Loddon Mallee UCA Presbytery Blog
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Who warned you . . .?
It is possible to go through the motions
with baptism. Like getting overwhelmed
by a raft or unresolved feelings
at an evangelistic rally, (remember them?)
and joining the throng of decision makers
at the front “where a trained counsellor
will come and talk with you.”
It seemed real enough at the time.
Perhaps it was. The Baptiser named John
knew how easy it was, in the drama
of the moment, to make the short journey
down the aisle to that pregnant space
in front of the stage.
Depending only upon the prophet’s power of
persuasion, John never had recourse
to the massed choir softly singing multiple verses
of “Just as I am, without one plea. . .”
At his riverside rallies, the Baptiser
certainly had his share of people
for whom the word “repent”
was suitably vague and imprecise.
Some of the religious leaders, we are told,
were also transported by the moment
and came down the front to sign their decision cards
and to be baptised. There they were met with
the less-than-welcoming epithet, “brood of vipers,”
and a call to a true turnaround.
They were told that their impulse must be genuine,
and that their apparent change of heart
must be evidenced in the real and tangible fruits
of lives transformed by God’s Spirit.
Otherwise, said the prophet, it’s a waste of water,
and no guarantee at all
that the wrath to come will be averted.
© 2010 Ken Rookes
love is the power
Monday, November 29, 2010
God of the unexpected moment,
bringing form out of chaos;
separating light from the dark;
breathing life into your human creation;
enliven our hearts,
fill us with your expectant Spirit.
Break in on our world
like a flood, like a thief.
Separate the day of the age to come
from the night of our human darkness:
come in your unexpected hour.
-- Jeff Shrowder
For the Second Sunday in Advent - Year A (Matt 3:1-12)
(in Haiku form)
One voice
telling the world,
"The kingdom is quite near":
shouting, out in the wilderness
"Turn now".
Who shouts
"Prepare the way"?
Who calls the world to change -
and seeks to have it turn around
to God?
This sharp,
prophetic, voice
which calls, is sent from God;
a messenger for him who is
to come.
How then
shall I prepare?
Joining in pious haste,
those leaning on ancestral faith
long past?
No, Lord:
let me reflect
the way you dwell in me:
living outward, bearing your fruit
each day.
-- Jeff Shrowder
For the Third Sunday in Advent - Year A (Matt 11:2-11)
Liberating God,
break into the prison which we build
around the life you give us.
We are busy and expectant,
preparing to celebrate;
too busy to heed the cry of the Share Appeal,
the Smith Family, the homeless young
and others we would push aside.
We are busy and expectant,
preparing to celebrate again the birth
of the one who would bring good news
to the blind, the lame and the poor;
preparing to celebrate again the birth
of one pushed aside,
into a cowshed, out of the way.
We too, are blind and lame and poor...
Restore us, healing God.
-- Jeff Shrowder
For the Fourth Sunday in Advent - Year A (Matt 1:18-25)
We journey through Advent,
with our expectations and hopes;
our reasonable and ordered lives
conforming to the social boundaries
set layer by layer around us.
You confront us, O God,
with events and circumstances
which are not what they seem,
and we are disturbed
by the prospect of embarrassment,
of public disgrace.
Yet in this shame,
is wrapped your hope for the world,
God with us,
in an unexpected way.
-- Jeff Shrowder
For Christmas Day
Light shining
in a darkened cave:
cloth bindings carefully enfold
new life.
A borrowed birth place declares
"Christ is born!"
Light shining
in a darkened cave:
cloth bindings carefully folded -
lifeless.
A borrowed burial chamber declares
"Christ is Risen!"
Loving God,
thank you for the Christ child,
thank you for the risen Christ,
in whom you have shown
that you cannot bear to be separated
from a world that would separate itself
from you.
That nothing can separate us
from your love,
we give you thanks and praise. Amen.
-- Jeff Shrowder
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
Be ready, therefore.
There is only one way
for a person to be ready,
only one thing that person should be doing
when Jesus comes.
One thing that he,
who called himself the Son of Man,
expects of his followers at any time.
He set it forth in plain Aramaic
on more than one occasion,
that is, if the gospels are to be believed
and not merely taken literally.
One thing.
It is the singular mark of discipleship,
the sign that a person has listened,
truly heard,
and been shaped by the words, the actions,
and the friendship of the coming one
It is he same thing that directed the course
of the Son of Man’s surprising life;
he who continues to come to his own.
This always-present one defiantly embraces
the costly consequences of his choice.
This one thing makes a person ready
for abundance in living,
and fulfilment in dying.
The fumbling and grace-dependent followers
of He who comes, know that they, too,
must be caught up into the generous
and sometimes painful work of love;
this one thing that declares our readiness
to receive him.
© 2010 Ken Rookes
Light the first candle
We know the schedule: four Sundays … the second one for a church tea, the third one for choir concert, and then the pageant for culmination. We may have a schedule -- but in fact the new world is coming at "an unexpected hour" (Matthew 24:44). The rush of God’s rule is impending, and Christians are "on the alert." This is not Orange Alert in fear; it is, rather, glad expectation. These readings ponder both preparation and expectation.Safe?
Safe? The God of fierce love and determined mercy? The God of unlooked for judgment and unrelenting justice? Of course he isn't safe. But he's good. And knowing that makes all the difference.
http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=426
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
A Royal priesthood
Not only are we to refuse to bow to any power that does not model itself on the Prince of Peace and King of Justice, but we are in fact to model those attributes ourselves. We are to be Kings and Queens in the world, Kings and Queens who create beauty and peace, who make justice, and who take on the crown of thorns to journey with those who suffer and who have not yet found their dignity as royal people under the Kingship of Christ. The reign of Christ has begun. We have King who not only lays down his life for us, but who raises us up and enthrones us as his people of royal dignity to share his glory for ever and ever.
http://www.laughingbird.net/SermonTexts/0227.html
Shakespeare on Kingship
"For God's sake, let us sit upon the groundAnd tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence: throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?"
Quote from Richard 2nd
In light of that litany of political disasters, what are we to say on the Festival of Christ the King. As much as comparing Jesus Christ to Henry VIII or the future King Charles or William makes me cringe, Christ the President, Christ the Prime Minister, and Christ the Premier I struggle with as well. But the assertion that Christ is King was never meant to be a comparison to the secular images of power. It was meant to be a stinging critique of empires and governments.
One of the reasons Christians were so viciously persecuted by the Roman empire was because their assertion that Christ is Lord and King was understood very clearly to imply that Caesar was not worthy of such titles. The festival of Christ the King was only added to the church calendar in 1925, and part of the impetus for it was that Mussolini had been ruling Italy for three years, Hitler's Nazi Party was on the rise and the western world was gripped by the great depression. In the face of the rise of dictatorships, in the face of the pushing of religion out of the social sphere and into the private, Pius IX called on the church to assert that nevertheless Jesus Christ is King of the Universe and reigns for ever and ever.
God and Empire
The Second Coming of Christ is not an event that we should expect to happensoon, violently, or literally. The Second Coming of Christ is what will happen when we Christians finally accept that the First Coming was the Only Coming and start to cooperate with its divine presence.
Sunday, November 14, 2010
In Paradise
I could never get much excited by the notion
of Paradise / heaven / the hereafter.
It sometimes seems to be a construct of the church,
attached to the teachings of Jesus
and distracting us from his command
to get on with the work of love.
At best, it is a bit-player, thrust
on to the centre-stage, to claim the spotlight.
There it assumes the role
of an all-controlling Master of Ceremonies
through whom ecclesiastical authorities,
popes, priests and everybody in-between,
direct the thinking and the behaviour
of the masses. If you want to get there,
as opposed to the other place,
remember; we hold the keys!
It suited, too the civil authorities
with its message of divinely ordered patience.
No need for revolution, in Paradise
you will receive your reward / recompense
for all the indignities, pains and brutalities
suffered during your earthly sojourn!
In Luke’s story of the passion
the word is placed upon the lips
of the cross-suspended Jesus,
as he responds to the justice and compassion
of a fellow criminal. Truly I tell you,
today you will be with me in Paradise.
To die with Jesus; perhaps this
is the proper meaning of Paradise.
Friday, November 12, 2010
From Brad
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Cosmic correction
How will all this happen? I have no idea. We needn't know the details of the "last days" described by Isaiah, Jesus or Paul. I like CS Lewis's analogy of actors in a real life drama. We don't know everything about the play, whether we're in the first or last act, or even which characters play the minor and major roles. In our ignorance, we have no idea when the End of the play ought to come. But the plot will find fulfillment, even if our limited understanding right now obscures it. Perhaps the Author will fill us in after it is over, but for now, says Lewis, "playing it well is what matters infinitely."Light
The visible reminder of Invisible Light.
Oh light invisible, we praise Thee!
Too bright for mortal vision
We see the light but see not whence it comes
O Light Invisible, we glorify thee.
T.S.Eliot 1888-1965
Choruses from the Rock (last lines
Impossible?
It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the Church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about: we plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.
-attributed to Oscar Romero 1917-1980
http://www.edgeofenclosure.org/proper28c.html
Monday, November 8, 2010
Prophets and other dreamers
Dreaming aloud as the perplexing words
of the strange and mysterious God
dance to their unique rhythms;
catapulting into the prophet’s
conscious thoughts and out again.
Words, this time, of hope;
encouraging affirmations of renewal,
with the troubled times retreating
into non-memory.
For the once great city
there is a promise of restoration,
of joy and delight; and of blessings
that will become for all an invitation to life.
Words of domestic contentment;
people dwelling in houses
they have toiled hard to build,
and granted the greatest of all
signs of hope, the birth of a child.
The words continue their unconstrained dance
singing of enjoyment and satisfaction in old age;
and of planting vineyards with the expectation
of enjoying their fruit. “You plant grapes
for your grandchildren,”
a winegrower once told me.
The words dance crazily as they tell
of wolves and lambs feeding side by side,
and of lions and oxen
sharing the same bale of hay.
At his point we know that the dreaming
has taken over from reality,
and that what really counts
is the abiding presence of the God
who answers even before she is called.
© 2010 Ken Rookes
Sunday, November 7, 2010
The locust
There was a locust
when I went outside yesterday.
It saw me coming and hopped away,
landing near the recycling bin.
“G’day,” I said.
“G’day,” it replied.
“Are you all alone?”
“Yes.” it answered.
“I was expecting about
five hundred thousand billion
of you blokes.”
“No, there’s just me,”
“Where’s the rest of them?” I asked.
“Dunno.”
I paused for a moment,
reflecting on the situation.
“In that case,” I said, gesturing
towards my lush, green garden,
“You might as well go ahead, then.”
© 2010 Ken Rookes
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Will you follow me?
“Will you follow me?” “Do you think it’s right to pay taxes or not?”
“Will you follow me?” “Can you explain the resurrection for us?”
“Will you follow me?” “Do you believe in miracles?”
“Will you follow me?” “What do you say about the authority of the bible?”
“Will you follow me?” “What do you think about sex outside of marriage?”
And Jesus explodes. “You’re not serious. You’re just playing games. You’ll just keep asking questions and keep asking questions to avoid facing the one question that really matters. “Will you follow me?” You’ll always make out that you just need it all clear in your mind before you can make a decision but there will always be one more question.”
Genuine questions will always be welcomed by God if we are asking them from a position of committed discipleship. Those who have already said “yes” to Jesus question and are actively following him and growing in faith and maturity can ask anything they like. Jesus encourages their questions because it is part of the road to growth and fullness of life. But if your questions are just a way of avoiding the real issues. If you stand on the outside and use questions only to try to undermine Jesus’ credibility and put off facing up to the implications of what he’s on about, the response will be different. Like with the sadducees he’ll answer for a while, but it won’t be long before he puts the tough question to you. And then its on your response that your right to keep asking questions rides.
http://www.laughingbird.net/ComingWeeks.html
re Job 19
In today’s reading, Job’s worship is an expression of faith so forged by bitter experience that it seeks to chisel the protest of its existence into stone as a testimony for all time. Against the ephemera of what we value in today’s society, there is no doubt in my mind that such faith, chiselled into the stones of our church buildings, can still prompt the search for God.
The 19th-century artist and critic John Ruskin understood something of this when he wrote: “The greatest glory of a building is . . . in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy . . . which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity.”
As we stumble across church buildings that persistently present themselves to us, we might ask: “Why are these Christian buildings here, what is their meaning, and how do we access it?” The remote churches that I visit on the North York Moors present such questions eloquently.
The small and steadfast congregations that worship in them keep alive the light of faith that prompts further enquiry, and challenges the assumption that we live in a post-Christian, secular age. But the same is true of other areas where I work, such as housing estates that are also “remote”, in the sense that they are a long way from access to the benefits of a share in prosperity and of protection against hard times.
This is the witness that challenges the limitations of an age that longs for value, but is obsessed with questions about price.
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=103062
Answerizing
Monday, November 1, 2010
The Sadducees
The Sadducees
I have some sympathy for the Sadducees,
for whom there was no resurrection.
They believed that this grounding place
of dust, decay, wind and uncertainty,
was where the true action was;
not in some future and otherworldly realm
where the dead are revived, renewed,
resuscitated and raised to somehow
continue the privileged work of living.
When the body dies, so does the soul.
Angels and other spiritual entities?
They simply don’t exist. Reward or
punishment beyond the grave? Forget it!
It’s what happens here that counts.
They, too. were Jews, these Sadducees:
children of Abraham who took their faith seriously.
They shared the Pharisees’ insistence
that the law must be obeyed,
and that the well-being of the nation depended upon it.
In the temple’s courts one day, these sceptics
enjoyed a spirited debate with one, Jesus,
an untrained teacher from the north.
According to the testimony of gospel-writing
historians, the itinerant rabbi clearly took the points.
Nearby scribes, they also tell us, were deeply
impressed by the power of his arguments,
and concurred. Some of us heretics, however,
are still considering the matter.© 2010 Ken Rookes