[Propertalk] FW: Proper 22 b - Part 2 of 3

[Joe Parrish]

Part 2 of 3

>From Robert Morrison  

 

          The point is that there are, in the darkest of situations, moments of grace when God’s eternal love and power DO become evident. As “Night Prayer” from  “A Prayer Book for New Zealand” put it, “The angels of God guard us through the night and quieten the powers of darkness.”

            Details about the shootings last Thursday may change, but one account being discussed on Friday was that each person in the room was asked whether he or she was a Christian. If the answer was, “Yes”, then the response was, “You’ll be in heaven in a second” and that person was shot in the head.

            What would have happened  had the person said , “No”? What would I do, if I were the second or third person asked about my faith, or lack of it? If that is the last thing I might say on earth, should I lie, should I make it a denial, or should I, in that instant, give up my faith completely, or embrace another?

            I hope I never have to find out what such stress might do, but I know that Roseburg is not the only place in the world where religious expression and acceptance carries such an extreme penalty.

            Would I – could I – ought I to curse God …? Would I die anyway?

Would I die inside if I denied what I believed, whether by what I said or what I did?

            I believe God forgives. I know the Bible teaches that the only unforgiveable sin is that against the Holy Spirit. But how does one sin against the Spirit? Not just for one’s self, but for one’s family, for the person next to one, or across the campus – for anyone, can one, should one stay silent or utter what we know is false?

            From all that challenges us, and breaks our hearts, and tests us, Good Lord, deliver us. And lead us not into temptation.

            No matter what, though, God was in those rooms, just as God sat beside Job as he tried to find some relief for all his pain. God was in Roseburg. God is STILL in Roseburg, as God is in Clackamas Town Center, and Thurston High School in Springfield, wherever pain, and abuse, and violence threaten to blot out all that is light, and warm, and lovely in our lives and in the world.

So we pray for peace. We ask that reason, and kindness, and respect, and dignity may prevail. We pray that mental diseases may be eradicated. That jealousy, and greed, and bitterness, and vindictiveness be brought under control.

As many have pointed out, though, we pray and then we act. Our prayer becomes fulfilled by the way that we put our words into practice. When you and I as individuals come together here on a Sunday or any other day, we learn to become community. What we do in worship here is a “we” event, not an “I” event. The church’s role – and we are the church! – the church’s role is to teach about “we”. The church’s role is to say that doors will be flung open in face of disaster and threats of all kinds. The church’s role is to say to the community, “We are here – to listen, to share, to feed spiritually and physically, to afford a place where one can scrape away at everything that troubles, no matter what it is or how it has come upon people.”

We come here week in, week out, to remind ourselves how God weeps with us, as well as laughs with us. Above all, we come here to learn and be reminded that God understands what is going on.

            Brother  Curtis Almquist of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, talking about compassion, wrote last week, “I would call compassion a ‘life skill’ learnable on our knees: to see ourselves as God sees us, which will inform how we see everyone else. In a time so full of hurt and hate, the grace of compassion can make a world of difference.” 3

            Compassion is what we have learned to feel for the people of Roseburg, and everywhere around the world where evil seems to be so prevalent. Compassion is what we have been invited to experience and to share, and to transform into outstretched hands and hearts and wallets and purses. Because compassion is part of what we need to know and to have in order to help us not to die unprepared.

 

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