Romans 10:5-15
Proper 14 (19) - Year A
There is no capturing Christ. A cultivated Christ will not justify our desires.
Having heard about Christ, is the message of new life, resurrection, for yourself and for others always on the top of your heart and the tip of your tongue, ready to leap to life?
If so you are part of the grand procession of people telling the good things of G*D. That's enough.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/august2002.html
To name a name is to know the essence of that which is named. To name the name of Jesus, literally, gets us into the danger of not everyone who literally names Jesus enters the presence of G*D. To name the name of Jesus, metaphorically, gets us into the danger of seeking G*D's presence on our own.
As we set about following the Way of Jesus, if not the spelling of Jesus, we live in the risk of the better danger. All who seek will find a generous response. This response is worth the risk.
How do we assist one another in this journey, but by telling that which we know. Here we will speak of Jesus' Way and experiences of Wholiness Spirits. This is the inclusion we proclaim -- we have been welcomed and we, in turn, welcome.
There is no distinction between Jew and Gentile, Gay and Straight, Iraqi and American, or any other duality. All are on the journey, swift or slow, to G*D. Let's hurry up and enjoy one another.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/august2005.html
We are what we do.
What do we do and what is the basis of our doing that keeps us doing what we do do well?
These have to do with community (the law) and heart (the Christ) working together. This has been imaged as "good cop" and "bad cop", foreground and background, inner and outer, and several other "thises" and "thats" that complement one another.
One of the differences I experience between some form of literalized fundamentalism and creative progressivism is that of flip-flopping between the two poles to see how to keep things under control and that of rubbing the two poles against one another to see what sparks fly.
Rub well.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/august2005.html
A promise: I will send you to those who hate you, who cannot speak peaceably to you.
So Joseph responds to his call as a prophet, "Here am I" and goes to his "brothers." So Elijah hears as a prophet hears, in great silence, and returns to those seeking his life. So the disciples enter the chaos of the deep, of wind and wave. So the faithful strive not for heavenly stairs or power to change the past, only a word and heart for this day's need.
This promise is repeated continually. Some hear and are renewed. Some almost hear and fear. Some do not yet hear, but are called, nonetheless.
Sometimes we hear and jump into the waves. Sometimes we forget in the presence of pressing need and regret our jump. Nonetheless, a repeated call is available to hear when we can clear our mind.
- - -
sent ahead
we know our own
times of famine
made worse by tired feet
starved of peaceable speech
as well as of daily bread
our insides and outsides
stumble on
sent ahead
without a clue
we take
what we know
and join it
with what others know
silently singing
steadfast love to action
sent ahead
into unfamiliar chaos
we battle wind and save
until we can step aside
from our fears
until our words
turn to healing
for the nations
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html
In a stormy sea with the demons of the deep all roiled up with no where to go but after you; in a dried out well around which relationships are fractured rather than merged – we find ourselves looking for beautiful feet walking the flood and the drought with us.
When we acknowledge that we were sinking deep and find ourselves raised beyond what we and our bootstraps could do on our own, we know that beautiful feet have drawn nigh. Our hammer toes and athlete's foot scale and fungus under toenails and high heel shortened Achilles and flat feet and all the other bunions and plantar wart ailments become beautiful in their own time.
Finally "there is no distinction", all is beautiful. In this we live and move and have our being. Let your feet shine on top of the white caps and below a depleted water table. Whenever you walk where others fear to tread, fields of daisies spring up where'er you go. How beautiful your feet.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html
Faith in anyone claiming extraordinary power or access to G*D is misplaced. They cannot control the heights or depths of lived experience. Faith worth the fear and trembling required for it's implementation asks for that deeper place of engaging your own journey toward a larger universe.
While appreciating the security of plausible deniability, the built-in opportunity to blame someone or something else, ultimately it is going to come back to what has been done by you with the opportunities you have before you. What were the roadblocks you put in the way of every person, regardless of their "status", to engage their journey to an expansive and expanding love? Distinctions between our various journeys aren't all that great, but the ways in which we can hinder one another seem to be multitudinous.
All who call out, who are journeying, receive what is needful. Claim the abundance available and humbly ask for more - or, party-on, dude!
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/08/romans-105-15.html
Searching for meaning? Well, it’s not going to be found over there. Meaning is always tied up with current experience that we either choose to move further into or further away from by deliberately designing new experiences.
Salvation or wholeness is not to be found in any particular affirmation with either heart or lips. It is a moving target that continues to extend our engagement one moment longer to look at the present through the lens of whatever is next and then to adjust again.
So what good news are you sensing coming your way? Can you hear the hoofbeats of a very intentional rider coming with a new pair of glasses that you might catch a better glimpse of your life? If you can, are you taking a step in that direction or poising to run like the dickens lest you have the information you need to change where you are in the world? This approach-avoidance choice is a part of the glass half-full/half-empty hard wiring we have. Fortunately the wiring can be re-wired.
You might want to take a good look at your feet and thank them for bringing you this far along. Regardless of whether they still have health and strength to get you one more step, they have brought you this far. From here other modes of transportation are available to spread the good news you have within.
This good news is not about everyone becoming a lock-step creedalist, but about setting one another one notch freer. With or without hammer-toes or diabetes sores, thank those beautiful feet for doing their best to carry a beautiful soul.