Stranger in a Strange Land (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

In Robert Heinlein's STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND, the main character, Michael, is a human who was raised on Mars by Martians, and then, as an adult, comes to Earth. He grows up on a planet with very little water and then comes to a planet that is mostly water. Actual, physical, wet water is a central theme, but it also takes on a spiritual meaning quite apart from its physical form. When people on Earth give MIchael a drink of water, he considers them to be "water brothers" because they have shared water with him. He feels spiritually bound to them because, having grown up with very little of it, water has a spiritual meaning for him. The humans he meets only think of water as a physical liquid, and therein lies a lot of miscommunication.

On Earth, even though he is also human, he is truly a "stranger in a strange land."

Water. When you need it (or feel that you won't be able to get it when you need it) ... well, it's hard to think of anything else. The Lectionary scriptures, this week, are all about water: the physical kind and the spiritual kind. In Exodus, the people fear they will die for lack of water. Following God's instruction, Moses (the original stranger in a strange land) strikes a rock in front of tribal leaders and water gushes forth. But, in this week's Psalm, the event is mostly remembered as a time of complaining and testing of God; not so much for the gushing miracle.

In the gospel of John, Jesus is tired and thirsty; He breaks some taboos by asking a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. What follows is one of those conversations we often find in John where Jesus means one thing and his listener thinks he means something else. It's all about the water: but she thinks he means the wet kind, and he actually means the spiritual kind. Finally, in Romans, we're told that the reason "hope does not disappoint" is "because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us."

That's the spiritual water of which Jesus spoke.

We can't let wet water, or the lack of it, remain our focus in this life. Sure, we need it; we can't live without it. But there comes a point when, like the folks in the Samaritan village, we move from the physical to the spiritual. We must think of the spiritual water that is as essential to our souls as the physical water is to our bodies. We can't live without that spiritual water, either.

We can both drink and share that living water because it never runs out; a continuously gushing miracle that daily strengthens us for our journey.

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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Third Sunday in Lent (March 19, 2017)
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/

Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 95
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42

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Lectionary Breakfast still meets Friday mornings at the Waco "Egg and I" restaurant. Starting at 8:00, we take the time to allow the living water to flow through us as we laugh, pray, read, discuss, and, of course, eat breakfast.

And each person gets a full glass of water.

Blessings,
Steve

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PHOTO CREDIT:
J. Alan Glennon. (2008) About Geysers, http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~glennon/geysers/index.htm, University of California, Santa Barbara, originally posted January 1995, updated August 9, 2008.

The Shining (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

There was a lot of controversy surrounding Stephen King's The Shining.

Likely, though, it's not what you think. I mean, if you think the controversies were things like a young child being stalked by evil ghosts or being endangered by his own father, then you would be wrong. Somehow, as strange as that sounds, today, people managed to accept both those premises.

The first controversy had to do with the novel, itself. King's publisher lobbied long and hard for King to not even write the novel. After the success of Carrie and 'Salem's Lot, Doubleday was worried King would get typed as a horror writer. There's some irony for you. The Shining went on the be King's first hardback bestseller.

The second controversy was the title; people just didn't get it. People had heard of visions, as in the Bible, and they had heard of precognition, as in ESP, but "shining?" What was that? Did King just make that up? It wasn't until 11 years after The Shining was first published that King explained: he took the title from a John Lennon song, "Instant Karma!," where Lennon suggests we, like the moon, stars, and sun, "all shine on."

Of course, the big controversy was the Stanley Kubrick film. Generally considered one of the greatest horror films of all time, it nevertheless diverged significantly from King's novel. King was not shy about his disappointment. The irony, here, is that the movie likely drove book sales through the roof.

It seems that "shining" has always been a bit controversial . . . as we see in this week's Lectionary scriptures. When Moses came down from the mountaintop meeting with God, his face was positively glowing . . . really glowing. Let that sink in for a minute; try to picture it. Even in this day of CGI movies, seeing someone like that in real life would be disconcerting. Moses was so bright, the people were afraid; he had to wear a veil for quite some time, until the glow had faded away.

Then, in another of this week's passages, Jesus takes his inner circle up the mountain where He is transfigured and, He too, is left glowing after encountering God there. I wonder how long that glow lasted? Scriptures doesn't tell us, but one thing we know, they didn't come down from the mountain until the next day.

Both "shinings" reappear in the II Corinthians passage, where Paul writes:

“With that kind of hope to excite us, nothing holds us back. Unlike Moses, we have nothing to hide. Everything is out in the open with us. He wore a veil so the children of Israel wouldn’t notice that the glory was fading away—and they didn’t notice. They didn’t notice it then and they don’t notice it now, don’t notice that there’s nothing left behind that veil. Even today when the proclamations of that old, bankrupt government are read out, they can’t see through it. Only Christ can get rid of the veil so they can see for themselves that there’s nothing there.

Whenever, though, they turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are—face-to-face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We’re free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. And so we are transfigured much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.”
‭‭(2 Corinthians‬ ‭3:12-18‬ ‭MSG‬‬
http://bible.com/97/2co.3.12-18.msg)

We should have no fear of the shining, the real shining. It's God's light pouring through.
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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Transfiguration Sunday (February 7, 2016)
Last Sunday before Lent
First reading
Exodus 34:29-35
Psalm
Psalm 99
Second reading
2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Gospel
Luke 9:28-36, (37-43a)

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Not all of us are morning people, bright and shining when we first face the day. That's what breakfast is for. Join us for Lectionary Breakfast Friday morning at 8:00. We gather for a great hour of relaxed fellowship and scripture at the Waco "Egg and I" restaurant.

Enjoy the week!
Steve

Radiant (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

Winters in our little river city could be harsh. When the cold temps combined with the wind off the river, the result was bone-chilling. And one place we could almost always count on to experience that cold was in Mrs. Maguire's Algebra class. Oh, there was nothing wrong with the radiators in her classroom. They performed their steamy duty as well as any. No, the problem was the windows.

If Mrs. Maguire thought anyone's attention was drifting, or their participation was subpar, she opened those windows.

Plus, to underscore how serious she was about the need to be engaged in her class, she would relocate people to sit by the open windows. Now, I'll grant you the radiators were directly below the windows. So, no matter how cold it was on that side of the room, no one was in any real danger. Those radiators kept radiating.

Still, as you can imagine, most of us were especially vigilant in her class that winter. Sitting next to the radiators could be warm, but that could change in an instant if she opened the windows to let those winter winds slice into the room.

Those radiators, whether warming us or serving the will of Mrs. Maguire, could have been called a different term: radiants. For the most part, we use "radiant" as an adjective. It has synonyms like illuminated, brilliant, gleaming, glowing, ablaze, luminous, luminescent, lustrous, incandescent, dazzling, shimmering, resplendent. We say things like "she looked radiant that evening" or "the radiant energy filled the room."

But it also works as a noun.

A person or thing can BE a radiant; the conduit for all that energy outflow.

I have to wonder if that is what the Psalmist means when he writes in this week's Lectionary, "Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.” (Psalm‬ ‭34:5‬ ‭NIV‬‬) It certainly was true of Moses. He spent so much time in God's presence that he glowed from the exposure. He became a radiant.

Those radiants kept us warm that winter in Mrs. Maguire's classroom, but only because they were connected to the source, the generator of all that steam heat. Disconnected, they would have been just so much cold metal. What about us? Are we radiants? Do we spend so much time in the presence of the Lord that others cannot help but experience God's warmth and glow?

Be a radiant.
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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/

Proper 25 (30) (October 25, 2015)
First reading and Psalm
Job 42:1-6, 10-17
Psalm 34:1-8, (19-22)
Alternate First reading and Psalm
Jeremiah 31:7-9
Psalm 126
Second reading
Hebrews 7:23-28
Gospel
Mark 10:46-52
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Fall is such a busy time. I hope you can make time to come to Lectionary Breakfast on Friday morning. We gather at 8:00 for an hour of fellowship, scripture reading, discussion; plus a few laughs along the way. Join us at the Waco "Egg and I" restaurant for a sure fire way to ensure you have a great week.

Enjoy!
Steve

The Audience of God (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

We, the audience, had come from all across the United States to hear this choir sing, to see Dr. James Abbington lead, to absorb gospel standards and other pieces of black sacred music, to have our souls refreshed. Before us, high up in the choir area of the church sanctuary, stood a large, combined choir composed of folks from several local churches and from churches as far away as Fort Worth and Dallas; well-dressed men and women; dark suits, white shirts and ties, colorful scarves, long black dresses.

For the second night in a row, Dr. Abbington asked us, the audience, to become part of the show.

For those of us who had attended a far less formal gathering the night before, the announcement was not all that surprising. The previous night, after a full day of speakers and panels, leading scholars presenting and discussing on the state of black sacred music, those same scholars took to the stage. Accomplished musicians, all, they were expected to provide us with an evening of gospel greats.

And we were not disappointed.

As our performers for the evening arranged themselves around dual pianos, Dr. Abbington changed the dynamic. We found ourselves called on to sing.

Us. The audience.

I marveled at this. He seemed so certain we would just do as he said. What made him think we, the audience, would agree to this? Weren't WE supposed to be on the receiving end of all this?

But we did what he told us to do. We belted out "Oh Happy Day," "Marching to Zion," and "Every Praise (is to Our God)." Song after song, we sang. But that was not the end of it. Next, Dr. Abbington started calling people to come to the front to take the solo parts and the leads. In short order, there were more people standing between the lip of the stage and the front row than in the rest of the auditorium.

Now here we were, 24 hours later, and he was doing it again.

I was starting to think this was just a thing he liked to do, the way some rock stars like to tilt the microphone toward the audience so they can chime in on some parts. Maybe this was just his way.

Then he said something that put it all in perspective: "According to Kierkegaard, in church, God is the only audience; we are all participants in the worship."

While I think I have long had a similar understanding of worship, I've never heard it said quite that way: God is the only audience.

He is certainly the only audience that matters.

Moses forgot this. Angered at the bickering Israelites, he struck the rock with his staff to get the water they needed. In doing this, he disobeyed God's instruction to get that the water by speaking to the rock. And he paid the price. Afterwords, GOD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you didn’t trust me, didn’t treat me with holy reverence in front of the People of Israel, you two aren’t going to lead this company into the land that I am giving them.” (‭Numbers‬ ‭20‬:‭12‬ MSG)

We are not, in fact, the audience. No matter where we sit or stand in the house of meeting, when we act as though we or someone else is the audience, we forget a basic truth about worship.

God is the only audience.
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Selected from a reflection on "Marching to Zion, the Pruit Symposium on Black Sacred Music" [Baylor University, October 2014]
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Something to keep in mind as we start the Advent season.

READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu

First Sunday of Advent (November 30, 2014)
Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:24-37

The Way Things Work

The Way Things Work
(a brief Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

Maybe you've sat with your child or grandchild and thumbed through "The Way Things Work" by David Macaulay. Or maybe you, like me, only needed your inner child nearby to enjoy learning how stuff works :-)

If you've never spent any time with this wonderful book, let me encourage you to grab a copy and get ready to be dazzled. There are no dry, difficult to understand explanations here. Macaulay is a genius at making the complex seem simple, with the added bonus that most of it is visual. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then Macaulay has saved us millions.

Or perhaps you've read (viewed) some of his other, award-winning books: "Castle" (he assembles one for us), "City" (all about Rome), "Ship" (a sea-going visual treat), "Pyramid" (just what you think), or "The Way We Work" (human anatomy), etc. These are delightful attempts to make plain much of what inhabits our modern life or which we wonder about from our past.

But you may not know of my favorite work by Macaulay: "Motel of the Mysteries." In this funny, quirky book Macaulay does for the modern world what he has done for castles, cathedrals, and pyramids. But there's a twist.

The set up: 2000 years from now most of the American continent is covered in a thick layer of petrified material. It has become one giant archeological site; people from across the globe trying to piece together what life was like in "Usa" before the not-fully-understood catastrophe made it uninhabitable.

In what has some pretty humorous parallels to Howard Carter's excavation of Tutankhamen's tomb, Macaulay shows us how easy it is, despite best intentions, to get it all wrong. Every time something is discovered about life in "Usa," it is assumed to have religious significance. And that's what happens when the ground gives way beneath amateur archeologist Howard Carson. He drops several feet into a shaft that, fortuitously for him (and us), reveals a previously undisturbed "burial" chamber in one of the former civilization's mysterious "motels."

A great part of the fun in reading through "Motel of the Mysteries" is that, due to Mr. Macaulay's remarkable drawings, we readers recognize everything and KNOW it is not what they think it is. We know it's just a motel room and that each discovered item is not something of religious significance. Some of my favorites are the Sacred Urn (commode), the Sacred Point (foil seal on the toilet paper), the Internal Component Enclosure used to symbolically store major organs of the deceased (ICE bucket), and the "Plant That Would Not Die."

If you have any interest in archeology---whether you read Michener's "The Source" cover to cover or are just a fan of Indiana Jones---you should find this makes for an entertaining afternoon. Snickers abound :-)

And that brings us to this week's Lectionary passages. Somewhat like Macaulay's future archeologists, we tend to see what we expect to see. And all the more so when we are treading familiar territory. We get so caught up in the part of the story we know, we often miss some very significant gems.

We read Esther expecting to come to the thrilling conclusion where the evil villain gets his just reward. But it's worth a revisit to Esther 9:22 where the details of the subsequent celebration are told, including the many "days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor." Wait. What? They celebrated by giving gifts to the poor? Now there's a thought; gifts to the poor. That one has me scratching my head trying to remember the last time I gave a gift (not a loan or a necessity) to the poor.

We read the Numbers passage unsurprised to find that, once again, the people are whining to Moses about something. This time they miss the foods they had for "free" while being slaves in Egypt; they want meat (miraculous manna is just not enough). Moses then whines to God about it (Yes, he really did). In response, God, just before dumping two feet of quail on the campo, gets Moses to convene the tribal elders at the Tent of the Meeting. God then drops a load of spirit on them that is so strong they all start prophesying, even two of them that stayed behind in the camp!

Joshua, Moses' assistant and eventual successor, is so horrified to learn of these two "outlier" prophets, he calls for Moses to stop them. But, in Numbers 11:29 Moses replied, "Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit on them!" It's a cautionary note to those in spiritual authority; a leader's desire should be that God blesses the people and leaders equally, particularly in matters of the Spirit.

In all the talk about who should or should not be casting out demons in the name of Jesus, who's for us and who's against us, and whether we're salty enough, you could easily miss this admonition to those who mislead the young. Mark 9:42 quotes Jesus saying, "If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones [children] who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea."

Gulp.

And finally there is all that talk in James about praising and praying; praying for the sick and the sad, and about how Elijah is just like us. You might miss this comment in James 5:20 which says "you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner's soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins."

Covered. Gone. For good.

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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt
Proper 21 (26) (September 30, 2012)

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
Psalm 124
Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29
Psalm 19:7-14
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50

Join us Friday at 8:00 a.m. at Cafe Cappuccino to imbibe food for thought and body. This "Cafe of the Mysteries" is located in downtown Waco on 6th, near the Courthouse, and there are many excellent items to be discovered therein. Food and libation is available for all in the inner chamber ;-)

Enjoy the week!
Steve