Psalm 147:12-20
Christmas 2 - Years A, B, C
This last part of Psalm 147 focuses on various issues of maintaining solidarity and security.
How different would it be for us if we used the first 11 verses where rebuilding and regathering, creating and healing, thanksgiving and sustaining the poor were the focus—instead of security and borders and power over creation and separatingly unique scriptures?
What is there about us that desires to move so quickly from the mystery and danger of birth and movement to distilling all that into the regularity and safety of institution? This last Sunday of Christmas subtly shifts us from the raising up of judges, as needed, to the institution of kings. We begin refocusing away from the manger scene of G*D with us in the first 11 verses to using this scene to prove we are blessed over all others and can use the symbol of the manger to lord it over poor shepherd and wise foreigners and everyday consumers.
By such choices as the first or last verses of a hymn we choose a prophetic or a priestly orientation.
How different would it be for us if we used the first 11 verses where rebuilding and regathering, creating and healing, thanksgiving and sustaining the poor were the focus—instead of security and borders and power over creation and separatingly unique scriptures?
What is there about us that desires to move so quickly from the mystery and danger of birth and movement to distilling all that into the regularity and safety of institution? This last Sunday of Christmas subtly shifts us from the raising up of judges, as needed, to the institution of kings. We begin refocusing away from the manger scene of G*D with us in the first 11 verses to using this scene to prove we are blessed over all others and can use the symbol of the manger to lord it over poor shepherd and wise foreigners and everyday consumers.
By such choices as the first or last verses of a hymn we choose a prophetic or a priestly orientation.
As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience
This last part of the Psalm focuses on various issue of maintaining solidarity and security.
How different would it be for us if we used the first 11 verses where rebuilding and regathering, creating and healing, thanksgiving and sustaining the poor were the focus - instead of security and borders and power over creation and separatingly unique scriptures?
What is there about us that desires to move so quickly from the mystery and danger of birth and movement to distilling all that into the regularity and safety of institution? This last Sunday of Christmas subtly shifts us from the raising up of judges, as needed, to the institution of kings. We begin refocusing away from the manger scene of G*D with us in the first 11 verses to using this scene to prove we are blessed over all others and can use the symbol of the manger to lord it over poor shepherd and wise foreigners and everyday consumers.
By such choices as the first or last verse of a hymn we choose a prophetic or a priestly orientation.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/january2003.html
Tonight it is very windy here. My beloved is tucked safely into bed, she enjoys the wind. I am still up, I don't care for the wind and when I go to bed I'll put in ear plugs.
Who can account for such different responses the the wind? We can say G*D is behind any event and yet we will find different appreciation levels for said event, even dislike.
What I wonder tonight is the value of ordinances or rules that require everything to be seen in its best light simply because it is posited by some that G*D is present, even in this otherwise undesirable state of affairs. Knowing an ordinance is not very comforting, in and of itself.
For me it doesn't make any difference if it is a winter wind lowering the perceived chill or a spring wind raising a kite to the heights. Wind in its raw state is for me a chaos. For others a joy.
What in your life is on the edge of chaos? Can you preempt it by praise? or by knowing some set of ordinances?
There are some times we simply need to put in ear plugs and wait to play another day.
From last Sunday: the wind blew the Vikings out of the playoffs and the Packers in. What ordinance here is a comfort to the Vikings? Don't you expect that they put in their ear plugs for a bit, will rest for a bit, and only then see what is next.
My current arrogant regime is pretty windy. My church's retrenchment to past creeds instead of present lives is very windy. I'll praise tomorrow, when the wind dies down.
As 2003 goes out like a lion, may 2004 bring us peace within all borders.
Happy New Year! We can still look forward to a time of calm, no matter how windy it currently is. Next year, Jeru-salem! A foundation of safety that will keep us from being blown about by such strange winds of doctrine as are currently pitted against one another.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/january2004.html
Psalm 147:12-20 or Wisdom of Solomon 10:15-21
The Psalmist's "he" and Wisdom's "she" run along parallel tracks of action. They each rescue and inflict.
One interesting difference, among several that can be accounted for by their different situations while they were writing, is the way in which the male word declares to and the female opens the mouths of the mute to do the declaring. Some of this can be seen in silent Joseph who is declared unto and simply acts and singing Mary who responds with an affirmation lifting the poor and outcast.
The differences here are less about male or female roles since there are males who declare and males that open and females that open and females who declare. Whether male or female (all are one in larger perspectives) what is at stake is the question of what is needed in a given situation. Are we at the point of needing folks who can speak to and for others or folks who can assist folks to speak their own experience.
This discernment is important because we tend to get caught in roles, even roles of wisdom, and develop a Johnny-One-Note approach to situations. Wisdom can adjust to the need of the time and the need of the future to bring forth what is needed. Without the ability to implement appropriately, wisdom is simply wisdom, but unhelpful, unable to get any traction to affect needed changes.
So are you a "he" or a "she" in your current situation? Have you been the alternative "she" or "he" in other situations? We need those who are persistent, in good times or bad, and those who shift to bring a needed perspective. It is not that one is automatically preferable but that what is needed might be evidenced.
Praise God; affirm Wisdom.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/january2005.html
Psalm 147
Next year, the Sunday after Christmas, we will hear again Rachel wailing in Ramah. At what point in Rachel's experience would she have found this psalm to resonate?
Would she need to hear it before she wailed that it might be background to all else?
Is she able to sing it along with laments during a slaughter of innocents? (Remember your response to this includes the "collateral damage" done to children on this very day, even though we may not hear about it, by poverty in any city in the proverbial richest country of the world and by that same country's army and bombs in far off countries. Can you sing this psalm today?)
Will she only be able to join this psalm at some future time similar to Job two-fold restoration?
For the moment I am tired of bragging up G*D. How might we better work together for a common good and commonwealth? These boom and bust cycles are wearing us out.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_12_01_archive.html
"He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and ordinances to Israel."
One of the questions of our day is about a correlation between our realities and the scriptures. In a three-storied universe this laser-like action of G*D from above looks different than a distributed universe filled with horizontal uncertainty principles, quantum indeterminacy, and evolutionary processes.
As we celebrate a new year, how might we celebrate a new approach to and appreciation of ancient wisdom that does not constrain a future to the past or enter a future forgetful of its past?
Christmas is not just remembrance, but a continued anticipation of the new breaking into the settled and returning it to its in-breaking energy, releasing it from accreted constraints.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010/12/psalm-14712-20.html
A light shown so brightly folks became disoriented. From whence comes this light as it seems to be everywhere? Is it eternally now or simply a moment in a longer journey? Why does it show you more clearly than it shows me?
In the midst of such disorientation provisional responses seem to add to the discomfort of not being in charge. Eternal answers begin to creep in to cut through the contingencies of life. Prime among these answers is that of privileged space and time.
At first it takes a great deal of energy to wrestle with simply being. Simply think of the years of the stages you have gone through to mature and then to mature some more. In so doing we begin to see it is not our will that prevails and any attempt to guarantee a moment’s calm is to eternally build a wall higher and broader that divides light from dark, one from zero, or me from you.
One important brick in this wall is “victory”. Everything we know and believe must be protected. Everything else is suspect and to be defeated.
These passages express that old understanding of a G*D being evaluated on the basis of that G*D’s military/political victories. Some are able to hold to their G*D even in defeat and when they next are next victorious their belief is multiplied and more rules added to further narrow who is in and who is out.
If light is light, wave and particle, we need to grieve for G*D as well as praise G*D. If light confuses us, imagine how confused we become when the reality of experience continues to simply be present in the midst of our best laid plans. It can help us remember that there is no reward for belief that will allow plundering that which is currently un-belief; “victory” gives no privilege, only obligation. An ever-victorious G*D breeds tyrannical followers.
Light leads everywhere. Even Wise Ones lose their way. Light reminds us to look in palace and manger and then to choose where we will place our bet—on Herod or the shepherds.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/01/psalm-14712-20-or-wisdom-of-solomon.html