[Propertalk] 7 Easter a rcl

[robertpmorrison at charter.net]

Greetings, Friends!

Here's what I have, and am still reading, for tomorrow.

Bob

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY    		       THE SEVENTH SUNDAY 
OF EASTER - A
ACTS 1:6-14				      	       THE SUNDAY AFTER ASCENSION DAY
1 PETER 4:12-14; 5:6-11					                            5th JUNE, 2011
JOHN 17:1-11						              PSALM 68:1-10, 33-36

	An old man is struck by a car and brought to the hospital. A nurse 
enters his room and says, “Sir, are you comfortable?”

	The old man replies, “I make a nice living.”

	Words are fascinating. One single word, thoughtfully or thoughtlessly 
placed, can inspire and make, or else destroy, a career. One word can 
fire up or block a project that will affect the lives of thousands, if 
not millions. Actions can do the same. So does one’s presence or absence 
at an event.

	In one famous scene of the movie “Amadeus”, about the life and vocation 
of Mozart, the narrator talks of the opera scene in Vienna. Whether or 
not the emperor yawned during a performance could shorten the opera’s 
run. More than two yawns and it wouldn’t play again.

	Simple things – incredible results – that can ripple out into the whole 
world.

	The New York Times correspondent Nicholas Kristof – who has a home in 
Yamhill County and so represents us around the world – Nicholas Kristof 
began an article a week or so ago, “One cost of the uproar over Greg 
Mortenson, and the allegations that he fictionalized his school-building 
story in the best-selling book ‘Three Cups of Tea,’ is likely to be 
cynicism about whether aid makes a difference.”

	That’s frightening. If someone attempts to implement some proposal, or 
talks to someone about one, and then doesn’t quite live up to the 
initial dream – does that really shut the whole project down? Does it 
reflect on other projects being organised by others?

	I wear a white bracelet with the word “One” on it, signifying among 
other things that one person CAN make a tremendous difference. I believe 
that. But I’d always thought of this in a positive way. CAN one person’s 
comment or activity have ramifications that hurt those unrelated?

	“But,” continued Nicholas Kristof, “but there are also deeper questions 
about how best to make an impact — even about how to do something as 
simple as get more kids in school. Mortenson and a number of other 
education organizations mostly build schools. That seems pretty 
straightforward. If we want to get more kids in school around the world, 
what could make more sense than building schools?

	“How about deworming kids? ….

	“Prof. Michael Kremer, a Harvard economist, helped pioneer randomized 
trials in antipoverty work. In the 1990s, Kremer began studying how to 
improve education in Africa, trying different approaches in randomly 
selected batches of schools.

	“One intervention he tried was deworming kids — and bingo! In much of 
the developing world, most kids have intestinal worms, leaving them 
sick, anemic and more likely to miss school. Deworming is very cheap (a 
pill costing a few pennies), and, in the experiment he did with Edward 
Miguel, it resulted in 25 percent less absenteeism. Even years later, 
the kids who had been randomly chosen to be dewormed were earning more 
money than other kids.

	“Kremer estimates that the cost of keeping a kid in school for an 
additional year by building schools or by subsidizing school uniforms is 
more than $100, while by deworming kids, the cost drops to $3.50. (In a 
pinch, kids can usually go to “school” in a church or mosque without a 
uniform.)” 1 – IF  there IS such a building available.

	But then, history seems to be full of folk who have a vision problem, 
who won’t ask what some may think as silly or off-the-wall. Some of us 
hesitate to go out on a limb for fear we might fall.

	Jesus ran into those sort of folk, all the time, even after His 
resurrection. Things would be O.K. if Jesus could do only one more 
thing. Like establish the State of Israel. That would solve every 
problem – at least until the next border dispute, or power-sharing 
difficulty. But that was the last thing on Jesus’ mind. He was about to 
leave the spreading of the Gospel message totally in the hands of a few 
folk. And what happened? They looked for some sort of street cred. They 
fussed over political structure and redistricting. It’s a wonder we 
didn’t hear that Peter, or Matthew, or Mary tugged on
Jesus’ sleeve and said, “Give me the rights to the franchise in 
Jerusalem and I’ll get the job done for you.”

	Jesus’ last words were, apparently, pretty close to, “Knock it off, 
won’t you? Just do what I told you.”

	We still get hung up on words, though. We want to know who has control 
of this or that function in the congregation. We look for the least 
trouble-free area of town in which to meet, whether for business or 
pleasure. We live in such a technologically advanced day and part of the 
country that we may well ignore what can be accomplished by a single 
phone!

	“Protect My friends,” said Jesus to His Father. “Help them, keep them 
from doing something really stupid – like putting up billboards about 
times and periods.”

	Lest we become too arrogant and proud of our dignity, don’t forget that 
we can boil up all sorts of cauldrons of stews about local as well as 
international issues – and all without the help of any outsiders either!

	The Church has wrestled with trying to understand what Jesus was on 
about for two millennia now. One of the major problems that I see is 
that we strain at gnats – we pick up on the tiniest of details – good 
enough in itself – but then we promptly forget or pay no attention to 
what the main story is about.

	Recently among the e-mails in my computer in-box, came a reference to a 
poem of which I’d completely forgotten. The British poet George Gordon, 
better known as Lord Byron, wrote, in 1816, “a narrative poem that has 
become a classic. The poem is titled, ‘The Prisoner of Chillon,’ and it 
is the story of (an historical figure) incarcerated in the dungeon at 
the Castle of Chillon near Lake Geneva, Switzerland.”

	The poem describes the trials of a lone survivor of a family who has 
been martyred. The character's father was burnt at the stake, and out of 
six brothers, two fell on the battlefield while one was burnt to death. 
The remaining three were sent to the castle of Chillon as prisoners, out 
of which two more died due to pining away. In time only the narrator 
lived.

	“The prisoner was in a narrow, cramped dungeon cell for such a long 
time that he began to think of it as home. He made friends with the 
spiders, insects, and mice that shared his cell. They were all inmates 
of the same dungeon and he was monarch of each race.

	“The years in the dark dungeon cell had taken their toll. He was no 
longer unhappy or uncomfortable. He had grown accustomed to his 
environment and came to think of his chains as friends.

	“One day a bird perched on the crevice of the ledge above and began to 
sing. It was the sweetest music he had ever heard. Suddenly, the desire 
to see the outside world overwhelmed him. He grabbed the walls of his 
cell, and began climbing and struggling up the wall so that he could 
look out of the little window. In that moment, he saw a world that he 
had forgotten…” 2

	There WAS a window in the cell, even although it may have been 
difficult to access. Somehow, though, the prisoner chose to ignore it, 
concentrating only on the minutiae of life. He allowed his vision to be 
dimmed.

	Here’s where I struggle. We can’t be short-sighted in terms of those to 
whom we minister. It IS important to think of the folk who belong and 
attend to our family here, and to the greater Albanites. But our vision, 
our understanding of Jesus’ word; above all, our understanding of Jesus’ 
compassion and power which embrace all of creation – our vision must 
stretch beyond who and what we encounter every day. We can’t forget the 
world outside – ever.

	I’m sure the apostles would have been thrilled to have known when 
Israel’s statehood would have been secure. The problem is that having 
that sort of information gets in the way of what the Gospel is all about 
– every time.

	Jesus’ ministry is remarkable for the fact that He never seemed to 
worry about the colour of carpets, or the comfort of the pews, or the 
size of the choir – never mind who ran the police force … as long as 
there was no abuse of power. So let me jump in with both feet and say 
that having committees for any of these has to take second place to 
issues of Love, and Justice, and Mercy all of which transform lives. 
Committees are necessary and useful, but only as far as they remain 
focused on their goals and purposes.  Let me add that I know that I find 
myself more than a little inclined to work energetically when the 
surroundings are attractive. Food in my stomach, something to keep me 
warm, in my case a cup of tea – a cookie would be icing on the cake! 
Yes, it’s tremendously hard to keep someone’s attention when that 
person’s feet are wet and cold. That’s why many agencies collect socks 
and underwear for elementary school children. THAT’S why Greg Mortensen 
and all those others who erect school buildings are to be commended – so 
that the wind, and the rain, and the snow can be kept at bay for a few 
hours. We can’t ever allow ourselves to forget that.

	But don’t forget deworming pills either. Pills and walls – they BOTH 
offer protection and set the scene for hope that Love, and Justice, and 
Mercy may not be far behind.

	A friend and I used to have a good giggle when we listened to the 
office of Compline and this morning’s verses from the First Letter of 
Peter were read. We made jokes along the lines of, “Here comes that lion 
again”. But the letter writer was serious. The lion of 
self-aggrandisement, of injustice, of silence and inaction in the face 
of suffering – THAT lion is alive and well in Albany as much as anywhere 
else. If we get so hung up on looking for all that we envisage as the 
trappings of the realm of God we may miss how little it actually takes 
to LIVE the Gospel and to bring God’s reign into plain view. Not 
necessarily the cost of a whole new building, or a new administration, 
or what the apostles probably wanted but were afraid to verbalise – the 
ability to control what goes on in the community.

	Certainly the new building might do wonders for people’s spirits, and 
there’s no denying the benefit of shelter from wind and rain. Staying in 
the parking lot outside on any given day in the last couple of weeks 
would soon tell us of that.  But socks, pills, mosquito nets, bricks – 
one at a time, for the cathedral in Haiti – none of them may SEEM flashy 
or earth-shattering, but to children and adults alike they can turn a 
life around.

A single word or action CAN make all the difference. We simply need to 
choose where and on what to focus. We may like it, or we may not, but 
Jesus left us that choice.

NOTES:

1 	“Getting Smart on Aid” by NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF New York Times. May 18, 
2011
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/opinion/19kristof.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

2	“The Prisoner of Chillon”  From ‘Wikipedia’, the free encyclopedia. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner_of_Chillon






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