SUN 8thAUG 2021(‘00) 19th SUNinORDINARY: B
1.1K19:4-8
- Read 18:1-19:21! What was it about Jezebel that intimidated resourceful Elijah?
- ‘TheBush!’: Read GEN21 (Hagar)! EXOD3(Moses)! JON4(Jonah)!
- Elijah’ unintegrated crane-bag of Piety&Violence&Luck&Timidity&Charism!
How does this offer me a glimpse of my own work-in-progress?
What sorts of disciple do I still need to undertake?
&Especially in regard to my dynamic non-rational serendipitous aspects?
2.THE PSALM:33:2-9
- Read 33(34):1-22! an optimistic moralistic ‘wishful think’ about Yahweh!
- What counts for me as ‘Yahweh’s Reality’, moment-to-moment, day-to-day?
- What especially allows me to ‘taste’ the desirability of being ‘Yahweh’sSlave’?
- Does the passive hearing&reciting of psalms like this lull me into being unable to strenuously work-with the ‘fragmentation’ glimpsed in Elijah’s narratives?
- Who has a vested interest in the propagation of optimistic ‘wishful think’ prayers?
3.EPH4:30-5:2
- What will enable me to listen more robustly to Paul’s ‘commonplace’ here?
- &’Transubstantiate’ it from mere rhetoric to be the beginnings of ‘real food’?
- ‘TheHolyBreath!’: Is this important biblical/theological ‘breath’ becoming the core of my inner&outer discipleship? &The dynamism to embody ‘commonplaces’?
- What ‘chance’ has ‘Christ’, in a marketplace thronged with ‘OtherGods’? Will He be trampled, or inculcated wimpishly, or prematurely frighten would-be disciples?
4.JN6:41-51
- Read 6:1-71! How would Elijah or Paul or Yahweh hear all the biblical echoes?
- In what ways is ‘TheFather’ drawing, sending, speaking or showingHimself-to me?
- Life: Power, mediated by biblical story&ritual, of being fully-Jesus in TheWorld!
- Why is one Bread-from-Heaven(Manna) not ‘lifegiving’, yet another Bread-fromHeaven(Jesus) is? But that Jesus models&enables a ‘way’ that ‘casts out fear’!
& can any of this be understood, apart from the imagery&power of ‘ThePassover’
5.The presence&action of the BlessedOne, is it like this?
Confidential memorandum to TheMostExcellentHighPriest Caiaphas!
Dispatched by trusted messenger from BarShemaya’, Stalker of The Nazarene!
Greetings!May Heaven’sBlessings adorn YourExcellencey, this Festival of Pesach! In accordance with yourBidding, I have attached myself to the group of pious flatterers
who constitute the larger part of TheNazarene’s following! Two days ago, by some magical devising, or more likely by a pre-arranged stratagem, he seemed to feed a very numerous crowd to satiety with a few fragments of food, this arousing on these simpletons the ludicrous desire to make him their king! &As if this weren’t sufficient treason, he claimed that what he could provide was more powerful & more lifegiving than ThePricelessFood, TheManna, offered to OurFathers by Moshe, peace be upon Him! He seemed to hint indeed, in a manner I found disquieting due to the proximity of the great Festival, that he himself was the new manna! I think YourExcellency will smell here, something even more baneful than treason!! Fare You Well!!!
6. RIDDLE Which offers the best exemplar to live This OneLife by?
Elijah David Paul or Jesus?
Refections and comments can be emailed to adbi@chokmah.ie