By Sit
empty cupped hands
outreached in supplication
for the daily bread
that feeds and sustains you.
Everyday you must
acknowledge your own hunger,
acknowledge your own emptiness,
acknowledge your own longing…
in this weakness
lies your strength.
Freed from all you cannot do
you are released to do what you can
and it begins when you sit
empty cupped hands
outreached in supplication.
Category: Theological Animation
The Cornerstone to the New Social Order
We continue our every-Sunday-celebration of the 30th anniversary of Binding The Strong Man, Ched Myers’ political reading of Mark’s Gospel.
The story of the Syrophoenician woman bears certain affinities with its counterparts in the Jewish cycle. She, like the hemorrhaging woman, demonstrates inappropriately assertive female behavior that is vindicated. The parallel with the Jairus story goes beyond the common petition on behalf of ailing daughters at home. Both these episodes articulate feeding-symbolics that are carefully correlated to Jesus’ feedings of the masses in the wilderness. Jesus’ somewhat anticlimactic instructions in the aftermath of his dramatic raising of Jairus’s daughter were for those present to “give her something to eat” (Mk 5:43). In like fashion, Jesus instructs his disciples in the first feeding to “give the crowd something to eat” (Mk 6:37). Similarly, Jesus tell the gentile woman that “the children must first be satisfied” (Mk 7:27 chortastenai)–which satisfaction has indeed already been reported in Mk 6:42 (“they all ate and were satisfied,” ephagon pantes kai echortastesan)! This is how Mark prepares the way for the fulfillment of the Syrophoenician woman’s request–the feeding and satisfaction of the gentiles–which will indeed shortly take place (same verb, Mk 8:4,8). Continue reading “The Cornerstone to the New Social Order”
Wild Lectionary: Today, Know This
16th Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 18(23) B
Proverbs 22
By Robert O. Smith
Proverbs of the elders. Received wisdom. The common sense of the ages. Men speaking to men, warning of loose women. Disjointed aphorisms, speaking against the Other, made know to us today.
One Broken Body is Enough
From Rev. Sonny R. Graves, pastor at New Spirit UCC, who posted this on Facebook last week during a pilgrimage to the U.S./Mexico border with the Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans. Sonny draws from the writing of Mary Luti.
Early morning over here in Arizona. The sky is lighting behind the range of majestic blue outline of the mountains. The summer night is warm, deep, and dry just like this Californian loves it to be. The systemic racism and anti-immigrant violence of my country and government further revealed here is feeling beyond words right now. It is heartbreaking. And we have been reminded many times throughout the trip it is also our responsibility that if our privilege or ignorance or unknowing has been disturbed – it is up to us to change it together. Continue reading “One Broken Body is Enough”
Sister Anna: A litany for worship inspired by the Prophetess Anna
By Ken Sehested
Sister Anna. Last-named prophet in Holy Writ, more
likely listed among household property and livestock.
When did your Temple-dwelling vocation begin?
What sustained your twenty-four-seven vigil
for all those years? Continue reading “Sister Anna: A litany for worship inspired by the Prophetess Anna”
Attacking Their Ideological Foundations
We continue our every-Sunday-celebration of the 30th anniversary of Binding The Strong Man, Ched Myers’ political reading of Mark’s Gospel. This week, the lectionary gifts us with an episode from Mark’s Gospel where Jesus deals with obstacles to an integrated community.
This episode resumes Mark’s polemic against the Pharisaic movement, begun in Mark 2:15, over the issue of the purity code as it defines the propriety of table fellowship…The issue at hand is maintenance of strict group boundaries, represented here by practices of ritual purity and dietary restriction. The Pharisees defend the purity code as fundamental to the ethnic and national identity of the people; Jesus repudiates these exclusivist definitions by attacking their ideological foundations… Continue reading “Attacking Their Ideological Foundations”
The Humanity That is Being Caged Inside
This week Rev. Traci Blackmon offered this prayer on the Mexico side of the U.S. border wall with a group of about 80 sojourning with the United Church of Christ’s Faithful Witness at the Border.
We come to this Border Patrol station, not as an enemy but as friend, because we are all connected by God. As you go about your jobs of border enforcement, as you go about guarding the border, I pray that you guard your hearts, so that you don’t lose touch with the humanity that is being caged inside; so you remember to treat those who are being detained with the same care and dignity that you would treat your own family. You must guard your souls, just as we must guard the soul of this nation.
Wild Lectionary: No Fence Can Hold
15th Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 17(22)B
Song of Solomon
By Cheryl Bear
he said, oh lovely one
follow my deep, ancient footprints
you will find me
you will track me until i catch you
i will always stand up for you
you remind me of a spirited young appaloosa
no fence can hold you
you’re blinding, dazzling
like trying to look at a river
flashing with sunlight Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: No Fence Can Hold”
The Catch
By Tommy Airey, a meditation on Luke 5:1-11
Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God…
We grope for what is spiritual-but-not-religious. Beyond the rusted institutions. These have utterly failed to meet human need. Too often, the church is a performance, a club, an obligation. So we go beyond the four walls, where Steadfast Love cannot be contained or confined. We come to the shore. Water and trees and birds bring life and hope and wonder. Jesus meets us there. He is the anti-institutional inspiration. He speaks truth and beauty. The word of God.
…he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.
At the shore, Jesus beckons us to the simple life. Everything we need is right in front of us. Manna. Boats. Fill-in-the-Blank. Cultivating awareness becomes crucial to the spiritual life. Jesus points to the nets. Like our souls, and everything else that carries heavy burdens, they need washing. Continue reading “The Catch”
Liberating the Bible from the Hands of the Colonizers
A Review of Unsettling the Word: Biblical Experiments in Decolonization
(Edited by Steve Heinrichs)
By Jen Galicinski
A timely, poetic, and prophetic new anthology titled Unsettling the Word: Biblical Experiments in Decolonization has recently been published by the Mennonite Church of Canada and will be re-published by Orbis Books in February 2019. It was edited by Steve Heinrichs, the Director of Indigenous-Settler Relations for the Mennonite Church of Canada and one of the several faith leaders who was recently arrested and spent time in prison for protesting the Trans-Mountain pipeline in Burnaby, B.C. in solidarity with the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
For Heinrichs, it was working on the book that deepened his profound belief that we must truly listen to the voices of Indigenous peoples, who have been suffering, alongside their wounded land, since contact with European Christian settlers. He is committed to following The Crucified One by acting in solidarity with crucified peoples, following their leadership towards self-governance and sovereignty over their own lands. Continue reading “Liberating the Bible from the Hands of the Colonizers”
Radical Discipleship 