[Propertalk] 3 Lent c

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

This was put together tonight and will face an editor tomorrow!

Happy celebrating this weekend.

Bob


EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY                                       	 
THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT (c)
EXODUS 3:1-15                         					        	         			 
3rd MARCH, 2013
1 CORINTHIANS 10:1-13		                            	 
PSALM 63:1-8
LUKE 13:1-9

	A man walked into a bar and saw another who kept falling off his stool. 
The man kept picking the other up, but he kept falling down. Finally the 
first man looked in the other’s wallet, found his address and took him 
home.

	He carried him to the front door and rang the bell. A lady answered. 
The man explained how he thought he should take the other home.

	The woman said, “That’s fine. But where’s his wheelchair?”

	Sometimes we miss the obvious.

	Moses’ curiosity was really piqued by that blazing bush. He’d probably 
been back and forth across in that part of the world many times. He and 
Jethro’s flock probably took so much for granted, yet both must have had 
to have kept their eyes open for predators. They couldn’t wander 
aimlessly through that sort of territory. Just like driving through 
downtown Albany, you have to think, you have to watch for someone 
stepping off the sidewalk between blocks. You have to be prepared for 
the unexpected, and to be prepared to react accordingly.

	THAT’S a pretty good description of Moses. Somehow, in the midst of the 
routine, of the sameness of the scenery, of the way that one day must 
have been pretty much like the previous one, or the one coming up 
tomorrow; in the midst of the expected, Moses was ready to have his 
attention grabbed and his imagination expanded. Actually, probably he 
longed for the unusual, anything to break the monotony. Moses was a 
traveller. He was someone who’d look for something new, something 
joyfully unexpected in the places he’d been before. He had a past, but 
he was aware that he also had a future. Somehow he sensed that God had 
something for him to do. THAT’S why he spotted the bush.

You know, I’m sure, that Moses didn’t have a perfect record. Arrogance, 
belief that the world owed him a living, a fierce temper, a murder rap 
and a warrant for his arrest – hardly likely to be the sort of guy you’d 
want for your son-in-law. And yet – yet – somehow God’s interest in him 
and his ability to respond to God were never extinguished.

	R. S. Thomas, who died thirteen years ago, was a Welsh poet and 
Anglican priest. He had a unique way of looking at things around him, of 
drawing out comparisons from previous eras as well as his own. He 
brought himself and the experience of Moses into such a comparison in 
one of his poems.

		I have seen the sun break through
		to illuminate a small field
		for a while, and gone my way
		and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
		of great price, the one field that had
		treasure in it. I realize now
		that I must give all that I have
		to possess it. Life is not hurrying

		on to a receding future, nor hankering after
		an imagined past. It is the turning
		aside like Moses to the miracle
		of the lit bush, to a brightness
		that seemed as transitory as your youth
		once, but is the eternity that awaits you. 1

	In the Lenten study programme last Thursday evening we commented on 
sanctifying time and place. We thought about the fact that all of time, 
all of place, belongs to God, is given us by God, therefore sanctifying 
time and place – making it holy – occurs when we notice the holy that’s 
already there.

	All around us, God is present, in the moments apparently dry, or 
boring, or repetitive as much as those bursting with vitality, and 
colour, and music. All the time, God flirts with us, trying to catch our 
attention. God jiggles a foot, drops a handkerchief, as it were, hoping 
that we’ll notice, that we’ll pick it up, that we’ll run up to offer it 
back to begin, or deepen, our relationship.

	The great news about this is at least two-fold. First, this isn’t just 
something from the past, something over which we can sigh longingly over 
a drink as we talk about the good old days – the good, really-old days.

	And second, God doesn’t try to catch out at a limited number of 
special, carefully groomed places.

	God is at this all the time, because our lives NEED this all the time. 
No matter how comfortable we feel, no matter how happily things seem to 
be playing out, there’s even more joy to be found, something which God 
wishes us to experience, something – perhaps someone – with whom God 
wishes us to engage.

	There’s no way of knowing how many events, how many people, Moses may 
not have seen till that point in time. It’s possible to speculate that 
he wasn’t really ready to see and to respond until that one day. No 
matter, Moses DID see, DID stop, DID listen, and DID respond.   One of 
the problems

	Of course, it probably wasn’t easy for Moses. I know that it’s not been 
easy for me. I suspect it hasn’t been easy for you. Sometimes we doubt 
whether God could possibly be interested in us, or expect anything much 
from us. I mean, when was the last time you felt you’d been told to free 
a contentious group of people and have them all hike a couple of hundred 
miles?

	Moses didn’t know anything about that when he stopped by that bush, 
however. R.S. Thomas admitted to not knowing – and not stopping – to 
look at a meadow filled with wild flowers and sunbeams, and quite likely 
missing out on some moment of connecting with God, of missing out on an 
assignment, of receiving a word of praise or consolation. After all, 
R.S. Thomas wasn’t a conventional figure, even for a priest. 
Politically, theologically, socially he was always challenging people, 
especially if it might lead to an ability to understand God’s love and 
God’s call.

Maybe you know who’s sitting in the pew in front and behind you – 
unless, of course, you’re to be commended for still experimenting with 
your seating arrangements in this worship space – but what about the 
person in the car alongside you at the stop light; or at the next booth 
or table in the restaurant; or in the row behind you in a theatre? What 
is God is calling that person – just like a wilderness bush, or a Welsh 
hillside – what is God calling that person to say to you? What is God 
calling you to hear from that person? And what’s going to result from 
it?
	
	Of course, not everything looks easy. There are times and places in or 
lives that look unbelievably uninteresting and infertile. There are, as 
Jesus described in the Gospel, situations which look like, or actually 
are, disasters. Things happen which seem to be so destructive, so 
impossibly bleak and heartbreaking, nothing like the intriguing, 
exciting contact with inextinguishable shrubbery and the person in the 
next row. And, yes, any “answer to these questions will do, just so long 
as there is an answer, and the more an answer allows me to believe that 
the same thing won't happen to me the better.”
	
	But Jesus corrects His listeners, corrects us. Remember what my 
paediatrician friend commented about September, 2011? She said we can 
choose whether to ask, “Where is God in all of this?” Or “Where is God? 
In all of this.” God IS present, all the time!

	Back to that opening thought about our not seeing or acknowledging the 
obvious, though. One of the aspects of any Lenten discipline is the 
recognition that we’re ALL God’s children; we’re ALL important to God; 
and we ALL have, within us, the ability to respond to God’s 
communications. We simply have to be aware that at any moment, on any 
day, in any place, God may use some event, use some person, to talk to 
us about love, about justice, and compassion, about anything under the 
sun.

	Joseph Campbell, the late mythologist, writer and lecturer succinctly 
advises us for Lent, and our lives beyond. He talked “about being awake 
and not missing out sleepwalking through life.” Within you, within me, 
always exists the capacity to respond to God. We should never doubt the 
ability of God to reach us, and to invite us to participate in bringing 
freedom, love, hope to everyone.

	Albert Camus put it this way:

		In
            the midst of winter,
            I found there was,
            me, an
            invincible summer. And
            that makes me happy. For
            it says that no matter how
            hard the world pushes against,
            within me, there’s
            something stronger – something
            better, pushing right
            back. 2

      Eternity awaits you, awaits me, awaits us all!

NOTES:

1 	“The Bright Field” from “Everyman’s Poetry”. JM Dent, Orion 
Publishing Group, London. © 1996. 
http://www.amazon.com/R-S-Thomas-Lafcadio-Hearn-Collection/dp/0460878115 
See also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LW2SFE7S2A to hear R. S. Thomas 
read the poem himself.


2		Albert Camus: Variant translation – as translated in Lyrical and 
Critical Essays (1968), p. 169; also in The Unquiet Vision : Mirrors of 
Man in Existentialism (1969) by Nathan A. Scott, p. 116 
http://quote.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus


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