Romans 9:1-5
Proper 13 (18) - Year A
What enormous sorrow do you carry with you?
Is it some regret, some continuing thorn in the flesh, some addictive behavior, some awareness of principalities and powers, some thwarted desire?
How might that sorrow be assuaged? Confession, healing, power, audacity?
Paul writes of his sorrow regarding those who have not yet caught his vision of resurrection.
He claims himself willing to trade places with them.
Am I willing to trade places with a biblical inerrantist or literalist? They are part of my family and have everything going for them in terms of the knowledge of details of the Bible. And yet I hear e.e. cummings observing that they are "so full of knowledge that they are empty, empty of understanding." Am I willing to trade places if it means giving up my little bit of experience of the expansiveness of G*D's love? Not yet.
Is this lack of generosity on my part why we seem to be at loggerheads in the church today? Since I don't think that even Paul could exempt himself from his own experience, I expect that there is some other blockage. Simply deleting all that "cursed" language might be a helpful beginning. Paul's intensity of intention can hardly be faulted, but denying one's self is hardly a good starting point.
Perhaps the best we can do is to proceed in trust without getting into a competition to see who can be most humble, cursed, or martyred. If nothing is impossible for G*D then there is bound to be a both/and way for a new community. Let's keep looking.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/august2002.html
For what group of folks you consider to have been left out, left behind, or left over would you be willing to offer yourself -- This is my body, this is my blood, given for you, for reconciliation -- ?
How dissatisfied are you that war continues -- that same-gender oriented people are discriminated against, religiously -- that distribution of resource values are starving people -- that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer -- etc.?
Most of us are able to satisfy our mind that we are not needed in any of these, or other, places of pain. It is difficult for us to give up our prerogative of salvation that someone else might enter in. We trust that some larger frame of time will automatically resolve issues. We justify our lack of action by some presupposed lack of power, forgetting the power of our freedom to live congruently with our vision of a better world.
May you not wish yourself accursed that another's curse might be lifted, for you have known all along that coming at things from the perspective of curse is a curse, in and of itself.
May you simply set about living as though our current culturally perceived curses are a thing of the past.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/july2005.html
A note from The New Interpreter's Study Bible says: "The most natural reading of v. 5 equates Christ with God, making it the most explicit reference to the deity of Christ in Paul's letters (cf. 2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15; Phil 2:6; 2 Thess 1:12)." This come from the reading, "...Messiah, who is God over all, blessed forever."
It is so easy to read this as one who demands to be in control rather than to be blessed. It is fruitful to ask about every decision you are party to and each decision you witness of others -- is it to control or to bless.
If it is to control it will require many more decisions to prop it up. If it is to bless it will set folks free to grow in a variety of ways that are helpful to whatever is meant by "the common good".
It is sort of like the difference between telling a lie that requires an increasing number of other lies to support the original one or telling a truth that can be consistently repeated. Control/lie/dissatisfaction or blessing/truth/satisfaction. These are the choices ever before us. Do you see them in your understanding of Messiah/GOD, your self, various components of the world around you?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/july2005.html
Jacob wrestles with an angel; disciples wrestle with a crowd. In both instances they learn something very important.
For Wrestling Jacob (in the Wesleyan Tradition) G*D is identified as Love. The disciples learn their perceived limits are not so - an ordered method allows folks to sit together and look at one blessing and see within it an abundance not previously glimpsed.
In the midst of everyone looking every which way (searching for their own best advantage), two loaves (loves) and five fish seem mighty puny. When, together we look (and see them identified as a blessing) - things change.
- - -
when we awake
we shall see righteousness
and be satisfied
when will that be
that steadfast love
will be recognized
how do we help one another
perceive grace and mercy
as ever present
so often there is such need
hungers are so high
we can't spare the time
we anticipate a zero-sum game
driven by competition
and miss compassion's presence
attend to our night cry
wrestle with us
til day breaks
love dawns
blessing abounds
we go on together
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html
Going to a deserted place has some hope within it of finding something new or being prepared to return to some same-old same-old.
Here we have an image of going to a deserted place as a result of giving up something already deemed precious. Imagine what it would take for you to be voluntarily cut off from Christ/Allah/Buddha/G*D/What(Who)ever/Food/Energy/Money/etc.
Going to a deserted place also has some loss within it of leaving something behind, never to pick it up again.
As you consider again the need and/or opportunity you have to go to a deserted place, are you looking to find something or to lose something? to break beyond a current barrier or to return, fortified, to encounter it again?
Are you ready to depart for your deserted place? If not now, when?
Is there a way to engage your busy place with your deserted place? A pastoral counselor for a state-wide Council of Churches suggested taking one's vacation (deserting a current idolatry) at one's busiest time. How might this put into regular, daily, practice and not just once or twice a year? For those of us who are work-aholics, giving up our work for the sake of another is heretical, yet crucial to a holistic life. For alcoholics, it is giving up alcohol. For Paul and other Jesusics, it is giving up Jesus. And for you?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html
And how reliable is the conscience of a sociopath? And how reliable is my conscience? And, might I ask, why wouldn't I understand that my conscience is confirmed by a Holy Spirit?
Having great sorrow, pain, or anguish is no confirmation that an intention is pure. Suffice it to say that we wish the best for folks. It is not necessary to writhe because they are not living up to what I see as best for them (particularly if that is not currently what they would want done unto them). My pain is not a final selling point for a particular perspective on living. What I can do is legitimately live the way I understand is best for me and do so with integrity, without putting the burden of my pain upon someone else as an additional pressure point in their life.
Read on a moment or two more and there will be a statement about G*D showing mercy where G*D desires mercy (and where wouldn't that be?). So why the angst here? Might this simply be a day to proceed without making a big deal out of it? Hope so.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/07/romans-91-5.html
A dilemma of a "weeping executioner": my internals and externals still aren't matching up. Neither my solitary weeping nor my public execution of duties resolves my plight.
Oh how I wish I could assist those being harmed without losing my job. I'm more compassionate in my job than others even if my job is to not be compassionate. And if I lose my job there are those who are dependent upon me and I will be letting them down, which isn't fair.
Oh how I wish I could resolve the harm being done by me without the reality that if I withhold my hand someone else will take my place and I will be the one to whom harm is done.
Oh how I wish I could get beyond wishing and have an analysis of the situation that wasn't so small. As it is I can't really see beyond myself and, if I could, that would be even more scary than staying in this place of cognitive and emotional dissonance.
It seems all that is left are pieces of left-overs. I am one of those pieces left lying around after a great thing has passed by. Yes, I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart! It is either tomorrow or suicide.