[Propertalk] Proper 17 c part 2

Fri Aug 26 23:50:49 EDT 2016

The second part for Sunday.
Bob

	 Jesus wasn’t trying to banish one group or another. He simply
wanted everyone to get attention as children of God, made in God’s
image.

	 My mind was grabbed by a statement in a review of a concert in New
York City the other week.

	 “A perfect table, a cabinet maker once told (critic Corinna da
Fonseca-Wollheim) isn’t one that draws attention to itself: It just
makes the rest of the room look right.” 1 When the soprano soloist
began to sing, she made everyone else sound good. There was none of
this, “Look at me. See how great I am.” to her.

	 The critic wasn’t saying that the soloist was holding back, nor
was she saying that she pushed herself out ahead of the orchestra, the
choir and the other soloists. The critic was saying that the soprano
soloist got it just right. She knew that she had abilities and she
shared them. Yet she did it in such a way that everyone else was able
to be heard properly, every other musician was able to shine also. As
the cabinet maker put it, a perfect balance was found.

	 Who knows what happened when the seating plan at the dinner was
switched in Jesus’ story. Parables can’t be pushed too far. But it
could well have been that the host said to the other, “You know, you
and I haven’t had a chance to talk in quite a while, and I’d like
to hear what you’re thinking about the election; or the weather; or
the extraordinarily high pollen count this year.”

	 Who knows what they discussed. All that mattered was that an
opportunity was offered and was taken. And, in order for that to come
about, someone who’d made presumptions had to be displaced.

	 I suppose that one of the morals of this passage is to ask what,
where, why, how the host would like me to do or to be.

	 The host in Jesus’ story, we can assume, is God, so we need to
check in, to be in the habit of asking God continually to give us the
insight to know where we should be, how we should speak or act, when
we should step forward and when we should step back. And when this has
become second nature, this conferring with God, then we may find
ourselves more and more aware of how differently we’re called to
live compared with the norms of society.

	 Brother David Vryhof wrote, “In prayer, the Spirit reveals to us
the ways of God, ways which often are in opposition to the ways of the
world around us.” 2

	 The situation in Louisiana and other crisis points has awakened many
people – or reawakened them – to understand how interrelated we
are, and how “Me first” and “My needs are more important than
yours” have no place until the needs of all are heard and evaluated.

	 “When an event like the flooding in Louisiana [1] takes place,
destroying homes and disrupting and ending lives, media coverage
shifts to a sober note. But (wrote a religion commentator) the images
of destruction and film reels of heroic rescuers suggest another,
disconcerting dimension to catastrophe: disaster is a form of
entertainment. It focuses attention, concentrates minds, and
stimulates emotions. This is true in fiction, from _The War of the
Worlds_ to _The Walking Dead_. It’s also true in reality, where
popular consciousness always seems fixed on one end-times scenario or
the other, …

	 “On the screen and in reality, the cocktail of horror, empathy,
and heroism is magnetic.” 3

	 Why DO we stare at what the reported referred to as “the cocktail
of horror”? Why, for instance, did I and my friends stare, and take
such delight, in the discomfort of our acquaintance in the University
Chapel? Why did we stoke the fires of discomfort with that insertion
in the student newspaper? We DID know him. Why didn’t we commiserate
with him on the unfortunate action he’d taken that morning? Why
didn’t we take him out to lunch? Why didn’t we sit and talk, or go
for a walk, or find out more about him than we knew already? That
would have been the Christian thing to do.

	 “The evil out there, (Daniel J. Clarke and Stefan Dercon suggest
in their recent book ‘Dull Disasters’), is not the zombie
apocalypse, or the alien invasion, or even climate change, but the
fascination with apocalypse and disaster itself.

	 “Clarke and Dercon tell a story about how our love of disaster is
itself a kind of quiet, but dangerous, disaster.” 4

 CLARKE AND DERCON’S BOOK, BY THE WAY, HAS IN THE INTERESTING
SUBTITLE “HOW PLANNING AHEAD WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE”. YOU MIGHT
SAY THAT THINKING LIKE THAT MIGHT HAVE HELPED MY ACQUAINTANCE, AND ME
AND MY FRIENDS.

 IF ALL OF US WANT TO TRY TO AVOID DISASTERS, IF WE WANT TO FIND JESUS
NOT FURROWING HIS BROW AT US FOR PUSHING PEOPLE AROUND, FOR STRUTTING
OUR OWN STUFF, THEN PERHAPS NOW WOULD BE A GOOD TIME AND PLACE TO
START THINKING ABOUT HOW WE BEHAVE.

 AND, HEY, FOR STARTERS, LET’S REMEMBER THAT QUIRKY QUOTE OF
JESUS”, “THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST”! WE DON’T HAVE TO WORRY
ABOUT BEING PUSHY. THERE’S NO POINT IN TRYING TO TAKE THE BEST SEAT
IN THE HOUSE. JESUS SIMPLY WANTS US TO BE THERE. THAT WILL BE ENOUGH.

 WE CAN, WE MUST, MATURE.

	NOTES:

	[1] “_At Mostly Mozart; A Self-effacing Magnetism”_ by Corinna da
Fonseca-Wollheim. New York Times, 21st August, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/22/arts/music/at-mostly-mozart-a-self-effacing-magnetism.html
[2]

	2 _“Revelation”_ at _“Brother, Give us a Word”_ by Brother
David Vryhof, SSJE http://ssje.org/word/?p=12931 [3] 

	3 _“Come hell or high Water: How the melodrama if disaster leaves
us vulnerable” by Noah Berlatsky. August 17, 2016
_http://religiondispatches.org/how-the-melodrama-of-disaster-leaves-us-vulnerable/
[4]

	4 Noah Berlotsy, Op. cit. _“Dull Disasters”,_ Daniel J. Clarke
and Stefan Dercon, Oxford University Press, Oxford. © 2016
https://www.amazon.com/Dull-Disasters-planning-ahead-difference/dp/0198785577
[5]

Links:
------
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/us/louisiana-flooding.html
[2]
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/22/arts/music/at-mostly-mozart-a-self-effacing-magnetism.html
[3] http://ssje.org/word/?p=12931
[4]
http://religiondispatches.org/how-the-melodrama-of-disaster-leaves-us-vulnerable/
[5]
https://www.amazon.com/Dull-Disasters-planning-ahead-difference/dp/0198785577

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