[Propertalk] Proper 29 c rcl

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

I still have to proof this, etc, but here's what I have for this last 
Sunday of the liturgical year.

Anyone stay up late to go to Harry Potter last night/this morning? 8 - )

Bob


THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY		          THE LAST SUNDAY 
AFTER PENTECOST: CHRIST THE KING
JEREMIAH 23:1-6	        	    	                      	   PROPER 29 C RCL
COLOSSIANS 1:11-20	   				    21st NOVEMBER, 2010
LUKE 23:33-43				               CANTICLE 16 – LUKE 1:68-79

	“I do a lot of work for seminary students.” That sentence in a higher 
education journal report caught my attention. “I like seminary 
students.” he went on. “They seem so blissfully unaware of the inherent 
contradiction in paying somebody to help them cheat in courses that are 
largely about walking in the light of God and providing an ethical model 
for others to follow. I have been commissioned to write many a 
passionate condemnation of America's moral decay as exemplified by 
abortion, gay marriage, or the teaching of evolution. All in all, we may 
presume that clerical authorities see these as a greater threat than the 
plagiarism committed by the future frocked.” 1
	Maybe you should go home after refreshments this morning and pull out 
those certificates to see whether or not you actually WERE baptised – or 
confirmed – or, heaven forbid, married. I DO remember a case a few years 
back in which a County Official in Grants Pass was found to have 
conducted hundreds of weddings, without having the authority so to do, 
and so officials were scrambling to try to track those hundreds of 
couples to tell them they weren’t married in the eyes of the State! I’ll 
bet THAT blew a few minds!
	How DO you tell whether or not someone has authority, though? I think 
there are many times when used car sales people get a bad rap. And 
lawyers too. But clergy? How do you know Marj and I aren’t faking it?
	As you may have guessed, the author of the words I quoted is a 
“ghost-writer”, someone who writes for other people for money. Might we 
say he’s engaged in “literary prostitution”? A bit further on in the 
article he wrote, “I live well on the desperation, misery, and 
incompetence that your educational system has created. Granted, as a 
writer, I could earn more; certainly there are ways to earn less. But I 
never struggle to find work. And as my peers trudge through thankless 
office jobs that seem more intolerable with every passing month of our 
sustained recession, I am on pace for my best year yet. I will make 
roughly $66,000 this year. Not a king's ransom, but higher than what 
many actual educators are paid.”
	“Desperation, misery, and incompetence” – these are three things that 
we may all experience from time to time – either in our own lives or 
those of our families and friends. And whenever we do, whenever another 
news report saddens or frightens us, we want to know that there’s 
someone on whom we can depend. And we’d prefer that person to be readily 
identifiable as trustworthy and dependable, someone with experience.
	An internet licence, a letterhead that doesn’t look quite right, 
anything of that nature probably wouldn’t help us. So, sad as it may 
seem, everywhere we have to test, we have to inquire, we have to ask for 
references as we look for comfort and support.
	One of the things I take from the opening story is that appearances and 
assumptions can be deceiving.
	It’s sad to think of people who advance through college, for instance, 
and	 who can’t put a simple sentence together. It’s not as if the 
students are abbreviating words because they’re texting. They simply 
don’t understand words and spelling.
	Simply seeing a diploma may not be a guarantee, then. Let’s hope your 
next surgery team is up to the task!
	Seriously, though, go back to Jeremiah’s comment. “Woe to the shepherds 
who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture, says the Lord.” It 
sounds like a case of people masquerading as shepherds. They knew what 
the vocation involved. They simply took off or did whatever was most 
comfortable and profitable, whenever it suited them. They may have 
thought that a shepherd’s crook was all that was necessary to convince 
everyone that they knew what they were dong and would protect the sheep. 
Appearance, they thought, and a few smart catch-phrases, would enable 
them to pass.
	Maybe that’s why some thought Jesus failed so miserably. Son of God? 
King? There were times when He wouldn’t have been elected dog-catcher. I 
mean, really, Son of God? Going from door to door and village to 
village? King – and NOT demanding that people come to pay Him homage?
	What a contrast Jesus was to Herod, never mind Pontius Pilate! Yet He 
still had enough of a following that the Romans had to get rid of Him 
before He stirred up the crowd and created greater disturbances at 
Passover than were already anticipated.
	Jesus’ appearance, however, and the way that He mingled with the crowd, 
the things He said – about peace, about the forgiveness of violence – 
that gave an appearance completely contrary to what the Jewish leaders 
anticipated and wanted, and it gave a similar appearance of weakness to 
the Romans also. After all, anyone remotely like a king would have put 
up resistance and would have had a crowd around Him to fight on His 
behalf.
	But Jesus’ whole ministry, in fact the ministry of the entire line of 
God’s messengers, didn’t fit in appearance, or in word, or in action 
with the perception the people had of how God acts.
	“Several years ago, Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks did a comedy skit called 
the ‘2013 Year Old Man’. In the skit, Reiner interviews Brooks, who is 
the old gentleman. At one point, Reiner asks the old man, ‘Did you 
always believe in the Lord?’
  	“Brooks replied: ‘No. We had a guy in our village named Phil, and for 
a time we worshiped him.’
	“Reiner: ‘You worshiped a guy named Phil? Why?’
  	“Brooks: ‘Because he was big, and mean, and he could break you in two 
with his bare hands!’
	“Reiner: ‘Did you have prayers?’
	“Brooks: ‘Yes, would you like to hear one? “O Phil, please don’t be 
mean, and hurt us, or break us in two with your bare hands.”’
  	“Reiner: ‘So when did you start worshiping the Lord?’
	“Brooks: ‘Well, one day a big thunderstorm came up, and a lightning 
bolt hit Phil. We gathered around and saw that he was dead. Then we said 
to one another, “There’s somthin’ bigger than Phil.”’” 2
	This isn’t just humorous. It’s an accurate painting of human nature. 
Not only do we look for the loudest voice, the wealthiest individual, 
the person with the biggest gun, or store, or car, or whatever, and let 
that person take the lead; we also assume that, somehow, that person has 
a right from God to be the leader.
	Once again, though, society – and the Church too, when it’s not careful 
– both misperceive what they see and take that for what is true, and 
honest, and just. But the Good News is that God is nothing like what we 
imagine; God behaves, God is present, God IS nothing as we imagine.
	“The Kingdom,” wrote Martin Luther, “The Kingdom is to be in the midst 
of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of 
the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses 
and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you 
blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are 
doing, who would ever have been spared?” 3
	The Realm and Reign of God are to be found precisely where we don’t 
expect it. That’s why one of the thieves beside Jesus was able to see 
through the battered and abused appearance of Jesus and find the loving 
mercy of God.
	Oscar Romero, the assassinated Archbishop of El Salvador, is reputed to 
have said, “The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our 
vision.” Yet St. Oscar not only kept looking beyond his own experience 
in order to find, IN his own experience, the very expression of God, 
working out love in the midst of pain, and questioning, and oppression.
	All of this is a message of hope. The challenging and cursing of 
Jeremiah; the pleading and prayer of the writer to the Colossians; the 
battered and broken crucified Christ Jesus as depicted by the evangelist 
– all of these talk of the hope of discovering God continuing to work as 
the authentic voice of mercy, and justice, and love even while 
surrounded by darkness and fear.
	The Good News is that we shouldn’t be taken in by glitz and glamour, by 
fancy diplomas or decorations. IF we seek to be participants in God’s 
reign – and that we have to decide for ourselves – IF we seek to 
participate in God’s reign, then we have to look into the heart of God’s 
love.
	Do you remember the collect said several times during Holy Week? “Lord 
Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of 
the cross that ALL might come within the reach of your saving embrace …” 
God’s heart is seldom wrapped in velvet and neatly tied with a ribbon. 
Most often it’s to be found raw and bruised, in the roughest of 
circumstances, beating in order to bring life where it seems to be 
ebbing out and dying away.
	The true certificate of authenticity of love can only be written and 
given by God. Yet once we come within the reach of that saving embrace, 
we too are turned around, to go into situations of fear and despair and 
to announce right at the moment of deepest pain, that no one will ever 
be separated from Love, from God.
	This is something which God asks us to envision, as we look through the 
eyes of Jesus, (still?) crucified for the world.

NOTES:

1 	“The Shadow Scholar” by “Ed Dante” The Chronicle Review. The 
Chronicle of Higher Education November 12, 2010 
http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/125329/ Editor’s note: Ed 
Dante is a pseudonym for a writer who lives on the East Coast. Through a 
literary agent, he approached The Chronicle wanting to tell the story of 
how he makes a living writing papers for a custom-essay company and to 
describe the extent of student cheating he has observed. In the course 
of editing his article, The Chronicle reviewed correspondence Dante had 
with clients and some of the papers he had been paid to write. In the 
article published here, some details of the assignment he describes have 
been altered to protect the identity of the student.
2	“Humor: False Prophets and Messiahs” via Tim Carpenter, 
www.Sermons.com
3            Martin Luther (1483-1546), paraphrase from "Sermon on Psalm 
110" [1518], WA, 1:696, quoted in “Life Together” [1954], Dietrich 
Bonhoeffer & tr. Daniel W. Bloesch &  James H. Burtness, Fortress Press, 
2004, p. 27



Robert P Morrison
Interim Vicar
The Episcopal Church of St Alban
PO Box 1556
Albany OR  97321   541-921-1076 (cell)
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