[Propertalk] Proper 22 b
robertpmorrison at charter.net
robertpmorrison at charter.net
Fri Oct 5 20:10:57 EDT 2012
Raw form, just finished draft, later than usual in the week, and there
may be excision to be done, but it isn't Saturday yet!
I wish you a fun celebratory weekend!
Bob
THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY THE
NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
JOB 1:1; 2:1-10 PROPER 22 B
HEBREWS 1:1-4; 2:5-12 7th OCTOBER, 2012
MARK 10:2-16 PSALM 26
By now you’re probably read about the fragment of a manuscript which
uses the words, “My wife”, and put them on the lips of Jesus. The
Harvard Divinity School scholar who first told of this was quick to say
that nothing could be proven, one way or the other, from these words. 1
But she was too late. In a nanosecond, people all over the map were
jumping in to make their judgement. The inevitable happened. Some very
bright priest came up with the “Top Ten Reasons not to be Jesus’ Wife.”
They all appeal to my sense of humour. I kind of like, “Your
mother-in-law is perfect. ‘Do you have any idea how much pressure that
puts on me at Thanksgiving?” 2
I find that amusing, but then what does it say about Jesus’ comment
about trying to be perfect as God is perfect? Maybe we should all
consider working towards perfection. It’s a tall order, and, this side
of a change in our status, not fully attainable. But a little thing like
that shouldn’t stop us.
I’m surprised afresh every night when I read “Night Prayer”. Two
portions at the opening hit me. The first is
“It is but lost labour that we haste to rise up early,
And so late take rest, and eat the bread of anxiety.
For those beloved of God are given gifts even while they sleep.” 3
Terrific advice, especially for anyone who actually keeps a calendar and
tries to satisfy every person and every whim. Burning the midnight oil,
as well as setting the alarm for that early morning rush-job, still
occurs, no matter what age we are. But if we’re depriving ourselves of
any needed down-time for our bodies and minds, if we don’t allow our
minds and bodies to process what we’ve stored in them during the
previous twenty-four hours, if we don’t honour the needs of our bodies
and our minds – and our spirits, we mustn’t forget them – if we don’t
honour all that we are, then we run the risk of diminishing the
opportunities God hopes we’ll take on.
We are, ALL of us, ALL that we are, we are all resources of God in the
expansion of God’s realm, therefore we’re under obligation to make the
fullest and best use possible of who and what we are. To belittle our
gifts, to squander them, including ourselves, is to settle for second
best in God’s reign, to drop it from perfection.
Whatever happens in our lives, then, we have to keep our attention
focussed firmly on the duties we assumed at Baptism and Confirmation.
Without benefit of a good Episcopalian Catechism class, Job seems to
have come as close as anyone to perfection. He knew his place in the
world – that’s NOT a criticism; it’s praise. He knew that he was created
by God, in whom he trusted implicitly. He knew that through wonderful
blessing he had a wife and family who loved encouraged and supported
him. He knew that, as a farmer and animal husbandman, he had a
responsibility to tend his crops and ensure the health of his livestock.
It wouldn’t have paid if Job had stayed up late – although I’m sure he
did, watching over a cow having a difficult time calving. It wouldn’t
have helped if Job got up early in the morning – but I’m sure he did
that too, making sure that a swarm of locusts didn’t settle on his grain
crop.
Whatever it took, Job did his level best, with the help of his family,
and kept faith with God. He’s precisely the sort of a neighbour any one
of us would like to have. He’d have his opinions, but his lawn signs
would be tasteful and wouldn’t make fun of anyone. But the
characteristic most noteworthy about Job is that he trusted in God, even
when – and this comes later in the story, not this morning – even when
he doesn’t understand, he keeps talking to God. He knew there were many
things which he could influence, many things which he could change about
his life and the lives of those whom he loved. It’s just as someone told
me this past week, “Life has no remote. Get up and change it yourself.”
But there ARE some things – often it seems that there are LOTS of
things – there ARE things which are out of our control, and, once we put
in our full day, our full energy, we simply have to place things in
God’s hands.
So often we, literally, worry ourselves sick over what we perceive as
incredible burdens. We can’t seem to be able to get our lives in order.
We see or hear things that impact our self-esteem; something happens to
affect our physical and our mental health. We may feel that we’ll never
be able to do enough to get ourselves out of the difficulty and the
danger in which we find ourselves. If we spend both waking and sleeping
hours wrestling with this, though, we’ll worry ourselves into an early
grave.
There’s no one going to stop us doing that, of course. There are
actually some segments of society, some
cultures, which demand his sort of approach. There always has to be
someone to blame, either one’s self or someone else.
There IS a sense of neatness to this, of course. If we can tie
everything up with ribbon and a bow, like doing a crossword puzzle in
ink, and assign praise or blame with what we think is as close to
absolute clarity as we can, then we feel a burden lifted off our
shoulders. If something IS our fault, then we can take our lumps and
move on. Alternatively, if it’s obviously someone else’s fault, then we
can place the blame there and continue with our work.
Having to wrestle with blame, having to try to decide who did what to
whom, and why – that CAN and DOES keep us up nights and really eat away
at us. There are so many times that it’s simply not possible to assign
clear-cut blame – or credit. We have to decide to accept the tension,
the uncertainty, the irregularity of life and simply get on with those
things which are within our power to accomplish – all with God’s help.
Did Job have a “boil fetish”? Was he really into sores all over his
skin? I doubt it. Even someone craving attention and sympathy would
hardly allow things to go to that extent. Yet he didn’t give up. He did
what was possible, practically, and he refused to succumb to the
temptation to blame God for everything which happened, not even the
things which caused him greatest trouble and heartache.
The interesting thing is that God let Job wrestle with everything that
was going on. What we see in this morning’s first reading, at any rate,
is not only that Job trusted God but that God trusted Job – this despite
all that was going on in their lives. Job found that despite all the
physical pain and the mental confusion, he was able to place his life in
God’s hands and get on with living.
A fascinating article written two and a half years ago surfaced again
last week.
“By the time the theologian and sociologist Nancy Eiesland was 13 years
old, she had had 11 operations for the congenital bone defect in her
hips and realized pain was her lot in life. So why did she say she hoped
that when she went to heaven she would still be disabled? …
“Nancy Eiesland specialized in the theology of disability.
“ reason, which seems clear enough to many disabled people, was that
her identity and character were formed by the mental, physical and
societal challenges of her disability. She felt that without her
disability, she would ‘be absolutely unknown to myself and perhaps to
God.’” 4
I take issue with whether or not God would recognize her without her
disability. Even if a soul can be disabled – and that’s another issue
entirely – God can and does know us whoever we may be. But the article
continued,
“By the time of her death at 44 on March 10,(2009), Ms. Eiesland had
come to believe that God was in fact disabled, a view she articulated in
her influential 1994 book, ‘The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory
Theology of Disability.’ She pointed to the scene described in Luke
24:36-39 in which the risen Jesus invites his disciples to touch his
wounds.
“‘In presenting his impaired body to his startled friends, the
resurrected Jesus is revealed as the disabled God,’ she wrote. God
remains a God the disabled can identify with, she argued — he is not
cured and made whole; his injury is part of him, neither a divine
punishment nor an opportunity for healing.”
Of course, the resurrected Jesus is just a twinkle in the eye at the
time of Job. But the point can apply to him as
much as to us. No matter what we face, no matter how stressed we are, no
matter what difficulties we face, we know that we’re accepted by God.
The Gospel verses raise a painful issue – that of divorce and of the
seeming finality of Jesus’ patience with those who divorced and
remarried. But at least in the mind of the Gospel compiler, if not of
Jesus Himself, that story about divorce, about one of the most painful
examples of separation, of the breakdown of human relationships, and the
stress, the sense of loneliness, the feeling of a lack of worth, that
story is connected directly to that about the reception of children and
how no one should ever be shut off from the Presence of God, for
whatever reason.
No matter what situations we face in our lives, nothing should ever
prevent us wrestling with God and with the meaning of our lives. The
writers of each of the three scripture readings, and of the psalm, point
to our relationship with God and how not even the most life-crushing
event should or could separate us from that love.
In the midst of our struggles, then, we’re reminded of the hope which
God brings to us time and again, hope which will take the edge off our
pain and confusion, and help us to celebrate what gifts we have from
God.
And this brings me to the second portion of prayer at the opening of
Night Prayer, a prayer which I find so helpful when I may feel tempted
to throw up my hands in despair at the end of the day in light of what I
may have failed to accomplish, or of the things which I may have done
which may have brought hurt or anger to others.
“Dear God,
Thank you for all that is good,
for our creation and our humanity,
for the stewardship you have given us of this planet earth,
for the gifts of life and of one another,
for the love which is unbounded and eternal.”
It is this love of God – and the love of those around me here – which
enables me to close my eyes each night, no matter how bad the day has
been, and to trust myself into God’s watchful blessing through the
night. It is this love which enables and encourages me to get up in the
morning – no matter what I know awaits me.
Thanks be to God!
NOTES:
1 “Coptic Scholars Doubt and Hail a Reference to Jesus’ Wife” By LAURIE
GOODSTEIN Published: September 20, 2012
http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=4z5Q7LhI+KVBjmEgFdYACPLKh239P3pg8xyEutREzrFwYfQ0EbC9/rFCyP2NCReAdlqzMFiFSctXebx4lWSZigSEC3PyJBYO2CA9FUXIZ7eewvijGAZRrhApI03ZvXV7Yx/IomRxCxYGTAMd1/anmEj/K/izfvEzo4h7sujGYvQNWBH13eCPfM0r4fC1co0Y&campaign_id=129&instance_id=21454&segment_id=39365&user_id=13776d46e58cd1c84bbfacad680c03b7
2 “Top 10 Reasons Not to be Jesus’ Wife”
http://frtim.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/top-10-reasons-not-to-be-jesus-wife/
by Fr. Tim
3 “Night Prayer” from “A New Zealand Prayer Book”, page 167 ff.
4 “Nancy Eiesland Is Dead at 44; Wrote of a Disabled God” By DOUGLAS
MARTIN Published: March 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/us/22eiesland.html Ms. Eiesland
(pronounced EES-lund) was an associate professor at the Candler School
of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta.
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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