For Your Quiet Meditation: Devotional Reflections

By William Flewelling

These meditations take a verse from one of the lectionary texts not chosen for preaching for a given service and offer a devotional reflection on the verse, often using the context of the entire pericope as described in the lectionary. I try to make them worth the while of my readers, finding a fairly broad readership among the congregations I served through the years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496959041

William Flewelling

I am a retired minister from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) living in central Illinois. Led by a request from Mildred Corwin of Manua OH when I arrived there in 1976, I long developed and led a series of bible studies there and in LaPorte IN and New Martinsville WV. These studies proved to be very feeding to me in my pastoral work and won a certain degree of following in my congregations. My first study was on 1 Peter, chosen because I knew almost nothing about the book. I now live quietly in retirement with my wife of 54 years, a pair of dogs and several cats.

Book preview

© 2014 William Flewelling. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 12/15/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-5905-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-5904-1 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Scripture quotations marked RSV are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission.

Contents

Foreword

1554

1555

1556

1557

1558

1559

1560

1561

1562

1563

1564

1565

1566

1567

1568

1569

1570

1571

1572

1573

1574

1575

1576

1577

1578

1579

1580

1581

1582

1583

1584

1585

1586

1587

1588

1589

1590

1591

1592

1593

1594

1595

1596

1597

1598

1599

1600

1601

1602

1603

1604

1605

1606

1607

1608

1609

1610

1611

1612

1613

1614

1615

1616

1617

1618

1619

1620

1621

1622

1623

1624

1625

1626

1627

1628

1629

1630

1631

1632

1633

1634

1635

1636

1637

1638

1639

1640

1641

1642

1643

1644

1644a

1645

1646

1647

1648

1649

1650

1651

1652

1653

1654

1655

1656

1657

1658

1659

1660

1661

1662

1663

1664

1665

1666

1667

1668

1669

1670

1670a

1671

1672

1673

1674

1675

1676

1677

1678

1679

1680

1681

1682

1683

1684

1685

1686

1687

1688

1689

1690

1691

1692

1693

1694

1695

1696

1697

1698

1699

1700

1701

1702

1703

1704

1705

1706

1707

1708

1709

1710

1711

1712

1713

1714

1715

1716

1717

1718

1719

1720

1721

1722

1723

1724

1725

1726

1727

1728

1729

1730

1731

1732

1733

1734

1735

1736

1737

1738

1739

1740

1741

1742

1743

1744

1745

1746

1747

1748

1749

1750

1751

1752

1753

1754

1755

1756

1757

1758

1759

1760

1761

1762

1763

1764

1765

1766

1767

1767a

1768

1769

1770

1771

1772

1773

1774

1775

1776

1777

1778

1779

1780

1781

1782

1783

1784

1785

1786

1787

1788

1789

1790

1791

1792

1793

1794

1795

1796

1797

1798

1799

1800

1801

1802

1803

1804

1805

1806

1807

1808

1809

1810

1811

1812

1813

1814

1815

1816

1817

1818

1819

1820

1821

1822

1823

1824

1825

1826

1827

1828

1829

1829

1830

1831

1832

1833

Also By This Author

Poetry

Time Grown Lively

From My Corner Seat

Enticing My Delight

The Arthur Poems

From Recurrent Yesterdays

In Silhouette

To Silent Disappearance

Teasing The Soul

Allowing The Heart To Contemplate

As Lace Along The Wood

Devotional

Some Reflective Prayers

Reflective Prayers: A Second Collection

A Third Collection Of Reflective Prayers

Directions Of A Pastoral Lifetime

Part I: Pastoral Notes, Letters To Anna, Occasional Pamphlets

Part II: Psalm Meditations, Regula Vitae

Part IV: Studies

all published by AuthorHouse.com

Foreword

In April 1981, being reasonably new to the pastorate of First Christian Church in LaPorte, IN, I noted that people were reading the unfortunate quips left on the back of the bulletins I had inherited from my predecessor. He left under pressure and bequeathed us a large supply of bulletins, all with his name printed on the front, which had been carefully marked out with a broad black magic marker. My thought was that I could give them something better than that to read.

I had learned of another pastor’s offering of short meditations with the bulletins and, though I had never seen what he did, I took the notion and begin writing what I called For Your Quiet Meditation … for Palm Sunday, 1981; that was April 14th. I continued to write them for each service through my tenure at LaPorte. I began to provide them immediately on my arrival in Ottumwa, IA, at Davis Street Christian Church, 1 April 1990. I continued the practice at First Christian Church in New Martinsville, WV and later in the Hocking Valley Parish, Athens County, OH. In between my time in New Martinsville and my interim ministry in the Parish, I continued to write these as an exercise. Since my time in the Parish, I have kept writing them, sharing them with friends largely by email connection.

Having accumulated a file of these in electronic form, beginning with number 1554 for 1 November 2009 I thought I would put this collection in printed form for whoever might find that of value. I also find I enjoy having some of my writings available in print format.

A year or so after I arrived at Davis Street, one of my parishioners, then in the hospital where I visited her, commented on those things I put in the bulletins. She said she liked them, used them for her daily devotions. The first week, she used the first one each day; then there was a second so that she alternated them. By the time she commented she had roughly thirty of them from her not-every-Sunday attendance pattern. So I have witness that some, at least, find them of value to the quiet meditation that informs their lives.

I hope you enjoy them, too.

William Flewelling

For Your Quiet Meditation …

1554

And the second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.

(Mark 12:31)

The balances we see in these two great commandments! Everyone admits to loving God – the first. In this, the second, we find those who emphasize ‘neighbor’ (literally whoever happens to be near at any given time) and those who weigh in on ‘yourself’ with an eye to concerns for self esteem. We are able to do almost anything on the basis of our particular interests. My estimation, however, doubts that the second commandment – either in its Leviticus 19:18 original or in Jesus’ citation of it – is really concerned with therapeutics. The focus rather appears on the other: whoever happens to be near at hand – on loving those near-at-hand persons.

In Luke’s version, the question is raised about this neighbor – and we are given the story of the Good Samaritan. The very next story in Luke is that of Mary and Martha – both stories being unique to Luke. It seems to me that they both answer that lead question in that the rapt attention of the Samaritan and Mary is with the other near at hand – first the injured man and, second Jesus. As here, in Mark, the interest lies in the other: an other-centered perspective on life.

Interestingly, love itself, as a verb in particular, seems vectorial: it starts here and aims to … another. The concept of a general-purpose loving, as a sort of mist around a body, or like the dirt attracted to Charlie Brown’s friend Pig Pen sounds fine until you begin to consider how you love – whether the affection is romantic or not doesn’t matter. For when a person loves, they love someone. There may well be many someones involved, each of whom is loved with some degree of intensity – but they are always persons who attract, or are awarded that love: vectorial, from one person to another, one to one, one by one, to whatever summation the sprawl of the beloved faces provide.

If, indeed, we love, we center our attention on the beloved – whoever they are, however many they may be, in whatever condition life assembles them for us. It is always the other who is the target of our affective vector, the other who provides the center for decision and consideration. If this is so, the rest of the law – well, it already is hedged about against the narrow appeal of a wanting self.

Our God, whom we adore, lift in our hearts the welling strength permitting from our font the nurture to love the faces near to heart and hand, the ones that lure by presence love astounding even us, the likes of Jesus, our Delight. Amen.

1 November 2009

For Your Quiet Meditation …

1555

Then Naomi her mother-in-law said to her, My daughter, should I not seek a home for you, that it may be well with you?

(Ruth 3:1)

Getting things arranged is a job to be done. In a traditional society, those best arrangements are the task of the older generation on behalf of he next one. When sons and daughters are brought to honor their parents, their forebears, their forebears know they owe in turn arrangements for the well being of the young. Now, in such societies, arrangements include marriage and the economic family – not necessarily taking emotions and affection into consideration as being even relevant: it is a matter, after all, of sheer tradition.

Given the way life has gone, Naomi knows this is her role with Ruth. She had sought to send Ruth back to her own people when she went to leave Moab – but Ruth (unlike the still-reluctant fellow-daughter-in-law Orpah) had insisted on continuing with the mother of her now-deceased husband. They are in Bethlehem together now. The chances and suggestions had placed the daughter-in-law within the scale of the extended family’s provision. Possibilities are available – the key to Naomi’s words of seeking a home for Ruth.

It is a family story, for Naomi’s own story will ever build upon the narrative progress in Ruth’s own evolving tale. The women are in need of service to take position in their society, by means of a home, a settled and belonging place – and Ruth is the one able to gain such an opportunity. It is simply the way of their world.

Translating a traditional society such as Naomi assumes into a world so non-traditional and secular as our own requires a certain balance. What we find in play is personal faithfulness within the rules of the game, the only one they could play. This personal faithfulness matches up with the real care on the part of Ruth for Naomi, on the part of Naomi for Ruth – a caring faithfulness that begs another extension into the providential development in the story of all the people, the whole people, Israel. Intriguing: the grist of care so faithfully arranged becomes the making of a people’s larger history and grace.

Our God, your majestic wonder pleads with us to find the simple grist of care, the mattering of faithful presence. In this ample simplicity, O Lord, create among us now the earnest of your visionary care. Amen.

8 November 2009

For Your Quiet Meditation …

1556

Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus,

(Hebrews 10:19)

Since we have confidence ends up in v. 22, let us draw near as the single sentence spans the four verses entire. First of all, we have confidence, a sort of steady inner substance endowing us with the rigor of soul to take and keep a stand in the face of the rest of the world. As we know, confidence arises for a reason: we don’t quite conjure it up out of fantasy, not so as to convince ourselves sufficiently to follow on the stipulating invitations to exceed ourselves. Exceeding ourselves is exactly what Hebrews is discussing here.

Beyond anything we expect of ourselves we find the way open for entering the sanctuary – he means the heavenly one, not made with hands, the model for the copy made in Jerusalem. In such a visionary meeting, the expected emotion is awe: thoroughly struck, thoroughgoingly stunned. – so that we simply stand, mouth agape, eyes wide, unable to either proceed or retreat on our own. Moving, then, beyond such an anticipation (based on the richest and strongest of any experience we have had or even imagined) is out of the ordinary – totally so.

And here we are, finding our author convinced that what happens is caused by confidence, our confidence (for what is it that we dare to attempt based on someone else’s confidence in lieu of our own?). What happens is: we do enter the sanctuary. We do step forward in spite of the enveloping density of awe – this is the sanctuary of God, not simply a model or approximation artistically made for our use around here, but the real one. We are approaching God directly! And we do so on the basis of confidence – something rather more thorough than an intellectual convincing that we ought to be able to do this; something more than Hebrews telling us it is so; something so thorough that it forms in us viscerally and really.

This confidence of ours, that we boldly enter the sanctuary of God, is ours by the blood of Jesus. It makes all the difference.

Our God, as the blood of Jesus is offered for us, confirm in us, in our hearts, in our bellies, the confidence to enter awe, within the furnace of your glory for our sheer delight and the rendering of bliss; in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

15 November 2009

For Your Quiet Meditation …

1557

Pilate entered the praetorium again and called Jesus, and said to him, Are you the king of the Jews?

(John 10:33)

There is the question: ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ Answering it is not quite so direct as Pilate imagined – for he thought it easy to say either yes or no. In his mind, Jesus would either claim to be king of the Jews, or not. It was simple, even though he could tell that there seemed to be a great deal of ambivalence involved in the person of Jesus. With yet a regal mien, he did not have the arrogance of one presuming to a throne already owned by Rome.

Over years, centuries, millennia now, Jesus has been known as king, celebrated as the regal figure over all time and every place. Even those personally unacquainted with a monarchy in any form can’t quite imagine Jesus as a Prime Minister or a President: political metaphors any more fail us. And so we tend to stick with the old fashioned king even when the royal metaphor lacks an immediate connection in our experience: King Jesus – yes. But that doesn’t quite answer Pilate’s question. For he wanted to know if Jesus claimed to be king of the Jews.

Jesus goes on to admit a kingship, but not one ‘of this world’. That hedges it a bit, so far as Pilate is concerned. But, like Lord, king or monarch is a political word in the Roman Empire, and there is only one Lord in that political whirl: Caesar. Alternative realms, even said to be ‘not of this world’ are not acceptable. Remember: a king is one who commands allegiance from people: how can there be two?

We come still to King Jesus; we call him Lord – not of the Jews but of us, of all who have been touched by the hand of the Lord. We confess to him allegiance in the best of times, anticipating he will provide a hedge against the worst of times. We, as many, forget allegiance pledged is exactly that: allegiance to the king, attentive to the rich and stirring stuff that forces those who own authority to drag him out to Pilate, where the question of treason is asked and left dangling – not so much for Jesus to answer in words as for us to answer in life.

Our God, you stun us with our own reality, escaping our convenient metaphors to be as ever an inconvenient lien upon our heart. We come yet, Lord, as offered in the way of Jesus our Lord, Jesus the King. Amen.

22 November 2009

For Your Quiet Meditation …

1558

Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

(Jeremiah 33:14)

Promise made becomes by promise a promise fulfilled – in coming days: that is, not yet in the time of Jeremiah the Prophet. The problem is the resolution of time and age according to the parameters of the righteousness of the Lord: it has not yet so appeared in the land. Of course, when Jeremiah speaks, the house of Israel has been despoiled for a century already and the house of Judah totters in its last years under the house of David. Political disaster swept Israel at the hands of Assyria and now looms about Jerusalem and Judah in the face of Babylon.

Those conquering heroes (the phrase comes from George Mendenhall) dominated the scene, providing the topics for political digressions, concerns for local ambitions against the apparent rages of the great powers. The scene is devastation – realized or nearly so – throughout the land of the people of God. Now, after years of prophesying disaster, even as the singular disaster that will force (at last) Judah to rethink its place in the world, in history, in the eyes of God – that is, The Exile – now, Jeremiah raises up the promise. It comes in an hour of tantamount despair. Now, when all is lost – all of the noble fabrications of national pride and striving a proven sham – Jeremiah returns and speaks of the promise being fulfilled, the promise of the righteous Branch to execute justice and righteousness in the land.

The situation precludes Judah helping them-selves. They may strive to hold off the inevitable through a prolonged siege. They might gamble with one devious attempt or another. But in truth, all is out of their hands. Now, Jeremiah speaks the words desired – of being saved and finding security. The days are coming: what sort of days would delay in the midst of such arrogant gloom? Why wait until the last despair has sighed itself beyond repair?

When all that’s left is God alone, the God who watched the siege works rise, who saw the mechanics of doom be put into motion to crush the last hope of Jerusalem: what now is to be seen in the promise? Something to meddle in the dust of despair when all hope has already been dismantled? Precisely then: for all at hand is the singular real hope: God.

Our Lord God, sought in the best of times, implored as we struggle to maintain our edge, groaned over as we sink into despair: come in the promise of righteousness to set us free in your divine embrace. Amen.

29 November 2009

For Your Quiet Meditation …

1559

I thank my God in all my remembrance of you.

(Philippians 1:3)

Going down the list of our responses to others – not when face to face but while long apart, with some distance involved, both in time and space – Paul lifts out that notion of thanksgiving. Finding in memory people we are glad to know, whose memory pleases us: that’s not hard. We collect them as they collect us (at least we hope they do!). But to find those whose presence in our lives has been so significant that our true response to remembering them with thanksgiving– frequently at that – I would guess they are infrequent. Yet to this Philippian Church Paul says he thanks God in his daily prayer, always in every prayer of mine he gives thanks to God for them.

We might wonder what in these Philippian Christians – or their relationship with the Apostle – made Paul thankful. We learn elsewhere that they sent support for him even when he was working elsewhere – a congregation sending money to help the work of a minister who had formerly worked with them. Here he says theirs has ever been a partnership in the gospel. And he is thankful for that sharing with them in the one thing that has dominated his life for years: the gospel of God and the service of the Lord Jesus Christ.

On the other hand, we might also wonder what it is in Paul that makes him so thankful, and thankful for them. Perchance there is some of that thanksgiving we find in the late verses of Habakkuk 3 – though everything go wrong and the economy collapse, yet he joys in God our Savior. Such would free this thanks-giving from any tethering to benefit for Paul himself. He was, after all, a man deeply touched by the Spirit, thoroughgoingly couched in the ambiance of the Lord. From where he breathed, the presence of a people around him once would allow thanksgiving to continue to flourish. For they would be known as present by God’s gift. And, for gifts, one gives thanks; and gifts from God elicit an ever deeper thanks because this is home for the soul.

Those people for whom it is natural to be glad, whose memory pleases us – in fact they color our lives significantly if subtly. And with Paul in mind, we discover, after all. that we give thanks for them in all our remembrances of them.

Our gift-giving God, by your gracious joy you bring abundantly about us the gentle touch of unassuming souls. And we discover ourselves anew in giving thanks for them. Amen.

6 December 2009

For Your Quiet Meditation …

1560

And the multitudes asked him, What shall we do?

(Luke 3:10)

John the Baptist stands in the wilderness, in the lower Jordan Valley, not too far from where the fast-running river flows into the Dead Sea in the lowest sector of the Jordan Rift. He has chosen this unusual ‘pulpit’ for his preaching of a baptism for repentance. He proclaims the severity of sin, calling people to flee from the coming divine wrath. The multitudes, the crowds come out to him – not in itself an easy thing to do, nor one given to casual effort. For most it would be a trip from the hill country, down some 4000 feet in 15 miles along a difficult path through rough terrain east of Jerusalem, and then into the lush wilderness of the immediate Jordan valley. They take the harsh journey to a difficult place to hear the injunctions of a troublesome message, cutting to the roots of their habits and regular life.

So they ask: What shall we do? Pointed question it is, of course. It cuts to our issues over and over again: what can we do? What must we do? What shall we do? We are fond of knowing what to do: life is easiest when it is at arm’s length. Out there, we manage other things, manipulate factors and considerations, perform the right functions, achieve the notable deeds. And we’re happy with that, really happy with that.

John will go on and give them a list of things they can do, all of which sound at once strange and drastic. In a way, they are radical, cutting to the root of who we are and how we are in this world of ours. Those who have, share, give to those who have not; those who are in a position to exercise corruption, be meticulously honest; those in the position of coercion, exercise no violence nor extortion for gain. In terms of actions, these are hardly grand nor obvious nor severe. They do, however, speak to the basics of life, to how we are in life – a matter of being rather than simply doing. John seems to suggest that what we do in a pinch, how we act in the pressure of a moment, even the way we handle the unexpressed assumptions of everybody around us – that arises from the mold of heart, that which a true repentance remolds on the model of grace.

Our God, confronted at the coming of our Lord with how our hearts refract the contents of our days, provide the impetus of who we are upon the actions our days demand: grant us the influx of your aspiring delight in Jesus our coming Lord. Amen.

13 December 2009

For Your Quiet Meditation …

1561

And this shall be peace

(Micah 5:5a)

An oracle about Bethlehem in Judah ends ‘And this shall be peace.’ Shalom – peace and rather more than peace: that which is free and intact; the quality of being whole; expresses every form of happiness and free expression … (in) community with others. (That is Johannes Pedersen’s analysis – just to footnote.) For Bethlehem Judah is to be the home town of a new ruler, one who will center the restored community of the people, Israel.

When the Magi come to Herod in Jerusalem, according to the story in Matthew 2, Herod inquires for them of the chief priests and scribes to answer their question about where they would find the new born king of the Jews. The answer was Bethlehem; and Matthew reports this passage from Micah (5:2-5a) as their scriptural authority. Thus has Jesus been the one seen by Christians as the center of the new community, a sort of new Israel, gathered anew about Jesus. And this shall be peace – shalom: not so much lack of combat as freedom, wholeness, community – centered on the one God brings forth from Bethlehem to focus the whole community in God.

We stand as heirs of this peace in the midst of a drastically divided Church whose unity we posit gladly, saying unity is not uniformity (as, indeed, has ever been the case since the day the Church expanded beyond Jerusalem) but a oneness in Spirit. We see in Jesus our wholeness as we compete with one another for a proper edge on our relative positions – and often do suspect that a real uniformity would be the best sign of unity, a uniformity in which everyone else would become just like us.

This new community, we begin to say, centers on Jesus. Almost immediately, we shift our real (as opposed to rhetorical) focus onto us: we understand us better than we understand Jesus. As we shift, our interests move from shalom toward control: there is at least a little control freak in each of us. But our peace, our shalom – the promise which is our hope – lies in one who walks in our midst and feeds us in the security of his ruling presence: Jesus.

Lord God, allure our wandering attention; draw our eyes unto Jesus who is our peace, our shalom as the focus of your new community in faith. Amen.

20 December 2009

For Your Quiet Meditation …

1562

forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

(Colossians 3:13)

Deciding what to do with the accumulating aggravating incidents that come about in the course of the ordinary day by day interactions of people – those who are there repeatedly and those who come by once or once in a rare while – such deciding determines a great deal about life. Those aggravations will accumulate. Some are harder than others to manage. One method is to hold grudges, allowing the accumulation to dominate entire aspects of the way life happens. Another way is to forbear, forgive – yet there seems to remain a memory of pattern, a memory that sensitizes to recurrences of the flavor that bites: it becomes act of forgiving and forbearing while learning to assemble some sort of self-protection.

As the Lord has forgiven, forgive. Once again we get that decisive comparison – that ‘as’ – between what we experience of the Lord and what we practice. Some memory must reappear from the Lord’s Prayer, where again we encounter the forgiven as forgiving (though as requesting God’s forgiveness in proportion to our own forgiving). Here, our author speaks to us as being God’s chosen, bidding us to put on a series of virtues – of which our verse plays out the ending of the string. He refers to us as chosen, holy and beloved – and as such bid to put on ‘compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness and patience’, explaining these as forbearing one another. There is a presence in effect which provides the realistic face upon the others, in tune with what is the root experience of the Lord.

The flow of forbearance, of forgiveness is among the one-another group: there are no boundaries suggested, simply a network of those connected by faith – whoever it is that shares the characteristic of the community of faith. One another, each other: these are reflexive and reciprocal relationships – single pronouns in Greek that reflect the fundamental human relatedness as bonded in the faith of Jesus, clothed in the qualities of the Lord, expressed in the community give and take forever refreshing each soul with soul in another’s accessible delight.

God, plant in us the liveliness of faith that such dynamic gentleness as we have found in Jesus may be found as nurture in us, one and one-another: all. Amen.

27 December 2009

For Your Quiet Meditation …

1563

No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.

(John 1:18)

In his Theology on Dover Beach, Nicolas Lash leaves the quip that, if we want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. The whole thought emerges here in this Prologue to John’s Gospel (that is, 1:1-18): the only Son makes known the never-seen God. So, if we want to know what God is like, we seek the one who makes God known. We find him in the bosom of the Father. Quite quickly we may begin to suspect a sort of circular arrangement – the one we seek so as to find God made known is in the bosom of the invisible and never-seen God. Yet there is in our awareness a telling of his coming in the flesh, that there are those who encounter him and tell of the encounter – not necessarily every detail we would wish to possess (we get greedy for information in an information age, forgetting that interpreted information is what opens meaning to us).

John’s Gospel is about interpreting the experience of Jesus on the part of those who knew him in his ministry as filtered through the community that grows upon the rich earthiness of that infectious experience. Here we discover the discovery of God in a man making known the intimacy of the divine as by a son whose nurture is rapt within the Father’s bosom. Indeed, the discovery is of God in the presence of Jesus; that Jesus in fact actively makes God known inspires the community to exist upon the active of memory of exactly that making known, and hence to weave the interpreted experience, its meaningful suggestion blossoming in sheer, sublime surprise.

The Gospel tells of the discovery – for us to discover not only in the telling of the ripe experience but in the presence of the community which becomes the telling of the discovery that is ever anew discovered and recovered within the newly-included who become the reservoir in which is to be discovered the character of the only Son. For the true experience comes to life as a way in which the made-known-in-Jesus God becomes the made-known-in-community-by-the-grace-of-Jesus God – whom no one has seen but who is, indeed, pressed in love, one for another.

Our God, in your blithe mercy, be discovered in us as we have discovered you in those though whom Jesus has made you known by making you known in their eyes and now in ours, to be found in the bounty of your delight. Amen.

3 January 2010

For Your Quiet Meditation …

1564

"everyone who is called by my name,

whom I created for my glory,

whom I formed and made"

(Isaiah 43:7)

In the heart of the promise of the re-gathering of the redeemed by God, Isaiah takes the precious and honored and beloved – ‘everyone who is called by my name’ says the Lord – and identifies them as the ones being brought home. The prophet speaks, first of all, to a widely dispersed people, an Israel that had been scattered by Assyria and a Judah that had been raked into exile in Babylon. These are a people whose ancient identities and sense of purpose, sense of place had been ruptured – from nearly two centuries to fifty or more years before. Destruction of presence had already wreaked its devastation – and now this prophet of return looks to new action by God to bring them to their place and to their favor.

The exile forced Israel to re-think who they are and how they relate with God. What had been long assumed about their heritage and role, the cosmic centrality of their Temple and how, literally, everything revolved around their covenant with God. Such was the work of these prophets – like the Isaiahs of Chapters 40–55 and 56–66 – and of the tellers if Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah. Some way had to be found in order that these people could organize their experience and hope in God again.

At this beginning of faithfulness, Isaiah offers profound reflections on the word of God impressed upon him, resonating with the past and utterly fresh in its exposure to the radical love God insists is theirs. God intends to gather them because God loves them; no other reason is needed. Where other strains fought for earning again a place of favor in order to return, Isaiah sees them wantonly loved without any reason – other than they are called by God’s name, created for God’s glory, formed and made by God … for God’s delight – thence to find in themselves such a wild grace that rises up in faithful response to divine faithfulness, as the Servant of the Lord.

In the midst of this flurry of insight on a world re-made in the passionate compassionate love of God – a prodigal God, escaping familiar boundaries with glee – Isaiah hints at a Messiah whose steps confirm the unveiling of such a God in a whirlwind that rearranges everything. For us, this Messiah, this Christ names us and gathers us beyond our reticent comforts.

Our God, in your mercy become the One gathering us as your own, your delight and your pleasure that we become the gathered whose delight is in you and in your Christ. Amen.

10 January 2010

For Your Quiet Meditation …

1565

You know that when you were heathen, you were led astray to dumb idols, however you may have been moved.

(1 Corinthians 12:2)

Spiritual gifts appear to many and in many forms: we seem to be easily impressed even when we name the effects in different ways. In our day, unlike Paul’s situation with the Corinthians, we encounter many arguments of those for whom the spiritual is reduced to other matters. I am reminded of Georges Bataille, whose self-described Inner Experience stunned him as a young man – but seems to have been something that did not fit the accepted categories of experience and he lived on the energy of that profound happening while proclaiming a public atheism and its attendant cynicism about matters spiritual. Given such an ethos in our own day, we meet Paul’s statement with a new perspective.

‘When you were heathen’ means before you were Christian, when you participated in the ways of the world in which you live, and when you shared its spiritual perspectives. In our own day we have the same sort of range of opinions dealing with that which transcends us – plus a thoroughgoing denial that such even exist. Something beyond us imposes itself in some way and we respond with some awareness. Of old, the grasp of that awareness clung to what is seen and felt, a power filling the midst and then configured in a sign, an idol thought to hold the essence of the deep unknown and all the stories told to implicate the wonder in the throes of life. It still is so as thoughts arrange experience in ways that manage life for us.

Bataille found in this vibrant whirl a want of labels, a vacancy of guidance. Nothing came to the fore – and, prototypically, he voided the labels offered but not the experience. Surprisingly, his discussion (in his book, Inner Experience) is alive with more vibrant enticement than most pious texts.

For Paul, however, knowing how richly moving all these things – approximations and misnaming, too-hasty approaches and absolute denials – may be, and are, calls them by the biblical name: idols, that which appears so as to divert one’s attention and devotion from the profound and final fascination and soul-shaking awe which comes in the Lord Jesus and is attested by the Spirit whose gifts plumb all human depths and opens them beyond all constructions.

Our God, lead us to not settle for less than all, for less than your unveiling in Jesus and in the thoroughgoing deep of Holy Spirit. Amen.

17 January 2010

For Your Quiet Meditation …

1566

And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee, and a report concerning him went out through all the surrounding country.

(Luke 4:14)

Becoming known, Jesus goes along doing his distinctive ministry. According to Luke, we have only the stories of his baptism and temptation prior to this notice of a report preceding him on the way into Galilee. In the midst of this spreading report, he teaches in the synagogues as an itinerant rabbi. We have no word of special training, merely indication of a developed knowledge of scripture and a charismatic presence, one able to command attention – exceptionally, so as to disturb the commonplace assignment of conditions named to comfort life.

With such an appearance does Jesus begin his ministry – identified by Luke as a coming north to Galilee in the power of the Spirit. Significantly placed, this rationale for the excitement endowing places with this spreading report establishes the crest of the tide announcing the intervention of God in the mundane happenstance meanderings of life in Galilee.

The image that comes to mind is that popular excitement attending the anticipation of the sort of celebrity whose personal attraction lies in the commanding sort