Crowned With Glory and Honor

“Humans are strange,” said one fly to another. “They build houses with nice ceilings, but they never walk on them!” We are a peculiar people, some of us more peculiar than others. Sometimes we ARE “crowned with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:5), but on other occasions our sins are scarlet and our motives purely selfish. Readings to be heard this weekend are aimed at those who think they’re the star of the show and that fellow-travelers are but bit players, if not robots. Maybe the robots also will be comforted…

The Book of JOB is prehistoric, it goes back to before writing and assumes a place as oral folklore. We’ll look at it for a few weeks, and try to relate to this guy who puzzled over the Universe and his place therein. The first two chapters introduce this blameless and upright God-fearer, and dwell on the Tempter’s contention that those with afflictions quickly turn from God. (Will they?) So Job lost his flocks, his standing in the community and his children/heritage… Yet he maintained, “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” Job becomes a poster-boy for all of us as we cultivate our illusions of righteousness. So the Universe doesn’t function with a system of reward and punishment? Is God sitting in the ashes with Job?

HEBREWS 1:1-4, 2:5-12 begins by re-introducing Christ as “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.” This understanding undergirds the entirety of the Letter, and stresses the timelessness of the Good News. Our faith-history is centered, then, in this central thread of seeing/ knowing God through Christ. The writer re-visits Psalm 8, “What are human beings that you are mindful of them….You have crowned them with glory and honor, subjecting all things under their feet.” This seems like a huge responsibility as well as an occasion for loving all the rest of the children of God!

MARK 10:2-16 puts me on tiptoe: what do we say about a cultural item like marriage, especially when remembered in the words of Jesus? Despite our good intentions, partners do grow apart, and often separate. When the world was small and we all shared the same cultural story, marriage could, I suppose, be considered “sacred”. But with an expansion of diversity, we recognize that not all social arrangements such as “marriage” are the same. Part Two of the reading confers “glory and honor” on children, valuing them as real parts of the Kingdom of God. The uniting thought here is about mutual respect and making a welcome for children–jelly-fingered and all–and sometimes grimy spouses…

There are a lot of ethical & moral points in these scriptures–yet the Whole is greater than the sum of its Parts. Reflecting upon these, we string together the concept of respect and we honor those the rest of the world rejects as unimportant. We struggle. We burn. We give God glory and honor, since we are made in God’s image.

In the process of unfolding, Horace Brown King

My Tuesday thoughts and fears are presented every week as we contemplate the scripture assigned to the upcoming weekend…at horacebrownking.com