[Propertalk] Proper 26 a

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

Here's what I have for this weekend - of course the revision and editing 
muse may strike at any moment!

Bob


THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY            THE TWENTIETH 
SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST – A
JOSHUA 3:7-17		 	           		          		            PROPER 26 A
1 THESSALONIANS 2:9-13				                         30th OCTOBER, 2011
MATTHEW 23:1-12						            PSALM 107:1-7, 33-37

	Several years ago I was on a committee charged with interviewing high 
school students to determine who should be given a scholarship to help 
pay part of the cost of college education. It was a difficult task, but 
it was also exciting because it helped us get to know the youth in the 
community, and it gave each of us on the committee a chance to think how 
we’d answer the questions we’d drawn up. One of them was, “If you could 
meet any historical figure, living or dead, who would it be and why?”

That question popped back into my mind the other day as I thought of the 
fact that tomorrow is Hallowe’en, and a great many unusual figures may 
be roaming the streets and ringing doorbells tomorrow. I wonder whether 
there’s any correlation between the costume someone wears and her or his 
favourite or dream character!
	
	I’m sure we can anticipate seeing the usual number of princesses and 
princes, or Star Wars figures, maybe some Muppets ® - I haven’t kept up 
with cartoons enough to guess who else may be more current. I wonder if 
we’ll see many Ghandis, or Mother Teresas, or Martin Luther Kings, or 
Sacajaweas, or David Pendelton Oakerhaters? What about Joshuas?

	What would Joshua look like?

	He was probably pretty terrified at the thought of taking over where 
Moses had left off. The fact that Moses had died without getting to The 
Promised Land may have had something to do with it – even if Moses must 
have been well up there in years. Following a leader of his wisdom, of 
his determination, of his stubbornness – no one would want to do that.

The fact that Joshua had been in Moses’ company for a while may have 
counted for something. Yet he must still have dreaded the thought of 
taking on the responsibility, not only of taking on Moses’ job, but of 
taking it those steps further which Moses couldn’t take. Especially when 
you consider the cantankerous intransigence of the Hebrew pilgrims!

Things change all the time. Sometimes we seek these changes 
deliberately. We don’t like what we have at the moment, or else we see 
something better over the neighbours’ back fence. Either way, we think 
that the change will bring a better opportunity to find happiness, or to 
be successful – possibly even to put one over on someone else.

At other times, of course, change happens apparently outside our 
control. A random act of some stranger, or an event half-way across the 
world, anything like these can bring great change to our lives. Whether 
we like it or not, whether we’re ready for it or not, whether we try to 
fight it or not, change happens.

The BIG question for us, then, every single day of our lives, every time 
we take a breath, is how we’re going to respond to it. Are we going to 
rejoice in an opportunity to do something differently in a familiar 
situation with familiar people, to start off on some different project, 
with or without folk whom we know – whether or not we trust them?

Or are we going to dig in our heels and try to slow down, try to defeat 
change?

Either way, it’s up to us.

One of my favourite prayers in the Prayer Book is in the section 
“Ministration to the Sick”. The prayer begins, “This is another day, O 
Lord. I know not what it will bring forth, but make me ready, Lord, for 
whatever it may be.” 1

That’s really all we can ask, especially in a world that’s seems to be 
different every time it turns around. I can see something like that on 
the lips of Joshua. As he looked out over the crowd of Hebrew folk, no 
matter how close they all were to what God had promised them, he must 
have had at least a couple of sleepless nights wondering if he was up to 
the task, and what tricks his sisters and brothers would play on him.

The good news is that things worked out. No matter how difficult, no 
matter what resistance he and they encountered, they arrived at their 
special place, and, eventually they settled down.

Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the 
British Commonwealth since September 1991, has had a remarkable and 
powerful influence in Britain over the past twenty-odd years, not only 
within Judaism, not even in religious contexts, but among those claiming 
no religious beliefs or influences. One of the things he’s been 
stressing is that it’s in community that morality is nurtured and from 
which it spreads out into the world. It’s when people learn to work WITH 
one another rather than AGAINST one another, that true happiness, not to 
mention justice and mercy, is found.

Joshua found that out by watching Moses. He must have been caught up in 
the struggle and probably made his share of mistakes, but obviously he 
learned enough from Moses that he was able, not only to recite chapter 
and verse about how God wanted the people to live, he was able to 
demonstrate and to engage the people in practical living.

That’s what Jesus pointed out where some of the Jewish community were 
failing in His day. They knew the words; they knew the history; they 
knew the principles – love God, love neighbour, seek justice, and so on 
– but they failed to make a connection between brain and heart, between 
mind and emotion.

Rabbi Sacks described it, “We have always had these two imperatives that 
take us in conflicting directions. There is the drive for survival and 
there is the drive for cooperation -- the altruistic element.
	
	“Charles Darwin,” Sacks said,” understood this, and we are beginning to 
pick up on this in evolutionary psychology and also in neuroscience. We 
pass our genes on as individuals but we survive in groups, and groups 
only survive on the basis of altruism. So we are caught in the perennial 
tension between the drive to good, and instinct to self-preservation 
that sees everyone as a means to our ends.
	
	“So we all have a moral sense, the question is, what are the settings 
or environments that strengthen that sense and allow us to combat some 
of the more destructive human instincts. Religion is always focused on 
that question. It's not that we need to be religious to know what is 
good, but we need to be religious in order to be educated in the habits 
of the heart that lead people to be moral. And we know those habits have 
to be inculcated by constant practice, which we do in religion through 
prayer and ritual. They need to be cultivated in community, and today 
religions are the strongest, maybe the only really strong communities 
that we have left.

	“And so I think religions make people better able to act on the moral 
sense.” 2

	THAT is the charge that’s given to us. WE are a community of the people 
of God. We’re called to this specific place and to this specific time, 
and chosen to be representatives of God right here in Albany. We begin 
within these four walls, just as Joshua began with the people right in 
front of him. We have to learn each day what the possibilities for good 
are, and what are the things to avoid. We’re to be aware of what would 
break up the community, what would decrease its effectiveness. We’re to 
learn how to talk together as we search for God’s word for this morning. 
Some may have to learn to be quiet while others talk. Some who may not 
be used to talking, or even afraid of talking, may have to learn to 
speak up. Whoever we are, we’re to learn to live and work together, 
putting the beautiful words of our Eucharistic liturgy into practice.

	If I may adapt Rabbi Sacks’ words slightly, “We in the religious 
community have (to take) the lead in creating a normative community of 
business people (…) financiers (and all leaders) who have ethical 
expectations of one another. It's done by creating the standards that 
people expect of one another if they are part of the community.”

Rabbi Sacks quoted Isaiah 58, “Is not this is the kind of fast I have 
chosen: To lose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke; 
to set the oppressed free and break every yoke, is it not to share your 
food with the hungry, and to provide the poor with shelter -- then your 
light will break forth like dawn.”

  “You can't walk into (a house of worship)”, Lord Sacks continued, 
“without that hitting you between the eyes. With wealth comes 
responsibility. We believe that what we possess we don't ultimately own. 
God is merely entrusting it to us. And one of the conditions of that 
trust is that we share what we have with those who have less. So, if you 
don't give to people in need, you can hardly call yourself a Jew. Even 
the most unbelieving Jew knows that.”

I’m sure Jonathan Sacks would be the first to admit that wealth needs to 
be described in the broadest terms possible.  It IS about money. Of 
course it is. It ALWAYS is. But it’s about everything which God has 
given us. Without this guiding principle in front of them, Joshua and 
our Hebrew ancestors couldn’t have made it across the Jordan, and that’s 
what many claiming Moses’ authorisation in Jesus’ time had forgotten.
	
If we’re still thinking about what we should wear tomorrow, then, you 
and I could do a lot worse that to be Joshuas – each of us a leader 
willing to take a chance and assume the responsibility of being a moral 
beacon, not just for the rest of us here, but for everyone we meet. Just 
how Joshua dressed, of course, isn’t clear. But there’s little doubt 
about how he acted – and how little nonsense he put up with from the 
rest of the people.

	Change, then, isn’t the enemy. The enemy is apathy, and self-interest, 
and an unwillingness to admit that God calls us to community. And we’ll 
never get across the Jordan with these.

	“This IS another day, O Lord. I know not what it will bring forth, but 
make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be.”

NOTES:

1 	“In the Morning”. Ministration to the Sick: B.C.P. page 461

2	“Religion, Morality and the Financial Industry: An Interview With 
Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks” by Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, Senior Religion 
Editor for the Huffington Post. Posted: 10/25/11 08:07 AM ET
 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-raushenbush/chief-rabbi-lord-sacks-interview-religion-morality-finance_b_1029129.html




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