[Propertalk] 3 Epiphany c rcl

[Robert P Morrison]

Here's what's up for editing for this coming Sunday.

Bob


THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY 	    3 EPIPHANYC RCL
NEHEMIAH 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10	                 24th JANUARY, 2010
1 CORINTHIANS 12:12-31a	                 PSALM 19
LUKE 4:14-21

	“Making the most of what you’ve got” – that’s a phrase which, if not yet a proverb, certainly carries a lot of sense, and wisdom, and comfort to it. If we all lived with that at the front of our minds and the tips of our tongues, just think how far we might be able to go for Jesus!
	Let me add a little twist to it, though – not enough to negate its power, but just a slight broadening of the idea. How about “making the most of where we are”? It’s the same thought, really. If we don’t take stock of where we are, and of who we are; if we don’t pay attention to what’s around us, we can miss so much fun, so many opportunities for laughter, and joy, and peace.
	Jesus was at home that weekend. What He’d been doing the previous few days is anybody’s guess. Maybe He came back to do the laundry – probably He returned to take care of something simple, something necessary, something practical. He was at home, so He went to synagogue. That’s just what He did. The football playoffs could wait. The news stories and the ads in the paper would still be there when He got back home. The sales at Costco and Freddies would still be on for at least a few days more. It was the Sabbath, so He went to the Synagogue. He took advantage both of the day and the location, and He went to re-affirm His contact with God and with his friends in the religious community. 
	And, no doubt, the format of the service was reassuringly familiar – the same faces, the same hymns, the same prayers – AND the same lessons.
	When Jesus was given the scroll to read it wasn’t something brand new. He hadn’t walked in and said, “You know, I got this idea last night and wrote it down – OK if I read it to you?”
	When Jesus was given the scroll, and when He began to read aloud that passage from Isaiah, the words were so familiar that most people there could have said them along with Him. This wasn’t news. This wasn’t strange. This wasn’t something unfamiliar. It was the same passage that would have popped up time and again – assuming they had some sort of a lectionary as we do. Jesus read to His pew-mates about how God’s love for us and our love for God are inseparable; and, continuing to quote the prophecy from about five or six hundred years prior to Jesus’ time, He said that the way in which this was made evident was by the way the least advantaged, the least enfranchised, the least healthy and strong members of the community were listened to, and nourished, and encouraged. Looks, dress, any sort of feature which we take as being definitive, nothing of that nature is to stand in the way of offering healing to everyone.
	ALL of us stand in need of healing of one sort or another, and ALL of us have the ability to find and receive this healing – that’s the message of Isaiah to a people who were becoming more and more depressed about their ability to find hope; THAT’S the message which Jesus emphasised that Saturday in the Synagogue. God’s desire for all of humanity is for wholeness. Just how we achieve this, though, is not completely clear.
	A radio talk last week raised a question in the mind of the interviewer about a trait described as being peculiarly American. “Who can speak against the optimism of The American Dream?” asked Anne McElvoy of American journalist Barbara Ehrenreich. Ehrenreich’s “new book ‘Smile and Die’ (...) attacks what she believes to be her country's addiction to positive thinking and blind optimism.” 1
	What we have to wrestle with, then, is the suggestion of the journalist that we need to be realistic – definitely NOT pessimistic, but realistic – in our thinking about illness and tragedy; we have to wrestle with the tension between realism and the absolute confidence of Jesus – for Himself and for us – in the burning, loving desire of God that we should live lives passionately committed to the healing, the righting, not only of individuals, but the whole of society. “These words ( – the vision of the aged prophet for a broken and lonely society – )  these words are being fulfilled right before your very eyes,” said Jesus – talking to us as much as to those within the synagogue walls. 
	This tension has ALWAYS been a problem for people who try to reconcile what we know call science and religion. On the one hand we’ve to accept all the things which we perceive with our senses and which we can try to rationalise. On the other hand we have those things connected with our faith, things which are much less tangible yet, to believers, no less real.
	That’s where I find the ideas I mentioned right at the beginning so important. As followers of Jesus, as listeners of Jesus’ concise comment on Isaiah, we MUST make the most of what we’ve got and of where we are. Whether we’re sitting in a Church pew or at the Annual Meeting in a few minutes; whether we’re in a line at a cash register at someplace like Costco or in a health care provider’s waiting room; wherever we are, we MUST somehow be both faith-filled and realistic at the same time, And we MUST make the most of both of these parts in our lives if we accept the invitation to make a full commitment to Jesus.
Jesus is REALLY concerned for and about us. He wants us to hear the call to experience wholeness in God’s hope for us; and Jesus wants us to be able to share this with other people. Indeed, the news is too good NOT to share.
	This past Monday I received an interesting e-mail from a friend – a non-Church  friend – describing his experience last Sunday morning in a cafe in town - how he and a stranger got into a conversation. In fact, it was that e-mail which started me thinking about morning’s sermon ... about making the most of what we have and where we are – re-listening to what is old with new ears. My friend may not have known it; the person to whom he talked may not have known it; but I think that both of them, somehow, were hearing Jesus’ synagogue words and bringing them to life for one another in a short, forty-five minute period. 
	Gordon headed his letter “Breakfast at the Beach Dog Café” – that’s a small café at the south end of Lincoln City.
 	“Typically,” wrote Gordon, “Sunday is an unplanned day for me. I occasionally do a laundry (then) if I forgot to do it on Saturday.  Yesterday I was working on the computer most of the morning trying to set up different groups for e-mail.  Close to 11:00 a.m. I took the clothes out of the washer, threw them in the dryer, set it to run for 70 minutes and headed across the street and parking lot to the Beach Dog Café for breakfast.
 	“One table for two was available as I arrived, somewhat unusual for this time of morning on a Sunday at the Beach Dog. I sat down. A couple entered and moved up to sit in chairs provided for those waiting for a table. A single lady approximately 50 I’d guess walked in a couple of minutes later just as Jesse was bringing me a cup of coffee (always arrives without even asking … one of the things that makes it almost seem like home). Jesse jokingly said that she might talk me into occupying the vacant seat across the table from me, with some quip like, ‘He doesn’t bite.’
 	“I saw the lady had a book to read in her hand. I offered her the seat and told her that she could read her book and relax and that would be fine. She sat down. The book never got opened.
 	“Over the next forty-five minutes we discussed a number of personal topics. I found out she was one of nine children, had left Minnesota, to return to Oregon to take care of her aging parents. One of her siblings had come to stay a few days so she had this opportunity to get away for the weekend to the beach and just read and relax … a time of personal retreat.
 	“She told me about her two sons. The oldest was enrolled in college after a four year stint in the marines. He did two tours in Iraq. She told me of the telephone call from Iraq where her son said, ‘Mom, I’m nineteen and I’ve just killed a man.’ I asked her if she thought her son had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She said they had talked about it. He felt it still bothered him, but the feelings were very mixed. There was part of the military adventure that he relished and part that kept him from sleeping well at night. I wondered silently how many (M)arines from Iraq felt that way.  He chose not to re-up, but to go to college instead.
 	“I finished my third or fourth cup of coffee (wasn’t keeping track), excused myself, paid for my breakfast and walked back to the house.  I didn’t ask her name, nor did she ask me mine.
 	“This morning, I reflected on that time. It was warm and personal. The setting was conducive for a good conversation. I think it is one of the things I treasure about living where I do. Away from the hustle of daily routines, yesterday provided a time that can only be described as a beautiful and meaningful experience. That is worth cherishing.” 2
	For me, the telling of that encounter epitomized the way in which Jesus hopes that we interact with one another, and the way in which we interact with God.
Both Gordon and the unknown mother were in need of reassurance, and friendship, however brief. Both needed to have a reminder of what wholeness in God is like. Gordon, I know, DOES believe in God and Jesus – in fact he has graduate degrees in theology and has taught it. He’s simply been burned by too many Church experiences right now to risk attending anywhere. What the woman believes didn’t seem to matter. In a sense, from where I sat reading about these two, I understood Jesus as sitting with them, saying that, in their hearing, the words and work of the prophets were being fulfilled.
Sometimes we’re too glib about not being realistic; we’re too quick to turn away from facing and wrestling with the difficult things in our lives. But then, there are other times when we fail to see how much we can accomplish for our own spiritual and physical well-being, and for the spiritual and physical well-being of those in our community around us. Sometimes, we need encouragement to make the most of what we’ve got. AND to share it.
	And I suggest that the rest of the sermon will be heard through the conversation around tables with coffee, and through the reports and discussion you make and receive at the annual meeting.
	Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people.

NOTES:
1 	Barbara McElvoy’s interview with Barbara Ehrenreich on “Night Waves”, BBC Radio 3, 21:15, Tuesday, 12 January 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00pl1y5
2	Gordon	




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Robert P. Morrison
Lincoln City, Oregon, 97367

541-921-1076