Psalm 70

"Holy Week" Wednesday - Years A, B, C
Proper 27 (32) - Year A

We are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses to a cloud of behaviors within. Today the warring of sore throat, bloated belly, and constricted head are all things I would leave behind. Along with them I would leave all the helpful family system techniques that are so helpful in conflictual settings (internal and external). I would also sit out any race someone is trying to sign me up for. I’ll take any kindness offered, even from a hand that tells me I am dead to them. I don’t care if I am supposed to be nice and conciliatory, whatever is hurting me—get rid of it, now!

Hurry help along the way. May it race to me even if I can’t race toward it. Here in the middle of preEaster week the wrestling happens between Demonstration Sunday three days ago and Betrayal Thursday just around tomorrow’s corner.

It all comes together into a perfect storm, inside and out. All that is left is perseverance and not even that looks doable. Soul’s Dark Night arrives again. It has passed in the past but that is little comfort in the present.

 

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

 

 

And just how much do we need our enemies to be done-in if we are to recognize our being rescued? Particularly when our enemy is so often ourself!

The very word "rescue" goes back and back to "quash." We need a new image of rescue that allows us to stand firm without having to do-in some enemy. This may be tied up with being able to say in the midst of every event, "This is enough."

Even life under arrest, mistrial, unjust sentencing, and execution can be viewed as having meaning. If it has been awhile since you read it, or if you never have, it may be time to reflect on Viktor Frankel's classic, Man's Search for Meaning . Go to The Search for Meaning for an interfaith reflection that has implications for us in the Christian tradition.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/november2002.html

 

 

Well, we have ridden into the city and been cheered. No arrests were made at the upset at the Temple. Plans are underway for Passover. Perhaps this is prelude to the Romans saying, "Let them go." Still, there is ambivalence because Jesus is still talking, "Suffering, death, new life," things are maybe going to be OK.

Into this comes Psalm 70, which, because of the lack of ascription on Psalm 71, may be connected to the next Psalm.

Well, we are pumping out, "God is great!" just as much as we can. It is almost as if we can only say it often enough, passionately enough, that we will yet come through without the death part Jesus keeps harping on.

Finally, though, it comes down to , "But I will hope continually." May this be sufficient for the days ahead.

[note to self: this is an individual plea for deliverance. We are still caught in that stage of individuals and without the group solidarity there will be a temptation to scatter when hope is momentarily lost track of in the heat of confrontational choice.]

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/march2005.html

 

 

Psalm 70 or Psalm 78:1-7 or Wisdom of Solomon 6:17-20

Usually we think of a voice as active and an ear as passive. Hear that here it is the voice that is still and the ear that inclines. This reversal is the energy that moves the generations forward as the voice is still ahead and our inclination tilts toward it. We have a choice about continuing to incline toward what the voice still has to say or settling for what we have heard so far. May you choose to listen beyond what has so far been heard that the unheard might yet be heard.

Let's see how Wisdom's theory goes
- desire for instruction leads to keeping laws
- - keeping laws assures immortality
- - - immortality brings us to God

For want of desire, God is lost. What are you desiring so much these days that when you are involved in it you have no notion of time ("peace is when time doesn't matter as it passes")? Choose that which brings forth this lack of sense of time (loving what you are and do), that moves us into divine space.

To incline our desire is to recognize our dissatisfaction with the limits of today. We hear better is yet to come than where we have arrived and feel the present as threat rather than arrival. And so we recognize how far short of immortality we are and how laws do not draw us beyond our present limits but hold us here. We call out, "Come, O God!" - "Come, Messiah!" - "Come Wisdom beyond our present difficulty!"

Choose well in which direction you incline your ear. Does present law or future openness offer a larger God with whom we might play?

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/november2005.html

 

 

Psalm 70 or Psalm 78:1-7 or Wisdom of Solomon 6:17-20
Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25 or Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16 or Amos 5:18-22
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Matthew 25:1-13

Wisdom requires decisions made in the moment, in this day. To wait for more information is not as wise as acting on what is now known and adding to what is known as we go along and making appropriate corrections, including recantations, to and of prior decisions.

What do you know of "bridegroom" behavior? How do you then plan and decide about their inconstancy?

What do you know of "bridegroom" forgiveness? How does this change your plans and decisions?

What do you know of "bridegroom" justice and righteous? Does this confirm or change your plans based on what you know about the forgiveness of same?

- - -

alas for you
who desire the day to come
without having made
the needed decisions of this day

to desire without planning
is driving without
seatbelt or helmet
damn silly

to desire without deciding
is counting chickens
before they are hatched
worthless

no amount of ritual
incantation or sacrifice
will atone for innocent desire
none

plan for extravagant justice
decide for expansive righteousness
for this is saving music to the ear
beautiful

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

 

Psalm 70
Isaiah 50:4-9a
Hebrews 12:1-3
John 13:21-32

We are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses to the cloud of behaviors within. Today the warring of sore throat, bloated belly, and constricted head are all things I would leave behind. Along with them I would leave all the helpful family system techniques that are so helpful in conflictual settings (internal and external). I would also sit out any race someone is trying to sign me up for. I'll take any kindness offered, even from a hand that tells me I am dead to them. I don't care if I am supposed to be nice and conciliatory, whatever is hurting me - get rid of it, now!

Hurry help along the way. May it race to me even if I can't race toward it. Here in the middle of preEaster week the wrestling happens between Demonstration Sunday three days ago and Betrayal Thursday just around tomorrow's corner.

It all comes together into a perfect storm, inside and out. All that is left is perseverance and not even that looks doable. Soul's Dark Night arrives again. It has passed in the past but that is little comfort in the present.

"Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together."

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

 

 

Here we find another way to glorification, that of the via negativa.


I am poor and needy; hasten to me, O G*D!
You are my help and my deliverer; O Lord, do not delay!

My G*D, my G*D, why have you forsaken me?
Then Jesus cried out again and gave up his spirit.

Be destroyed to the uttermost, be deeply shamed and confused—still claim your center, your glory, your belovedness, your simply unlikely birth. It is from this center that we proceed, anyway. As generations before us have affirmed in one way or another, “Called or not, G*D is present.”

- - - - - - -

If you would like to play a bit this mid-point day, you might browse the Harvard Review to find variations on this last quote such as “cold or not, ...” or “culled or not, ....”— click here.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/04/psalm-70-wednesday.html