[Propertalk] Proper 22 a 207 - Part 1

[Robert P Morrison]

I've been wrestling and editing this for a while, and will continue to
do so!
Here's part 1
Bob

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

	EXODUS 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 PROPER 22a 

	PHILIPPIANS 3:4b-14     8th OCTOBER, 2017 

	MATTHEW 21:33-46  PSALM 19 

	 How do you feel about your faith? How do we grow to understand that
God is present, even in the dirt, and shame, and smell? How we begin
to do this is a sign of the growth of our faith. It doesn’t all come
at once, of course. The blinds aren’t taken away fully – they
never are till we take that final step. But we keep the faith! 

	 In weeks like the one we’re still experiencing, we wonder about
our faith. 

	 We all wish that there were simple answers, just as we wish that
there were simple solutions. Yet when stressed in any way we can turn
to faith – even people who’ve avoided faith studiously throughout
their days leading up to tragedy, and disaster, and evil. In 2009,
when Flight 1549 was brought down safely on the Hudson River and all
were taken off alive, “Passengers who said they hadn’t believed in
God nevertheless prayed to him on the plane, then publicly thanked him
for sparing their lives.” 1 When confronted by fear, by shock, by
any sort of unknown, by evil, it seems that we all turn to faith of
one sort of another. There must be something embedded in us so deeply,
something that some may not ever have occasion to look for it, or
allow it to surface in their lives; there must be something in us
which cries out in terror or in joy to God. Maybe this is what various
writers of biblical stories call “the image of God in us”. Maybe
this is the incredible gift which God gives us, in the hope that
we’ll use it frequently. 

	 Is it this which prompts our faith, even when we don’t know what
it looks like, or even acknowledge that it’s there?  How incredible
of God to give us such a life-affirming basis for our journeys, and
then to allow us to look – or not look – for it as we will! The
most precious thing we own, and we take it so much for granted.
Perhaps if all were more aware of it us, we might take it out for a
spin, kick the tyres, check the oil and battery, put in some fuel;
perhaps if we became willing to be open, to check out God’s image
and our faith, then we might find ways in which our faith, the hope of
our life in God, could grow stronger. Perhaps if we, if all humanity,
let our faith out in our lives more, then we may be able to find ways
in which we can discover God working in and through us, reaching out
to touch us in all the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”.
But, alas, we’ve a tendency not to let our faith off the leash to
explore how God may help us draw closer. I’m just like others who
tend to keep any thoughts about my faith on a very short leash. So our
faith may be prevented from developing. 

	  Faith, then, is one of many things which we MUST talk about, for
own health as well as that of others. Of course, it won’t stop evil.
But it’ll help us face up to it and live through it. Our faith will
get stronger, changing and deepening as it meets with and interacts
with both the good and the bad in the world. 

	 But why do we not talk about it? Why don’t we push our faith, to
let it grow? 

	 I don’t know if it’s a generational thing, but my mother
repeated to my sister and me over and over again, “Ages, wages,
politics and religion are nobody’s business but your own.” So much
so that, until she died and the head stone was carved, I had no idea
whatsoever in what year she’d been born. And as for her faith – I
knew she believed, and that she attended church every Sunday, but how
did it help her? 

	 How much does this shortchange those who would seem to be the most
important people in our lives? How much does this deprive our spouses,
or our children and grandchildren of what we hold most important and
most valuable to us? If we like, we can even use this as a way of
teaching our children and grandchildren that there are reasons why we
aren’t totally free with facts and thoughts with any old Vladimir
and Lyudmilla. NOT to talk to our family members, no matter how
extended they may seem from us, deprives not only them, but also
ourselves from the possibility of actually LIVING our faith. If you
and I DON’T talk about our faith, about what we feel a lifetime of
living with God is continuing to teach us, then who is going to talk
to them about it?  

	 Seriously, there’s a vital need to talk to those whom we feel we
can trust best to be honest with us when we talk about our faith.
It’s not simply a matter of saying, “This is what I believe, take
it or leave it.” I think we’ve all reached sufficient maturity to
be able to say, “Here’s where I am right now. This is how the
Bible speaks to me. This is what my involvement with this
congregation; this is what my own personal experience teaches me about
God and about living into God’s values. But it’s a journey.”
I’m sure we’ve all travelled far enough on the pilgrimage which is
life to be able to realise that what we thought we understood as a
five, or ten, or even twenty-year-old; where we were in our young
adulthood may well have set out the pattern we hoped to follow. I’m
sure that we’ve all been led by God to discover that we can NEVER
know all about God, or even where we and God may end up. Life, in all
its mysteries, is filled with changes, with growth, I pray, with
deeper and deeper revelations about where we stand with God, and how
God wishes us to discover how endless are the possibilities of God’s
love. 

	 NOT to share this with our children, OR our spouse, would seem to me
to be cutting them out of how the process of engaging life’s journey
is going for you. That, and not witnessing to them that changing
one’s mind, changing course, no matter how radically, is quite
within the realm of possibility in God’s wishes for you and me. NOT
to share that could actually be harmful. 

	 None of this is to say that what you and I think must be how our
family members think; nor is how they think to be how you and I think.
But it DOES open the glorious possibility of discovering new lines of
thought; new ways of approaching difficulties and dangers, for you,
for me, and for those with whom we discuss this. At the very least,
this lets younger, perhaps less experienced, members of our families
know how we arrived at the decisions we’re making right now. It
opens our own and other peoples’ minds to the use of rational
thinking, and how that colours and strengthens our faith, our sense of
who God is and how God longs that we’ll live.


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