[Propertalk] proper 29 c 2016 - part 1

[Robert P Morrison]

I write this, fairly quickly, but haven't had a chance to go back to
re-read it.
Bob

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

	JEREMIAH 23:1-6 PROPER 29 c 

	COLOSSIANS 1:11-20 20th NOVEMBER, 2016 

	LUKE 23:33-43 CANTICLE 16 

	 How many death threats do you think I received last week? 

	 Let me repeat that. Sometimes folk are still settling in and they
don’t quite catch the first sentence of the sermon, or they wonder
if they heard it correctly. 

	 How many death threats do you think I received last week? How about
you? How many of you have received death threats? 

	 Well, so far, I’ve been lucky. I haven’t had any. But I
haven’t listened to this morning’s voice mail. 

	 This is not something about which to joke. This ISN’T an attempt
to try to get a cheap laugh, or, for that matter, to try to curry your
sympathy. It’s a question because I have one friend who, after a
sermon a couple of weeks ago – a sermon to which I’ve listened, by
the way, and heard nothing that Jesus wouldn’t have said, namely,
that every action we take in life is a moral matter. He received –
I’ve lost track of how many emails, suggesting that he resign. 

	 I have another friend who’s not only received virulent,
profanity-laced emails, but has been told that her death is being
planned imminently. This friend said that if we – her friends –
were to share her Facebook comment, she’d cut us off immediately,
she’s that afraid of what is being said to her. 

	 I have another couple of friends who’ve been receiving phone
calls, but the caller has been hanging up immediately after my friends
answer. And this has been going on for hours each day. 

	 Just as an aside, although I think it’s directly relevant, Mother
Susan Church, whom some of you know, and who retired from being the
Vicar in Newport and Waldport, received death threats for weeks after
she opened the church basement to let Latinos and Latinas find shelter
after coyotes brought them down from the Spokane area and dumped them
in Newport in January and February – with nothing but the clothes on
their backs and a bedroll and a few personal items. 

	 We live in difficult times. 

	 It’s not new, of course. 

	 I placed the two bulletin illustrations in that sequence
deliberately. We celebrate today, the Last Sunday after Pentecost,
called Christ the King Sunday. We acknowledge today, publically, that
Jesus is King, that Jesus is Lord, that Jesus is our Judge. But
that’s the second illustration. The first is a scene at Jesus’
feet. The soldiers, the onlookers, the rabble, are fondling Jesus’
clothes , in an almost erotic way, the clothes which have been
stripped off Him. And they do this while He’s hanging on the cross,
barely a few feet from them. 

	 In other words – and, if you like, this may be the best thing to
remember from the sermon – in other words, Jesus can’t get to the
throne; Jesus cannot be Lord; Jesus cannot be King; Jesus cannot be
Judge – as the Creed describes Him – unless He receives death
threats that are actually carried out. 

	 Too often we all – you and I both – try to soften this. We think
about what Jesus’ death means for us. We think about how, somehow,
we’re saved by His death. But we seldom stop to see actually that
Jesus’ death, His ultimate obedience to the Law and the Prophets,
the unflinching way in which He refused to back down when He faced
arguments from those who thought they knew better,; the vilification
when He did something which brought comfort, and hope, and healing to
those whom the rest of the community despised; we seldom stop to see
that this constancy of Love and resolute seeking of God’s Will MUST
come before He is able to come to be our judge. “You,” we’ve
been singing through the last couple of months or more, “You will
judge the world you made.” And we’re part of the world. I WILL be
judged. YOU WILL be judged. No escaping this! 

	But first the ridicule; first the threatening; first the accusations
of blasphemy which carry not only banishment from society, but also
– wait! These carry the death penalty, whether it’s legal or not.
Let’s get rid of this country peasant from backwater Galilee before
He gets any more of a following and the Romans and the powerful Jews
in the city find Him a threat to the banking and trade commissions. 

	 We’re fond of saying that Jesus, by what He taught and what He did
in healing and comforting those whom no one would tough; we’re fond
of saying that Jesus turned the world on its head. But we expect
nothing like this. The only way to the throne; the only way in which
Jesus can be true to Himself, is to stick scrupulously to what
Jeremiah, among others had taught. 

	 The LAST thing that Jesus would do would be to destroy and scatter
God’s sheep. 

	 The crazy thing is that, when Jesus was born and came among the
people whom God had endowed with the gift of caring for creation; the
crazy thing is that Jesus SHOULD have simply come, checked out the
sheep, maybe counted a few of the flocks to make sure that everything
was hunky dory, that none had untreated foot-rot, that none lacked for
food and water, and so on. If things were going according to God’s
plan, Jesus’ job SHOULD have been a snap.

	
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