, know that being thus rescued from being enthralled by our enemies we can simply live in wholeness and mercy all the rest of our days -- long or short.
The appropriate act here is that of forgiveness in the trenches of life, not the raising of a scepter to lord it over.
If we have learned well this past year, there will be a new dawn, a new light, beaming from you to those darkened in one way or another. This is not a lording it over them, but a setting out of a ministry for a next year. Hopefully our evaluation of how things have gone and one thing that still needs doing will energize us to go forward, guiding our feet and the feet of others in a way that will intersect in a present paradise that might be called peace or reality.
Blessings on your evaluation for tests are just around a corner. Today I was able to be part of giving a test to a bureaucratic church body (United Methodist Connectional Table). For the moment they passed and stopped their formalities to give up a morning's agenda to talk about sexuality and even claim it was important for them to speak about it as a body to General Conference. You can read about it here.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/11/luke-168-79.html
Let's connect verse 72 with 77.
"Thus G*D has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered our holy covenant."
"... give knowledge of salvation to all people by the forgiveness of their sin."
- - -
Mercy is extendable over the generations. There is no time boundary to mercy, just as there is no arbitrary numerical limit to it (no 7 or 77 or 7x7).
As we have experienced/interpreted life, so we pass it on. The question for us is how do we see our relationship with G*D (has mercy been received by us? - Are we to pass it on to other partners of G*D?).
What would be an example in your life of a mercy without a statute of limitation?
What would be an example of your modeling, teaching, or edifying others as to their ability to receive forgiveness, even at this late date? Can you do this without actually doing some forgiveness?
All of this leads us toward the revealing of tender mercy. This is best done by walking a path of peace, not doctrine (no matter how well phrased).
- - -
Wesley White
Wordsmith's daily posting has quotes. This one came today: "It is a difficult matter to argue with the belly since it has no ears." -Cato The Elder, statesman and writer (234-149 BCE)
It would seem the same can be said of doctrine. Once it has listened to the prevailing wisdom of the day and crafted its being, there is no more listening. It is not that it no longer has ears, but that they are not used and whatever is not used is lost.
This, of course, is a caricature of doctrine at its worst. It would be helpful to have doctrine continue growing in honesty and to somewhere acknowledge that it has growth spurts and plateaus, just like the human beings who conceived it and gave it suck.
Until then doctrine will continue to find it difficult to live in mercy and forgiveness which are always beyond doctrine's limits.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/december2003.html
Some translations have G*D responsible for desolations and devastations on earth [NRSV, NIV, HCSB ]. Others begin to widen the scope to also include wonders [AMP]. Some go all the way to the wonders, talking about marvels, flowers, and trees [MSG].
In this context desolation seems most helpful as the passage goes on to claim that G*D causes wars to cease. This is a desolation to our business as usual processes. What would we do without war? We would be thrown back into chaos with simply too many options. War short-circuits options and turns life into limited options of this or that winner or loser. We would be devastated without war, it binds together our own desire for control and knowledge that God is on our side.
What is the mechanism whereby G*D brings such desolation over the loss of desolation? Is it found in being still - Elijah-like? Is it Zechariah's understanding of knowledge of salvation by way of forgiveness? Is it Isaiah's beautiful, peaceful feet on the mountain good-newsing about G*D reigning? Is it the consequence of John's preparation by way of a call for repentance and baptism?
If there is a connection between the action of G*D and that of humans, it may behoove us to show in our day the mercy promised our ancestors to come our way. We all come from the metaphoric house of David, we all have a part to play as savior, healer in our day. With mercy, forgiveness, good news, we continue in the face of whatever discouragement pops up. Dawn has broken. We can see a bit more than before what is already present, solidifying, through those rosy fingers, from promise to fulfillment.
Standing in the dawn of G*D's reign we find Christ's crown offered to us as a Holy Grail. And like Jesus' humility to empty himself of claiming it, we are emboldened to pass it on. An uncrowned Christ is the only king worth being kin to.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/november2004.html
Mercy is one of Creation's intentions.
As such it has been reflected from the beginning in promise after promise. This mercy shows up in covenant after covenant. A part of the need of this repetition comes from our forgetting to remember a promise for very long. As we look back we see covenants of mercy continually cropping up in our presence. We may not have recognized them at the time, but now they become clear.
Likewise tender mercy is on its way from farther away than eye can see, heart hope. It is not just for us as an individual, for mercy is as social or communal as any basic of life. Tender mercy is not simply a comfort but an equipment of light to find faint ways of peace beyond our experience of death in the midst of life or expectation that anything will really change.
You, child of G*D, are called to be a prophet who preemptively shines forgiveness into the graves of lives. This forgiving light shines beyond our accepted limits to reconnect us to past and future, to friend and foe, to G*D and Neighbor, to self and non-self. Rejoice in your high calling by boldly receiving mercy and extravagantly and expansively giving it away.
- - -
a bigger bang than a big bang
precedes expansive energy
no where there is created stuff
or even non-stuff
has mercy not been there already
mercy lays a groundwork
for foregrounds and backgrounds
for groundhogs and ground chuck
we are grounded in mercy
Allah the Merciful rings true
may G*D's mercy continue
greater than judgment
that the leading edge of creation
bloom and grow
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html
To be a preparer of a better way is indeed a high calling. It is one within the reach of everyone.
Sometimes we strive for some better part, to be the hero/heroine of whatever situation we are in. Sometimes that is not only possible, but achievable. For a given time and place, we are the obvious catalyst to move things along. More often we would do better to cast around for simply a next baby step that someone else will be able to build on, bring to fruition.
It is amazing how often this role of the preparer of a better future revolves around issues of forgiveness. Time and again the gift of radical forgiveness is needed to clear space for a better time. It is this forgiveness that provides a better picture of salvation and ways in which it might become clearer and stronger in our living.
In this last moment of the year we might cast our hearts and minds back over the past year to see the proportion of our experience that found us humbly preparing a better way compared to those moments where we were a final capstone put in place. My hunch is that we will all find ourselves more often in the role of preparer. Now that we have cast back, we might be able to more forthrightly and joyfully fill more of that role in the year ahead. This will lead to a greater fulfillment by this time next year.
- - -
there is a river
whose streams make glad
habitations of the heart
whose strong flow
sees us through to dawn
streams pre-river
sea post-river
play their part
along a way
of new life
gathering
holding
connected
river-wise
courageous
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html
When filled with a Holy Spirit we find ourselves blessing one and all. We bless G*D (you have done that recently, haven't you?) and find what we thought was one specific blessing has become universal as well.
Being in G*D's image we find we are blessed and blessing, as well. Look again at verses 78 and 79 and see if this revision works as a self-awareness: "By my tender mercy, dawn enters darkness and guides us to peace."
Eventually we find that we can't bless G*D without blessing our neighbors as our selves or our enemies. May your tender mercy bless many this day and all days.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_12_01_archive.html
"And you, child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go before G*D to prepare G*D's ways, to give knowledge of wholeness to people through forgiveness of sins."
This charge to all who are dedicated, blessed, baptized, is an ordination to the work of communal and environmental peace. Take your authority and prepare G*D's way.
If you can't yet see yourself following in the ways of Jesus' peace, can you see yourself following in the way of John's prophecy that is oriented toward that same peace? It may be that you sense your call to the ways of peace follows after neither Jesus nor John. Whatever you see as a model is your call to demonstrate that you understand that it is not a starting point that is our measure, but our ending point of a way of peace. Blessings on your awareness and your follow-through.
Again, listen to this liturgy and see how it applies in your life:
"And you, child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go before G*D to prepare G*D's ways, to give knowledge of wholeness to people through forgiveness of sins."
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/11/luke-168-79.html
G*D blessed through forgiveness. This passage suggests that such forgiveness was only mediated through an authorized route. Those who went before only had a promise of mercy extended to them. We, however, are the ones who experience this freeing.
All those who would rather live with a promise of mercy instead of that promise’s fullfillment - raise your hand. I trust that included you as living in a promise is no easier or harder than living with mercy that brings a clarifying light to keep us from excusing ourselves because we are confused or whose feet are mobilized to dramatize a way of peace in a time of no-peace. I trust you would have also raised your hand had the question been about a preference to live in merciful forgiveness. As has already been posited, they each are worth a hero’s quest.
To be clear-headed is no easy task. To trust what you see to be reality-based is not easy. And to follow where peace beckons is not only not easy, but very difficult.
Note: Usually a Psalm is found on these Wednesday postings. This is an insight into the energy level of a Psalm. Where a prophecy is occuring, it can easily take the form of a poem, either patterned or free-form. Even the most prosaic of prophecies is poetic. Listen to how prophesy rolls off the tongue no matter what its form or content.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/12/luke-168-79.html