[Propertalk] 2 Lent c rcl

[Robert P Morrison]

I forgot to post this last night, but this gave me a chance to edit out a joke of whose relevance I was wondering.

Happoy whatever you're doing right now!


Bob


THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY  	           2 LENT C RCL
GENESIS 15:1-12, 17-18		                                28th FEBRUARY, 2010
PHILIPPIANS 3:17 – 4:1	   	                                PSALM 27
LUKE 13:31-35

	How come so many of the creative people throughout history seem to hear – and often march to – a drummer that the rest of us seldom hear or actually ignore? I have a T-shirt that reads, on the front: “Artist. Visionary. Party Animal.” On the back is simply the name “Toulouse-Lautrec”, along with that standard outline picture of him, bearded, bowler-hatted and with a cane.
	 “Son and heir of Comte Alphonse-Charles de Toulouse, he was the last in the line of an aristocratic family that dated back a thousand years.” 2 Perhaps because he was barely four-and-a-half feet tall as an adult and, as far as I remember, he had a continual nasal drip, he felt extraordinarily awkward socially, so he threw himself completely into artistic studies and work.
	“Throughout his career, which spanned less than 20 years, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec created 737 canvases, 275 watercolours, 363 prints and posters, 5,084 drawings, some ceramic and stained glass work, and an unknown number of lost works. … He excelled at capturing people in their working environment, with the colour and the movement of the gaudy night-life present, but the glamour stripped away. He was masterly at capturing crowd scenes in which the figures are highly individualised. At the time that they were painted, the individual figures in his larger paintings could be identified by silhouette alone, and the names of many of these characters have been recorded. His treatment of his subject matter, whether as portraits, scenes of Parisian night-life, or intimate studies, has been described as both sympathetic and dispassionate.
	“Toulouse-Lautrec's skilled depiction of people relied on his painterly style which is highly linear and gives great emphasis to contour. He often applied the paint in long, thin brushstrokes which would often leave much of the board on which they are painted showing through. Many of his works may best be described as drawings in coloured paint.” 3
	Quite a character – I don’t know whether I’d have been in awe of him or afraid of him. One way or another, though, I doubt if I could have ignored him, just as everyone else in Europe, even beyond Europe, was influenced by his raw energy and startling way of showing things as they were.
	Kind of like Jesus – except nowadays folk seem to be able to ignore Him quite well. 
	The problem with Jesus was that He called a spade a spade. He didn’t do this because He liked putting people down. He didn’t act out of spite. He never took pot shots at people just because they held power or could control others. But He didn’t let power, or fancy outfits, or local prestige distract, or intimidate, or overwhelm Him. To use that twentieth-century description of Toulouse-Lautrec, “He excelled at capturing people in their working environment.”
	This doesn’t mean that He hung around factory entrances, talking only to blue-collar folk. But He didn’t forget them either.
	One of the problems at least some of us face today is in trying to take the Gospel into the Boardroom as well as to the Factory Floor. It’s a different challenge. Some folk see the issues between what can be people of quite disparate interests as irreconcilable; some folk think that they have to choose to talk to only one or the other; some folk think – yes, it happens – some folk think that one or the other can be written off, and that both the pews and the Good News are, somehow, reserved for only a few.
	To be fair, there ARE some within society who hold similar beliefs, that only they should be courted by God’s messengers, and that if these bearers of God’s welcome ARE comfortable with EVERYONE, then perhaps the message, or the manner of sharing the message, isn’t going to be their cup of tea.
	Now I’m not saying that it’s easy to take to the world God’s invitation of love. It’s not. There are occasions and situations where I, along with countless other committed followers of Jesus, develop a cotton mouth, or go completely blank, or even say what turns out to be insensitive and inappropriate. But none of these should stop me trying. No one is off limits for God. No situation is so seemingly barren that God cannot coax life and love to flower. Nor is any representative of Jesus beyond the working of God’s Spirit to awaken some ability to recognise that love and find in it the comfort the whole world seems to need so desperately.
	Toulouse-Lautrec seemed to recognise just this. He didn’t hold his breath and look for folk to praise him, or to gather around him and “Oooh!” and “Ah!” about his latest poster, or painting. He didn’t check with the local Chamber of Commerce, or even the Artists’ Guild, as to where in the city he should find models to represent and in whom to find inspiration about humanity, and love, and, yes, needs and wants also. No, Toulouse-Lautrec marched to that inner drummer. He painted what he saw. He drew people’s attention to what was going on that was so full of potential or else what was in such desperate need of reform.  He DID seek out people who’d treat him with some degree of interest, and would respond, often with pleasure and gratitude, to the way he paid attention to them. But he talked with his brushes to all levels of society in Paris and, eventually, the world. And, as the art critic remarked, he would leave some of the basic canvass of life untouched so that it would be brought into the scene he was revealing.
	Just so Jesus, in His day, would speak, would talk about all sorts of things, comfortable or not, and would leave life shining through His stories so that people could see where and how they fit into the picture.
	I suppose that’s what rattled Herod and Herodias so much. The word-painting was just a bit too revealing, too close to the bone, that they tried everything they could to put a different spin on things. They talked to reporters, they bought time on the local TV station. They threw lavish parties and invited the most impressionable as well as the best-connected members of society, hoping that they’d convince everyone how well-behaved they were.
	But that didn’t work with Jesus. He kept talking. He kept inviting people to come to HIS banquet, to experience God’s love in the way that they welcomed everyone into their lives, no matter who they were or what they’d done. Jesus kept talking to people about turning their lives upside down and finding joy in the strangest places. That’s what must have rattled Herod to the point of trying to set his death squads on Jesus.
	But Jesus never flinched – and this may be the most difficult lesson for us to hear, to learn, to accept. No matter who speaks out, how rational or irrational the person may seem, no matter how we may find ourselves challenged, the task of Lent – a season repeated year after year in the hope that we’ll pick up a little more about the task – the task of Lent is to grow closer to God through accepting that Jesus is addressing us when He calls people cunning foxes; that Jesus is crying over us as He laments the stubbornness He sees. “Albany, Albany, the city that  ...” – that does what? What has the “Democrat-Herald” been talking about this week? With what have our neighbours been dealing? What’s been on OUR minds? Is there anything which we could have done differently or better this past week which might have made more clear and welcoming God’s invitation to listen to Jesus and to travel with Jesus?
	Lane Denson, a friend who lives in Nashville, wrote last week, “Let us not lose sight that this gospel we profess is about conversion, about repentance, about returning, reconciliation, and renewal, about justice and peace, in short, about change. And that we, the church, are called to be primary stewards of all that both compassionately and prophetically.
	“Jesus sets for us one more splendid example of such spiritual authority in his prophetic presence at Jerusalem. Just as we must in whatever place we are be our own community of welcome and of explicit common sense by the power of a faith that can provoke for the world a renewed crisis in our way of seeing things.” 4
	I wonder, sometimes, what might have happened if Herod had been even a little less preoccupied. What if he’d responded to Jesus call to engage more in the fair and just administration of his territory, and to scheme less about power and money? I wonder whether or not Herod may have imagined that he didn’t need Jesus’ invitation or had gone too far down his chosen path for Jesus to be able to bring him back. I wonder if the Jerusalem authorities were so engaged in THEIR own devices that, when the prophets confronted them with a call to conversion THEY thought they’d gone too far?
	I wonder if WE’VE ever found ourselves harbouring that doubt – that we’ve messed up so royally that Jesus couldn’t possibly be able to effect a difference, to let us walk with Him, to let us work for Him, simply to listen to Him.
	But that doubt is addressed directly, to ALL of us, no matter who we are, no matter what we’ve done or not done. “How often have I desired to gather (you) together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings”! Jesus’ warm embrace knows no limits, and even now invites us to join Him in that banquet which heals, and nourishes, and strengthens. In the words of Eucharistic Prayer C, we need to know that we can come to God’s Table for pardon AND renewal. And we need to get this word out to everyone. 

NOTES:


1	 http://www.artchive.com/artchive/T/toulouse-lautrec.html 
2	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_de_Toulouse-Lautrec
3	“Out of Nowhere” Lent 2C Lk.13.31-35 24th February, 2010. Lane Denson oon at covpubs.org  

--
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)