[Propertalk] Proper 18 a 2017 - part 1

[Robert P Morrison]

This is "raw footage", so to speak - unedited.
Part one of a sermon begun sometime last week and given an ending last
night.
Peace and hope in the midst of water, smoke, fire - oh, and locusts.
Anyone seen any locusts?

Bob

	THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST ALBAN, ALBANY THE FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER
PENTECOST

	EXODUS 12:1-14    10th SEPTEMBER, 2017

	ROMANS 13:8-14   PROPER 18a

	MATTHEW 18:15-20     PSALM 149

	 The wonderful musician, Jordi Savall, who is also a renowned
musicologist, wrote, “‘I believe that people conserve their music
through the generations because this music is very important to them.
It helps people to survive. You are Scottish – (I liked that part)
– you are Scottish – well, think of the Scot in America. He uses
the music to remember his origins. This helps people to survive, so it
is important to them, in their hearts. We use our music to identify
ourselves.’

	“This comes quite naturally from a Catalan, who says he can feel at
home in Madrid or Grenada, or Istanbul, or Sarajevo, but never forgets
the soil from which he sprang. ‘All of us have to preserve a certain
dignity for ourselves. In small countries, if they are part of bigger
states or they are overshadowed by great nations, we have to speak our
language and preserve our culture. You don’t have to be an academic
to understand this. It is natural.’

	…”Cultural homogeneity, he says, is a mistake because the
attraction of people becoming more universal is an illusion. ‘A
person is always right to defend his own roots – not in opposition
to other cultures but simply because this is part of him. I can read
books at home written in Spanish. If they are written in Catalan, they
are different. That is who I am.’” 1

	I find this extremely interesting, not only because I am in this
country which is not the land of my birth, but also because I am a
Christian in a culture and land which is increasingly less and less
Christian, however we define this. And because I am deeply influenced
by music, I resonate with the idea that, in order to survive, I need
to remember things that remind me of who I am, and, among these things
is music, composed in certain styles, performed in some particular
ways, which talk to me about my immediate past as well as my ancestral
past. Similarly with my faith.

	Notice that neither Jordi Savill nor I am saying anything about other
music – whether it’s “good or bad”, whatever that may mean.
Savall, in fact, is quite clear to point out that another individual
has her or his own particular set of musical impressions and memories
which talk about roots and philosophies which are not the same as
anyone else’s. He’s just saying that we each have our own story,
even if it IS connected in some way to the stories of others who have
come together to live and benefit from particular cultural families.
Like the Scot Savall mentioned, that person may remember and
appreciate specific aspects of Scottishness which nourish other Scots
who may live nearby, or are connected in some way.

	All of this prompted me to think about how we live and interrelate as
individuals and as communities – communities of faith, communities
of culture, any sort of community in which we may be engaged.

	We’re so prone to following the lead of other voices. We’re being
taught not only to isolate ourselves from one another, but we’re
being taught to reject, to despise, to try to eradicate the values of
others. We’re encouraged by so many forces, from the media, to
advertising, even to the act of sitting having coffee with someone;
we’re encouraged to impose our wills and views in such a way that it
seems that we want to wipe away that which makes others “them” as
individuals. It’s as if we’re saying that there’s no place for
difference; there’s no place for remembrance; there’s no place for
honouring our ancestral roots which bring us the reassurances as well
as the questions on which we depend for our daily lives.

	I wonder if you remember the heartbreaking words of Psalm 137 “How
shall we sing the Lord’s song upon an alien soil?”

	The majority of the people of the nation of Judah had been taken to
Babylon as slaves after their country was ransacked and their iconic
buildings knocked down or desecrated. They felt that they could no
longer remember the songs, the music, the very heart of their faith
because everything about them was different, from the geographical
surroundings to their social status. They could not remember what it
was that God had spoken to Moses when they were in similar anguish in
Egypt almost a thousand years previously, the story that we heard once
again this morning.

	I am with you, God said, despite the pain and the bitterness. I am
with you and I am going to give you something to hold on to as you are
about to find release from everything that troubles you. I am with you
as you discover that you’re going to have to live differently;
you’re going to have to take on some difficult tasks. Things won’t
be the same, but I want you to hold on tight to what I am about to
give you. “This day (, said God,) shall be a day of remembrance for
you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your
generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.” 

	We – the whole world’s population – cry out for release from
slavery placed on us by all sorts of agents.

	We’re slaves of time. We think we never have enough of it. We start
something then, almost in unison, our spiritual and mental ADD kicks
in. We arrive somewhere; we begin a journey or a task; we open our
hearts to someone; until we start to think about time. Are we spending
too much time on this? Might we be better employed doing something
else? We get nervous about silence, about listening, about reflecting,
possibly afraid that we have to fill the silence with noise rather
than risking hearing something. Or are we afraid we’ll miss
something else?

	To this, God says, This is the day, the time, the moment I have made
for you. Savour it. Examine it. You WILL find freedom in it.

	Or we’re afraid of what we see around us.

	There’s so much that’s destructive; there’s so much that makes
us feel that everything is out of control. We see people whose
opinions are opposed to those with which we’ve grown up and on which
we’ve based our identities.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://stsams.org/pipermail/propertalk_stsams.org/attachments/20170907/bc21974a/attachment.htm>