[Propertalk] Last Pentecost b RCL

[Robert P Morrison]

We go to our diocesan convention this Thursday and begin elections for a new bishop on Friday - prayers requested! 8 - )

The whole shindig ends on Saturday, so I got to this early, although it should be polished a bit as the week goes on.

Comments, etc, will be considered with thanks 8 - ]

Bob


THE EPISCOPAL PARISH OF ST. JAMES, LINCOLN CITY              PROPER 29 B RCL
2 SAMUEL 23:1-7          THE LAST SUNDAY OF PENTECOST – CHRIST THE KING
REVELATION 1:4b-8	                      	 22nd NOVEMBER, 2009
JOHN 18:33-37	                        	 PSALM 32:1-19

	Lane Denson wrote, a couple of weeks ago, “One of the reassurances in the wake and celebration for Ted Kennedy has not only been the reminders of his loss and his remarkable family and their leadership. But even more importantly as a friend of mine said, that ‘he not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, but to be remembered simply as a good and decent man who saw wrong and made it right.’
	“Her insight affirms that in his absence as a lawmaker it is also the inherent rights of the poor and the marginalized built in to the very fabric of our country for which and for whom we must also grieve. There have never been as many champions of the poor as there are those who in the blindness of their bootstrap economics simply don't give a damn. Welfare is always held in disdain, save when it is the corporate welfare about which we look the other way. Take for example the millions made off fighting wars and the economic status of those who fight them and die for them. No wonder we avoid a national draft.
	“All this is only one more illustration of the irony by which we claim to be a Christian nation and all the while practice a morality inconsistent with the Gospel essential to such a claim.” 1
	There’s always a terrific tendency to exaggerate. On the one hand, the memory of a person or a situation is possessed by everything confusing, and frustrating, even evil, so that there’s no room for any sort of light in which to think of the person’s achievements. On the other hand, we may tend to be absorbed only by the things that intrigued, or enthused, or paralleled our own thinking and desires.
	So many factors can lock us in to one opinion or another. How old we are; what part of the country nurtured us; who our parents and their peers were; what was happening locally and globally. All of these can leave such an imprint that we may never even think of leaving the political party; or religious affiliation; even the geographic location of those who sheltered and socialised us. On the other hand, maybe something happened, either decades ago or within much more recent times, to make us move far from the comfort zones of our childhood and youth.
	It IS OK to change! Or not!
	Either way, it’s incumbent on us NOT simply to lean on the commonplace sayings and feelings that circulate for fact. Whatever one may think, for instance, of the late Ted Kennedy, if you and I are going to talk about him, we have to read what he wrote, and examine what he did, and then decide for ourselves. What someone else may say about him MAY be interesting, or inflammatory. But it can’t take the place of going back to the source to examine motivation, guiding principles, and the sorts of things the person did or said when she or he didn’t think anyone was looking or listening. And, really, I believe that Kennedy would be the last person to seek even minor deification for himself. If people were to seek anything to remember, he would say, look at the bills, the acts, the structures and look at the people whom these have impacted.  Let THAT be what you bring to mind.
NOT to engage in deification, but that’s precisely how Jesus is reported to have lived His life and ended His sojourn here on earth.
“‘King’ is your word. My task is to bear witness to the truth. For this I was born; for this I came into the world,”
	If you and I had to come up with three or four succinct, descriptive phrases of and about Jesus we’d probably include something like, “The reign of God is already in your midst”; “unless you become like children”; “if you did it to one of the least you did it to me”; “God so loved the world …”.
	All of these point away from Himself. Jesus, even in the most incredible moments of healing and renewal, in the heart of pain and discomfort, Jesus never drew attention to Himself. He pointed away, first to the God who brought everything into being; and second to those who were impoverished in body, mind and spirit.
	Jesus, therefore, ought “not (to) be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, but to be remembered ….” How?  As someone who put others way ahead of Himself. When we say and hear the words “Do this in remembrance of me”, not only do we see Jesus lifted high. We also see Jesus torn apart. And in both of these views we’re drawn closer to discover that the exaltation and the sundering of Jesus’ Body was – is – for us.
	This is the King we acknowledge and worship today, as we come to the end of another year.
	Even as we celebrate Jesus’ majesty, however, we’re brought face to face with the task of re-ordering our thoughts and our priorities. We’re forced to deal with our comforts and discomforts. We’re confronted with our prejudices, good and bad – at least we’re invited to try to distinguish what is good and what is bad.
	Once again, Jesus stands the world on its head. Everything we’ve been brought up to trust, to seek, to honour, to cherish – absolutely everything is put under the scrutiny of the majestic glass through which the true Light shines.
	Jesus talks about leadership and what God expects of a leader. Jesus talks about social life and structure, and what God expects in them. Jesus talks about pain, and suffering, and uncertainty, and about how God views them.
	In every single one of these – and countless others besides – Jesus demonstrates how wrong the standards of the world have been ordered. It all has to start with God and with the impoverished – who, actually, stand together. Everything else is built upon them. Therefore, anything or anyone who’d do or say anything to bring disrespect, or discredit, or disillusion to God or the impoverished of the world is attacking the foundation upon which Truth is built.
	And note where this discussion, this revelation, takes place: in the official court hearing room of the Roman Governor, an extension of Rome itself. In the very place where order, and pomp, and legalism were centred and enforced, stood Jesus, jousting verbally with Pilate on the deadly serious subject of authority and allegiance. Jesus is trying to witness to Pilate, as much as to us, of the need for us all to become “other-worldly”.
	We’re not talking here about forgetting what’s happening outside the doors of this building. This isn’t a call to isolationism – something I fear we’re all guilty of doing when times get tough.  Far from it. But the “other world” to which Jesus points when he talks about belonging, is one which encompasses all the people, all the institutions which exist yet which operates under completely different principles.
	This is right-up-to-the-minute news about individual congregation members here. It’s a direct message to the Vestry; to the Convocation; to the Diocese – yes, the Diocese which just elected **** as Bishop of Oregon! This dialogue between Pilate and Jesus, with the ending of which we’re all fully aware, this dialogue says that it’s never supposed to be “business as usual”.
	When money gets tight what do people do? They cut way back on their discretionary purchases. They limit the trips they take. They may stop pledges to Public Radio, or political causes – to Churches? Yes, to their congregation also.
	Just before His death, though, Jesus engages Pilate. He talks to the person with all the power over Israel, the person representing all the power in the western world. Jesus pleads with Pilate to think about where the governor’s life and his habits and his devotion are leading him.
	The whole point of the Gospel is to be there when things are on their last legs; when people feel they have nowhere to turn; when oppression, and abuse, and callousness seem to have a stranglehold on both individuals and the societies of which they’re a part.
	When the market is high; when social security is, well, secure; when health isn’t a factor at the front of our minds; we might be forgiven for not dwelling too much on the Gospel as the Daily Word of God for us. Certainly, it’s there, and it should guide us in our dealings with other human beings. Yet it’s when we face all sorts of challenges and struggles, when people would threaten us, or dismiss us, or cause us harm – it’s when we face heart-dropping moments of crises that we find the Gospel speaking out even stronger, and saying – don’t allow the values and means of the world to control you.
	I thought, the other day, about whether there’s a tie-in between this Gospel moment in the Roman court and the scene at the Temple treasury. The widow gracefully gave away all she had for God’s ministry through the Temple. Jesus was about to give away, literally, all that He had for God’s ministry in bringing reconciliation and hope in the midst of despair.
	The Gospel, the Bible, isn’t a clean book. It’s a work in which God’s Spirit shows us how to cope when we’re evicted from our normal way of living and forced to live on the streets without what the world might like to refer to as the “comforts of home”. The untidy Gospel, dealing as it does with people like us who have aches, and pains, and worries about all sorts of issues, the untidy Gospel is a message of hope that doesn’t deny pain. It simply denies the final authority of pain.
	So, beginning with God and the however-impoverished at the centre of our vision, we turn this morning, barely two days after the election of a Bishop for this Diocese, to see where this congregation and this Diocese may be headed. 
	We face enormous challenges. Money – of course; confidence – yes, to a fair degree; vision – well, it could be better. People – no worries there at all. God’s people are all around. It’s simply a matter of engaging them, of finding our focus, of getting rid of everything which tries to kill our spirits.
	For some reason last week my mind was caught by Mark Antony’s speech in Shakespeare’s tragedy, not so much by the opening, but by the closing lines. Antony, asking his hearers to give him a moment, uttered the wonderful request,
	 “Bear with me;
	My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
      And I must pause till it come back to me.  2
	Jesus stands to raise us out of the coffins that try to encase our hope, our energy, our spirits – not just at the end of our earthly lives, but right now. What good news for this Diocese and ****, our Bishop! What good news for this congregation! What good news for you, and for me! All that we need to do is to bear witness to the truth – that’s all! 

NOTES:
1	“Out of Nowhere” by Lane Denson. Monday 9th November, 2009     oon at covpubs.org
2	Mark Antony in “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar” by William Shakespeare, Act III, scene 2.  See a comparison of the original text with a contemporary paraphrase at http://lklivingston.tripod.com/caesar/


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

541-994-2426 (Church)