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As an Old Preacher, my life for the last fifty-plus years has been driven by the words I’ve written & spoken.  As a would-be sage, I wonder if any of such words have come to roost in the minds & souls of those I’ve touched.  Late-night turbulence brings my alter ego, who reminds me that I’m not particularly important, so why should anyone mark  my rants and outbursts.  Daylight calls me once more to the awful realization that phrases I offer to harm or heal call me to accountability both to God and to the greater community surrounding.  Scripture passages for this weekend slap me for my ignorance.  You can listen in, if you’d like…

Jeremiah 15:15-21 is particularly troublesome:  the prophet laments the limited results of his hard and faithful work in behalf of God.  And God answers (v.19),  “If you turn back, I will take you back, and you shall stand before me.  If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall serve as my mouth.  It is they who will turn to you, not you who will turn to them.”   Utter what is precious?  But I’m a teller of jokes, a buffoon FULL of worthless words!  Is this why my acquaintances welcome me indifferently, but hope I’ll go away soon?  Have I anything “precious” to share with others?  I need to pull ‘way back…

Ah, well, enough about me.  Paul, in Romans 12:9-21, gives LOTS of possible precious moments:  Let love be genuine; be ardent in spirit; be present in suffering and persevere in prayer; extend hospitality….and one especially for me, “do not claim to be wiser than you are.”  This passage continues to be the mission statement, our vision for Christian living.  Ben Franklin suggests that when you have such a list of virtues, practice just one each week–and by the time you get to the bottom, you’ll have to start again from the top!  Yep…

The Gospel remembers the humanity of Peter as he responded to Jesus in behalf of all of us:  “God forbid it, Lord!  This must never happen to you.” (Matthew 16:22)  This was the same guy who shortly before this had confessed Jesus to be the Christ!  Here was an ambivalence of words which Jesus respectively affirmed and rebuked, those which were earlier categorized as “precious” and “worthless”.  I can’t say anything about Peter:  he’s ME.

So I guess I’ve gotta refine my speech, concentrating on the precious and abandoning the worthless.  This is hard, since my whole life is recognized for the trivial and the silly.  Maybe with God’s help I can yield that which is meaningful, instead of rushing up to folks with my latest pun…  Lord, help my words of today to be sweet and tender; tomorrow I may have to eat them!

God Bless Us, Every One                           Horace Brown King

My wrestling with scripture texts for the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com

New students at Hogwarts School of Magic are assigned to one of the four houses– Gryffindor, Slitherin, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw –by the discernment of the Sorting Hat.  It may simplify the old question of “Who Am I”;  I wish I had one of those hats!  Scriptures for this weekend address the concept of Discernment, and may help us affirm Who Jesus Is and, on the way, Who WE Are.

Isaiah of Babylon speaks to the remnant of Israel in Exile.  These are conflicted folks: the elders are nostalgic for “the old ways, the old country”, their memories polished and gladdened by the passing of years; and a newer generation accustomed to the relative glitz and glamor of the metropolis.  “Listen to ME”, Yahweh calls (Isaiah 51: 1,4).  Those who pursue righteousness will see justice as a beacon to all nations.  A beacon is  a non-moving light mounted on a recognizable location which re-established direction when clouds confuse the traveler.  Despite the storm, Yahweh’s salvation will be forever, “and my deliverance will never be ended.”(v.6)

St. Paul calls the exiles among his contemporaries to “be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God–what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)  This discernment of God in our midst will lead to non-conformity:  standing for ethical integrity when everyone else is being naughty.   This can be tough:  discernment probably will set us up against friends and neighbors, family and peers.  Psalm 138 reminds us that “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve me against the wrath of my enemies; you stretch out your hand, and your right hand delivers me.”

“[Jesus] asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’   And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’  He said to them, ‘But who do YOU say that I am?'” (Matthew 16:13-15)  Well??  Much of the “secular” world affirms Jesus as teacher & healer, some as a true prophet–but do you really claim that he’s the CHRIST, Immanuel, God With Us?  As Peter makes this Credo on behalf of the Church through the ages, Jesus reminds him and us that such discernment is heaven-sent alone.

In the noise of Babylon, we need a Sorting Hat to separate the useful from the profane.  Even better, God’s persistent call –and invitation –reassures each pilgrim that the Faith Community is larger than we often think; and that a Holy Presence IS discernible however deep the valley.

God Bless Us, Every One                     Horace Brown King

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

In the side yard of the house in which I grew up was a large apple tree.  Too old to produce much fruit, it’s main purpose in life was to serve as a fortress for neighborhood boys.  Some days as many as 6 or 7  kids sat on or hung from its branches.   We tried to figure a way to build a Tree House, but our engineering skills were lacking.  Some of our friends had similar apple trees and HAD built tree houses.  But what’s this?  Crude signs announced, “No Gurls Alowed”.  Biblical explorations for this coming weekend address our private and public sins of exclusion–so relevant after the ugly event in Charlottesville.

The Hebrew Scripture lifts up Isaiah 56:1,6-8:  Yahweh brings even the “foreigners” to the Holy Mountain, will accept their offerings and sacrifices as well, “for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”   God actively GATHERS the outcasts!  No conversion, no spiritual surgery is required; everyone is sheltered under a salvation-promise to those who “maintain justice, and do what is right”.  Wendel W. Meyer offers that “a just and righteous response [to God’s gracious welcome] demands that we look deeply into the inner workings of our minds and hearts to identify and dismantle those internal mechanisms that cause us to demean and dismiss others”.  (FEEDING on the WORD, A 3:343)

St. Paul wonders aloud how his birth-people, the Hebrews, are going to fit into God’s scheme, since they have reservations about Jesus being Messiah. (Romans 11:1-2, 29-32)  He comes to the happy conclusion that “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable”, and that it’s impossible to fall from Grace!  (Most of us are glad to hear it, although some still cling to a hope of retribution.)   Martha C. Highsmith shares a few bon mots:  “In the scandal of grace, we receive God’s good gifts in spite of ourselves….the people’s rejection of God does not lead to God’s rejection of the people….Nothing we do can convince God to let go of us.” (ibid., p351ff)

Matthew’s Gospel (15:21-28) is the puzzling story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman:  she wanted her daughter’s demon to go away, but Jesus was reluctant to minister to a non-Jewish person.  After conversation, though, he does what she requests despite her “foreign” status.  Many sermons have been constructed to psyche-out Jesus/the situation/a teaching moment.  But the bottom line is that God through Christ heals and hears all people, in whatever circumstance. (This was probably shocking to Matthew’s traditionally Jewish audience!)

Caution!!  If you really buy into this, welcoming the outcast and the alien and the immigrant WILL change your life, no doubt about it!  There may well be a mosque built down the street.  The pink-haired kid next door probably will play hip-hop music.  Loudly.  The widow down the block will crowd the street with the vehicles of her hourly gentlemen callers.   AND some gurls could clamber up to your apple-tree hideaway…

God Bless Us, Every One                   Horace Brown King

My thoughts about prescribed lessons for the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com

“(Moan)  Gloom, despair and agony on me…     Deep dark depression, excessive misery…    If it weren’t for bad luck then I’d have no luck at all…    Gloom, despair and agony on me.”   Unless we’re blind and deaf, or a hermit, it’s pretty hard not to be dejected by the world around us.  Scripture readings for this weekend help answer our frustrated question of “God, where ARE you?”, and remind us to give our attention to the daily Presence which “over and around us lies”.

It helps us a bit to know that even Elijah, that holiest of prophets, had his own times of world-weariness (I Kings19:9-18).   Fearing for his life and disgusted with his soul, Elijah runs blindly to Mt. Horeb/Sinai, in an echo of Moses’ great experience with God.  In contrast to wind, earthquake & fire, God drew near him in the sound of deep silence.  Despite these awe-inspiring events, Elijah clings to his self-denigration:  “I alone am left…”  The God Who Draws Near reassures him & us that there’s still a remnant of the faithful left, and that holy-history still goes on.

Paul, writing to a Gentile audience in the Letter to the Romans (10:5-15), does a lot of quoting from Hebrew scripture, namely Deuteronomy 30.  “The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart.”  We don’t need to search heaven or harrow hell to reach the Christ, for holiness is in our own hearts and mouths!  This is good news because it frees us from heroic “mission”and spiritual acrobatics to just be receptors of the God who continues to break into our souls and claim divinity there.

There are probably a thousand sermons to be preached on Matthew’s famous story about Jesus walking on the water.  What springs out at me today is the idea that Jesus comes to the disciples even as their boat was battered.  Just when they needed him most, when matters had become more than they could handle, Jesus came to them!  And focusing on holiness, Peter could also walk on the water–until he noticed the wind, which reminded him that he was human, after all…  “What causes us to sink?” was the question from the lectionary group.  My response looked a lot like the Seven Deadly Sins; I’m painfully aware of my lead shoes.  Even in our diminished faith, Jesus is still nearby.

These two stories and Paul’s commentary give us some comfort in knowing that even the most saintly among us have their moments of terror and blindness to God’s Presence at hand.  Yet they move from despair to new strengths:  it seemed to the disciples as though the wind ceased!  And Elijah continued to trouble the adherents of Baal.  Happy ending?  Not entirely, for crosses & a chariot of fire await.  BUT  faith is renewed, weak hands are strengthened and God comes to all of us in critical times.  Thanks be to God!

God Bless Us, Every One                          Horace Brown King

{PS:  too good to omit.   A guy approaches a marina on the Sea of Galilee and asks to rent a boat for an hour or two.  “I have a boat,” the owner says, “but it’ll cost you $100.”  “A hundred bucks!!  Most places charge only $20 per hour!”   “Yes,” agrees the boatman, “but this is a very special sea, where Jesus walked on water!”  “I can see why,” remarked our hero.  “At those rates, he probably couldn’t afford a boat!”}

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

We humans are a suspicious lot.  If we see a sign “Free Puppies”, we figure there must be something wrong with them.   What’s the tricky motive behind giving away free food & clothing at the Thursday night’s Shepherd’s Supper?  We’ve seen the motto, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”.  The Scripture lessons we’re presented with this weekend fly in the face of our need to pay for everything, our need to control our independence even from God.

Isaiah 55:1-5 (and beyond) towers like Mt. Ararat over the Caucasian highlands.  Counter-cultural to both Testaments, it spins images of a prodigal God, a perfect gift and empowered recipients.  “EVERYONE who thirsts, come to the waters…come, buy wine and milk WITHOUT money and WITHOUT price!”   The only admission to the Banquet is a heart-felt yearning to be involved in it.  What does this say to Hebrew contemporaries of Isaiah about sacrifices and sin-offerings?  What does this say to present-day Christians about deeds of penance?  Or doctrines of Atonement??

Romans 9:1-5 is Paul’s lament that his fellow Hebrews are missing out on the gracious gift of participating in God through Christ.  He has “great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart” because the Israelites have come so close…  From them has come the Messiah who is over all–yet most have chosen to set the gift on a closet shelf.  Twenty-First Century  church people may likewise be dismayed at the widespread distrust of God’s Gifts.  If I accept them, will I relinquish my freedom to choose?  Will I lose my “independence”?  Yep.  Sorry, Frank, you can’t do it your way.

The Gospel according to Matthew (14:13-21) remembers the story about Jesus feeding a gigantic crowd with meager rations.  It takes place in “a deserted place” where many of the devout would feel uncomfortable; the wilderness reminds them of wandering homeless, rebellious and tempted.  “The desert raises profound questions about the source of human meaning and identity, security and sustenance.” (Iwan Russell-Jones, in FEASTING on the WORD, A 3:308)  The riff-raff is fed only because God loves them–and there’s still  twelve baskets of left-overs to distribute to all the Tribes!  The Disciples were thinking in commercial terms of buying provisions; Jesus spoke in radical terms of GIVING them what they needed…  Jesus told them to dream bigger, outside the box.  As the Disciples made the distribution they also realized their own roles in the Kingdom.

Once again Holy Writ stands over and against the prevailing wisdom.  It’s gonna be hard to relinquish our stores of provisions for old-age security.  In the desert we don’t think there’ll be enough to go ’round.  Besides, nice capitalists like us should always pay our own way, assuming we’re gods and don’t need the charity of  grace.  Yet the word still is shouted over the midway, “Come & Get It!”  Without money?  Without price?