[Propertalk] Proper 19 c 2016 - part 1

[Robert P Morrison]

Here's the rough draft for Sunday.
Part 1
Bob

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

	JEREMIAH 4:11-12, 22-28 PROPER 19 c

	1 TIMOTHY 1:12-17 11th SEPTEMBER, 2016

	LUKE 15:1-10 PSALM 14

	 Business as usual? Full speed ahead?

	 This anniversary – what do we make of it? How may it draw healing
out of infection; how may it build up after destruction? If we can’t
find ways in which to heal and to build, while honouring those whose
lives were snatched from them, then we’re still trapped in the
vicious tentacles of terrorism.

	 As Brother Mark Brown put it, “If God’s vision for the human
enterprise is to unfold in all fullness, we need a people ready,
willing and able to embrace that which is timeless and carry it
forward. And people ready, willing, and able to subvert what needs
subverting.” 1

	 From the beginning of the stirrings of any sort of feelings about a
god or gods who had some, if not all, control over the earth and its
inhabitants, people have been wrestling with the connection between
their faith and what was happening in their lives and the world around
them.

	 I suppose it made perfect sense. You had a deity in charge of the
sea. Another in charge of the sun, and one for the moon. You had a
deity for crops and another for rain and a third for the wind. To have
some single deity was beyond initial believers. How could one God keep
everything in balance? So people sacrificed to so many gods that it
became a perpetual dance, and if the forests caught fire and
threatened homes and farmland, to which god did you sacrifice first?

	 Even when the Hebrews joined a few others in believing in a single
god, there wasn’t the total relief people expected. Folk became
careless and indifferent about their responsibilities to God and to
one another. And this led to such beliefs and acceptance of, for
instance, what the prophet laid out in our first reading. “You
didn’t do this,” he said to the governing leaders, “so THAT will
happen” – “that” being, in this case, unrelenting drought, and
high winds, and the eroding of the landscape.

	 In other words, it was the people who ticked off God, so God was
simply replying in kind.

	 You still find this today. Hurricane Katrina and most of the other
flood and wind disasters; earthquakes in Japan, New Zealand and
Oklahoma; canyon fires east of Los Angeles; - some still say there’s
a religious reason for these. Theses and that attacks on the eleventh
of September, 2001, were due to all sorts of social disorders which
had riled up God to the point of a temper tantrum. Some religious
leaders DO actually say that today. As ridiculous as it sounds, it was
because of Gay Pride marches in New Orleans that Katrina tore through
much of the south of the U.S., according to some.

	 You know, it IS remarkably easy to blame one group or incident for
causing God such a pain that a thunderbolt is released. It’s much
more difficult to say why hurricanes hit certain spots, why “the big
one” hasn’t hit the Pacific Northwest yet. And why those few
terrorists planned and executed their plots on the location in New
York, and Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania; why they and countless
others vent such rage and try to reduce nations to spineless jello
idiots, all for the same of power.

	 Jeremiah DID point out at least one correct fact, however.
People’s behaviour DOES matter, EVERYone’s behaviour. If you kick
a dog often enough, even if you imply try to take away its food, it
WILL bite you. If one individual, one group, one nation continually
inflicts disrespect and abuse on others, at the very least unrest
results and often leads to open rebellion. Prophets, leaders, Mother
Theresa, now St. Theresa of Calcutta, all speak of the way that our
treatment of each other causes ripples across the globe. Whether we
ignore something or pay far too much attention to it, consequences are
severe. The only difference between our behaviour and beliefs of and
those of two thousand years ago is that we usually don’t try to
bring God into the picture as the one who causes the flood, or the
earthquake, or the act of terror. God, e believe, is very uch in the
picture today, but not as a vindictive, spiteful Deity. Instead, we
believe that God’s eyes are filling with tears, and God’s heart is
breaking, because of our deliberate and careless behaviour, or the
things done on our behalf.

	 I think Jeremiah would have, unfortunately, felt very much at home
in our day and age. He’d still be speaking out about inequity, about
injustice, about greed, about short-sightedness – you name it!

	 Where is the healing in all of this? Where is the rebuilding? Where
is, in the thought of Brother Mark, where is the readiness, the
willingness, the ability to seek and embrace what is timeless, to
carry that forward instead of hugging to ourselves that which is so
temporary, so narrowly focused, so self-serving. Is not this which
lies at the heart of what troubles us, troubles society these days.

	 In that incredibly moving and strengthening prayer for generosity
attributed to St Ignatius Loyola God is addressed in such a way as to
admit how we can focus on ourselves, on the wrong things, even on the
wrong people sometimes. “Lord, teach me to be generous. Teach me to
serve you as you deserve; to give and not to count the cost, to fight
and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor
and not to ask for reward, save that of knowing that I do your
will.”

	 One commentator on the prayer wrote, “I’ve prayed the Prayer for
Generosity many times, thinking that Ignatius wrote it. Does it matter
that he didn’t?
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