[Propertalk] Proper 17 b BCP lectionary

[Robert P Morrison]

We're up to 1979 in our prayer book usage, so this is based on that lectionary.

This now goes home for reading and editing.

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL PARISH OF ST. JAMES, LINCOLN CITY   THE THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
DEUTERONOMY 4:1-9			    PROPER 17 b BCP 
EPHESIAND 6:10-20			    30th AUGUST, 2009
MARK 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23		                          PSALM 15
LAST SUNDAY OF STUDY OF ANCESTRAL PRAYER BOOKS – THIS DAY USING 1979 – RITE II

	“Some scribes … noticed that some of (Jesus’) disciples were eating their food with defiled hands – in other words, without washing them.” Heavens! What WOULD Emily Post have thought? Or Mrs. Bouquet, of BBC TV – PBS fame?
	Back in January, Newsweek ran an article about “The Quest for a Spiritual Home”. 1 The author was focussing on the fact “that 40% of Americans profess a different religious affiliation from the one they were raised in.” I’m one of them. Not that I was surveyed as a member of that statistical sample. I became a member of The Episcopal Church because, in addition to an emphasis on the responsibility of feeding people homiletically, The Episcopal Church didn’t shy away in fear from the unknown, from questions that seem to well up every time one turns on the TV, or picks up a print media offering, or walks into a bank, or an office, or sits at dinner with a friend.
	I, along with a great many who currently who adorn Episcopal pews, relish, if not actually NEED, to accept and to honour mystery. There IS no way we can know everything. In fact, God doesn’t WANT us to know everything. Not right now, anyway. We simply cannot cope. So we need to keep asking questions – AND being patient. 
	There’s a third thing which drew me to The Episcopal Church, though, and which has kept me here, and that is what seems like the glue that holds most of the other elements of Episcopal life together and in tension. The Episcopal Church acknowledges that there needs to be, and also seems to flourish, where there is social responsibility. If you like, you can call this a sense of moral responsibility that MUST inform everything we do, and MUST challenge us every time an issue comes up, whether in our minds alone, or before the whole community. We cannot, ever, remain silent. Jesus, our fearless leader, never did
	It wasn’t that Jesus was insensitive to the cultural norms of religion and society. He valued the power these had to shape peoples’ lives. But He was analysing the effects of these norms constantly. He DIDN’T set out to pick fights, whether with His parents and siblings, or villagers and city fathers, or with those elected or born into authority. But He didn’t shy away from challenging them to question their own attitudes. He forced people to try to determine if they were behaving and regulating not out of pure motives that would help and reform society as a community of God, but out of the dark motives of trying to silence those who asked awkward questions and presented them with uncomfortable choices – or held a mirror up to them too closely.
	Back to the Newsweek article: “Fr. Albert wasn’t born an Episcopalian. In fact, he first walked into St. John’s (Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown) about twenty years ago as a Jewish physician. He had done a lot of searching to find a spiritual home since his high school days …
	“In his former career, Albert Scariato specialized in radiation oncology. He’d often found himself at night tossing and turning, agonizing over the sufferings of his patients. Almost all were battling cancer, but in the mid-80s, AIDS was also becoming a potent force – something Scariato felt keenly as a gay man. ‘If someone came in with AIDS, it was usually a young man with pneumocystis pneumonia and he was dead within a matter of days,’ he says. ‘I had no idea if [one day] I were going to be that man on a stretcher, and that really made me identify with my patients in a huge way.’”
	Stop right there in that story for a moment, though. Jesus – God’s Son – with all the perks that that entailed – you know, eternal life, never having to worry about where the next meal was coming from, never having to deal with anything more serious that figuring out some sort of a Trinitarian theology that would stand up to human scrutiny, yet not be resolved or understood too easily – Jesus set aside all these perks and took on that human existence precisely so that He could identify with US in a HUGE way. And, here’s the mystery, so that He could draw us into the glorious company of God and all the saints in Light.
	Albert Scariato said that in his own spiritual quest he was “humbled by the courage and fortitude he saw on a daily basis.” Beside the usual questions about medical history and so on, he “would also see other questions in their eyes … unspoken questions: ‘Why do you think this happened to me?’ ‘Am I being punished for something?’
	Sound familiar? Jesus dealt with it every day. So do we, in one way or another. Jesus’ answer to these sorts of questions may not seem helpful, initially. He talked about continually looking for sign’s of God’s glory, even in the dirt, and the pain, and the stress. Jesus was arguing that there were more productive things to do than wring one’s hands. He DIDN’T mean we shouldn’t check to see what behaviour may have placed us in a bind. What I DO think He meant was that first, second, and last, we should be looking for God in our routines, not as someone to blame, nor as someone who toys with us, nor even punishes – but as someone present to be there when we meet danger, or decisive action is needed.
	Nor, actually, is Jesus condemning ritual. The Pharisees ought not to be condemned at every opportunity. They have a good point, here at least. But, as our General Convention Chaplain points out, “Jesus seems to be saying that engagement with the world is even more important.”  2 This is where what happened to Christ on the cross is brought into our own lives. This is where our traditions can be questioned. Do they get in the way of what we need to be doing? Do we fuss far too much with external matters, with our own personal appearances, or those of the gathered community, and how we maintain our reputations in society? Is this how we’d like God to see us? Or  does Jesus not imply that it’s only after the poor, the downtrodden, the un- or under-insured are comforted that we can start to think about cleaning our hands?
	I see in this sort of debate which Jesus was having with the Pharisees something like a modern-day politician, plunging into the crowd to shake hands, to kiss babies, to stop to talk to the person in the wheelchair or the veteran with some form of disablement. And, all the while, the Secret Service personnel are scared spitless that somewhere, some lunatic is going to go off half-cocked and try to harm the politician.
	Both have a point. Both are necessary. You make plans for any sort of a Town Hall meeting this week, and you have to have someone who’s worrying about who’s going to do what. But, ultimately, one tactic has to have priority. And Jesus says to you and to me, always err on the side of the other person’s needs and concerns, even if it puts you in some form of danger. If you’re forever dealing with dirt, whether it be on your body, or on the floor, or in someone’s mind, then your entire ministry is going to be filled with preoccupation with what are non-essentials.
	Yesterday I heard a broadcast of Beethoven’s opera “Fidelio”. It was written, with much sweat and hard thought, about the matter of freedom of expression and the triumph of love. The performance I heard was of a concert performance. In other words, the soloists were standing along the front of the stage, more or less motionless, while the orchestra and chorus were behind them. The leading woman was asked whether a concert performance generates as much energy for her as does a staged performance. She replied that it didn’t make any difference whether one is on concert dress – however fancy that may be – standing in front of an orchestra and chorus, or in full costume, on a stage, with the orchestra somewhat out of sight in the pit in front of one. She said, “Everything depends on what is inside.” 3
	Whether you sing, or teach a class, or work in or run a business – whatever you and I may do, at any time in our lives, everything depends on what is inside. Everything DOES depend on how well we’ve listened and responded, both to God’s word and to the needs of the entirety of creation.
	Back to the story told by Albert Scariato. “(I)n 1989 his partner was diagnosed with AIDS. He’d been raised Episcopalian, and the couple started attending first the National cathedral in Washington, and then the smaller, more intimate St. John’s in Georgetown. The Sunday before (Albert’s) partner entered the hospital to participate in an experimental medical trial, the sermon was about how Jesus had taken the cross – an instrument of unspeakable torture – and transformed it into a symbol before people genuflect. The priest asked: what in our lives is so unbearable, so unspeakable, and what can we do with God’s help to turn it around? Sitting in the pews, Scariato says, he realized, ‘This is what I feel I’m being called to do.’ …
                      “Scariato’s last day as a radiation oncologist was August 27, 1993. Two days later he was sitting in the chapel of Virginia Theological Seminary. (Now he) says he is most comfortable in a place of worship where people with doubts and questions are welcome. … He’s known for biblically based sermons that can be applied to daily life and that convey a message of social justice. He spends much of his time ministering to the sick and dying, and reaching out to the poor. Does he miss his old profession? ‘I feel I never left it.’ replies Fr. Albert Scariato. Dirt, illness, heartache, crying, these are what define a great deal of the ministry of the followers of Jesus.
                      Something that was said in a worship service spoke to what was at the heart of that oncologist-priest’s being. and he found that what he’d been doing was part of the outreach of Jesus from the cross.
                      Nothing was said or done about washing up before the priest or Scariato went to that Eucharist, although undoubtedly all his medical training about taking infection-control precautions was still part of his routine. Nothing was said or done about smoothing off the rough edges of Jesus’ cross – or of the Church pew, for that matter.
                      What WAS offered was Jesus’ heart-breaking welcome, that ALL might come within His embrace, which I can’t imagine as anything BUT sweaty, and dirty, and probably blood-stained also. That’s simply the nature of things in this world. And it strikes me that whenever we try to pretty things up too much, or too often, we deny something about creation, maybe even about God.
	Yesterday I came across something written by a friend, a priest in Virginia. She was seeking permission to put up a poster about a Spanish language service beginning in her congregation and got into a long conversation with a Hispanic woman who’d been brought up Roman Catholic, but no longer attends. “she said, 'I am a feminista, I don't believe a lot of what the Bible says... I don't see why women can't be ordained--why the church puts women down.' I guess the collar around my neck didn't register with her --so I merely said, 'the Episcopal church ordains women.' And then she said, 'And I think priests ought to be able to get married if they want to.' --and I said that clergy in the Episcopal church could marry and form lifelong relationships, that I am the priest and I am married. ...”
                      Then “(s)he said, 'What does your church believe about gay people.' And I didn't know whether this question would bring condemnation or the refusal to post the poster or what....
                      “So, I said as plainly as I could that if she came to St X she would see many loving couples and families, and some would be two men, and some two women and some a man and a woman, and some with children and... ---- and then I stopped. Mid sentence. Her eyes were filling with tears as she said, 'I haven't been to church because my family and my church don't approve of my relationship or who I am.' -- Come to church, I said....”  4
	There are all kinds of dirt. NONE of it should prevent anyone from discovering how Jesus’ heart burns in desire for all of us.


NOTES:

1	“The Quest for a Spiritual Home” by Eleanor Clift. Newsweek. Published January 17, 2009: Magazine issue dated January 26, 2009.     http://www.newsweek.com/id/180039 (c) 2009.
2	What Matters to God  The Rev’d. Dr Francis Wade Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23   13th Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 17) August 31, 2003  http://day1.org/500-what_matters_to_god
3	Waltraud Meier on a concert performance of Beethoven’s “Fidelio” at the BBC Proms, 22nd August, 2009 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00m8b67 
4	“come beloved of God” 	Margaret: “leave it lay where Jesus flang it” Friday, August 28, 2009
http://leaveitlay.blogspot.com/2009/08/come-beloved-of-god.html 

--
Robert P. Morrison
The Episcopal Parish of St James,
PO Box 789
Lincoln City, Oregon, 97367

541-994-2426 (Church)