Luke 21:25-36
Advent 1- Year C
Signs are present. Signs come in innumerable guises. Some will see them as a destructive judgment. Some will see them as next opportunities. Some won’t see them at all.
Those who are able to see through their hard-wiring or experience will be able to shift. Some will flee from wrath. Some will walk boldly forward.
Signs not only come to be present, they fade from their once presence. Signs are as frail as the leaves of a deciduous tree - spring green, productive day-after-day, celebrative in completion, and fertilizing the future. No one of them is normative.
If not signs, what may stay with us? We can claim it to be words, but they are just signs of signs. It is not the “words” here that are lasting, but what they describe — alertness to how to honorably stand and assist others to do the same.
Clarifying and strengthening an ability to stand, clear-eyed, is worth a year’s endeavor. Can you imagine how individuals, congregations and other communities might grow by the end of November next year by working on this orientation rather than on mediating words? Neither can I. But it sounds worthy of our best.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/11/luke-2125-36.html
When trouble comes, as it does, a part of our work is to interpret it. At the beginning of things (which means right now) we are to see more deeply into the processes at work and clarify the expected consequences if we keep traveling down the current path. Being able to stand up, look trouble in the eye, and know that help is on the way and we are part of that help is a great blessing for ourselves and for others.
So look around. What glimmer of a new heaven and earth do you see? Are you acting on that? Are you sharing your perspective with others?
Have you ever looked at the word generation and not applied the usual number of years to that? What would happen if you read it in terms of the folks we seem self-blocked from seeing the larger perspective. "Truly I tell you, scoffers will be with you until all things have taken place."
Rather than read verse 33 literally, as though words on a page won't fade, even on archival paper, let's listen to the "words" we know - love, forgiveness, peace. These will not pass away even if the language changes and one more translation will be needed. When we get too caught up in literalism we get caught in idolizing the Bible. If there needs to be a choice, choose connotation and meaning over denotation and letter of the law.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/november2003.html
Rudyard Kipling wrote a little poem, If , that has been much quoted.
I you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, ....
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!
Yes, go ahead and make that last line more inclusive.
It gives another feel to the waiting process of Advent. It is so easy to just jump to Christmas, to Resurrection, to Judgment. It is so tempting to jump out of whatever frying pan you are in, even a cross-shaped frying pan. It is difficult to live in the in-between between our current realities and our hopes.
Do you have your head and heart and relationships on straight? That's enough. Enjoy!
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/november2003.html
Justice and Righteousness show up in all manner of guises. Here we are faced with an image of Jesus on a cloud with Power and Glory [a reference to Moses and Elijah from Mt. Transfiguration?]. Another way to speak of this would be one who appeared with energy to do something about which one has a perspective. Even though the Greek has these both to be feminine nouns, we might yet translate them as Justice and Righteousness.
One approach to this cloud scene is that of a remote judge and executioner come to impose a final solution upon sinners and the afflicted. Another is to envision a new-born, a re-born, that empowers and clarifies creativity and choices. We can stop moping around, feeling helpless, and stand and look about us with a clear eye and energy to pick a direction that has hope to make earth as though heaven had arrived. Imagine again - a community gathered around a birth rather than an individual enrobed.
It is with the possibilities of energetic renewal that offers again strength to out-wait the dissipation and despair trap of being too fearful to stand and look and choose. The image we attend to makes all the difference.
This is imaged with foreground and background interaction with a lowly fig leaf and the mysterious majesty of a turning season. To link the parable in we see Creative Power of Justice and Righteousness coming on a fig leaf. When this is glimpsed, the summer of our lives leads us to come away from the ice of winter and the flood of spring to a summer where we raise our heads to grow anew.
The cloud image shifts from harvest judgment to profligate abundance twice to a hundred times more than we began with. It turns out the rider(s) of the cloud arrives with fertilizer, not a scythe. A question now is how much justice (acts of mercy) and righteousness (acts of piety) our roots will gather for our health, how high we will raise our head, how tasty and nutritious we will become.
What are the words of life if not Justice and Righteousness, Steadfast Love and Faithfulness, Blamelessness and Holiness, Power and Glory, Peace and Security, Fig Leaf and Summer.
- - -
In a fig leaf is summer seen
A scene of life reveals its context
divine fertilizer abundant
roots deep and wide
clear eyes and choices wise
In growth eternity glimpsed
and so we yearn or pray -
deep clarity of justice
wide wisdom of righteousness
awaited, revealed, enacted
- - -
- - -
Anonymous (Reader) said...
It is with the possibilities of energetic renewal that offers again strength to out-wait the dissipation and despair trap of being too fearful to stand and look and choose. The image we attend to makes all the difference.
Dissipation and despair are like someone laying in the street bleeding. Waiting is no good. None.
Waiting is appropriate for something growing, a seed planted, a hope born in imagination. Then nurturing is the order of the day, and patient waiting/watching/attending.
Standing fearful, looking and choosing, is already making a choice: fear. The choice is fear. Not a good choice, I think.
The cloud image shifts from harvest judgment
Is it really judgement? Or common sense? Who wants to bake bread with chaff? Chaff is irrelevant. The church is becoming chaff.
to profligate abundance twice to a hundred times more than we began with.
You mean there is more than enough for everyone to be "wealthy" beyond their wildest dreams? This is good.
What are the words of life if not Justice and Righteousness,
Who decides what is just? What is righteous? I can't. But no one can do it for me either.
Steadfast Love and Faithfulness,
What happens if we take the word "steadfast" out of there? And love of what? Faithfulness to what? Lots of people are faithful to that which deserves no fidelity.
Blamelessness and Holiness,
Persons with clinical Borderline Personality Disorder feel, all the way through, blameless. So do sociopaths. So to innocent children. There's more to it than this. I don't always know what that is, but there's more to it.
Power and Glory,
Save me. Unless you are referring to the power and glory of the early December snowstorm that blew in this morning, followed by a clear blue sky that rendered the view out my patio door completely stunningly gratitude-inspiring.
Peace and Security,
That is my prayer. Can these two co-exist?
Fig Leaf and Summer.
I'd prefer to dance totally naked beneath warm summer skies, no fig leaf, thank you. Still working on entrenched cultural inhibitions, but given the right combination of privacy and warmth...
Tom
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html
Life is uncertain in its details. [Note G*D, not the Devil, loves the details, all the fiddly bits.]
A basic choice presented with this piece of Gospel writing reflects a disaster inflicted upon Jerusalem and its Temple and how that and other persecutions made it seem as though there was nothing to currently rely upon. Instead of the sun propitiously stopping at midday, it was as if the sun had stopped arising at all.
The choice presented is how we will live at any given time with expectational dislocations both small and large. Will we faint? Will we be alert to stand for G*D's expansive and expanding love as did Jesus and those who eventually were recognized as official Saints.
If you were to project the sense of this choice into today's world you might sense the American destruction of Iraq to be the equivalent of Rome's destruction of Jerusalem. Yesterday I heard Sami Rasouli, Director of the Muslim Peacemaker Teams, speak eloquently of bringing together his Islamic tradition of "One" with the Judeo-Christian tradition of "Unconditional Love" within his own life. This led him avoid fainting and to be alert as to how he might stand. If you have an opportunity to hear him, I recommend you take it. Working in an interfaith setting can bring even larger understandings than working ecumenically within one tradition.
In the meantime you may want to consider a different way of expressing your commitment to life to your family and friends and enemies during the coming consumer holidays. If you go to the Muslim Peacemaker Teams site you will find ways of supporting Sami's stand in the midst of uncertainty - Water for Peace and Iraqi Art. It may even trigger in you a new insight about how you might better stand in a world of uncertainty. May you avoid dullness and be alert to your call to reveal the presence of G*D in your life, no matter how dire the circumstance.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html