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I’ve had quite a few church members and friends who’ve had various cardio-related problems.  Part of their recuperation was in going to rehab centers or gyms to swim, lift or engage in other heart-strengthening exercises.  The hopeful season of Advent is big on heart strength:  many of us affirm that God has come to bind up the captives and to set the prisoner free.  There are daily reminders that, despite the perceived chaos, the Lord of Life has come to renew our hearts  for kingdom citizenship.  Lessons for this First Sunday of Advent are designed to help the disciple acknowledge society’s brokenness AND to move beyond this into a hopeful expectation that God is already unfolding redemption all about us…

Jeremiah 33:14-16 can stand without too much explication:  the promise is even now being fulfilled, a Righteous Branch will spring up, and this Messiah shall preside over a golden age of justice.  “You must be joking, Jeremiah,” scoff the people.  “Can’t you see what a mess we’re in?”  Even though the Temple, that bastion of God’s Presence, is crumbling–and with it, all Judaism–Jeremiah calls the terror-stricken of all ages to see the future, to appreciate GOD’s future.  I yearn for his confidence.

Paul’s Epistle, I Thessalonians, is filled with the Good Speech so often called a Benediction.  I especially like 3:13,  “And may [the Lord] so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless…”  The Advent-watcher recognizes that the gems of holiness amidst the sawdust of human glory are heavenly inspired.  The salvation we claim to crave comes by allowing our hearts to be exercised from beyond ourselves.

What signs are recognizable today?  Luke’s sources remember that Jesus spoke about the powers of the heavens…those things that are ALWAYS stable…being shaken (Luke 21:25-36).  Some social and political structures NEED to tumble before the New Age of God’s Kingdom can be ushered in. The appropriate response of the Believer is to “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”  To “stand before the Son of Man” involves unfolding from our fetal position, to stop hiding and to skip forward into the cosmos!

Reuben P. Job has some good thoughts about this potentially exciting Season:  “We do get another chance!  The Season of Advent gives the church the opportunity to begin again.  Once more the full story of God’s grace is awaiting our discovery.  Once more we shake off the failures and victories of the past, and we get a clean page on which to write the story of our companionship with God in Christ….Advent marks the beginning of the church year and lays before us the pathway of faith for the year ahead.”  (A GUIDE TO PRAYER FOR ALL WHO SEEK GOD, p.20)  “The stories of Advent are dug from the harsh soil of human struggle and the littered landscape of dashed dreams.  They are told from the vista where sin still reigns supreme and hope has gone on vacation.”  (Gary W. Charles, in FEASTING on the WORD, C 1:3)  Yet may they strengthen your hearts…

God Bless Us, Every One                        Horace Brown King

My encounters with scriptural passages assigned to the coming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this space on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com

We Americans have gone for almost 245 years without a King; and officially, we don’t want one.  And yet we’ve been glad to hand over authority to Drill Sergeants, Football Coaches, Godfathers and egocentric Presidents.  We admire their absolute power, and nod sagely about their tyrannical actions.  So with mixed feelings we observe this coming weekend as the proclamation of Christ the King, or in more republican terms, The Reign of Christ.  This is the last weekend of the Christian Year, the celebration and acknowledgement that God has already accomplished the fulfillment of God’s Kingdom–even if we can see only glimpses here ‘n’ there….  So relax and give thanks!

Bernhard Anderson reminds us that Yahweh (according to Samuel) didn’t want Israel to have a king. “Israel was not a nation, but a PEOPLE–distinguished from the [other] nations….In becoming like the nations, Israel would be ‘secularized’ and thus no different from any other nation….Israel was not allowed to identify a human kingdom with the Kingdom of God, for Yahweh alone was king.”  (Understanding the Old Testament, pp.124-125)  Nevertheless, the people persisted; and suffered through the madness of Saul until “good” King David appeared, the pinnacle of the Israeli prosperity.  Thus in II Samuel 23:1-7 we have what are remembered as The Last Words of David:  “One who rules over people justly, ruling in the fear of God, is like the light of morning, like the sun rising on a cloudless morning, gleaming from the rain on the grassy land.”  Well, he tried; but his grandchildren screwed things up.  Royally.

Flash ahead about eleven centuries:  people still were subject to absolute power, this time seen in the Roman Empire (after some side-trips to Babylon & Syria).  John’s Revelation polemic (1:4b-8) includes v.6, “and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving {Christ’s} God and Father…”  Thus the Lord’s dominion exudes ultimate authority over all the “lesser” nations & empires, even in every-day matters.  But “Christ is not a tyrant; he is a lover.  He is not a power-mad despot we are forced to serve or else…”  (Peter M. Wallace, in FEASTING  on the WORD, B 4:331)  Our fealty is admiration and participation in faithful service.

The Gospel, John 18:33-37, is an archetypal intersection of the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Humans.  Pilate asks leading questions of Jesus, “So you are a king?”  Jesus tells him that his kingdom is not one of political terms; the world doesn’t understand this.  So a long time before Elvis, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, or the Lion King, the Empire Strikes Back with overwhelming power and intimidation.  Has the Dark Side won??  “‘What IS truth?’, said jesting Pilate, but would not stay for an answer.” (Francis Bacon)  Lucretius adds, “no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of Truth, and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below…”

Pete Peery concludes, “On this Sunday, the church proclaims Christ the King.  The church announces that it bows only to Jesus the Christ.  The church declares that it does not give allegiance to any other person, principality, or power [or flag?–HBK] claiming to be sovereign.”  (FEASTING, etc., p.335)  In all of this civil disobedience, as we continue to speak Truth to Power, we may be passionately patient as we receive God’s actions!

God Bless Us, Every One!  “…and be ye thankful”              Horace Brown King

My confrontation with lessons assigned to the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com

There seem to be two concepts of the End of the World.  Some will say that the “signs of the times”–war, poverty, a general overturn of the common good–are playing out right now, so get ready!  Others think that the End will never come, that God’s gone on vacation and that business will grind on as usual.  Scriptures looked at this weekend call the faithful to look beyond What Seems to Be to affirm that God is yet in control, however our human calendars try to confine the process of Creation.

The Old Testament is LONG, I Samuel 1:4-20-2:1-10.  Many lectionary schemes suggest that the second part, the Song of Hannah, replace the Psalter.  However you do this, each is important in seeing the usual order of things overturned.  In the first chapter, Eli the Priest sees Hannah’s spoken prayer for a child as drunkenness.  (Besides, everyone knows she’s “too old”.)  However, Samuel (“Asked of God”) is born, and the normal order of things is overturned.  And then, in a song copied by Mary in the Magnificat (Luke 1:46ff), Hannah announces this turnabout: “bows are broken, but the feeble gird on strength….[God] raises up the poor from the dust; [God] lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor.”  The Kingdom continues to grace-fully unfold.

The reading from the Letter to the Hebrews (10:11-25) continues to emphasize the permanence of Christ’s saving power.  “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.”  We can assume that the readers of this letter were quite sure that the Second Coming/End of the World was literally tomorrow.  Even if there’s a delay, “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful….all the more as you see the Day approaching.”  Look beyond appearances and trust God.

Although Mark’s Gospel (13:1-8) sets this scene in Holy Week, it pertains to almost any time.  The Disciples from the rural North are impressed by the apparent durability of the Temple, but Jesus cautions them that even that massive pile can soon be rubble.  There will be a lot of charlatans trying to cash in on the Second Coming scare–can you say “Jonestown”?  Jesus displays much less concern about the Last Days than some believers who crave the gnosis of “I know something you don’t know!”  He urges us, though, to look beyond appearances, “wars & rumors of wars”, to that which is unfolding in God’s Good Time.

Michael Pasquarello III sums it up nicely:  “As we near the end of the Christian year, God’s people are given a fresh vision of the new world that is on its way, a world that is not dependent up[on human efforts, plan, or strategies, but a world that is God’s gift.” (FEASTING on the WORD, B 4:299)  Today is not Doomsday, but another instance of God’s durability ‘midst the scrabble of human dust!  Thanks be to God!

God Bless Us, Every One                                     Horace Brown King

My encounters with scripture passages assigned to the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this space on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com

How many times I’ve heard folks explain their absence from worship with, “I’m just not good enough to go to church”!  Congregations are perceived, outside of our walls, as a collection of perfect people who’ve somehow cracked the code of ethical–or at least acceptable–behavior before a demanding and capricious Almighty…  These folks have convinced themselves that they’re just bad, that there’s no hope of godly acceptance.  Scripture for this weekend speaks hopeful words to those who’ve been cast away by their peer-groups and thus themselves.  Who SAYS we’re so bad??

Our opening story is that of Ruth, an outsider, one of those terrible people from Moab (3:1-5; 4:13-17).  Naomi, her mother-in-law and the real hero of the story, came up with a way to overcome the stigma of intermarriage so dear to Ezra & Nehemiah.  Boaz’ marriage proposal expanded the limits of the “People of God”:  now Ruth was embraced and acceptable.  Evidently God makes provision even for those–shudder!– Moabites.  (see Deuteronomy 23:3)    G. Malcolm Sinclair exclaims, “This is huge.  It shakes the powerful….It elevates the tender and dirt-real lives of the many.”  (FEASTING on the WORD, B 4:269)

In the Letter to the Hebrews 9:24-28 we re-visit the idea of Christ as High Priest.  The duties of that official included being advocate for the People, bad as they may have been.  Now, in Christ, we have a full-time advocate for our imperfections.  Does God need to be reminded of God’s parental love?  The community of believers to which the author wrote may have been endangered by “spiritual fatigue” and needed reassurance of their personal & corporate worth.  “The entire passage trumpets liberation to all bound by the burden of guilt arising from our failures to ‘measure up’ to God’s desires or even our own best intentions.” (Jane A. Fahey, op.cit.)  Our salvation has been established for good!

Mark’s remembrance (12:38-44) of the prideful “religious” and the poor widow who gave all she had should be seen as a contrast between the Ins & the Outs.  Jesus didn’t say that God loved one better than the rest; so neither should we.  It is noted, however, that the Establishment seemed to have lost its compassion en route to feathering its own nest on the backs of the poor!  Even knowing this, the widow gives everything she’s got to maintaining the tottering system.  So then does Jesus give everything he’s got to give eternal life to the dregs of humanity–present company included!

The widows in these stories came to abundance and acceptance even in their poverty.  Not only were they accepted by their neighbors, but especially by God, who gives a model for today.  Those who’ve separated themselves from worship with mis-placed guilt are reminded that a Holy Image has been implanted within them, an Image which is not to be cast aside.  Thanks to those who reflect God’s intent by accepting me and other sinners as recipients of holy love, despite our bad habits…

God Bless Us Every One                       Horace Brown King

My encounters with scripture passages assigned to the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com