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Medieval mystics talked about The Cloud of Unknowing, that instance when our spiritual perception gets murky, so much even that we can’t find the pathway forward.  This, said they, is a great opportunity for the pilgrim to put her hand in God’s hand in order to navigate the journey even in perilous times.  Scriptures for the upcoming weekend acknowledge these occasions when we become paralyzed and afraid of plunging into the chasm nearby.  Saints are called to welcome such times as an exercise in trust.

In the Hebrew Scriptures we read the story of Elijah’s fiery transportation to heaven, II Kings 2:1-14.  Yet it’s really ELISHA’s story:  his persistence in staying with his mentor even ’til the Sweet Chariot swung low to separate them; his ultimate request for what gives Elijah power; and his breath-stopping question of, “Can I too part the Jordan?”  Here we relate–have there been recent times when we’ve realized that any power we wield is not our own?  Have we asked The Question, “Am I good/sincere/faithful enough to accomplish wonderful things?”  The Cloud is present for Elisha, who wonders “What Now?”

Paul’s letter to the Galatians severely contrasts the “works of the flesh”–fornication, strife, anger, quarrels and more–to the “fruit of the Spirit”, i.e., love, joy, peace, kindness…  If we try to walk through the Cloud by ourselves, we’re bound to trip over our own bad habits and lie wounded on the pathway.  Our hand in God’s will not necessarily eliminate our moments of worldliness, but will help us to name and avoid their perils.  The problem of these hazards is that they distort our humanness into caricature:  we crave intimacy, but fornication is a poor substitute; we naturally worship the holy beyond us, but idolatry falls flat in two-way prayer; personhood provides for passionate attachment to a cause, yet dissensions and quarrels are self-defeating.

Some will say that the Gospel, Luke  9:51-62, is too harsh.  Jesus does rebuke his disciples for even thinking about zapping some Samaritans; and he seems gruff when he told a would-be follower to “let the dead bury their own dead”, and when he made a caustic comment about “no one who looks back is fit for the kingdom of God”.  What he’s insisting upon here is URGENCY:  no dilly-dallying is acceptable.  Then are we expected to drop everything for discipleship?  The answer here is YES!  Here we go, on to Jerusalem and world-changing events; there’ll be no “next time, next year”.   Here’s that Cloud, again:  do those who would be disciples have the fortitude to reach up and hang on??

Sometimes when it’s cloudy I’d just as soon hunker down in my meager shelter.  Two songs sustain me on the way:  “I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now…I really don’t know clouds at all.”–and “Through the storm, through the night, lead my on to the light, Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.”

God Bless Us, Every One                             Horace Brown King

My encounter with scripture passages for the upcoming weekend can be seen every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com

I saw a tee-shirt which read, “THE HOKEY POKEY SHELTER: a Great Place to Turn Yourself  Around”.  Scriptures for the upcoming weekend are about those who try hiding, but God finds them anyway and sends them on their path.  I feel like hiding, sometimes.  Fatigued by daily instances of inhumanity and selfishness, I try to travel to the desert where there’s none of that…yet some hope keeps bringing me back.  I’m not an optimist by any reason;  I’m surprised that some small spark of my soul has survived to yearn for tomorrow.  F. Scott Fitzgerald writes that “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function….[to] be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”  (quoted in SIERRA, Jan/Feb 2019)

The Old Testament lesson comes through I Kings 19:  the Prophet Elijah has just shown up the prophets of Baal–and slaughtered them all!  Queen Jezebel was livid, and put a price on Elijah’s head.  Figuring that all was lost, he headed for the desert to die.  But YHWH evidently wasn’t done with him:  food & water was miraculously provided, and Elijah traveled “forty days & forty nights” (i.e., a long time) to Mt. Horeb/Sinai where he intended to shelter in the Lord.  But God, after some volcanic fireworks followed by the Sound of Silence, sent him back into the fray.  (But Lord, I’m TIRED with all this prophesying; you want me to WHAT?)

Paul reminds the Christians of Galatia that “we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed.”(3:23)  But now we are no longer in need of a governor or “disciplinarian”.  Our encounter with God has released us from the constraints of old fears and worries and social distinctions, and we can resume our rightful activity of people created in the reflection of God.  The mountains of Galatia (think central Turkey) would be good places to hide…still there’s the restorative voice of God which calls them/us to once again validate a holy community.

The Gospel is that of Luke 8:26-39, probably a familiar story of Jesus and the demon-filled man of Gerasa (see also Matthew 8 and Mark 5).  Besides the Hebrew-delighting story about the demons and the pigs–one of whose descendants moved to Amityville, LI–it’s a tale of the reclamation of a recluse which touches me.  The whole town thought him hopeless.  He himself thought he was hopeless.  But an encounter with God when he least expected it turned his life around!  Jesus sent him home to pick up the pieces and get on with his life.  Martin L. Smith describes him as an “unlikely hero” who his family and neighbors “must come to know…in his simple humanity and goodness, now that Jesus has set him free from the misguided need to perform as the ghastly icon of their downtrodden community…”  (SOJOURNERS, June 2019)

I expect that there’re many both inside and outside the Church who feel exhausted by the avalanches of distress, and who’ve considered some form of escape.  Perhaps these scriptures will extend some hope to the hopeless, and encourage me/them to still carry light into the darkness even though “winded by the chase”.  “Once more, dear friends–into the breach!”

God Bless Us, Every One                        Horace Brown King

My wrestling with the lessons for the upcoming weekend may be observed every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com

At the outset, I have to say that much of my thought today has been advised by Steve Shusset’s essay in HUNGRYHEARTS of Spring 2007.  He writes, “On the road of life there are innumerable occasions for us to stand at the corner of ‘Mystery’ and ‘Mundane’ and see God at work in the course of an an ordinary day.”  Trinity Sunday finds us at such an intersection:  the Spirit has been overflowing, and now we’re ready to plunge into Ordinary Time as we look at how the Church responds to Jesus’ call to free the captives, heal the sick and proclaim the Day of the Lord.

Proverbs 8 recognizes the constant presence of the Spirit of Wisdom “at the crossroads…beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals”.  “Wisdom’s fingerprints are allover God’s creation because Wisdom was there when everything in this world began.” (Richard Boyce, in FEASTING on the WORD, C 3:28)  There’s comfort for me in this reading:  it confirms that there IS a plan which is unfolding, a delight in the human race.

Romans 5:1-5 is typically Pauline in that it’s hard to digest without picking out the wonders contained in each phrase.  Verse 5,”God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us”, quantifies all that has gone before:  peace with God, hope of sharing God’s glory, strength for even the most severe trials…  In the Spirit there’s no “disappointment”–disgrace of shamefulness– but a merry anticipation of completeness as we await God’s next move.

The Gospel (John 16:12-15) is our final encounter for now with the benedictory words of Jesus at the Last Supper.  He speaks of “the Spirit of Truth” which will guide the still-raw disciples along the holy way.  This Spirit is not a loose-cannon (canon?), but declares a genuine direction as an integral part of God.  Even though we faithful followers can’t “bear” the fullness which the Resurrection brings to the unfolding Creation, the Spirit of Truth will help us to keep intact despite news of tariffs, shootings and munitions.

Any Mystery should be approached with a sense of humble reverence.  Yet today’s readings bring a bubbling buoyancy about being alive in the holiness of Today!  If there’s an antidote to society’s current sourness, it’s the Church-message that God is happily in charge.  Reuben P. Jobs concludes it well:  “No day can be ordinary when God dwells within.  Every day is seen as blessed and holy, filled with opportunity and grace for all who put their trust in God.”  (A GUIDE TO PRAYER FOR ALL WHO SEEK GOD. Upper Room Books, Nashville:2003)

God Bless Us Every One                   Horace Brown King

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

During the last dozen years, I’ve become progressively deaf.  Hearing aids help a bit, but I still hear conversations differently.  I often think of the aged cartoon guy who uses an ear-trumpet, but still has to say , “What?  Huh?”  I grow tired of asking for repetition, so a lot of garbled messages remain as such….I smile and nod, which is often the entirely wrong response.  People sitting in church pews this weekend have come to hear SOMEthing:  will a still-small voice be able to register amid the din of I.T. all around us?

Lectionaries will vary with their offering of the First Lesson; I’ve opted for the ones which refer us to the Tower of Babel (babble?) story, Genesis 11:1-9.  My image is that of a family around a campfire of an evening…the smallest girl asks, “Grandpa, why are there so many languages?”  The patriarch tells the legend about trying to build a tower to climb to heaven–to be like God–and its subsequent abandonment because the Heavenly Host caused the builders to speak to each other in different languages.  This part of the Creation Story is told as a warning not to let our human ego delude us into thinking we can do God’s Work.  Is this Original Sin?  At any rate, it belongs to the Pentecost celebration with the affirmation that only the Holy Spirit can dazzle us into understanding others.

Acts 2:1-21 is the centerpiece of Pentecost.  The wind and fire of God appeared among the people, and they began to speak in all the languages of the known world.  No longer a regional cult or sub-set of Judaism, the Christ story is now told in universal languages through the grace of the Holy Spirit.  (Compare the people of Babel, who tried to access the heavenly by their own limited skills.)  Pentecost tells us the good news that our divided humanity doesn’t have to remain separated by an inability to understand each other.

The Gospel of John, 14:8-27, still leans on Jesus’ farewell instructions to the Disciples.  Here Jesus announces the coming of an Advocate, the “Spirit of Truth”, who “will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.”  Jesus had earlier referred to “the words that I say to you”  as being heavenly in origin.  The Spirit which we acknowledge at Pentecost refreshes these “words” through each generation as we tell the stories even around the campfires  and carry their implications of service, prayer and active hope before an anxious and fearful people.

Even though we know these things, we’re caught in the middle.  TV commercials scream at us to buy bigger, flashier toys.  The jargon of digitalization convinces us that with the proper software, WE TOO may rule the world.  Aircraft carriers in the Gulf intimidate lesser nations into bowing before our supremacy.  (Has Babylon moved?)  We long for Pentecost, when “the Spirit moved among them and they no longer saw each other as people to be suspicious of, but as fellow children of God.”  (Douglas M. Donley, FEASTING on the WORD, C 3:4)

God Bless Us, Every One                               Horace Brown King

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