Acts 8:26-40

Easter 5 - Year B

Here is a story waiting for the right digital technology, as per the Matrix you'll revisit soon.

A limo tooling down the street. Running alongside, opening the door and cooly stepping in - Philip. Opening minds to see what couldn't be seen. A choice is made - dojo baptism. And the seemingly real fades and the beyond our realities come into view as the One brings new life and joy and, seemingly minor character, Philip moves a moment beyond.

All that to the side, don't you just love to ask the question of innocent pontificators, "Are you talking about yourself or someone else?" And don't you just hate it when others so question you.

In that zen moment of silence, before they/you return to time-eating happy-talk, it may be possible to hear G*D shifting orientations. The great transformation is still possible with us as we move from being slaughtered without awareness to seeing beyond such limits.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/may2003.html

 

 

To know and to be known, inside out, is a great pleasure and a great threat. As we look at these passages we wrestle with boundarys of intrinsic and shared worth.

What abides in you? An alien waiting to punch through your chest? A waiting prodigal parent? Can you abide being abided in? What then of myself? Do I live or am I but alive when lived through?

As G*D abides in me am I to so abide in others? What does that do to my control of self and others? Does being loved mean I get what I need as an infant, I get to reject it in adolescence, I can always come back to it? Is love contingent upon my response?

Where does this come into play with faithful mothers and over-protective mothers and hurtful mothers? What about the mother part of each one of us, whether biologic mothers or not?

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/may2006.html

 

 

Acts 8:26-40
Psalm 22:25-31
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8

Four words - one from each pericope:

Baptized - yes, even eunuchs
Family - yes, even Iraqis
Born - yes, beloved of G*D
Abide - yes, G*D in creation, creation in G*D

There is a multitude of ways we interact with the world around us. Among the biggest choices are those of what we prevent and what we nurture.

For those within a Christian tradition, here is a strong statement about choosing nurture over prevention: "Those who say, 'I love God,' and reject non-Jesus people are liars."

To abide, to be born from that abiding, to be family beyond limits, to be baptized into a way of life leaves little escape from a command toward wholeness: "those who love G*D must love their brothers and sisters also - their common environment, their belovedness, their family relations, their belonging past all divisions.

- - -

look - water
rippling with life
reflecting glory

look - enemies
still family
ancestral descendants

look - home
abiding here
abiding everywhere

look - love
born and reborn
and born forever

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html

 

minds want to know what horsepower chariot Philip had to contend with. Had the chariot pulled into a fast-falafel joint and reading passed the time (1 horse power)? Did the Ethiopian have a driver so he could read as they bounced along (several horse power)? Whatever it was, apparently Philip had an angelic booster on his side or at his back. Please, no Jr. Hi. jokes about backside boosters. Apparently Philip was in good enough shape that he could run and talk at the same time.

I often scratch my head about understanding what is understood. Said understanding always seems to come with a particular perspective, not an alternative one. When you hear Isaiah being pondered, I presume readers of these notes automatically think, "Jesus is what needs talking about here." But, with a head scratch, maybe they don't always go to that default?

Fortunately Philip arrived just in time to hear this particular portion of Isaiah. Some other sections would have presented a bit more hermeneutic alakazam to connect Jesus in such a way that a request for Jesus-authorized baptism would be the logical response by this Ethiopian eunuch fellow-traveler of YHWH.

It is this at-just-a-right-moment phenomenon that is of the most interest today. Providence is a powerful, sometimes too powerful, perspective. Even though we don't hear of it, one might presume that an angel of the Lord was preveniently whispering in the Ethiopian's ear to set off at just the right time for Philip to intersect his reading at a particular point in Isaiah. There are a lot of variables the angels had to attend to along the way, the speed of the horses, construction zones, thieves along the way, Dramamine's precursor, etc.

Providential moments can be seen as fated or an opportunity to make the most of an opportunity. Around these parts we tend toward the latter. This means our search for meaning can show up running along side and that we can strike up a conversation in the most unconventional of places and among the most unlikely of folk. The folks caught up overmuch in angels plotting ahead can miss an opportunity to engage an unaware angel. Whether you see life through the lens of "the hand of G*D" or "a god-damn fluke", may you be open to receive and to proclaim good news, where e'er ye be.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html

 

 

And so we were led to go toward the south that goes down from Wisconsin to the Florida Keys. There was the United Methodist Church in Tampa, seated in General Conference, debating what it meant to be transformed into disciples of Jesus. Actually it was more about making others into ourselves. We heard so many different interpretations of scripture that it became a babel of confused theologies. At one point 44% voted that Grace was not available to all - John Wesley wept; John Calvin winked.

Unspoken was the question, “How can I understand? Where is a reliable voice in the midst of so many voices?"

The good news is that there is a reliable lens through which we might hear the depths of a religious tradition call out to us.

At General Conference human identity issues measure every vote. What will divestment from Israel mean for Palestinians? What does ordination have to do with sexual orientation? Who benefits from a concentration of power into the hands of the pious? How much of a budget belongs to the poor?

And we left Tampa with these questions unasked. Baptisms deferred rather than offered. It was if we were never there.

May the spirit prepare better questions for the United Methodist Church to ask.

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Reader Comment:

In the meantime, Hope this day has gone better for the greatly darned (think socks).

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          Holey, holy, wholly
          Great Sock! almighty,
          If stitch wert my art,
          My sock be unity

But alas, I am no sockstitcher. I work in my socks, most of the day, and they become holy very quickly, and it becomes suddenly apparent when the heel gives out and there is a gaping void where once was sock (nothing to buffer my foot from the reality of the Floor). I like to think of those moments as apophatic moments: the sock of undoing, the s(h)ock of reality hitting, something mystical afoot, a flash of insight that it maybe is we who are the Sock more than the wearer of the Sock. Those moments pass and are replaced, usually, by a mundane expression of dismay over the hole in the sock: "Oh darn."

I wonder that our theology, our disciplines, our cherished notions, are like socks. Some of them serve well, and if we really wear them, they serve well and then fail catastrophically and cannot be darned because a holiness opens up at the heel and spreads far and wide across the very foundation of the sock. Some people wear out their socks at the toe (shoes too small, mostly). No matter.

Some socks are very expensive and said to have unnaturally long life. It's not true, they are still socks, and some of the pricey ones wear out even faster than the cheap Costco socks (4 pair/$10, over-the-calf). Some people swear by tube socks, but having no socksual orientation whatsoever are rather difficult to wear because they don't fit anybody real. Some socks are just poor socks, made with sub-par yarns, poor workmanship, and ragged finishing. They are too small, they have no stretchiness or give, they are totally unforgiving. Alas, these tend to last forever because they never get worn but Original Guilt keeps them from being discarded.

Some people throw out the holey sock and mix and mis-match pairs based on function rather than design/color. These people are scarey sockmongers.

The truth is, all socks wear out. They're socks. That's what socks are supposed to do. They cushion feet against the blistering inflexibility of the shoe, and for people who pad around in their socks, they provide a little warmth and cushioning against the floor (but more importantly a hedge against the law - health dept. regulations prohibit working barefoot). There is some confusion here: "uncovering the feet" is a biblical euphemism for socksual knowledge and that has always made the authorities uneasy, who think that socklessness is a slippery slope of some kind, but this is disinformation: in reality, it's the socks themselves that are slippery. Bare feet usually hold nicely.

Nonetheless, there continues to be the deep longing for the perfect sock.

          "Sock of ages, cleft for me,
          let me hide my foot in thee."

Some, weary of the search, become bereft and go about in sockcloth and ashes.

Others find escape in hedonistic pursuits like those described in "101 ways to better socks" or "the joy of socks."

It is reported that Jesus did not wear socks and therefore never had to deal with being greatly darned (or even slightly darned). Most likely it is because he did not want to appear too bohemian-chic by wearing socks with his sandals, as some do.

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Reader Comment:

Love this response, as well as the reports and photos from Wesley that have me yearning for threads that hold, in spite of the petty nail in the floorboard.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/05/acts-426-40.html