[Propertalk] 5 Easter b rcl

[Robert P Morrison]

This is probably up for revision before Sunday morning, but here's what I have down so far.

Happy wine-making!

Bob


THE EPISCOPAL PARISH OF ST. JAMES, LINCOLN CITY            5 EASTER B RCL 
 ACTS 8:26-40                       10rd MAY, 2009   
1 JOHN 4:7-21                       PSALM 22:24-30      
JOHN 15:1-8

	“Delaying medical care is a characteristic of poverty. For people living close to the edge, taking off a day to visit a doctor or staying home sick is literally taking food out of their mouths.” 
	These were the words of Paul Gertler, a professor of economics at UC Berkeley, commenting on why some in Mexico self-medicated before receiving treatment for swine flu. 1They’re a heart-wrenching commentary on the status of world-wide society. Fortunately, things seem to be smoothing out a little - and perhaps the initial reaction WAS over-reacting. Or was it? ANY sort of a delay can be fatal. Medical providers talk about the golden hour - the first sixty minutes after the recognition of a patient experiencing a stroke, and the administration of what are becoming fairly common-place drugs can now, literally, save a life.
	Any sort of a delay can be critical - not heeding the warning to get to higher ground when a tsunami siren sounds along the beach here; failing to open one’s door when someone is being attacked or has been injured in front of one’s house; refusing to respond when asked to contact legislators when the Matthew Shepherd hate crimes bill came up before the Senate last week. Delay CAN be fatal, in any and all of these instances.
	First, last week, when I came across Professor Gertler’s comment, I fixed on the tragedy of delay. But then I looked at what he posited was at least one of the causes - poverty - and my mind began to wonder about how that poverty is manifested among us. It’s certainly present when people simply have no economic means to respond, or to care for themselves and their families. But poverty may be even worse when it describes one’s spirit, one’s conscience, one’s very being. The person who is God’s image, yet is impoverished in spirit or motivation, is indeed a tragic figure. The “God” may be said to have been denied.
	What we’re about, as Christians, is exactly the opposite. What we’re about is not only lavishly bringing into play every last ounce of each resource at our own disposal. It’s also working to persuade every other individual whom we meet to assume the same attitude of lavish expenditure. As Christians, we’re called “not to count the cost”, as St Ignatius’ prayer 2 has it, but simply to give what we have in order to bring health to body, and mind, and spirit, whether it’s for someone in Lincoln City, or someone in Mexico City, or someone - anywhere.
	The reading about Philip and the Ethiopian court officer shows God’s loving generosity in action in this way on different levels.	
	The man had been struggling to understand those in whose country he’d spent some time on official business. He was more than intrigued. It seemed that he wanted to become one with the people of Israel, so impressed was he by what he’d experienced. And although he could read the words, he couldn’t understand what they meant. That’s when Philip was impelled by the Spirit to open the man’s understanding and to show him the Love of God in Jesus.
	Again - this is PRECISELY what we’re to be about. We’re to be able to respond when we find someone needing an explanation, needing some comfort, needing acceptance. We’re simply to tell our story to the other, to share how God has touched our lives and continues to be present.
	The thing to note, though, is that delay in hearing God call us to this ministry may seriously hurt others. Philip, no matter what he’d been doing, no matter how busy he’d been, or how recently he’d come to terms with Jesus’ resurrection himself, Philip responded right away. Had he delayed; had be claimed that he needed another couple of credits at the Jerusalem Bible School and Missionary Academy before engaging anyone in the new theology; had Philip said, “Wait a minute. The disciples and we deacons don’t quite have our act together. We’ve still got a lot to work out before we can claim to demonstrate any degree of unity among ourselves. Maybe some of the others don’t think Ethiopian eunuchs are the sort of folk with whom we should hang around.” If Philip had delayed, then only God knows what might or might not have happened for that man who was travelling back to his life and vocation in Ethiopia.
	Philip was, literally, RIGHT there, exactly in response to the needs of that man. Nor did the fact that he was only one make the slightest bit of difference.
	There ARE times when we have to respond with no delay - and to do otherwise is to show poverty of spirit.
 	A report I read this past week only intensified my feelings about responding to God’s needs with urgency. “There is terrible news out of the state of Chattisgarh in India -- over 1,500 farmers have committed suicide as a result of lack of water for their crops. 
 	“The crop failures are causing farmers to fall into ever deepening levels of debt until there's no escape except via death. 
 	“This is dramatic evidence of what researchers have been saying for years: access to clean water is one of the simplest and best ways to help poor communities. Not only do you help people avoid the terrible health problems associated with dirty water, but you also help ensure the livelihood for those who depend on agriculture to survive.” 3
	For the people of Chattisgarh, and thousands of other areas around the world, help is needed NOW - OUR help!
 	For the people of Lincoln City - without medication, with bills piling up, with fewer and fewer sources of help, a response is being sought NOW. 
 	I’d venture to guess, however, that in every case where there’s confusion and desperation, having someone sit with one, finding a way to be truly present to one, would go a long way to helping the other. It doesn’t decrease the financial indebtedness; it doesn’t bring back to life the humans or the animals who’ve died of disease, or malnutrition, or thirst. But it DOES say, I am here to be as close to you as you can let me be, and as close as you want me to be.
	This should never be a case of one person forcing one’s self on another - as if to say, only I can help you. The Ethiopian had the freedom to decide whether or not to invite Philip to come up alongside him. But as Jesus says to us, so must we say to the world: we are engrafted to one another, and by this engrafting we can find the power to resist disease. In the twining of our branches - just as in the twining of fingers of those who care about one another - so we find strength, and comfort, and nourishment for our souls.
	Catherine of Siena wrote about being one with Jesus and God in this way. She said:
	 And you, high eternal Trinity, 
	 acted as if you were drunk with love, 
	infatuated with your creature. 
	When you saw that this tree could bear no fruit 
	 but the fruit of death 
	 because it was cut off from you who are life, 
	 you came to its rescue 
	 with the same love 
	 with which you had created it: 
	 you engrafted your divinity 
	 into the dead tree of our humanity. 
	 O sweet tender engrafting! 
	 You, sweetness itself, 
	 stooped to join yourself 
	 with our bitterness. 4
  
	It’s through our engrafting on to Jesus, the stem of Jesse, that we find both the power and the drive to fill our own lives with hope and with joy - and then to reach out to others.
	I find it a sad reflection of individualism that there are so many today - it seems there are more all the time - who say that they can read their Bibles, they can pray to God, they can engage in good work, they can call themselves Christian, all by themselves, or with a few, well-chosen, similarly-minded people. If there’s one thing both Old and New Testaments emphasise, it’s the fact that while God calls into community, God never calls us to live with only those who agree with us, or who think as we do, or who act as we do.
	Lane Denson of Nashville wrote this week that both the story of Philip and the unnamed Queen’s councilor and the parable of Jesus made him “think of the way Garrison Keillor closes out his daily Writer’s Workshop with the salutation, ‘Be well. Do good work. And keep in touch.’
	“There’s something of a ‘stinger’ in both stories. For Jesus, it’s the fact that unless we abide in him, there’ll be no grapes. For Keillor, the reminder to stay healthy and to work hard is obvious, but pointless, if we don’t ‘keep in touch.’
	“For life is about connection, about being connected, about keeping in touch. We are created for community and given Holy Spirit to enable it. One of God’s first reflections in the Garden of Eden as he imagined us into being was that we not be alone.” As we’ll be reminded in a couple of weeks whgen we celebrate God’s Sacrament of Baptism, “Abiding in Jesus — and in one another — is the churcher's way of keeping in touch. And keeping in touch is the groundswell of the church’s ministry to ourselves and to the world. The vitality symbolized in the vine is essential if our ministry would bear the fruit of peace and justice and love.
	“So how do we do that?
	“Some communities,’ wrote Lane, “some churches, do it by requiring members and potential members to believe alike, by requiring them to make and adopt a common confession. They’re actually called ‘confessional churches.’ They're not so connected as they are bound.” 5
	This sort of thinking may be behind the motivation of those who claim that there’s only one way to interpret the Bible; there’s only one way to understand human relationships; there’s only one way - MY way - to live in the world.
	Thank God, that NOT how Jesus taught, though. Yes, Jesus expected us to be together, to worship, to work, to explore life, to find strength to help in time of need. Jesus knew that we’ll always need one another. But the good news is that Jesus never called us to be identical or even to agree all the time, except when it comes to loving God and loving one another. I’d venture a guess that only associating with those whom we find comfortable and agreeable is an example of the sort of poverty of which that economics professor talked, and that if we delay in breaking out of such ruts, then we CAN become dis-eased, and withered, and, ultimately, only the bearer of bitter fruit, if any at all.
	Lane Denson sees OUR call as being to resist that, and instead developing a “living, changing, and vital life of commitment and love with roots and branches and fruit.”
	 As Catherine went on to say of Jesus, “You, then, are my workers. You have come from me, the supreme eternal gardener, and I have engrafted you onto the vine by making myself one with you. 
	“Keep in mind that each of you has your own vineyard. But everyone  
is joined to the neighbors’ vineyards without any dividing lines. They are so joined together, in fact, that you cannot do good or evil for yourself without doing the same for your neighbors.” 6
	Who knows whom God has planned for you to meet in the next few days? Who knows what sharing community in God’s Name will do to bolster someone living in poverty? Who knows how many lives will be saved by bringing people and water together? Who knows what this meeting and sharing will do for each of US?!
	And that’s the news from Lake Gennesaret this week.

NOTES:

 	 Paul J. Gertler,. Source: The Washington Post  quoted in Sojourners, Thursday 7th May, 2009 http://go.sojo.net/ct/T7_NXw41mETp/
2	Prayer of Saint Ignatius Loyola:  Teach us, Good Lord, / To Serve Thee as Thou deservest; / To give and not to count the cost; / To fight and not to heed the wounds; / To labor and not to ask for any reward, / save that of knowing that we do Thy will. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.  
3	“Care 2 make a difference”   www.care2.com/c2c/share/detail/1126329  Take action link: http://www.care2.com/go/z/e/AFmf0/zj7K/ANkyM
4	“engrafted to divinity"  Catherine of Siena (d.1380) The Prayers of Catherine of Siena, ed. Suzanne Noffke  Meditation One  from http://www.edgeofenclosure.org/mysticaljourney/easter5b.html 
5	“Out of Nowhere” by Lane Denson. Connections Easter 5B Jn 15.1-8 http://covpubs.org/oon/2008/04/24/connections-3/
6	“engrafted to neighbors” Catherine of Siena, Dialogue, The Vines That Are Tended by the Divine  Gardener (quoted from Mystics Visionaries and Prophets, Shawn Madigan, CSJ, editor)  


--
Robert P. Morrison
The Episcopal Parish of St James,
PO Box 789
Lincoln City, Oregon, 97367

541-994-2426 (Church)