[Propertalk] Proper 18 a

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

Passing this along to my editing personality!

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY                        THE 
THIRTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
EXODUS 12:1-14						                                    PROPER 18 (A)
ROMANS 13:8-14						                        7th SEPTEMBER, 2014	
MATTHEW 18:15-20			                                                              	 
PSALM 149

	How many of you know nasty Episcopalians? Take a minute. I’m serious. 
“Nasty Episcopalians” – it’s not an oxymoron. They DO exist. I’ve even 
met one or two. Not in Albany, of course. But we DO have to be careful. 
For their sake as well as our own.

	What is it that makes a “nasty Episcopalian”? What makes a “nasty” 
anything? Is it the colour? Is it the shape? Is it the age? Is it the 
way that it – whether “it” is a person on an object – is it the way that 
“it” is different from you or from me? Is it a matter of who appears to 
have power and who does not? Or does all this really matter?

	The first reading this morning gives the anchor to one of the most 
important observances in Jewish religious life. It even colours secular 
Jewish life today too. It shows the love of God for the people who were 
chosen to exemplify how humans are supposed to live for and with one 
another. It’s so embedded into the life-blood [– pun intended –] of Jews 
that, after Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement – it’s central to what 
Jews believe about themselves and the God whom they worship. Perhaps 
there’s even an unspoken link between the two days, no matter how many 
months separate their observance, showing how we’re called by God to 
evolve continually, to draw closer and closer to the ideal which God has 
planned for us; showing how God actually prepares the way for us.

	It’s an incredibly moving story that’s told at Passover, both from the 
original passage in Exodus and from listening at a Seder dinner. Nothing 
can stand in the way of God’s forgiveness, of the reconciliation which 
God effects with us. Ultimately, we’ll all live in the Promised Land. 
Not even the seeming gates of hell shall prevail against our 
participating in that Being of Love which is God’s company.

	To know that we’re loved like that, that God will go to such 
extraordinary lengths to ensure that we’ll be safe, secure, and freed 
from all oppression and anxiety; to have this knowledge is amazing. None 
of us deserves it, of course. No one can possibly come close to meriting 
such friendship, yet it’s right there – it’s right HERE – for ALL of us!

	As Christians, as celebrants at Eucharist, we should really gasp when 
the bread is torn apart and held up, broken, in the silence, until we 
hear the words, “Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us.”

	On the night on which He was betrayed, Jesus sat at table with His 
friends. He was following prescribed ritual. He, and the others, were 
thoroughly immersed in the practice of their faith. They would have read 
the story we heard read this morning. They would have had all sorts of 
images flit through their minds. They would have been thunderstruck at 
the amazing generosity of God in the face of so much intransigence, and 
doubt, and argumentativeness. They must have felt the tension in Jesus 
as He reached across the food spread out on the floor. No reason to 
think much of it, though. All was going according to plan – the lamb, 
roasted carefully, and the herbs. And the bread – ah, yes, the bread.

	It’s a staple, has been a staple on so many tables for thousands of 
years, so much so that God told the Hebrews to be sure to have it as 
part of the meal.

  	Jesus reached for that staple and, as He tore it apart, I can imagine 
time standing still.

	I wonder if it stood still that night in Egypt. I wonder if it stood 
still in successive years as people reached for the bread, tore it and 
ate – the love of God, the salvation of God, crumbling down from its 
edges, as it always has.

	It’s funny how we pay so much attention to the lamb at Passover. Of 
course, Christians see Jesus, as John’s Gospel made sure we learned, as 
the Lamb of God. It WAS the lambs’ blood that marked the doors of the 
Hebrew people who were seeking release. But Jesus gave us the Bread of 
Life. It’s in those small details that we find the fullness of God’s 
love. It was as He reached across the other food and picked up the bread 
that time stood still again, it was “wrinkled” that we might find our 
place of healing and refreshment. At that point in creation Jesus 
forever linked the slavery and release of the Hebrew people with 
everything that bound and trapped the women and men of His own age, as 
well as those in every age.

	Just as killing the lambs and smearing their blood on the lintels of 
Hebrew habitations brought freedom, so did tearing apart the Bread, the 
Body of Jesus.  It’s an incredible mystery. Why should destruction bring 
release, unless we understand that it’s Jesus’ death, the death of One, 
that brings reconciliation for everyone else in creation.

	But this brings up what for me is one of those elements than can be 
glossed over so easily. Only the homes and lives of those smeared with 
blood were spared. Everyone else, so goes the story, EVERYone else 
suffered.

	Who enslaved the Hebrews?

	You might reply that every Egyptian benefited from the Hebrews’ work. 
Their lives may have been made easier; the costs of their goods and 
services cheaper, just as the clothes we wear cost less because of 
intolerable conditions in sweatshops around the world. WERE the 
Egyptians, as a whole, guilty by reason of where they shopped, and what 
they bought, and what they tolerated in terms of social structure? Or 
was it only the Pharaoh and his cabinet; the upper echelon of 
governmental structure; the owners of the various enterprises, such as 
they were, who were to blame for the inequities and enslavement?

	Then why did every Egyptian suffer? Why do we continue to paint 
“Egyptians” as a whole nation as responsible for the misery of the 
Hebrews? Why do we make them all scapegoats?

	This is what made me think of “nasty Episcopalians”, whoever they may 
be. Of course, there are Episcopalians who are nasty, who seem to defy 
God’s call for reconciliation, who do nothing positive when their own 
oxen are in danger of being gored.

	Last week I wrote to a friend abroad and, in reply was told, yes, there 
are, here, quite a few … folk … (who) definitely lack any sense of 
humour … (who) have their very own Episcopal churches … and into which 
I, I was told, would definitely not fit in.

	So why are there two – or more – Episcopal churches? Why do people look 
at one or the other and define the entire Episcopal Church according to 
how a few behave? Why do people find it so difficult to deal with “This 
is my body … Drink from this, ALL OF YOU …” and want to, as they used to 
say in Scotland, “fence the Table” – to make sure that there would be 
Egyptians out there in the congregation who’d be destroyed because they 
were not allowed to participate with everyone else?

	I’m probably guilty myself of tarring everyone with the same brush, but 
there seems to have been an edge of exclusivity at least in some 
expressions of Judaism. No doubt this is what made Jesus so heart-sick 
and so mad when He saw folk being excluded from both religious and 
everyday life.

	Doesn’t Jesus make the point that creation is for everyone? Was not 
Jesus born to make us one with God – and with one another, without 
exception? We should all be bending over backwards then to make sure 
that all can participate in the way that God passes over all our sins, 
that God offers heath and salvation to all of us. Condemning whole 
nations, whole belief systems, whole political or civic groups is, to 
put it bluntly, blatantly anti-Christian. So is using a generic label 
against one or two people.

	It’s REALLY important for us to be aware of that. It’s not to give a 
pass to an individual, or even a group, who is nasty. Instead, thinking 
this way is to open us up to the wonder of creation, to the 
limitlessness of God’s love, so limitless, in fact, that even we are 
embraced by God!

	An interesting challenge was presented last week by an article about 
baristas at Starbucks.

  	The article began, “It’s no secret that the Episcopal Church has 
historically been associated with a particular stratum of society — 
white, educated, socially connected, middle-to upper-class. The 
Presiding Bishop used to live in Greenwich, Connecticut — and now lives 
(or could live) in a Manhattan penthouse. We are a church that can count 
the number of presidents who have been members and can cite the large 
number of elected officials who belong.” 1

	You get the picture.

I find much of the article seems to be written with broad brush-strokes 
which don’t describe us here, or, for that matter, many of this 
Diocese’s congregations. But it DID make me think about whether we do 
things in any way to edge one another out of the picture in some ways, 
trying to get God’s angels NOT to pass over someone, or some group, thus 
eliminating them from our sense of responsibility.

How easy it is to put up road blocks that prevent involvement. How easy 
it is to move people to the periphery.  I found myself asking how much I 
did this – because we do all do it.

“The article focused on a young, single-mother who has no certainty in 
her work schedule from Starbucks and so ends up living a life of 
constant chaos, torn between child care, work, transit between the two, 
and with barely any time for any of her major life goals, like education 
or a driver’s license.

	“The article doesn’t say but I’d guess that this young woman is not a 
member of the Episcopal church. She may

not be a member of any church, in fact. But let’s imagine she walks into 
her local Episcopal church on a Sunday morning and hears a sermon 
exhorting her to join in the mission of God, to get out there and build 
the kingdom, to do, to labour, to work. It’s not unreasonable to think 
that her response might be, ‘I can barely keep my head above water as it 
is. Why would I want to join a church that tells me I need to do more 
work?’”

	If we lived thirty-some hundred years ago; if we lived in Egypt, but 
were not related to the Hebrew community, how likely might we be to seek 
some sort of spiritual and social comfort among a group which made all 
the non-Hebrews out to be worthless?

	Who’s nasty now?

	WE live in the twenty-first century. How, then do we preach and 
exemplify that all are or may be one with God – and with one another?

	It’s a heck of a ministry to which we’re called by God!

NOTE:

1 	“Can a Starbucks Barista Find a Place in The Episcopal Church” by 
Jesse Zink on September 1, 2014
 
http://www.ecfvp.org/posts/can-a-starbucks-barista-find-a-place-in-the-episcopal-church/

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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