[Propertalk] Proper 20 a 2017 - homily - part 1

[Robert P Morrison]

I heard a TED Radio Talk on Sunday as I drove to lunch, and started
writing this then. Of course, I'll read it over many times...
Happy Tuesday!
Bob

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

	EXODUS 17:1-7  PROPER 21 a

	PHILIPPIANS 2:1-13  1st OCTOBER, 2017

	MATTHEW 21:23-32   PSALM78:1-4, 12-16 

	 How many of you have a God-complex? I’m really curious. I know I
do, from time to time, and it’s not because I get to be up front
here, talking or gesturing with my hands. It’s because, according to
the thought of one economist, 1 I and many, many others can have
difficulties with failing. People are so used to being told that if
one fails, if one doesn’t do well in things as varied as choosing
dessert for a dinner party, to answering a difficult question, to
making a really important decision in life; people are becoming used
to being told that they’re a failure that it becomes embedded in
their personalities. And how we deal with this can be both visible and
invisible, to ourselves as well as others.

	 What really intrigued me the other day was when that economist
suggested that some people respond to failure, especially when
they’re told repeatedly that they’ve failed; what intrigued me is
that they shove that thought, that experience, to the back of their
minds. They refuse to listen to any suggestion that they’ve failed
in the past and that it’s in their DNA to fail again and again. They
think about ignoring mistakes and failures, even if they’re
deliberate. So they take on a God-complex. They begin to think that
they’re incapable of failing.

	 But only God doesn’t fail. Only God gets it right all the time.
Only God doesn’t need to take into account whether or not what
happened last week was good or is never to enter God’s thinking
again.

	 So if God is the only One who DOESN’T fail, then that means that
WE DO fail, way more often than we admit. But the great news, the
wonderful news, is that this never stops God from loving us, from
caring for us, for being right there with us, ALL THE TIME! 

	 We’re back with the Hebrew people in the desert, the wilderness,
back to the whining short memories, to not being able or willing to
think about everything that’s gone right. We might be accused for
thinking that God might take a page out of Ronald Reagan’s playbook
and say, “There you go again!”, as if to imply that, of course, we
the people repeat ourselves in both word and deed.

	 Yes, we DO! In fact, if we didn’t, if we didn’t challenge, if we
didn’t question what’s happening, if we didn’t bring up the same
things that continue to trouble us, then we’d be failing in our
responsibility as God’s children.

	 God longs to hear what’s going on in our lives. God doesn’t want
us to hold back, although I’m sure that God would breathe a little
easier if we managed to relax a bit and get it right now and again.

	 Notice that it’s Moses who’s so worked up, as Peggy said last
week. Moses was human too. HE wasn’t God, even if God chose him to
speak out from time to time. Moses, like us, was completely human.
Maybe he was thinking like ‘enry ‘iggins in “My Fair Lady” –
“Why can’t humans be more like God?”

	 So God took him by the hand, and whispered that Moses gather up some
of his good friends, and that they all let their blood pressure settle
back down, that they get away by themselves. Then God asked them how
they coped when things went right the last time they ran into a
problem. God had them think of the positives and set aside the
negatives.

	 How like us this should be! I can’t read your minds, for which
I’m really thankful, so I don’t know what you think, but I suspect
that, like me, when something goes less than satisfactorily, we dwell
on that. When we find that we’re hurt or feel threatened by a
particular person or situation, then we remember that. We don’t look
for the positive.

	 This, in itself, tends to be part of our makeup as human beings.
Since we AREN’T God, then perhaps this is another point in our lives
in which we admit the failure, but set it aside, to think of what good
can come out of it.

	 Moses was told to confide in his friends. He was to listen and speak
with people whom he trusted. He was to learn to let stuff roll off his
back, because GOD had his back. 

	 God’s NOT saying that there’s nothing more fun than a Saturday
or Sunday morning spent imagining all the ways in which we mess up.
What God IS saying is that before we even start running over in our
minds what’s been happening, that we take a deep breath, that we
repeat silently or out loud, “God is in this place”; “God is
present;” “God cares.” Then we can go on from there. We can
admit our human frailty, but we can bring to the front of our minds
what went well; what we really enjoyed; what gave us hope; what really
fed us richly.

	 In addition to gathering his friends, Moses was told to go to find
his staff. “Remember what you had with you when you felt your world
was falling apart?” God said. “O, yes! My staff!” NOT the
people, although they ARE important, but the tool which he’d been
given by God. Use that with which God has blessed you. Keep it close
to you. Lean on it, as a visible sign that things DO go well.

	 What do you and I have that can act like that for us? Remember the
definition of a Sacrament? “An outward and visible sign of the grace
of God for you and with you.” What is sacramental to us? A photo of
a loved one, or of a really happy occasion; a letter; a tangible gift,
chosen for each of us and given to each one carefully; a book; a poem
– something that shines colour into our lives – any and all of
these may inspire us to feel the loving presence of God as well as of
some other person, whether physically there or not.

	 Think back to the times when someone or something was given to us at
precisely the right time when we seemed to be headed to a new low in
our lives; and remember how that person, that object, brought a smile
to our lips and a warm feeling in our hearts and minds. These are
wonderful graces from God, designed not just for the moment we receive
them, but to take with us for the rest of our lives.


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