My Blog

Most of us have certain places where we remember something significant, perhaps an epiphany.  I’ve consecrated the apple tree in the yard of the house where I grew up, where I thought Great Thoughts in my boyhood; also the corner of campus where I proposed to my wife.  That special overlook of the Library balcony.  My first church.  It’s good to memorialize special spots where our lives have re-tracked.  Ancient Celtic hermits sought out and revered these Thin Places where God could be seen face-to-face. The lessons of this weekend remember sacred events and places where God has chosen to interact with people.

We’ve been looking at the Book of Beginnings/Genesis all Summer, to remember and acknowledge a holy hand in the lives of our spiritual ancestors.  Here in this 32nd chapter, we find Jacob the rogue and swindler returning to the land of his birth after many years.  He and his two wives–Leah & Rachel–and eleven children pause at the Jabbok wadi, a seasonal stream flowing into the Jordan.  As he spends the night in worry, he wrestles with God and receives a new name:  Israel, translated by some as “God Rules”.  Here is a Thin Place where the Old gives way to the New.

St. Paul also wrestles with his God-problem in Romans 9.  As we read the first five verses, we recognize Paul’s grief that so many of the Israelites were missing the gracious gift of Jesus as the Christ.  He remembers, undoubtedly, the Thin Place on the way to Damascus where his own life was entered and changed. So many of us remember our own world-changing theophanies and grieve that our children or friends don’t seem to have had such experiences.  Not giving up, Paul continues to place his kinfolk in God’s hands; why then should we not tell our own stories and the stories of the faith?

Matthew’s Gospel (14:13-21) continues to tell us about the gracious feeding of 5000-plus in “a desolate place”.  Was the place itself desolate, or the people involved?   People have a habit of becoming desolate, and that’s where Grace often finds them!  A greater miracle than even the displayed abundance was the willingness of God to meet and refresh the crowd in this thin place.  Matthew’s audience cringed away from the wilderness, remembering their refining at Sinai and also Jesus’ temptations.  Can God break in even in the suspicious desert?   So why wouldn’t God break into the times when I’ve been arid and alone??

Thin Places are alternatives to the busyness of living.  We can’t be there ALL the time, as we’ve learned from hermits.  After the mountain-top refreshing we have to return to level ground. But we’ve been changed, and need to tell the others all about it.  Where are those holy spots where the Hound of Heaven has prevailed and re-named you?  Where have you been called aside by the Burning Bush?

In the process of unfolding,                    Horace Brown King

Read about God’s confronting me with scriptures assigned to the coming weekend every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com

Marie and I have enjoined, from time to time, in dabbling in Antiques (and Junque).  Trouble is, we never had enough storage or sales-space to get involved in furniture; so we settled for small stuff–cups ‘n’ saucers, miniature paintings, jewelry…    Some things are delightfully magnificent, while others feature minor enchantments for which you need to look.  Scripture this week addresses the daily pleasures which often times pass by unnoticed.  Can God be seen in the little details?

Why is Genesis 29:15-30 included?  This is the story of Jacob working seven years for Rachel’s father as a dowry; and it turned out that his bride was LEAH, the older and less attractive sister.  No matter; Jacob worked ANOTHER seven years to pay for Rachel, so he married both sisters…Good God!  The story is important in that it fills in the narrative of holy-history with the children of Abraham.   Some will try to talk about Jacob’s faith in Laban–but this is weak.  Chicanery seems to have been a gene in that family:  the pool is getting shallow.

Romans 8:26-39 reflects Paul’s faith that no matter how often the sky falls, no matter how distorted life gets, God can’t be beaten.  “In all these things [hardship, distress, persecution, death itself] we are more than conquerors through [Jesus] who loved us.”  Pandemic-quarantined persons are feeling very separated from their friends, their work-places and life as it once was; yet God in Christ prevails.  This passage is a firm “NO!” to the grief and chaos all around.   “We shall overcome someday…”

The Gospel (Matthew 13:31ff) continues the telling of Jesus’ parables.  “The kingdom of heaven is like…”  A mustard seed.  A pinch of yeast.  A discovered treasure.  A pearl of lustrous perfection.  You know–little everyday things.  He’s telling us to envision God in every nook ‘n’ cranny:  if God can use mustard seeds and a smidgen of yeast to grow the kingdom, we need to keep our eyes open for the common and perhaps neglected.  These parables demand a decision to honor the “lost and the least”.  Who knows?  Maybe you’ll discover a treasure!

In Ordinary Time, we read of how Jesus honored ordinary things.  The extravagant miracles are nice, of course–but God’s Kingdom is likened to everyday material.  Maybe the Kingdom is hidden in the homeless and dirty grief-paralyzed person down the street.  Maybe the Kingdom is hidden in YOU!

In the process of unfolding,                                   Horace Brown King

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

I’m not a patient guy.  Just ask the driver ahead of me at the light at the intersection.  Just ask my wife!  (No, better not)  I can’t understand why the “evil” people scattered among us don’t get their comeuppance.  Everywhere I turn, headlines and breaking news describe plagues & pandemics, famine & drought.  Environmental and health laws are being discarded right & left!  Economic “recovery” seems to be more important than common-sense quarantine.  Materialism, selfishness, arrogance…  O Lord, break the heavens and come down and straighten out Creation!  Where IS God, and for what does God wait?  So these lessons for the weekend are for me; you can listen in if you want to.

The Genesis story, 28:10-19, is about Jacob–who was not a good guy.  He had coerced his twin brother Esau into trading his right as first-born for a dish of stew; he had tricked his blind father Isaac into giving him the family blessing; and now he was on the lam from their wrath to find him a wife among his kinfolk.  Why didn’t lightning strike him dead?  God musta seen some possibility in him:  in his vision of the great “ladder” filled with God’s messengers coming and going, God promises Jacob the land and many descendants:  “I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you”.  Evidently God was still at work.

In Romans 8:12-25, St. Paul addresses our wait “with groaning”:  “if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience”.  Well, I want to see NOW what’s coming, I’m ready NOW for the ultimate harvest.  “What you see is what you get”  has been my motto.  But transformation is rarely an overnight event:  growth happens sunrise/sunset.  “In some instances the one who hopes may be the only one with the courage to endure the suffering of the present.” (David M. Greensaw, in FEASTING on the WORD, A 3:256)  And, “This is an era in which Christians…can understand ourselves to be an alternative community to the destructive ways of life embraced by the larger culture.”  (Blair Alison Pogue, op.cit., page 259)

Jesus is still telling parables in Matthew’s Gospel, 13:24-30.  Some evil enemy has scattered weed-seeds in the well-started field of a wheat farmer.  These weeds even look like the Real Thing; but they’re not.  “Let’s rip ’em out today, before they get any bigger and out of control.”  No; no, let them grow, and don’t disturb the good stuff.  My human side rebels:  how can God stand all this imperfection??   Evidently God is still at work, hoping against hope that more good than evil will come from this field.

One of the roles of the Church is to polish diamonds in the rough.  Most of us have our success-stories of the Broken Ones who’ve become Whole.  These lessons each demand of us that we not rush God, who’s incrementally refining and reclaiming what my impatience has called Junk.  Even the weeds…

In the process of unfolding,                   Horace Brown King

My pondering over scripture readings assigned to the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this spot on Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com

I’m kinda miffed at AGWAY.  I bought seed packs from them in the Spring–sunflowers, zinnias & bush watermelons–and they’ve yielded (so far) two scraggly zinnias, no sunflowers, and only one watermelon bush.  Did I goof, somewhere, or were these seeds somehow defective?   I guess I’m glad for whatever DOES grow; but it seems as though I shoulda received a little bit better deal.  (I can report that my crabgrass and bindweed are thriving!)  This weekend’s lessons are for pondering our plantings–and those of God.

The story of Jacob & Esau is shared with us from Genesis 25 beginning at verse 21.  Their mother Rebekah had all sorts of labor problems, for “the children struggled together within her” and finally were born in tandem.  My conjecture is that “they” were opposite sides of Isaac & Rebekah’s blessing, the Yin & Yang of parenthood.  Whatever,  the elder macho guy sold his  “birthright” to the younger stay-at-home brother, thus launching another episode between the Hebrews (Jacob’s descendants) and the surrounding peoples of Esau’s children.  Jewish readers of the Torah would consider Esau’s clans as crabgrass in the lawn, thorns in the harvest.  What races of “Them” do we consider expendable, in need of being excised?

In Paul’s heavy treatise on Ethics, his Letter to the Romans, we read of his concern for separating the “flesh”–tendencies to make our own gods/values–from the spiritual.  In other words, weeding our gardens.   “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on things of the Spirit.” (8:5)  Again, the Yin-Yang model which exists in humanity; is there still this dichotomy today?  Living ethically with God seems to be a deep-down question within each church-goer.  CNN & MSNBC devote their entire programming to this.

Matthew’s Gospel, 13:1-9, remembers when Jesus told the parable of The Sower; and later explained it (vv 18-23).  My friends at our Lectionary group think that the Sower is US:  we scatter the Word of Life to all we meet, regardless of whether we think that it will grow and be received there.  Good point.  But I’d like to imagine the Sower as God, freely shoveling Grace to all corners of the world and hoping for a harvest.  All of this seed is good and bears the potential for growth; it prospers as the soil is prepared.  Each hearer needs to name their own thorns…can they be eliminated?

So sing along with me this little ditty from THE FANTASTIKS:  “Plant a carrot, get a carrot, not a brussels sprout; that’s why I like vegetables, you know what you’re about…But if your issue doesn’t kiss you, then I wish you luck–for once you’ve planted childeren you’re absolutely stuck!    Every turnip green, every kidney bean, every plant grows according to the plot; while with childeren, it’s bewilderin’, ‘cuz just as soon as you think you know what kind you’ve got IT’S WHAT THEY’RE NOT!  So life is merry if it’s very vegetarian:  a man who plants a garden is a very happy man!”   Aahhh…!

In the process of unfolding,                                   Horace Brown King

My reaction to the Scripture readings of the upcoming weekend can be found every Tuesday at this space of Facebook; or at horacebrownking.com