[Propertalk] Proper 18c rcl

[Robert P Morrison]

Here's what I have for Sunday. Of course, that's three days off! 8 - )

Bob



THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY          THE FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST
JEREMIAH 18:1-11	    	    				                      PROPER 18 C RCL
PHILEMON 1-21				                                      5th SEPTEMBER, 2010  
LUKE 14:25-33					  				      PSALM 139:1-5, 13-17

	Recently I came across some recipe conversations. One was on the radio. I was listening to someone who sounded really well-educated, and full of enthusiasm for her topic. She was running down the list of ingredients, most of which sounded familiar. My mind was beginning to water as I heard about how things were combined until I was brought up short.
	A tablespoon of Old Spice.
	Huh?
	I thought, “Wow!” How’s that taste going to combine with everything else and be not merely palatable, but the sort of thing you’d be proud to serve to the in-laws, or your children’s families. I can just imagine the looks – even if it smelled and looked interesting. Aftershave in a recipe?
	That’s when I reheard what she was saying. Of course, the slightly Southern, gentile accent hadn’t helped, but what she actually said was “All Spice”.
	Whew! Something just saved me from a social disaster!
	What happens when you’re sure you heard what someone else has said? Remember the old saying? “I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”
	I can picture Jesus, shaking His head in disbelief!
	The other recipe sounded interesting too. “Cut the cucumbers in half. Place the butter and oil in a saucepan. Rinse the cucumbers and add them to the heated mix. Chill.
	“Chill”?
	My mind leapt to the back porch with a couple of Margaritas, some Faure songs on the stereo, a good book. “What a great recipe,” I thought. “Not only does it tell you how to come up with a wonderful soup, the creator cares about my physical well-being.”
	That‘s when it occurred to me that it was the soup I was supposed to chill. The creator probably couldn’t care less what or how I was doing, as long as I followed the directions and didn’t make a fool of myself at the dinner table. 
	By this time, Jesus was snickering! As well He might. There are times when mishearing or mis-imagining can be humorous. There are other times when it’s frustrating. Then there are those times when it can be dangerous – to body AND soul.
	One other quote for just now – another of those “good to remember T-shirt advisories”: “Things to know about the future. #1: It doesn't have to look any particular way, but around here, if it doesn't, a lot of people will never speak to you again.” 1
	And there are times when that may be a VERY good thing!
	Jeremiah might have wished for a little bit of private space, or quietness, or a definite lack of criticism. His life MUST have been so stressful. He’s on fire with a message for the community – both citizens and leaders. He’s convinced that things are NOT going according to God’s will. He’s seen some of the things the people have been doing. He’s seen how some of them have put their trust in all sorts of odd-ball schemes. He’s aware of how they voted, how they conducted their businesses, how desperate folks on the wrong side of the wagon tracks are, because of the lack of access to water, and grain, and olives. He’s having difficulty understanding why one group of people treat those who may well be their distant relatives with open neglect. And he can’t take it any more.
	He’s filled with indignation and fury about the way that those who could do something about the injustices can’t or won’t hear what God’s love is all about. So out comes the famous parable of the potter.
	I hear these verses from the writings and speeches of the prophet and I think of the aria in Handel’s “Messiah” with its terrible judgement that God will dash the people to pieces like a potter’s vessel. The verse Handel set is actually from the second Psalm – but the theme is identical. God set the material out, from which we have the option to be something useful – as the late British essayist and curmudgeon Malcolm Muggeridge described Mother Teresa, we too can be “Something beautiful for God”.  
	That’s what set Jeremiah on fire twenty-six hundred years ago; that’s what sets twenty-first century prophets on fire! The potential to do something incredibly profound and creative for God is right there, within the grasp of every human being. No one CAN’T be anything BUT beautiful – AND useful - for God. But then we blow it. We hear “Old Spice” instead of “All Spice”.
	But there IS good news! It’s not ALL bleak. Jeremiah never did give up! He kept talking. He kept open to God. He thought and rethought what he heard and what he saw. And he discovered that God took clay that had collapsed on itself, or twisted itself into something with little purpose - again and again God took what looked broken, and without much apparent significance. Jeremiah saw that God took that and created something else. Nothing is ever wasted.
This, for me, is a great relief. How often have I felt that I’m a pretty mis-shapen pot? How often do I feel I may have sprung a leak and not been able to hold or carry much of anything? What I need to do, if that’s the case, is to offer what I DO have and am to God – and let GOD do the transformation necessary.
That’s all ANY of us can do. However, we have to do it with our eyes open. We have to be prepared for the fact that the reshaping, the change in what sort of a vessel, or what sort of purpose God might have for us tomorrow, may include discomfort, and stretching, and, undoubtedly, refiring in the kiln.
How many times have we heard Jesus described as saying to the disciples that they’d face difficulty? How many times have we heard Jesus say that any who committed themselves to putting God’s will ahead of anything else would be faced with the wrath of someone in power, someone who felt that his or her own authority was being eroded. Or, like the folk in Jeremiah’s day, who’d be shown up for the grasping, immoral, dispassionate folk that they were.
Change – the sort of change God seeks of us every day – involves such painful expansion of horizons and the muscles to reach right to the new horizon. So Jesus two thousand years ago and Jesus today prays that we’ll prepare. Disciple and discipline are the same word at root. They mean someone or something which results from study, from application, from questioning, from commitment to work something out to as close to a sensible and fruitful conclusion as is possible. 
It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been disciplining ourselves either. We always seem to encounter new ideas, new muscles never used, or muscles used in a different way. From the whole world to the individual sitting in the same pew, we have to become committed to accepting God’s call to be God’s earthen vessel. Just as the world changes, so WE have to change to minister in and to the world. Just as the circumstances of the person next to us, across the breakfast table from us, in the adjoining lane on I-5 from us – just as the circumstances of each of these people change, so WE must change in order to bring Jesus and be Jesus to each of them.
>From half-way across the world came the story of a couple who were walking on Shuhada Street in Hebron – a street on whose foundations Jesus one time may have set His feet.
	“‘Excuse me!’ the Israeli soldier called. ‘You can’t walk down that street.’
	“Elizabeth and (Sarah) turned toward him, questioning. ‘We can’t? But the German tourists here earlier walked this way,’ Elizabeth recalled.  
	“‘I walked down the street three days ago,’ (Sarah) added. ‘No one stopped me then.’
	“The soldier shrugged. ‘We can’t let (Christian Peacemaker Team members) walk on this street.That’s the order we’ve been given.’ ….
	“Although Elizabeth and (Sarah) didn’t need to walk Shuhada Street that day, (they) wanted to challenge even this small cog in the Israeli occupation of Hebron.  So (they) pressed the soldier to explain the rationale for the order. ‘It’s to keep the peace,’ he finally said. ‘We don’t want any trouble with the (Israeli) settlers who live here.’
	“‘I wouldn’t call that peace,’ (Sarah) objected. ‘Your order seems more about keeping things quiet.’
	“To (Sarah’s) surprise, the soldier agreed. ‘Yes, it’s about keeping the quiet.’
	“‘I know you’re only following orders,’ (Sarah) continued. ‘Yet isn’t there something wrong in this order? If you’re worried that we will make trouble, then it’s appropriate to keep us off the street—‘ 
	“The soldier shook his head, clearly unworried about trouble from CPTers.
	“‘But if you’re concerned that settlers might give us trouble, then there’s something upside down in us being the ones barred from the street,’ (Sarah) concluded.
	“‘Of course it’s upside down, the soldier admitted.  ‘Everything here in Hebron is upside down. The system is wrong — I know that, you know that — but what can we do? We have to follow orders. There’s nothing we can do, except keep the quiet as much as possible while we work toward a solution.’”
	“Yet keeping quiet rarely moves us toward genuine peace. (Sarah remembered that a)s Martin Luther King, Jr. noted in his 1963 ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail,’ the real obstacles in a liberation struggle are the moderate people who prefer ‘a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.’
	“Someday, I believe, (wrote Sarah,) Palestinians will again walk down Shuhada Street. In this and other ways, they will experience the equality and dignity rightfully theirs. But the journey to reach that day of justice will not be quiet.” 2
	Hebron isn’t the only place to which God is inviting change, however. This room here, all of us here, the people in the houses around this building and around the homes in which we stay – change must come there too. The change may not come easily – just as it’s not in Hebron. The change may involve giving up some of our cherished ideas or rituals so that others may find freedom from anxiety; freedom from worry about money, or food, or child-care; or equal and respectful treatment by other human beings.
	The challenge is to discover how God’s hands are molding us each day – how we may be being re-directed, sometimes with some discomfort. The challenge is to accept this as but the refining of God so that we may continue to be both beautiful and useful vessels of God’s grace.
	So we have to be open and aware all the time – and for heaven’s sake, we ALL have to use our common sense as well as our spiritual radar whenever we listen to God’s recipe for us!
	Old Spice? Chill? Jesus calls, “Listen up, and listen well. You hear? Get a Life!”

NOTES:
1 	StoryPeople	Annette at storypeople.org
2	“HEBRON REFLECTION: Shuhada Street: Keeping the quiet (when there’s no peace to be kept)”
By Sarah MacDonald CPTnet 16 August 2010 http://www.cpt.org/cptnet/2010/08/14/hebron-reflection-shuhada-street-keeping-quiet-when-there%E2%80%99s-no-peace-be-kept




--
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)