[Propertalk] Proper 18 b part 1

[Robert P Morrison]

First part - probably of three - draft for Sunday.

Bob

	THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY    15th SUNDAY AFTER
PENTECOST 

	PROVERBS 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23     PROPER 18 b 

	JAMES 2:1-17       PSALM 125 

	MARK 7:24-37    6th SEPTEMBER, 2015 

	 What’s wrong with us? 

	 I can feel myself bristle if I hear someone say that. Possibly by
beginning the sermon with these words I may have made some of you
tense up also. It can be said sarcastically; it can be said angrily;
it can be said sadly. But no matter what the tone, the sense is the
same. We’ve done something wrong. 

	 Of course, especially if you have a streak of Calvinism in you
somewhere, this question may be something we’re used to hearing.
Even our own prayer of confession talks about this – “what we have
done, and … what we have left undone; we have not loved (God) with
our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbor as ourselves.” 

	 It’s human nature to lighten our loads when we can. Few of us are
deliberately mean – all the time, anyway, although I’m sure we
have our moments! Yet we DO let things slide from time to time, so we
all merit the question, “What’s wrong with us?”  

	It might be as simple as a health care visit, though. If our energy
has been at a low ebb, if we can’t sleep as well as we’d like, if
we have something going on which is painful or bothersome, we may well
ask, “What’s up, Doc? What can you do, what can we do, to get back
on an even keel again?” It’s a sensible question, a necessary
question. It can lead to a good self-inventory, but then, in order to
ask the question and reflect on possible answers, we have to have
something, or, better yet, someone against whom to measure ourselves.
It’s like giving ourselves a baseline measurement so we can judge
whether we’re slipping or improving. 

	Perhaps at this point, our health care provider – be she addressing
our physical, our mental or our spiritual lives – perhaps at this
point another question starts to formulate within us. “What can I do
to restore health, to make things right?” to which one appropriate
reply might be, “I shall drink the cup of salvation and call upon
the name of the Lord.” 1 

	Recognising that there ARE things wrong about us, we can still come
to the Feast which God provides. And we have to open our hearts, our
minds and our lips and engage God in a conversation which touches on
our failings as well as our gratitude. 

	To guide us through life, our three readings this morning focus our
attention on the things that can draw us from the love of God –
something of which we promised we’d make ourselves aware during the
baptismal liturgy last week. The first and second readings lean
heavily on the temptation to make money, to make tangible assets, and
our desire for them, our accumulation of them, the guide for our
lives. 

	The somewhat unfair picture of Jesus sitting with the disciples,
talking about the duties and responsibilities of congregations and
BACs, turned this week to the role of money and its management. 2 You
remember the unfair characterisation of Judas in the Gospels. It was
written in to stir up and affirm prejudice against Jews. The name
“Judas” simply means “Jewish man”, so as the rift between Jews
and Christians widened in the first century, any opportunity was taken
by the early Christian congregations to slander the Jews, setting in
motion prejudices from Shylock in Shakespeare to the pogroms around
the world in which Jews were depicted as controlling and bankrupting
others. 

	The illustration is included in the bulletin this morning to show
just how easy it is to be offensive. It’s got nothing to do with
Maggie Lang, our Treasurer, or, necessarily, any other treasurer. It
simply reveals how wrong, how hurtful, how abusive we can be. It
points out how easy it can be to make ourselves out to be better that
our neighbour, whether in the pew, or in the street, or across an
international border. So we’re called to confess those things which
divide us, which embitter us, which fill us with bigotry of all sorts


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