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Summer is finally giving up, and it’s time to cut back the rosebushes.  I’m not good at this, either cutting too long or too short.  Mostly I’m too tender, wondering if the plants are screaming in pain.  But then I’m left with a springtime tangle of spent canes.  Most plants, I’m told, actually enjoy being pruned!  Sounds masochistic to me.  Next summer’s blooms are evidently dependent upon this fall’s zeal:  spare the rod and spoil the rose…  Passages to be read in your worship-space this weekend dwell with God’s being part of our lives even while said lives are falling apart.

Lamentations is a book we skip over between Jeremiah–its purported author–and the “minor” prophets.  Historically, this is a lament over the wreck of Jerusalem (and the Chosen People) after the Babylonian desolation.  A survivor speaks of this post-trauma community experience:  “How lonely sits the city that once was full of people!…like a widow…a princess…she weeps bitterly in the night….Her princes have become like stags that find no pasture.”  (1:1-6)  Can we deal with this awful change?  Will Zion Be Great again?  Things aren’t like they were when I was a lad…  Does Yahweh still have our back?

Generations later, there’s still trouble.  “Paul” is pictured as writing from prison to “Timothy”, a protege.  (Detour, if you will, to Bonhoeffer’s “Letters from Prison” and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”)  In the middle of the confusion there do appear signposts to mark the way (II 1:1-14):  Adhere to what you’ve been taught; know that Christ Jesus overflows with love; and “guard the good treasure entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit LIVING IN US.”  Keep your sunny side up, kid, “for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.”

My Pastor, Michelle Bogue-Trost, calls them the “duh-ciples”.  They certainly ask dumb questions–which is good, otherwise I’d have to ask them myself.  Luke 17:5-10 could be read in a snarky way, because they asked Jesus to “increase their faith”.  If they went to seminary with me, they’d have learned that Faith is from the INside, our response to the wonders of Grace.  But Jesus reassured them that even their microscopic smidgen of Faith can cause world-changing events  There’s no purpose in a briny mulberry tree; but there are many gigantic frontiers of justice, peace and the healing of the nations which could be credited to the incarnate faith community.  “Faith cannot be measured, only enacted”, says Kimberly Bracken Long in FEASTING on the WORD, C 4:144.

The immediate challenge to our hearers is a choice:  to mourn the “Good” Old familiar Days–or to embrace where our faith-journey is unfolding, even if the Old Guard should be imprisoned by our dream-dragons while the Young Turks blaze new trails.  I think I’ll go out now and cut back the rose bushes.  ‘Way back…

God Bless Us, Every One                         Horace Brown King

My thoughts on scriptures to be heard on the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this space on Facebook, or at horacebrownking.com

“What,” I asked Marie, “will Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Brien do after the election?”   But there’ll still be administrative silliness and inequity of justice to pillory when the current beasts are tamed and the earth tumbles through another spin-cycle.  Church-goers and other spiritual folks may turn to Biblical holy-history to renew a comforting perspective of Divine Tenacity:  the idols of each generation tarnish and crumble.  Don’t they…?

The weekend’s scriptures address idolatry in general and materialism in particular.  Jeremiah has been under house-arrest in 586 BC, ten years AFTER Babylon’s forces have taken leading citizens into forced exile.  Now the same troops are knocking at the gates AGAIN!  When will these troubles cease?  When will we “Be Great Again”?  Of all things!  In the midst of fear and despair, Jeremiah buys a field! (32:1-15)  His aide, Baruch, is instructed to keep the deed intact no matter what destruction occurs:  this story of long-range investment needs to be told to ensuing generations.  “For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel:  houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.”  In a way, Jeremiah redeems the Portion as an analogy of how God redeems the Whole.

The fatherly advice to Timothy (6:6-19) warns him away from idolatry, especially that of materialism.  “In their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.”  The better alternatives should be offered in contrast:  righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.  Christian allegiance is to God alone–excluding pension plans, the Alma Mater’s football team, family ties; and yes, civic government.  Boy, is this subversive!  But riches don’t have to be evil or self-serving:  those who have affluence “are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.”

Luke’s Gospel, 16:19-31, is the familiar story of the Rich Man & Lazarus, told to those who were lovers of money (see vv.14ff).  On the surface this seems to say that by ‘n’ by roles reverse, that what goes ’round comes ’round.  Not to be ignored is The Great Chasm, which can be crossed only by the bridge of Christ, and that only in THIS life.  The “haves” are to embrace justice while there’s still time…  Abraham pointedly tells the ones now suffering due to their carelessness with their stuff, You Only Live Once.”

Norman Podhoretz says that a Prophet is one whom God has lifted up to confront the idol(s).  Many prophets are needed to speak against our prevailing culture of “America First”, which is a way of saying “me-first and too bad about you.”  Jeremiah’s property transaction records are to be retained intact, even within the earthen vessel of the Church.  These are investments in the future, beginning here & now.

God Bless Us, Every One                          Horace Brown King

My thoughts about lectionary readings for the coming weekend can b e found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook, or at horacebrownking.com

LONG ago, an “established” preacher told us about three necessary ingredients of a sermon: identify the brokenness (sin, injustice); tell about Jesus, the alternative; and discuss how we might therefore live with integrity.  Ah, there’s the challenge!  How shall I live with integrity with one foot in the City of God, one foot in the City of Man (sic)?

Jeremiah’s oracle (8:18-9-1) could well be called a psalm of lament.  Here God moans over “the cry of my poor people from far and wide”.   There must be no balm in Gilead, no physician there; the health of God’s people has not been restored.  Present-day hearers must admit that at least SOME days our  culture leaves us feeling broken and frustrated.  Is there any plausible hope for both the victim and the victimizer?

Those of us who believe in predestination can write this off more easily:  “Some folks are gonna be like that.  We can’t do anything about it.”  Not so, says Paul to Timothy (2:1-7).  Here is an urging to include EVERYONE in our intercessions and thanksgivings!   Even kings and Those Who Would be King, crooked administrators and public servants  who feather their own nests!   God “desires EVERYONE to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”  !!

Jesus’ parable of the Crooked Manager–Luke 16:1-13–is troublesome.  Knowing that his employment is over, this guy makes friends for himself by altering their bills; AND the Rich Employer commends him!  Is there then virtue in shady dealings?  That’s the Way of the World, Jesus said, and are you any different?  Our economic systems often conflict with our ethics:  news stories and political campaigns celebrate job creation as the only value.  Unethical?  Insensitive?  Let someone else deal with that…

The Gospel is Good News because it presents a pro-active God who takes genuine interest in the well-being of Creation.  Not just in the National Parks, but on Main Street AND on Wall Street.  These readings seem to urge us toward faithfulness to a Holy Image built into us and all humanity…despite the rhetoric of wealth-at-any-cost.

God Bless Us, Every One                           Horace Brown King

My thoughts about Scripture readings for the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this space on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com

Summertime movies almost always deal with The End of The World.  Either by tidal waves, the nuclear rays of Dr. Evil, or the attack of aliens and/or sharks–things as we know them dissolve into terror.  It must be a universal phobia.  “Wars & rumors of wars” send the populace into a tizzy!  Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?  Or Mighty Mouse, or Captain America??   Some will listen carefully to the weekend scriptures: hoping for a word of Grace; or perversely reveling in God’s peevish response to a yet-imperfect humanity…

Jeremiah doesn’t paint a pretty picture (4:11-12, 22-28).  A devastating desert wind will scorch everything in its path,  repealing the Goodness of Creation.  The Wind of God which once brought forth Life and Order now becomes an agent of Holy Frustration, withering the fruitful land and driving away birdsong and shelter.  As Israel has rejected YHWH’s  generous purpose, so does a divine creative Word pull away from its prosperity.  “Because of this the earth shall mourn, and the heavens above grow black…”

The Timothy Letters present the passage of wise experience from an Elder (Paul?) to his wet-behind-the- ears apprentice.  We Old Guys often measure our worth, at this point of life, by the sagacity we can share with the Whippersnappers, whether they want it or not.  In I, 1:12-13a, “Paul” reminds Timothy of his own checkered past: “a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence”.   BUT (13b-14) “I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”  The Apostle “welcomes us into his heart through its broken places and fervently hopes that we see something of ourselves in desperate need of God’s grace through Christ.”  (Matt Matthews, in FEASTING on the WORD, C 4:67)  We are helped in telling our tale by the shared experience of those who’ve been waylaid by the Gospel and lived to tell about it….

Luke’s  account retells Jesus’ two stories about the finding of a lost sheep and also of a lost coin (15:1-10).  The immediate symbols are of a thorough God who searches high and low for the missing and presumed valuable.  The corollary is that this action restores the set to its original wholeness, and thus proclaims an intended Perfection.  Those who sit in pews or study-chairs are familiar with their quest for Oneness.  They have an inkling that “Sin” is a rip in the Web of Life.  Here is a proactive God trying time and again to mend the Holy Fabric which is Creation!  “Salvation” is a churchy and overused word which is really a Wholeness in and with God.  Thankfully, the Savior isn’t content with “close enough”.

My life falls somewhere between the Hallmark Channel and Sci-Fi’s End of the World.  By and large, I’ve experienced many Happy Endings!  A few church-people exult in saying, “See!  I TOLD you so!” when change and decay seem to be in charge.  And yet the overview of holy-history bears out God’s unwearied Presence, adjusting and searching and chasing these recalcitrant humans…

God Bless Us, Every One                           Horace Brown King

My thoughts about lectionary passages for the upcoming weekend can be found each Tuesday at this spot on Facebook, or at horacebrownking.com.