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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>I'd been wondering how to deal with the readings - then the tragedy in Roseburg happened. I hope this works ... time for editing.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>Blessed weekend!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>Bob<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY THE NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>JOB 1:1; 2:1-10 PROPER 22 B<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>HEBREWS 1:1-4; 2:5-12 4th OCTOBER, 2015<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>MARK 10:2-16 PSALM 26<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'> “From dying suddenly and unprepared, Good Lord, deliver us.” 1<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'> That’s one of the petitions from the prayers called “The Great Litany”, which we use during Lent. There are times when we can be tempted to treat these words somewhat nonchalantly, as if it deals with something far out into the future. But this isn’t what we’re saying to God. We’re pleading that, when something drastic DOES happen, we’ll be able to deal with it. Somehow, we pray, we’ll find the resources, spiritual, emotional and physical, to live into and through whatever it is we may find most frightening or unnerving, especially when we hardly have a moment’s notice. And THAT’S what our faith is all about.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'> “Curse God and die” must be one of the best spousal support lines in the Bible. If you know anything at all about Job. You’ll remember how devout he was. He was faithful to the point of stoicism. Puritanical, in the best sense, might describe him. He is pictured as following the laws and making sure that their spirit was evident, that he wasn’t simply going through the motions. He was SO faithful, in fact, that God was really and impressed by the way that he conducted himself. So much so that God couldn’t stop talking about and pointing to Job as the very epitome of what life was all about.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'> Not to berate ourselves unduly, but I doubt if you and I would compare to Job. Yet we all have our good points. Perhaps best among them is that we all try hard to live into the discipleship to which Jesus calls us. We do our best, even as we struggle, for instance, to make sure that everyone is treated as we’re called to do by the promises of the Baptismal Covenant. But everyday life IS hard, something Jesus recognised. Yet He counselled that we should never give up, either on the possibilities of God’s Love to transform us or on our determination to be as faithful as we possibly can. Then, when the chips are down, from somewhere within us, we can draw on that reservoir of love.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'> “From dying suddenly and unprepared …” this petition is made all the more real by the events in Roseburg of last Thursday. Like the “loathsome sores” covering the body of Job, the shootings at Umpqua Community College came out of nowhere. Even if the assailant DID post comments and warnings on social media on Wednesday night, no one, apparently took them seriously. People may have thought them fantasies of someone with a wild, if very warped, imagination, something little different from many of the TV shows or Facebook rants that pepper our lives.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'> There’s no telling what, if anything, was the social media equivalent in Job’s day, but many believe that the standard against which life was judged was that if you were prospering, you must be righteous, and if you were struggling, then it was, somehow, your own fault and that you’d insulted God. This sort of reasoning still persists to this day, in certain quarters, despite what Jesus said repeatedly – that God isn’t such a capricious Creator. Time and again, Jesus echoed the thinking of Job, that terrible things happen, and that it can’t be explained away, except for a few isolated occasions when we know that we could have chosen better, we could have refused to be rude or abusive, we could have been more careful and considerate. Yet there ARE so many times when nothing we’ve done or could have done prevents the tragic, the mean, the violent from erupting in our lives.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'> We may never know or understand what drove that young man – and the hundreds of others who’ve done the same thing – to engage in such random and destructive acts of violence. That’s a separate matter. The more immediate one is how we respond when we think of the mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, daughters and sons of those killed on the College campus. Or, worse yet, when we find ourselves in such horrendous danger.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'> “From dying suddenly and unprepared, Good Lord, deliver us!”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'> Somehow, we train ourselves to think of God as being present everywhere, observant, standing at our sides, in every situation, not a God who intervenes with the wave of a magic wand – that would be impossible since God honours us with free will. But the God in whom we believe brings comfort for all the wounds we suffer. The God and Father of Jesus was present and sent angels to minister to Jesus when He faced such temptations in the desert, or in the Temple, or on streets or countrysides. Whenever someone tried to divert Him from His mission of love and forgiveness; whenever someone tried to make Him lose faith in what He was about; whenever, finally, He was hoisted on to a cross and hung out to suffer and die; whenever someone whispered, “Curse God and die”, Jesus found the inner strength to work through the consequences of His faith and trust.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'> This is not make out Job’s unnamed wife as some sort of monster. In her own way, she was struggling with trying to understand what was going on. And, to her eternal credit, no matter how frightened, how distraught – take a look at the bulletin illustration 2 for yourself to see what the artist made of that discussion – to her credit, Job’s wife stayed at her husband’s side.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'>= = = = =<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></body></html>