[Propertalk] Proper 23a

Sat Oct 11 12:41:03 EDT 2014

Here's my first draft for tomorrow ...

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY                        THE 
EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
EXODUS 32:1-4					                                   	               	 
PROPER 23 (A)
PHILIPPIANS 4:1-9					                        	 
12th OCTOBER, 2014	
MATTHEW 22:1-14			                                                              	 
PSALM 106:1-6, 19-23

	How would you describe the human race? I suppose it depends on the day, 
what you’ve been watching on TV or reading in the paper or on-line.

	One of the dangers we face as humans, I think, is our tendency to make 
blanket statements. Nothing that such-and-such an individual, or group, 
of business can possibly be any good. Perhaps that individual, or 
business, or TV station has said and done something monumentally stupid, 
or dangerous, or patently untrue. Perhaps this is what registers in our 
minds, so we expunge from our minds anything that might sound remotely 
complimentary or conciliatory towards them. We give up. We simply can’t 
be bothered taking even a minute or two to analyse anything about the 
situation. And if someone were to ask whether or not there were 
extenuating circumstances, we’d laugh in that person’s face.

	Of course it’s easier to live by those rules. We need only one exposure 
to a person, to a programme, to a behavioural characteristic before we 
make up our minds. Remember the good old days when we could go to 
gladiatorial contests and it was thumbs up or thumbs down, and that was 
the end of it? Boy, did I LOVE those! It was so simple. A couple of 
beers and some hot dogs and I didn’t need to think. It didn’t matter who 
was in the ring. It all boiled down to a scrap of information, a facial 
twitch, a torn loin cloth. Who cares if those in the ring hadn’t slept 
for days, or had to hold their breaths while they ate moldy food, or 
were fighting lung infections from being exposed, perpetually, to 
dampness? One shot, that’s all anyone needs before we scrub them from 
existence.

	What’s that? He has a wife and three children? She’s trying to support 
her husband and parents who’re all on disability? That’s their problem. 
He or she shouldn’t have had children in the first place.

	A quick read of the Hebrew scripture and the Gospel this morning might 
back us up in the way we make such snap judgements. How thoughtless ARE 
some people? How thoughtless are WE?

	There the Hebrews were in the desert. And Moses and God had been 
knocking themselves out to come up with a manageable instruction manual 
about how people should live with one another, care for one another, 
respect one another. I mean, we all heard the finished product last 
week. It had been such rough going that Moses and God must have sent for 
our more loks and bagels than you could shake a staff at while they took 
every word, and parsed it carefully, and checked it for double entendres 
– and then worked it over to ensure that anyone with a third grade 
education might be able to understand it.

	You don’t knock out these agreements every day. It takes time. No doubt 
there was a lot of talk back and forth between God and Moses while they 
pared the manual down to the essentials.

	But the wait was simply too much for the Hebrews. No doubt Moses had 
used up all the good will the pilgrims had – and that wasn’t much to 
start with. No doubt many of them had been just looking for an 
opportunity like this in which they could do some sort of an end run 
around what they felt were way too many restrictions. Surely each could 
decide for her or himself what was good, and right, and worthy?

	What made the Hebrews go so recklessly off base and forget everything – 
the escape from slavery, the food, the bread and the quail, and the 
water in the place you’d be least likely to find it? Why were they 
unable to remember that it was God who had their backs – and their 
fronts?

	I feel for them. I really do! I’ve never been in that sort of 
situation, not with quite that much stress. But I DO know what it’s like 
to be frustrated – by people, by events, by what looks like an 
interminable time before things may happen. I know what it’s like to 
feel as if I have very little control over the decisions I’d like to 
make. There have even been times when the decisions themselves seem to 
take over and make it see so much like an impossible job that it’s hard 
simply to get started on some project or another.

	I’m sure we’ve all been there, in one way or another, when the person 
or the force that we believe should be our guiding principle seems to be 
so far away. That’s when we look for a substitute.

	It’s so easy to think that we were wrong, that our judgement had been 
clouded, that we’d set our sights too high. Besides, when we can’t reach 
out to touch someone, life can be pretty stressful.

	“In thirty seconds, everybody notices everything” reported one study 1 
that was used in the late seventies to develop what was, for at least a 
decade, one of the most memorable advertising slogans.

	“N.W. Ayer, one of America's oldest advertising agencies, needed a 
creative approach to help AT&T soften its image in the face of growing 
concerns about AT&T's potential monopoly.” So the print and TV campaign 
that incorporated the now famous "Reach Out and Touch Someone" tag line 
was developed to “position the company as an indispensable element of 
everyday American life.”

	It worked! And it makes me wonder why God didn’t have that P.R. company 
doing a little research to come up with a tag to impress us about God’s 
Love, about God’s fidelity, about God’s humour, joy and delight in 
simple Being with us.

	Was Moses with wrong agency? I mean, really, what impresses you more, 
“Reach out and touch someone” or “Trust me. I’ve got two tablets here.” 
Mind you, he didn’t have a whole lot of time to say anything. The party 
was in full swing by the time he got down off the mountain.

	But that’s often the way it goes … impatience, a stray thought, a 
glitzy design, an edgy effigy – and where does that take you? If you 
haven’t already, and can multi-task, take a look at the first 
illustration in the bulletin. There you have it, the crowd holding up a 
bull, the symbol of strength, of fertility, of good luck and prosperity; 
there you have that, superimposed on one of the symbols of twentieth 
century achievement – the skyscraper. 2

	It’d do easy to be side-tracked, even confused when we take God-given 
inspiration for architectural design and development, along with 
artistic imagination, along with a little pride in our accomplishments, 
and to let them take the place of what we profess to believe, that, 
intelligence and imagination aside, God is still, or should be, at the 
centre of our lives.

	When we’re lonely, when we’re confused, when we’re on the point of 
being overwhelmed by all that’s happening to us and is asked of us, it’s 
so easy to look for the thing or the person we can touch. It’s so easy 
to think that, somehow, God’s lost interest, or has zipped over to 
another solar system for a quick repair job, leaving us alone for a bit.

	Was THAT what happened to the Hebrews? I know that that’s often what 
happens to me. I guess that that’s what presents itself to you. We ARE 
still so young, sometimes, certainly young in faith.

	Moses didn’t have a clue about what was about to confront him when he 
came down from his intense work with God. He thought they’d worked out a 
pretty good deal. They’d got things down to a six-day week, with nothing 
said about just what you could or couldn’t do on the seventh. They’d 
worked out a pretty good health-care system, enabling the older members 
of the community to relax, secure that the rest of society would care 
for them. They’d even set up a manageable justice system to safeguard 
rights and expectations.

	But that was before Moses discovered how fickle folk were. And WAS he 
ticked! He couldn’t imagine why things had fallen apart so quickly and 
so thoroughly. There’s no saying what God thought of it.

	Long story short, though, God and Moses put together another deal.

	It’s really amazing how patient God is, isn’t it? No matter how many 
calves we put together and parade around in our lives, no matter how 
much we attack and hurt one another, with words, with purchases, with 
campaigns – you name it, we STILL do it! – no matter what we do, God is 
still there, waiting.

	A review of a recently translated book of Walter Kasper, a German 
theologian, talks about the immensity of God’s patience and love. Pope 
Francis, among others, talk with approval about the theologian’s 
““ambitious’ claims about universal salvation and, ….

	“He depicts God as one who ‘recommends,’ ‘courts,’ and ‘woo[s]’ us but 
does not ‘force’" or ‘overpower’ us.” 3

	THAT’S the God who calmed Moses before the latter set off down the 
mountain for the second time. THAT’S the God who continues to send out 
invitations to us – perhaps us first, but then to absolutely everyone, 
without exception – to discover how Love should become such an active 
verb in our life vocabulary. The God of whom Jesus talked with such love 
and such intensity, is the one who can do nothing but live life with a 
justice that is nothing but mercy. And THAT is why it’s so incredibly 
unbelievable that anyone should not be prepared, in her or his heart, to 
follow Jesus in a life of sacrificial and joyous giving. The unprepared, 
the person unwilling to make God’s love the driving force of her and his 
life, regardless of the attractions of saving a buck here and there; of 
being able to take advantage of someone’s weakness or forgetfulness; 
regardless of the temptation to take a cheap shot or dismiss someone on 
the basis of one comment or action; such an unprepared person strains 
God’s incredulity. I would venture to guess that that’s because it 
demonstrates a decision to live by the glittery facile things of this 
world, to be unwilling to take a chance on God.

	As Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, known now as Pope Francis, put it,	“We 
need to understand properly this mercy of God.”

	YES, this morning’s passage from Hebrew Scripture and the one from the 
Gospel talk about our intransigence and our need to reform. But way more 
than that, they talk of the enormity, the endless unlimitedness of the 
mercy of God. THIS is what Jesus proclaimed. And THIS is what we are to 
proclaim by how we live.

	As the theologian, Kaspar, concluded his discussion, “Mercy courts 
every human being to the very end; it activates the entire communion of 
saints on behalf of every individual, while taking human freedom with 
radical seriousness. Mercy is the good, comforting, uplifting, 
hope-granting message, on which we can rely in every situation and which 
we can trust and build upon, both in life and in death. Under the mantle 
of mercy, there is a place for everyone of good will.”

NOTES:

1   Arlen, 1980: p. 211, quoted in “Bell System ‘Reach out and touch 
someone’ Commercial (April 2, 1979) Source: 
http://www.porticus.org/bell/bellsyst..., 
http://www.davidlucasmusic.com/) 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO17B-ACRn0

2	“Dancing Around the Golden Calf” by Fri Heil, from Art in the 
Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, 
Nashville, TN. 
http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55683

3	Thomas Ryan’s review: Cardinal Walter Kasper in “Mercy: The Essence of 
the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life” quoted in “Kasper's book: 
Mercy has been ‘criminally neglected,’ which is a ‘catastrophic’ 
situation by Thomas Ryan  Oct. 8, http://ncronline.org/node/87401  Book 
by Walter Kasper, translated by William Madges Published by Paulist 
Press, $29.95

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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