[Propertalk] Proper 8 b RCL - for re-reading of course!

[Robert P Morrison]

This was working out through the day, but I put it down late on Wednesday.

Bob


THE EPISCOPAL PARISH OF ST. JAMES, LINCOLN CITY      4th SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 
2 SAMUEL 1:1, 17-27		             PROPER 8b RCL
2 CORINTHIANS 8:7-15   		            28th JUNE, 2009	                 
MARK 5:21-43                                                     PSALM 130

	Waiting. Why do we have to wait? What is that that keeps God from acting NOW? What is it that keeps US from acting - now?
	Difficult questions - but then, Christianity is NOT an easy way, not in terms of understanding all the ins and outs, anyway, not in terms of trying to discover WHY we have to act. But act we must - however we feel about it. In fact, God may NOT be waiting. WE may the cause of the waiting, the unrest, the lack of wholeness.
	A retired priest friend wrote this last week. I didn’t think there was anything that could trump justice - making sure that everyone is treated as one of God’s beloved, that NO one be permitted to suffer or refused the opportunity to discover the wholeness that God desires for all of us.
	Here’s what Bill Fleener wrote to the deputies and bishops who’re preparing to meet next wee in General Convention in Anaheim, but who are active 24/7 in their local parishes and diocese, and are, actually, NEVER allowed to take a break from that, even when away at Convention. 
	“There is a step to take before we can talk of any of our ‘sticky’ issues in terms of justice.  An experience early in my ordained ministry (probably around 1957) illustrates this first step. 
	“I took occasion one day, some three years into the six years I spent in my first congregation, to express my admiration for something one of our parishioners was doing regularly. Whenever she heard that someone in the Negro (that wasn’t the word most people used) part of town was sick, she would cook up a large pot of soup and take it to the home of the sick person. Take note, please, that this woman was in her 80s, and one of the most loving persons I have met in my life. She had become accustomed to fending off the criticisms of her neighbors and friends for doing this act of mercy. She had been particularly criticized for those occasions when there was no one else who could stay with the sick person through the night, and she would take on that responsibility. 
	“Her response to my expression of admiration stopped me cold.  She said, ‘Well, they don’t have souls, so this is the only life they get, so why should I not try to make it as good as possible for them?’
	“1957, and a loving Christian woman didn’t believe that Negroes were fully human. 
	“That women were considered less than fully human throughout human history - mere possessions of whatever man ‘owned’ them - father, husband, brother - was the primary reason that the early Church stopped ordaining women and some in the Early Church said it was wrong for a woman to teach a man. 
	“Coming to terms with the full humanity of black persons was an essential first step toward stopping our enslaving of blacks, preventing them from voting, being ordained, etc.  Only after admitting that blacks shared the same humanity with whites did the issues of voting and ordination become ‘justice’ issues. 
	“Only after enough people in the Episcopal Church accepted the full humanness of women did the issues of women serving on vestries, as delegates to diocesan conventions and, (gasp!) as deputies to General Convention become ‘justice’ issues.  Only after that same full humanness was acknowledged did ‘deaconesses’ become ‘deacons’ and women could be ordained as priests. Only after the full and equal humanness of women eventually becomes an integral part of our thinking will women truly have equal ‘justice’ in clergy deployment.” 1
	Two women figure at the heart of this morning’s Gospel passage. In a sense, even Jesus is sidelined. All eyes are on the woman whose haemorrhaging had been untreated for more than a decade. What was wrong with her? Cancer? Who knows? Who cares? - and that may lie at the heart of the matter. YES, the report is that health-care providers did try to help, but I get the distinct feeling that they may not have given the problem 100% of their attention, beyond taking her money. After all, she WAS just a woman - and probably beyond the ability to have children.
	But did she have a soul? Blood was considered the life-force to Jewish society. If she had been bleeding all that time, imagine how people must have regarded her. Her very life had been draining out of her. She was becoming a non-person in front of the whole community’s eyes.
	Think of the incredible discomfort. Think of the incredible shame that woman must have experienced. No one could help her. No one would touch her. No one would want her. Better that she die quickly and away from people’s sight and hearing.
	And Jesus, what did Jesus do? Nothing! That’s the startling thing. He was a Jewish male. Compassionate? Yes. But we read how He had to learn to interact, how even HE had to discover the scope and the quality of God’s Love.
	Yet that woman persisted. She DIDN’T leave the community. She pressed in around Jesus, just like all the others, and in a mixture of faith and desperation, reached out to catch a fleeting touch of Jesus’ cloak.
	Even today, we’re only just coming to terms with how God acts. Are you aware that this little passage, inserted into the middle of the other story, was always carefully excised from the lectionary we used to use? Only now it seems, are we finding the will and the energy to wrestle with such issues.
	And what IS that other story, the one that frames that of the desperate woman? It’s about a young girl. All due respect to Jairus, but girls are a dime a dozen. For heaven’s sake, why bother?
	These were both people on the margins of society, never mind that Jairus was a synagogue president. These were people who even today might be passed over with hardly a second glance - even IF one or both have the intellectual capacity and the energy and will to be government leader, or the head of a school district or of a university system, or maybe even a Presiding Bishop.
	Maybe we’re polite. I THINK we are. But how much of the waiting that people endure is because we’re polite, and not out there making sure that the young, and the old, and the under- and un-employed are brought face to face with God’s burning desire to make EVERYone whole?  Or even to give everyone half a chance, no matter how she looks, or he acts, or they respond?
	And what does our waiting to act do to those who’re waiting to be healed, to be told that they’re fully-fashioned in the image of God, complete with eternal souls and well as physical bodies and minds?
	“He was a little boy,” Barbara Martens wrote, “with dark hair and hazel eyes like my eldest grandson.  He was even the same height, so I imagined him to be eight years old, just like my grandson. He had the most frightened look on his face. Six Israeli soldiers had him trapped. They were rapidly marching downhill along the side street that leads to the main road going into the Old City of Hebron; the part of the city riddled by a roadway of tunnels close to the military post into which Palestinians disappear for questioning and beatings. My partner on street patrol and I did not take long to size up the situation. The Israeli soldiers literally had the boy by the scruff of his neck as they dragged him along. There was no hovering adult walking alongside, who, if not able to help, could at least try to be with him.  
 	“As I quickly began walking alongside this patrol of Israeli soldiers, they dismissively waved me and my questions away. I looked at the little boy, and tried to reach his outstretched hand. The soldiers intervened.
	“Eventually I learned the nature of his crime. He had thrown a stone at one of their military posts. I pictured my grandson’s myriad of toys. This little boy did not have such a bounty of things to amuse him. Stones can be fun and keep the boredom at bay for a little while. 
 	“As I struggled to reach the little boy’s hand, I said to the soldier: ‘Don’t you have little brothers who might play with stones?  Besides, he has only a stone. You’re the one who has a gun.’ The soldier responded, ’His parents have not taught him not to throw stones. We must teach him a lesson. He is a terrorist.’  It was not the first time I heard an Israeli soldier make such a preposterous statement. I kept talking as I managed to put my arm around the openly crying, desperately frightened little boy. The soldiers finally relented, and one little boy managed to go home unharmed. But was he really unharmed?”  2
	Fortunately, that boy didn’t have to wait long - but did even that short time or terror do such damage that he may not recover fully, that his terror may paralyse him?
	Even if Jesus had to deal with His learning curve, seldom did He make people wait. He reached out - to the woman, after His initial astonishment, He gave her God’s blessing. Jairus’ daughter Jesus restored to fullness of life.
	It doesn’t seem to matter where we are; or who we are; or what our situation. God gives to each one of us the ability to reach out and to smash the misery of waiting - certainly by keeping someone company as she struggles with some issue, even if not to bring or to restore into the heart of the community instantly. But that bringing, that restoration, MUST be our goal.
	It may sound as if I’m talking primarily about those outside this congregation, as if to suggest that those here are not bleeding, or have lost the will or the ability to breathe, or find little to make them feel fully human. We all know that that’s NOT the case. Even those with smiles on their faces, and who come here to worship and to interact frequently, and who talk and listen with seeming ease - even these people can bleed, and feel their chests tighten with anxiety and pain, and be paralysed. There’s no telling how many people are hurting. How many people may have been told by word or attitude that their significance is zero or limited?
	We may not know, we may not be able to tell just by looking, what’s going on in a person’s life. Jesus may never have seen that woman in His entire life. But that day she and He met, albeit apparently co-incidentally. Nevertheless, she was affirmed as a daughter of God, beloved in God’s eyes.
	So that is our task - not just for today; not just for this week; not just for this year. This vocation of being life-affirming is a 24/7 responsibility. We are to be so affected by the loss of even ONE individual soul - as David was - whether we know and love that person as deeply as David did, or whether we see the person only once and then never again - we are to be so affected by the thought of the loss of even ONE that it breaks our heart simply to think about what we might have been able to do.
	There are SO many issues we face in this congregation, never mind outside the doors of this building. How we treat each other, how we make sure we’re the sort of people to whom others can open up, and then be open to reaching out when needs are expressed - these are issues on which every group has to keep working.
	And what we need to do for and with those within these walls, we need to do for and with those outside the walls - even far beyond our ordinary vision. 
I go to General Convention in a week’s time, knowing that what I do or don’t do, what I say or don’t say, may touch the people who walk past the Anaheim Convention Center as much as it may touch the people of this Diocese, as much as it may touch the people of the Sudan, as much as it may touch - touch whoever it is who may brush against me, whoever she may be.
	And I can’t help thinking of the ending of the letter of Bill Fleener of Western Michigan. He’s talking of one group of people who need to know that God calls them beloved, but he’s actually talking about everyone.
	“Only after those of us,” write Bill, “ only after those of us who accept the full human nature of the members of the GLBTQ portion of the human race become typical of Episcopalians, can the issue of FULL INCORPORATION be a ‘justice’ issue.  
	“Submitted with love, and with hope that someday very soon, the Episcopal Church will quit telling God that God doesn't have our permission to continue creating some 10% of HUMAN BEINGS same-sex oriented ..”
	Why are we waiting? You know, in Britain, at least, we sing these four words to the tune of the Christmas hymn “O come, all ye faithful.” Maybe, just maybe that’s significant!

NOTES:
 	Bill Fleener, Sr. Priest of the Diocese of Western Michigan, retired. http://www.ecdplus.org/email/?clergyID=45657
2	HEBRON REFLECTION: One little boy” by Barbara Martens. CPTnet 17 June, 2009 www.cpt.org/cptnet/2009/.../hebron-reflection-one-little-boy

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

541-994-2426 (Church)