My Blog

In an attempt to thoroughly fill the Twelve Days of Christmas, I’ve chosen to comment on readings for the Second Sunday after Christmas–the Ninth Day of this holy tide.  Others may well turn to the Epiphany lessons, for that day is also fast approaching.   A Holy  Mystery is lined out in the Eucharistic liturgy:  “Christ has died; Christ has risen; Christ will come again”.  Is this too much of a leap from the manger??

Many of us will not have the Old Testament reading in their regular Bibles: it’s from Sirach, often called Ecclesiasticus, written “between” the Testaments to quell the Hellenic concept of Wisdom coming from within a person.  The poet–ben Sirach?–affirmed that True Wisdom was an external gift bestowed in Creation, beginning in Jerusalem and extending throughout all the world.  “I came forth from the mouth of the Most High, and covered the earth like a mist….Before the ages, in the beginning, {God} created me, and for all the ages I shall not cease to be.” (24:3, 9)  This Word/Wisdom/Spirit is what connects the  Creation and its Creator.  Pretty metaphysical…but it begins to shed more light on the Incarnation.

The Epistle (Ephesians 1:3-14) goes on and on.  All good stuff, yet I’d rather examine one or two parts.  F’r instance, “With all wisdom and insight {God} has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” (vv.8a-10)  Post-manger Christians begin to glimpse the magnitude of this revelation:  not as a corrective intervention, but as a bow on the gift which “gathers up” what has always been!

The Prologue to John’s Gospel (1:1-18) recalls how the Wisdom-Word was Godly from beginning, although the English translation has some gender anxieties.  For Christmastide, the central verse seems to be the 14th:  “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”  Barbara Brown Taylor speaks about “God putting skin on these attributes, this glory”.  In the ChristChild, the Mystery is fully revealed; those who seek Truth are invited by Christmas to draw closer, to stand on tip-toe to peer at The Holy One.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to not tell so many stupid jokes.  Well…it’s not January yet, so bear with me…   Back when LIFE magazine was functioning, the editors sent their best photo-journalist, Sandra Terry, to do an extensive feature on the South Pacific Islands.  She wasn’t heard from for weeks…then months.  After a year had passed, the magazine hired a detective to find out what was going on.  The poor fella searched through jungle & swamp–and one fateful day stumbled into an idyllic clearing where a native gathering was paying homage to a beautiful princess.  But wait!  Was something familiar about this goddess in tropical trimming?  Our Hero knelt down and said (here it comes!), “Ah, sweet Miss Terry of LIFE, at last I’ve found you!”

Otherwise, God has blessed us.                                                                              Every One.                                                Horace Brown King

My dear wife gave me a Christmas Gift of the last three years of my weekly blog transcribed and printed out in hard copy!  I’m amazed!

My weekly thoughts on Scripture Lections for the coming weekend can be found at this space on Facebook, AND by entering “Horace Brown King” on the WordPress.com site.

Winter Solstice.  The Bottom of the Year.  Where, o where, is there anything Holy growing on this dreary day?  Neighbors have strung lights, and a few have inflatable “Christmas” characters rising up from their lawns–I even saw an inflatable Darth Vader (“The Force Be With You: and also with you”).  Lots of reindeer.  And one of my friends has an electrified outdoor creche, complete with Lucy, Linus…and Woodstock in the manger…  Where is anything Holy growing on this dreary day??

Scriptures which the faithful remnant will hear on this
First Sunday of Christmas tend to announce that seeds of the Kingdom not only  have been planted, but are germinating into Trees of Life.  We begin by hearing about little boy Samuel assisting in the holy sanctuary with priestly Eli. (I Samuel 2:18ff)  “Now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and with the people.” (v.26)

But St. Paul won’t be discouraged by wet blankets!   He lists ways in which believers are becoming the Beloved (see Henri Nouwen).  “…clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  Bear with one another….And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” (Colossians 3:12 ff)  If you’re making New Year’s resolutions which are intended to last beyond when the Kings go home, here’s a good beginning!  Can we grow new deeds for a new year?

Although Christmas was but two days previous, Luke’s Gospel account for today presents a twelve-year-old Jesus giving his parents and family fits because he disappeared during the Passover festival in Jerusalem. (2:41ff)  When they finally found him in the Temple, he precociously shrugged, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”  (eye-roll here: duh!)   Nevertheless, he went home with them, and “increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” (v.52)

The din of Presidential candidates and the blare of talk-shows have pretty well numbed me from hope.  Morning rain seems to remain in my soul all day.  So I welcome this Third Day of Christmas message:  perhaps I can yet again point to places where the Word grows nearby.

God Bless Us, Every One!            Horace Brown King

My thoughts about readings for the coming weekend can be found every Tuesday in this place on Facebook.

This weekend will recognize the Bottom of the Year, those days when the sun seems strangely absent and when the Powers of Darkness seem to have won.  It also features the Last Sunday of Advent, the doorstep of Christ’s Incarnation.  The Church is pulled between contrived jollity and more serious involvement with shepherds and magi.  What words can we speak to those who watch the horizon?

The prophet Micah looks forward to those days (?) when a Davidic ruler will step forth and take back the Judean territory lost in the Assyrian wars. (5:2-5a)  “But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little [the smallest!] clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for [God] one who is to rule in Israel.”  Notice, please, the reference to David, the youngest and smallest of Jesse’s boys; and the metaphor of little Bethlehem.  Seems as though God is changing the world through that which appears insignificant.

The Hebrews passage (10:5-10) lifts up the idea that the old attempts to be Godly really haven’t worked.  We’ve tried to Be Good.  We’ve denied, rationalized and hidden behind our mortality. The incarnation of Christ is the tipping-point for humanity: “He abolishes the first in order to establish the second.”  Steven P. Eason reminds us, “God has done something for us that we cannot do for ourselves.” (FEASTING on the WORD, C 1:86)

Luke’s Gospel is The Magnificat (1:46-55), where we encounter God’s threatening and embarrassing flip of the Order of Status Quo.  The hungry love this, for they will be filled with good things.  The rich hate it, for they will be sent away empty.  Even before birth, Jesus brings an in-your-face notice to the powerful that things’re gonna be different!  As a more recent song tells us, “There’ll Be Some Changes Made”…  “This Sunday is an occasion for bold, daring, speech…which proclaims the upside-down world inaugurated by Jesus’ incarnation.”  (Charles L. Campbell, op.cit.)

Many of us will hear these readings with tolerant humor, for the Old Order has prospered us.  We  run the risk of slipping away into tinsel and tissue, as we hear the rich imagery of these writers.  Maybe, just maybe, this Christmas will be the one where our own world will turn upside down?

God Bless Us, Every One              Horace Brown King

My thoughts about the upcoming scripture readings are found every Tuesday in this space on Facebook.

The world is afraid.  The “wars and rumors of war” have moved from far lands to the late-night terrors of our imaginations.  Men and women of Good Will despair that the enemies of God are winning, ashamed of our insignificance and frustrated by our limited energy.  Yet this is not only a condition of Our Times; Rudyard Kipling wrote a century and more ago, “If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you…”  Readings for the Third Sunday in Advent, Gaudete Sunday, help us to keep our heads as we expect Divine Intervention.

Zephaniah begins his oracle by calling out Jerusalem and environs for their hardness of heart and lack of faith during crisis.  Then comes a dramatic & audacious switch (3:14-20):  “The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies.  The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst…”(v.15b) Can there be light at the end of the tunnel?  Is there a rose asleep under the snows of winter?  Dare I see God where nobody else would guess that God is present? (Deborah A. Block, in FEASTING on the WORD, C 1:54)

Paul brings the Advent of Christ to the Philippians rather simply, for him:  “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.  Let your gentleness be known to everyone.  THE LORD IS NEAR!” (4:4-7, emphasis mine)  Most agree that Paul was looking for an immediate Second Coming–is Jesus making the scene disguised as a hungry man at Shepherds’ Supper…or the mother of three kids at the Clothing Center…or the faithful saint now crippled and short of breath, a shut-in waiting to Go Home?

Luke’s Gospel introduces John the Baptizer, who prophet-like begins his message with a tirade:  “You brood of vipers!” (3:7ff)  The One Who Is To Come isn’t coming to trim the hedge, but is even now bringing an axe to get to the root of the barren culture!  And “the people were filled with expectation” (v.15)   Why did they go out where the wild things are, leaving their safe comfort?  What drew them to expect Something More?  What restless spirit is within humans that occasionally drives us to test the borders of our comfort zones?

A prayer by Donna Schaper reads in part, “O God, we know that salvation is at hand, and yet we walk as a people in danger, a people unconvinced that your time is nearly here, that it has in some ways already arrived….Help us understand what it is that we worry about, and then place us back on your path.  Send us straight to Bethlehem: through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

God Bless Us, Every One             Horace Brown King

My blog presenting scriptural thoughts for the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this space.

Is there a point to all of this?  Does Life really mean anything beyond Thursday night football, Dr. Who, and the new Mazda that’ll stop on a dime?  As we come to the dark bottom of the year, it’s only natural to fill the uncertainty with tinsel and glitz.  By the way, I love tinsel & glitz–yet there must be something else.  Readings for the upcoming Second Sunday in Advent offer some respite from the Same Old Same Old.

The only thing we know for sure about the prophet Malachi is that his name means “messenger”.  His oracle, sort of tacked on to the end of the Old Covenant, carps about the insincere worship and the neglectful ethics of Israel.  Malachi looks for better days to come:  “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple….Indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of Hosts.” (3:1)  There’s disagreement about whether this messenger is the prophet himself; or John the Baptizer; or Jesus.  Whatever we read, the news is that God is doing Something to purify Creation.

St. Paul doesn’t spend much time or energy in nostalgia; he sees each of his adventures as the first day of a new life!  My own Christmas card selection shows me to be mired in homey villages, little white churches and horse-drawn sleighs.  But Paul sees Advent as a time for progressive thinking:  “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6)  Dare we affirm that we’re being gradually made more and more complete?

John, son of Zechariah, called “the Baptizer”, was an enigma:  Luke gives us some remembrance of his birth, yet we lose track of him until he appears near the mouth of the Jordan baptizing and calling for repentance and renewal. (Luke 3:1-3)  As biting as his words were, John preached Grace and Second Chances:  there’s still time to turn your life around, he said.  All-at-once or bit-by-bit, God is bringing this Good Work in you to completion!

John Wesley spoke a lot about “Going on to Perfection”.  This journey to completeness is the soul of Advent, and those who come to worship during these weeks need to hear that God’s Not Done Yet!  Most of us whimper in the dark.  Our comfort is in hearing that day is almost here.

God Bless Us, Every One                  Horace Brown King

My thoughts on upcoming Scripture readings can be found every Tuesday on Facebook.