Psalm 36:5-11
"Holy Week" Monday - Years A, B, C
Let’s begin with a renaming: Clarification Week, not Holy Week.
Our very distinction of “Holy This” or “Holy That” belies the “holiness” of life in all things. With too much coded holiness we move into unhelpful dualities that end up splitting spiritual and material.
The Psalm begins with plotting in bed—nightmares continued into the day. I suppose this could be seen as a foreboding of Judas’ journey between Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday.
Even so, the larger story is not that of betrayal but a continuance of steadfast love (salvation, if you will). We participate in this love and add our part to its continual revelation. Hold hands; do not be driven from this reality.
This pericope could have continued to the end of the Psalm. This would have brought us back around to doing-in those identified as evildoers. Instead it ends with a simple call for protection: “Bestow faithful care on those participating in greater justice who are caught in traps set by those claiming entitlement to continue their ways.”
We cannot follow Jesus’ way, differentiated from that of Judas and Religious Leaders attempting to continue a privileged status of money or power, without seeing beyond the usual visible spectrum. This seeing into the infrared or the ultraviolet is to see deeper into creation, into G*D. The Psalmist puts it this way, “By this light do we see light.”
Even though this is a week with great sadness, we find a bubbling fountain of life in mercy far outweighing betrayal by encompassing it.
Even so, the larger story is not that of betrayal but a continuance of steadfast love (salvation, if you will). We participate in this love and add our part to its continual revelation. Hold hands; do not be driven from this reality.
As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience
Psalm 36:5-11
Isaiah 42:1-9
Hebrews 9:11-15
John 12:1-11
Yes, PreEaster, not Holy Week. Our very distinction of "Holy This" or "Holy That" belies the holiness of life in all things. We move into unhelpful dualities that end up with a split between spiritual and material.
Let us take hands and declare to one another that which is yet to come to pass before it has sprung forth. This imagery from Isaiah sees us through every sort of life situation.
The Psalmist reminds us of the continuance of steadfast love (salvation, if you will). We participate in this love and add our part to its continual revelation. Hold hands, do not be driven from this reality.
The writer to the Hebrews knows that a new covenant does not depend on some third party, but on the integrity of those engaged together. She reminds us that it is not the sacrifice of others that brings life, but that of our own participation in that which we deem essential that moves us from life's repetitive works to continually revealed expressions of a steadfast love not held away as a carrot for tomorrow, but offered as a full feast for today.
Whether it is our commitment to giving roses, perfume, anointing, relationship now instead of later or our past experiences of resurrection coming to challenge the leaden, deadly inertia of cultural and political blocks to more life for more people, we challenge the current status quo striving for more advantage and control. It is in fact our generosity and awareness of new life that bring forth the opportunities for revealing the basic choices of life. Here we immediately run into the fears and tremblings of past teaching that we now know what's what. Generosity and awareness of abundance of life are still counter-cultural fulcrum points that can move the world.
Let's keep telling a larger story than our own small part and honor our small part in moving a larger story along.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html
Let's begin with a renaming: PreEaster Week. Yes, PreEaster, not Holy Week. Our very distinction of "Holy This" or "Holy That" belies the holiness of life in all things. With too much coded holiness we move into unhelpful dualities that end up splitting spiritual and material.
The Psalm begins with plotting in bed — nightmares continued into the day. I suppose this could be seen as a foreboding of Judas' journey between Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday.
Even so, the larger story is not that of betrayal but the continuance of steadfast love (salvation, if you will). We participate in this love and add our part to its continual revelation. Hold hands, do not be driven from this reality.
This pericope could have continued to the end of the Psalm, which would have brought us back around to self-protection against plotters. Instead it ends with "Bestow faithful care on those participating in greater justice who are caught in traps set by those claiming entitlement to continue their ways."
We cannot follow Jesus' way, differentiated from that of Judas and Religious Leaders attempting to continue a privileged status of money or power, without seeing beyond the usual visible spectrum. This seeing into the infrared or the ultraviolet is to see deeper into creation, into G*D. The Psalmist puts it this way, "By this light do we see light."
Even though this is a week with great sadness, we find a bubbling fountain of life in mercy far outweighing betrayal, encompassing it.