Register Login |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Welcome to i.UCC Forums! To participate, please register or log in as a user. Your registration information will be confidential!  Register
Log in
|
| You are not authorized to post a reply.
|
|
| Author |
Messages |
|
katehuey
Posts:174
 |
| 01/28/2008 11:58 AM |
|
It's often said that Epiphany is the season of "manifestation," so it's an excellent time for us to open our eyes and hearts to those unexpected encounters, and the help that comes from unexpected places and shows us God's care.
We're turning now to the Transfiguration, as we bring this season to a close. Now THAT's definitely an experience of light and manifestation! |
|
Kate Huey |
|
|
katehuey
Posts:174
|
| 01/28/2008 4:33 PM |
|
I want to share this thought about the text, sent to me by my best friend:
"Did you ever think about how, in this text, Jesus calls the insiders to abandon what they know to follow him so that those who are abandoned could know of the gracious love of God?"
I thought it was beautiful. Maybe that's what "fishing for people means"? |
|
Kate Huey |
|
|
oscpastor
Posts:1
|
| 01/30/2008 1:17 PM |
|
Thanks,Kate for sharing that line! (I have to be careful what I email you...) The thought did occur to me, spurred on by the reflections in Provoking the Gospel of Matthew, that abandonment plays a big part in this passage. Jesus abandons his hometown and its familiarity for the land "across the Jordan" by the shores of the sea and finds himself in an area of diverse populations along what were ancient trade routes. Now in this territory with its symbolic significance (it is Epiphany after all and Jesus is the "light to the nations") he comes upon four people fishing and invites them to similarly abandon the familiar plying of a trade and use those same gifts and abilities for a new purpose.
Then I wondered what that purpose would be and realized that it was to the hungry, the prisoner, the poor and the alientated...in other words those who have experienced abandonement themselves.
So, Jesus is a savior who freely abandnons his hometown and calls others to freely abandon what they know for a new road so that those who have had abandonment thrust upon them may know the good and gracious love of God.
Could this be what Jesus means earlier in the passage by calling people to "Repent!"? Can it be that one aspect of repentance has nothing to do with sin at all, but rather a "turning toward" or "turning again"?
|
|
Mark Suriano
Old South UCC |
|
|
subear
Posts:789
|
| 01/30/2008 2:14 PM |
|
ocs,
thank you for continuing that thought; I have been contemplating that for a couple days now. . .
how it can be a gift or service to abandon someone or something where there may have be a mutual dependence. The gift or lesson (if we choose to accept it) is that both (the abandoner and the abandoned) learn who & what is the source of our substance and our salvation.
Earlier today I read that the gate is narrow because we must enter unencumbered, without [psychological] baggage, weapons or shields. naked. . . open. . . in truth. . .
P.L. & U.
Susannah
|
|
"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." Pierre Teilhard de Chardin |
|
|
|
| You are not authorized to post a reply. |
|
|
|
ActiveForums 3.7
|
|
|
|