[Propertalk] Proper 8 b 2018 - part 1

[Robert P Morrison]

Here's what's on the drawing board for this weekend, which brings the
baptism of Evelyn born on the second of April this year. Her older
sister, Frances, was baptized a couple of years ago.

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

	2 SAMUEL 1:1, 17-27 PROPER 8 b 

	2 CORINTHIANS 8:7-15 1st JULY, 2018 

	MARK 5:21-43  PSALM 130 

	 “Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in
thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have
left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not
loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly
repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and
forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your name. Amen.” 1 

	 “We have sinned against you.” Think about that. How? Why? “We
have not loved you with our whole heart.” 

	 Well, I can understand that. Sort of. I know how easy it can be to
become sidetracked, to blink mentally, and to lose track of who is the
ground, the reason for our living. It’s easy to forget that our
catechetical goal is to make God excited and happy by the way that we
strive, every day, to find and perform what we perceive is God’s
desire for us for each particular day. 

	 Lord, how I, how we all, fall short of that. 

	 But then, there’s that other part in the way we have sinned
against God. “We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.” 

	 If we thought it was tough to love God, how much harder is it to
love our neighbours. 

	 One example, perhaps. 

	  “If people don’t give, the monks don’t eat.” 2 

	 What a stark sentence, yet one which is taken in stride by the monks
themselves. The comment came from an article about Buddhist monks who
live in community near White Salmon, Washington. Community, however,
means more than just the monks. Community means more than just the
people of White Salmon and its environs. Community means citizens,
monks, and everyone else in the world all together. That’s what
makes the comment so arresting. It makes the point also of the way in
which what one in the community has, or what one in the community does
NOT have, affects the entire community. 

	 “No man is an island,
  Entire of itself,
  Every man is a piece of the continent,
  A part of the main.
  If a clod be washed away by the sea,
  Europe is the less.
  As well as if a promontory were.
  As well as if a manor of thy friend's
  Or of thine own were:
  Any man's death diminishes me,
  Because I am involved in mankind,
  And therefore never send to know for whom the  bell tolls; 
  It tolls for thee.” 3 

	 John Donne, in this famous writing, makes it clear that human beings
do badly when living or acting in isolation. It is in community in
which they thrive. As one commentator put it, Donne’s comments
resonate not just in Christianity, although that they do. But this
appreciation about community and commonality echoes throughout most
other religious practices, most especially in Buddhism. Which makes it
all the more apt to think about Donne’s words and the life and
ministry of the double communities on the north bank of the Columbia
at the same time. 

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