[Propertalk] Proper 24 a 2017 - part 2

[Robert P Morrison]

Part 2 for Sunday - of course, editing will happen! 8-)
Bob
 “What good is that?” Moses may have muttered. And we may join him
in frustration. But think about that for a moment. Imagine someone
who’s been a tremendous influence in your life. Picture someone
who’s opened our minds in what we thought was an impossibly
dangerous and difficult situation. When we have that much respect for
and security with such a person, we CAN recognize them from the back.
We know how she or he holds her or himself, what gestures are
characteristic of that person, or how others react in the company of
that person. Even from the back, we still know that person and can be
filled with love, and gratitude, and awe.

	 So with God. Moses didn’t NEED to see God face-to-face. Moses
could tell, even from behind, that THAT was God there. Of course, he
had to be trained, he had to be receptive to the possibilities that
that was how God behaved. In the first place, he had to be open to the
fact that God was and always is present. That helps! So for us. We
call out to God in our confusion, in our loneliness, in our
frustration, in our pain. We want relief. We want God to sit down to
share a good strong cup of tea and eat a scone with us, and to point
out ways in which we can begin to approach what’s creating so many
difficulties in our lives. It’s the personal thing, the proper way
to deal with life, to make physical contact. And the good news is that
God knows this; God appreciates and understands our positions. So,
just as for Moses, God lets us catch the image of a familiar figure
passing away out of our immediate presence or field of view.

	 This this leads to the second point of reassurance. When we, just as
did Moses, see God from the back, we need to understand where God has
been. God HAS been here; and there; and everywhere. Perhaps we
didn’t know. It’s highly likely that we didn’t know it. As if a
loved one had been in the room with us and it wasn’t apparent
because we were too involved with other things and other people that
we didn’t notice. Maybe we were decrying what was happening around
us. Maybe we were too wrapped up with internal matters that we failed
to notice the person in the same room. No matter how crowded the room
may have been, surely we should have been able to sense the presence
of the Other. I hope you all have experienced that, when the person
you know so well, the person whom you trust and admire so much, seems
to leave some sort of radar-like signal that you and I can sense, even
without physical sight.

	 But so we know how often it happens that it’s as the person leaves
that we understand truly who the person is, and how important the
person is. It’s only because of what that special person has done
and has left behind that, all of a sudden, the light goes on, and we
know in whose Presence we have been. Then we’re encouraged, we’re
given hope because we know that that person cares enough to be with
us.

	 So with God. God doesn’t want to destroy us outright with
brilliance and glory. Discovering them fully simply has to wait for
another time. So God may touch us so lightly that we don’t think
much of it. God may whisper a word, or flash a smile, or laugh at a
joke, and then move on, leaving enough for us to be able to face up to
whatever people or situations are causing us fits, just as God did for
Moses.

	  This is what I find so helpful. Short of an audience, it can be
enormously reassuring.

	 Yet there’s more. As we realise that God has been present and
leaves us grace, so we may have our minds and eyes opened to discover
that God may have been working through all sorts of people and events,
and that they are symbols equal to anything else we may want and need.
The wonderfully made people of God are part of God’s plan for us, no
matter how strange, how different, how unexpected, even how apparently
unattractive such people and events may seem; no matter how much we
have been brought up to ignore or despise certain people or events,
God’s Presence IS there and can provide what we long for, even if
we’re taken aback by the messenger.

	 Let me give a reverse analogy. Remember Pigpen in the Charlie Brown
comic strip? There were times when he was stationary, talking with
other people, hair mussed, clothes ruffled, and so on. More often than
not, though, his presence was marked by a trail or dust, and dirt, and
many other objects sucked up in his path. I DID say that that was a
reverse analogy! Yet what if God, moving through our lives and the
lives of everyone in creation; what if God becomes known further to us
by the sparkling stardust OR by the blowing dust and garbage? What if
God appoints wonderful individuals to trail through our lives, perhaps
stop for a while to engage us, and then move on down the road or
across the street, even if those individuals are what we consider are
far from what WE might consider “wonderfully made”?

	 Nowhere does God say that we’re NOT wonderfully filled with the
abilities to make a difference to ourselves and others. It’s simply
a matter of expanding our imaginations, and being willing to look at
everything from different angles and open minds.

	 I love the Monty Python film “A Life of Brian”. Partly it’s
the ribald humour, but it’s also the way that God’s love can be
displayed so disarmingly through what the characters say and do.

	 Towards the end of the film, the characters are sitting in a room at
kind of a town hall meeting designed to devise ways to harass the
Roman occupiers and throw them out of Israel. John Cleese’s
character is leading and trying to arouse the crowd. He says, “Come
on! What have the Romans ever done for us?”

	 There’s some muttering and then one timid person pipes up,
“Aqueducts.”

	 There’s silence, astonished silence.

	 “Well, yes, I suppose,” says Cleese’s character, “but,
really, what HAVE the Romans ever done for us?”

	 Again, there’s silence until a voice says, “Irrigation.”

	 John Cleese is getting exasperated. This meeting isn’t going as
he’d planned, so he repeats the question a third time, only to hear
someone at the back of the room mutter, “Sanitation”.

	 And then a few more people in the crowd – supposedly a relatively
uneducated, pretty pliable mob – more people start to speak.
“Roads”.

	 “Well, of course they built roads. They had to build roads.”

	 “Wine”.

	 “Public safety”.

	 And the list goes on for several minutes until John Cleese, feeling
that the purpose of denigrating the Romans and building up people’s
anger against them is slipping out of his control, finally shouts,
“O.K. So, aqueducts, sanitation, roads, irrigation, education, wine,
public baths, public safety and order, medicine, fresh water system,
public health, peace. But what have the Romans REALLY done for us?”
3

	 It’s like Jesus surrounded by those quizzing Him and trying to
entrap Him. “O.K. Do we have to pay taxes?” 

	 “Let’s see a coin.” And, horror of horrors, one of the elite
is actually carrying a despised and, to a good Jew, defiling Roman
coin. “Whose likeness is that?” asked Jesus? “Well?”

	 Where was God that day? Where is God this day? When will we see God?
And how? And what has God done for us lately? 

	 “Always look on the bright side!”

	NOTES:

	[1]  Via “StoryPeople” by Brian Andreas, 13th October, 2017

	2 _“Wonder – Brother, give us a Word”,_ Br. David Vryhof,
S.S.J.E., 2nd October, 2017

	3 _“Life of Brian”,_ Monty Python film, produced in 1979,
directed by Terry Jones. Monty Python: What have the romans ever done
for us? - YouTube [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7tvauOJMHo [2]
Life of Brian Script - Scene 10: Before the Romans Things Were Smelly
[3] montypython.50webs.com/scripts/Life_of_Brian/10.htm

Links:
------
[1]
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjDz6_v6PrWAhUJ8WMKHQQJCZwQyCkILDAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DY7tvauOJMHo&usg=AOvVaw1CRKX7bzulJQhZkTfzsf-T
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7tvauOJMHo
[3]
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=16&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjDz6_v6PrWAhUJ8WMKHQQJCZwQFgh3MA8&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmontypython.50webs.com%2Fscripts%2FLife_of_Brian%2F10.htm&usg=AOvVaw1WDXrxQpxCSw3887ByHgVM

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