[Propertalk] 7 Easter a

Sat May 31 02:00:05 EDT 2014

A late night draft, tomorrow the re-reading begins.

Happy Ascensiontide!

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY                   	  THE 
SEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER (A)
ACTS 1:6-14							               1st JUNE, 2014
1 PETER 4:12-14; 5:6-11						PSALM 68:1-10, 33-36
JOHN 17:1-11

	In a news article from Britain, I read that “Local man Ken Young was 
devastated last night after the bottom suddenly fell out of his 
work-from-home industry.

	“Young was earning around £700,000 a year, working from home with just 
his laptop, in some kind of unskilled position that needed no training. 
In an apparent act of philanthropy, or a misguided attempt at recruiting 
business partners, Young went online to tell millions of complete 
strangers his secret. Shortly after posting on multiple web sites ‘The 
Home Working Secrets They Don’t Want You To Know’, Young suddenly found 
his fortunes took a nose dive. With barriers to entry low, suddenly 
millions of competitors flooded into the same market that Young had 
previously had all to himself.

	“It was a mistake anyone could make, says business analyst Gina Sharpe, 
… ‘Which of us, on discovering a lucrative niche that nobody else is on, 
but which requires no great skill, could resist the temptation to share 
the news with all our competitors?’ says Sharpe. But Sharpe (went on,) 
‘If you give your secrets away, they ain’t valuable any more,’  …

	“Experts are now questioning what made Ken Young make this terrible 
strategic mistake. ‘I was onto such a good thing. I found a (business) 
that would pay me hundreds of thousands of pounds for a repetitive task 
that needed no great skill or effort. I suppose it went to my head and I 
thought I was untouchable,’ says Young.

	“He soon discovered how transient success can be. But he remains 
philosophical. He has a book coming out and Hugh Grant is set to play 
him in a heart-warming British comedy … ” 1

	It’s amazing what a selfless, generous, philanthropic individual can 
do. Whether or not he thought about the consequences of his action, that 
British man essentially put himself out of business and allowed millions 
of others to benefit, to find security, to get some publicity, to 
flourish using his techniques and business methods. Anyone on Wall 
Street or in the corporate world would have kept the business processes 
a closed secret and fought tooth-and-nail to ensure that he or she would 
be the only person to benefit from personal knowledge and power.

  	In other words, the thought of sharing would hardly ever, if ever, 
come into that person’s head, especially if it meant the risk of 
diminishing that person’s influence, or sense of importance, or 
certainly not his or her net worth. Even if the product or the process 
were carefully patented and registered, I’m sure most of us might be 
pretty reluctant to share it with any but a few of the most closely 
trusted friends. And even then, we might not wish to take a chance on 
losing whatever income, whatever prestige, whatever fanfaric accolades 
we might crave.

	It seems that that’s how human beings – or a great many of them, anyway 
– are wired … to look out for ourselves, even when it might mean 
depriving another from something which might conceivably help them.

	It’s not that we’re depraved – again, most of us, at any rate; it’s not 
that we’re mean. It’s simply that when things are unsettled in terms of 
the economy or societal structure and recognition, we don’t want to take 
a chance on our putting ourselves at risk in any way whatsoever.

	So we hang on. We hang on to our thoughts, our little secret ways of 
setting the Altar, or preparing and arranging the bulletins, or, well, 
we hang on to so many things. But that’s not what Jesus is calling us to 
do.

	We entered a sub-season of Easter last Thursday, Ascension Day. It 
lasts only until the close of next Sunday, and is even shorter that 
Christmas Season. It marks the movement of Jesus from our physical 
vision and the period of waiting to celebrate the gift we’ve been 
promised, the Presence of God the Spirit.

	Suzanne Guthrie gives a wonderful sense to this, which could really be 
quite intimidating and frightening. She talks of “this most holy, 
dazzling darkness of a mystery!” 2

	What I like so much about this is the way she reminds us of Jesus’ 
parting words. He’d been raised from the dead; He’d appeared to Mary of 
Magdala; He’d satisfied Thomas’ scientific inquiry. He’d talked to the 
disciples about what it means to live in the midst of questioning, of 
anxiety, of pain. He’d demonstrated yet again the incredible loving 
power of God which can transform even the most bleak of situations and 
He promised His disciples that they’d be able to accomplish incredible 
things. Then He left.

	You’d think that the last thing He’d want to do, after He’d built up 
His friends’ confidence again, is to take a chance on them becoming 
overwhelmed. Even He may have had His moments of questioning when He 
looked at them. But He left them, physically, trusting in God to be 
present with them in whatever way they needed.

	St. Paul, writing to the Philippians, talked about Jesus’ humble 
confidence in God when he described Jesus, though divine, not grasping 
at power and control. 3 Anyone else might have clung desperately to what 
was known, to what gave prestige, so that not only would resources be 
guaranteed, but also prestige and popularity. Anyone else might have 
wished to deal only with the known, thus reducing the possibility of 
mistakes, and frustration, and discomfort. Not Jesus, when He was born. 
When Jesus came among humankind in what we accept as divine mystery, He 
accepted, fully, all that it means to be completely human, even 
suffering the most cruel death imaginable. Now, after the resurrection, 
after once again briefing His disciples and preparing them for ministry, 
He engaged mystery once more as He relinquished His power to the people 
that they might be His ministers.

	I wonder what was going through Jesus’ mind as this happened. Would He 
have regrets about not being able to see them, face to face, for a 
while? Would He have been like a parent sending a child out to school, 
and university, and vocational engagement? Whatever He thought, He 
recognised that it was time for His friends to experience the glory 
Jesus shared with His Father. And He left – designating these, His 
friends, to take up the ministry.

	This was so typical of Jesus. He had His disciples’ backs all the time 
– not to prevent them from saying or doing something incredibly stupid 
or dangerous. That was their own responsibility. But to remind them of 
God’s love for them – AND – here’s the point – to remind them of their 
individual value and their ability to live and preach the Gospel. Of 
course they needed Jesus, for guidance, for encouragement; but He’d 
engaged them so closely that they were now charged to begin to use their 
training. Jesus was doing what the man described in the opening story 
did, only He was doing it with the complete knowledge of what would 
happen when He gave the insight and the power, freely, to anyone who’d 
listen. And it went completely against what people of His day and our 
day might expect.

      This is why Suzanne Guthrie and others talk about what Jesus did 
in empowering His friends and us to enter into the darkness of a 
mystery. We’ve passed through the darkness of Holy Week and the light of 
the Day of the Resurrection only to be asked to be patient just a little 
longer. We’ve been paused, anticipating next Sunday’s recognition and 
celebration of the power and love of the Holy Spirit in our lives, and, 
while we wait – whether it’s for next Sunday or for the next experience 
of divine inspiration to guide us – while we wait we’re drawn once again 
into the love of God which Jesus knew all along and which He prayed we’d 
recognise and make our own.

      We’re called this morning to accept that loving is the most 
important thing that we can do.

      Bede Griffiths was a British Benedictine monk who’d studied with 
and become a close friend of C.S. Lewis at Oxford. He was received into 
the Roman Church and lived much of his life in ashrams in South India. 
He could have been talking of this time in God’s waiting room, linking 
Jesus’ prayer to His Father to the idea of surrendering to God in the 
mystery and hope of what is to come; Griffiths could have been thinking 
of us now when he wrote, “Love is invisible, but it is the most powerful 
force in human nature. Jesus spoke of the Spirit which he would send as 
Truth but also as Love. ‘If anyone loves me, my Father will love him and 
we will come to him and make our abode with him.’ This is the love … 
which was proclaimed in the Bhagavad Gita, the compassion (karuna) of 
Buddha, the rapturous love of the Sufi saints.

	“Ultimately.” Griffiths suggested, “a religion is tested by its 
capacity to waken love in its followers, and, what is perhaps more 
difficult, to extend that love to all humanity. In the past religions 
have tended to confine their love to their own followers, but always 
there has been a movement to break through these barriers and attain to 
a universal love.” 4

	So maybe that’s what we’re invited to engage for the next week, a test 
to discover not how much we love ourselves, as important as that is; nor 
how much we love those around us in the pews on any given day, as 
important as THAT is; but a test to discover, in that wonderful, holy, 
dazzling darkness of a mystery which is the love of Jesus and the father 
for us, just how much we can love those whom we see and don’t see, but 
don’t know.

	I know that he’s not perfect, but I was struck once again by the words 
and actions of the Pope during his brief visit in Israel last week. 
Three things leapt out at me. First, he prayed at the wall built around 
Bethlehem to ghetto-ise the Palestinian people, having kissed the wall 
first. Second, he prayed at a Jewish memorial for terror victims near 
Mount Herzl. And third, he has returned to Rome to wait – just as we are 
waiting just now – to wait for “a prayer summit between (leaders) Abbas 
and Peres, tentatively to be held June 6, after Pope Francis invited the 
leaders to pray for peace with him at the Vatican. Both parties 
accepted.”  5

	And, as if icing were needed, “Pope Francis and Orthodox Patriarch 
Bartholomew I of Constantinople have agreed to plan for an ecumenical 
meeting to be held in Nicea in 2025, …

	“Patriarch Bartholomew revealed that he and the Roman Pontiff had 
‘agreed to leave as a legacy to ourselves and our successors a gathering 
in Nicaea in 2025, to celebrate together, after 17 centuries, the first 
truly ecumenical synod, where the Creed was first promulgated.’ The 
Council of Nicea, held in 325, brought together over 300 bishops and 
approved the formula of faith now known as the Nicene Creed.

	“Pope Francis and the Ecumenical Patriarch chose Nicea—now known as 
Iznik, Turkey—as the site for a council that could bring together 
Eastern and Western Christians, as the original Council of Nicea did.” 6

	Six hundred years ago, Dame Julian of Norwich described a vision of 
Jesus saying to her, “I am the one who makes you to love; I am the one 
who makes you to long; I am the one, the endless fulfilling of all true 
desires.”

	So we wait, but we love. We enter this most holy, dazzling darkness of 
a mystery!” And we can’t stop loving – ever!

NOTES:

1 	“Man who shared ‘money making secrets’ online shocked as competitors 
flood market” – “Newsbiscuit” 25th May, 2014. 
http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2014/05/25/man-who-shared-money-making-secrets-online-shocked-as-competitors-flood-market/

2	“At the Edge of the Enclosure”, 7 Easter a 1st June, 2014, by Suzanne 
Guthrie http://www.edgeofenclosure.org/easter7a.html

3	Philippians 2:6.  See, for instance, “The New Jerusalem Bible” 
translation.

4	Bede Griffiths 1906-1993 “Universal Wisdom” quoted from “Pathways to 
Peace”, quoted by Suzanne Guthrie, op. cit.

5	“Pope Francis leaves Holy Land with hope for peace, prayer” 29th May, 
2014 http://ncronline.org/node/78126

6	“Pope, Orthodox Patriarch look to new meeting at Nicea” Catholic World 
News - May 30, 2014
http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=21561

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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