Psalm 46

Proper 4 (9) - Year A
Easter Vigil - Years A, B, C
"Christ the Kings" - Year C


To be a preparer of a better way is indeed a high calling. It is one within the reach of everyone.


Sometimes we strive for some better part, to be a hero/heroine in whatever situation we find ourselves. Sometimes that is not only possible, but achievable. For a given time and place, we are an obvious catalyst to move things along. More often we would do better to cast around for simply a next baby step that someone else will be able to build on and bring to fruition.

It is amazing how often this role of a preparer of a better future revolves around issues of forgiveness. Time and again a gift of radical forgiveness is needed to clear space for a better time. It is this forgiveness that provides a better picture of salvation and ways in which it might become clearer and stronger in our living.

In this last moment of the year we might cast our hearts and minds back over the past year to see the proportion of our experience that found us humbly preparing a better way compared to those moments where we were a final capstone put in place. My hunch is that we will all find ourselves more often in a role of preparer. Now that we have cast back, we might be able to more forthrightly and joyfully fill more of that role in the year ahead. This will lead to a greater fulfillment by this time next year.


- - - - - - -

 

there is a river
whose streams make glad
habitations of the heart
whose strong flow
sees us through to dawn

 

streams pre-river
sea post-river
play their part
along a way
of new life

 

gathering
holding
connected
river-wise
courageous

 

As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience

 


 

From a quick and dirty search of the NRSV one-fifth of the Psalms use the image of "refuge" and nearly half the references to "refuge" in the whole canon are in the Psalms. This is a significant issue to sing about.

In the above paragraph, my fingers twice typed the word "refute" instead of "refuge." How Freudian is that?

Regardless of that psychological issue there is a connection. To "refute" is to beat back an attack; to "refuge" is to flee from attack.

Where are you refuting harm to another? Where are you taking refuge from harm aimed at you?

Both are active and worthy acts. We flee to G*D for refuge and G*D refutes the uproar against us. As G*D's people we are called to be people of refuge for others and people who refute the world's uproar that diminishes any sister or brother.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/june2002.html

 


 

Psalm 46 or Psalm 31:1-5, 19-24 

Knowing we have a refuge, a place of care, leads to fearlessness.
Knowing we have a source of refreshment leads to joy.
Knowing we have a place of quiet leads to assurance.

Thus we come to understand a steadfast love shown us and a desire to pass it on.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/may2005.html

 


 

Psalm 46 or Luke 1:68-79

Some translations have G*D responsible for desolations and devastations on earth [NRSV, NIV, HCSB ]. Others begin to widen the scope to also include wonders [AMP]. Some go all the way to the wonders, talking about marvels, flowers, and trees [MSG].

In this context desolation seems most helpful as the passage goes on to claim that G*D causes wars to cease. This is a desolation to our business as usual processes. What would we do without war? We would be thrown back into chaos with simply too many options. War short-circuits options and turns life into limited options of this or that winner or loser. We would be devastated without war, it binds together our own desire for control and knowledge that G*D is on our side.

What is the mechanism whereby G*D brings such desolation over the loss of desolation? Is it found in being still - Elijah-like? Is it Zechariah's understanding of knowledge of salvation by way of forgiveness? Is it Isaiah's beautiful, peaceful feet on the mountain good-newsing about G*D reigning? Is it the consequence of John's preparation by way of a call for repentance and baptism?

If there is a connection between the action of G*D and that of humans, it may behoove us to show in our day the mercy promised our ancestors to come our way. We all come from the metaphoric house of David, we all have a part to play as savior, healer in our day. With mercy, forgiveness, good news, we continue in the face of whatever discouragement pops up. Dawn has broken. We can see a bit more than before what is already present, solidifying, through those rosy fingers, from promise to fulfillment.

Standing in the dawn of G*D's reign we find Christ's crown offered to us as a Holy Grail. And like Jesus' humility to empty himself of claiming it, we are emboldened to pass it on. An uncrowned Christ is the only king worth being kin to.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/november2004.html

 


 

Psalm46 or Luke 1:68-79

To be a preparer of a better way is indeed a high calling. It is one within the reach of everyone.

Sometimes we strive for some better part, to be the hero/heroine of whatever situation we are in. Sometimes that is not only possible, but achievable. For a given time and place, we are the obvious catalyst to move things along. More often we would do better to cast around for simply a next baby step that someone else will be able to build on, bring to fruition.

It is amazing how often this role of the preparer of a better future revolves around issues of forgiveness. Time and again the gift of radical forgiveness is needed to clear space for a better time. It is this forgiveness that provides a better picture of salvation and ways in which it might become clearer and stronger in our living.

In this last moment of the year we might cast our hearts and minds back over the past year to see the proportion of our experience that found us humbly preparing a better way compared to those moments where we were a final capstone put in place. My hunch is that we will all find ourselves more often in the role of preparer. Now that we have cast back, we might be able to more forthrightly and joyfully fill more of that role in the year ahead. This will lead to a greater fulfillment by this time next year.

- - -

there is a river
whose streams make glad
habitations of the heart
whose strong flow
sees us through to dawn

streams pre-river
sea post-river
play their part
along a way
of new life

gathering
holding
connected
river-wise
courageous

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_11_01_archive.html


 

G*D is a place of safety, not security. In this sense we finally realize that our building has been on shifting sands not able to bear the weight we assigned to foundational material. We keep trusting in surfaces, not their depths. In some sense this is creation – sandy, slippery, changing.

A part of our response to this is to then run about as noisily as we can to set things right, to move our house to a different foundation and then a different one. We insist on keeping the house without consideration of its foundational environment.

If only we were still for a bit. Eugene Peterson puts it, "Step out of the traffic!" Were we to take as long a loving look at G*D as we experience being looked at by steadfast and expansive love we would note that living on shifting sands is exactly where we need to be – living on sand is our rock. Remember back to all the strange folks who have set out on journeys, to enter into temptations, to know that hometowns aren't where its at, to trust resurrectional processes over any other, and to live life as though it were worth something. Remembering that we are among the traveling saints of old, we know we are always sliding down a sand dune of some sort and we can enjoy the ride.

Whatever sand you have built upon, G*D is with you. Stop, Look, and Listen and join the chicken crossing to the other side of the road. After all, as Grandpa says, "In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough." So, you're living on sand - build lightly, not a bigger barn. It is time to get back to tent living, not palace construction.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_05_01_archive.html

 


 

We are often gotten by nothing. Our sense of loss turns that into Nothing. We will hang on to bereftness as long as we can. Absent Saturday can continue on for quite some time.

Here in Vigil Time we are to find Nothing melted back into nothing that runs through our fingers like time in a sieve. We look back at all the desolations that have occured to find that there are gaps in our story. Desolation...desolation...desolation....

Litle by little we are drawn through our sense of nothing-left-to-lose to those nothing places. The closer we look, the more we see they are not empty places but filled with decisions to be made about how to live. Choices have been made, time after time, to fall back into a next desolation, but there were choices to be made.

Be still, know that there is a choice to be made, even here. This choice becomes our refuge.

Whether it takes a short or a long time to come to terms with the choices we have, our sense of nothingness begins to fade and color intensity returns. You may need to vigil through Easter Day and the whole Easter Season for this become visceral for you. Don’t give up on a vigil just because it is announced to be over for someone else or for some other purpose. See it through until you can see through it.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/04/psalm-46-vigil.html