[Propertalk] Proper 14 a rcl

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

I don't believe I posted this yet. I did the first draft a while ago and 
tweaked it a little, but no doubt it will go through more scrutiny 
before the weekend. 8 - )

I'm enjoying going through Jacob,  Joseph, and looking forward to the 
next stories in the semi-continuous track of the RCL OT.

Happy wrestling.

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY                   THE EIGHTH 
SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST – A
GENESIS 37:1-4, 12-28				           		   PROPER 14 A
ROMANS 10:5-15					                7th AUGUST, 2011
MATTHEW 14:22-33 					     	   PSALM 105:1-6, 16-22, 45b

	It’s really a tragic tale – an old tale – but not any less tragic. It’s 
also not that uncommon.

	Let me ask you a really TERRIBLE question. Who’s your favourite child? 
For one reason or another, we may feel closer to one than the other. We 
may feel that we can talk more readily with that one. And that can blind 
us to so much. Just ask King Lear! But to say and show that we have a 
favourite? That’s a recipe for disaster. Yet it happens, even when we 
don’t intend it. Yes, we may feel especially close to someone who was 
born unexpectedly, or after a long wait. There can be all sorts of 
excuses for it, but none of them really hold much water.

	This wasn’t a one-way street, however, Jacob wasn’t the only one with 
problems. Joseph, seventeen – well into mature young adulthood for his 
day – Joseph couldn’t let an opportunity pass to run down his brothers 
and paint himself in a good light. “D’you know what these boneheads did 
with your sheep the other day?”It’s almost as bad as sitting at the 
dinner table and casually asking if your father knows what your sibling 
did with your dad’s ’56 Plymouth Belvedere convertible. Before the words 
are out of your mouth he thinks the worst. It doesn’t matter what your 
brother or sister did, the poison’s been spread and may never go away.

	And there’s a third side to this street, the side that Josephs’ 
brothers – all of Jacob’s other children – were on.
They weren’t free and clear in this performance either. They had their 
justifiable anger. Ever since Joseph cried out for the
first time, they’d discovered how it was to be counted as less important 
somehow. They had to deal with a lot of
resentment for so long that one day they snapped.

	What a family, what a tragic situation because people couldn’t be 
honest, couldn’t see straight, couldn’t back off and allow that all 
sorts of mistakes had been made. It’s described as love between Jacob 
and Joseph, but it doesn’t sound too much like that to me. There was a 
lack of trust. There may even have been a strong element of fear in what 
was going on in that household.

	Certainly there was fear between Joseph and his brothers. Who knows 
what Jacob would be capable of doing when he got any older? He might cut 
the others out of his will – he might have put Joseph in charge. Not in 
itself a bad deal, but given Joseph’s arrogance and attitude of 
self-importance that made him behave as if were the greatest thing in 
the world since the invention of goat curds, anything that gave more 
power to him – or even appeared to give him that control – sooner or 
later you’re in a situation where neither party will back down. 	Just 
think of the hassle over the debt ceiling and the handling of the 
federal treasury and you can see what happens when one person 
continually feels that he or she has to score points off another. 
Tempers, angry words, blame, ridicule – thank goodness there weren’t any 
pits in D.C. at the end of last month, otherwise the traders would have 
had a field day picking off all those with whom someone or other had a 
serious grouse.

	Canon Jeff Golliher, vicar of St. John's Episcopal Church in 
Ellenville, New York, wrote about fear that, “Everyone knows, or should 
know, that not all fear is bad. The kind of fear that alerts us to real 
threats to our survival can save our lives and our souls. This kind of 
fear is profoundly and obviously good. Everyone needs a healthy fear 
response. But most of our fear is not like that. Most of our fear has no 
direct relation to actual threats to our survival. Most of our fear 
prevents us from recognizing real threats for what they (are) and acting 
in appropriate, life-saving ways. In this day and age, the greater part 
of our fear can be traced to economic, social and political forces that 
create mass movements for their own self-serving, bottom-line purposes. 
The traditional word for this is ‘corruption.’ Because corruption 
requires fear, it creates it.” 1

	Whether it was fear of being old and alone, as perhaps Jacob worried; 
or middle aged and without any property or control, as some of the 
brothers may have felt; or of alienation from everyone else, as Joseph 
may have felt – whatever the reason or cause, fear probably drove the 
actions of the people in that story. And it can play havoc with OUR 
lives. It can destroy everything that love has carefully nurtured and 
built up. Fear can cut into respect; it can cause someone to feel a loss 
of dignity and worth. Worse, fear can cause one person to cause the loss 
of dignity and worth of another.

	Supposedly “Perfect love casts out fear.” I say “supposedly” because 
there are many times when we seem to forget that bit of the Bible. Not 
that that’s the only verse, by any manner of means. But if we can’t 
remember the power of love to transform and bless our lives and the 
lives of everyone we meet, then we’re going to have a difficult time. 
This isn’t to say it’s easy to love, or that if we’re going through 
something tough or not understandable, that somehow we’re deficient. 
Remembering that perfect love DOES cast out fear, however, is the 
beginning of understanding what Jesus’ life on earth was about, and 
should give every last one of us something at which to aim.

	The author, Susan Patton Boyle, whose son is an Episcopal priest who 
served in Corvallis a number of years ago, wrote that, “When we lose 
love, we lose also our identification with the universe and with eternal 
values – an identification which alone makes it possible for us to lay 
our lives on the altar for what we believe.” 2

	It’s love, then, that not only makes life tolerable, but that gives us 
that incredible spark that enables us to work through whatever dangers 
and difficulties cross our paths day in and day out. It’s the 
unconditionality of love which we celebrate whenever we come to the 
altar, to take Bread into our hands and have Wine touch our lips and 
throat. Jesus comes to meet us as we walk, no matter how quietly, to 
stand before Him. Without stopping to ask anything, Jesus
simply comes into our lives to transform and bless them. “Come,” He said 
to Peter. “Walk into the storm. Come towards Me.” And Peter, just like 
us, tried it. And, just like most of us, Peter started to sink, to lose 
his confidence, probably to take his eye off Jesus.

	But that’s not the end of the story, although it takes quite a while to 
get to the last chapter. It’s a bit surprising that we read of Peter 
going back out on boats again. In fact, after the death and resurrection 
of Jesus he suggested to the other disciples that they head back to 
Galilee to take up fishing again.

	Clearly something happened between the episode on the lake when he 
began to sink and the willingness to risk future storms. But that sort 
of clarity of thought only came after thorough testing.

	Somehow, the brothers of Joseph, their father and Joseph hadn’t been 
able to reach that state of understanding. They were still embroiled in 
petty jealousies, in putting themselves, and their own well-being, and 
what they thought was their security ahead of others.

	Too often that’s where we find ourselves today.

	I mentioned the debt ceiling hoo-hah. Politics is certainly one place 
where it’s easy to find lack of trust. It’s not just in the rarified, 
probably oxygen-depleted atmosphere of D.C. that this goes on. I’d 
imagine you could find a good argument between two dog catchers, if, 
indeed, Linn County can spring for two.

  	Oh, wait a minute, we’re still embroiled with Blue, aren’t we?

	This doesn’t mean that we have to ditch common sense. It doesn’t mean 
that we can’t have debates and strong differences of opinion. It doesn’t 
matter whether you’re at your dining room table, or on the golf course; 
whether you’re with a colleague at work, or a member of your family, we 
all have to sharpen or develop our skills at talking in a civilized 
manner. We have to come to accept that sometimes what we think may be 
the best way to go about things is OK, but there are other times when 
it’s not. We shouldn’t try to duck difference, though.

	Psychiatrist Viktor Frankl advices against trying to live in “a 
tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a 
worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What (each) needs is not the 
discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning 
waiting to be fulfilled by him (or her).” He went on to write that, 
“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core 
of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of 
another human being unless he loves him.”  3

	It’s too late to do anything for Jacob and his family. They’re past the 
need to find resolution in this life. So are many others who’ve gone 
before us. But there ARE people and situations all around us right now 
for which there’s still time to dispel fear. Canon Golliher suggests 
that “the reason that we don't love our neighbors as much as we would 
like, or as much as we should, is not that we're bad people. The reason 
is that we're afraid to love them, and we're telling ourselves that it's 
okay with God.

	“The time to turn this around is now. With God's help, we can find it 
within ourselves to do what needs to be done. It makes me afraid to 
think that we might not have much time, but we don't. That's a good kind 
of fear. It's the kind of fear that brings together our survival 
instincts with the promptings of our spiritual hearts.”

	The good news is that God can bring about good out of our stupidity, 
and self-centredness, and lack of compassion. Jesus DID rescue Peter – 
as He does us, time and again. But we’re left for this morning with the 
uneasiness of the story of Jacob, Joseph and his brothers – until Jesus 
calls us once again to come to Him – at the altar.

NOTES:

1 	“It's time to speak out about fear”  By Jeff Golliher, July 22, 2011 
http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80050_129188_ENG_HTM.htm

2	Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author of The 
Desegregated Heart (Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and 
author. The Desegregated Heart, part 3, ch. 2 (1962). Boyle, a white 
Virginian, had publicly advocated integration despite great opposition, 
social isolation, and threats of violence.)

3	 “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl. Pocket Books.



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