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Oh No!!  The seat of my good summer weight suit is getting discolored and thin, and a few of the seams look a bit wobbly.  But I’ve had it for only six years, my Egyptian-made, Italian-named gray suit!  I thought it would be the last I’d ever need, and now it’s wearing out!  I’m not really surprised:  LOTS of my stuff over the years has worn out.  My favorite car, a 1968 Malibu 8 cylinder hardtop.  Several cats & dogs.  Cardigans & loafers.  “Change and decay in all around I see; O Thou who changest not, abide with me.”

Readings for this weekend are about things that become worn AND about those which endure.  Don’t get caught up in trivial nostalgia about The Good Old Days, but help your friends welcome the positive changes which we believe the Creator is providing…  We continue to hear from Hosea (11:1-11), portraying YHWH’s self-musings.  “The more I called them, the more they went from me….[Therefore] the sword rages in their cities, it consumes their oracle-priests, and devours because of their schemes….[Yet] my heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.  I will not execute my fierce anger…”  Israel continued to indulge in idolatry, to their own disaster.  Hosea can be endorsed for presenting a non-vindictive, always-hopeful God, frustrated with the non-essential baggage carried by immature progeny.

The Letter to the Colossians continues to address the ongoing notion that faithful living is dependent upon formulas and propriety more than the knowable intimacy of God through Christ.  “So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above (sic), where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” (3:1)  Some things distract us from our holiness:  fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed; anger, wrath, malice, slander and abusive language.   These not only demean Creation, but dissipate our energies:  they may pleasantly release adrenalin, but the good feeling soon passes.  So what ARE the “clothes of the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator…”? (3:10)

“Take care!” Jesus said.  “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed;for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” (Luke 12:15)  What radical talk!  Then he told a parable (vv. 16-21) about a successful fellow whose main worry was in storage of all his stuff.  But he died, and “the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”  Again, the fault wasn’t in investments, but in their accompaning distractions.  David J. Schlafer offers, “Distractions occlude clear discernment and lead to choices and commitments that are often tragically foolish….What does it mean to be ‘rich toward God’?” (FEASTING on the WORD, C 3:315)

People today can’t hide from the care of their things.  Some have tried to live at Walden Pond, or on a pole in the desert; some hermitages can be safe havens–for a while.  But most of us have to live in a material world, even as we decry it.  How, then, to manage our resources so that God and Creation are lifted up?  How can I redistribute my wealth as a worshipful sacrifice through Jesus?

God Bless Us,Every One                 Horace Brown King

My thoughts on scripture passages prescribed for the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this space on Facebook, or at horacebrownking.com

This weekend would be a great time for the with-it preacher or class leader to talk about Zombies!  After all, many of our acquaintances drag their way through the week like The Living Dead; those who multi-task have the opportunity of dying regularly and often!  They walk among us.   There’re lots of movies, comics and sit-coms around to spin and reinforce gripping horror…do the forces of Good/Life always win?  (Will I preach about Zombies?  Not a ghost of a chance.)

Hosea 1:2:10 begins our journey into the Absurd.  Although it’s probably too long to read in entirety,  your hearers should be encouraged to read the whole story , through chapter 3.  This is scripture because it’s an analogy of how God continues to love us to life, despite our death-courting habits.  A great story: Hosea is told to marry a whore.  Three children are born–maybe Hosea is the father, yet maybe not–and are given names which are in themselves messages to the people.  “God sows” comes first, and is quickly followed by “Show no mercy” and “Not My people”.  Bitter days!  God is an offended ruler, a betrayed husband and a disappointed parent.  The People of God have become unfaithful by their worship of idols, their alliances with non-Jewish nations and their involvement in shady materialism.

As we stand with heads hung, embarassed and shuffling, there comes a Holy Word from St. Paul, Colossians 2:6-15.  “When you were buried with [Jesus] in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.  And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands.”   The old contract which indicts our failures was nailed to the cross, and a covenant of Life bursts from our death. Richard L. Eslinger says that “the old Egyptians within us lie dead in the sea.  But we Israelites now come up out of the water freed from bondage to sin and death, forgiven and healed.” (FEASTING on the WORD, C 3:285)

Luke’s Gospel (11:1-13) is a three-for-one teaching on prayer.  Each segment could be lifted up by itself, yet together they offer a continuity which courts insight and imagination.  Segment One is The Lord’s Prayer,  a formula which has endured in intimacy through the centuries.  Segment Two is the parable about the persistent friend who beats on the door until his need is met.  Segment Three seems more in continuity with our thread of a Loving Parent who rescues us from a living death:  “if you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask?”

Our society may be dead in the water.  Many individuals drag through their days without claiming the wonder therein.  Senior church-members take a grisly pleasure in the perceived death of their congregation.  The audacious news for today is that God still lives despite and beyond our perverse mortality!  I’ve gotta believe that I’m not on track to being a Zombie!

God Bless Us, Every One                      Horace Brown King

My ramblings on lectionary readings for the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this space on Facebook, or at horacebrownking.com

Like it or not, Globalization is very much with us.  A world economy shakes when upsets in China or Britain change their buying and selling.  Immigrants & refugees are an issue ‘way outside of the Middle East.  Instant communication informs us of civil abuse or military bullying, shootings and kidnappings even as they happen.  Some think that walls will help us define ourselves…but that didn’t work for Hadrian, the Chinese or Berlin.  Scriptures read this coming weekend will address diversity and injustice while looking to Christ for mutuality.  Uh Oh–looks like a three-point sermon is coming up…

Amos (8:1-12) begins with a prophetic vision of a basket of summer fruit:  fresh and juicy now, but soon to turn soggy and rotten.  He chastizes merchants for using false balances and selling grain with the “sweepings” in it for added weight.  They “trample on the needy and bring to ruin the poor of the land”; therefore watch out!  For such injustice, the natural world will turn upside down and God’s word of comfort and care will disappear.  It’s not hard to see that the quest for riches, power & prestige hasn’t changed since those days.

BUT…(Point 2 should always feature “But”, and interpose Grace into Hopelessness.)  But God has sent “the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15-28) to restore the brokenness of the people.  “In him all things hold together.”  We can’t sweep ancient divisions under the rug and pretend they’re not there:  they still will be.  BUT we and the Colossians are reminded that even WE can find a restoration of Wholeness by Christ.  This inclusion is one of the most amazing mysteries of the Church’s all-encompassing embrace!

The Gospel reading is brief and to the point (Luke 10:38-42):  Mary & Martha are wired differently, yet are out to serve and please Jesus.  Some will compare their vocational choices, but that’s unfair.  Others will remember that true discipleship involves both charitable work AND contemplation.  Or were Mary & Martha corresponding sides of ONE person trying to multi-task, with accompaning frustration?  Jesus accepted the gifts of  both sisters in the integrity in which they were given…and, of course, invites us to likewise include The Other(s) just as she is.

There are days when I crawl into a corner, overwhelmed with injustice both ancient and new.  But the writer of Colossians keeps coming at me, reminding me that Christ rebuilds our shaky dreams and restores our brokenness.  Holiness is experienced in many ways, some of which I haven’t even heard of…and I’ll try even today to apprehend this Holiness in others who my many prejudices disdain.

God Bless Us, Every One!                    Horace Brown King

My musings concerning lectionary readings for the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this space on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com

Okay, boys & girls, our new word for today is MAKROTHUMIA, a term I remember only dimly from long ago.  Wm. Barclay translates it “patience with people”; my own poor Greek sees it as “the greatest possibility”.  “It is the quality of mind and heart which enables us to cope with people in such a way that their unpleasantness and malice and cruelty will never drive us to bitterness, that their unwillingness to learn will never drive us to despair, that their folly will never drive us to irritation, and that their unloveliness will never alter our love.  Makrothumia is the spirit which never loses patience with, belief in and hope for others.”  (The New Daily Study Bible, Colossians, page 127)  Boy, do I need to practice seeing the greatest possibility!!

Readings for Sunday begin with a remembrance of Amos (7:7-17), who traveled from his farm in the South Kingdom (Judah) to confront the Northern Establishment (Israel) with YHWH’s displeasure at rampant injustice.  His vision was of God with a plumb line, seeing whether the foundations were straight.  Builders will know that if the foundation is out of plumb, subsequent stories will become more ‘n’ more crooked.  A plumb line points directly to the center of the earth.  Amos called the northern king & prophet to discover this center, to aim for the greatest possibility.  And we should listen, too.

We’re never told exactly what the great Colossian heresy is, which Paul or his team addressed (1:1-14).  But it seems to have had something to do with Needing More than Jesus:  perhaps special rituals & liturgies, proper attire and food laws.  Probably bans playing cards, drinking & dancing…  The passage asserts that hope in Jesus leads to a transformed and holy life:  “Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it…”  May we Colossians  reflect the beloved community by acknowledging the greatest possibility in all.

The Gospel is Luke’s grand telling of the Good Samaritan parable, 10:25ff.  Having a dialogue with an honest seeker about “Just who IS my neighbor?”,  Jesus lifts up the unexpected hyperbole of a Samaritan (UGGH!) who becomes the instrument of mercy for the wounded.  Neither of these actors were judged better or worse:  we know nothing about their worthiness or background.  Yet the merciful neighbor was the Samaritan, who saw the greatest possibility in the beaten one.  And, of course, Jesus pointed out the greatest possibility in that awful Samaritan…

O yeah, from the depth of my cynicism I need to pray for makrothumia.  Overwhelmed by headlines and conversations with dweebs who Just Don’t Get It…how can I learn to see the greatest possibility??  Bishop Woodie White, in a recent issue of THE INTERPRETER, quoted William Sloan Coffin:  “Hope is a state of mind independent of the state of the world.  So, if your heart’s full of hope, you can be persistent when you can’t be optimistic.  You can keep the faith despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing has the evidence any chance of changing.  So while I am not optimistic, I am always hopeful.”  Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.

God Bless Us, Every One                              Horace Brown King

My thoughts about scripture readings for the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook, or at horacebrownking.com