Ears to the ground
Saturday, December 29, 2012
The Fifth Day of Christmas
1 John 2:5-10
Anyone who claims to be intimate with God should walk just as Jesus walked, and live the same kind of life that he lived. This is nothing new … and yet it is new, because the darkness is passing away, and the True Light is already blazing. Whoever loves his brother is in the light. And he remains in the light.
John keeps this as simple as possible. Be like Jesus. And what does that mean? Love your brother.
Our negotiating, agile rationalizing cold-blooded selfish lizard brains ask, “But who is my brother?” Jesus answers by saying, “Who is not your brother?”  On page 4 of the Bible Cain asks God, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” God does not answer, except to cry out to Cain, “What have you done? Listen to the sound of your brother’s blood, crying out to me from the ground.”
If I listen, I will hear. God implores me to open my ears and open my eyes. He wants me to be like Jesus.
All the rules in my life, the disciplines, the rhythms, all the habits of being and doing and thinking and speaking and writing either make me more loving or they don’t. Albert Haase says our prayers must make us more prayerful in the rest of our day, or they aren’t prayers after all.
Let my prayers open my eyes to my brother’s blood, and my ears to it crying from the ground.
Lord, now lettest thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people: a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.
(For me, Simeon’s beautiful prayer is always sung, as it was at Zion Lutheran Church in Lincoln, Illinois – the church of my youth.
Whenever the lectionary gets around to Luke 2:29-32, my mind rings with the chant, with the melody, with the notes from how we sang it in those days. The word Israel, for example, suddenly has seven syllables.
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