[Propertalk] Proper 8 b 2018 - part 2 b

[Robert P Morrison]

I hope that this is the last part...

	 THIS is what it means to live in community. Maybe this is why David,
and Saul, and Jonathan, and many in Israel were having such a time.
They had lost sight of the connectedness which binds everyone
together. Personal wealth, personal control, individuals and only
close friends over everyone else, this was what mattered to them,
apparently. 

	 Maybe this was going on in the lives of the woman, the young girl
and the others in the Gospel story too. Quite possibly they lacked
community to care for them – the woman had fallen foul of the
medical system which took her money and did next to nothing; the
synagogue leader and his family may have been isolated because
everyone else thought that they were behaving in such a way that put
them above others. We don’t know. But we DO know how people on our
own streets, and in our own communities, act, so it’s not a stretch
to see how communities extend only so far and break down so readily. 

	 There’s a medical term used to describe those whose lives seem to
have lost meaning and is affecting their entire physical systems.
It’s called “failure to thrive”, and it can happen when
communities of support disappear, and when others can begin to prey on
them. 

	 Jesus’ point in healing both the people in the story is to restore
them to mainstream society and, in order to facilitate that, He told
the girl’s family to feed her, to allow her to assume her normal
role in the home and in the village. The older woman, we assume, was
given a similar gift. She was given back to the others in the
community. 

	 Interesting that Jesus said, “Feed her.” Kind of like the
unspoken words in White Salmon. “Feed them.” If you won’t, who
will? Or the people around here, the people who come to our doors; who
go to FISH, not more than a couple of blocks from here; or who go to
St. Mary’s, or to Helping Hands. 

	 “Set them on their feet and give them the means to be steady.”
It’s what everyone needs to hear said of them at least once, if not
way more often in their lives. 

	 Frances seems to be doing pretty well on this score these days,
though. But she’s not quite at the stage of providing for all of her
own needs. She has to have folk look out for her. Even more so Evelyn.
She has to have so much more support. So she’s been brought here
this morning by people wanting to ensure the quality of her community.
She, her sister, her parents and her other relatives seek nothing but
the best. And she and her retinue look to us to provide the supportive
socialization that will help her grow as a human in God’s image. 

	 The expectations that we place on her – or rather, that Jesus
places on her – are really high, just as they are for us. She must
learn from us what dignity is and means. She must learn from us what
it means never to discriminate, for any reason. She must learn from us
how to respond to the image of God everyone on earth bears, and then
she must be able to make this her own manner of life, so that she will
be able to respond whenever and wherever she can – to be an
instrument of God’s healing to women young and old; to communities
torn apart by prejudice and anger; to people who mourn the loss of
their friends AND their enemies. 

	 Like us, Evelyn’s not here just for the bread. She’s here for
the bread AND the community, both of which Frances has found and
enjoys already. 

	 There are people, perhaps people whose needs might surprise us;
there ARE people who may be saying, right now, right around us, as
well as around the world, “If people don’t give, we don’t
eat.” 

	 Baptism, coming into the family of God and a sibling relationship
with Jesus; Baptism calls us to be alert – to needs, to
relationships, to communities.   

	NOTES: 

	1 Prayer of Confession, The Book of Common Prayer, Church Publishing,
Inc., New York, N.Y. © 1979, page 360, et al.  

	2 Forest-dwelling monks have kept an obscure Buddhist tradition alive
in the Columbia River Gorge with the help of the White Salmon,
Washington, community. Buddhist Monastery Survives In Columbia River
Gorge Through ... - OPB [1]
https://www.opb.org/.../buddhist-monastery-white-salmon-washington-thai-forest-gor
[2]... 

	3 John Donne, originally in prose in Meditation 17 Devotions upon
Emergent Occasions. No Man Is An Island Poem by John Donne - Poem
Hunter https://www.poemhunter.com › Poems › No Man Is An Island
[3] __


Links:
------
[1]
https://www.opb.org/artsandlife/article/buddhist-monastery-white-salmon-washington-thai-forest-gorge/
[2]
https://www.opb.org/.../buddhist-monastery-white-salmon-washington-thai-forest-gor
[3]
http://mail2.spectrum.net/file:///J:/No%20Man%20Is%20An%20Island%20Poem%20by%20John%20Donne%20-%20Poem%20Hunter%20%20https:/www.poemhunter.com%20›%20Poems%20›%20No%20Man%20Is%20An%20Island

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