[Propertalk] 7 Epiphany a rcl

Fri Feb 18 00:23:31 EST 2011

I wrote this shortly after arriving in Philadelphia, and have yet to 
edit it. In fact, I've barely looked at in since!

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY  	        THE SEVENTH SUNDAY 
AFTER THE EPIPHANY A
LEVITICUS 19:1-2, 9-18	                          		        	 
20th FEBRUARY, 2011
1CORINTHIANS 3:10-11, 16-23		 
PSALM 119:33-40
MATTHEW 5:38-48

	Two stories, from a couple of weeks ago, one brought to mind because of 
the beautiful quilts made for and sold at the bazaar here back in 
November.

	Quilts are such a personal gift. They’re incredibly labour-intensive. 
They take good eyesight and steady hands. They need patience. They need 
good light. They need a large table or flat area on which to lay out the 
material – to look at the large piece of fabric, to see the patterns in 
one’s mind’s eye, to cut carefully – I’ve never done it myself, but I 
know several of you here have, and the rest of us may often go out of 
our way to see a quilt exhibit or go to a quilting workshop.

Above all, this sort of thing demands imagination.

	Then, when it’s pieced together, and smoothed, and one smiles, then 
it’s given to the person whose name may have been in our mind from the 
moment of the first stitch, the name which has guided one’s mind and 
one’s hands all the way through the task. And from that moment on, it 
becomes a family heirloom, to be passed on from generation to 
generation, so that even when it’s worn, it’s still treasured as a link 
to the past as well as a link to the future.

Someone made this quilt, this blanket, and entrusted it to us to show 
how much we’re appreciated and blessed.

	And someone hopes that we’ll find the hidden mysteries within the 
stitched fragments that tell stories to every passing generation.

	Such is the gift of God – not just the quilts which the Spirit 
encourages us to create, and to gift, and to value; but also Creation 
itself, that amazing patchwork put together for our comfort, and our 
nourishment, and our protection – a sign that we share a link with 
everyone who’s gone before us, including that Divine Being who is prior 
to whatever Big Bang brought everything to be; a sign that we must pass 
on to those who come after us, to remind them of the relationship that 
we wish to have with them.

	Imagine all the thought, all the needle-stuck fingers which go into 
quilt-gifting, all the love and hope in such creativity – both God’s and 
ours.

	Then ask yourself if we should ever do anything to destroy, to harm, to 
break the stitching that holds the whole human race together.

  The first story.

	“Her dropped head, her clasped hands, her sad face continue to haunt 
me.” wrote the author. “I ask myself how anyone could endure this kind 
of pain, especially a mother. I sat in a stupefied silence as the 
fifty-six-year-old woman told us about the invasion of her home last 
October.  Soldiers had awakened the family and their relatives next door 
by banging on the door at 12:00 a.m.  They then ordered the families out 
of their homes, locked the women and young children in the shop next 
door, handcuffed and blindfolded the men and adolescent boys, and told 
them stand in front of a shop.

	“In the next twelve hours, the Israeli military shot and killed two 
Palestinian men accused of killing four settlers.  Afterwards soldiers 
entered the same house, although neighbors said the family had no 
connection to the killings, shot randomly into the bed, through the 
blankets, under the bed, into the windows, doors, and table.  I wept 
within when the mother pointed out a beautiful blanket meant to be a 
wedding gift for one of the sons and his wife, now riddled with bullet 
holes.”  1

	This was something that happened within the last few months, but it’s 
simply a retelling of the story that’s been lived out around the world 
since the beginning of time. I just finished reading a book loaned me by 
Art Stevens about the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The 
tale is the same. One ethnic group, even a sub-group within one group, 
literally tearing apart the flesh of individual people and of society …. 
all the while others are standing by, too afraid, too complacent, too 
self-absorbed in their own toy boxes, to speak up or to place themselves 
between abuser and victim.

	The day I arrived in Philadelphia a TV report on the late night news 
told of seven boys, about age fifteen, who bullied a thirteen year-old, 
then pulled him by his legs through the snow before hanging him on the 
spike of a fence. Only by God’s grace did the spike not go through the 
boy’s neck. This happened about a mile from where my daughter and 
son-in-law live. No one did anything.

	Far too often we forget how Jesus Himself – AND the prophets before Him 
– stepped between someone whom society was victimizing and society 
itself. Too often we forget how, first, Moses transmitted God’s command, 
“You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” Then Jesus said, 
simply, “Don’t pay attention to how others behave. Follow Me. Walk into 
that dangerous place. For the sake of the person who has no home, no 
shelter, no credit rating, no educational opportunities, no mental 
health treatment, no friend with whom to weep – for the sake of the 
person who has become too afraid to show up even at a Church building – 
perhaps ESPECIALLY afraid to show up at a Church building; for the sake 
of the person who no longer cares about her or himself because no one 
else apparently cares; for everyone who’s ever been or is still in that 
position, Jesus continues to say, ‘Follow Me.’ Jesus says to us, as we 
say to Him, “tend the sick, … give rest to the weary, bless the dying, 
soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous …”’ And, as 
today’s readings suggest, this is what it means to be holy, to try to 
attain the perfection of God which is the Goal at which we’re to aim.

	If ever any congregation were to wonder what its mission is in the 
world, it needs to look no farther than the sidewalk outside the back 
door – not the front one; that one is usually keep swept – outside the 
side or the back door.

As we come towards the end of the Season of Epiphany and draw closer to 
Ash Wednesday and Lent; as we think about how this Church may profile 
itself and search not only for a variety of leaders, but for meaning; as 
we move towards rethinking our discipleship with Jesus, surely such a 
story about the destroyed blanket must speak to us.

The sadness is that that blanket need not have been destroyed. That 
family; that community – the communities on every street in Albany – ALL 
communities – need to have their blankets which unite them to their past 
and shelter them from danger.

But not all stories, not all people, are enveloped by such perils as the 
first story about The West Bank Palestinians.

The second story IS complimentary to the first, though. There IS nothing 
that happens in isolation, so whenever we see or read of abuse, there 
are often stories of hope which can strengthen us to work harder for 
Jesus’ friends. The cross which shows the worst that human beings can 
inflict on another is NOT the end of the story. Nearly every time there 
is one story, another follows along, then another, and one after that, 
and so on. So here’s the second one.

The teller wrote, “Some things we know for sure — a little boy dealt a 
seemingly impossible hand, the two gay men who decided to give him a 
home and a life, the unlikely spell cast by the only horse in Montclair 
(New Jersey). 2

“Beyond that, well, it was what you could never quite know as much as 
what you could that drew 500 people, friends and strangers, to St. 
Luke’s Episcopal Church (on a) Saturday to ponder the lesson in grace 
and resilience, the parable of good lives and deeds outside the 
prescribed lines, in the remarkably long and way-too-short life of 
Maurice Mannion-Vanover, dead at the age of 20 on Jan. 14.

	“Few people begin life with so many strikes against them as Maurice had 
when he was born with AIDS on Sept. 11, 1990, to a crack-addicted mother 
in a hospital in Washington. There were physical and developmental 
issues severe
enough that his twin sister, Michelle Reed, lived only 20 months. 
Deserted by his parents, he got his first break in 1993 when two men, 
intent on caring for a baby with serious physical needs, agreed to take 
him in.

	“The two, who came to be known as the Tims, Tim Mannion and Tim 
Vanover, were told he would probably live six months. But, to everyone’s 
amazement, he began to thrive. He gained weight. His T-cell count 
steadily increased. In 1996, they adopted him, becoming the first gay 
couple in Washington to adopt a child. A year later, they adopted a 
second son, Kindoo, eight years older. When Tim Vanover got a new job in 
New York, they moved to Montclair in 1998.

	“Eventually, the family of two white gay men and two black children 
became two men, two children and one horse, Rocky, short for 
Rockefeller. The Tims bought Rocky, a 4-year-old cross between a Morgan 
and a quarter horse, for $3,500 in 2002 and gave him to Maurice on 
Christmas Eve.

	“Montclair, a densely populated suburb, isn’t exactly horse country, 
but they had a double lot with an old carriage house near downtown. And 
Maurice had fallen in love with horses, almost transformed by their 
presence. Atop a horse, seemingly glued to the saddle, the slender child 
seemed to blossom, his back straighter, his eyes brighter, as if on top 
not of a horse, but of the world.

	“To say this was a blessing for Maurice is an understatement. But it 
wasn’t just for Maurice. Before long, everyone in Montclair, certainly 
every kid, knew about the house with the horse and the incredibly lucky 
kid who owned him. And before long, the intersection of Union and 
Harrison was a mecca for children and a magnet for passers-by, 
invariably greeted with a wave from Maurice and often a greeting from 
Rocky, who trotted up to view neighbors each day on their way to work.

	“It’s not as if everything went smoothly. Far from it. Maurice’s health 
could be precarious, like the heart condition that almost killed him in 
1998.

	“Rocky sometimes got free, galloping down busy Harrison Avenue, where 
the New Jersey Transit buses go,3  then eating some of the neighbors’ 
flowers. And the Tims — stout, outgoing Tim Vanover and thin, more 
reserved Tim Mannion — broke up, but only as a couple, not as Maurice’s 
fathers, choosing to live together and continue to raise him.

	“None of that affected Maurice, who became a fixture in his 
neighborhood and church, a Buddha smile always on his face, the iPod 4 
— full of Ella Fitzgerald, 5 Edith Piaf, “The Lion King” — seemingly 
permanently attached. He graduated from a special-education high school, 
traveled to Central America, Europe and Africa with his fathers, 
volunteered at the church food ministry. On Dec. 12, he became a black 
belt in tae kwon do. He wanted to live on his own and become an 
elementary school teacher’s aide.

	“And then on a trip to Toronto in January with Mr. Vanover, he got 
sick. Then he got sicker. There was pneumonia, sepsis, acute renal 
failure. “It’s time,” he said several times, seemingly in his normal, 
slightly Delphic voice. No one knew quite what he meant, but it didn’t 
occur to anyone it meant that this was all the time he had. But it was.

	“Making sense of it all goes far beyond the known facts of Maurice, the 
Tims and Rocky the Horse: the way his beloved dog, Hunter, keeled over 
and died a few hours after Maurice passed on; the way Rocky took Mr. 
Vanover’s head with his own and drew it close to him, as if sharing 
grief in a hug. Before the funeral service, Rocky, the Tims and Kindoo 
walked to the church in front of the hearse. Maurice’s priest and 
friend, the Rev. John A. Mennell, recalled his incandescent smile, his 
cut-to-the-chase greetings, his unerring instinct for doing the right 
thing, if not always the proper one.

	“He recalled the day Maurice was helping with the collection plate.

	“‘You can do better,’ Maurice said amiably to one congregant. It was 
the story of his life. You can do better, he said, and without quite 
knowing it, everyone did.”

	To everyone in Israel and Palestine; to everyone in New Jersey; to 
everyone in Albany, Oregon; to everyone sitting in the pews here – 
whether our offering is being received or we’re engaging in some other 
act of worship; Jesus’ call to us; Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for us; 
above all, Jesus’ resurrection for us, says again and again, through 
story after story – most often with a smile and a friendly tease – Jesus 
encouragingly repeats, “You can do better”.

	Because Jesus walks with us, and listens to our stories, and 
participates in our lives, we all KNOW that we CAN do better. We simply 
have to put our minds to it.

NOTES

1 	“HEBRON REFLECTION:  The left their mark everywhere” by Paulette 
Schroeder CPTnet  1 February 2011 
http://www.cpt.org/cptnet/2011/02/01/hebron-reflection-left-their-mark-everywhere

2	“Our Towns Against All Odds, a Beautiful Life” By Peter Applebome New 
York Times Published: January 23, 2011 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/nyregion/24towns.html MONTCLAIR, N.J

3	 
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/new_jersey_transit/index.html?inline=nyt-org

4	 
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/ipod/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier

5	 
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/ella_fitzgerald/index.html?inline=nyt-per

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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