1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Proper 28 (33) - Year A
"You're sons of Light, daughters of Day. We live under wide open skies and know where we stand....
"God didn't set us up for an angry rejection but for salvation by our Master, Jesus Christ. He died for us, a death that triggered life. Whether we're awake with the living or asleep with the dead, we're alive with him! So speak encouraging words to one another. Build up hope so you'll all be together in this, no one left out, no one left behind...."
[The Message]
An encouraging word is needed in these days. Regardless of how the geo-political environment and the urge of empire turn out (history gives evidence of much pain and many deaths in these sorts of moments), we are still called to see that no one is left behind - the popular book series of the same title not withstanding.
The word of hope I have is not based on any rebalancing of political realities - it is built on the fact that you and I are still working at issues of hope for ourselves and others. We still see everything working together and not that there will winners and losers. We still invest our lives in life - standing out in the open and insistent that no one be left out, no one be left behind.
Here is the circularity. I see hope in hope. Sometimes wishful is misconstrued as hopeful. Energy to act is what tells them apart. Live in hope, live together.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/november2002.html
Those in the dark, intentionally or not, get caught in the great hypocrisy - claiming peace when violence abounds. "Peace", thus used, is the greatest coverup of the greatest sin. For tainted and counter-productive "peace" we are willing to lose just one more and then one more.
Seeing false peace requires many concomitant gifts that bolster one another. Paul's list of those gifts, that, when used in concert, allow one to catch a glimpse of true peace under the fog of false peace contains: sobriety, faith and love (paired), and hope (of wholeness, not just anything). What would you identify as a peace-revealing constellation of gifts?
At base, we understand, beyond the generations-long setbacks, that we are destined for salvation, "the arm of the moral universe is long, and it bends toward justice" [MLK]. So we are encouraged and so we encourage one another. Put on the good stuff. Pull back the mist of false peace. Pursue that which builds up.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/november2005.html
What is going on in our life influences the way in which we come at a scripture passage -- what we see and hear in it, how it is able to address our life. If we are looking for ways in which it is reflective of or gives us an out from a culture of violence, we will have a particular door opened to our knock. If we are looking for a personal healing, we will find that avenue open. If we are looking for wisdom for a decision that needs making, we will see an opportunity to which we were previously blind.
Earlier I found encouragement to expose "false peace" in this passage. Today I am interested in healing. Right off the bat we find an issue of time coming to the fore. We don't need to know, and wouldn't know what to do with it if we did know, ending times. One of the first things we want to know about a time of illness is its expected duration.
While there are sometimes therapies to be tried for any number of maladies, there are times when nothing will lead to a cure. We get all caught up in faith issues when we look at healing. Whose faith is operative is an important question at death. In many ways what we have faith in can be the major block to healing or the use of preventive lifestyles. This is why a dramatic willingness of suspension of disbelief is important to the healing process. We don't need faith's rules, but its poetry.
From a Jewish website: Samuel Taylor Coleridge called drama "that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith." When we sit in a theater, we willingly suspend our disbelief. We know that everything that is happening on the stage isn't real, but the playwright, the actors and the audience all enter into a conspiracy "of poetic faith" in an attempt to bring to life a quasi-reality that will transcend and communicate some perception about life in this world.
Unlike other religions, there are no leaps of faith in Judaism. Maybe a couple of steps at the end of a long well-lit boulevard, but no leaps into the dark. Judaism is not so much about belief as the "willing suspension of disbelief."
- - -
There are so many things that cause us to shy away from GOD's intention of salvation, cure or no cure, for ourselves and for creation. We don't want to get our hopes too high. If Jesus and Paul were brought up in this tradition of disbelief what would it mean in interpreting their words. How important is it to disbelieve in violence as a solution? What drama do we need to understand we are living in to lead us to a poetic faith instead of faith in a fist? How important is it to disbelieve in a need for "good health" before we can be an active participant in salvation? What drama do we need to understand we are living in to lead us to a poetic faith instead of a faith of healthful prosperity?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/november2005.html
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Judges 4;1-7 or Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18
Psalm 123 or Psalm 90:1-12
Matthew 25:14-30
Life has been given into our hands. Some have received one gift; some another.
What to do with gifts is a perennial issue. The way we use a gift this year may be different than the way we were called to use it last year. It is difficult to keep up with a Living G*D.
The doing of evil may be as simple as continuing to use a gift in a manner no longer called for. Persistence of evil might be seen as a persistence of behavior beyond its time with no new listening, learning, or living.
It is this persistence of past talents that can be the same as burying them in the past and protecting them from being invested in the present and future. Thank goodness for communities that continue to challenge and support us in our use of gifts - for challenging us when we keep repeating ourselves past usefulness and for stimulating and encouraging us to new uses of given gifts.
- - -
a thousand years
swept away like a dream
and we complain
we bewail
we are at wit's end
the pull of habit
is strong
persistent
insistent
desired
even if there is new grass
growing through cement
we cling to our cement
claiming it to be life
in the presence of real life
may the light of day
keep us from SAD
cast a beam upon our path
warm our waning days
and lead us to one another
a thousand days
pfftt
gone
no regret
today's enough
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html
We are enlightened folk who are not surprised at the timing and strength of labor pains. We know there are issues which cannot be side-stepped, only lived through. The consequences of past behavior do come around whether early or late, for this or subsequent generations.
Since we are enlightened we are aware that wrath is not a destiny worth pursuing, but a healthy wholeness is. Whether we are discouraged or sensing a brighter dawn is ahead, we are encouraged and encouraging. To move beyond wrath we pay attention to building each other up. Integral to this is a hope that our vision of a preferred future continues to be mutually refocused until we experience a thinning between today and tomorrow. At that point - future touches present, heaven comes on earth, an energized community is encouraged to put wrath down and deal with what is rather than what might be projected.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html
No matter how large a hole you have dug for yourself to bury your treasure in we expect a surprise that will counter our darkness and reveal to us and all that a treasure can’t help but shine.
So it is we do our best to live in a light of surprise - our darkness has been stolen away from us and we have been built up enough to build up others. Certainly not what we expected, but it turns out this is a pretty good way to live - not for wrath, but for wholeness.
Be ready, again and again, to have light shine out of the darkest of places. Enough of claims for false peace and falser security. We trust steady decisions, not flash-in-the-pan solutions. We look forward to surprises, not put off by them. And so the latest polarity - steady surprise.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/11/1-thessalonians-51-11.html
We are good considering how to get an immediate return, but not so good at thinking 6 generations or even 6 seasonal cycles into the future.
For just the briefest of moments consider the ramifications of G*D not coming like a thief in the night (unless, of course, you want to remember Prometheus bringing light out from some "chaos"). In this scenario we are called to live in the light available to us that we not harm the context of coming generations.
A light here would be to attend to the extreme change we have brought to the climate that is background to every other part of life. Our raping of the earth for energy has ended up dis-respecting air and water as well. Rather than blaming this on G*D we might want to acknowledge our own own culpability for the consequences of our own actions.
An excellent way for us to improve our common-future decisions is this model: "Therefore encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing."
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/11/1-thessalonians-51-11.html