Psalm 97

Christmas Eve/Day - Years A, B, C
Easter 7 - Year C


Jesus’ prayer is fairly localized—bless these and those in their image. Paul’s actions are localized for his own benefit. The Psalmist continues this with a focus on those who authorize a high and exalted god as the one, true god.

 

If we are dealing with resurrection, wherein these limitations?

 

Well, it has been seven weeks since we had an anniversary of a resurrection. That’s twice as long as it usually takes to institute a new habit, a new way of experiencing the world. It wouldn’t be unusual for some forgetting to be happening around the edges. Resurrection opens us to life, and these limitations close us.

 

If we remember resurrection we may yet participate in it, not just tout it. Here’s a paragraph from Richard Rohr’s new book, “Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self” that might trigger some alternatives for you.

 

No matter what your definition, we all want resurrection in some form. And I do believe “the raising up of Jesus” (which is the correct theological way to say it because it was a relational meaning between Jesus and God, and not a self-generated “I can do this”) is still a potent, focused, and compelling statement about what God is still and forever doing with the universe and with humanity. Science strongly confirms this statement today—more than ever before—but with different metaphors and symbols, like condensation, evaporation, hibernation, sublimation, the four seasons, the life cycles of everything from salmon to galaxies, and even the constant death and birth of stars from the exact same stardust. God appears to be resurrecting everything all the time. It is nothing to “believe in” as much as it is something to observe and be taught by.

 

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/05/easter-5-year-c-psalm-97-jesus-prayer.html

 


 

"Let the many coastlines be glad!"

Let them be glad in the midst of being changed from glory into glory - from blue to bluer to bluest. Volcanoes, earthquakes, and melting mountains are all part of the process.

When we talk of the many coastlines we are not talking of only our relaxing beach or invigorating headland. We are also talking of other nation's coastlines which are just as beautiful and bracing.

Here we come to find not just this coast or that coast rejoicing in itself, but each and all rejoicing in an encompassing earth.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/may2004.html

 


 

Psalm 97 / Psalm 96 / Psalm 98

Sing to the Lord a new song: Judgment is grounded in equity, righteousness, and truth. (96)

Sing to the Lord an old song: God loves, guards, rescues. (97)

Sing to the Lord a new song: Remembered steadfast love and faithfulness. (98)

If you had to embody one of these songs, which would come first to your lips? This is almost a personality test and it doesn't make any difference whether that is a gift hard-wired or learned through experience.

Are you into

- judgment on what has already happened?

- being proactive in peace and justice ministries?

- living as you would have the future become?

- - -

Thomas (Reader)

How about:

Sing to God, for God,
the very song
the only song
that only you can sing
the song that only your voice can carry,
the song that only your heart and mind and spirit can dream of.

What if all else
is nothing more or less
than a denial of God?

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/december2005.html

 


 

Psalm 97
Isaiah 62:6-12
Titus 3:4-7
Luke 2:(1-7) 8-20

You! Remind G*D!
You! Give G*D no rest!
You! Prepare for a place of peace to be established!
You! Build up! Build up!
You! Build righteousness!
You! Build justice!
You! You know . . . go ahead!

G*D, reminded of G*D's own intention, awakens to a response of goodness and loving kindness in the face of every stimuli clamoring for judgment and punishment. G*D's salvation is not based on our behavior, but G*D's mercy.

So shepherds in the fields abiding, far from respectability, honor, wealth, or power have this mercy offered - a light, a song, a sign, a witness. Wise shepherds that they be, they look and listen and come and go.

This is a valuable pattern, yet. This is a model of being a Christ-bearer - a Christopher Christmas, if you will. It is so valuable that Jesus models himself after shepherds. More than the Magi, the shepherds call Jesus to his calling.

- - -

what we treasure most
we shine with pondering
turning it this way
and that

through this pondering
a treasure outgrows our grasp
loosing it here
and there

humble words stir up
remembrances of holy experience come
root words ground
expectations of holy boldness to come

fearless news
joyful people

let's go, shepherds, peace is promised
let's ponder, with Mary, peace
let's return, shepherds, with a song of peace on earth
let's treasure, with Mary, the favoring of peace for all

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

 


 

An upshot of G*D in heaven and all with the world being one, in a holistic sense, is an interplay of light and joy. These two intertwine each other in such ways that the warp and woof of life can hold all manner of patterns together. Light and joy are spirit equivalents of physics time and space. Just imagine the lightness-of-being fields that lift just where gravitational fields reshape our ground.

Light and Joy bend our lives, our journey trajectories, toward steadfast love. They do so in measurable ways so that we can begin to use them to further explore a vast universe of righteousness and justice ready to be employed in any number of ways.

In like manner, Righteousness and Justice bend our lives, our journey trajectories, toward steadfast love. They do so in measurable ways so that we can begin to use them to further explore a vast universe of light and joy ready to be set loose in any number of life's arenas.

- - -

let the earth rejoice
prisons be opened
righteousness and justice
shaken to their foundations
shaken until light and joy
burst forth in the dark
calming fiery fears
igniting thanks

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_05_01_archive.html

 


 

In verse 2 we hear about the foundational relationship between "Righteousness" and "Justice". Many times we pair "Peace" with justice. A helpful perspective here is that righteousness and justice correspond with an internal and external component of a our life. Peace and justice have a greater tendency to both be external, not requiring ourselves to participate in justice as a part of our wholeness and that of creation.

By the time we come to verses 10 and 11 we hear some parallelism. Justice is paralleled to external actions of guarding and rescuing. Righteousness is paralleled to internal responses of light and joy.

If we begin to bring these together we need to ask about what light we might shed on situations where someone or some part of creation needs to be guarded. Immigrants and ocean gulfs come easily to mind today. We also need to investigate the connection between joy and rescuing. If you have been on a mission trip of some sort, you probably have a sense of this and a question about why you don't do it more regularly.

Without having to posit an externalized anthropomorphic "Lord" to be "king", we might better recognize a mystery larger than ourselves in qualities of righteousness and justice, in guarding light (no not the soap opera Guiding Light where little guarding went on), and rescuing joy which are much to be sought and lived. In some sense the Lord language puts the focus on being authorized rather than our own inherent integrity and integration (so close in sound and so distinct in derivation).

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/05/psalm-97.html