[Propertalk] 3 lent c rcl - trial balloon ?

[Robert P Morrison]

Here's what I wrote tonight after an afternoon conversation with a man in an Assisted Living facility. Maybe it will fly, maybe it will be amended, maybe it will give a chuckle to you, or even an idea for yourself.

Note that The Episcopal Church doesn't follow what, apparently, others do in the OT lesson - we have Exodus while others have Isaiah.

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST ALBAN, ALBANY	      3 LENT C RCL
EXODUS 3:1-15                                                      7th MARCH, 2010
1 CORINTHIANS 10:1-13	                        PSALM 63:1-8
LUKE 13:1-9

	Pass any blazing bushes on the way into church this morning?
	This may age me, but I wonder if any of you remember the early Bob 
Newhart sketches which were issued later on LPs. He would work the routine so that you could hear his side of the conversation. It was a great way to rethink historical events and people. In that vein, think for a moment about the events surrounding the first reading this morning. For some reason, these thoughts weren’t recorded by the writer of the Book of Exodus. 
	Imagine Moses, back at home. He’d brought all the sheep close in for their protection. He’d finished his stew. Now it was time to rest his aching muscles as well as his body and mind, even if he kept half-an-ear open for untoward noises outside among the herds.
	That was when he turned to Zipporah, lying beside him under the skins. He’d been thinking about this all afternoon, wondering if he’d dare talk to anyone else, even her. Finally, with the lamp running very low and casting long shadows on the walls, he spoke up.
	“Zip,” he said cautiously. “How’d your day go?” He listened to her relating stories about searching for roots and herbs in the not-particularly hospitable part of the desert on which they lived. The steam and the oasis DID help, there was no doubt about that.
	Moses’ mind was running tightly as her descriptions only half-registered. Finally he spoke out. “Something a bit different happened today out with the animals, Zip,” he said. “You know those funny bush things out by the dried up wadi?”
	 “Uh huh,” she responded.
	“One of them caught fire while I was out there,” he went on. “Kind of crazy, though. The flames were shooting up all over the place. There must be pitch in that plant, or something, so I decided to wander over. The animals would be OK for a minute.”
	“You left the animals by themselves?” she cried out.
	“Well, yes, I said it was just for a minute.”
	“You know how long my father’s been struggling to put together these herds?” she exclaimed. “And you left them to look at some desert fire? Are you nuts?”
	“Well,” Moses was getting quieter by the second, “there was something really strange going on. The closer I got, the more I could see that the flames were running through all the branches and leaves but not a single one of them was even singed.”
	She drew closer for a second and began to sniff the top of his head and his beard. Nothing – not even the hint of smoke.
	“Then I heard a voice talking to me. I thought it must have been rocks rolling down the hillside, but there was nothing moving – nothing nowhere! It was as if it was coming straight out of the midst of the fire, and it told me I was on holy ground, and that I should get ready to go to bring all the Hebrew people out of Egypt. The voice said it was God.”
	“What do you smoke out there in the desert?” said Zipporah. “I thought you promised you’d give that stuff up! Why don’t you just get out of the tent, and don’t let the flap hit you on the way out! Maybe some of the goats will talk to you out there”
	And so Moses gave up talking – for a while, anyway.
	What DO you make of God talking to you? Where and how does it happen? Do you risk talking to others about it? 
	This whole episode, with all that had happened previously and what was about to come up in the future – the whole thing is about the incredible mystery of who God is, and how God operates, and why God operates – AND what the relationship is between God and us.
	Nothing can be considered in isolation – that’s one of the things that’s clear from this. Moses didn’t suddenly begin life, a fully-formed adult who somehow got mixed up with Midianites. He had a past. AND he had a future. And God was in both of these. 
	We all have a tendency to think of Moses the hero; Moses the archetype of everyone who hears God and takes on monumental tasks; Moses the tour-guide extraordinaire. But that’s only part of the picture.
	Moses grew up in a time when an incredible tension had developed between the Egyptians and the Hebrews who’d become resident in the Nile Delta. There was a fear that Egyptian might be overtaken as the dominant language, that a variant of Hebrew would take over, and that the stores would all have to stock potato latkes, and gefilte fish, and lentils.
	Moses grew up in a palace, though – one of the very few places where meat would have been served with any degree of regularity. He knew his Hebrew heritage, but he recognised his Egyptian privilege. So his emotions must have been mixed as he glanced around to see if anyone was watching before he murdered the Egyptian military official who was beating up on the Hebrew worker. Then he took off in horror when, within hours, two Hebrews mocked him with the accusation about which of his two personae would dominate in the way he dealt with them.
	THAT was how he got to Midian, just in time to beat off a gang of rowdy shepherds who were harassing Jethro’s daughters. THAT was how he married Zipporah. THAT was how he happened to be in the desert at the right time and place.
	Co-incidence? Of course – not! But here was God, drawing close a snotty, privileged young man who was a murderer, to boot. Here was God, entrusting what we understand is one of two hinge points of God’s relationship with human beings – entrusting this tremendous undertaking to – to Moses! Moses who, in addition to all I’ve just said, was a stutterer.
	Where WAS God’s mind?
	Behind this incredibly important matter of theological understanding is the fact that God continually takes the most insignificant, the most unlikely, perhaps even the most unlikeable person, in order to work miracles and draw people ever closer into a relationship of fulfillment and joy. And while all of this is being played out, in the least hospitable of surroundings, the stage is set for healing of all sorts to take place, and a sense of unity to develop in a way that might not have been possible without all the wrangling of Hebraic pilgrimaic journeying.
	As soon as WE start to get a glimmer of understanding about what’s going on here then we can begin to relax and have hope for ourselves. No matter who’s present in Albany – Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists – who else is there? Oh – Episcopalians, almost forgot them! And former Germans, and Swedes, and Welsh still celebrating St. David’s Day from last Monday, and all the others.
	All of a sudden we start to get the picture of God being able to see through all the different ritual practices and hear through all the different languages; all of a sudden what we cling to with grim determination as if our own particular immediate heritage were the last hope for preserving culture in Albany – that begins to drop off the radar screen of important things to manage. All of a sudden, if we’re extraordinarily perceptive, we may begin to see flaming foliage at every street corner in this city, foliage accompanied by a voice which invites every passer-by to listen and to accept the role of being God’s means of bringing a reduction of anxiety, and an increase in dignifying humanity.
	Not that we’re all cut out to be able to stand up to the authorities and protest injustice. Not that we’re all going to be able to get even our best friends to take a forty-year hike. Not that we’re all going to become such an incredibly important community figure that people thirty-two hundred years for now will be poring over atlases of Oregon and trying to figure out who Joan of Albany might have been.
	Yet we ARE ALL called to sharpen our perceptive skills, and open up our imaginations, and to nourish within us confidence in who we are, so that we can ALL discover how God will use every last one of us. What of it if we help and influence one person, while someone else down the block, or over at Faith Lutheran, or wherever, discovers how to inspire and empower five hundred? Who knows whom that one may empower? Every single one is important, no matter who of what she or he is.
So, if we’re learning to become amazed at the way that God acts and speaks, what does this say of, for instance, immigration policies? What of a comparison between the relationship of the Egyptians and the Hebrews and the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution and whichever group we may have a tendency to isolate?
	If we’re learning to become intrigued at the way that God gives certain tasks to everyone, what does this say about employment practices?
	If we’re learning to become enraptured at the way that God draws people together to accept different roles in history and society, what does this say about marital and familial relationships?
	Jesus, as this morning’s Gospel verses remind us, strove to break people’s assumptions about cause and effect, and about misunderstanding events in ways completely unjustified by Scripture. But Jesus DID warn about what happens if we don’t allow ourselves to see, and to hear, to learn, mark and inwardly digest the signs God leaves above Love, and Justice, and Mercy.
	No segment of the population, no past history, no failed credit check, not even jail or penitentiary time can impede God having God’s way with us all. So why should WE get in God’s way? Maybe we ought not to be like the imagined Zipporah when our spouse, or most trusted confidante, OR the least sympathetic stranger begins to say that he or she has been seeing and hearing some pretty strange things, and has even begun to wonder if there’s hope for the world – or at least for Albany – after all.

--
Robert P. Morrison
Interim Vicar
The Episcopal Church of St Alban,
P.O. Box 1556,
Albany, Oregon, 97321

541-921-1076 (cell)
541-967-7051 (church)