Romans 10:8b-13

Lent 1- Year C

Three key phrases to attend to:

 

Word of faith - an external eternal.
Confess with your lips - offer assent for assurance.
Believe - trust there is no advantage to be gained and all are equal before G*D

 

Our words of faith are incompatible with their words of faith. Battle lines are drawn and friendships quartered over the difference of one little word. So was Eastern Christianity divided from Western and is every schism justified.

 

Confession with our lips tempts us claim form takes precedence over function. These are never order-able, but always interactive. Here is the beginning of hypocrisy that cannot see itself.

 

Believing is action based on trust in a wholeness between intention and implementation. To do anything other than both is to deny our earthly and earthy dustiness as well as our heavenly image dwelling within and through us.

 

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/02/romans-108b-13.html

 

 

When we deal with the heart we are dealing with deep personal matters. In the heart we do not separate any other resurrection or new life from our own resurrection or new life. In the heart there is no longer not any distinction between that religion and this, one gender and another, or a special or ordinary resurrection.

Too often we have read this as "heart-felt" or my experience is the measure of all things. When we do this, words such as Paul's here become litmus tests and creedal cornerstones.

Another place to look to see how open this is, rather than closed, is the last verse about being saved or helped.

We can read it very openly, "Everyone who calls, 'Help, GOD!' gets help" [The Message]. We can also read it very closed that only those who use the confession of Jesus on their lips will get the help they need - all others need not apply.

Paying attention to the matters of the heart (while seemingly inward looking), in a master feat of topology, opens us to new neighbors and alt.god.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/february2004.html

 

 

Presupposing that the division between Jew and Greek has been done away with, that those who "believe" are able to bypass such distinctions, there is left the division between those who believe the way I do and those who don't. Be they Jew or Greek or blood relative of a non-Jew and non-Greek, anyone can still be cast away on the basis of their stated beliefs, if not their genetic/cultural heritage.

It might be helpful here to simply focus on the last line with a different translation. "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be found whole." Of course there will be quibbling about this "name" business. Perhaps a Lord by any other name will respond as mercifully and generously as another.

This is not to discount the heritage one names most easily, but is to open us again to the important theological point of "generosity." Wherein lies a stumbling block to a named Lord who is generous to those who call in a particular timeframe and to not also be generous to, simply put, all? Anything else would lead such a named Lord to also be named stingy, petty, tyrannical, and soon enough ignored.

- - -

one reason prophets are discounted
is their lack of distinction
they do not pretend to power
they don't insist on the number of angels
who attend or dance

if only they would allow
a distinction to be made in their vision
that would allow everyone to continue
living just exactly as they are
if they were only to eat their peas

we keep looking for the distinctions
that set us apart and give a leg up
on sitting right and left of royalty
setting the level of needed sacrifice
and calling down fire on "them"

you're Greek, you're odd man out
o yeah, you're looking in a mirror
huh? were the same
then women must be out
ahh, sweet distinction

we distinguish ourselves
by not distinguishing our commonality
commie, social democrat, trade unionist
rasta, Muslim, anti-globalist, liberal
speak for one another or forever hold your peace

[last fragment reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...]

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html

 

 

Beautiful news comes on good feet. Here's some encouraging news: a gift of love and life can be heard without a herald. It is part of living locally while imagining globally. As we are shaken about and come through, we give evidence, in any language or religious paradigm, of good and beauty - high value values.

How might we proclaim the best of what Moses, Confucius, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Joe Smith, Lao Tzu learned, lived, and taught? [Note: It is sad how few would recognize the leadership of Miriam, Mary Magdaline, Mary Baker Eddy or other women unnamed through the ages.] By doing the best of what you have to offer as the follower of one or another or on your own.

In this case, Christ is proclaimed by abundant living, not intermediate creedal interpretations of an ideal faith. It is this abundant living that is able to come through wilderness temptations and carry on, nonetheless.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/02/romans-105-8a-8b-13-14-15.html