Pentecost Reflecting: This Peter; This Crowd; This Jesus

This Peter 

So unlike the Peter of even yesterday . . . 

Hiding in a room safe from the crowds . . . 

Waiting for he knew not what . . . 

Now filled with such power that the crowd is stilled before his words . . . 

Powerful Peter . . . 

but even Peter does not stand alone . . . 

The eleven are with him . . . at his side . . . 

There are no cowboys in God’s kingdom 

Not even This Peter. . .  quoter of prophets . . . 

Himself now a prophet of the Most High . . . 

This Peter who cowered and ran from the crowds now seeks their attention . .  Demands their listening ears . . . 

And he reminds them of what they already know . . . 

A day will come . . . 

A day when God’s Spirit will be poured out on all flesh . . . 

On everybody . . . 

Even those with umbrellas . . . 

On that day, boys and girls, will be prophets

and teenagers will have visions

and old folks will have dreams

and even the poorest of the poor . . . 

the nothings and nobodies

will have prophecies to tell . . . 

And creation itself will be a prophet of God . . .

Bringing signs and wonders of things to come . . . 

And everybody that calls out to God . . . 

Will . . . be . . . rescued . . . 

What has been promised is no longer a tomorrow-thing . . . 

it’s a here-and-now thing . . . 

And this Peter is the first one to tell of it . . . 

he will not be the last . . . 

But he is the first . . . 

And the crowd listened . . . at least some of them . . . 

This Crowd 

people from all over the known world of the time . . . 

Listened and heard

Each in their own language 

it was impossible 

yet it happened

God’s attention-getters are always humdingers . . . 

Yet understanding the words did not breed true understanding in everyone . . 

For some, it was enough, this hearing in their own language . . .

For others, one suspects, nothing would ever be enough . . .

The old saying, ‘seeing is believing’ gets turned on its head . . . 

And suddenly . . . 

Believing is seeing . . . 

And so we’re left to wonder . . . 

Did those who sneered understand?

Or did they only hear nonsense noise?

This Peter . . . 

This crowd . . . 

This Jesus . . . 

This Jesus 

This Jesus whom you crucified . . . 

He’s the One . . . Messiah . . . Anointed One . . . 

Doer of miracles . . . 

Crucified and killed by his own flesh . . . 

Raised up from the dead by God

Foretold by David and Joel, and people of old . . .

This Jesus . . . 

God’s promise . . . 

Exalted at God’s right hand – the spot of honor . . . 

God has made him Lord and Messiah . . . 

This one you crucified . . . 

This Jesus . . .  He is the One . . . 

The crowd in Peter’s day believed a Messiah would come . . . 

Most just didn’t believe it was Jesus . . . 

In our day it’s the opposite . . . 

Most, even Christians, believe Jesus came . . . 

We just don’t believe much in Messiahs anymore . . . 

I wonder . . . 

Do we know the Messiah when we hear him?

Or do we just think it’s the wind?

Sermon Cliff Note: Brothers of Another Mother

Scripture:  Luke 1.68-79

Born so auspiciously . . . they both died so shamefully . . . one beheaded to satisfy the boredom and hurt pride of a licentious woman . . . another crucified as a talisman against the fears of an oppressed people that he would bring Rome’s unwanted attentions upon them . . . both died as the butt of the jokes of others . . . both, by their very existence, made others afraid . . . and in the meantime, they lived parallel lives of joy and despair . . . and urgency . . .

These were the pride of their family, cousins we could think of as brothers of another mother – two so intertwined in their lives and their destinies that where one left off, the other began.

One is the Son of the Most High . . . the other is His prophet . . .

Both spent their youth growing and becoming strong and wise . . .

One prepares the way for the other, who will be known as The Way . . .

Both were prophets, but to paraphrase Oscar Romero, a priest murdered for his witness against the injustices of the government where he lived, John was a “prophet of a future not his own.”

Among their ancestors, jealousy was the order of the day . . . from Cain and Abel . . . to Jacob and Esau . . . to Joseph and his brothers . . . relationship led to enslavement . . . and theft . . . and murder . . . yet for these brothers of other mothers, there would be none of that . . . from the first time they met, inside their mother’s bellies, they recognized the kindred and the call in the other . . . and the younger would walk in the path laid down for him by his older cousin . . . the path leading into his own kingship . . . and death. . .

It is a paradox where one follows the other by going first . . . first into the wilderness . . . first into the prophet’s journey . . . first into baptism . . . first into death itself . . . each and every step Jesus takes bears the footprints of John going ahead . . . preparing the way . . . the way laid out from before the very beginning of time itself . . .

Today we observe and celebrate that Christ, The Risen One, is our King . . . the king who comes to us an infant in a feed trough . . . The Resounding Yes to the proverbial parental question, were you born in a barn? . . . 

The King who is our brother of another mother too . . . bound in eternal kinship by our common Father . . . let us, like John, go and prepare His Way . . . in our own lives . . . in the life of the church . . . in the life of the world . . .

If It's Positive You Want

If it’s positive you want,

I am not your gal

I get it – I really do –

I’m as tired as you

are of all the kvetching,

whining, complaining

good-old-days yearning

downright bitchiness

of it all – very tired

and yes I know there is

a time for everything 

under the sun – even 

Solomon wasn’t original

to Solomon, you know –

so yes, there it a time for

putting on our happy hats

as we dream our big dreams

but life is no longer Eden

and I stand where I stand

right up to my kneecaps

in the shit of it all – and

I dare not pretend otherwise

for that lie won’t hunt,

that dog won’t dance

that girl won’t do

everything is not possible

but some things are

everything is not desirable

but some things are

everything is not good

but some things are

so when you tell me to

“be positive”

what I hear is

“be someone else”

for the someone that I am

is not an atom

but an ion

with cations and anions

mixing it up freely

sometimes one

sometimes the other

holding the fore

for are not positive

and negative

negative and positive

simply aspects of Truth?

how do we leave out one

in favor of the other

while standing in the land

of the True?

and is not the land of the True,

rather than the home of the 

free and land of the brave

the better place for standing?

And what is true is this:

I am neither brave nor free

Constrained by fears – my

own and others – fettered

by the bondage of past and

present, realities and perceptions 

does the myth of freedom (whatever

that may mean) crumble as dust

at my feet and it is there – in the

dust – that the ions have their

dance – positive . . . negative . . . 

negative . . . positive . . . 

So you want me to tell you of

a future where all will be well?

Here’s the thing – we have to

get there from where we are –

and where we are is the place

where plowshares have not yet

been yielded up from swords

where lions still eat lambs

for supper and call it

lip-smacking, freedom-

loving good

where Jew and Greek,

male and female,

slave and free

still walk the land

differences intact

and yes, we will get to that

promised land

but we must get there

from here

so what is my vision?

a time when and a place where

the people – us – are moved

to get busy and do the work

picking up our hammers

to strike a different chord 

in the heart of the sword

a time when and a place where

the prophets will rip the duct tape

from their mouths and stand and

speak and stand and speak and stand

and speak until – at long last – their

Truth begins an ionic shift into

the change we wish to be 

a time when and a place where

we stop yearning for yesterday

as if it were Eden – it wasn’t

[please, not another fb post about

the great 1950's – do we not notice

that all the faces were white?  I know

some do – for their faces are not there

and as my Grandma used to say – 

there wasn’t that much good in the

good old days]

and start yearning for the reality that

we are to be the enough it was 

created and dreamed to be

back when God stood on

that mountain top and 

looking out, bespoke,

I have a dream . . . 

and she and he is you and me

but you want positive

and I am an ion

and in positive world

I just won’t do

***

Read How the US Turned Three Pacifists Into Violent Terrorists and consider the language usage and how it shaped a reality -- for the three and for us.  Consider the trespasses that need forgiving -- 

The misuse of language is frighteningly effective when people acting non-violently against instruments of violence and the indifference that allows their continuation are labeled by government prosecutors and agencies as guilty of acts tantamount to terrorism and the courts support it.

To my gun-toting friends who insist on open carry laws, etc., I would point out that your rights to carry remain intact while my and others rights to speak and act against bigger weapons are not. This, friends, is the genuine constitutional threat of our time and it is not limited to Democrat or Republican, as all presidents in recent memory claim ever more power under the aegis of our fear of attack.

Why are we not collectively screaming against this overkill of ‘justice’ in the conviction of three peace

activists acting against the nuclear arming of a nation?  Why are we not outraged that what was an act, at most, of ‘trespass’, has been elevated to the crime of sabotage?

The real 'sabotage' was to reveal the weakness of our own mythic self-protections for the lie it is.

If the story of the Emperor who wore no clothes were re-written for our time, the little boy would have been sentenced to prison for the danger he presented of revealing the self-evident truth.

Shame on a government of, by and for a people who can no longer bear such things as truth.

But as a Christian and follower of The One, I have to agree with my government: symbolically hammering a huge piece of equipment is indeed an act of 'sabotage' and it is intended to be: it is sabotaging our lies to ourselves that our safety, our security, our future, reside on the backs of weapons of mass destruction, for they do not. The lie has been revealed for the cruel hoax it has always been. And indeed, if power is to remain power, such revealing must be quashed at all costs.

Well done, good and faithful servants. Sleep well tonight knowing you have stopped the danger presented by three people armed with nothing save Truth and the will to face you head on. Except that you haven't.

A Little More

Sitting yesterday in another meeting about visioning for a future to be born out of a changed present, invited, challenged, advised, directed, to think “positive”, I strain against the constraint and wonder why – is it the being told that bothers me?  Or is it “positivity” itself I so reject?  My answer arrives standing outside with a fellow curmudgeon, who invites me to have a bad day as we part, both laughing, both getting the joke.

I am yearning 

for a bit of

Old Testament

a little prophetic

in my vision

a little bigness

in my dreams

a little more God

a little less me

a little more Truth

a little less

accentuating

the positive

I am yearning

for a little more

as I am asked to

settle yet again

for a little less