Monthly Archives: August 2010

On Generosity, by Walter Brueggemann

On our own, we conclude:
there is not enough to go around

we are going to run short
of money
of love
of grades
of publications
of sex
of beer
of members
of years
of life

we should seize the day
seize our goods
seize our neighbours goods
because there is not enough to go around

and in the midst of our perceived deficit
you come
you come giving bread in the wilderness
you come giving children at the 11th hour
you come giving homes to exiles
you come giving futures to the shut down
you come giving easter joy to the dead
you come – fleshed in Jesus.

and we watch while
the blind receive their sight
the lame walk
the lepers are cleansed
the deaf hear
the dead are raised
the poor dance and sing

we watch
and we take food we did not grow and
life we did not invent and
future that is gift and gift and gift and
families and neighbours who sustain us
when we did not deserve it.

It dawns on us – late rather than soon-
that you “give food in due season
you open your hand
and satisfy the desire of every living thing.”

By your giving, break our cycles of imagined scarcity
override our presumed deficits
quiet our anxieties of lack
transform our perceptual field to see
the abundance………mercy upon mercy
blessing upon blessing.

Sink your generosity deep into our lives
that your muchness may expose our false lack
that endlessly receiving we may endlessly give
so that the world may be made Easter new,
without greedy lack, but only wonder,
without coercive need but only love,
without destructive greed but only praise
without aggression and invasiveness….
all things Easter new…..
all around us, toward us and
by us

all things Easter new.

Finish your creation, in wonder, love and praise. Amen.

Encapsulating worship

This is one of the best definitions I’ve read in a long time:

Worship is the ordering and reordering of our material being to the end for which it was meant. J. K. A. Smith, ‘Desiring the Kingdom,’ p. 143

 

I am wondering what I will need to order and reorder so that my life looks like worship today.

A little harsh on the prairie…

Sometimes, you just want to relax in front of the T.V. You flip through the channels looking for something fairly benign and wholesome. You find Little House on the Prairie and a strange kind of excitement takes hold of you. When you were a child, reruns of this show were aired on a Sunday morning while you were in church, so you could never watch them.

Although you’re not too familiar with the particulars of the Little House, you feel justified in thinking you are about to settle in for some comforting nostalgia from a more innocent era.

Slowly you realise the episode you’re watching is not so cheerful. There’s a fire at the blind school and Mary’s baby is left inside. You think to yourself, “it’s Little House on the Prairie – there must be a happy ending, right?” Wrong. Watch the clip below to find out just how wrong you are.

A few weeks later, you’re back in front of the T.V. once more hoping for that gentle, warm and fuzzy feeling you can maybe sleep a little bit to. You see that Little House is on again. Burned by your last experience, you hesitate. But then you think, “well, they can’t be chipper and cheery all the time – maybe that last episode was a one-off special. It’s probably back to its normal, congenial self today, right?” Wrong, again.

In this week’s episode, a young girl is raped, becomes pregnant as a result and is shunned by her Father. As for the outcome, once the Father realises his mistake, well, see for yourself…

Fast forward a few weeks, and you’re again watching T.V. Why you turn on Little House, you don’t really know, but you think “Oh well, maybe third time lucky, right?” Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I know life in these times wasn’t all roses, but I’m officially scarred and all cried out from watching all these heart-wrenching story lines. So I’m sorry Little House, but it’s been three strikes – I can’t take any more emotion!

Home: everywhere and nowhere

The following quote is from a medieval text called The Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus. The writer is unknown – Mathetes simply means disciple – but it is thought of as one of the earliest examples of Christian apologetics.

This excerpt helps me understand why I feel so at home everywhere, and yet not at home anywhere, all at the same time. Perhaps it isn’t such a random, crazy emotion after all, but an indicator of something deep and true going on.

Of Christians, he writes:

 

 

 

They live in countries of their own, but simply as sojourners; they share the life of citizens but endure the lot of foreigners; every foreign land is to them a fatherland and every fatherland a foreign land… They spend their existence upon earth but their citizenship is in heaven (Chapter 5).

 

 

 

Image from: http://www.christian-travelers-guides.com/art/christian2.html

Never chaste except you ravish me…

I am currently reading Desiring the Kingdom, by James K. A. Smith and it’s sending my mind and heart in all kinds of different directions. I’m waiting til I finish reading it so I can collect these together and write them down in some coherent fashion. But for the moment this sonnet, by John Donne, feels like the appropriate response.

Holy Sonnet XIV

Batter my heart, three-person’d God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.