1 John 3:16-24
Easter 4 - Year B
What power does it take to lay down one's life? Does it make a difference if you lay down your life for one of the in-group or for an enemy?
A key question for our capitalistic consumer-oriented culture - can you lay down your life more easily than you can lay down your goods? Or will they have to pry your goods out of your cold, dead hand?
I am always heartened when belief is paired with love. Too often we separate the two. Do both your belief and your love lead you to multiple versions of laying down your life, laying down your goods, laying down your belief, laying down your preferred worship style, laying down your experience of life, laying down your in-with-G*D?
If you are laying down these important matters, what are you picking up? In some sense it is the old addiction issue that if you scat one devil away and do not fill in its place, it will return with seven more addictions and you'll be worse off than before. What are you adding to the pool of life when you lay your life down?
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The Indestructible Worm
When last we checked in on the tiny soil worm known as C. elegans, it had reached a pinnacle of scientific success. Not only was it the first animal to have its genome deciphered, but it had also become the favored laboratory specimen for studying how cells divide, differentiate and develop into organs, a role that contributed heavily to last year's Nobel Prize in medicine.
Now C. elegans has achieved another spectacular feat. Hundreds of the worms were on the space shuttle Columbia when it disintegrated. They survived the breakup, the fiery descent through the atmosphere and the jarring collision with the ground and kept on reproducing until they were found three months later.
Whether this was mostly luck, or because their canisters rode in a sheltered spot on the shuttle, or because of the worms' hardiness, is not clear. Their survival lends plausibility to the notion that life might have descended on Earth from other worlds in ancient times.
If a tiny soil worm could do it, why not a hardy bacterium from a distant world, hitching a ride on a space rock or, dare we think it, sent by an advanced civilization?
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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While this isn't directly related to the lectionary it did bring back to mind that old saying that if you have faith as humble as C. elegans.... May we engage whatever faith we have in the tasks we have at hand this day.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/may2003.html
"If anyone enjoys the riches of this world, but closes their heart when they see their brother or sister in need, how will the love of God remain in them?"
It is as if all the things of this world are among the lightest of elements. They are always attempting to float away. In so doing, those who are oriented toward them are always trying to hold them down. In being so distracted they don't notice the hole in their heart (new image) or bowels (old image) through which drains whatever amount of love they have left.
How will any love remain in them if they don't focus on the substantial soul issues of life that settle into the holes in our life, slow down the loss of the "substance of we feeling" (SOWF) [read Doris Lessing's "Shikasta" to learn more of this image], and fill it in that we might finally find our cups overflowing.
Are you reaching for the ephemeral or patching your leaky places?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/may2003.html
1 John 3:16-24
Acts 4:5-12
Psalm 23
John 10:11-18
Definitions define. "I am the definer", to modify a phrase.
Is my life taken or given? I am the definer.
Are my actions loving or not? I am the definer.
Am I walking through a dark valley or a green pasture? I am the definer.
Is this healing from Jesus or spontaneous regeneration? I am the definer.
Are all definitions equal, dictionary-wise? Are all definitions up for grab, Humpty Dumpty-wise? Where does my definition end and yours begin? Can I define you out if you define me in?
What needs better defining in your life and in the life of the community of faith and of living that you participate in?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2006/may2006.html
1 John 3:16-24
Acts 4:5-12
Psalm 23
John 10:11-18
A "good shepherd" has the power and responsibility to know when to lay down their life and when to pick it up.
Followers of a "good shepherd" don't always get the power of this ambiguity. Some will claim the shepherd can only pick up life and so everyone must give up their life in the light of the shepherd's life. This will keep them from an ability to lay down their life for others. Seemingly, they can see only a crook as a mighty scepter.
Other followers make exactly the other error, that the shepherd must at all times and in all places, lay down (even if this is an active action against violence, it is still a laying down).
What we are still seeking is wisdom on how these fit together in our lives and in our times.
One beginning spot understands that goodness and mercy are ever present. This gives direction to our picking up and laying down of life. At which point does one reveal the background of goodness and mercy through a contrasting action and at which point does the other polarity kick in to better reveal a field of goodness and mercy against which everything else makes better sense? It is here we always find ourselves. Do we zap a fig tree or allow a rich, young ruler to go further down a dark path?
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resurrectional power reveals
our basic bent in life
to narrow life down
one unique resurrection
to open life up
resurrection as commonplaceto see resurrection for Jesus
and claim it only for him
runs us afoul other sheep
claimed as part of all
runs us afoul of others who also
reduce resurrection to oneto see resurrection as ours
authorized and encouraged
by this resurrected Jesus
for the sake of lost sheep
ordains us transformers
of resurrection to resurrections
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html
1 John 3:16-24
Acts 4:5-12
Psalm 23
John 10:11-18
What an openness to life! Teaching (being led forth), Fellowship, Feasting, and Communicating within and beyond - these are still key elements in a healthy community - whether of one faith or another.
These four qualities bind a community closely enough together that trust of their most prized possessions (even survival) to one another can take place. Without this vital communitarian impetus organic growth doesn't take place. Oh, there can be surface unity, but the lack of deep trust will eventually shine through and fracture will show.
In today's untrusting environment where winning and losing metaphors abound, what Teaching is most needed that would lead us toward trust? What Fellowship and Feasting? What Prayers? Note that teaching toward trust is different than teaching toward a particular doctrine.
There are undoubtedly many responses to these questions. Instead of waiting to come up with one grand theory of everything, you and I are encouraged to Teach, Fellowship, Feast, and Pray as best we can, leaving any later form of such to such a time.
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called to endurance
is a strange gift
to receive
in a world valuing
this quarter's bottom line
only in light of the nextendurance will best be seen
in light of the flighty
expedient choices of today
which reveal the long-term
values worth investing in
today for tomorrow's saketo pile value high
pack it down and heap it higher
is still a long-term strategy
with a proven track record
sustainability trumps a Vegas hit
enduring and guarding lifeso our ancestors found
again and again and again
forgetting this teaching imperils life
hoarding goods and celebrations
to the fewest possible number entitled
diminishes possibilitiesso our descendents call out
again and again and again
to be included in the bounty of life
and so we endure today
with ancestral solidarity
received and passed on
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html
While love has a sacrificial aspect to it (it's not all about me), it must be asked whether sacrifice is its hallmark.
Stinginess is certainly a sign that any love available is being blocked from rising to the surface. It does not follow from this that love is absent when not evidenced, ultimately lost or controlling of G*D if not immediately passed on, or based on obedience.
I suspect the community had some reason for looking beyond word or speech, as a grounding of mutual love, to the abstracts of truth and action. I expect they had their share of disappointment and betrayal by smooth-talkers. Eventually, though, they do know that loving one another (loving all creation) is important, no matter what the response and whether or not it is commandable.
Perhaps it will suffice to note a connection between the particular and the general, physical and spiritual love. To be dependent, one upon the other, or to consistently choose an independence of one modality over the other, does not bring the interdependent, holistic experience of being loved and loving. If we were to leave Jesus out of this, the writer could still have arrived at the point from purely Jewish sources (which of course they did by referencing Jesus).
May you be bold in restoring the world by receiving your belovedness, your image of G*Dness, and encouraging those qualities within those you meet along the way.
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In Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Lessons for Transforming Evil in Soul and Society by Matthew Fox we hear the following about the "Fifth Chakra: Prophecy" and find a connection with "love in truth and action" that goes beyond sacrifice of life and obedience:
"This chakra represents the throat and the expressing of one's truth and wisdom. The throat lies between the heart and the mind chakras. Truth comes from both heart and mind. This chakra is also the prophetic chakra. The throat is the trumpet that speaks our truth, as the prophets also spoke out (the meaning of prophetein in Greek) their truth. . . .
"It is my experience, in listening to stories of people over the past two decades, that many people are having dreams about their throats. This is especially true of women and of gay people, and I think the meaning is that these people are finding their voice after having had it taken away for many centuries. They are on a search for their true voice. . . .
"The prophetic call is to speak out to interfere with what we see is obstructing what we deeply believe in. This chakra recovers the sense of the 'holy word' that we are called to speak regularly in our lives. . . ."
May your deep belief be spoken/lived this day.
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jeholton (Reader) said...
Thank you for your thoughts on love in truth and action. Loving in action is easier to understand for me: love is something you do. Loving in truth will take a journey to comprehend. You have helped me along that journey through your thoughts (and quoting those of Matthew Fox) about the prophetic voice.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html
Today at General Conference there was to be a time of “Holy Conferencing”. Because of debates over Rules this began late. There were technical snafus that also got in the way of a number of groups. Gil Rendle had some helpful words about changes in church and culture in the last years that could and should lead us to look again at what it means to be in mission in a world that is asking similar questions but coming up with a whole variety of responses (this is different from just a short time ago when we had the same answer to the same question). Unfortunately there were time issues that were a convenient excuse to not process our various conversations.
This passage would have been helpful to have reviewed before intentionally deeper conversation than usual. What does it mean to lay down one’s life for another? If Jesus could do it, why can’t his followers? It is difficult to intigrate truth and action and to know this frailty is important to dealing with our differences. How do we get beyond our feelings that have tied us to G*D in such dogmatic ways? We keep confusing loving another with desiring for them to reflect our self.
Without a serious attempt to abide in another and to have that reciprocated, there is no conferencing—supposedly “holy” or not.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/04/1-john-316-24.html