Colouring within the lines

2 Samuel 7: 1-17

Have you ever sat in a kindergarten class? Watched kids attempt to gain control over the paint and pencils and stencils? Heard the teacher's prompting and the kids consternation about colouring in the lines?

I like colouring in the lines - I like the neat tidy ordered controlled aspects - the picture is predrawn all you have to do it add your colour. So you feel useful but not revolutionary.

In this weeks reading I see David doing the equivalent of colouring in the lines - he's got the wealth and because of that the time to ponder the artistic. He decides it'd be a good thing to build God a house. After all that's what you do - that's where the lines seem to be drawn already. Conquer the country, subdue your enemy, amke yourself king and give glory to your god. Controlled, predetemined, safe.

Enter the (reluctant) artist - Nathan - who gets stuck with the vision/dream which causes him to glimpse another picture. But this picture's got a dodgy outline, it's unclear and uncertain - not a house (bayit) but a household (bayit). There's a promise that if you stand back far enough it'll look alright. But we have to stand up close to add our colour so all those assurances aren't that helpful really. How will David know when he's done enough? How will he be sure it's what was wanted in this time and place? What's he to do with the stockpile of cedar?

As we've waited this advent I've wondered - am I just colouring in the lines of orthodoxy and certainty or can I summon up the courage to go outside the lines and not be sure at all? For what this passage points to in the end is the truth that it is God's picture not mine, it's God's mercy and goodness which gives me the colours to use and the pictures to paint. It's not a paint by numbers it's an invitation to close my eyes and to dare to colour the world with God's hope.

Advent 3 - Back in Jerusalem

Isaiah 61: 1-11

So here we are - back in Jerusalem.

We were inspired back here by a prophet whose poetry could carry us on the desert journey back up the Euphrates through the heat...but even more whose images of what Jerusalem could be carried us beyond the limits of our exiled imagination.

We're back here and we are supposed to do something... supposed to make this place an embodiment of hope and justice, supposed to make this place a response to the grace and covenant bestowed on us, supposed to re-make this place shiny and luminous, high on a hill so other's will be drawn, supposed to get our hands unclean.

This wasn't the job we thought we were coming to.
This church isn't a place I think I can rebuild.
This suburb isn't a place where we any longer feel safe and known
This nation seems not to have a hope of legislating for justice
This world isn't a place to show your kids about humanity

Jerusalem - not what we'd expected.

And yet; and yet
we came back
we are here
Bablyon was easier but this is our place
we are called to rebuild
...in the knowledge we won't see it finished.

Let us go now to be co-builders of the Kingdom here.




PS This post also appears at lectionary.digitalorthodoxy.com

Lectionary Blag

Isaiah 40: 1-11

Thoughts on the first reading

What jumped out? Where do we prepare for the coming of God?

As Christmas rushes it’s carolling way in our direction and the countdown is proclaimed ever louder though the shops where do we prepare the way – where do we even begin to see the need for the way?

In the wilderness and in the desert we are to make room for God. I get that – if I wasn’t stuck here in the end of term marking frenzy I could make way for God – well maybe. And what’s all this stuff about a straight path? Does God need a straight path – what’s the significance of the flattened mountains and filled in valleys? Stray thoughts float through my mind of the redistribution of earth and justice.

More organised thoughts for preaching

With a little help and explanation from the scholars – especially Anna Grant Henderson: These chapters mark the start of Deutro-Isaiah. The calamities predicted in the first half of the book have happened – Jerusalem has fallen.

And time has passed. Passed for the exiles in Babylon – they have become part of the culture, they own land and have raised children who have never seen the Temple in Jerusalem. These are the people to whom these passages are addressed. Words of comfort – suggesting that the message is that of forgiveness – no longer repent.

After the calamities have happened in our lives and churches , we need to get to the point where we stop looking back and being sorry. We haven’t acted – it’s too late. It’s not like it was in the old days in our congregations, in our society. We’ve stuffed up our relationships we’ve broken other people. We are now faced with the hardest call of Advent – to look forward. Forward to the future – a future that is possible for those in exile because of God who is faithful – God has led them before and God will lead them again – over rough and smooth ground. Forward to a future now where we will not be the only “voice of religion” a future where ambiguity will reign, a future that has as part of its history our past.

Dare we hear the good news of comfort or are we still too busy beating ourselves and our church up to look ahead?

Advent is not a call to a perfect family Christmas future either – where we all kiss and makeup and don’t fight. Isaiah wasn’t calling them to something great- he was calling them to get their hands dirty in a ruined city – a city most of then couldn’t remember…why would we want to follow a prophet into such an unpromising situation? Why would we want to follow our faith into a unknown future when it so much more comfortable here in the exile of the imagination?

Getting people to move -that was Isaiah’s problem too – and he does it with poetry I think – he woos the people to Jerusalem with image dense writing – invite you to read the rest of the book in the next few weeks – read it for the pictures of God and God’s mercy it contains. Here’s one to start us off – the image of the shepherd – long before that terrible Sunday school print of the all American Jesus with a very clean lamb was this image of the shepherd – who picks up the little ones and who leds the others. Not all of us are little ones who need to be picked up – but all of us need to be led with gentleness. Pray for leadership in this place who will model that sort of gentleness.

Comfort O comfort my people – What would be comfort to me at this time? Do I need to be carried as a child by the caring shepherd or am I in a place this Advent to be as a parent led gently?