[Propertalk] St Alban's Day - our patronal festival

[Robert P Morrison]

I began this a little last Saturday and finished it on Sunday evening or Monday morning. Of course, it may be revised before the weekend, when we have our patronal festival!

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY     THE FEAST OF ST. ALBAN (Transferred)
WISDOM 3:1-9		            20th JUNE, 2010
1 JOHN 3:13-16		                PSALM 31:1-5
MATTHEW 10:34-42	
    
	“‘We need windows to the outside world — windows to let our story out, to let in the light.  We need you to be our windows.  Will you be a window?  Will you?  And you, and you?’
 	“The finger that points at me,” wrote Marilyn Paarlberg, “the eyes that meet mine, the voice that locks itself into my consciousness, is that of ….” 1 Well, the finger, the eyes, the voice could be that of anyone, in any age.
	You know the history of Alban – at least some of it, I’m sure. To boil it down to a few sentences, he’s believed to have been a Romano-British citizen of the Roman town of Verulamium in 3rd century Britain, a man who gave shelter to an itinerant Christian priest, later called Amphibalus.
	“Impressed by what he heard, Alban was converted to Christianity by him. When a period of persecution, ordered by the (Roman) Emperor, brought soldiers in search of the priest, Alban exchanged clothes with him allowing him to escape and it was Alban who was arrested in his place.
	“Standing trial and asked to prove his loyalty by making offerings to the Roman gods, Alban bravely declared his faith in ‘the true and living God who created all things’. This statement condemned Alban to death. He was led out of the city, across the river and up a hillside where he was beheaded.” 2
	There are several things that strike me about this, whether the priest landing on the doorstep of the early Briton was coincidental being one of them. This was a person who was both Roman and British at the same time. He – tradition assumes it was a he – he would have been answerable to both authorities. He was open to the whims and subterfuges of either. Nevertheless he gave refuge to someone he knew the Romans were wanting to control, at best, or kill, at worst. But he went further. In addition to hospitable sanctuary, he allowed the Christian priest to speak to him about his faith, and was so convinced that he himself became a Christian.
	“We need windows to the outside world,” said the author of the short quotation I offered a few minutes ago. This Alban did. He put himself in place of the priest; he put himself in extreme danger; he died – as a window not only to allow the priest to continue witnessing to the power and love of God, but also as a window to show the Romans just what his newfound faith meant to him.
	To us, being a window may not seem like a particularly exciting vocational choice, though, especially in such a society as ours in which action is prized over just about everything else. But there ARE times when our mere presence – at a city meeting; at a gathering to discuss the impact of some proposal; at a Church service, even – there ARE times when our mere presence can give such encouragement to others when they see how seriously we take our faith. Sometimes just being there makes all the difference in the world. 
	“‘Show up, pay attention, tell the truth and leave the results to God.’ This was the charge that Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori delivered June 9 to some 200 participants attending (a) World Mission conference (in Britain), noting that the Franciscan summary (she just quoted) is an ‘excellent model’ for the mission work to which the church is called. 
	“‘We have to show up everywhere with an attitude of radical openness,’ (the Presiding Bishop) said. ‘Mission means healing and restoring all creation toward the common weal of God … living in justice with dignity, and all people and creation living together in peace.’”
	Bishop Katharine talked about how this branch of the Anglican Communion tree owed its existence to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. This mission organisation, based in England several centuries ago, was “providing support to 77 persons in the American colonies,” she said. “As the church developed, lay leadership became essential and vital and women took significant leadership roles … That history of lay leadership and the development of a democratic national and ecclesial polity has continued to shape the Episcopal Church.” 3
	And all because someone was there, someone was present, someone had the courage of her or his convictions – maybe someone who sheltered a person who was being unjustly persecuted; maybe someone who gave encouragement to another who was considering the implications of leaving the comforts of home and family for some unknown situation; maybe someone who bought squatters rights to a claim held by Hiram Smead for $400.
	It may sound incredible, but there’s a link through that Briton named Alban and the unknown Christian priest sometime between 200 and 250 years after the birth of Jesus; to the seafaring chaplains who established communities on the eastern seaboard of this continent; to Walter and Thomas Monteith who completed the first frame house near the confluence of the Calapooia and Willamette Rivers in 1849; to you and me inside this room right here, right now.
	Something like sixteen hundred years after the faithful Christian witness of Alban, Albany’s first sermon was delivered by a Dr. Thomas Simpson Kendall in the Monteith home. Three years later, a congregation was organised and met in that same building for three years. It happened to be Presbyterian, but we can’t fault them for that, I suppose! 4
	The same house, however, was home to Episcopalians for some time too – a presence which grew not only geographically to the east of the rivers, but numerically as well.
	There’s a link between what happened in that community just north west of London and what happened on the banks of the Oregon rivers which meet so close by here – indeed what still happens because of who are in this building right now. And that link is faith. It is trust. It is hope. It is courage. It is presence – whether quiet or audible.
	Out of that list, it could be courage that we settle on first. Crossing the Atlantic and crossing this country both took courage. I could joke that becoming a Presbyterian took courage – but it wouldn’t be entirely jocular. In a time when life was filled with such unpredictability, and so much attention had to be paid to every last detail about growing and harvesting the grains and getting them down to the mill on the river which made Albany such an important place, there may have seemed little time for formal religion and worship. A few well-chosen words addressed to the Almighty while out among the wheat stalks might not have been infrequently heard. Yet somehow people WERE able to include going down to the Monteith House, and similar places, even when they worried about whether the river was going to flood up over the banks and drown the crops, or whether hail stones might ruin the ripe fields before harvest could happen – not to mention whether or not the laden vessels would make it all the way to the Oregon City Falls without running aground or tipping over. 
	Granted, even with frontier-style justice, I’m not aware of how many people would have been hauled out of their homes and set to swinging from the nearest oak tree. Still, economic hardship, maybe even death, still had to be faced and dealt with. Morality, living up to one’s own conscience and one’s reputation for honesty and dependability – all of that would only have been deepened by holding fast to the Golden Rule. Stopping for a Sunday morning, at least, and gathering together with neighbours and friends to pray and sing a few hymns and listen to the likes of Dr. Kendall – THAT was being a window to the community – letting light in and allowing people to see through a person to show how faith, and trust, and hope weren’t just words, but could be part of a settler’s life without making anyone seem weak or foolish.
	And so it goes today. We’re here in this building, this morning, even if it may have been mildly inconvenient to get up and get down the road when the Sunday paper may have seemed to be speaking loudly, or a grandchild’s plea to go to the park might have been heart-tugging. Or, possibly, we may simply have felt that the events and circumstances of our lives this past week may have left us sufficiently unmotivated and disinclined to be with others.
	It’s actually relatively easy to come down to the corner of Queen and Hill when things are going well, even with all the other distractions. Where we shine most as window-martyrs, though, is when we engage in worshipful witness when we find our obligations and responsibilities beginning to pile up – or we have a list of things to do that might rival bringing in hundreds of acres of wheat before nightfall this evening.
	Where it’s difficult to operate as Christian windows is when family members look at us, and start to question our faculties when we put worship and witness ahead of their priorities. When parents and children, when in-laws and other relatives, when best friends talk about doing something that might compromise our promise to be faithful in continuing in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers, as we repeated as recently as four weeks ago – THAT’S when we can find our resolve weakening.
	Maybe today’s threats don’t appear so challenging and life-depriving as those of Alban’s day – but they ARE there, and in their own subtle way, they tempt us to compromise for the sake of expediency just as strongly.
	Where will we invest such resources as we have? To whom do we owe our deepest loyalty? What action of ours may prove to be the greatest challenge to those who see us, and maybe take their lead from us? What might we be tempted to do that might make Jesus’ life, and death, and resurrection seem irrelevant or even destructive for the lives of the people who walk on Queen or Hill, or through Freddy’s, or in the surgical waiting room at the hospital?
	I keep coming back to that opening plea – in this case, from Amal, a representative of all the Palestinian women who speak out about life in refugee camps in, of all places, Bethlehem.
	“‘We need windows to the outside world — windows to let our story out, to let in the light.  We need you to be our windows.  Will you be a window?  Will you?  And you, and you?’”
	It doesn’t matter who asks us, or what’s happening, OR how dangerous it may be to ourselves. As Bishop Katharine put it – “Show up, pay attention, tell the truth and leave the results to God.” You can’t leave out ANY of these steps. None of them were skipped for us. So now it’s JUST as important that we keep the windows colourful, and transparent, and distortion-free, and faithful to the Glassmaker for those who’ll come after us to this community.

NOTES:

1	Christian Peacemaking Teams 11 June 2010 PALESTINE REFLECTION: Windows by Marilyn Paarlberg  cptnet at mailman.cpt.org  http://www.cpt.org/cptnet/2010/06/11/palestine-reflection-windows 
2	Story of St Alban - The Cathedral and Abbey Church of Saint Alban http://www.stalbanscathedral.org/history/story-of-st-alban  
3	‘Witnessing to Christ Today”: Presiding bishop, Southern Africa primate address USPG conference By Matthew Davies, June 10, 2010 http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79425_122828_ENG_HTM.htm
4	http://albanyvisitors.com/historic-albany/museums/monteith-house/



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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)