Romans 5:1-11
Lent 3 - Year A
Let's look at a parallelism.
"... we boast in our hope of sharing the the glory of God."
"... we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation."
Two connections come quickly. First a connection between God and hope. Can you have one without the other? This is a question for you, specifically, not a generic you. Some can make the distinction, can you? or are they bound together?
Second a connection between glory of God and reconciliation. Again a question of how they are tied together. Are these simultaneous realities or sequential (if so which first, which second) or are they not related but by happenstance?
A connection not so quickly arrived at is means, not ends. How go the connections between "sharing" and "through" for you. Do you find yourself sharing alongside or working through some external mechanism or person? How might you do both?
Finally a connection between boasting and living. Do you have boasting spots in your life or not or have you a boast that is squelched through a socialization not to reveal it?
After finally, how might you see a parallelism between this perspective and the world around us that finds its boasting in power and control for trusting in hope and God is simply too iffy or with the world that can only relate to the glory of self and punishment of anything other?
"There is also this benefit in brag, that the speaker is unconsciously expressing his own ideal. Humor him by all means, draw it all out, and hold him to it." -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882) -- Boast away and help others boast away, just know we will be held to it.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/february2005.html
This time let's work through the list of virtues the other way around. The current order starts with suffering as a given (very Buddha) and moves through along eight or so paths to endurance, character, hope, and love.
Can you imagine starting with love (very Jesus) and thus having the experience to discern false hope from living hope and then using that living hope to shape our character that is willing to persevere even further than those who endure through snow, rain, heat or gloom of night all the way to choosing against one's short-term achieving of American happiness.
My own experience is that being able to read this in both directions opens up new possibilities for myself and for others. To get stuck with a one-way approach, from either direction, leads into unnecessary tests and a slowing down of a perpetual conversion (as differentiated from a perpetual covenant).
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/february2005.html
"Give us water to drink," quarreled the people with Moses.
"Salvation is present in rocky ground!" rejoices the Psalmist.
"Peace with G*D," is Paul's lifeblood.
"Give me a drink," focuses Jesus' challenge.
An old standard is 6-8 glasses of water per day. In a world of increasing ecological disaster and civilian-oriented warfare, even 1 glass a day is a challenge in many places.
A next war may be fought over water rights. Quarrels have already begun about water's availability. It may be that where folks literally thirst for life - they will rise to take the life of those who withhold such a basic necessity.
Such physical realities have cosmos-wide implications. We can't separate water gushing up for eternal life from water gushing up for daily life. These are not just religious, theological, doctrinal passages, but political and prophetic ones. If you have not already been called to use your gifts and resources in some other arena of life, this would be a worthy place to engage to see if this is for you and your life-giving community.
- - -
water
water everywhere
drinks on the house
bottoms up
filled to the brim
water
water everywhere
rights to be wrangled
dams to build
levees to rebuild
water
water everywhere
and yet thirst
and yet division
and yet ignorance
water
water everywhere
water in rocks
water in wells
water in star dust
water
water everywhere
ho, come to the water
dive deep
until a spell is snapped
water
water everywhere
watering prayers
watering love
with sips and gulps
water
water everywhere
and not a god to drink
then a little vesper bell
rings out a change
water
water everywhere
staff to rock
voice to ear
salvation saved
[ suggested by a Wikipedia article Info about The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Fulford, Tim, "Poetry of Isolation: The Ancient Mariner," Coleridge's Figurative Languages (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), 62-73.
Fulford analyses the composition of the poem's discourses in the context of the assumptions of the historical biblical hermeneutics with which Coleridge was familiar. Fulford argues that the poem's discourses disrupt the hermeneutic circle of believers posited by biblical hermeneutics, and illustrate the isolating freedom provided by an exegesis discontinuous with tradition. Historical biblical hermeneutics attempts to deal with the problem posed by the finitude and historicity of interpretation. By positing a grand unity of perspective in God, historical biblical hermeneutics can deny the inerrancy of scripture (an embarrassingly untenable notion) while placing each sacred text in a circle with other spiritual interpretations of existence authority, a circle which progresses toward though never reaching the circumscription of truth. Spiritual authority thus rests in a continually reinterpreted tradition of spiritual texts. McGann and Butler argue that Coleridge organizes the multiple levels of discourse in his poem to create such a hermeneutic circle: the Mariner interprets his own experience; his interpretation is affirmed but reinterpreted by the poem's narrator, the balladeer; the narrator's reinterpretation is deepened by the scholarly author of the gloss, who typologically integrates the poem into the tradition of Christian hermeneutics; critics such as Warren perpetuate the circle with their interpretations of the poem, which are modernizations and expansions upon the gloss. Fulford argues that the poem is more problematic than either McGann or Butler perceive it to be. The poem brings together, not in unity but in collision, radically discontinuous hermeneutic discourses; the poem breaks the hermeneutic circle. The Mariner's interpretation of his experience cannot be reduced to the narrator's moralizing or the glosser's typological interpretation. As in "The Wanderings of Cain," in "The Mariner" traditional interpretations of guilt and punishment are destabilized by the poem's sympathetic treatment of the Mariner. The tension thus created between the Mariner's tale, the narrator, and the gloss is left unresolved. Furthermore, the Mariner himself breaks with hermeneutic tradition when he denies the Christian interpretation of the albatross and shoots it. His interpretation of the consequent events disconfirms the hermeneutic circle: through imagination the Mariner creates an interpretation of reality as chaos which is incompatible with the unifying assumption of the hermeneutic circle. His fate as a misunderstood prophet outside of society expresses the radically isolating consequences of the dissolution of the hermeneutic circle into the babble of competing discourses. Even the glosses are fissured by the incompatibility of the various interpretive discourses the glosser draws from the hermeneutic tradition and puts into play in the poem. The unity of the poem's hermeneutic circle is on the verge of collapsing into the fragments of a forced appearance. The poem does not capitulate entirely to radical discontinuity, but suffers intensely from the strain, created by the movements toward unity on the one hand and dissolution on the other, which is inevitable in all hermeneutic endeavors.]
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html
Pop Quiz: Compare and contrast the following two statements
* God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, and
* God proves God's love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.
= = = = = = =
If you play long and well with the words "pouring" and "proving" you may begin to see the secondary nature of atonement and suffering and dying.
Pouring is a release and is tracked back through the words "vent" and "wind" to a creation breath of life.
Proving is a testing of what is good but can easily shift over to a rigidity of "answered once-and-for-always". There is a tendency to rely on a proof for all time, rather than any new questions such testing raises.
Trust, again that the steadfast pouring of love into your life will continue, regardless of the suffering you or any other has experienced. This out-poured love is the experience we desire that will allow us to deal with every temporary blockage of same. No matter what the suffering, there is none great enough to substitute for a cup of love overflowing.
Rejoice in the flow, not its explanation.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html
What begins as compassion might end as reconciliation. While there are many bumps along this road that can detour our journey to such a destination, reconciliation is contained within promises of healing and simply promises.
Compassion has its genesis in the midst of things gone wrong, promises delayed to the point of seeming impossibility. Here in a problematic zone we might see more clearly what needs to be rectified. One of these places of clarity is when facing an "enemy".
In such locations reconciliation both rises to a greater need to be experienced and costs the most to offer. Sometimes we find ourselves talking about the cost of sacrifice to come to a place of compassion and reconciliation. What we reflect on less is the cost of resurrection, a much deeper and expanded source of compassion and reconciliation. This resurrectional approach looks for a change not only in the one offered compassion and re-opened to a possibility of reconciliation, but a change in the one offering such gifts.
Here we are offered a new picture of the limits of sacrifice qua sacrifice – it doesn't make it to resurrection and so compassion is short-lived or soon-left in the face of fatigue or a next need that tugs at our heart. Resurrectional compassion allows us to stay and stay – like The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) stays long after the first wave of compassion-givers has come and gone to a next event.
This puts into play both a ranking of compassions (hard-wired humanity, sacrificial, and resurrectional) and a gift of compassion given on many levels (short-term emotion vs. longer-term intentionality, band-aids and systemic involvement).
May you boast well of your place in the keeping of promises made and the keeping-of-promises-made alive.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_06_01_archive.html
Any other ways to have "peace with God" than through Christian "justification by faith"? There are, of course, many who would affirm other journeys.
Since this is our journey we note that "sharing the glory of G*D" is Paul's description of an end game with which we are involved. Such can happen right here, right now. We can love G*D with all that we have, from suffering to loving hearts.
Some might want to focus on the details of justification and expressions of faith. In the light of reconciliation and revelation of the Image of G*D within even ourselves, a works righteousness of Jesus' death fades as quickly as attempts at works righteousness by ourselves.
Keep your eye on your hope and reality of sharing glory with One Another, your Neighbor (and any you can't yet abide as Neighbor) and G*D. Justification will take care of itself.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/03/romans-51-11.html
Ready to die for Jesus? Is this your crusade call, “Die for Jesus!”? Meaning what I do and what I do to you.
Ready to have someone else die because they aren’t ready to die for Jesus? Yes, crusades of all shapes and sizes are still going on, “You don’t die for Jesus like I die for Jesus so you will have to die.” Justifying brains are a wonder to behold.
Do you think this is the message Photina took to her storybook village?
Do you think that her message might have more to do with reconciliation. A woman with five “husbands” might know a bit about reconciliation that would ring true on the telling of it. The experience of assurance (experienced reconciliation) is one of the most powerful motivators in a person’s life. It can even trump the accumulated prejudices of a whole community. This kind of assurance goes even further, into all the feared deficits of a life poorly lived to reframe the story of a life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CpY-aPrhhMQ#t=0
May the story of your life echo in the lives of others and theirs in you.