[Propertalk] 5 lent a

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

Here's my draft for this Sunday. I wrote it about ten days ago in a week 
when I wasn't preparing for the upcoming Sunday.

I hope you have  fun with the propers!

Bob



THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY  	                 		 
FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT
EZEKIEL 37:1-14							      10th APRIL, 2011
ROMANS 8:6-11					                                	               PSALM 
130
JOHN 11:1-45

	Whatever we do, wherever we are, God’s call to each one of us is to 
make the best out of every possible situation. In God’s creation, 
there’s nothing that cannot be transformed. That’s an incredible 
thought! So no matter what’s going on in our lives, how much difficulty 
we may be facing, how desperate we feel, somewhere, there’s a tiny 
glimmer of light.

	I’ve not gone too far with my study of general relativity and quantum 
mechanics, and it’s been a while, but my understanding is that if 
there’s a Black Hole about it will suck everything close to it into its 
incredible depths, and that nothing will ever escape. No matter how 
large or how small – star or tiny particle – it will disappear. It will 
cease to exist. It will be almost as if it had never been there.

	There IS one theory that some have posited, however. That is, whatever 
is sucked into the darkness, pulled down in absolute, inescapable 
control, whatever is sucked into seeming nothingness, may just possibly 
emerge from the other side, released into light, and freedom, and 
endless creativity. 1

	Whatever appears to have no destiny, no hope, may, after all, be 
transformed while in the heart of darkness and emerge incredibly 
transformed. There is NOTHING to fear. There is NOTHING that can’t be 
transformed. No person, no situation is outside the scope of presenting 
glory, and comfort, and exhilaration, and ecstasy.

	No matter what happens to us, then, we need to hold on tightly to that 
hope, that promise. As the bumper sticker I saw on Pacific Avenue 
declared, succinctly, “When hell freezes over I’ll ski there too!”

	Is that being too rosy-spectacled? Is that way too Pollyannaish? Not 
according to that spark in the centre of our being. Somewhere within us 
is a particle of Light that can never be conquered, never be 
extinguished. Somehow, that Light is able to survive no matter how 
devastating the destruction – thousands upon thousands on Japanese 
beaches and on the rubble-savaged land; half a million or more, STILL 
homeless in Haiti, struggling to find clean water, and a modicum of 
health care, and most of all something that can nourish dignity and 
self-worth; seemingly the same people in Albany, unable rise out of the 
fourteen per cent unemployed, whose spirits are close to being broken by 
finding rejection at every door of employment, and are incredibly 
embarrassed to beg – somehow, even there, the Light is never quite 
overcome and extinguished.

	People have wondered about Jesus – from His first cry in His cradle to 
His last cry on the cross – people have been trying to figure out how 
much He knew about who He was, and how He lived with the intense 
struggle between humanity and divinity. But we don’t need to know HOW He 
did it. All that we need to remember is that just as everything seemed 
to be pulling Him into the core of darkness He hung on to the belief 
that LIGHT would live within Him.

	I don’t know how I feel this, but I DON’T think that He knew how 
everything happened. What I believe that Jesus DID have and DID do, 
however, is trust. He accepted the promises that had been given at all 
sorts of steps throughout His life. And He tried to communicate this 
with His friends – sometimes this was done quietly, by example; 
sometimes more verbally, whether in a talk to His close friends or to 
hundreds and thousands on hillsides.

	Did Jesus have doubts? You bet! And questions! But that spark of Light 
kept burning fiercely within Him, convincing Him of the rightness of 
expecting more, of expecting hope, of expecting peaceful resolution.

	That’s where the three readings and the psalm all point this morning. 
Bones, scattered across hillsides, like the final signs of something so 
terrible that the mind can scarce take it in. Maybe it was something 
like the Hutu and Tutsi genocides. Maybe it was like Tunisia, and the 
Sudan, and Libya. I don’t know to whom these bones belonged, probably 
only an anthropological pathologist might be able to come close to an 
identity.

	Or the writer of the Psalm – for some reason I’ve been drawn to these 
verses since my first year in college. That was when I heard them in a 
liturgy for the first time ever. Maybe they’re too powerful. Maybe some 
people had trouble introducing such doubt into worship. After all, 
religion is supposed to be about nice things; about comfortable things; 
about having everything resolved and neatly tied up with a bow – isn’t 
it?

	But here is someone straight out of The State Hospital or any county’s 
mental health caseload. The writer is at her or his wit’s end. Nothing 
seems to make sense; everything seems to be going wrong. Could it be 
something to do with family relations? Might it be pressure from folk in 
the community? What about constantly running out of money before the end 
of the month? I’m not taking about just one week’s worth of pain. This 
is about really deep, on-going pain – the sort that makes one loathed to 
get out of bed in the morning, and leave the house for a day or two.

	This is Desperation with a capital “D”.

	I suppose some folk may have wanted to shelter me from such heavy 
concepts. But this is Life, with a capital “L”, and if we don‘t struggle 
through the situation of the entire psalm we never come to that point in 
placing ourselves in front of God to say that we still trust, no matter 
what.

	Finally, in the Gospel, there’s the story of Lazarus, with its aspect 
of timing, and contradiction, and tears, and disintegration – the body 
of one of Jesus’ closest friends was literally falling apart. Yet Jesus 
never did lose that spark of hope.

	What kept that alive in and for Jesus? What was it that kept Him going, 
interacting, cajoling, scolding, feeding, hugging?  It was that spark of 
Light again. It never DOES die out completely. Somehow it twinkles and 
flickers and gives life not just to ourselves, but to, potentially, 
everyone else with whom we come in contact.

	That’s why Jesus kept walking – brushing against people, visiting some 
places no self-respecting Jew would go – like touching a dead body – 
even if it WAS one of His best friends.

	Once again, Jesus challenges us to acknowledge our weakness and our 
doubt, but to keep on going nevertheless, even if we’re not sure where 
we may be going and what we may be doing on any given day. After all, 
none of us can be completely sure beside whom we’re going to sit when we 
come into this worship space; or whom we may meet and where once we 
leave after tea or coffee. I mean, is anyone here going to lock her or 
himself up in her or his room as soon as she or he gets out of here? 
Hardly likely.

	Jesus COULD have left Lazarus dead. It wasn’t that Jesus and Lazarus’ 
sisters didn’t believe in resurrection. They said as much. Lazarus was 
OK where he was – but Jesus thought that there was work still to be done 
– for one thing, demonstrating a lack of fear about the unknown, the 
dark side.

	A friend of a good friend of mine wrote in her blog the other day, “I 
don’t recommend a fatal disease as a way to wake up, but it happened to 
me, and I accept it. I’m more alive than I’ve ever been. I wouldn’t 
trade it for time that didn’t matter to me.” 2

	The Light is burning brightly in Kirstin, despite the cancer.

	Or think of the Light burning in Queens.

	“Seaside, a squat one-story brick building, was one of 105 senior 
centers that the city marked for closing because of state budget cuts in 
January. Its ceiling tiles are water-stained; large bugs roam the musty 
gray carpet. In a past life the building was a bar. Four years ago, the 
city closed it temporarily because the roof was unsound. In no 
neighborhood would it draw praise for its architectural beauty or 
innovative services. ….

	“ON a raw, gray morning this month, two women sat at their usual table, 
eating breakfast from plastic trays. Rose Bosco, who is 95, was having 
oatmeal and toast, her white hair swooping magnificently back from her 
pale forehead. Delores Brown, 73, passed her a carton of milk and a 
banana to slip into her purse for later. Their shoulders touched as they 
leaned close in conversation.

	“Five mornings a week, shortly after 8, they meet at the same round 
table with the clear plastic cover in the main dining area of the 
Seaside Adult Community Center in Rockaway Beach, Queens. They have been 
sitting together since last fall, though neither can remember how it 
started. …

	“But for Ms. Bosco and Ms. Brown, the center has been the soil for an 
unexpected and valued friendship, one of many formed between bingo games 
and complaints about the food. Each afternoon Ms. Brown, a former nurse, 
walks Ms. Bosco, the daughter of a sharecropper, two and a half blocks 
home. The elder woman lives by herself in a small bungalow owned by her 
grandson; the younger, in a house with her son and grandson. Though they 
are coherent in conversation, both repeat themselves at short intervals, 
seemingly unaware of what they said moments earlier.

	“‘I don’t know how I got here today,’ Ms. Bosco said. ‘The wind almost 
blew me over.’

	“‘Did you walk?’ Ms. Brown said.

	“‘Yeah, how else would I get here?’

	“For these women, and the 80 or so other regulars who spend most 
weekdays there, Seaside provides a place of connection in the face of 
isolation.” 3

	The Light STILL burns, even when a wrecking ball threatens to tear 
apart human lives and relationships; even when disease guarantees a 
brain will turn to Swiss cheese; even when the authorities get so mad at 
you for talking about urban, and emotional, and physical, and spiritual 
renewal that they threaten to crucify you.

	These bones – the bones that hold us together as children of God and as 
sisters and brothers in Albany, Oregon – there’s NOTHING going to stop 
these bones from coming to life and staying alive. And Jesus is calling 
us all to be Bone-grafters and Light-spreaders – right here – in this 
building – you and me – and everywhere we go. All it will take is some 
imagination, some patience, and a sense of humour – and we can pull 
ANYONE out of a Black Hole. Some Ms. Bosco and some Ms, Brown are 
waiting for us. And Ms. Bosco simply doesn’t want to stay home.

When are we going to start?

NOTES:

1 	Consider, for instance, as discussed on “Night Waves”, 17th March, 
2011, BBC Radio 3: “Do we exist millimetres away from a parallel 
universe? Physicist Brian Greene talks about the theories explored in 
his latest book: “The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep 
Laws of the Cosmos”, that much of reality's true nature may be deeply 
hidden within parallel universes. He discusses what form these 
alternative worlds may take and how they may hover closer to us than we 
could ever imagine.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00zdhd9

2	Saturday, March 19, 2011 “Still okay, still here”.
 
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbarefootandlaughing.blogspot.com%2F2011%2F03%2Fstill-okay-still-here.html&h=c6fc3 
[Kirstin]

3	“Alone, Together” By JOHN LELAND New York Times March 25, 2011
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/nyregion/27seniors.html?nl=nyregion&emc=ura1




Robert P Morrison
Interim Vicar
The Episcopal Church of St Alban
PO Box 1556
Albany OR  97321   541-921-1076 (cell)