[Propertalk] Proper 13 c - part 1

[Robert P Morrison]

Here's part one of the first draft!
Happy weekending with Jesus.
Bob

	THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN THE ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST


	HOSEA 11:1-11 PROPER 13c 

	COLOSSIANS 3:1-11 31st JULY, 2016 

	LUKE 12:13-21 PSALM 107:1-9, 43 

	 First, the bad news! 

	 “the division between body and soul … was foreign to the Hebrew
mind where the ‘nepes’ – the self, whole person – was an
undissolvable composite of body and spirit.” 1 

	 Put it another way, whatever one thinks, says or does reflects, to
the minds of the contemporaries of Jesus, as well as His ancestors,
the condition of the soul. And this hasn’t changed since Jesus’
time. We are – to the very core of our created being – we are what
we say. And if this doesn’t make us squirm just a little, then
you’re to be congratulated. You’ve reached perfection. You are
exactly as God intends you to be. 

	 One thing I ask, though. Please pray for me. I’m nowhere near
there, and I squirm quite a bit. 

	 We should be clear, however, that this has nothing to do with our
bank balances, or putting a thousand square foot addition to our
homes, or anything like that. 

	 This story that Jesus told is “about a man who failed to recognize
that he was accountable to God for all that he owned.” 2 He was
accountable not just for his physical and mental acts but for the fact
that his soul was and would remain inextricably linked with everything
else that he thought defined him. 

	 There’s an old Scottish rhyme that talks of a teacher who sat in
the church on Sunday, devoutly praying that God would “gie him the
strength to murder the bairns on Monday.” 

	 It doesn’t work that way. You and I can’t have a life like that
– a well-dressed, quietly-spoken, sweetly smiling and devoutly
Sunday person and an avaricious, compassionless, vindictive,
dignity-stripping person for the rest of the week. We can’t talk of
keeping body and soul together. They ARE together. They always will be
together. So we have to pay attention. All the time! 

	 Notice, then, the problem. “It’s all about me! ‘My barns …
my grain … my goods’ make up (this) rich man’s world His game
plan is to expand his storage facilities in order to preserve all his
surpluses for himself.” 3 He’s flying solo. What he wants, he
gets. He can fix anything. He doesn’t need anybody. 

	 Facebook, you may have discovered, has a way of reminding people
where they’ve been. This past week, I was told that a year ago I was
talking about a poem written by Mary Oliver. It’s called “Some
questions you might ask” and it talks about the soul. She wrote: 

	Is the soul solid, like iron?
 Or is it tender and breakable, like
 the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?
 Who has it, and who doesn’t?
 I keep looking around me.
 The face of the moose is as sad
 as the face of Jesus.
 The swan opens her white wings slowly.
 In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
 One question leads to another.
 Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
 Like the eye of a hummingbird?
 Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
 Why should I have it, and not the anteater
 who loves her children?
 Why should I have it, and not the camel?
 Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?
 What about the blue iris?
 What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
 What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
 What about the grass? 4 

	 The man who came to Jesus asking for a summary judgement must have
been the younger of at least two brothers. He’s wanting Jesus to hit
his brother up the side of the head, in a legal way, of course. But
“Jesus is a reconciler of people, not a divider. He wants to bring
people together, not finalize separations.”5 Remember, Jesus
recognises that now, as then, He was dealing with the whole person. He
wanted to help people beautify not only their language and their
relationships. He wanted – and continues to want – to beautify
peoples’ souls. As the hymn puts it, He wants to “fit us for
heaven to live with (him) there.” 6 

	 Just because He didn’t want to take sides in this fraternal
dispute, though, didn’t mean that He didn’t care about cries for
justice. Wherever He turned, He was SO absorbed about the lives and
health of the downtrodden, the oppressed, the outcasts, the fearful,
the dispossessed. 

	 This could have been written today about everyone who struggles for
a sense of purpose, some sort of recognition, for something as simple
as a meal, some way of keeping body and soul together.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://stsams.org/pipermail/propertalk_stsams.org/attachments/20160730/d5726913/attachment.htm>