[Propertalk] 1 Lent c rcl

[Robert P Morrison]

Here's what's up for editing now.

I hope you have a peaceful evebing and a funt time with Jesus tomorrow.

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY	       1 LENT C RCL
DEUTERONOMY 26:1-11		                            21st FEBRUARY, 2010
ROMANS 10:8b-13			       PSALM 91:1-2, 9-16
LUKE 4:1-13

	I’d like to suggest that we think this morning about journeys, and about purposes, and about outcomes, and about impacts.
	I really enjoy well-written poetry and prose. There are times when even poor work makes an impact, but if the writer has a sense of style, and a way with words, especially a sense of humour and the knack of hiding it till the last minutes – well, I began to think about Lent through a couple of articles about music.
	First, in a review of a film about Beethoven, Michael Church wrote, “Beethoven attracts biographers like moths to a flame: most die on impact.” 1 Not a particularly enticing prospect that. Maybe we should leave Beethoven alone!
	One of the things about Ash Wednesday and the yearly entry into the season of Lent is that it may seem so discouraging. The outcome – the death of Jesus, the seeming destruction of everything we hold sacred – is pre-known, by us at least.
	Last Sunday, a Washington Post leading headline caught my eye. The article was headed, “Australia welcomes China's investment, if not its influence” 2 and it began, “Here in this land of searing heat, scrub and eucalyptus, a land so vast that road signs warn the next gas station is 600 miles away, ...”  
 	Talk about a nerve wracking journey! What if the gas tank sprang a leak? What about the fuel gauge being faulty? What about the car manufacturer’s instruction and specification manual being just a shade overly optimistic about the mileage of the vehicle and its fuel capacity? What if…. What if… What if …?
	Would you like to take a chance on that six hundred mile cross-desert trip? Even in a reliable car? I know I might think twice.
	What about our Lenten entrance and journey, then? What if God was slightly optimistic when you and I were formed? What if God didn’t fully understand how coming close to Jesus, being identified with Jesus, taking Jesus seriously when He said, “Follow Me” might produce such hardship, such censure, such ridicule?
	What do you know about the history of the saint after whom this congregation is named? According to Bede's “Ecclesiastical History of the English People”, Alban was a pagan living at the Roman community called Verulamium  when a persecution of the Christians broke out. “Alban sheltered a Christian priest … in his home, and was converted and baptised by him. When the “impious prince”, as Bede has called him, sent Roman soldiers to Alban's house to look for the priest, Alban exchanged cloaks with the priest and was arrested in his stead. … (He) was taken before the magistrate, who was furious at the deception and ordered that Alban be given the punishment due to the priest if he had indeed become a Christian. Alban declared, ‘I worship and adore the true and living God who created all things.’ These words are still used in prayer at St Albans Abbey (, and if I can pause in the story, this might make a good motto for us!).
	“On his way to the execution, Alban had to cross a river, and finding the bridge full of people, he made the waters part and crossed over on dry land. And the executioner was so impressed with Alban's faith that he also converted to Christianity on the spot, and refused to kill him. Another executioner was quickly found (whose eyes dropped out of his head when he did the deed), and the first was killed after Alban, thereby becoming the second British Christian martyr.” 3
	Of course, not only were you aware of this story. You were also aware of the implications of being associated with this congregation. Coming here SHOULD take you really close to the flame of God’s Spirit. Coming here, especially telling others that you come here, SHOULD make all of us marked people – kind of like the implications of getting that ashen cross on your foreheads – something, I was told yesterday, which didn’t come off very easily afterwards. But that’s part of the risk of following Jesus. It may not really be carried this far in Albany, but there are places still where people who come too close to Jesus DO die on impact. But, hey, that’s O.K.! No one said everything was easy.
	The second musical article I read last week was a review of the work entitled “Mass”, Leonard Bernstein’s work that many think holds the key to understanding what he was about as a composer, and conductor and human being. Philip Clark, the reviewer, wrote something that starts out by making what I feel is an astute summary of our desire to have a watered down version of Christianity. Clark wrote, “Compared to the intellectual fence-sitting and crackerbarrel mysticism that … is everyplace, Bernstein’s relationship with God is dangerous, probing, transformational. There are those, of course, who proffer that Bernstein thought he was God, that’s why he could stand in defiance against Him. But, no – Mass reveals a man thirsting for faith but petrified of blind acceptance. Bernstein’s religion was muscular and intellectualized, and the experience of Mass expands, rather than contracts, the further you travel towards the essence of its cosmology.” 4
	I find that comment perfectly appropriate and erudite, of course, but amazing to come out of a secular magazine, actually published in Britain, where both the actual number and percentage of those who attend Church has fallen even farther recently, as people feel that Church and congregations have lost their relevance and have little if anything to offer society or individuals today. But neither the discussion of Bernstein’s composition nor, indeed, Bernstein himself shied away from being open about the struggle involved in living out the implications of faith.
	We can rejoice this morning, then that there are more and more moths willing to be drawn towards the flame of God’s fire, be willing to risk the ridicule, and embarrassment, and exclusion, and economic and social hazards than can befall us as today’s equivalent of martyrdom, in Albany, at any rate. We can be really glad that those of us here, and those in other buildings scattered throughout this community, continue to seek a relationship with God that may be dangerous, certainly challenging to us. Not only that, but who come here prepared – no, MORE than that – expecting to be challenged as well as comforted and energised.
	It’s strange that I should come at Lent through these thoughts on music. As you’ll have noticed already, the whole tone of the service has changed. No prelude to begin, to draw our thoughts towards worship. Instead, we had silence – silence that can make us uncomfortable, perhaps because it is – well, quiet. It reveals the sound of our own breathing and our own heartbeat. It helps us to be more aware of ourselves, of who we are, and what we’ve been doing, maybe even what we were thinking as we drove to Church this morning.
	And then there was that procession while chanting about difficulties we encounter in life as well as thankfulness for people and situations which are a blessing to us.
	As less-frequently as we experience this movement, in Church, at any rate, this could be seen in terms of the old British custom of “beating the bounds”, a custom still observed in many parishes there. The community members walk the boundaries of the parish, to share the knowledge of where they lay, and to pray for protection and blessings for the lands. They, like those in the procession this morning, encircled the space around us. It was the congregation today, but it could as easily have been work, or school, or home – making everything, or rather reminding us that all already IS “sacred space”.
	The Gospel this morning, in addition to those quotes about music, summarises all that Lent is about. The temptation not just for Jesus, not just for clergy, not just for BAC members, the temptation for ALL of us is to try to cut corners, to take life easily, to expect God to take care of all of our needs without seeing how what we use or ask for impacts everyone else.
	Let me end with what may be our Lenten discipline, if we so choose.
	A friend in Atlanta wrote last week about a recent dinner to celebrate a friend’s birthday. He wrote, “Six of us went to a nice restaurant to celebrate. … 
	“As I thought about the cost of that meal, I realized that what six of us had spent in one evening on food and wine what was probably an entire year's wages for some of our sisters and brothers in Haiti.  
 	“Despite the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed the celebration, it brought to mind the reality that even the poor in the United States are wealthy by much of the world's standards.
 	“Thus I came up with an idea: For the entire Lenten Season, whenever I go out to eat, pick up fast food to bring home, or dine in a similar fashion, I will make a donation to Episcopal Relief and Development in an amount equivalent to what I spent on ‘outside’ food.  My plan is to keep track of what I spend and make my donation on a weekly basis with the designation that it go to relief efforts in Haiti. 
 	Bruce admitted that people are being confronted with all sorts of economic issues, but he went on, “My challenge to (my friends) is a simple one:  Join me in making such donations.” 5
	We could do this privately, if we like, or we could make a contribution with the offerings made to this congregation, designating them as we wish.
	Jesus resisted the temptation that came to Him. He refused to be fed by Himself. Elsewhere, He said HE was bread for the WHOLE world. Where we go on our journey this Lent and beyond will show our Alban-ism to the world, perhaps even better that the sight of us coming through the doors of this building.

NOTES:

1  	“In Search of Beethoven: A film by Phil Grabsky” – a review by Michael Church in BBC Music Magazine, October 2009, page 98.
2	 “Australia welcomes China's investment, if not its influence” By John Pomfret Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, February 14, 2010; A01 http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/8VXTM7/8OON0/AMM00C/3W4VMI/CEXJD/7V/h
3	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Alban  
4	A Review of Marin Alsop’s recording of Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass”. Philip Clark.  Gramophone, September 2009,  page 80 www.gramophone.co.uk
5		Bruce Garner, Atlanta, GA., Member of The Executive Council, The Episcopal Church, bruce.garner at att.net  


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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)