[Propertalk] Proper 18 c 2016 - part 2

[Robert P Morrison]

Part 2.
Happy weekend worshipping!
Bob

	 “Then, one afternoon during my parents’ semi-annual visit from
Detroit, my father showed up in the dining room with a hammer. 

	 “‘What’s that for?’ I asked. 

	 “‘I was going to break that chandelier you’re always
complaining about,’ he said. ‘I figured if somebody didn’t break
it, you’d never get around to getting yourself a new one.’ 

	 “That’s the lesson he taught me: Some things you just have to
break or they’ll stay there forever. … 

	 “This may explain why God had to put on such a big show with all
those miracles and plagues  (to get the Hebrew people out of Egypt).
… The slaves themselves had to _want_ to go free….  

	  “What had to be broken was not Pharaoh’s will, but the dullness
of their own routine, the comfortable reliability of outing up with
things the way they were.” 3 

	 Sometimes it takes something stressful, something radical, to shake
us out of not the dullness of our routines, but the sameness, the
familiarity of them, no matter how much we may sense that change is
not only inevitable, it’s desirable. 

	 Take that short Letter to Philemon, written by Paul from Rome.
It’s the only private letter from the apostle that remains to us,
and it describes a situation in which there’s not just property, but
human life at stake. Boiled down to its basic ingredients, Paul said
that Christianity introduced a completely new relationship between
human beings. No matter who people had been, no matter what they’d
done, the old format, the old manner of inter-relating, had been
smashed wide open. Paul left it up to his friend, but he laid out to
Philemon that slavery and treating anyone as less than human was not
how God saw things. 

	 Of course, this takes courage. But it takes the will to do it also,
no matter how long something has been in place, no matter what it may
cost to people or material. Some things HAVE to change.  

	 It’s serendipitous that the Epistle reading should be assigned for
this Sunday right after the courageous stand taken by Georgetown
University. No matter that it is a Church institution which DID have
active slave-holdings from very early in its life. No matter that
there was some disquietude even back in the early nineteenth century
about this, at that point, money over-rode any other consideration. 

	 Yet here, two hundred years after Georgetown’s trafficking in
human beings, despite the fact that University endowments and budgets
aren’t the rosiest by a long shot; despite what some may say as
practical problems, the Board has decided to try to make public
recompense, starting with apologies and continuing with the intent to
affect the educational hopes of those who might never consider going
to any University, far less Georgetown. In essence, the University is
saying, “What will YOU be when you grow up?” And every other
school is being challenged to address the historical practices of
each, to discover what it means to be a Christian in the twenty-first
century. 

	 And if Georgetown, why not every other University? Why not every
Government institution? Why not every civic group? Why not every
individual? And while we’re in the midst of asking questions, why
not the Church? 

	 Is it difficult to acknowledge the humanity of everyone? Is it
difficult to acknowledge how we have hurt, and continue to hurt one
another? Whatever differences there may be, they are as nothing
compared to the Common Clay that we share in being Children of God. 

	 No one has any right or responsibility to do anything to diminish
the capabilities of another. In fact, exactly the opposite is what
we’re required to be. So if we see something happening, something
which prevents development, prevents babies, children, teen-agers,
adults from being able to minister as full Children of God, then we
have to remedy the situation. Even if it means bringing in a carefully
controlled hammer. Even if it involves money. It may take a while, but
the point of all three lessons; the point of the stories we’ve heard
today, is that we have to begin NOW. 

	 “What WILL you be when you grow up?” 

	NOTES: 

	[1] All Saints Church of England Infant School
www.ALLSAINTSSCHOOLcroydon.co.UK/contact-us/ [1]  

	2 Ann Fontaine 2nd September, 2016
https://www.facebook.com/seashellseller?fref=ufi [2]  

	3 _“Breaking Chandeliers” _in _“Invisible Lines of Connection:
Sacred Stories of the Ordinary”_ by Lawrence Kushner. Jewish Lights
Publishing, Woodstock, Vermont. © 1996. Pages 85-6

Links:
------
[1] http://www.allsaintsschoolcroydon.co.uk/contact-us/
[2] https://www.facebook.com/seashellseller?fref=ufi

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