[Propertalk] Proper 24 c rcl

[Robert P Morrison]

Hello, Friends,

I wrote this on Thursday night and haven't checked it since as I turned to a funeral homily afterwards.

Here's what I'll return to after the funeral this afternoon.

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY        THE TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
JEREMIAH 31:27-34	          					     PROPER 24 C RCL
2 TIMOTHY 3:14 – 4:5		      	       				    17th OCTOBER, 2010  
LUKE 18:1-8			  	               				     PSALM 119:97-104

	How many times does one have to beat on the door?
	Never give up – shouting, banging, praying – whatever it takes, said Jesus.
	Chilean novelist, poet and essayist, Arturo Fontaine, was one of thousands gathered in the desert waiting as a new shaft was drilled towards the thirty-three miners trapped because of a cave-in. Fontaine filed a report for CNN on Wednesday, saying “In Chile, love moves the sun and stars”. 1
	His words really struck a chord with me
	“Bad guys,” he wrote, “bad guys, you know, do exist: the owners of the mine of San José, where 33 workers have been trapped for so long. San Esteban Mining Company has obvious problems with the law, has flouted safety regulations and, of course, cannot explain the drama their greed has caused. But in spite of this, they were shameless enough to declare that they were not willing to pay the salaries of these 33 workers, claiming bankruptcy.
	“But, fortunately, good guys also exist. Down there, with almost no hope, these 33 miners spontaneously built an organization. They freely generated a method of collective decision-making and were able to control their instincts and appetites and use their minds to the benefit of each and every one of them.
	“How was this possible? Leadership? Yes, but why were there leaders in a position to lead for the well-being of everybody as opposed to only a few? What was it like to live down there just waiting for Godot?”
	Fontaine quoted the Peruvian poet César Vellejo:
		The miners came out of the mine
		Shod with infinite paths
		And eyes of physical weeping,
		Creaters of the profundity,
		They know, from the ladder's intermittent sky
		How to climb down looking up,
		They know to climb up looking down
	“Experts were predicting little chance of finding them. Wise men who advise President Sebastián Piñera were all suggesting to him that, obviously, the wise thing was to distance himself from this drama that would end sadly.
The families were getting angry. There was so little hope! People were unhappy with the way the search was being handled. The experts were too slow. Certainly, one could go down more quickly using dynamite.
	“The police were sent to keep order. Piñera is famous because of his intelligence and his wealth and his knowledge and his shrewdness. Everybody expected of him a careful cost-benefit analysis, a well-calculated bet.
	“However, he did nothing of that. He did not, apparently, consider the 
opinion of his cautious advisers. No clever calculation was employed by the
president. He simply did the right thing.
	“Polls show that his popularity, as well as that of his minister of mining, has gone up. Machiavelli wrote that in a republic, people do not judge the knowledge of their leaders but rather their character. Piñera has proved that he has good instincts and guts.”
	Think of all the banging at doors that must have gone on in Chile, indeed around the world, for thirty-three men – names unknown at first, at least, to all but the shift foreman and their families.
	Think about all the people on the other side of the doors who wished that knuckles would get tired, and feet sore, and stomachs empty – and give up.
	Think how hard-nosed – or should I say “hard-eared” – the people within must have become. If they were lucky, they were far enough away from the secretary’s desk; or had enough rooms, or a powerful enough stereo or TV in their homes, that they could distance themselves from the noise of the insistent door bells and pounding at the entrance.
	But banging on the doors of heaven as well as earth – filling the air with cries of pain and grief and loneliness and a lack of understanding – constantly demanding of God why and what can be done to return everything to that status quo, if not the status of original Paradise – THAT is what Jesus affirmed and encouraged. And He promised that the keening of those suffering injustice, and disease, and unprovoked or unsought occurrences – Jesus promised that every syllable, every wail would be heard, AND answered.
	The tough part is that Jesus never defined how or when the answer might come. The woman in the parable got the judicial relief she sought. But quite likely we don’t need to leave this room to encounter at least one person who’s still waiting for an answer.	
	Arturo Fontaine was honest about his initial feelings about the Chilean President. He thought the President had no ears.
	“In the past,” Fontaine wrote, “I've criticized Mr. Piñera for showing his intelligence and not his heart. Not this time.
	“Last night was silent. No cars on the streets. Every Chilean was sitting in front of the TV set and waiting to see the first face emerging from the bottom of the earth.
	“Hope was what we all were feeling. Only hope.
	“A technological device, a system designed to lift human beings that are at the bottom and bring them up is a powerful image. It is what we would like our socioeconomic system to be able to do with the poor. What we have been watching is somewhat linked to that dream, I think.
	“Of course, the most impressive moment was when the capsule Phoenix 2 appeared up there. Then it gradually went down and gently, tentatively, with shyness touched the floor of the hard rock.
	“Technology + poetry = humanity.
	“The first miner, Florencio Avalos, appears--like a newborn. His kid and wife are there. He hugs them. He looks fine. After 68 days under the Earth, his eyes, with sunglasses though, are the first to look up at the stars.
	“And we feel, with old Dante, that on this night in Chile, love moves the sun and all the other stars.
	“Sometimes, after all, life is as it should be.”
	Millions of people around the world watched, or texted, or cried, or hugged. People who may never had met or known one another except around that mine shaft bonded in both grief and exhilaration. It was the knocking that drew them together.
	And still the knocking continues.
	A friend from whom I hadn’t heard for several months e-mailed me two or three weeks ago to say she has cancer in several parts of her body – one more crisis she’s had to face. She’s been misunderstood, she’s been mocked, she’s been disbelieved; she’s overcome medical problems of a variety of sorts. She thought she’d dealt with everything that could happen to her. Now this.
	I e-mailed back and asked what I could do. She replied:
 	“Can you take away my Cancer?
 	Can you ask the Med. Facilities/Hosp. to accept Ins. only?
 	Can you assure me of anything?
 	I guess this is my reward for achieving Sobriety - what an awful
		 outcome. 
	-	What a JOKE!!!
 	...and don't tell this happened for a reason...
 	I am soooooooooooo tired of that _______.
 	Haven't I paid enough and been a Good Girl?
 	What next???”
	How would YOU reply? If you heard the door knocking, if this voice filled with questions and despair kept on outside your home, or even came across the internet, would you shudder and turn away? That’s the easy thing to do. Just as it would have been easier for the President of Chile to have wrung his hands and said that as sad as it seem, it was, after all, only thirty-three out of the country’s population.
  	But Jesus’ never used words pointlessly, never raised people’s hopes without knowing that they’d find satisfaction, and help, and peace. Everything about Jesus’ was infused with Love and a desire to make people whole.
	Of course, some people resisted. They preferred their lack of completeness. They liked not having to listen, not having to see, not having to think about what happened on the other side of a door. To them Jesus held up a mirror showing how they measured up against God’s Image. And their insensitivity really bothered them. Not enough to stop them from their selfishness, though, so they couldn’t or wouldn’t change their behavior. They wouldn’t, or couldn’t respond to pleas for help.
	You know, it really doesn’t take much to respond, at least to listen – even if you feel powerless to do anything about a cancer.
	But what about a burger?
	A burger?
	“Sami Desadjri, an observant French Muslim, used to have a problem when he and his high school classmates hit the local burger joint for lunch. Since the meat was not halal, or slaughtered according to Islamic guidelines, he was forced to fall back on fish sandwiches, assaulting his adolescent taste buds and splitting him from the clique.
	“But those awkward times are over. In a telling measure of the growing Muslim presence in France, Quick, a homegrown hamburger chain trying to compete with McDonald's, began serving halal hamburgers last month in 22 of its 367 restaurants, including the busy establishment frequented by Desadjri and his friends in this heavily Muslim suburb just north of Paris.
	“It’s really important for me,” said Desadjri, a bright-eyed 16-year-old with wavy black hair who was gulping a hamburger and fries the other day alongside a non-Muslim pal, Darren de Lemos, 17. “I used to come here before, but I could never eat what I wanted. Now, we can all eat the same thing.
	“The decision to serve halal burgers, with its bow to Muslim buying power, has produced an outcry among some political leaders, who regard it as an affront to France’s Christian traditions and official secularism. As a result, the lowly hamburger has become an unlikely new symbol of the unease spreading across Western Europe over an influx of immigrants, including many Muslims, who as their numbers increase demand respect for their traditions.” 2
	I guess there are doors and deafness across in Europe as well.
	“A rabbi was once asked, ‘What does a rabbi do?’ He replied, ‘A rabbi is to lead God’s people to study Torah so that one day everyone will know Torah. On that day when everyone knows Torah, everyone will be a rabbi so that there will no longer be any need for rabbis.” 3
	But until then, we need to listen as every door and, pray God, we too may say with Arturo Fontaine, “Sometimes, after all, life is as it should be.”

NOTES:
1 	“In Chile, love moves the sun and stars” By Arturo Fontaine, Special to CNN October 13, 2010 STORY HIGHLIGHTS http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/10/13/fontaine.chile.miners/index.html?hpt=C2
2	“IN LA COURNEUVE, FRANCE. Letter From France: Hamburger chain's decision sparks tensions over Islam”  By Edward Cody Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, October 14, 2010; 1:07 pm   http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/F490YD/HDYG7L/GDD77M/L6SDSO/OO3JM/PJ/h  
3 	“Sermons that Work” October 17, 2010 – Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 24 Year C By the Rev. Kirk Alan Kubicek (RCL) Jeremiah 31:27-34; Psalm 119:97-104; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8  http://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermons_that_work_124741_ENG_HTM.htm

--
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)