Revelation 1:4-8

Pentecost Last - Year B
Easter 2 - Year C

Twice we hear the refrain: “Is...Was...To Come”. This Trinity is a source of grace and peace.

 

Being able to play with these elements brings forth helpful questions.

You get the idea.

 

A similar sliding scale can be devised for the Alpha to Omega, A-Z, imagery. Are you more starting out or winding down? And the culture you identify with?

 

All too often the Book of Revelation is read as “To Come” when it is more helpfully read as “Is”. Blessings on playing with a Trinity of Time available to you this day.

 

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/04/revelation-14-8.html

 

 

There is a tradition of Jesus, while theoretically in the grave, descending from the Tomb to Hades/Hell/The Dead. One part of that tradition is to offer salvation to all those who had gone before him. A most gracious act that presupposes some ongoingness of life (a bit at odds with some other traditions from which Jesus came).

Here is another vision of Jesus descending, this time from the Clouds to The Still Living. This time he comes to offer judgment and to bring wailing.

As you play back and forth between these images of a descending Jesus you may want to consider what a subsequently ascending Jesus might be about. In the first case, does he arise to continue bringing salvation (hope to the hope-lost disciples)? In the second case, does he arise to end a salvific process, to only play with and further judge his current best-friends?

How does the separation of us (loved) from them (wailers) advance the ministry of a Christ-for-all?

- - -

I am
alphas and omegas
many-beginning
many-endings

herein is all mighty
strength and flexibility
yoga of the soul
responsive chakras

when is and was
and is to come
finally settle to one
great wailing ensues

a wailing wall
walls us in and out
until love again
breaks loose

the beginning
the ending of all
to simply anew
grace that is grace

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html

 

 

What else can one do in the presence of "is and was and about to arrive" than grin all over yourself? And here we were so preoccupied with our entitlements . . . what is, was, or will be that about?

And then, adding in seven spirits to the recipe, the grin turns to a guffaw.

This imagination is freedom from the fear of the moment. It sets a larger scene - peace to be transformed into freedom and vice versa.

Now you try - understand you are Alpha and Omega. This will help focus you on your gift for this time. See them become your parentheses. All that you have been working on, "(", and all that has been working toward you, ")", surrounds you to work together as a lens () clarifying today's task that will complete a partial past and set the groundwork for a better future.

It would be so easy to have this just be about G*D, but this expansive view of G*D is intended to have an effect of expanding you and me. If it is just about glorifying Jesus and G*D we are most to be pitied.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/04/revelation-14-8.html

 

 

On a culmination day when thanksgiving in the present might be the case, we are still looking forward. Look to the clouds, notorious for their chageability, everyone will see a cloud that looks like Jesus, even those who are against him. Good luck with that. Claiming Jesus is like catching a cloud formation and freezing it into place. Even then, take three steps to the right, and its gone.

More to the point, incarnationally G*D is with us, already. Any waiting on our part is an excuse to not make the changes available to us to join the healthy of every tradition. With time up for this year, we will give it one more try to see if we can live in the present without a diploma. We have been in medias res and we continue to be in the middle of a story. No artificial final Sunday will change that. Onward to our most realistic of seasons - Advent.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/11/revelation-14b-8.html