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OK, scholars–I lifted that phrase from Karl Barth.  He & I think that this is a description of Advent:  an invitation to dream along with God about the perfection which is foreseen and already well-begun through the Birth of the Christchild.  And so it’s a season of letting go previous disappointments, of being remorseful for the world-worship and feathering of our own nests–AND anticipating with hope the Ultimate Revelation provided in the Incarnation.  Lessons for this weekend affirm the nearness of God.

The stage is dark, although the curtain has long gone up.  Into a single spotlight steps the Prophet Isaiah, daring to sing words of refreshment to a yet-unseen cast.   Here (Isaiah 2:1-5) begins Advent:  an announcement of YHWH’s ambitious plan to convert armaments into farming tools, to change that which destroys life to that which sustains life.  Do we inwardly smirk at such baffling radicality?  We long for the peaceable kingdom; but can we believe it?

St. Paul prods a dozing Church to wake up, ’cause something BIG is happening!  “The night is far gone, the day is here!  Get dressed in Christ, and don’t worry about all your stuff!”  (Romans 13:11-14)  Every moment, Second Coming or not, is rich in possibility.  Even though crumbs of the dark remain (do they ever!), God is still running the whole light-board.  Joanna M. Adams suggests that “People justify for themselves the most outrageous behavior and callous disregard for the well-being of others…Why?  Because they do not believe any longer that anything is expected of them.”  (FEASTING on the WORD, A 1:17)  Do we not know what time it is?

Matthew remembers (24:36-44)  how Jesus turned aside the Disciples’ question about When ‘n’ Where–they just wanted to impress their relatives at the Thanksgiving dinner table.  “About that day and hour, no one knows.”  Good thing, too, else we’d be a bunch of reprobates gaily sinning right up ’til D-Day.  “To use the terminology of our raging times,…[this says] ‘Stay Woke!’  That is, be vigilant in violent times while adhering to hope.”  (Kenyatta R. Gilbert, in SOJOURNERS, December 2019: 48)  “Jesus’ coming brings to our expectant minds the essential nature of a God who wields love and salvation.  God always provides a way to secure such provisions.”

Tired and re-tired preachers tend to greet this Season by thinking, “Advent.  Again.  Well.”  Weary of sparking dim candles in dark towers, we wonder how to put a modern spin on this yearly quest…and lose ourselves in the bright busyness of revelry and charitable parties.  So of all earth’s pitiful beings, we who are confronted by these readings need to be challenged the most by them.  Believe it or not, there will be some in our pews who are hearing them or taking note of them for the first time!  Help my eyes to sparkle again, Lord, even as I read them yet one more time….

God Bless Us, Every One                            Horace Brown King

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

Many will skip over Christ the King Sunday.  We don’t know or tolerate the absolute power of royalty, although some countries maintain kings & queens as a nostalgic reminder of past glories.  Americans have celebrated a celebrity rock-star and an overgrown primate as “king”:  there must be some hidden quest to be in vassalage in our subconsciences.  Nevertheless, “on Reign of Christ Sunday we celebrate the fulfillment of the Biblical revelation of God in Christ”.  (Reuben P. Job, A GUIDE TO PRAYER FOR ALL WHO SEEK GOD, p.407)

Jeremiah 23:1-6 continues to speak God’s words of condemnation to the “false shepherds”, i.e. kings–perhaps Jehoiakim and Zedekiah–who have abused their power to the detriment of the People.  But now an immanent LEGITIMATE shepherd in the tradition of David is approaching the horizon.  God will round up the People from where they’ve scattered and restore justice and righteousness in the flavor of the Garden of Eden.  We continue to wait for this Messiah:  has this Kingdom begun?

An actual “garden” isn’t mentioned in Colossians 1:11-20, but Paul or his accomplice has written, “[God] has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of (his) beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”  The “power” of darkness is our own fear and insecurity; spectres & demons vanish in the Light of Christ.  Perhaps the Colossian Church was beset by dark and uncertain times.  Perhaps those in the pews this weekend are feeling likewise pressured.

The Gospel is a reprise of Luke’s crucifixion account, 23:33-43.  What jumped out at me was the conversation between Jesus and the “good” thief:  “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  And Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”  Paradise is a Persian term for the King’s garden/hunting ground–NO ONE got in there without a royal escort, or at least credentials from the royal family.  Much breath has been wasted debating when “today” is–but the idea of being Jesus’ guest in the already-blooming Garden is a most pleasing concept!

What dare we cling to in these dark times when all of Creation seems out of balance?   What mercies and prayers can the Church offer that may inspire those in the life-raft to trust that God’s Kingdom has budded?  “So committed, we are ready to face every eventuality of life because we now know the One in whom our life is found, redeemed, and kept secure.  Our radical trust is in the One who is completely trustworthy. Life in Christ is good and complete.”  (Job, ibid.)

God Bless Us, Every One                          Horace Brown King

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

The peripatetic life of a United Methodist minister!  Marie & I have lived in 9 different parsonages, and now in this pleasant double-house in our retirement.  Most of those places were very nice, although some needed attention.  For good or ill, weal or woe,  I’m grateful for these shelters from the storm and places to keep our never-shrinking pile of Stuff.  The weekend’s scriptures hopefully will be a reminder to the well-heeled that “Be it ever so humble, there’ no place like home”.  Or, as Bugs Bunny maintained, “Be it ever so crumbly, there’s no place like Rome”.  C’mon, Toto, I don’t think this is Kansas any more…

Isaiah 65:17-25 is aimed at those returning to Jerusalem from Babylonian Exile who gaze on the ruins of the Temple and say, “Nope; it’ll never be the same”.   To them God says, “For I am about to create NEW heavens and a NEW earth….Be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating.”  Human short-sightedness is no match for God’s joyous re-creation!  However bleak things seem, a productive and holy treasure is waiting just below the frost line.  The Peaceable Kingdom is ready to blossom, and no longer shall be heard the cry of distress.  This is a good place after all!

What shall we do with II Thessalonians 3:6-13?  The reader needs to be very careful not to extol the value of “work” to the point of discomfort to the retired, the disabled or the unemployed.  Here the savvy speaker can offer  many congregational opportunities for service and aid, reminding worshipers that prayers and social-media contact can be seen as meaningful “work” in God’s Kingdom–and that these endeavors can be a thankful exercise in responding to this Kingdom as a good place to live.  The Pauline author leans on the believers’ obligation, and also on the obvious fact that appreciation and ownership come through involvement in the community.

Luke’s Gospel, 21:5-19, can be terrifying!  Oh my, is the sky really falling?  This reader likes to emphasize Jesus’ words in verse 12, “But before all this occurs…”  Of course there’ll be wars & earthquakes & famine & drought–even climate change–but our worries are more immediate.  They (?) are coming for ya:  don’t worry about what to say, God’s words will be sufficient.  It’s still a nice place to live.

Beauty, they say,  is in the eye of the beholder.  Of course there are glitches.  And missteps.  And the ravages of accumulated years.  I’m trying really hard–with mixed success–to look past these as “normal” and to thankfully play whatever role is yet given me to enhance still further this Good Place.

God Bless Us, Every One                   Horace Brown King

My wrestling with scriptures assigned to the upcoming weekend can be observed every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com

I’m getting older by the day; but I don’t yearn for those “good” Old Days–cuz they weren’t.  Yet I can empathize with the many who look vainly for familiar landscapes, and despair when all they can find is ruins.  So scriptures for this upcoming weekend are meant to encourage those who wear a Faded Rose of Days Gone By, those who sift through rubble hoping to find viable heirlooms of a once-valid past which will never return again…

Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem lay in ruins.  When the Exiles returned from Babylon in 539 BC, they found no glory or splendor remaining in this central symbol of their Nation and Faith.  And here comes Haggai, urging them to build back better than ever (1:15b-2:9)!  Church restoration projects are HARD, and require putting to bed the Old at the same time imagining the New.  In 1969 I was assigned to a congregation considering such a thing; and being too young to know better, we did it.  There were plenty of times when we looked at the half-finished shell and despaired of surviving.  But even today, Embury UMC in West Scranton offers a worshipful space to  spirit-travelers…  God speaks through Haggai, “My spirit abides among you; do not fear.” The glories of this new temple would be as good as–even better than–the old temple of ancient memory.

The Second Coming of Christ is the central theme of II Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17.  As memory changed to tradition, the Thessalonians debated and speculated about When & Where Jesus would reappear.  How many needless and divisive conversations about this have been held by good people who’ve lost the imagination of a Creation yet unfolding!  Despite the gloom ‘n’ doom of those who “remember when”, the sky is NOT falling!  Is it not marvelous to preach a God who makes a way even though there may be only ruins surrounding?  By the way, Jesus may not look like you think you remember him…

Kenyatta R. Gilbert writes in SOJOURNERS, “In Luke 20 [27-38], the Sadducees pose a tricky question.  [Whose wife is the widow of seven brothers in the afterlife?]  Resurrection is not resuscitation or re-animation of the physical self; rather, according to Reginald H. Fuller, it signals the active work of a divine sovereign to bring about a complete psychosomatic transformation of the human body.  Resurrection is an absurd notion unless one’s faith-claim is premised on the assumption that the historical process is not theologically closed.” (November 2019)  The Sadducees honored only the Torah, the five books of Moses which begin our current canon.  They were unable to look past the Old Days to envision God’s continued creation.  Are there Sadducees today?

It seems that there are two basic choices: we can sit on the debris of how we remember our past–or we can meet new possibilities, anticipating that the Lord of Light will make things better and better.  “Jesus does not answer all our questions, though one of our fondest illusions is that he should.  What he does is point us to a God whose faithfulness to those whom God has called is immeasurable and inexhaustable, and in that faith-fulness we find enough to endure all that life and death will ask of us.”  (FEASTING on the WORD, C 4:289)

God Bless Us, Every One                      Horace Brown King

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