[Propertalk] 7 Easter b rcl

[Robert P Morrison]

Had a good time at a wedding this afternoon. Now here's what's on tap for tomorrow - with a baptism.

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL PARISH OF ST. JAMES, LINCOLN CITY  7 EASTER - SUNDAY AFTER THE ASCENSION B RCL 
ACTS 1:15-17, 21-26                24th MAY, 2009   
1 JOHN 5:9-13                          PSALM 1
JOHN 17:6-19

	"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." 1 That’s what the teenaged Anne Frank wrote in her diary, while in hiding from the Nazis. Nobody need wait a single second before starting to improve the world. To how many people do each of us need to say that? Not counting ourselves, of course - we ALL need to hear and to believe that.
	So often we get hung up on the size of the task in front of us, though. It looks huge, it looks unmanageable. So we stare at it and stare at it, and don’t do anything about it.
	It’s the same sort of feeling we have about who we are. We’re only one person. We don’t have much, if any, clout in any given community. We feel weak and powerless. So we believe that we can’t accomplish anything. So we don’t even try.
	Two sides of the same coin? The funny thing is that often it’s the least likely person or action that can awaken us to our vocation and our potential. No matter who we are, or think we are, God has called us and given us a purpose. God has given us the resources to accomplish whatever the task is. All we need, usually, is some sort of a catalyst to shake us out of our fear, our uncertainty, our unwillingness to believe that we can make a dent in the project. It’s always possible that the potential for embarrassment or failure has too tight a grip on us, but that shouldn’t mean that we don’t try.
                     Whether or not Michael Sean is able to conceptualise any of this, at age two, not even his size and its accompanying limitations, real and perceived, should inhibit him from being able to reach out to make his mark on the world. This may be a bit scary for Heather and for any others who are within his orbit, but that shouldn’t stop Michael from trying - nor any or us from encouraging him.
                    After all, that’s what Baptism symbolizes - the acknowledgement that Michael is an integral member of God’s family; our brother in Christ; someone on whom God is even now lavishing the gifts of the Spirit, in however rudimentary a form. This morning we’re all reaching out to Michael, and everyone else who’s been baptised, to affirm one another’s worth and to encourage one another to accept the challenge to begin every new day with a rush of mental, if not physical adrenalin. We’re called to affirm the dignity of every human being, so we can’t hold back when someone seeks to try her or his God-given grace in an effort to bring signs of God’s Laughter, and Joy, and Love to a world that seems kind of short of these at times.
	This past week I came across a reference to “Desert Solitaire”, a book by Edward Abbey in which he wrote about two summers spent in southwestern Utah. Wallace Stegner in the Los Angeles Times Book Review observed that “‘Desert Solitaire’ lives on because it is a work that reflects profound love of nature and a bitter abhorrence of all that would desecrate it. ‘Abbey is one of our very best writers about wilderness country,’ …’he is also a gadfly with a stinger like a scorpion.’” 2
	What caught my imagination, though, and seemed to act as a ray of sunlight by which to look once again at Baptism, and our relationship with God and one another; what caught my imagination about Jesus intense desire that we should be one with Him and with one another; what caught my imagination was Abbey’s comment, “I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.” 3
	The artist and observer of nature, Rod MacIver, asks, “Without joy, what would remain in the lives of the birds and animals in these woods? Life is often hard here. Not today. Today, the woods ring with song and the sun is shining, but there are days when the weather presents severe challenges to those who live here. Even now though, the residents of these woods must be alert for predators, and the predators face their own food concerns.”
                         This isn’t restricted to woodland birds and animals. I think it applies equally to humans. That may be why I was struck by MacIver’s very interesting comment that “The will to survive must be linked somehow to a sense of joy.”
That’s how I imagine Jesus, as He engaged others in ministry. That’s how I imagine Jesus, as He told the disciples to be about the business of baptizing - of bring folk closer and closer to God and to one another. That’s how I imagine Philip and the Ethiopian from the scripture passage a couple of Sundays ago. Baptism is an exciting mixture of the will to survive and a sense of joy.
                         Especially these days of economic uncertainty and what seems like an unusual increase in illness, we seem to concentrate much more on the will to survive. Of course it’s natural. Our whole being tends to focus on drawing oxygen into our systems and making sure we have something to eat. We pay so much attention to making sure that we satisfy our own needs, even at the expense of others, that we forget about the lavishness of God in scattering Love throughout the whole of creation. What we may need is to pay a bit more attention to two-year-olds to see the sense of joy that may be missing from our baptismal lives.
Not that two-year-olds are perfect. They demand; they’re fairly self-absorbed. But they’re not shy either about expressing their needs OR their delight in finding something that expands their imaginations and opens up whole new, as-yet unexplored possibilities. . Maybe THAT’S what witnessing is like - being so full of joy with the knowledge that God loves us, and that Jesus lives in us, that one can barely contain one’s self. Not in an obnoxious way, of course. After all, we ARE Episcopalians. But while we all have different gifts and vocations given us by God, we ALL share the same basic gift and vocation - to tell people about Jesus, specifically the RISEN Jesus. THAT’S why and how we live out the baptismal covenant - by telling people how much God values them. It’s so simple a two-year-old can do it!
                         If you can, put yourselves in the position of NOT being a member of a congregational family, yet seeking some meaning in life. Think of yourself perhaps as having stopped attending or having been put off attending Church because of someone’s attitude and behaviour. Imagine what it may be like to be seeking God, yet somehow unable to participate in the life of a faith-family.
Now think about how a two-year old can welcome people, after initial shyness may be overcome. There’s a sort of incredible joie-de-vivre about such a person. The child almost rushes from one person to the next, as if to say “Look at me; Look what I’ve discovered; See how much fun I’m having. I want you to be able to join in this with me, to share in my uninhibited pleasure.”
                      THAT’S what knowing God’s love is like. It should be so infection that we can hardly contain ourselves, not to beat someone into submission, but simply to be present and willing to share whatever we have, and whatever the other has to offer. THIS is what I suspect Jesus is getting at when He prays that we “may be one, as (He and His father) are one.” It’s a reassurance that whether things are going well or badly; whether we feel alone or caught up in the enthusiasm of friends; no matter what’s happening and with what we may be struggling, Jesus’ love is a constant and cannot NOT be shared.
                       On the face of it, the first reading this morning may seem like a bit of a downer - the situation is set up by Judas’ seeming total misunderstanding of what Jesus’ ministry was all about. But out of the uneasiness came the realisation that the apostles HAD to keep adding to their number. So Matthias was chosen. Why? To be “a witness to (Jesus’) resurrection”. Simply to tell people not only about the life and the sacrificial love of Jesus as He brought others to understand how much God cares for us. But also specifically to tell about Jesus’ resurrection.
THAT’S why it’s important to baptise Michael Sean this morning - to bring one more person into the family so that he can, in his own way, begin to tell people that there’s a wonderful, unquenchable hope despite and in the midst of the chaos that surrounds us.
                         Bonnie Anderson, the President of the General Convention House of Deputies, wrote to all the deputies this week. She described how she’d fallen away from the church denomination of her childhood. A neighbor asked her and her family “to go to church. It was an Episcopal Church. As I sat there waiting for the service to begin,” she wrote, “I thumbed through the prayer book and found the Catechism. In the Catechism, in answer to the question, ‘Who are the ministers of the Church?’ I read that in this church the ministers are the laity, the bishops and priests and deacons. And you know what? My heart started thumping in my chest and I believed what I read and I said, ‘Where do I sign up?’” 4
                             Michael can be just like that neighbor was to Bonnie Anderson. YOU can be like that neighbor. None of us needs to be perfect before we do this - none of us CAN be perfect. But ALL of us can be so enthused about our baptismal inclusion that we move beyond the mode of survival to the mode of joyful living.
                            To paraphrase what Jesus said to His followers, “Unless you become like a little two-year-old, with all her and his wriggling enthusiasm, and willingness to tackle anything and everything with gusto, then you’ve missed the point of what I’ve been trying to say.”
                            God help us never to miss the point of what He’s still trying to say!

NOTES:
1	Anne Frank   Diary of a Young Girl, 1952 German Jewish diarist (1929 - 1945) 
2	Desert Solitaire Edward Abbey, 1927- Desert solitaire : a season in the wilderness / by Edward Abbey ; drawings by Peter Parnall. 1st Touchstone ed www.abbeyweb.net/books/ea/desert_solitaire.html 
3	“Desert Solitaire” Edward Abbey: quoted by Rod MacIver in Heron Dances heron at herondance.org
4	Reflection given by Bonnie Anderson to “The Living Stones”: 2/9/09

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

541-994-2426 (Church)