[Propertalk] Proper 23 a homily - Part 1

[Robert P Morrison]

Here's the first part of my draft for this Sunday.
Peace!
Bob

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

	EXODUS 32:1-14    PROPER 23 a 

	PHILIPPIANS 4:1-9   15th OCTOBER, 2017 

	MATTHEW 22:1-14   PSALM 106:1-6, 19-23 

	 Brother David Vryhof reminds us that, “When it’s all said and
done, the question we will be asked on the Day of Judgment will be:
Did you love? Were you a lover after Christ? Did you have room in your
heart for those whom Christ values? This is what matters most.” 1 

	 But what is it that turns us from this? I mean, we KNOW what Jesus
said about how we’re to live. Yet, as the readings for the past
several weeks have shown, people from the beginning of time think that
it’s easier to stray away from that like lost sheep than to work
through questions and doubts. 

	 A writer questioned the other day where we are as church in our
society, and what it is that’s ruling it. She was thinking out loud,
because that’s what people in church are supposed to do. She was
thinking out loud among people whom she knew and trusted, not because
they all agreed with her, far from it. But she was thinking, she was
asking, she was trying to finds basic answers to basic questions: what
IS the church? What should the church be like? What should the church
be doing? She was just as you and I are, I hope, asking what our
tradition, what our understanding about the Bible, have to offer us to
help us make sense of what’s happening in the world on the sidewalk
outside these doors – perhaps no further than a hundred feet away
from where we’re sitting. What’s going on in the homes closest to
this building? What is troubling the people within these homes and
what’s giving them pleasure and a feeling of security? And here’s
where we may all question, what do the scripture passages read this
morning have to say about life? Where are we on the journey of Love? 

	 Not to dwell continually on the negative, although we know that
these are the things that fill the media and grab our attention far
quicker than anything else; not to dwell on the negative, but it seems
to get a little bit more difficult to live up to the Great Commandment
each day. And it never hurts to learn where there may be new or
different potholes on our pilgrimage. 

	 So what if we start with our worship. How are we to keep an even
keel without throwing up our hands or burying our heads under a
pillow? 

	  Different parts of the Eucharistic Liturgy strike me at different
times and seem to tug at my sleeve. Perhaps this happens to you too.
It may be a word or a phrase in the collect or the hymn “God, we
praise you”. It may be something in the creed or the prayers of the
people. It may be in the Prayer of Consecration or Prayer of
Thanksgiving after we’ve been drawn into Communion with God and one
another. 

	 In any and all of these, something may seem to strike a chord within
us to bring new light and understanding about the incredible
limitlessness and expansiveness of the love of God – something of
which we need God to remind me, and possibly you, every day, it seems.


	 One of the touching expressions that’s been working on me for the
last month or two since we’ve been using Eucharistic Prayer C is the
description of the way in which we succumb so easily to destructive
tendencies. It’s as if we’re either extraordinarily dense or
extraordinarily self-absorbed! 

	 Listen to this:  

	 “From the primal elements you brought forth the human race, 

	  and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made us 

	  the rulers of creation. But we turned against you, and betrayed 

	  your trust; and we turned against one another. 

	  Have mercy, Lord, for we are sinners in your sight.” 2 

	 God has, as it were, handed us everything on a plate. God has
created for us and gifted us with so much that it’s incredibly
embarrassing when we think how much we have, and how much has been
done for us. Even on our best days, we may be excused for thinking,
“Who am I that the Creator should be so amazingly generous?” 

	 “Thy table now is spread, thy cup with love doth overflow,” says
one of our Communion hymns. But it’s not just at the Altar, as
wonderful as that is. It’s everywhere we turn. To deny this is a
sin. Everything we see around us; every person we see around us, has
been brought into our lives, as the psalmist says elsewhere, “for
the sport of it”, for the sheer unadulterated joy in which we may
bask with God. 

	 We’ve been listening to Exodus stories about the Hebrew people for
some time now, because we need to be reminded of our roots, not just
ancestral, but our more immediate ones. We’ve been rediscovering how
God has been matching the Hebrews’ footsteps, walking with them,
guiding them, advising them, sometimes even being a step ahead of them
so that peoples’ needs will be cared for. Even when correcting them,
God seemed relatively restrained. So why would the people want to do
anything to jeopardise God’s love? Why would WE?  

	 Why would they want to do anything to reprioritize within their own
lives and put something, a block, a coolness, a sense of uncertainty
and restraint, between themselves and God? Yet they did. 

	 As the Prayer of Consecration puts it so bluntly, we lose it so
frequently. We don’t understand and don’t take time to think
things through, or else we’re such deliberate narcissists if we DO
understand. However it happens, we move God within our lives. We take
what IS, and always SHOULD be, at the centre of our lives; we take
what should be at the centre of everybody’s lives; and push God into
a cupboard somewhere.


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