Psalm 32
Lent 1 - Year A
Lent 4 - Year C
Proper 6 (11) - Year C
Blessed are those forgiven a choice to follow temptation.
Blessed are those able to now clarify a temptation facing them.
Blessed are those whose temptations have been chosen against.
Blessed are those steadfast in choosing against temptation.
As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience
Grumbling comes easily when we don’t get to take anything we want, when we want. Once begun it is difficult to end. This may be the earliest of temptations - shiny things.
When addressed at its root, dissatisfaction is a blessing as it stimulates our creativity into bringing forth a gift to meet a need and a curse when it gets us into a taking mode.
A basic antidote for grumbling is experienced forgiveness that cuts through a desire for and shifts our desire to. Occasions for forgiveness reveal the nakedness we felt as shame and covers it with belovedness that revels in being revealed as choosers of significance. Those who have been injured and those who have harmed have different choices to make to become one again, but they are equally difficult.
This forgiveness is most easily done eye-to-eye and heart-to-heart. It is harder to do at a distance as we have more excuses not to forgive or be forgiven. Just as participatory democracy is a difficult governing style, forgiveness is a difficult spirit to participate in. Forgiving and a being forgiven call both to be new creations. The intersection of these dynamics is joy—the impetus of creation of new life out of chaotic dysfunction is revealed as forgiven and forgiver stand naked together, unashamed, joyful.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/03/psalm-32.html
Of the seven penitential Psalms, six are laments and this one a thanksgiving. It breaks the pattern in the same way that silence is broken.
When the silence of evasion, camouflaging our behavioral intentions, and the experienced pressure that squeezes shaped sponges into a little cube get to the implosion point we find the trigger of "making a clean breast of our failures" crucial to loosen our tongue to rejoice in forgiveness, to scrub our face clean, and to expand to our intended size.
It might be helpful to look at sin through anorexic eyes as that is one form of its lived outcome in our lives. Treatment [MISSING URL] is no clearer here than how we generally deal with sin and its attendant relapses or backslidings.
I especially like the response to our claiming G*D as a "hiding place" where we can be preserved from trouble with no effort of our own -- "Hey, I'm teachin' ya the way to go - get outta here!"
Perhaps that is part of the message the prodigal youngest heard as he hid away in a pig pen - The first step to what is being taught is to get out of where you are. Then it is to make amends. Beyond that is mystery.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/march2004.html
Blessed are those forgiven the choice of following temptation.
Blessed are those able to now clarify the temptation facing them.
Blessed are those whose temptations have been chosen against.
Blessed are those steadfast in choosing against temptation.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/february2005.html
Psalm 32, Psalm 5:1-8
"And here I am, your invited guest – it's incredible!" (5:7) [MSG]
"'I'll make a clean breast of my failures to God.' Suddenly the pressure was gone – my guilt dissolved, my sin disappeared." (32:5) [MSG]
How incredible! Before anything, we have been invited to the dance of life – we are invited and we will continue to be invited.
As invited guests we have a choice to be a responsive guest or a reluctant guest. When the hosts ask, "How are you?" we can take that at face value of their interest and be clear about how it is with us – our self and the host, the world, our self, our neighbors, and others.
We could take it as a polite, ritualistic question and simply care for it with a perfunctory "Fine" or "OK."
One choice leads to relieving the pressures we experience. One choice keeps everything in its current place.
So… How are you? Really… How are you?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/june2004.html
Psalm 32
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Romans 5:12-19
Matthew 4:1-11
A tree of knowledge certainly sounds helpful, particularly if it aids one in distinguishing good from evil - even if such distinguishing is as fine as the difference between a white and black thread at the rising and setting of the sun.
Such a tree presupposes that there is good and evil to be distinguished. If created by G*D was good and evil only latent until a eye was opened or did it exist already? If so how important is the whisper of its existence? Does it take some ability to distinguish good from evil to desire to better distinguish?
There is some sense in which stepping between good and evil leads us into confusion.
It is from this very tree that Jesus seems to have also eaten. He is able to distinguish helpful applications of the scriptures (accumulated wisdom of our experiences with G*D) from unhelpful applications. It is not that scripture is automatically helpful. Knowing when to apply which is important.
There is some sense in which stepping between good and evil leads us to clarity.
Thank you "Adam" for joining "Eve" in engaging wisdom.
Thank you Jesus for building on wisdom and clarifying the need for larger contexts regarding "tests" or experiences of life.
- - -
I am a type of one who has gone before
and a type of one who will follow
I am a free gift borne by a past
and a free gift invested in a future
of all the options available - I arrived
and now more options are opened
wrestling still with good and evil
my appetites struggle to be met
my desire for immortality leaps into the fray
my controlling power claims first place
and on other days they all face
poverty, chastity, obedience
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html
From The New Interpreter's Study Bible: "The double blessing that opens the psalm (Heb. 'ashre, vv. 1-2) results specifically from breaking silence with God, confession and forgiveness (vv. 1-5)." This double blessing is linguistically connected with making progress in a forward direction. It's as if we can now proceed, where before we were blocked.
A blockage by silence shows how powerful that technique is. To get the silent treatment is a deadly proposition. To speak together again - here or after apple-eating time or whenever - opens us to joy.
Try playing with placement of verses 8-9. Would it make a difference for you if the Psalm began with these lines? The context then is G*D's intentional involvement in lives with either easy or difficult presence. Out of this come the blessings that follow (an eventual response to steadfast presence/love).
What if it were at the end (moving 10-11 up to follow 7)? Here we would again follow the ancient wisdom that all manner of things shall be well again.
Do you like it where it is? - a sequence of personal revelation, G*D self revelation, congregational exhortation to move ahead as per blessing at the beginning.
- - -
breaking wind is old phraseology
bringing healing laughter
wind is also spirit and word
breaking silence is old healing
a spirit word set loose
to laugh where it will
listen for wind
listen to word
listen in spirit
listen with laughter
listen toward blessing
listen from experience
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html
Psalm 32 or Psalm 5:1-8
Contrasted with greed's consequence of trouble - an abundance of steadfast love. Between these realities we are birthed, live, and die, and live again to die into life.
We see the consequences of greed in acts of destruction small and large. We distance ourselves from such by looking for a hiding place from which we might glimpse the destruction of others and, at the same time, avoid a common lot.
It is a bit much to follow the advice that the practice of magical prayer and confession will keep all wild things at bay. Better to simply acknowledge that we are in this together and give thanks for all that has been and will yet be.
- - -
rocks and hard places
devils and deep blue seas
remind us
duality is alive and well
in our hyperbolic responses
to everyday life
running between the poles
wears us out
long before any event
eventuates
in such wise as to remind
we did it to ourselves
standing firm
when all is blowing about
is not situational disregard
but learned counsel
steadfast love remains
through and after a winnowing
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html
Baptizer: "I baptize you with water for repentance…." (Matthew 3:11)
"Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven…." (Psalm 32)
Jesus: "It is written …." (Matthew 4:7,10)
Out of Baptism comes a happy word, "This is my Beloved…." (Matthew 3:17)
This "happiness" (a combination of repentance and belovedness) opens one to receive and live out of Psalm 32:8 – "I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you."
Here we have the development of a storehouse of treasures from which new and old (appropriate) responses to life might be applied (Matthew 13:52). Here the remembrance of old responses and investigation of new ones takes place in an intentional study of life that is both alongside and moving toward G*D.
Out of this happiness comes an openness to hear the intent behind a question and a willingness to respond to that larger organizing principle. Out of this happiness comes a sense of enough (even when hungry or entitled to more of anything from simple bread to complex economic/political power) that can identify and move beyond each temptation to be satisfied with the surface of living.
Many are the faces of unrepentance, unforgivenness, unbelovedness. Each face is best responded to in steadfast love (Psalm 32:10).
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html
Keeping silence, keeping secret, keeping closeted, wastes body and soul. A silent, secret groaning, prelude to an earthquake or a volcanic eruption persists at a sub-seismic level.
Whether this comes from an eternal heavy hand or an internal fear or learned response, our strength withers and our reserves dwindle.
Life-deniers have their moments but not their day.
Life-affirmers find their assurance, their belovedness, preceding them around every corner.
Celebrate, sing, be glad in Life, rejoice, shout for joy, raise the roof! The silenced, secreted, closeted have nothing to lose but their chains! They shall find and be found and feast - a fresh start!
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/03/psalm-32_10.html
There are times when we need to face our transgression(s). Those are difficult moments. We wonder how we ever fell prey to such behavior.
One response is that we did not confess our temptation(s). Had we done so, a transgression may never have followed. Nothing is certain here and this is not a programmatic fix for transgression, but it does have its place.
To be able to have some temptation language available to us might aid us in better dealing with the temptation before the transgression. This week might be a time of reflecting on the temptations facing those in power, those out of power, those who are victims of power. We might go on to circling that down to ourselves and others as we deal with similar temptations to make things into all-or-nothings. When temptations are clear we can better see the gradations therein and our scheming to find a short-cut out of the temptation without really dealing with it. Having seen we will have a better choice.
Steadfast love clears our tempted eye. Blessings to you as you straighten up your crooked places, your temptation places.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/03/psalm-32.html
Happiness and blessing to those who are able to see the distance from their possibility to their current life. In this we hear:
I see the gap in my life and acknowledge it is real. My guilt about this is in the way. I will seek out a direction needed to further clarify and rectify this discontinuity. This surety leads me to trust a context large enough to hold every process that connects me with my dream of drawing my life toward my gifts and integrating my gifts into my life.
Just being on an intentional path is a good and joyful thing to be everywhere applauded. No matter how winding the way, bless the path.