Sunday Reflections
2021
It is our intention to post Hilary's Sunday Reflections and the related scripture reading for our followers who are not in attendance or those who would like to review the content of his lessons.
Sunday, August 221 Samuel 18:17 (from the Woman’s Lectionary year “W”
After several verses about all of King Saul’s children, The writer continues with a Story about how David got a wife: Then Saul said to David, “Look, here is my older daughter Merab. I will give her to you as a wife; only be my valiant warrior and fight the battles of the Holy One.” For Saul said [to himself], “Let me not raise a hand against him, rather let the hand of the Philistines do it.” Then David said to Saul, “Who am I and what is my linage, my ancestral house in Israel, that I should be the son-in-law to the ruler of Israel?” But at the time for giving Merab the daughter of Saul to David, it happened that she was given to Adriel the Mcholathite as a wife. Now at the same time Saul’s daughter Michal loved David. Saul was told, and the matter was all right in his eyes. So Saul said to himself, “Let me give Michal to David that she may be a snare for him and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him.” So, Saul said to David a second time, “Through the second shall you be my son-in-law this day.” And Saul came to fear David more and Saul became the enemy of David every day from then. Psalm 31:1-7 In you, Womb of Life, I take refuge; let me not ever be put to shame; in your righteousness rescue me. Incline your ear to me; quickly deliver me. Be for me a rock of refuge, a stronghold to save me, for you are my rock and my stronghold; for your Name’s sake lead and guide me for you are my refuge. Into you hand I commit my spirit... MESSAGE: The two readings I choose for this morning come from what I consider to be two conflicting notions about God, politics, and religion. In the first we can see how women had & have no power in terms of their futures, bodies, or dreams and desires – their lives were determined by those who had the power over them and their choices. The Samuel reading is all about control over and power and manipulation. Women are used here as means to ends-- having no say in their future and less in its outcome. They are tools for the powerful to utilize in their machinations. This Samuel reading and the weight it wields by virtue of its inclusion in, and interpretation of, what is generally understood as a sacred text preaches like vile and evil dogma to later generations of male dominance. We are seeing this particular idea of males thinking that they have the power over women, and over the social structure as a whole, played out in our current news. Senators, Congresspeople, pastors, professors, coaches preying on women and grooming girls for sexual violence. Male dominated churches, clubs, and social settings outraged by women who want control of their own bodies can be traced to this and many other of our sacred texts. The “Me too” movement, the demand for choice, glass ceilings, even the dress codes at the Olympics are indebted to these kinds of “holy texts.” The second reading offers A feminine/womanly vision of the divine that is tender, caring, powerful, and trustworthy. While both of these texts set paradigms for human behavior, the Psalm reading is a reconsideration of the masculine language inherent in most biblical translations. It is an attempt to make more level and inclusive how we think about divinity and to show how the ancient Hebrew male directive can be recast into phrases that are restoring and healing. In preparing this reflection I have been led to wonder how often I/we automatically slide into language and expectations and choices and patterns that are more compatible with the paradigm set in the Samuel reading-- an orthodoxy that objectifies other humans and uses them accordingly. Having the feeling, or suspecting, that someone is only a friend because of something we can do for them is a yucky feeling, and yet that is a way of doing business for many. Many pastors and their Boards only see their congregants as numbers and income. The reading from today’s Psalm offers us a way out. If the God we worship can be for us our Womb of Life instead of a conquering defender we can begin to envision the birthing of new life and healing in our relationships. If we are offered a God with a hand that instead of striking caresses with tenderness, then we have a God we can trust fully and to Whom we can commit our sprits for safekeeping, and we can become that safe place for others as well. We can become Wombs of Life that birth healing and renewal and hope into our relationships and into our world. AMEN! |
Sunday, September 5Deuteronomy 1:43-46
I told you but you wouldn’t listen. You rebelled at my plain Word. You threw out your chests and strutted into the hills. And those Amorites, who had lived in those hills all their lives, swarmed all over you like a hive of bees, chasing you from Seir all the way to Hormah, a stinging defeat. Psalm 37:39-40 The salvation of the righteous is from the Ever-Present-Ever-Birthing God she is our stronghold in the time of change and struggle. The Nurturing-Healing God helps and delivers and saves those who take refuge in her. * * * * MESSAGE: Hearing and healing. Listening and changing. Delivering and saving. I have just read a book by singer/songwriter, Mary Gauthier titled, Saved By a Song. Gauthier writes songs about her own journey into healing. She was adopted, and because she was, she felt like she was not actually born, wasn’t really real, and only a fiction. This all led, first to addiction, then to songwriting, and then to sobriety. She says of her songs that they are vehicles for healing, but that when she is doing the writing that is not at first evident, but it is later that she recognizes her song was actually documenting a stage of her journey. These songs are hard, gritty, and uncomfortable. I’ve heard people say that they won’t listen to her work because they are too raw and sad. Still, she has a large following of people for whom the very nature of her songs lead them into healing. She writes truth—emotional truth. She does not write slick, commercial hits. Her writing speaks to the darkness lurking beneath layers and layers of hers and our denial. It seems most of us do not want to hear, and will not listen to what we deem hard, harsh, too sad, or that goes against our carefully constructed personal mythologies of who and what we are, and how we are perceived by ourselves and by others. But we all are victims of our own denial-- many of us who think we are not in denial are nonetheless in denial about something. Some examples of what is denied are: Systemic Racism, Evolution. Human accelerated climate change Immigration, Domestic violence, our actions... The Ever-Present-Ever-Birthing God of our second reading says: “I told you but you wouldn’t listen. You rebelled at my plain Word...” — we don’t always listen. The Word of this Ever-Present-Ever-Birthing God comes to us in many forms as prophetic words from: Scripture, Sermons, Sunrises & Sunsets, Baby’s smiles, Suggestions, Advise, Inner urges, Stuff we try to ignore, Hard words from friends, Interventions, Books we read, and Songs... If we close our hearts and ears to the channels of God’s Word we lock ourselves into cycles of non-healing. My own inner process when I am confronted with a hard message that challenges my self-perceptions is like this—first: How dare-you-thoughts of outrage. You got me all wrong. Infuriated thoughts concerning the stupidity of “some” people. Total denial of any weakness, wrongdoing or character-flaw on my part, and justification for whatever I am called out on. Understand that these are usually purely interior reactions and are silent. After all that interior drama and I cool down a little, I begin to consider the intention of the comment or issue. I try stepping aside from my ego. I remember that when I have reactions that are so intense, usually it is because I am faced with a truth I hate hearing. I then attempt to set my drama aside and see what it is I need to do about myself. Gauthier’s songs speak of addiction, lostness, fear, domestic violence, and lost hope. I think that these are themes that we all have been touched by and because of that we have deep wounds we many times deny. I have discovered that by not denying but embracing my pain, and my embarrassment, I can minister to my wounds and find healing. The Nurturing-Healing God helps and delivers and saves those who take refuge in her. If I listen I can hear. If I do not deny I can call out for help and I can be delivered and saved. If I move beyond my fragile ego and not throw out my chest and strut around I can be helped. AMEN! |
Sunday, September 12Genesis 7:11-12 & 17-24
It was the six-hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month that it happened: all the underground springs erupted and all the windows of Heaven were thrown open. Rain poured for forty days and forty nights. The flood continued forty days and the waters rose and lifted the ship high over the Earth. The waters kept rising, the flood deepened on the Earth, the ship floated on the surface. The flood got worse until all the highest mountains were covered—the high-water mark reached twenty feet above the crest of the mountains. Everything died. Anything that moved—dead. Birds, farm animals, wild animals, the entire teeming exuberance of life—dead. And all people—dead. Every living, breathing creature that lived on dry land died; he wiped out the whole works—people and animals, crawling creatures and flying birds, every last one of them, gone. Only Noah and his company on the ship lived. The floodwaters took over for 150 days. 4 Maccabees 15:29-32 O Mother of all hope and courage (this is an allusion to both the mother of the Maccabee boys and to the creator of all), vindicator of the law and champion of our spirits, who carried away the prize of the contest in your heart! O more noble than males in steadfastness, and more courageous than men in endurance! Just as Noah’s ark, carrying the world in the universal flood, stoutly endured the waves, so you, O loving guardian of righteousness, overwhelmed from every side by the flood of your emotions and the violent winds, the torture of your sons, endured nobly and withstood the wintry storms that assail our spirits. MESSAGE: We escape scary episodes of near calamity, maybe just barely, but we do. A wolf pack in the Lassen national forest survives an almost 900,000 acre wildfire and thrives. What do incidences like these have in common? I was reading an article by Ryan Sabalow in the Sacramento Bee about the survival of a wolf pack that were spotted alive right in the middle of the Dixie Fire near Westwood in Lassen County, California. Stabalow writes that California Wolf biologist, Kent Loudon expected charred carcasses but instead found, an oasis of streams and greenery surrounded by char and ash. As I read this article I realized that this was in-and-of-itself an ark which is defined by Merriam Webster as “1a: a boat or ship held to resemble that in which Noah and his family were preserved from the Flood; b: something that affords protection and safety; 2a: the sacred chest representing to the Hebrews the presence of God among them; b: a repository traditionally in or against the wall of a synagogue for the scrolls of the Torah.” Which is to say a place where things and people and concepts are protected and kept safe. This realization led me to wonder about our own present-day arks-- those places where we are either kept safe or where we can run to for safety. Where are they? What are they? You’ve heard the phrase, “Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide?” But that is not actually true. In God, in Spirit, in life, in hope, in faith there is always somewhere we can go for safety. So, I am wondering about our own arks. Prayer has been an ark for me. For in prayer I have found hope for a better day. But also I have found much needed arks within my tight circle of friends, for in their hugs and the feeling of safety being held brings me I am given an anticipation of possibility. Sometimes being within the walls of my house seems like being in an ark, too. And then there is this Table where we celebrate and remember that Last Seder Meal Jesus ate with his friends and family. For it is there/here that I am led to recall that the words we proclaim, the words we bring to mind from our collective and historical memory as Church, offer me that bubble of peace and sense of safety and I am given the courage to face another week. I wonder, what are your arks? Where are your safe places? When the fires rage and the ash falls do you know where to find green and flowing streams? “O Mother of all hope and courage, vindicator of the law and champion of our spirits,” hold us in the ark of your heart and hold us safe... AMEN! |