Ephesians 5:8-14
Lent 4 - Year A
Sleeper by Greg Brown (sample) or (lyrics) is a bluesy version of awaking - beckoning "come and go with me".
This passage is a call to journey with others to what is "pleasing" (another way of putting the old terminology of "kingdom of God").
Who have you called to awake and come on this pleasant journey?
Who has called you to awake and come on this pleasant journey?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/march2005.html
Try to find out what is pleasing to GOD. Go ahead, just try. Are you feeling lucky?
This quest can be reduced to a couple of key prooftexts. Seems we all have them. They become the mechanism by which we can feel we are still on the journey to finding out more, and still take it a bit easy because we have these foundational pieces in place.
A part of Jesus' journey seems to have been a willingness to not let the seeming foundational stories of his tradition get in the way of his way, truth, life. To place all of one's energies toward finding out about GOD requires traveling light (in both of its meanings).
May your own journey to light, lighten your step.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/march2005.html
Ephesians 5:8-14
1 Samuel 16:1-13
Psalm 23
John 9:1-41
Once you were in darkness - threatened by leader and community - then you came to understand "not wanting" and you proceeded as though it were light, as though there were no threat.
When we feel threatened we shut our eyes, physical and spiritual.
With our eyes closed we divide our experience from our theology. Saul is Saul is Saul and ever will be king (substitute the leader of your choice) so there is no sense in doing anything about it. Blind from birth is blind from birth is blind from birth (substitute the present personal limitation of your choice) and so there is no sense in practicing an alternative reality. Once darkness sets in, darkness is all there is.
These limitations and their overcoming are the stuff fairytales are made of. And there isn't much truer than fairytales.
- - -
sin, sin all around
and not a healing left
unfairness abounds
and blame is our motifthrough the most unlikely one
the youngest the weakest
the ugliest the most foolish
the spit and the mudsin becomes irrelevant
unfairness ceases to be a mantra
so what now that our understanding
of blame needs recalibratingwell well well
it is time for the depth
of experience-based belief
in muddy spit-based kinship
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html
An alternative translation of such dualities as "dark" and "light" or "evil" and "good" is that of "limitation" and "possibility".
This has the benefit of removing the judgmental, all-or-nothing, eternal aspect from a conversation so that the participants in an experience can engage with one another rather than go toe-to-toe.
Here we are reminded that once we operated on the basis of our limitations, but, now, Christ has drawn us into possibility. As we shift our decision-making from limitation to possibility we find our decisions more consistently result in what might then be described as good and right and true - as tested by time rather than by cant.
This challenges us to find the possibilities of new life in our current situations and to expose limitations so they might add to better decisions, not stymie them. Eventually, underground, un-exposed, secret-power limitations lead to regretted and even shameful results. But, that which focuses on bringing out the remaining possibilities, reveals an opening for a preferred future to enter. It is this "light" of possibility that comes to waken and energize us. Rise beyond your limitations! Possibility is present!
- - -
This same approach can be helpful back in our long pericope with the man born blind. It is in the possibility of G*D's wonders that we grow to learn from our limitations without being bound by them.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html
Once you were darkness - not seen. Being blind is not just not seeing, it is also a not being seen. Shepherding in daylight is still invisible work.
Be careful in finding out what is pleasing to "the Lord" for it is likely to engage you with invisible people - those who have the potential of witness to change in the most unlikely of situations (from blind from birth to sighted engagement or from lowly shepherd to ruler of a nation). If such can happen, the status quo is in danger and so these shifts are dangerous. Workers will arise and the wealthy shake; rising leaders scare present leaders. If you get caught between, your allegience one way or the other is at risk - and so are you.
To find out what is pleasing to "the Lord" will change your life. You may be hardened against trying that again or you may get deeper and deeper into significant change of a particular social reality or culture. Nonetheless, it is well worth it. Blessings on being pleased when you find out what will be pleasing to "the Lord". That mutual pleasure may be all that is available in the midst of grinding change.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/03/ephesians-58-14.html
Having been in “darkness” and now being light, I know there is a darkness still in you that I will ferret out by shining my light into your darkness. Spiritual rape excused.
And it was evening, but now it is morning. Live in the light as though light were present as well as you lived in the dark as though it were dark. To each there are fruits and flies.
To live in the dark well is a blessing. To live in the light well is a blessing.
Be awake in the dark. Be awake in the light.
[Yes, sleep and day dreaming are legitimate ways to be awake.]