Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19

Advent 2 - Year A


Give justice to the king, O G*D, give justice to all!

Every political system needs to have justice and righteousness flow through it that it might flourish as when rain nourishes grass without flooding it.

Listen to a section from Matthew Fox’s Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life—“Meister Eckhart and Karl Marx: The Mystic as Political Theologian”:

In a society that was as aware of privilege as was Eckhart’s, the thesis that all are aristocrats is a far from subtle rebuke of the caste system then prevailing. But it is more than a rebuke—it is an imaginative alternative that Eckhart is suggesting. According to historian Jacques Heers, what characterized the popular uprisings of Eckhart’s period and place was that even when the “people” overthrew one aristocracy, another immediately took its place. We see then how truly radical and imaginative was Eckhart’s alternative: not to confront aristocracy but to recreate it entirely by baptizing all into it. Eckhart does not put down nobles and aristocrats, and he refuses to substitute a new dualism of the lowly over the privileged. Instead, with a dialectical imagination that only a mystic could muster, he makes the peasants into nobles. Instead, therefore, of putting down anyone, he elevates all ....

Thus Eckhart reiterates his marvelous admiration for the nobility of the human person. Eckhart does not stop short of claiming that human beings give a home to the divine within them. For in us ‘God has sowed His image and His likeness, and … He sows the good seed, the root of all wisdom, all knowledge, all virtue, and all goodness, the seed of Divine nature. The seed of Divine nature is the Son of God, the Word of God.’ Eckhart’s theology of personhood does not concentrate on sin and redemption but on divinization. In this regard he drinks fully of Eastern Christian spiritual theologies.

The seed of God is in us. If it was cultivated by a good, wise and industrious laborer, it would thrive all the more and would grow up to God, whose seed it is, and the fruit would be like the Divine nature. The seed of a pear tree grows into a pear tree, a hazel seed into a hazel tree, a seed of God into God.

So what would it mean to have this Advent be an advent of your rising beyond the caste system of your culture, your society? Bloom where you are!

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


 

It sounds like a lot of moral values are being attached to leadership in this Psalm. In this passage moral values revolve around justice for the poor, not the behavioral control values of our recent election.

Yesterday I received two references I thought you might find helpful regarding moral values:

click on December 2004 issue and read the PDF.

Reading the Gospel - red letter version not red state version.

- - - -

On a side note — my keyboard just lost its "l" key cap. It is time to get out the swiss army knife and epoxy and try gluing it back together since I'm pretty cheap. Can you imagine a religion without its "__ll"? I may just have to leave it like this and have the keyboard become an icon through which a living/loving G*D might be better glimpsed.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/december2004.html

 


 

Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
Isaiah 11:1-10
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 3:1-12

While waiting between times, atween coming 1 and coming 2 (or coming sometime ago and coming some time to come) or any two moments in time, we are constantly faced with issues of righteous wolves and faithful lambs and what they mean to one another. Again and again the righteous question of prosperous justice arises from the lamb. Or is it just(ice) a question of prosperous righteousness, wolfwise? Each constantly calling the other to account and into question.

While the prayers of David may be ended, ours are not. We still appeal to a G*D of hope we hope is able to fill us with all joy and peace. Unfortunately the text adds "in believing" and all of a sudden we find joy and peace turned on their ears into teaching to the test of right answers defining what we shall see and hear; what we might divine, what we must filter.

While doing cost benefit ratios on every part of life we eventually must face water or fire, the biblical equivalent of a rock and a hard place. Water for the worthy fruit of repentance, fire for the fruit of worthy forgiveness.

We wait and waver between water and fire. We are always to blame they are always forgiven. We teach the extremes of life that both end up making everyone less than they are and might yet be.

Are we ready by dint of harmony set loose by steadfastness and encouragement to experience in any moment the steam power of water meeting fire needed for hope? If not, a shoot from the stump has not yet come. If so, a shoot is already a tree. Come play under a spreading chestnut tree where at a flaming forge our "toiling - rejoicing - sorrowing" is shaped into joy and peace.

- - -

we are so easily caught casting an eye about
for wolf that will devour
for lamb to swallow in a gulp
for water to engulf
for fire to consume
seeing only one horizon at a time

we listen repeatedly to echoing cares
hungry wolves and lost lambs - bleating
enfolded lambs and shunned wolves - howling
water fired - hiss
fire watered - whimper
hearing every sleepless nuance

come, root of jesse,
welcome us welcoming others
raise a standard of mercy -
on straying eye and roving ear
on cycles of poor and oppressor
- a once and future mercy

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_archive.html

 


 

Give it to the king, O G*D, give it to the king!

The king needs to have justice applied to the king and a filling of righteousness.

The king needs to have such justice and righteousness flow through them that they may be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers watering earth.

Who is this king? Let's listen in to a section from Matthew Fox's Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life. In writing of "Meister Eckhart and Karl Marx: The Mystic as Political Theologian", Fox comments:

"In a society that was as aware of privilege as was Eckhart's, the thesis that all are aristocrats is a far from subtle rebuke of the caste system then prevailing. But it is more than a rebuke--it is an imaginative alternative that Eckhart is suggesting. According to historian Jacques Heers, what characterized the popular uprisings of Eckhart's period and place was that even when the "people" overthrew one aristocracy, another immediately took its place. We see then how truly radical and imaginative was Eckhart's alternative: not to confront aristocracy but to recreate it entirely by baptizing all into it. Eckhart does not put down nobles and aristocrats, and he refuses to substitute a new dualism of the lowly over the privileged. Instead, with a dialectical imagination that only a mystic could muster, he makes the peasants into nobles. Instead, therefore, of putting down anyone, he elevates all. . . .

"Thus Eckhart reiterates his marvelous admiration for the nobility of the human person. Eckhart does not stop short of claiming that human beings give a home to the divine within them. For in us 'God has sowed His image and His likeness, and … He sows the good seed, the root of all wisdom, all knowledge, all virtue, and all goodness, the seed of Divine nature. The seed of Divine nature is the Son of God, the Word of God.' Eckhart's theology of personhood does not concentrate on sin and redemption but on divinization. In this regard he drinks fully of Eastern Christian spiritual theologies.

"'The seed of God is in us. If it was cultivated by a good, wise and industrious laborer, it would thrive all the more and would grow up to God, whose seed it is, and the fruit would be like the Divine nature. The seed of a pear tree grows into a pear tree, a hazel seed into a hazel tree, a seed of God into God.'"

So what would it mean to have this Advent be an advent of your rising beyond the caste system of your culture, your society? Bloom where you are!

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_12_01_archive.html

 


 

If it is G*D alone that does wondrous things (v. 18) what is a king in this system?

It would seem that a king is to be one who acts out of righteousness and justice, cares for the environment from which comes prosperity, and has particular responsibility for the poor and needy along with defending people from violence. A king is a local expression of G*D.

Well, this is not a role unique to a king, it is simply a reminder that there is no rising to the top that will excuse not being a local expression of G*D. There is no divine right of kings without a basic connection with the rest of creation.

A king without these qualities is an idolatrous dictator. Their function has been usurped by the powers to be about power.

In keeping with the protestant understanding that we are all priests, we are also to claim that we are all local expressions of G*D.

Pause for a moment and check out that which is within a proverbial arm’s reach. Is it going well? And the room or dale where you are located? How is life there? As you continue extending your locality, what needs attending to regarding the environment and the poor?

Some of us have gifts to act within the range of a hug. Some of us have gifts to embrace from further away. Whatever your locale, you are blessed to be a local expression of G*D. Go ahead, you are authorized to stand up for the oppressed and to stand up to those in a kingly role who are oppressing rather than freeing.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/12/psalm-721-7-18-19.html