[Propertalk] 5 Easter c rcl

[Robert P Morrison]

This may be revised and even take another direrction before Sunday. But here's what I have set down so far for the coming weekend.

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY  	 THE FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER C RCL
ACTS 11:1-18	                  2nd MAY, 2010
REVELATION 21:1-6	                  PSALM 148
JOHN 13:31-35

	What would you change – if you could? I mean, anything is fair game – nothing is off the table. What would you do? Would you try to do whatever you could, from your perspective, to make sure that relationships with others are richer and more fulfilling? Would you make a point of calling the relative with whom you may feel at odds right now? Or the neighbour across the street with the annoying habit that wakes you up in the middle of the night? Or the City official who never seems to understand that what you say and think is important?
	What about the things around and in the congregation here. I won’t even suggest anything for fear of bringing up something of which you haven’t thought, in case it adds one more bone of contention! However, if we’re like every other congregation on earth, there are already things that at least make us sigh, if not squirmy.
	What happens when we think of these things? What happens when we mention these things – to our family member or friend? to the editor of the Gazette-Herald? to the mayor and city council? What about the Bishop? We DO have a Bishop now, in case you hadn’t heard. Bishop Michael will be here in Albany with us on Tuesday 11th from 11 till 2 pm. Are you planning on coming? What might you and say to him – about this congregation, and city, and Diocese?
	Oh, just one thing – it HAS to be tied in, somehow, to the Gospel – how we understand it, how it troubles us, how it encourages us and reassures us, how it enthuses us.
	That should really be one of those “no-brainers”. Everything we do should be a development from what we hear Jesus saying in the Gospel, and what the early Christian leaders wrote and said to the first congregations. Everything – from how we interact with the person from whom we’re buying our food to the person who’s just interrupted our dinner to ask us for a contribution to some social or political cause.
	NOT thinking about this just won’t do. We don’t ever have to agree, but we ALWAYS have to respect the other individual as a child of God, no matter how misguided or crazy we may feel that she or he is.
	Is this easy? Is it second nature to us? I can’t speak for you, but I know that no matter how long I may have felt I’ve made a commitment to live as Jesus’ friend and follower, no matter how long or how many congregations I’ve been a part of, no matter how many times I’ve read or heard the Gospel, never mind the rest of the Bible, it’s STILL not second nature. It’s STILL not an easy way to live. So I have to be on my guard, constantly. In act, usually, just when I think I have everything down pat, when I think I know where God is trying to lead me, I discover that I’m off base.
	Does this make me nervous, though? Does this mean that I’m a second-, or a third-, or a fiftieth-rate Christian? No, not at all. It simply means that I’m the same track as the disciples. It means that I have to learn to be open every day of my life – open to discovering that just when I thought I’d got some clue as to what God sounds like and how God directs me, I discover that God has many more voices, God has many more situations which I’m supposed to address. And this holds true even when I DO accept what last week’s Gospel asserted was Jesus’ assurance that His sheep recognize his voice.
	This doesn’t – or usually doesn’t – make me nervous, though. Jesus as given us the assurance that when He or God speak we WILL be able to understand – if we make the effort, if we’re open to the fact that things keep changing in life. This is true in terms of the people we meet walking down the same streets at the same time of day as it is of the land forms of the earth which are constantly moving, and erupting, and swaying, and settling.  All that Jesus asks is that we move with Him; that we listen for Him; that we be willing to hang loose every now and again.
	That’s why Jesus spoke to the disciples as He did on that night on which He’d gathered folk together to celebrate the remembrance of God’s protection and leadership. He reminded them of all that God had meant to their ancestors, all the ways in which God had been there for them. He talked about the way in which the community of faith was being formed, and then He interjected that He had something new, something radical to bring to their ways of living.
	It wasn’t enough that He simply might reinforce everything they’d heard up to that point in time. He said that that had to take a new direction – they had to live as if utterly consumed by love.
	Thank back to the time when you recognized that there was some one person who was – and, I hope, remains – incredibly special to you. Think of the moment when that first dawned on you. Think about how you felt when you became caught up in that relationship of love, and commitment, and dedication. Try to recapture that moment.
	I wonder if you can. For some, it may be possible to enter that special place again and again. For many of us, though, what we have is the memory of how elated we felt, how we discovered that we were focussed on the sharing of life and desires with that one person. This doesn’t mean that we love the person any less. It doesn’t mean that the commitment is shallower or weaker. Often it’s the opposite. There’s an added depth to it because we’ve shared life with that person for a number of years and have grown emotionally and spiritually with that person as we’ve gone through both joy and struggle together.
	THAT’S how Jesus wanted the disciples to feel at that moment. At that particular instant, He wanted each one of them to experience the incredible attention they were being given by Him, and the seemingly simple command that each should wash others’ feet, should show complete devotion to others, without exception.
	On the face of it, it seems relatively simple. “Do this in remembrance of me.” Jesus said that, more than once. We obey, we remember Him as we feed from His Body and His Blood at the altar, of course. But DO we remember that just before He took the bread, and passed the cup, He took off his robe, he took up a towel, and a basin and a jug of water, and He took their tired feet in His hands, and He said – BEFORE the Bread and Wine – He said, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” The verses we heard this morning are a part of the whole description of Jesus’ conversation with His followers, a conversation that began around the table just before Passover.
	There’s no way of knowing with how many people Jesus celebrated that ancient rite in that room. Our minds tend to jump to the number twelve, and the twelve were, undoubtedly, there. But chances are there were at least several more than that. So how many feet DID Jesus wash? What DID He say we had to do? How many feet do WE have to wash? And how often do WE have to do it?
	I can speak for myself – you have to speak for yourselves – too often I’ve tried to convince myself that I’ve done enough – enough sweaty feet, enough confused minds, enough whining or sad voices, enough – enough changes asked of me. “When, God, is enough enough? Isn’t it enough to stick to this congregation, to this Diocese, to this denomination, to this – God, why is it NEVER enough? Why should love, and respect, and compassion, and all forms of caring – why should they never end. ISN’T it enough that we keep our resources for those whom we know to be going through difficult times right here?”
	But then, just when we’re tired, when we feel that we’re doing our best with perhaps somewhat limited resources, God speaks to us in some sort of a way and says, kindly yet forcefully, “Look at what ELSE there is. Look at the resources you’ve never considered. Look at the people whom you haven’t asked to help tell the story of the Gospel. Look at the people whom you’ve never asked if THEY needed help.
	To use the movie title, the vocation to which every one of us is called is “The Neverending Story”. It doesn’t stop when we feel that we’ve exhausted ourselves, and our talents and resources. It simply changes gears. It may involve different people, folk of whom we may seldom have given a second thought because they always seem indifferent to us and to the Love of Jesus. It may involve different situations and circumstances, when we come up against what we feel are terminal road blocks in our ministry. It may involve people or situations which annoy and frighten us because they represent views or approaches which are radically different from our own. Heaven forbid, it may involve things of which we’ve never thought before!
	However, the sheet of God’s bounty is immeasurably immense. As that familiar hymn puts it, “EACH little flower that opens, EACH tiny bird that sings – the Lord God made them ALL.”
	No matter how many feet we may have washed already, how many hands held up till now, how many times we’ve simply sat in silence with someone who’s scared or grieving – no matter what we’ve done, God says, “There are yet more to whom I send you. There are opportunities of which you’ve not yet dreamed. And there are resources available for you which WILL be there WHEN you need them.”
	It’s a matter of trust, and of whom we trust. If we thought that the foot at which we knelt was going to kick us in the face, would we wash it? If we thought that the hand to which we reach out in compassion is going to slap us, do we still hold it? If we thought that the mind which we try to comfort would produce all sorts of threats of endangerment, will we sit there?
	What WOULD Jesus do? What WOULD Peter do? What ARE we to do?
	Change gears for a moment. A mother hears that her child has been arrested by an occupying-force police, and is being held incommunicado. She knows that the authorities have a track record of brutality. She knows that she seems powerless. What does she do? Does she stop loving? Does she try to gather friends and neighbours to effect the release of her child? Does she, even if no one else will move, does she go by herself and put herself in jeopardy, as well as the child? Does it tear her in pieces to rationalise and say, “I have other children. I can’t jeopardize them. If the one dies, perhaps the others will live.”? Does a mother say that? Or does a mother say, “THAT is my child. I MUST do whatever it takes to help”
	What did Mary do? What do her daughters and her sons do today?
What do women – and men – do today when their children are picked up as they come home from school – all over the world – and are abused, or tortured, or even killed? What do WE do when our neighbours are not protected from indignity and danger? What do WE do when they need above all else to know that God loves them?
	It seems clear to me that I have to face some tension in my life. While there is certainty of God’s love for me and of me, there is at the same time UNcertainty about where that love may take me. I simply have to take on trust, not that GOD’S mind changes, but that my perception of God’s mind, and of how God’s mind impacts my life and vocation, is and MUST ALWAYS be changing.
	I don’t know whom I shall meet tomorrow, never mind this afternoon. However, I CAN be sure that there WILL be feet to be washed by me. And I can be sure that those feet may belong to people with whom I never imagined I’d have contact. AND I can be sure that my goal will be to bring comfort and acceptance to whomever has these feet. But I can also be sure that the means to care for the feet of the world will be there for me, if I can only set aside my prejudices, and my fears, and my desire to stick only to what I know right now.
	If I – if YOU – can take this chance for Jesus, and never try to confine where, and why, and how, and through whom God may minister, then “all will know that (we) are (Jesus’) disciples”. And all will see who Jesus is, and what He does. This is the promise of Jesus.
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Robert P. Morrison
Interim Vicar
The Episcopal Church of St Alban,
P.O. Box 1556,
Albany, Oregon, 97321

541-921-1076 (cell)
541-967-7051 (church)