The Cowboy Coming to You (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

There was a bit of a commotion in our Central Texas community the other day.

It happened about the time everyone was headed back from lunch.

The bull, lighting out for the territory ahead, was giving it his all as he sprinted down a very busy street. Behind him, lasso and whip at the ready, raced a man in a red pickup truck . . . followed by three (or possibly four) police cars.

It WAS a sight.

As entrancing as that parade was to local drivers and the folks finishing their burgers and fries, the most interesting part of the story came at the end.

That's when two "animal control cowboys" arrived to corner the fella and wrangle him into a trailer. His flirt with freedom at an end, the bull was returned to his owner, only a little worse for the wear.

And as one local police sergeant noted, “The good thing about living in Texas is that it’s not too long after you call a cowboy that you get one coming to you.”

That brings us to two of this week's Lectionary scriptures: the Exodus 17 passage where the children of Israel tested God, and Psalm 95 which refers to that event. When Exodus 17 opens, the Israelites have experienced the wonder and power of God again and again and again: the ten plagues on Egypt, including the miracle of the Passover; the pillar of cloud and the pillar of flame; the dry crossing at the Red Sea and the destruction of the Egyptian army; undrinkable water cured; free meat every evening to feast on and manna every morning with which to make bread.

And yet, after all of that, when they grew thirsty, they insulted God by complaining as if they had never witnessed a single miracle. They had seen His power, LIVED it, but acted as if none of it had ever occured.

Is it any wonder that God came to loath them?

The police in my community called on animal control cowboys when faced with the need to round up an errant bull. They made that call because they KNEW those cowboys were available and ready to accept the challenge. There was every confidence that a cowboy would soon be coming to do what needed to be done.

That's because we live in "cowboy country." We know they are there, that they are capable, and that they can be depended on in time of need. We have seen their abilities and have no concern about them handling our needs. Our experiences with relation to cowboys has led to our faith in them to address our cowboy needs.

In the same way, the Israelites lived in "God Country." They had been living there for some time; yet, when the need arose, they couldn't muster a tiny bit of faith, even with all their experience with Him, to trust God for their need.

If you have seen the power of God in your life, imitate our local police in your faith; trust that when you need God's help that He already knows and has an answer on the way.

You have a cowboy coming to you.

##############################################################

We're rounding everyone up Friday morning at 8:00 for feed and a little scripture grazing. Join us if you can. We'll be at the Waco "Egg and I" restaurant.

Cow folk welcome.

Enjoy the week!
Steve

###############################
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu

READINGS FOR THE WEEK
Third Sunday in Lent (March 23, 2014)

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

dallas noir (a brief Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

Even as a kid, I was the one who was more interested in the B movie than the double feature headliner at our local drive-in theater. That's because the B movie was often the one with the "noir."

Noir is a story style that usually involves at least one dead person, murdered by someone wanting something that dead person owned, controlled, or had access to. Think: The Maltese Falcon. There is almost always a tough-talking protagonist seeking the truth, along with some complicated chemistry ("sparkage") between the protagonist and a suspect. Think: Mike Hammer.

I like noir.

Seems like I was always having to stay up late to see the B movie or catch the late, late show. But that's when I could see the hard-boiled detective (private or police) wade through the miasma of half-truths and red herrings on the way to ferreting out the perpetrator. This may be why I am a night owl.

I like noir so much, I recently made a pilgrimage to the Half-Price Books mother ship in north Dallas to attend the pre-release event for a new anthology called "dallas noir." This is the 60-th release from Akashic Books in a series with titles like boston noir, mumbai noir, and wall street noir (lower case all intentional). Future editions include such destinations as Baghdad, Stockholm, and Jerusalem.

The evening did not disappoint. Not only could I purchase the book in advance of public release, the editor and ten of the authors were on hand! I stood, transfixed, as author after author discussed his/her story, the what and why of it, and how they chose that particular Dallas neighborhood in which to set it. A little bit of heaven for a noir lover.

As the term implies, these are dark stories. I've spent more than a little time trying to sort out just what it is that draws me to them. A few years ago, after considering and dismissing one reason after another, I decided it was this: almost every story has at its center a knight-in-tarnished-armor who struggles against that darkness, perhaps personally, perhaps professionally, and not always succeeding . . . but never giving up.

Now, in this week's Lectionary selections, I find another reason. With all its darkness (commandments are broken, deadly sins are everywhere), each noir story serves up a dramatic illustration of what can happen when we forget something important: The idea that we control the flow of wealth is an illusion, and attempts to take it from others always leads to a dark place. When this life is measured in decades that can usually be counted on the fingers of two hands, the very concept of "possession" must be called into question.

True, while we're here, we are to be good stewards of what has been entrusted to us. And while stewarding these trusts, we are to do so in recognition of this truth:

‘The silver and gold are mine,’ says the Lord who rules over all. (Haggai 2:8)


###############################
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu

READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Proper 27 (32) (November 10, 2013)

Haggai 1:15b-2:9
Psalm 145:1-5, 17-21 or Psalm 98
Job 19:23-27a
Psalm 17:1-9
2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17
Luke 20:27-38

Can you be with us Friday morning? We're still meeting at 8:00 at the Waco "Egg and I" restaurant. The food is tasty and the coffee is hot.

Oh, and their dark roast is superb :-)

Enjoy the week!
Steve

The Kessel Run (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

You might be surprised to learn that real scientists can be upset by what is said by fictional characters.

Oh yes, it's true. In fact, they can get in quite a tizzy about the most arcane things. They get into heated debates about the accuracy, and more specifically, the likelihood, of such things.

Case in point: in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (the first movie), Han Solo boasts that his spaceship, the Millennium Falcon, is more than fast enough to meet the needs of Luke and Obi-Wan, claiming, "It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs."

Astronomers everywhere blanched.

A Parsec, it turns out, is a measurement of distance, not time. One Parsec is roughly 3.26 Light Years or 19 trillion miles (that's close enough for our purposes).

So, if Han wasn't bragging about the speed of his ship, what did he mean?

Well, the Internet is FULL of answers.

Many serious scientists have weighed in on this, and their answers run the gamut. A sample: one theory suggests that Han took a short-cut through a dangerous region of space to reduce the distance, went where a more risk-averse pilot would not. Another scientist talked of wormholes (or hyperspace). One even wrote a very learned paper on why it HAD TO BE time-travel.

The situation is somewhat akin to what happens when we read the statements of Jesus, especially when he tells a parable. We often get caught up in the details of the parable, completely missing the reason why Jesus told it.

In the case of Han Solo, it is unlikely there will ever be an answer that is acceptable to everyone. However, George Lucas is on record (there's a note in the script) that Han was "obviously lying." The reactions to Han's claim, especially that of Luke Skywalker, strongly support Lucas' answer.

And who knows better than the author?

In this week's Lectionary passages, we have "the parable of the unjust judge" told by Jesus to his disciples:

"Then Jesus told them a parable to show them they should always pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected people. There was also a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but later on he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor have regard for people, yet because this widow keeps on bothering me, I will give her justice, or in the end she will wear me out by her unending pleas.’” And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unrighteous judge says! Won’t God give justice to his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he delay long to help them? I tell you, he will give them justice speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:1-8 NET)

The debates about the various particulars associated with this parable are, seemingly, infinite. How much of a role model is that judge for us? Are "we" the widow in the story? Who is her adversary, in "real life?" And what is Jesus trying to tell US with that last statement about faith? On and on.

All of it, in my opinion, missing the point.

If you read it and come away with any conclusion other than we "should always pray and not lose heart," then you have drifted from the purpose of the parable. It's right there in the very first line of the passage.

And who knows better than the author?

###############################
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu

READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Proper 24 (29) (October 20, 2013)

Jeremiah 31:27-34
Psalm 119:97-104
Genesis 32:22-31
Psalm 121
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Luke 18:1-8

We're continuing to meet for Lectionary Breakfast every Friday morning at the Waco "EGG AND I" restaurant. Join us at 8:00 for some excellent earth-based foods and some celestial discussions.

Astrophysicist are welcome, but must limit themselves to language we can all understand ;-)

Enjoy the week!
Steve

Al Capone Does My Shirts (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

It's 1935. Moose Flanagan and his family have just moved from the middle of the country to Alcatraz Island so that his father can take a job as a prison guard. Having a job, any job, is an accomplishment, even six years after the great stock market crash of 1929. But this job comes with both a decent salary AND a place to live. All of the guards at Alcatraz must live on the island, so quarters are provided for them and their families.

As important as those things are, though, there is another reason for them moving away from all that is familiar to them. Moose's sister, Natalie, needs a special school, and one of the few such schools, perhaps the best of them all, is located just across the Bay in San Francisco. Moose's Dad and Mom uprooted their family, made the move, took the dangerous job, agreed to live on the island, all pinned on the hope she will be admitted.

Al Capone Does My Shirts is one of my favorite reads. I recommend it to all (and I can hardly wait the few more years until I can read it with my grandson!). Gennifer Choldenko's novel has it all: dangerous criminals and trustees, family life and school, a Warden and prison guards, a likable main character and baseball, and, of course, Alcatraz and Al Capone.

But it also has some other things: uncertainty, yearning, forced relocation (for Moose), and not knowing who your true friends are.

And in these things, we find a connection to this week's Lectionary passages. I am particularly thinking of the upheaval being experienced by the Israelites who were forced to move to a foreign land, are captives there, and who must find their way, somehow, until they are released.

They yearn for the home they left behind.

I wished I could have reached into the novel and shared with Moose the comforting words Jeremiah wrote for God's people in Lamentations:

"But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” (Lamentations 3:21-24 ESV)

When the Lord is our portion, it doesn't matter where we are, and we can place in God all our hopes for ourselves and our loved ones. God's faithfulness always exceeds whatever we lack.

###############################
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu

Who SAYS we never shake things up? Eric switched his sermon source for this week and last. This week, he will use the Lectionary passages intended for October 6, 2013. Next week, we will be back on track.

READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Proper 22 (27) (October 6, 2013)

Lamentations 1:1-
Lamentations 3:19-26 or Psalm 137
Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4
Psalm 37:1-9
2 Timothy 1:1-14
Luke 17:5-10

I hope to see you Friday morning at Lectionary Breakfast. We will gather at the Waco Egg and I restaurant at 8:00 to share food and fellowship.

Please leave your laundry at home.

Enjoy the week!
Steve

A Matter of Gravity (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

Several years ago, a question was put to Futurists consulting with a government think tank: "How would life be lived if, every day for 20 minutes, there was no gravity?"

The group immediately split into two different camps: the "gravity will disappear every day at the same time" camp and the "no one knows when the 20 minutes of non-gravity will occur in a given day" camp.

The scenarios they tossed out were, to say the least, intriguing. Everything from "we would need to anchor everything not already tied down" to "we could take it as an opportunity to teach people to fly." Other ideas included permanently labeling everything so items that "strayed" could be returned to the rightful owner and strengthening roofs so they could withstand the impact of objects that would, surely, fall on them when gravity resumed.

Still, what is most interesting to me is that not a single one of them applied their scenarios any where except on Earth. You see, at that point in time, no one had actually flown into space; the Earth had yet to be orbited; space stations were fully the province of fiction. None of these folk, until later told to do so, considered the question from the perspective of outer space.

They were thinking chaos would ensue for 20 minutes every day; that, at a minimum, the potential for loss and injury had to be addressed.

This makes me think about the passages of this week's Lectionary readings. Psalm 81:11-12 talks about what would happen if our spiritual gravity were switched off, perhaps permanently. We would be allowed to follow our OWN counsel. Like an object no longer tethered to the Earth by gravity, we would spin off in the direction we were already headed, but with nothing to break our speed except impact. Our "own counsel" would soon lead us to destruction.

Despite how we often chafe against its seeming limitations, we need the spiritual gravity God offers us to keep us tethered to reality, to continue moving in orbit around all that truly matters.

This week's passages are all about HOW we do that.

###############################
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu

READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Proper 17 (22) (September 1, 2013)

Jeremiah 2:4-13
Psalm 81:1, 10-16
Sirach 10:12-18 or Proverbs 25:6-7
Psalm 112
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16
Luke 14:1, 7-14

I hope to see you Friday morning at "The Egg and I" in Waco. From 8:00 to 9:00, we have a great time rocketing through the scriptures, and the food is LOTS better than paste and Tang :-)

Enjoy the week!
Steve

The Sunday Milking (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

For a few years, my Dad was involved with a family friend in a dairy operation. Early on, before the dairy could pay for itself, the two of them also worked for one of the barge lines based in our hometown of Paducah, Kentucky. That job (pretty much everyone called it "working on the boat") required each of them to be away from home for an entire month; working, eating, and sleeping on the tug as it pushed barges down the Ohio River to the Mississippi, and then on down to New Orleans . . . and back.

Dad and our friend alternated months working on the boat; the one NOT on the boat handled the dairy. They would "swap off" the next month, and so on.

The dairy was a two-a-day operation. Once each morning and once each evening, the cows would make their way across the field and crowd up around the milking door. They were pretty insistent about being fed and milked on time. On the rare day we were late, we could hear them "bawling" clear out on the road.

I was expected to help Dad whenever he needed any assistance with the milking. I wasn't called on to do this too often, and, despite my grumbling about having to get up early or perhaps miss an after school activity, it really was no burden. While Dad got the equipment up and running, ensuring it was clean and ready, my job was to climb way up onto the feed floor, essentially an attic-like space filled with feed. I would make my way around the room, shoveling the feed into the tops of tubes that led down to where the cows would stand when being milked. I usually had to do this twice for each milking. When not shoveling feed, I helped with the cows.

The only time I really had a problem with all of this was one Sunday morning.

Even as a teen, Sundays were MINE. My "day of rest." My day to worship, attend Sunday School, and, in the afternoon, participate in youth activities before evening worship. We teens had such a great time being together, we often went out to the Dairy Queen after evening worship.

Nobody messed with my Sundays.

But one Sunday, the cows did.

I awoke early that Sunday to the sound of my Dad calling my name, telling me to get up because he needed my help with the cows. For a moment there, I was completely disoriented; wasn't this Sunday? But then, when my head cleared I KNEW it was Sunday. I pulled on my jeans and shoes, buttoning my shirt as I headed downstairs, but I griped all the way down the stairs . . . and all the way out to the farm. I whined about losing "Sunday time" to the cows; I was emphatic that we HAD to finish in time for me to get to church; I was oh-so-righteously ticked off at Dad for making me do this "on a Sunday!"

Dad didn't say a word all the way to the farm. He just let me rant. But, once we arrived and were walking toward the dairy barn, Dad turned and stopped me with a palm to the chest. I stopped walking (and, finally, stopped talking).

Dad said, "Do you hear that?"

Of course, I hadn't heard anything other than the sound of my own voice for several minutes. But as I paused, then, to listen, I did hear something.

"Yeah," I said, "It's the cows bawling."

And he then asked the question, the one that REALLY shut my mouth: "Do you know WHY they're bawling?"

In all the time we had been doing this, I had never once stopped to wonder . . . well, ANY thing about the cows. Sadly, I had to admit that I had no idea, really, why they were bawling. Somehow, in my youthful mind, I just thought they were ticked off that we were late.

Well, no.

"They're bawling," said Dad, "because they're in pain. And they will stay that way until somebody milks them."

I was just like those folks in this week's Lectionary selection from the gospel of Luke: I couldn't see past my own well-ordered world view to the actual living beings who were in need.

###############################
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu

READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Proper 16 (21) (August 25, 2013)

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
Isaiah 58:9b-14
Psalm 103:1-8
Hebrews 12:18-29
Luke 13:10-17

I hope to see you Friday morning at Lectionary Breakfast. We're still having a great time discussing the scriptures over a great meal at "The Egg and I" in Waco. Join us if you can.

Enjoy the week!
Steve

Run For Your Life (a Lectionary Reflection by Steve Orr)

The news was bad, about as bad as it gets. His life was forfeit. It appeared nothing could be done to change that. So. Decision time.

Fight, flight, or fold?

Some of us recall the television show, Run For Your Life, where, in the first episode, successful attorney Paul Bryan is told by his doctor that he has less than two years to live. Faced with a hopeless situation, he elects to "take the money and run." For 85 more episodes we follow Paul Bryan (perfectly portrayed by Ben Gazzara) as he travels the globe attempting to do all those things, go all those places that might, in modern parlance, constitute his "bucket list."

This show worked a lot like Route 66; each episode finding the main character embroiled in some situation, but rarely in the same place and rarely with people he had met before. One week he might be stuck in middle America because his car broke down, and the next he might be enlisted by US intelligence to perform some task behind the Iron Curtain (Why, yes, it . . ahem . . . WAS a long time ago).

For those who have never seen it, this is one of the best shows television has offered us, regardless of year. Great writing, great acting, and a who's who of Hollywood stars on their way up. Definitely worth your viewing time.

And that brings me to this week's Lectionary scriptures. In the 1st Kings passage Elijah, coming off the victory at Mount Carmel, suddenly finds his life threatened, and not by just anybody. He has been threatened by Queen Jezebel, a woman who has a reputation of delivering on her threats.

Like Joseph before him (and many others before and after), Elijah elects to run from the confrontation. It seems counter-intuitive, especially following Mount Carmel's mind-blowing victory. But, run he does.

Paul Bryan COULD have chosen differently. He could have stayed right where he was, just accepted the bad hand he had been dealt. "Fold" is always an option. But he chose, instead, to take a different path, to "run for his life." And because of his choice, adventures ensued. Elijah, too, ran from his troubles . . . right into the arms of God.

There are times when we need to press on, but there are also times when the thing to do is run the other way. Or if not run, then walk, or maybe just step off for a bit . . . and seek an audience with the one who is "a very present help in trouble." (Psalms 46:1 NKJV)

###############################
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu

READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Proper 7 (12) (June 23, 2013)

1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a
Psalm 42 and 43
Isaiah 65:1-9
Psalm 22:19-28
Galatians 3:23-29
Luke 8:26-39