[Propertalk] Proper 27 b rcl

[Robert P Morrison]

Here's what is staring at the editor, etc, this evening and tomorrow.

May you have joy in Jesus humourous company!

Bob
THE EPISCOPAL PARISH OF ST. JAMES, LINCOLN CITY          PROPER 27 B RCL
RUTH 3:1-5; 4:13-17                      	    8th NOVEMBER, 2009
HEBREWS 9:24-28	                         PSALM 127
MARK 12:38-44				

	The lessons this morning contain several things that can be glossed over, perhaps because of our pre-wired brain patterns, or perhaps because we simply don’t think about the details. When I stopped to go over these details, though, the first thing that struck me was the way that Jesus and the disciples were standing at such a place that they could actually see exactly how much everyone was putting in the offering plate.
	Imagine if the ushers this morning – should I ask them to do it? – imagine if the ushers stopped at each pew and called out, “Jane Doe: $20. John Smith: $14 and some change.”
	I can’t speak for you, but that would make me INCREDIBLY uncomfortable. Nevertheless, maybe from the sound of those small coins everyone could tell what the woman in the story gave to God’s ministry through the Temple treasury. And possibly from her dress, never mind her standing in the community, everyone could tell what sort of a gift it was that she made. She gave everything she had because she trusted – trusted in two things. First, she trusted absolutely in God. God, for centuries, had said that every need would be met. This formed the backbone of Judaism, the backbone of the faith we profess today. God CAN be trusted. No matter how desperate, how difficult, how frightened, how depressed we may be, God CAN be trusted.
	Remember the second chapter of last week’s sermon? The pain and the loneliness brought on by the death of Elizabeth Kaeton’s daughter caught up with her and paralysed her, until she decided she HAD to get to Mass, somewhere, anywhere, even if she wouldn’t be able to take Communion. And, behold, she WAS given what she called the Mysterium Grandum. In her emptiness, her heart, her soul and her body were filled through the Presence of God, as Fr.  Ed Hines pressed the broken Body of Jesus into her open hand.
	In so many ways that we may not even recognise the gifts, God DOES provide.
	Second, the woman to whom Jesus drew the disciples’ attention trusted absolutely in her community.
	Nothing was said about it, not directly anyway, but that woman placed herself not only in God’s hands, but in the hands of everyone in her worship group. Yes, it WAS the law of God. Absolutely no one, regardless of who or what they were, absolutely no one was to go unfed and unsheltered. And anyone who abused another in any way was to be condemned instantly. Anyone who took advantage of the crisis in another’s life, the accident that produced pain, or illness, or hardship of any kind, anyone who ignored distress or, worse yet, who increased it somehow, that person was to be corrected right away.
	Life is sacred. It’s a gift from God. Therefore it’s to be cherished everywhere, among everyone, by everyone.
	THAT’S why that woman put all she had into the offering plate. It was remarkably simple, actually. Everything would be covered – IF things were done right.
	It’s the same story from the reading from the book of Ruth. Naomi and her daughter-in-law came back home after the men in the family died, and managed to make ends meet, panhandling – well, not quite. They were able to keep alive and reasonably healthy because of that same law of Judaism which said that you couldn’t hog the crop. It HAD to be shared.
	But Naomi kept thinking of her foreign-born daughter-in-law, and cooked up an arranged marriage so that Ruth would be cared for for the rest of her life. All based on the laws of hospitality and compassion.
	Again, whatever you and I may think of Naomi’s methods, she was looking out for the other person so that Ruth wouldn’t have to worry.
	So how does this play out right here and now? How do we feel about trust? WHOM do we trust? 
	Last week I quoted from the book we’re discussing on Wednesday mornings. 1 The author, Tracy Kidder, talks about Dr. Paul Framer’s first sight of Cange, in the central Plateau of Haiti. There were “clouds of grayish dust – dust in (Farmer’s) hair, dust up his nose, dust adhering to his sweaty skin – an utterly changed landscape, with scarcely any trees, colored in shades of brown and white, a landscape he would remember as ‘amazingly, biblically, dry and barren.’ 
	“Most of the dwellings were crude wooden lean-tos with dirt floors … (with) roofs made of banana-bark thatch …. Most of the adults he saw and talked to were clearly dejected. It was as if, he thought, the people who had built these miserable lean-tos weren’t convinced that they’d ever live in anything better., indeed expected things to get worse. … Haiti had already redefined poverty for (Farmer). Cange redefined it again.” 2
	What on earth does “trust” look like in that sort of a setting? In whom or in what does one expect to find the slightest hint of hope on to which trust can be built?
	Yet even in the midst of the most abject poverty, there IS something on which to build life, and trust, and hope. And it comes from what may sound like the least likely source. Farmer found the native Haitians living out liberation theology, which he defined as “A powerful rebuke to the hiding away of poverty.” In the midst of their apparent misery the peasants told farmer that “Everybody else hates us, but God loves the poor more. And our cause is just.” Yet this wasn’t “the cult of resignation” and the peasants countered the question of whether a just God could permit great misery with the proverb, “‘God gives but doesn’t share.’ This meant, as Farmer would later explain it, ‘God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he’s not the one who’s supposed to divvy up the loot. That charge was laid upon us.’” 3
	And that seems to place things back in Boaz’ winnowing floor, and the temple precincts with Jesus, and all the businesses along Highway 101. Somehow, each of the people involved down through the past – all the saints whose lives we brought to the forefront of our memories last week as members of the congregation read from “A” to “Z” – each of our ancestors AND we ourselves have to try to summon up hope that somehow, things WILL come together. Maybe they won’t look quite as we thought they’d look, or when we thought that vision might appear, but they WILL come about. And that’s the hope to which we all have to cling, regardless of who we are, because ALL of us face challenges.
The problem for me, though, lies back in what Naomi and Ruth faced as they claimed the right to glean in Boaz’ fields, and to inveigle marriage for Ruth to Boaz. They trusted that Sacred Law would be lived out, and no one would cheat another, or neglect another, or abuse another. The joyful act of that widow in the Temple Treasury was that she too believed, long before Social Security was a gleam in anyone’s mind, that she could expect that she would be cared for.
Did this work? Well, according to the story, after a long and arduous journey, Ruth and Naomi were cared for. And as far as the widow was concerned, we don’t know. But here’s the down side. So often, far TOO often in the estimation of Jesus, the widows, the orphans, the physically differentiated were NOT cared for.
It’s been said, in our own day, “that societies are judged by the way that they treat their very old and their very young.” 4 You might say the same about economic distinctions also, and social ones, and ethnic ones, and sexual ones. In fact, NONE of this should matter one bit. What SHOULD matter is that every single human being should be able to devote her or his entire energy to giving everything for the work of enriching God’s reign right before our very eyes, without having to worry about having a home, or food, or medication – or, for that matter, friends.
The scary part is that this says nothing at all about wisdom, or courage, or any of the other categories we might name as a “virtue”. We ALL have the right to make mistakes, and to follow our own dreams in developing the gifts with which God has blessed us.
No one here has the right to prevent us from opening another latté establishment, or art gallery, or whatever in Lincoln City. We must all decide for ourselves where to put our resources and talents. But – and I see this as a huge proviso – but we must ALL take responsibility for one another, no matter who we are or what we’ve done. And if we DON’T take care of the widows, who’ve given their all to the burnishing of part of God’s creation, if we allow people to get physically ill, or mentally ill, or spiritually ill, because we don’t say, “I’m going to be here to help you, no matter what”; if we DON’T understand that God gives us the rules, but doesn’t ever force us to follow them; if we don’t understand that our society right here in Lincoln City, and in this congregation, will be defined by how we divvy up the resources; if we DON’T understand this, then we fail to see what is a major part of the message of Jesus. 
	This past week I came across an interesting article based on a programme on the Discovery Channel on TV. Researchers have discovered that “It takes wolves a year or two to learn how to hunt, but their ferociousness doesn't last long.
	“According to a new study, most wolves lose their prowess by age 3, just halfway through their lives. After that, they have to rely on younger members of the pack to catch the majority of their meals.” 5
	They live in a society in which each assumes responsibility to care for the other. Maybe we can learn to find hope in this for ourselves – setting aside the ferociousness, of course, unless it describes the way in which we assume an absolute trust in God and an absolute commitment to one another.
The sad thing is that it seems that even in the beginnings of reconstruction after the darkest places of the recession, the sad thing is that we can see glimpses that show the way that we’re allowing the old systems of greed, and deceit, and cheating, and general immorality to creep in once again. To our condemnation, we’re allowing these to be the standards by which reconstruction, and assurance, and hope are gauged. And, in God’s name, we simply CANNOT, we simply MUST not allow that to happen. Naomi, and Ruth, and the nameless, incredibly generous and brave widow, are all crying out to us to centre our lives on trust. And their prayer continues that religious institutions and places of worship not only commit themselves to living without fear, but offer some sort of concrete sign to their communities that hope and trust in God and Jesus’ followers are NOT misplaced. For once, it may be fair to say that our currency hits it right on the nail: “In God we trust.”

NOTES:
 	“Mountains beyond Mountains” by Tracy Kidder © 2004 Random House Trade Paperback Edition. © 2003 John Tracy Kidder. 
2	Kidder, Op. cit. Pages 76 – 77
3	Kidder, Op. cit, Pages 78 - 79
4	Quoted, for instance in “Gentlecare: Changing the Experience of Alzheimer’s in a positive way” by Moyra Jones. Published by Hartley & Marks, Point Roberts, Washington, and Vancouver, British Columbia. © 1999 Moyra Jones Resources Ltd.
 5	“Middle-Aged Wolves Retire From the Hunt” by Emily Sohn, Discovery News http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/11/03/wolves-hunt.html


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

541-994-2426 (Church)