Maggie breen Readings for this Sunday:
1 Samuel 17:32-49 | Psalm 133 | 2 Corinthians 6:1-13| Mark 4:35-41 “How very good and pleasant to live in unity” feels like something of a lament this week… a yearning… an if only. …feels like a statement of what’s meant to be, and far removed… …but also strangely it feels like some kind balm for the heart: a heart that aches at those lives lost in Charleston and the horrors of witnessing one of God’s beloved so brutally taking the lives of others. “How very good and pleasant to live in unity”… a sadness at the brokenness that we can’t seem to escape… …but also these words, they ring, maybe faintly, with the echoes of something we might hold onto. “How very good and pleasant to live in unity” …a reminder…..a hope - yes a hope…..an enticement…a coaxing …and a question – a gentle question: How will you respond? - we are connected to those who are in pain – we ache with them and this ache is of this unity of which we sing – unity in God – holy belonging to each other – feeling pain for each other – knowing that this violence is far from the peace we are made for and so as people connected to all other’s that God’s loves there come this question…..How will you be? What will you do?
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Maggie Breen Readings for this Sunday:
1 Samuel 15:34-16:13 | Psalm 20 | 2 Corinthians 5:6-17| Mark 4:26-34 The seed in Mark’s gospel is the word of God, the revelation, the action of God amongst us. Jesus gives us this definition in the parable that is told right before the one we read today. Today’s parables (or folklore was a description of parables that I heard this week: common tales, tales of the people that help us understand, bring down to earth, things mysterious and important). Well, today’s parables are part of a series that Jesus tells about seeds; seeds and the way they are sown and what they do and how they can help us understand a little more fully and a trust a little more deeply the nature of God’s word amongst us and within us. So in the previous parable, the one right before those we read today the seed is sown and it is sown on all sorts of ground – fertile ground, hardened ground, weedy ground, rocky ground – and as we might imagine, or if you have gardened you will know - that under such a method only some will thrive. The seed needs the right conditions to grow. But the aspect of this tale that strikes me as especially important and that I think gives greater dimension to the parables we read today is that this seed, this word of God, is thrown everywhere. It’s not just here in this book – the use of that word takes us there, but the word or the action, the revelation, the presence of God is everywhere. The Sower of the seed, the one who plants the word of God—God’s own self - does not discriminate in terms of where God’s word will be planted. This word from God, it is planted everywhere – everywhere. All over the place. Everywhere. Absolutely no place is out of bounds. And then there are today’s tales – Maggie breen Sunday's Readings: Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67 | Romans 7:15-25a | Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30
My friends and I have this running joke, a kind of ritual almost. It’s been running for about 10 years now. It develops and changes over time. It looks different with different friends, but it emerges from the same basic thing. It’s based, this joke, this ritual, in the fact that we are from different places. We are shaped in particular ways by countries that have a particular but related history. Maggie breen Sunday's Readings: Genesis 22:1-14 | Romans 6:12-23 | Matthew 10:40-42
One of the foremost scholars of this Genesis text – Jon Levenson – has said that the reader must in a way treat Isaac as an object in this story[1]. An object and not as a boy. Isaac is the thing that Abraham needs to get to God’s promise. God has promised that through Isaac blessings will flow not just for Abraham but for the whole world. God’s request that Abraham sacrifice the boy, that he give him up, is one more test of Abraham’s reliance on the promise and God’s ability to fulfil it over the means by which Abraham, in his limited human ways - imagines or hopes the promise will be fulfilled. [1] Jon Levensen PHD – Teaching the Binding of Isaac balancing the bible and Midrash - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgaf66eg6gU Today's Readings:
Acts 1:6-14 • 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 • John 17:1-11 Ask a group of ecumenists why they do what they do and some of them will mention these verses from John 17. "A group of who?" you might be asking. What did she say? Did I miss something in that accent of hers again? Sounded like she said a group of economists? Or maybe it was communists? Did she just say communists?? No, not economist or communists. What I said was a group of ecumenists. Ecumenists are people who work for the unity of the church – the big church across and within our different denominations. The ecumenical church, the church united, is very active in Renton, and has been for a long time. It’s where I do much of my work. As I do that work I am asked now and again, “Could we find a word other than ecumenist to describe who we are? It’s so….unusual….difficult to say….we are not sure people understand it.” But it’s a word with a particular meaning and history and that I think teaches something important about who we are. Maggie BreenToday's Reading:
John 18:1-19:42 This life can be frightening sometimes. Actually, that’s maybe an understatement. This life can be frightening oftentimes - heck for some this life is frightening most of the time. Events close in on us and they bind us. Loss and betrayal happen in ways that make us sensitive to threat and reluctant to trust. Maggie BreenToday's Readings:
Ezekiel 37:1-14 • John 11:1-45 We are a confessing church. We have a tradition of saying what we believe. We witness to what we understand about God, and who we are as God’s people, by confessing, by saying out loud, what we believe to be true. This tradition goes back to the very early days of the church and it is rooted in the stories of scripture. The earliest creed that the Presbyterian church, along with many others, accept as a statement of what we believe is the Nicene Creed. It dates to the early 4th century. The Apostle’s Creed is from at least as early as the eighth century. Many of you will have heard one or both of these creeds before -- we say them together sometimes in worship. Both are broken into three sections….I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen; and then they go on to state our belief in Jesus Christ and what we accept about who he was and is; and then there is this end paragraph that lists our belief in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. Many of us have heard these, right? Maggie BreenToday's Scripture:
Malachi 3:1-4 • Hebrews 2:14-18 • Luke 2:22-40 So, I have lived in this country long enough to know that, in some parts, the phrase ”bless your heart” has a very certain meaning and it’s really not very nice. In Scotland we have a similar response when someone has shown that they just don’t get it or have stepped over the line. “God love them” we’ll say, because, well, really who else possibly could is the undertone. Same idea I think in "Bless your heart," right? But, let’s put that particular understanding of blessing aside for a few minutes. What is it that we mean when we say that something is blessed? Jesus identifies nine different sets of people as blessed in this passage we read – what does he mean by that and what does it mean for us? Maggie BreenThere was a show I used to watch with my dad when I was a teenager. It was a British show – no surprise there, right? It was set in a London council estate, and it was called “Only Fools and Horses.” Del-boy, the main character, was an unlicensed trader who sold shadily acquired goods from a suitcase on the edge of local outdoor markets. With his parents gone, he was the caretaker for his little brother Rodney – now an adult – and their granddad. Rodney, Del-boy and their Granddad lived in a run-down council highrise, interestingly called Nelson Mandela house, in working-class South London. They lived on the underside of an obviously unbalanced social and economic system: a system that is still very much with us today.
The 1980s council highrises of Peckham, were places of poverty, crime and despair. They sat just 4 and a half miles down the road from the opulence of the British Royal family’s residence at Buckingham Palace, and only 3 miles from the money markets of one of the most powerful financial districts in the world and the obscenely, over-the-top wealth of the more legitimate traders that populate that place. Maggie BreenToday's Scripture:
Isaiah 11:1-10 • Romans 15:4-13 • Matthew 3:1-12 Every year I am surprised. Advent begins and I start to settle into the waiting. Waiting for a baby. I remember waiting for a baby. Perhaps some of you do to. Getting everything ready. Warm things. Beautiful things. I start to settle into that warm, hopeful waiting, and I feel better – you know? I know that something special, something beautiful is happening, something that I know, or at least I hope, will bring me to what I want, what I need: peace, new wonderful life, untarnished possibilities hopes for new ways of being that are good and lovely. We wait for that baby, God’s promise to me, to the world. It’s a lovely, warm, beautiful waiting. And then every year I am surprised, shocked, saddened even, when John shows up. He shows up every single year at this point in Advent (no matter the gospel we are reading – he is in every single one), and he shows up shouting, proclaiming judgment, promising wrath. |
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