[Propertalk] 4 Lent c rcl

[Robert P Morrison]

This began, incorrectly, thinking about verses which precede today's OT rcl reading, and I couldn't quite shake them - so maybe there'll be further pruning and re-working as I go through the evening.

Peace!

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY  	            4 LENT C RCL
JOSHUA 5:9-12			   14th MARCH, 2010	
2 CORINTHIANS 5:16-21			                 PSALM 32
LUKE 15:1-3, 11b-32

	I received an e-mail yesterday – one that has a list of things. This one was called “20 Random Thoughts”. Just to let you get a preview of the level of some of the attempted humour this morning, here’s Number Twenty. “I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lites than Kay.”
	Mick Jagger – remember that name! I’ll get back to it shortly.
	Why would God want you back?
	Think about this for a moment.
	Who ARE we – never mind the rest of the folk in Albany, not even the ones we like – who are WE that God would want US back? Who IS this God who’s so patient, so courteous, so incredibly, so lavishly generous?
	What do you think turns God on? Every week, in one way or another we recite one or other of the ancient creeds of the Church. At least once a week we talk about our basic beliefs, beginning by talking about God who made everything that is.
	Maybe that’s the first clue about who God is and what excites God.  God likes doing things with Her/His hands – but remember, when we talk about God’s hands we’re only trying to get our minds around the idea that God may have been the first Person to say, “Look, Ma, no hands!” – except, and this is something else we say at least weekly – except God doesn’t have a mother. “Sometimes,” sings God, “sometimes I feel like a motherless child!”
	So, if God has no hands, and God doesn’t have a mother, what is there to which to look forward?
	“Well,” said Jesus once, when talking to the fussy literalists and legalists among the listening crowd, “if people won’t praise God, then God can make rocks talk.” 
	It seems that God gets a bang out of people being happy, people finding pleasure in life, people discovering all the things that THEY can do because THEY have hands, and feet, and lips, and hearts, and – maybe most importantly – they have minds which ought to be working on God’s behalf, to make sure that everyone and everything else is given a chance, and fully and honestly encouraged to live up to the specifications of the Owner’s Manual. But if our hearts and minds somehow forget what our specifications are, and who provided those specifications, then that’s when the rocks may start to talk.
	You know, this IS a crazy way of doing business! Last week we had talking bushes; this week I’m going on about talking rocks. What on earth will we find next week? 
	So – talking rocks – do THEY amuse God? I think we can say, “Yes” because of what they can accomplish.
	The Hebrew people had been through the wringer. They’d left a predictable existence in Egypt, with pluses as well as minuses; they’d wandered around in the desert with Moses for at least a generation; they’d arrived at the Jordan River and could see what looked like promising land across the river – only, it wouldn’t be easy to get there. So God dropped another hint. “Use the rocks, folks.”
	Twelve huge rocks – interesting, one for each of the twelve tribes; each one gets his or her own pet rock – twelve huge rocks are set into the bed of the river of life and the whole nation moves across safely into the next stage of the promise. Then God tells the people to set these rocks by the river so that people thousands of years on from that point can hear the rocks say, “God helped your ancestors to find freedom, and health, and the potential for prosperity. God CAN and WILL help you, no matter who you are.”
	Where do we hear about those rocks, though? Well, from the pun in the Hebrew of what was read. “Gilgal” and “rolled away” linguistically tie together – Gigal comes from the same root word which means “to roll”, and now means a circle of stones, a circle recalling  a wheel which can roll, and just before the verses we heard from the Book of Joshua this morning, there’s a reference to the stones which were used to effect the Hebrews’ entrance into their promised land. These stones were to stand for all time so that people, hundreds of years later, could look at them and be reminded of God’s continuing blessing.
	Not only that, however. By that circle, by that place where all the previous serious behavioural problems of the Hebrews had been wiped away by God, by that circle the whole community celebrated Passover – the principle sign of God’s grace, still celebrated by faithful Jews to this day. And THEN they began to gather in their first harvest after the desert experience. AFTER they told their stories and remembered God’s deliverance, and confessed their trust in God, THEN they received crops as the fruit of the land.
	It’s all tied together – rocks which tell of God’s love; circles which speak about the forgiveness of sin and its being wiped away by God, and the double celebration of God’s provision for the people – their freedom and the provision for their physical needs.
	And this isn’t something merely in the past. This is a message for all time. “What was valid ‘then’ is proclaimed to be still valid ‘today’, at a time when people are groaning (as if in) exile and believe that the promises and miracles of God belong to the past, with no connection to the present miserable reality.” 1
	Oh – and Mick Jagger … I said I’d get back to him. Well, remember – he was one of the founders of “The Rolling Stones”! See what kind of a strange thing can happen when words and concepts start to filter through a mind, even a strange mind as mine can be. “The Rolling Stones” – it DOES sound a lot better than “The Gilgals”, you have to admit!
	There ARE talking, rolling rocks today, if only we’ll look; if only we ask about them! There are rocks everywhere; there’s bread and wine everywhere; there are plants, and vegetables, and meat everywhere – if only we’ll look. And in these we can find out about the way in which God has brought us from A to B in our own lives. Through sharing our personal stories and thinking about them, we can find things which will tell to ourselves, and our children and our grandchildren just how gracious God is, and how God has led us to turn our lives around.	So there’s a third clue to help us build a picture of God. God is eternally creative, yet handless without us. God is without beginning – motherless, yet calls us to mother all of creation. God is filled with graciousness, and calls us both to receive and to give grace.
	 What else? What else do we need to fill out our picture, our belief in God?
	Well, if we actually need anything more, God doesn’t worry about appearances. God loves us; God reaches out to us; no matter who we are or what we’ve done.
	There’s a peculiar and seldom remembered fact from the middle of the story about the son who returned after wasting his inheritance. “Middle Eastern adults do not run in public if they wish to avoid public shame.” Yet in the parable Jesus told, “the father … exposes himself to public humiliation by running down the road.” 2
	For all God’s power and righteousness, absolutely nothing will stand in the way of our welcome back. It would seem that we simply have to look over our shoulder and to turn towards God to find ourselves embraced in a tremendous bear hug. No matter who we are.
	That’s why God wanted the Stones placed where they were – so that generation after generation might remember that at that place, after all the wrangling, after all the hesitancy to trust, after all the direct confrontation and disobedience to God; after all the ways in which men, women and children had abused one another – after everything that had happened in the Hebrew people’s past, God STILL took them to safety through the desert and across the Jordan. There God renewed with the people the covenant established through Abraham and Moses. There, surrounded by the Stones, God and humans celebrated the gift of life and commitment as depicted in the Passover ceremony.
	THAT’S why, as unlikely a figure as he may appear to be in a sermon, it seems quite natural when thinking about Stones to talk about Mick Jagger – the butt of so many talk-show hosts’ jokes, because of his appearance, and his behaviour, and his age.
	NOT that I’m saying we should necessarily emulate Mick in everything, but that Mick Jagger, whatever he may have done or said, is as much to be enveloped in God’s embrace as we are. And, if Mick Jagger, then surely included in the company of the community of God, with us, are all those with whom we have disagreements, even radical differences and fierce arguments. Whether we’re talking family, or congregation, or diocese or Communion, ALL that’s asked is that we rediscover God as Creator; God as healer and renewer; God as the One who can reconcile us all. ALL that’s asked is that we turn and come home.
	That list of Twenty Random Things from which I quoted earlier. The first one states: “I think part of a best friend's job should be too immediately clear your computer history if you die.”
	None of us need ever fear about this turning around. As St Clare is reputed to have said on her death bed,” Live without fear: your Creator has made YOU holy,” Imagine that! God has made you, and you, and you, and me – has made us ALL holy. God “has always protected you, and loves you as a mother. (So g)o in peace to follow the good road and may God’s blessing be with you always.” 3
	Welcome Home!

NOTES:

1 	“Joshua” by J. Alberto Soggin. S.C.M. Press Ltd., London © 1972. Page 65.
2	Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth E. Bailey. IVF, Downers Grove, Ill. © 2008. Page 177, with footnote 7.
3	From Enriching our Worship, et al. See also http://www.poorclarestmd.org/st-clare.htm  

--
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)