[Propertalk] 3 Easter b 2018 - part 1

[Robert P Morrison]

Here's a draft I typed up from notes yesterday. I'll split it in two
and let the chips fall where they ma.
Bob

	THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY    3 EASTER b 

	ACTS 3:12-19     15th APRIL, 2018 

	1 JOHN 3:1-7    PSALM 4 

	LUKE 24:36b-48 

	 “When I was twenty-five,” wrote the author of a book I’m
reading. 

	 Gosh! Twenty-five! Oh, to be twenty-five! What was I doing then?
What did I think I might accomplish? Did I imagine I’d be standing
here? 

	 Hardly! 

	 But, twenty-five, with my whole life in front of me, sounds about an
age when anything would be possible. 

	 In actuality, though, twenty-five was just about when Jesus began
His ministry. Twenty-five was almost half-as-much again as the age of
the disciples of Jesus. He’d been dead, and buried, and resurrected
before they were even near twenty-five. Even Paul, none of whose
writings were read today, even Paul wasn’t likely to have been
twenty-five when Jesus knocked his socks off. 

	 Twenty-five, then, is an age when we think we can accomplish
anything and still have the energy to do it. 

	 So, back to the book! 

	 “When I was twenty-five, I served in the Peace Corps in northern
Zambia, near the Congo-Zaire border. When I left home, I looked
forward to meeting people as brave and adventurous as I wanted to be.
The villagers welcomed me generously, but I felt lonely many nights,
in a strange place with a different language and different food. Not
fitting in, in that environment, was not a surprise. But I also
remember the nights I sat around fire pits with other volunteers.
Often there were tall stacks of beer crates nearby. In the background,
a never-ending series of drinking games went on. One night, a Peace
Corps volunteer I’ll call Ralph turned to me and said, ‘I don’t
trust people who don’t get drunk.’ Because I didn’t drink
alcohol, well, he didn’t trust me. 

	 “From that conversation and several similar evenings, I understood
that I didn’t really fit in among those volunteers either. 

	 “After the Peace Corps I moved to New York City, still hoping to
find the group to which I would belong. A pastor on Manhattan’s East
Side introduced me to wisdom from C.S. Lewis’s lecture ‘The Inner
Ring”. Lewis wrote that we all want to enter inner rings of
exclusivity. … This desire drives good people to do very bad things.
It’s the unrecognized cause of a lot of unhappiness.” Lewis
further explains that, unfortunately, when we do get inside those
exclusive rings, we always discover that there’s an even more
attractive and exclusive ring beyond. … this is the trap of the
inner ring. 

	“Lewis’s solution was to find something we like to do and do it
often. Then invite others to join us if they like doing that thing
too.” 1 

	 Fitting in, belonging, being made to feel comfortable and welcome
– the author, Charles Vogl, was unable to find that. Somehow,
society wasn’t ready for him. 

	 How, then, did Jesus get on? Or His disciples? 

	 Setting aside the fact that life expectancy then was less than ours
by a fair bit, those disciples actually did reasonably well. Oh, they
didn’t manage to avoid annoying the authorities. But, on the other
hand, they DID manage to attract people who were at least willing to
listen to their descriptions of Jesus’ life, His conversations, and
the way that His resurrection had changed their lives completely. 

	 Somehow, the desire to fit in, the longing to be appreciated, the
hope for accolades and a huge Facebook following wasn’t what
governed their lives. All of a sudden, as Vogl learned, they
discovered that when they found something they liked to do, and did it
often, they experienced incredible satisfaction. 

	 Of course, there must have been days when people – leaders,
socialites, and so on – tried to demean them, to shout them down, to
ridicule them, to bring pressure to bear to make their lives seem such
a burden. But the disciples probably remembered that evening when
Jesus popped in for a fish supper. They were so down – what we’ve
heard for the past couple of weeks – brutality, inhumanity,
degradation at any cost, without regard that we’re talking about the
treatment of human beings – this was NOT on the disciples’ list of
favourite, encouraging activities. Yet they were able not only to
weather it through, but actually to flourish. 

	 It’s amazing what Jesus’ resurrection appearances managed to do
for the disciples. They were, after seeing Jesus and talking to Him,
they were able to work with and encourage anyone who’d listen and,
for the most part, they were able to forget about the “inner
ring’s exclusivity” and to get down to the business of trying to
help others find the same joy, the same enthusiasm, the same
compassion that they had found. 

	 I can’t help but think of what James Howard presented to the BAC
back in January – the goal not simply of inviting warm bodies to sit
in the pews, but the goal to expand this community, to make sure that
everyone of the outside knows that each is welcome. More than that,
though. The goal is to encourage everyone inside to talk to everyone
– yes, I said EVERYONE! – outside about what’s important to us
in our lives, what helps us face all the discouragements. 

	 The goal to which Charles Vogl pointed in his book; the goal to
which this new committee of the BAC is pointing, is what is described
in all the post-Easter experiences of Jesus. Last week and this week,
Jesus is described as appearing to the disciples – who don’t
recognize Him at first. It was as if, somehow, He didn’t belong. He
wasn’t a part of them. He was a stranger, an intruder, a foreigner,
and a scary one at that, who, somehow, burst into their group. 

	
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