1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Advent 1 - Year C

Here is a question for the year: No matter what the season, are we actually experiencing an increase of abundant love for one another and for all?

This will call for individual work (prayer) and communal work (restoration).

If we can make some progress on this during the coming church year we will find our hearts strengthened for more years of building on how far we have come. Is this or is this not a time to go beyond the making of a resolution to the implementation of steps that will help us arrive.

This quote may help us: "His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it." -Lois McMaster Bujold, writer (b. 1949)

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/11/1-thessalonians-39-13.html

If we just read these verses without noting what went before the major thrust would be:

1) we have joy before God because of you and your lack of faith
2) we can again ride to your rescue
3) we pray God will lead us to you so we can fix you
4) we pray God will fix you to better love one another
5) we pray your hearts will be fixed.

It is almost, Hooray! We got to you just in time. We found a fault to fix and justify the process of faith being from the top down. Later this will come to be known as missionary hubris.

Its in the nature of the leader of the pack to uncover any weakness in the followers. A good bet for finding fault, as Paul goes on, is in the arenas of basic human functioning. In this case sexuality. This gets additional clout when human authority is tied with spiritual authority (4:8).

How gleeful are you when your adversary gives you an opening to be able to correct them? Is Paul's prayer similar to your prayer for "them"?

Is Advent here the looking for and yearning for an external mechanism that will require our loving one another? What has blocked that from already occurring? What needs to change for mutuality to be effectively present?

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/november2003.html

Question: What is the level of your abundance of love?

Question: Is that enough to love those who aren't loving those who are either or both near and far?

Question: Does a yearning for more love show up in your prayers?

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/november2003.html

Hooray!

Holiness is not limited to Blamelessness.

Faith is not something whumped up by pulling on our own bootstraps. It is a response to face-to-face community with G*D, with another.

Love for one another is not a commodity with the usual rules of an economy. It is a gift with no obligations involved.

To focus on these three realities for a whole year would do most individuals and congregations a world of benefit and increase their capacity for joy.

All too often we lose sight of holiness by hiding behind a rule or law, pulling the mores over our head. Then we fight over our particularities and peculiarities. Looking at great religious figures, we find holiness more generally recognized after the fact rather than while they are stretching whatever current limitations they are dealing with.

Faith as gift, rather than assent to the logic of some particular construct of meaningful meaning that has an a priori good which is basically unexaminable, raises possibilities of moving from constraint to a new heaven and earth. Faith, as gift, does put us in situations where fear and trembling would hold sway forever, and then blazes a new path.

Love finds similar limitations based on expectations of benefit from same. It is difficult to sustain a loving attitude that doesn't simply satisfy a hormonal pleasure surge or some desired level of comfortable predictability. To find a blessing of a God, whose name and nature is Love, entering and passing through one disconcerts our desire for control. It overwhelms us and those we encounter and in so doing scares us into limiting it or frees us into expanding it.

- - -

Go ahead and blame all you want
as for all my various "me's", we will choose holiness
and claim faith in love beyond everything

holiness in self, in God, in others
faith from God, from others, from self
love to others, to self, to God

Faith, Holiness, Love - these three
and the greatest is each.

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html

A thanksgiving pericope on Thanksgiving Day. The focus here, though, is not storing up enough turkey energy to arise early for Black Friday shopping. This thanksgiving is much more personal.

"How can we thank G*D enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before G*D because of you?"

and

"G*D, Forerunner Jesus, and others down the line invigorate our way to you."

and

"May All-of-Creation guide your journey to increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you."

You get the picture. Thanksgiving is personal, not some consumer product. Advent will also be personal, not some religious creed.

Thus far we have 4 P's on which to hang our Advent remembrance and anticipation:

Parable - opens to new learning

Promise - opens a stuck past to a new future

Path - opens practical applications of mercy

Personal - opens to universal joy

- - -

"Don't ask what the world needs.
Ask what makes you come alive,
and go do it.
Because what the world needs is
people who have come alive."
~Howard Thurman

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html