[Propertalk] 2 lent b

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

Here's the first draft of this Sunday's sermon.

Best wishes,

Bob


THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY  	                        THE 
SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT – B
GENESIS 17:1-7, 15-15	                          		    	                	 
4th MARCH, 2012
ROMANS 4:13-25	                                                	 
PSALM 22:22-30
MARK 8:31-38

	“Japanese Prison Camp, 5th April, 1944.

	“On April 5th, George was four-years-old. It was his second birthday in 
prison camp. At midday, Leila and I got out the box of Red Cross food. 
We opened everything and divided each item into thirty-four sections. It 
required mathematical precision. But we did it. Every child then brought 
a bowl or plate to us and watched with shining eyes.

	“We filled each plate with little mounds of salmon, sardines, butter, 
spam, ham, jelly, meat, prunes, chocolate, cheese and we made a milk 
pudding with milk and rice which we added. Then we called for cups and 
distributed coffee with sugar. And all the mothers were rewarded for 
being mothers with cigarettes.

	“Each child took his plate, said, ‘Thank you,’ politely, said, ‘Happy 
Birthday,’ to George, and scurried home.

	“Each face was pale with excitement. This was not fun, or pleasure. 
This was tense, terrible, earnest participation in paradise.

	“I had wondered beforehand if I was wrong in not saving the foodstuff 
for George, to feed him over a period of time, but when I saw those 
faces, I knew I was right.

	“George’s melting gratification in having something to give, his pride 
in being a benefactor, made him swell all day long before my eyes, until 
by night time he was twice normal. How I loved him then.” 1

	That came from a BBC Radio programme about abundance – our abundance – 
all around us – whether we see it, or acknowledge it, or not..

	How do you face up to difficulty, to disappointment, to challenge, to 
open hostility?

	It’s pretty easy to live when everything is going well. There CAN be a 
few bumps, of course. That’s why one of the prayers for mission in 
Evening Prayer includes that marvelous clause: “Shield the joyous”. 
Sometimes you and I can be so happy, so filled with excitement about 
something that we can do something remarkably careless. We get so caught 
up in what’s going on that, for a brief moment, we seem to forget to put 
one foot in front of the other, or other similar basic, common sense 
actions. But even with the risk of falling on our faces, I don’t know 
anyone who’d take hard times over good times.

	Life doesn’t work that way, however. There ARE hard times, and the 
choice of what we get isn’t ours to make. The trick in life is to be 
ready, as best we can, so that we can respond to the best of our 
ability. The trick is to try to be so used to doing what we’ve found to 
be right, and productive, and nourishing that these things become as 
close to second nature as possible. Then, when we DO have to react, 
chances are that we’ll do the reasonable, the loving thing.

	Think about Abram and Sarai, and Peter – AND Jesus, for that matter.

	There was big pressure on them to respond in one way or another to the 
situations in front of them. Take off from settled surroundings, get all 
the sheep and relatives rounded up, persuade the children that it would 
actually be fun to hike many hundreds of miles; flirt with danger in the 
midst of the soldiers and authorities in Jerusalem, where, at the 
Festival, everyone’s sword-and-spear-finger would be twitching. Should 
they choose to play it safe, to take a week or two to Google the road 
conditions and check their Facebook friends to see what lay ahead for 
them? Or should they decide to go, once again, with their faith that God 
would get them through, no matter what lay ahead?

	We know the outcome. What we don’t know – and it might encourage us, if 
we think about it for a bit – is how long it took those folk to come to 
their decisions. As far as the episode with Peter is concerned, Jesus 
probably did answer him pretty quickly. But the others – they could have 
struggled with their choices for a while.

	It doesn’t really matter how long these people took. The important 
matter is what choice they made in the end, and how they responded. Even 
Simon Peter’s seeming mental and spiritual lapse wasn’t the end. He 
probably shrugged and replied to Jesus, “My bad!”

	I HATE that expression. Besides being horrendous grammar, it seems 
almost prideful and so sloppy. So maybe it fits Simon Peter pretty well!

	Yet that WASN’T the end for Peter. In fact, this is the person whom 
Jesus will make, in a few weeks, Junior Warden for the universal church, 
the person entrusted with the keys, and the job of opening up the Body 
of Christ to let people in.

	And that’s what the Scripture choices are about – opening things up not 
just for these immediate people, but for everyone who may come along 
afterwards. WE’RE here, because of Sarah and Abraham. As “iffy” as it 
may seem, we’re here because of Peter. Somehow, you and I have been 
brought here and have found it somewhat comfortable to stay here for a 
while, because of the choices of others who travelled on the road of 
faith thousands of years ago.

	Actually, we’re here because of many more people than these. I’m here 
because I was taken regularly first to one congregation in Scotland, 
then to another. I’m here because of marvellous people like Mrs. Brown. 
I assume I am, anyway. I can’t picture her or remember her. But I have 
in my possession a small New Testament given me sixty-five years ago, in 
which she wrote in beautiful copper-plate script, with a real pen, a 
note of encouragement and love, telling me that I was in her Sunday 
School class till I was about three and a half.

	Who knows – maybe it WAS Mrs. Brown who made the difference, who’s 
enabled me to stand here eight thousand miles away from where she stood. 
She may have thought that what she did, what she said, how she smiled, 
and so on – she may have thought that what she did was simply her duty. 
Who knows – only she and God have much of an idea about that, and 
they’re both probably having a good giggle about me right now.

	The point is, she herself probably participated in congregational life 
seven days a week, in and out of the church buildings, and made all 
sorts of choices; she probably fought with hard decisions; she may have 
been frustrated – I’ll BET I frustrated her, more than once. But 
something, obviously, kept her going. Someone informed her decisions. 
Somehow, whatever mis-steps she may have taken, she was able to make 
whatever mid-course corrections were necessary, and God blessed her and 
her work.

	I wonder if you can think who are the Mrs. Browns in your lives. You 
can be sure they were there. And perhaps the point isn’t so much that 
you can think of them by name, or even remember what they said or did. 
The point may be simply that such people thought about their choices, 
and took actions, and lived out their lives as well as they could, no 
matter what the circumstances.

	However, things don’t stop there. You and I all need to be 
congratulated for learning from those who’ve been there for us, and for 
carrying on their traditions. But you and I have to be there for all 
sorts of other people. We’ve probably done it for quite a few people 
already. But that shouldn’t tempt us to rest on our laurels. There are 
all sorts of people within a Bible’s-throw of our homes and work places 
for whom our witness of how we make choices, and how we deal with 
struggles, and how we deal with our own mistakes and those of others; 
there are all sorts of people who will take hope from the way we live 
and will find courage to live through their own dangers and darknesses, 
no matter how desperate they appear.

	People struggle every day – and sometimes they’re oppressed by how we 
act and talk, and sometimes they’re elevated by what how we act and 
talk. The choice is ours.

	I came across a devastating article the other day about life in 
Britain. It was about the employment situation. “‘If you are not 
working, in training or in college, you might as well be a thief - 
employers just do not take you seriously.’ That was Nicki Edwards, 19, 
of London, who has been looking for work for two years. … 2

	“She is 19 years old, well-spoken and self-possessed. But like many 
young people in Britain, she could not afford to remain at her 
university, making it impossible to find a job. London’s youth riots 
last summer have closed even more doors to people like her….

	“‘In England, for example, many employers prefer to poach skilled 
labor,’ Mr. Martin (of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and 
Development based in Paris) said.

	“None of which comes as news to Stefan Radanovic, 19, who says he has 
applied for hundreds of jobs in customer service or sales.

	“He is looking for a job in the music industry but is willing to do 
anything to help support himself and his single
mother, with whom he lives in the Ealing district of West London.

	“Mr. Radanovic presents a confident and polite appearance — all he 
wants, he says, is a chance — although he understands why he has not yet 
received one.

	“‘I don’t blame them,’ he said of the countless employers who have 
ignored his résumé. ‘They just don’t want to train you.’”

	What if someone had thought Abram and Sarai untrainable? What if – 
probably more likely – what if someone had thought Peter untrainable?

	Who DOES make the choices about how we live, and what we do? It matters 
not a whit how rich or poor, how young or old, how strong or weak we may 
think we are. As the director of a Jewish Museum in Jerusalem put it, 
“The Holocaust shows not only how low humanity can go, but also how high 
it can go. Someone in a camp who shares his last bread with a friend 
sheds new light on the word friendship.” 3

	We make our choices based on how we’ve listened to and spent time with 
those who’ve gone before us, and how we’ve tried to model their example 
of faith.

	I wonder how many of those thirty-four children in that prison camp in 
Borneo remember the care with which all that food was divided up and 
shared. I wonder how many of them even remember George, whose fourth 
birthday was celebrated that fifth of April. But what was done – a sort 
of loaves-and-fishes episode, if you will, just like the one to which 
Dr. Terndrup referred last Sunday – what was done in Borneo must have 
had some impact. George, his mother and his father lived through the 
horror, possibly because of the faith that enabled them to make that 
decision and act out of abundance. But even if people DID forget about 
that party, their inner beings must have been so absolutely delighted 
for that day that they were able to face the incredible suffering of 
that camp

	Remember what Agnes Newton Keith said about her son, George, and his 
unselfish sharing? His choice? Pray that we’ll hear Jesus saying it 
about us!

	Oh – “How I loved him then!"

NOTES:

1	“A Birthday: Japanese Prison Camp, Kuching, Borneo, 5th April, 1944” 
by Agnes Newton Keith in “Three came home”. Published October 30th 2002 
by Eland Publishing Ltd (first published 1946) Read on BBC Radio 3 
“Words and Music, 19th February, 2012 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01bzqq0 See 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnes_Newton_Keith

2	“For London Youth, Down and Out Is Way of Life” By LANDON THOMAS Jr. 
Published: February 15, 2012 
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/business/global/for-london-youth-down-and-out-is-way-of-life.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

3	“From Overseas Visitors, a Growing Demand to Study the Holocaust” By 
ETHAN BRONNER
Published: February 14, 2012 
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/world/middleeast/lessons-from-the-holocaust-are-widespread-and-varied.html?pagewanted=all

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