[Propertalk] Proper 13 b

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

Here's what the editor is going to work on for the balance of the day 8 
- )

Happy celebrating!

Bob


THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY		                  THE TENTH 
SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
2 SAMUEL 11:26 – 12:13a                         	    	                	 
PROPER 13 B RCL
EPHESIANS 4:1-16		                                                	               	 
5th AUGUST, 2012
JOHN 6:24-35        						 
PSALM 51:1-13

	One of the many stories on the Olympics which disturbed me concerned 
eight players on badminton teams. You may have read about it. They were 
disqualified for breaking one of the rules. They were losing, 
deliberately, so that they could work their way into an easier bracket 
and not have as difficult a time to advance. 1

	Now I’m sure everyone would like to be able to move along in standings 
of various natures. If we could find ourselves in the final match, or, 
better yet, at the top of the medal stand, hoisting a small gold disc in 
the air, I’m sure we’d be elated. But if you got it for doing so little, 
if you were proclaimed a winner, if you were given a prize and didn’t 
have to put out effort and break into a sweat, wouldn’t that seem either 
as if the competition were very lop-sided or not worth a whole lot?

	I’m not denying that some people are simply far better trained, 
physically and mentally, and seem to get past the opposition. But when 
you reach Olympic level, unless something drastic happens, you have to 
give every ounce of energy, you have to be incredibly focused, you have 
to work harder than you’ve ever done in your life in order to place, 
never mind win a gold.

	Two things are necessary in life. You have to work at whatever it is 
you’re doing or wanting, you have to prepare; and the second is that you 
never give up. Both easier said than done, of course. All sorts of 
things get in the way of our training. We finish high school and we have 
our eye set on college and a vocation in something really interesting. 
Then the scholarship dries up, or there’s a family emergency, or we get 
sick, or we may simply not apply ourselves. Any number of things can 
blur our focus, at best, or completely derail us at worst. Sometimes we 
make wrong choices. They probably seemed right at the time. Seldom do we 
actually choose disaster deliberately, but we may not have our eyes 
open, or we may think that we can skirt danger; or we may not be aware 
of all that’s involved in the choices we make. It may be a case of 
misunderstanding what we’ve seen, or heard, or thought. That’s why it’s 
so important to keep our eyes open and our brains in gear, as well as 
listen to our hearts. Then, if all else fails, there are our friends, 
the special folk whom we can trust and to whom we can go for advice.

	One way or another, we can try to do our best to prepare for life. It’s 
not being pessimistic, however, to admit that we’ll ALL mess up, 
sometimes royally. But look at what happened to David. Eventually he 
recognised that it wasn’t quite kosher to have a women’s husband killed 
so you can add her to your family, and he sought God’s forgiveness. 
Although the psalm this morning dates from long after the time of David 
it contains pretty much the thought of what must have been going on. 
There’s straight forward recognition that there have been 
misunderstandings, mistakes, that were serious. But the one side of the 
coin of which we should never lose sight is that of forgiveness. We’re 
encouraged to remember this. No matter what’s been done, whether it’s a 
lack of preparation, skirting the rules, whatever, we can always seek 
forgiveness. That’s as natural as taking in the next breath, and we must 
never lose sight of it.

	You’d think that God might be pretty tired of our behavior. You might 
be excused for thinking that you can limit God’s forgiveness. You might 
think that David might have been history.

	Last Sunday somebody told me, on the way out the door, something to the 
effect that she thought David was toast, based on his behavior.

	But the Good News, the news that’s spoken at every liturgy, that we 
should strain to hear every chance we can, is that God NEVER brushes us 
off. Far from BEING history, David MADE history. To this day, he’s the 
archetypical king for Judaism. With all of his failings, and with his 
understanding of how he’d failed, he was restored with God’s blessing.

	David may not have understood God fully, but there are days when I 
think he was streets ahead of us. Maybe that’s what makes him such a 
role model. More than that, though. God assured him that he was a person 
of interest. In other words, there’s nothing that’s beyond the realm of 
God’s redemption.

	Does this mean that we can just do what we like, then? That God will 
forgive us, and that there’s no problem? Well, the answer to that is, 
“No”. One of the books that the Monday study group worked through 
several months ago in part dealt with how we discern God’s will, how we 
try to find standards for our lives of faith. In a chapter on 
discernment, Diana Butler Bass contrasts those who hold that everything 
is laid out in black and white with those who say that there are no 
standards and we may make things up as we go along. 2

	Between these two extremes, Butler Bass suggests what we should be 
doing is switching from asking “I-questions”, those described by 
theologian Frederick Schmidt as “driven by the need for … a sense of 
entitlement”; switch from that to God-questions, which Schmidt describes 
as “the task or process of distinguishing the spirit or presence of God 
at work in the world … in an effort to determine where the spirit of God 
may be moving.”

	Of course, it’s always great if you walk into a room and are handed a 
finalised list of answers and comments from which one cannot deviate. 
But both prophets and apostles try to bring people’s relationships with 
God into focus by having them look at how God has been seen to have been 
present in the world in the past, and then having each individual, each 
nation, wrestle with the issue of how God’s hope for the world is 
understood.

	This involves questioning, therefore, questioning ourselves as 
individuals to see how what we’re doing matches up with how we 
understand God’s desire for each of us. What gifts have I been given? 
How will I use them? How will I react to this situation? And it involves 
questioning groups and other bodies also. Nothing is beyond questioning, 
holding up behaviour and intent to see how it matches what the prophets 
addressed and how Jesus lived.

	But, we must remind ourselves again and again that, as often as we 
stumble, God’s hope and desire is that we’ll get up as forgiven, renewed 
people. As much as we may be repelled by David’s behaviour towards 
Uriah, getting him killed any way he can, what we’re reminded is that 
God can bring good out of the most desperate situation. David and 
Bathsheba are left together. In fact, Solomon will be born later out of 
that relationship. Butler Bass quotes another theologian in describing 
the work that needs to go on in our personal lives as well as our 
congregational lives. Talking about the process of trying to discover 
what God wishes for us, a “practice that involves self-criticism, 
questions, and risk” Frank Rogers defines discernment’s goal as helping 
“to find better paths towards the future”.

	This implies that the paths we’re on may have been filled with 
mistakes, they may show signs of hastily made decisions that weren’t 
thought through. But it affirms also that we’re not at the end – of 
anything. This morning’s scripture passages make that clear. The crowd 
chased after Jesus and He turned to them and suggested that they were 
only after Him for another free meal. He said that there was a deeper 
need that they had. He never denied people’s physical hunger, that much 
was plain from the Gospel passage last week. But He said that such 
satisfaction is never enough. There has to be a strong desire to find 
spiritual satisfaction that involves questioning God about each human’s 
purpose in life.

	Back up to that story about the badminton players at the Olympics. The 
problem wasn’t that they lost. In any competition someone one is going 
to come out ahead and someone else will be second, or third, or whatever 
– not that ranking really matters in life. The problem is that the 
players didn’t go on to the court and try their very best, all the time. 
Should another team be better prepared, should something happen from a 
judge’s decision, should the weather be of a certain nature – all of 
that can affect the outcome. However, nothing should affect the effort. 
We’re ALL called to expend every last ounce of our energy to try to 
decipher what it is that God has called us to do – this morning, and 
this week, and in the weeks ahead. We’re ALL called to try to see with 
whom we’re to engage in God’s ministry, and we’re to do our very best to 
work with that person, in as honourable a way as we can possibly muster. 
And, if we foul out, worse yet, if we hurt someone else, then we’re 
called to seek God’s forgiveness and the others’.

	There’s a petition in the service of celebrating and blessing a 
marriage that reads, “Give them – give the couple – grace, when they 
hurt each other, to recognize and acknowledge their fault, and to seek 
each other’s forgiveness and yours.”

	All of us fall short. Occasionally only God and the individual know 
this, but the emphasis of the Gospel is that we have God’s word that 
we’ll never be left down on the ground, broken, depressed, worthless. 
That’s something of which we need to be reminded, frequently. There’s a 
second part to it, though. If we find someone else facing difficulty, 
we’re to reach out to assist them up, set them on the path, do whatever 
it takes.

	Jesus didn’t say, “You know, you got it all wrong. That meal was a 
one-time deal. That’s all I’m going to do for you.” He reached in to 
help them, despite their misunderstanding.

	There’s a story I read from New Zealand last week. See what you make of 
it. See what you think it means for us as we try to discern God’s call 
to renewed life. See what it might do for us in our evaluations. It 
comes in the form of a letter to a newspaper editor.

	“I was in pak n save today buying bits and pieces to last me till the 
weekend. I didn’t realise that I hadn’t transferred enough money over to 
my spending account. So of course I was short and had to get one of the 
staff to help me cancel some produce at the self help service lane. I 
was so embarrassed and stressed out. While sorting out what to cancel 
one of the staff came up to me and said, "That man standing behind you 
said put everything through, I turned around and saw a man just looking 
at me. He had given the staff member $10 so I could afford the rest. He 
wouldn’t accept the money back when I said, “No thank you, it’s ok.” 
Then he was gone. I would like to thank this wonderful man, he didn’t 
look as if he had much money himself, but helped me (a stranger) out. 
Wanganui does have some wonderful people in this city. Sadly enough I 
don’t remember what this man looked like to do something nice for him 
one day ... The staff member said he does what he did for me all the 
time ... If this man is on Facebook and has the Chronicle (newspaper) on 
his like list and sees this ... thank you so much for helping me out 
today, you are what makes Wanganui a friendly, caring community ...” 3

	No matter, what, Jesus is always there to help us, to set us right.

NOTES:

1	 
http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=4z5Q7LhI+KVBjmEgFdYACPLKh239P3pg9//Rc3FUTBI9VJZlrQ7XIKNsV1hchRZ9qIoDxog1rhCbRQO7J39NP0xIM+dcM1A3Ci8X5BuSwmv6o5Vfmaoyp+s08ozzcl1X6JW//QT1z/VTHnGYfLzHSP32OgB9a1JG80D3xDZoD9UYQb+z/4Z3VpGmY2liCPrKDkWJqPtuxEHLFw3r5Z+ZCg==&campaign_id=129&instance_id=17624&segment_id=37066&user_id=13776d46e58cd1c84bbfacad680c03b7

2	“Christianity for the Rest of us”: Diana Butler Bass. HarperCollins © 
2006 Pages 93 ff

3	Wanganui Chronicle, New Zealand http://www.wanganuichronicle.co.nz/ 
via Face Book




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