Psalm 125

Proper 18 (23) - Year B


How protected are you feeling today?

What is your peace quotient today?

A few years ago we heard it takes a village to raise a child. It takes a village to surround a child. In this psalm we hear about it taking mountains to encircle, encompass, surround a whole people that they might be raised as a village of peace that can raise children who are peacemakers.

Where is your village, your mountains? Without them the sceptre of wickedness is raised over us and we are scared. Without them we will fall prey to copying the way of the wicked.

In the face of injustice and organized violence, while before corruption and and complacency, we look for the place of trust that will gird us round. We find that in the gathered community.

In these in-between times when the village has been scattered and the mountains shaken - remember peace remains upon and beneath and close around.

Try this word substitution on for size: "As justice surrounds Jerusalem (peaceful place), so G*D judges the people, now and forever." While justice is quite different from peace and the two should never be equated, it is important to note how justice provides the protection needed for peace to flourish. Without it wickedness prevails.

Is your sense of protection and peace qualified because not enough attention has been paid to the communal aspect of justice that goes beyond personal justice? What is just for me may not be just for you and so the need to search out what is just for both of us even if that means my losing what is just for me or you losing what is just for you. Only through such difficult terrain do we find the mountains that cannot be moved. Only through such difficult terrain do we arrive at the peace that cannot be shaken. Only through such difficult terrain do we experience a peace that goes beyond remembrance or hope.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/september2003.html

 


 

Psalm 125 or Psalm 146
Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23 or Isaiah 35:4-7a
James 2:1-17
Mark 7:24-37

Raise a glass, "The rich and the poor have this in common: the Lord is the maker of them all."

May your heart be strong, not just from the drink, but in appreciation of a presence of G*D that sets you free to no longer judge rich and poor, but to live justice attempted and completed.

This open-eyed justice does away with acts of favoritism, in any direction, as we recognize our neighbor as ourself. This communal approach leads to mercy received, given, and shared. Such faith is practical, beyond cant.

- - -

be opened woman from afar
be opened Jesus so near
be opened ye deaf
be opened you onlookers
be opened scoffers and praisers

let us shape one another
in G*D's image
beyond hierarchy
beyond favoritism
beyond simply beyond

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html


 

"Peace/well-being over Israel!" is a popular sentiment. It comes at the expense of doing away with a tension between those who trust in the Lord (good) and those who don't (evil) by destroying evil. This sort of peace is a dream. Do you remember any group able to hold their purity over time? They either lose their focus and are caught in their own trap of identified sin or they are not sustainable and fade from view.

A problem arises regarding the way in which peace or well-being (shalom) comes into being and the projected end state. If trust can only be experienced as victory then trust has lost a key component - an uncertainty of outcome. Contrasting the breadth of trust with the narrowness of victory gives a background to some of the technical difficulties and discontinuities within the Psalm itself.

May it be well with Israel! and with every particular! as we work our way toward and beyond one another, rather than away from one another toward only our own.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html

 


 

What would keep a hand from a scepter of wickedness. This “Precious” is a great temptation and needs a strong intention to avoid it. We might look to mountains to hedge us in, leaving only the good as an option. We might employ capital punishment, eternal separation, as a technique to discourage wrong-doing.

We know from experience that external controls are only as good as their last success. Eventually they will be tested and tested again. The two-year-old and adolescent in us will push every boundary and push again.

Eventually it comes to what we trust. We trust that being upright and forthright pays a better dividend than the breaking of trust with G*D, Neighb*r, or S*lf.

Image trust as solid as a mountain. A landslide may happen and rearrange a contour, but the basic mass is still present. Imagine living a solidly helpful life. A backslide may happen, but a basic integrity is still present.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/09/psalm-125.html