Words 2.17

 Words Twice a Week        2.17

And here’s one for free from The Writer’s Almanac -

It's the birthday (the 17th) of the man who said, "A good sermon should be like a woman's skirt: short enough to arouse interest but long enough to cover the essentials." That's writer and (Church of England then Roman Catholic) priest Ronald Knox, born in Kibworth, England (1888). 

Some thoughts on some of the lectionary texts for this week – Seventh after Epiphany

Genesis 45:3-11, 15

+ Joseph and his brothers.  Here’s nice piece from Fred Buechner on brothers -

   CAIN MURDERED ABEL. Jacob cheated Esau. Joseph's brothers sold him for twenty shekels and would probably have paid twice that to get him out of their hair. The Prodigal's elder brother couldn't stand being in the same room with him even with a fatted calf for inducement. As the Bible presents it, one of the closest of all relationships is also one of the saddest. 

   Envy and fear are apparently near to the heart of it—one brother is afraid the other is loved more, favored more, given and forgiven more, gets away with more—but that doesn't seem enough of an explanation somehow. You have a sense of signals crossed, of opportunities missed, of messages unheard or unheeded, in short of love gone wrong. You can't help thinking what friends they might have been if they hadn't been enemies. Cain giving Abel a hand with the spring lambing. Jacob letting Esau have his pottage just for the hell of it.   

   We all have the same dark secrets and the same bright hopes. We come from the same place and are headed in the same direction. Above everything else maybe, we all want to be known by each other and to know each other. Iraq and the United States, the Arabs and the Israelis, the terrorists and the terrorized—we are all of us brothers, all of us sisters. 

+ And here’s one from Henri Nouwen -

In our world full of strangers, estranged from their own past, culture, and country, from their neighbors, friends, and family, from their deepest self and their God, we witness a painful search for a hospitable place where life can be lived without fear and where community can be found. Although many, we might say even most, strangers in this world become easily the victim of a fearful hostility, it is possible for men and women and obligatory for Christians to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings. The movement from hostility to hospitality is hard and full of difficulties. Our society seems to be increasingly full of fearful, defensive, aggressive people, anxiously clinging to their property and inclined to look at their surrounding world with suspicion, always expecting an enemy to suddenly appear, intrude, and do harm. But still—that is our vocation: to convert the hostis into a hospes, the enemy into a guest, and to create the free and fearless space where brotherhood and sisterhood can be formed and fully experienced.

+ the story really is a good one as we see Joseph converting hostis into hospes before our eyes.  How do you suppose the brothers felt?

Luke 6:27-38

+ “Love your enemies, do good, bless, pray…”  One writer notes “Love” here is more of a verb than a noun.  It means “Do good, bless, pray…” and we can do those no matter how we feel.

+ another writer notes that we are “Kingdom people” and Kingdom people do not reciprocate – in vs 27-31 towards those who mistreat you, in vs 32-36 towards those who treat us well.

+ do you buy the idea that if we (Christians, church folks, ???) all did this the Time of God’s Peace would be here?  I don’t really.  My first thought was what would God have to do for this to make sense?

+ the bit from Fred Craddock last week about there being no exhortations, no urging, helps.  This is not about what we do to bring in the Kingdom/Time of God’s Peace – the Time of God’s Peace is beginning/has begun and this is how we live in it.  

+ so this is where I’m ending up – The Time of God’s Peace/Kingdom of Heaven is beginning in Jesus, or is being activated in some way, or we are just learning about it – and we can become Kingdom People, Children of God.  So we live this way – loving enemies, doing good to all, because this is how God is and we are children of God.  This is how God’s People/our family lives, whether or not it makes any difference in the world.  “Other people do _______, our family doesn’t do that.” - I can almost hear my mom explaining it to me.

+ A bit more from Craddock – The difficulty many of us have with God’s kindness is therefore twofold.  First, God behaves with favor toward persons whose life-style does not merit such favor; and secondly, we are to relate to others with this same graciousness.  God’s people do not so often quarrel with God about how they themselves are treated as they do about how God is too generous toward others.

+ and in vs 37-42, the sense is not “Do not judge so that you won’t be judged;...forgive so that you will be forgiven,...give so that more will be given to you.”  It is more “Don’t judge – you are not going to be judged; forgive – you are (and are going to be) forgiven; give – you have been given (and will be given) much.”  The words are enabling/empowering more than exhorting.

+ So that’s where I am – how about you?

That’s what I got for now…..

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