Proper 15(20) C
Jeremiah 23:23-29
Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Luke 12:49-56
By Rev. Dr. Victoria Marie
Recently, I had the honour of participating as the resident elder in the Sacred Earth Camp for youth, a project of Salal + Cedar Watershed Discipleship Community. The lectionary readings, in light of the Camp experience, motivated me to revisit and reflect on certain current truths and issues of concern. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: Prophets False and True”
By Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. This article first appeared in Geez magazine’s winter 2014 issue, Geez 36: The End.
It seems strange to me that ideas of invasion, attack, occupation, and dispossession are recent fodder for television series such as The Walking Dead. This fictional reality is so strikingly close to the colonial legacy I was born into, at least in concept, it is sometimes difficult to see it as entertainment. Continue reading “Indigenous Resistance Lifts the Veil of Colonial Amnesia”
By Kateri Boucher at Day House Catholic Worker August 11, 2019
Luke 12: 32-4
Hebrews 11: 1-2, 8-19
Wisdom 18: 6-9
Some of you may have heard the story about the man who was being chased by a tiger and falls off a cliff. Luckily he catches a branch and is hanging there from it, trying to figure out what to do. In desperation he cries out, “If there’s a God up there, I’ll do anything if you’ll save me!” Suddenly a voice booms down from the heavens, “This is God and I want to save you! All you have to do is let go of the branch!” There’s a long pause as the man thinks that over, then he finally turns back up and says “Is there anyone ELSE up there?”
From spiritual practitioner Bayo Akomolafe (Facebook, August 4, 2019).
The phrase “thoughts and prayers” needs a new cosmology. The one it now operates in presumes ‘God’ is absolutely transcendent, heavenly, irretrievably cast away at an unbridgeable remove from our earthly goings-on. Brought down to our material earth, thoughts and prayers take on a new urgency. Thoughts become public things, the shared fabric through which my life becomes yours and yours mine; prayers become matters of accountability and justice. Thoughts and prayers should be ecological matters that enable us to meet ourselves, to share our tears and ask hard questions about our complicity in the suffering of others. Not Twitter templates that deepen our indifference and bypass our complacency, masking as piety.
From the conclusion of Dr. Maulana Karenga’s recent column in the Los Angeles Sentinel:
As I have noted elsewhere, “a society that cannot concede its problems cannot solve its problems. And a society that cannot solve its problems cannot survive its problems.” Certainly, we cannot deny America, U.S. society, has a series of interrelated self-destroying problems. And these basic problems cannot be summed up as Trump, although he represents them in one of their most raw, racist and unadorned forms. The struggle over what kind of America we will have is still being fought on the ground in every place and instance of oppression. Paul Robeson is right, “The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear.” And the task, Fannie Lou Hamer tells us, is to constantly question America, and set aside all illusions of a “perfect union,” of freedom unfought for and of justice not gained and sustained in righteous and relentless struggle.
From Revolutionary Saint: The Theological Legacy of Oscar Romero by Michael E. Lee (Orbis Books, 2018), quoted by Chava Redonnet of Oscar Romero Inclusive Catholic Church (Upstate New York):
By viewing the church’s mission as service to God’s reign, Romero opens up a theological space that did not exist in the old colonial mind-set. The church is not beholden to the state, nor does it function to legitimize the status quo in the name of good ‘order.’ The reign of God and its criteria, not the government, should dictate the church’s action.
By Wes Howard-Brook & Sue Ferguson Johnson, on this week’s lectionary Gospel passage (Luke 12:32-40)
*Originally posted in August 2016.
In the soporific summertime, it is easy enough to lie back, close one’s eyes, and fall into a tranquil sleep. Indeed, many of us could use more sleep, driven as we often are by the exigencies of empire into never-ending task mode. Perhaps ironically, getting more sleep could help prepare us for Jesus’ word to us this Sunday: stay awake (12.32-40)!
The church cycle offers us Lent and Advent as seasonal opportunities to practice anti-imperial wakefulness. With school out, though, the church year seems to take a break from the call to faithful vigilance. But the lectionary surprises us this week, just as Jesus’ message within the text from Luke gives us images of surprising arrivals. Perhaps equally surprisingly, a close listen to our Gospel text invites us to hear precisely what we are called to stay awake against: the lure of the exploitative, anxiety-ridden, imperial economy. At the same time, we are called to stay awake for the opportunity to be servants to one another and all creation. Continue reading “Stay Awake”
By Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson
Proper 14 (9) C
Solomon offered as sacrifices of well-being to the LORD twenty-two thousand oxen and one hundred twenty thousand sheep. So the king and all the people of Israel dedicated the house of the LORD.
—1 Kings 8.63What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the LORD; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more; bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me.
—Isaiah 1.11-13I will not accept a bull from your house, or goats from your folds.
For every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine.
“If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine.
Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?”
—Psalm 50.9-13
By adrienne maree brown, re-posted from her website.
dear men.
this is mostly a note to straight, cis men; but also includes trans men, queer men, and all who participate in masculinity – if you see yourself in these words, this is a love note to you.
patriarchy (the system of society/government in which men hold the power and women are excluded from it) is collapsing, and it’s time for you, too, to give it up, to get yourself out.
it won’t be easy.
i don’t believe total revolution or liberation happens in one generation, but i know from my own life and many lives i have witnessed and accompanied, that it is absolutely possible in your lifetime, in a generation, to personally relinquish an unjust ideology, to begin to practice a more evolved way of being.
Continue reading “relinquishing the patriarchy”
By Joyce Hollyday
In honor of his 75th birthday, I was inscribing to my friend Randy a cop
y of a book that I co-authored. I wanted to thank him for inspiring me to “greater commitment, deeper compassion, and…”—well, something about courage. Having already used “greater” and “deeper,” my mind was momentarily absent of adjectives. After a little thought, I settled on “stronger.” Continue reading “Stranger Courage”
Radical Discipleship 