Romans 13:11-14
Advent 1- Year A
Put on the armor of light.
Advent is a time of putting on. We put on our imagination of how the world might be better. We put on our intellect to figure out a next step toward that imagination. We put on our experiences to sort out what has been helpful and what has not been in order to change our patterns toward the helpful. We put on our intentions regarding our relationships with one another and the “wholy” (G*D and universe). We put on all this and more as a next future dawns. That which is coming needs to be welcomed. Advent pulls us onward.
Advent is a time of putting on. We put on pageants of Christmas. We put on angelic heralding. We put on bringing gifts of gold, frankincense, myrrh, and time away from our daily work. We put on awkward pregnancy. We put on redecisions about relationships. We put on all that has come down to us and so we put on baptism and temptation and healing and preaching and teaching and listening and praying and dying and resurrection and service and mission. Advent pushes us onward.
What do you need to put on? for your soul’s sake? for your neighbor’s sake? for one another’s sake? for the sake of enemies?—For G*D’s sake, what do you need to put on?
As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience
A back story to our work this year is encouragement to see Peace and Security as parallel realities. Our current world tends to separate them so a focus on Peace leaves us insecure and an emphasis upon Security keeps us from hope or trust.
For Jerusalem to be Jeru-Salem these issues of Peace and Security need, as the Psalmist says, to be "bound firmly together." Isaiah is clear that the light of the Lord will lead us to finding Security only in the Peace of swords turned to plowshares and Peace only in the Security of the whole and not just our part.
Matthew has an intriguing image follow after examples of usual places of togetherness --around table and in "marriage". Togetherness is swept away when we divide ourselves up - in the midst of everyday life, one is taken way and one is left behind. We are usually told this is about a second-coming and judgment day but it makes as much sense to consider this behavior as the result of our choosing sides against one another or allowing our house to be broken into by dividing Peace and Security.
Judgment against our current divisions is already evident and we are encouraged to work against our desires for privilege and exemption from common work alongside one another.
As the rich get richer and the poor poorer, as some earn their keep through interest from money and others provide for themselves by their labor, we loose the bonds of two becoming one and find two dividing into two.
Advent places before us a choice for a different future where, instead of being separated from the world by an attempt at renewal, Noah-style, two by two, we are ready to set aside separation and quarreling to respond to a call from our descendents, Children-of-human-style, to, one by one, rebind Peace and Security.
- - -
May peace be our life
among family, friend, stranger, enemy.
May security be our heart
among our common house and common good.
May these gifts give light on our way
among ancestral dreams and coming hope.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html
If salvation is closer to us than our breath, then why the hype about what time it is — just before dawn? Do we or do we not know about kairos? How easily we slip from the little we know about chronos to the much we don't know about kairos.
For us in Kairos CoMotion we trust the expansive love of G*D through thick and thin, through kairos and chronos.
Why would we be any more active than we are because of some seeming deadline? We simply do what we can do. So we morph from multi-state events to regional portions of a state and a camp. Who knows what the next shape is, including being called out of a particular ministry as well as into one. This is all done honorably, listening for the right act in the right moment.
Why would we be any less active than we are because of some seeming deadline we think might be just a tad further off? Again, the listening and acting are the honorable way whether chronos is short or long.
Are we salvation? No. Are we participating in salvation? Yes. In so doing we gratify the deep needs of ourselves and those who benefit from our participation in life. In so doing we are gratified by what others are doing and we benefit from their participation in life.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/november2004.html
Put on the armor of light; put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Advent is a time of putting on. We put on our imagination of how the world might be better. We put on our intellect to figure out a next step toward that imagination. We put on our experiences to sort out what has been helpful and what has not and changing our patterns in the direction of the helpful. We put on our intentions regarding our relationships with one another and the wholy. We put on all this and more on as the future dawns. That which is coming needs to be welcomed. Advent pulls us onward.
Advent is a time of putting on. We put on pageants of Christmas. We put on angelic heralding. We put on bringing gifts of gold, frankincense, myrrh, and time away from our daily work. We put on awkward pregnancy. We put on redecisions of relationships. We put on all that has come down to us and so we put on baptism and temptation and healing and preaching and teaching and listening and praying and dying and resurrection and service and mission. Advent pushes us onward.
What do you need to put on? for your soul's sake? for your neighbor's sake? for one another's sake? for the sake of enemies? — For God's sake, what do you need to put on?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/november2004.html
Thanksgiving has become a day of attempted satiation. We stuff ourselves with every manner of thing in hopes of being fulfilled. However, every rule we set up about how we will know we are cared for, falls apart on the rocks of an actual relationship. Eventually we confess that food will not satisfy. Then, another year later, we try it again.
It turns out that Paul shares with us this Thanksgiving sentiment:
Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law - the doing away with the law.
So, first, do no harm.
Of course hot on the heels of this is a need to actually do some good. In American politics it is immigration that best reveals how far from a communal thanksgiving we are. Our immigration policies and lack of reform both do harm and refrain from doing good. In other places this will be revealed differently.
For now, be thankful you are still able to hope that Neighb*rs will love one another. Then, take a deep breath for you know that this love has no other better starting place than with you.
Thanks for giving your love away. Love is law fulfilled and set aside.