[Propertalk] Proper 9 b

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

Here's what's still being reviewed for this Sunday!

God's peace,

Bob



THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY 
THE SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
2 SAMUEL 5:1-5, 9-10                           	    	                	 
PROPER 9 B RCL
2 CORINTHIANS 12:2-10		                                                	               	 
8th JULY, 2012
MARK 6:1-13         					                        PSALM 48

	“Chippie the parakeet never saw it coming. One second he was peacefully 
perched in his cage. The next he was sucked in, washed up, and blown 
over.

	“The problems began when Chippie’s owner decided to clean Chippie’s 
cage with a vacuum cleaner. She removed the attachment from the end of 
the hose and stuck it in the cage. The phone rang, and she turned to 
pick it up. She'd barely said ‘hello’ when ‘ssssopp!’ Chippie got sucked 
in.

	“The bird’s owner gasped, put down the phone, turned off the vacuum 
cleaner, and opened the bag. There was Chippie - still alive, but 
stunned.

	“Since the bird was covered with dust, hair and all the stuff you find 
in a dust bag, she grabbed him and raced to the bathroom, turned on the 
tap, and held Chippie under the running water. Then, realizing that 
Chippie was soaked and shivering, she did what any compassionate bird 
owner would do . . . she reached for the hair dryer and blasted the pet 
with hot air.

	“Poor Chippie never knew what hit him.

	“A few days after the trauma, a friend who had heard about Chippie’s 
troubles contacted his owner to see how the bird was recovering. ‘Well,’ 
she replied, ‘Chippie doesn't sing much anymore - he just sits and 
stares.’ 1

	This morning’s Gospel passage gives us two separate stories which 
probably didn’t occur back to back, but make some sense together in 
terms of what sort of life the followers of Jesus might expect.

	We heard a few weeks back how Jesus’ family was so worked up about how 
He was embarrassing them. This week we read about the whole village. 
Everyone knew Him. That was the problem right there. They thought they 
could read His mind, know ahead of time exactly what He’d say and do. 
The problem was that they wanted Him to behave just as He had before – 
when He was growing up. Or maybe do what the villagers had heard that 
He’d done across in the next county.

	What they were doing was dulling their own imaginations. They’d lost 
the ability to be surprised and enchanted. They’d forgotten that 
everything in life changes – even one’s best friend from Sabbath School. 
They thought Jesus would fit their own expectations, maybe perform a few 
fancy tricks to amuse folk and possibly gain them some advantage. But 
when they discovered that that wasn’t how Jesus operated, they became 
like Chippie. They just sat and stared, unbelieving, uncertain of what 
might happen next, afraid to close their eyes in case something 
terrible, something really challenging might come along. And they 
grumbled. Did they ever grumble!

	There’s nothing wrong with offering advice, with critiquing something, 
even with being critical – as long as it’s done with the intention of 
bringing something positive to pass, and if it’s done with respect, with 
an open heart and mind.

	We all know about those who like to hear the sound of their own voices. 
We’ve been at meetings or gatherings of one sort or another where 
someone won’t accept that something positive might happen, because it’s 
not in line with what that person thinks. WE do it ourselves. That 
person is from such and such an area; that other person went to that 
“other school” forty miles down I-5; that person is married – or not 
married. We could go on and on, bringing up all sorts of prejudices. 
Anne Lamott, the author, wrote, “You can safely assume that you’ve 
created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the 
same people you do.” She’s quoted as saying her priest friend told her 
that, so she must be right! 2

	Was that the problem with the folk at home? They were so fixed on who 
Jesus had been, on how He talked, on His family life, that they couldn’t 
imagine Him growing into someone else. They’d heard of what had been 
going on in other communities, but they simply couldn’t reconcile that 
with the fact that He was a local boy. There were plenty of things which 
Jesus might have been able to help rectify. I’m sure there was no 
shortage of sick people, of confused people, of economically or 
emotionally depressed people. Yet most of the village-folk were of such 
a negative frame of mind that nothing could be accomplished – so 
everyone suffered.

	This reminds us, once again, that God never forces anything on us. We 
have freedom to choose how to be involved, how to use the gifts with 
which we’ve been blessed. We get to self-destruct, if that’s what we 
want to do. Of course, God keeps sending messages, bits of advice, 
questions that cross our minds. But we can behave in as boneheaded, as 
selfish, as unrelational a way as we wish. We don’t HAVE to listen.

	Imagine being asked if we wanted our arthritis cleared up; or our lung 
capacity improved; or our heartache and loneliness healed. Imagine being 
questioned about whether or not we’d like to find someone to whom you 
and I could open up and talk about all that gives us anxiety and 
trouble.

	Imagine two folk walking through your neighbourhood, smiling, talking 
to you in your front yard or even coming up to your front door.

	Wait – are you thinking LDS Missionaries? Jehovah’s Witnesses? What if 
they were disciples of Jesus? Is that what Jesus was getting at when He 
sent His friends off, after He’d been rebuffed, and told to be nice to 
folk, to try to console them, to offer them a word or action of comfort 
from God? And what did He mean by shaking the dust off their feet if no 
one listened, if people were rude, and slammed doors, or ridiculed them?

	Are we so locked in to our ways that we can’t let someone even make a 
suggestion? Are we so cynical that we can’t pick-up an idea, an image of 
Jesus from talking to someone in the next seat at a concert, or at a 
movie? Jesus said that it’s through interaction, it’s through sharing, 
that we find God’s reign being revealed. When He sent His friends out to 
make house calls, He didn’t say that they had to brow-beat the locals; 
He didn’t imply that the locals had to give up their way of thinking 
either. He simply invited folk to share, to try to imagine what God 
might possibly see in me, and you, and everyone else, and to trust that 
we may have to put some of our thoughts or plans on the back burner for 
a while in order to try to bring peace, or healing, or security to those 
who may be living right next door to us.

	“Speaking to the (Stanford) Class of 2012, Sister Joan Chittister drew 
inspiration from the Buddhist monk Tetsugen, who spent years begging for 
money to translate the Buddhist scriptures into Japanese, but gave the 
money away twice – first to build houses for the homeless after a flood, 
then to feed the starving after a famine.

	“‘When the scriptures were finally printed in Japanese, they were 
enshrined for all to see,’ she said, speaking Saturday morning in the 
Main Quad at the Baccalaureate ceremony, a festive celebration of 
thanksgiving and inspiration for the future.

	“But they will tell you to this day in Japan, she said, that when 
parents take their children to view the books, they tell them that the 
first two ‘editions’ – the new houses and the thriving people – were 
even more beautiful than the printed works.

	“Chittister said there was a lesson for Stanford’s graduating students 
in the story.

	“‘No personal passion, no private agenda, not even any religious ritual 
must ever be allowed to come between you and the people you serve,’ said 
Chittister, who is a member of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie, 
Pennsylvania.” 3

	There will always be storms which threaten to derail us. This past week 
I happened to come across a forecast map which suggests that, except for 
the Pacific Northwest, most of the rest of the country can expect 
moderate to severe drought conditions for the balance of the summer, 
into the Fall. What to do about this seems so unclear, but one way or 
another, we’ll have to respond.

	Sister Joan Chittister said, in that commencement address at Stanford, 
pretty much what Jesus might have said to the friends He sent out to the 
neighbourhood. “You are all graduating from this great university this 
weekend because someone has seen leadership potential in you at a time 
of grinding poverty and gross inequality. At a time when we have never 
needed leadership more, someone saw in you the possibility to be a 
powerful presence in the public arenas of our own time. The question is, 
then, what will you inspire in this world now?”

	God has seen, God KNOWS the potential that’s in each one of us, and we 
have done God the honour of making a commitment, of being baptised, 
maybe a fair number of us have been confirmed. We’ve said that we’d try 
to find ways to make sure that no one goes to bed crying tonight, 
because of hunger, or pain, or loneliness. We’ve committed to make sure 
that no one takes advantage of anyone else. Above all, we’ve committed 
to make sure that people can express their views, and work to bring 
renewal of life to those whom we meet.

	We’ve to learn from those in the stories told by the Gospel writer. 
Again, to quote Sister Joan, she talked about Stanford’s motto “The wind 
of freedom blows”, which should reflect exactly what we’re about as 
Christians. The church is called to address a world which is struggling. 
The church, made up of those whom Jesus sends out, the church is called 
to make sure that nothing should ever create “Chippies” – people who 
have stopped singing, people who just sit and stare.

	Yes, every last one of us may well have to face up to the equivalent of 
errant vacuum cleaners, and high-pressure water, and scalding blow 
dryers. Jesus didn’t tell anyone they’d escape from difficulties. But 
Jesus DID try to convince His friends that God would enable us to 
overcome anything, therefore we can, we MUST keep singing.

	Thinking back to that story about the Buddhist monk in Japan, I’m also 
brought to think about a saying that’s been floating on the internet for 
a week or so, and which may have originated in North Carolina, much to 
the consternation of some local pastors. The saying is very simple. 
“Don’t go to church. Be the church.” 4

	Combine these two thoughts together, then, and you might have a pretty 
good motto for us. “Don’t just sit and stare. SING! Don’t go to church. 
BE the church!”

	
NOTES:

1 	“Humor: Sucked In, Washed Up, Blown Over” Vince Gerhardy, Calm in a 
Storm via Joe Parrish

2	“Traveling Mercies” by Anne Lamott. on page 22 of Bird by Bird she 
attributes this quote to “my priest friend Tom”. 
http://writingshed.wordpress.com/2010/04/17/when-god-hates-the-same-people-you-do/

3	Stanford Report, June 16, 2012 Baccalaureate speaker tells Stanford's 
Class of 2012, 'Rebel, rebel, rebel - for all our sakes, rebel!'
	“Answers are easy to come by – just Google them, Sister Joan Chittister 
told the Class of 2012 at the Baccalaureate ceremony. "No, what the 
world really needs from you now is the courage to ask the right 
questions without apology, without fear and without close-mindedness." 
by KATHLEEN J. SULLIVAN 
HTTP://NEWS.STANFORD.EDU/NEWS/2012/JUNE/BACCALAUREATE-ADDRESS-CHITTISTER-061612.HTML 
Prepared text at 
HTTP://NEWS.STANFORD.EDU/NEWS/2012/JUNE/BACCALAUREATE-TEXT-CHITTISTER-061612.HTML

4	See  http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/10918034/





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