“Lizzie, Cut It Out!”

I often sing the song about Lizzie Borden, who allegedly hacked her parents to death with an axe.  “Now it wasn’t done for malice, and it wasn’t done for spite, and it wasn’t done because the lady wasn’t very bright…She had always done exactly what her Ma & Papa bid; they said, ‘Lizzie, cut it out!’–and that’s exactly what she did!”  Not surprising, then, that the scripture for the coming weekend addresses the need to excise the unGodly from our lives.  Ginger Gaines-Cirelli reminds us that “our inward posture centers on God and resists all that is NOT God, resists all that is counter to the ways of God revealed through Jesus.” (CIRCUIT RIDER, August/Sept. 2018)

The Book of Esther needs to be read all at once, or at least condensed to the narrative.  The prescribed lesson is 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22; it may be more useful to select other verses, since the story won’t appear again this year.  But the core of it addresses the unwitting  genocide of the Jews by King Ahasuerus, ruler in Persia a few centuries BC.  Righteousness eventually won, and the arrogant Haman got a taste of his own medicine.  This is a folk-story, not a God-story: it makes a nice morality for those who persevere in their cause–and in the end, the evil was excised “and they lived happily (?) ever after”.

The last verses of James’ letter (5:13-20) call the congregation to the centrality of God’s power.  The sick and the sinful will be restored to wholeness, and the family will be healed by those who bring home the lost sheep.  There are some specific remedies for brokenness:  pray for one another, sing holy songs, engage and accept the virtues of the elders, share faith and folly with others of like mind and situation who are also on this spiritual journey.  Can we cut out the self-serving wisdom of the world and allow community building to replace it?

Jesus’ words in Mark 9:38-50 are unnerving, calling us to cut away the offending body-part which may separate us from God’s fullness.  If Jesus isn’t speaking in hyperbole, I’m in real trouble, having few working parts left!  Modern medicine, though, has been doing this:  if a patient has cancer, gangrene, or certain diabetic conditions they experience a surgery which saves their body even while unhealthy segments are removed.  This goes well with a previous call to ego-denial, announcing that the righteousness of God must be taken seriously above other rewarding quests.

Such surgery is always painful.  Giving up something we treasure frightens us, yet the resulting health of the Whole Body increases our prosperity of the quality of life.  Pearl Maria Barros  gives the benediction:  “The good news is that grace is also a way of being in the world.  Grace comes to us every time we ‘cut off’ our problematic behaviors by acknowledging them and then replace them with those that lead us closer to God and to each other.” (SOJOURNERS, September/October 2018)             “Slam the door and lock and latch it:  here comes Lizzie with a brand-new hatchet!”

God Bless Us, Every One                                  Horace Brown King

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