Mind Your Business – Luke 2:8

Mind Your Business

  “Mind your own business,”

My mother said when I was

Inserting my nose and opinions

Into the lives

 of friends and foe alike.

Get your head out of the clouds

And take care of business.

You have work to do today

And more tomorrow

And even more the day after.

Mind your own business

Said shepherd mothers to their sons.

There are ewes and lambs to watch

Wolves and foxes to watch for

And brambles and crevices.

It is dark, and it is cold  

Make sure you are awake

As your watch crawls slowly to dawn

Or you’ll lose your lambs

And death will come to the flock.

Minding our business,

Passing the watches of the night,

Watching our flocks one night

When it came, but it was not death

It was light, joy and song.

It had to be angels

There’s no other option

They came, first one,

And then a host,

Speaking and then chanting

A baby has been born in David’s city,

Yeah, that happens all the time,

Saul had a girl last year at this time

And got to leave us with the sheep

To keep watch with his new family.

But this child is different,

He comes with a choir

Angels, looking like soldiers,

Armed with words not swords,

Told us to go and see.

Mind your own business,

I thought, as look at the sheep

The same sheep I had watched

For days, weeks and months.

Mind your own business.

Glory to God

In the highest

Peace on earth

To whom God chooses

As He minds His business

So we go, and see the newling

Like one of our lambs,

In a stall, not under the stars,

But with straw and

That country smell we know.

She had been

Minding her business

And he his,

When angels came to them

About a boy child

To be called Jesus.

So we looked,

And it was as they had said

We left our business

To observe for once

Something of heaven.

Mind your own business!

We did get back to our sheep,

Who were watched by the Almighty

While we, we watchers,

Became tellers of tales

Mind this business!

Angels, a baby,

Signs and wrapped cloth,

Sheep and straw

And something totally new.

Now you, mind this!

Your business goes on each day

As the day before,

And the day to come.

The Lord has come,

Mind this business!

David E. Carlson, 2010

2 Corinthians 5 – is this poetry?

Having preached a series of messages on imbedded hymn texts in the New Testament (such as Philippians 2:6ff) and having spent a lot of time in the Wisdom Literature and Psalms, which are laden with literary pattern, I couldn’t help but wonder if there were not two such passages in last Sunday’s text.  2 Corinthians 14b-15 contain a passage that is set off as a summary, and it’s structure and brevity suggests poetry to me.  I have laid it out schematically below.  v. 14a is an introduction, and 14b and 15 are in an ABABCCB Structure.  A – Christ’s Death (and life); B – consequence; C – detail.  We note that the section is set of with “that” (“hoti” in Greek), often a way to introduce a quotation (not quotations marks in Ancient or Koine Greek).

For the love of Christ controls us,

            because we have concluded this:

                        that one has died for all,

                                    therefore all have died;

[15]                  and he died for all,    

                                    that those who live

                                                might no longer live for themselves

                                                but for him who for their sake

                                    died and was raised.

Further, there seems to be two more:  v. 16 is ABAB

[17]      Therefore, if anyone is in Christ,

he is a new creation.

            The old has passed away;

behold, the new has come.

And v. 21 – ABCABC

            For our sake

                              he made him to be sin

                                         who knew no sin,

             so that in him

                            we might become

                                                the righteousness of God.

the Commentators seem to be disturbed over the lack of detail (who are the “all” who died (v. 14b), for example).  If this shares the OT Poetic  characteristic of terseness, that would be explained.  We can use the example of using the structure of parallelism to explain the meaning.  That is use the A sections together and the B sections to give context to the words used.

A Prayer for the Church – Ephesians 3:14-21

A Prayer for the Church

Ephesians 3:14-21

 

An

expanding,

extending,

encompassing

appearance has grasped

molded and

emptied the world.

 

We see,

searching,

surfing,

  not waiting

to comprehend.

 

Enlarge it,

Lord, the

internal,

imperceptible,

I –Thou

connection.

 

Remodel,

relocate,

 in us.