<html><body>Here's the fist draft for Sunday, when we hold the Annual Meeting of the Congregation also.<div><br></div><div>Bob</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY 4 EPIPHANY C<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">JEREMIAH 1:4-10 31<sup>st</sup> JANUARY, 2016<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">1 CORINTHIANS 13:1-13 PSALM 71:1-6<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">LUKE 4:21-30<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> You’ve probably figured out by now that Jesus had an incredible sense of humour. He still does. More than likely He’d never have survived without it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Who else would talk as He did in His local Synagogue on the day of the Annual Meeting? Wither He had a wonderful feeling of job security or else He had a tremendous death wish. Or maybe He was simply naive.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> We heard today’s first verse at the end of last week’s Gospel reading. Although He was still very close to the beginning of His ministry, He must have felt a terrific burst of excited confidence as He worked His way through Isaiah’s verses about the transformation. No doubt He could barely contain Himself. The light must have dawned on Him as He went from word to word, and He must have felt so filled with joy. “Today.” He said, “today <b><u>ALL</u></b> of this has been made real.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I don’t know how you or I would have felt, had we been there. We may have thought of family members or friends, living with medical uncertainties. We may have wondered about the news of what’s unraveling in Harney County. We may have spent more than a minute of two thinking about the budget the BAC adopted the other night. Or maybe we might have spent some time thinking and dreaming about what we will accomplish as a congregation in the new year. After all, Jesus said that everything God had talked about, everything God had promised, was opening up right in front of them. It was all about to burst into glorious foliage and blossom, like a garden of such a mixture of plants that the colour, the fragrance, the potential to nourish bees and other pollinating insects and to produce a marvelously lavish crop of fruit; all of this, said Jesus, begins today.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> So far, so good. Nothing could be better for our annual meeting than to know that God’s energy and love will be with us to help us minister as a congregation as well as individuals. To hear about healing, about the resolution of disputes and misunderstandings, about the way that this congregation is going to be able to be an effective means of transformation up and down Queen Avenue and the length and breadth of Hill Street: what could possibly be better?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> <b><u>THIS</u></b> is what Jesus said to His neighbours and friends, even to His own family. And you can just picture Him smiling, His eyes possibly tearing up as He stood in the midst of these people, proclaiming that they would all find themselves caught up in the crazy ministry of making the reign of God come alive to everyone in town. Shoot – with news like this, why bother with an annual meeting? Just grab a mimosa on your way out of the door as you sift through in your mind where and with whom you’re going to talk first and begin to help resolve all the issues that are bothering folk.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The only problem is that Jesus must have belonged to the Episcopal Synagogue in Nazareth. You know us. Someone gives out good news and the response is a pretty polite, pretty restrained smile. You know the scene. Outwardly, we remain stoic. Inwardly we’re trying to remember if we left the oven on, at the right temperature, and whether or not it was the responsible crew who made all the arrangements for brunch.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Jesus brought this message about incredible freedom, about the way that the town, the county, the state, even the nation was going to experience tremendous transformation and growth, and all He could get out of them was a muffled, “Humph!”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> It wasn’t a “Nasty ‘Humph!’”, though. Jesus still seemed to have the ears, minds and hearts of the parishioners with Him. In fact, although they may have been reluctant to admit it, they were enjoying it. It was like walking into a meeting here to discover your neighbor – the one whom you give a smile and a hello to when you drive past one another in the morning; it was as if you walked in to a meeting here and discovered that the person had a real grasp about what was going on around Albany.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> What a surprise! To find such wisdom and insight from the person you’d least expect to find it. And maybe that was where the tinge of resentment comes in. the congregant, the board member, the tennis partner, the coffee companion; out of the blue, that person seems to be so sure of what was happening that she or her begins to set your teeth on edge. And when that neighbor begins to suggest that maybe the folk in Sweet Home, or Lebanon, or Shedd have nore trust, more awareness of what’s going on and what’s needed; well, that’s more than you and I can stand.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Neighbor or not; Annual Meeting or not; that person, all of a sudden, becomes a pompous ass, a danger to the way things are run here. And the meeting starts to turn wild.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> The problem about Jesus’ humour about this episode surfacing on Annual Meeting day is that Jesus is pulling our eyes, our minds, our hearts away from ourselves and our own way of doing things. The problem is that Jesus is telling us that the purpose of the Annual Meeting is to turn our attention to whom someone described as the “unprepared outsider”.<sup>1</sup><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Jesus is certainly pleased at the energy and effort we put into what happens within these four walls.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Jesus is well aware of our emotions over what’s happened here over the past twelve months, and of what we hope to accomplish in the next twelve, twenty-four, the next sixty months. There’s no way that Jesus is going to abandon us here. All that Jesus asks us to remember is that God’s reign “unfolds in the least expected, most distasteful places.” <sup>2 </sup>In other words, what may be a great idea to keep in mind when we convene as the meeting of this congregation is that we must never be complacent about the scope and consequences of our ministry.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Yes, we all need to be able to pay to keep the lights on and the heat at least approaching a level of comfort. But those outside, those who struggle, those who need heat and light just as much as we do – we can’t forget that <b><u>ALL</u></b> are God’s children; <b><u>ALL</u></b> are our siblings, even the ones we only tolerate at Thanksgiving and Christmas.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Theodor Adorno wrote, “</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">As far as possible, we ought to live as we believe we should live in a liberated world, in the form of our own existence, with all the unavoidable contradictions and conflicts that result from this.... Such endeavor is by necessity condemned to fail and to meet opposition, yet there is no option but to work through this opposition to the bitter end. The most important form that this will take today is resistance.”<sup> 3</sup></span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Adorno reminds us how Jesus’ sermon ended. Beginning with such enthusiasm, Jesus found that He’d underestimated the commitment of His listeners. He thought that they’d be so freed-up to hear that the health, and utility payments, and relationships, and the freedom to speak and share one’s deepest concerns; Jesus thought that His neighbours would be so relieved that they’d spill out of the meeting, fired up and ready to help every last person they met, whoever they were, wherever they lived.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Instead, the fire in their hearts took a different turn. They were ready to – to do what? To crucify Jesus? Well, others would get to that, later on. But they were willing t do anything to shut up Jesus. This wasn’t the Annual Meeting they’d planned, and, by golly, they weren’t about to let Jesus suggest they look out beyond the neatly-manicured grass and the well-maintained building.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> There’s the old saying that Jesus was about comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable. Maybe that’s at least part of what any Annual Meeting should be about – or, for that matter, any celebration of the Eucharist. Not to make us feel miserable, but to make us all excited about the fact that we’ve been given the challenge to discover who the widows and lepers of Albany are.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> I wonder how the people of that Synagogue congregation felt ten, twenty, fifty years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Some of them would have changed. I have no doubt about that. Others may still have been trying to work out their time and place in life. A few, unfortunately, may still have been unable and unwilling to forgive Jesus for what He said and did.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> One thing is sure. The good news that the world has been liberated – <b><u>ALL</u></b> the world – is true to this day. It’s simply a matter of having the courage to accept the challenge; to admit that some folk are always going to complain, no matter that Jesus is looking right at them.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Our call is not to be comfortable, but to be risk-takers for Jesus, always reaching farther and farther away from our well-known, well-established routines.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> There’s an interesting quote I came across last week, especially as we think about Jesus and how He related to people He knew and didn’t know; especially as we think about Annual Meetings; especially as we think about our ministries.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> <b><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Søren </span></b>Kierkegaard wrote, “People have an idea that the preacher is an actor on a stage and they are the critics, blaming or praising him. What they don’t know is that they are the actors on the stage; he (the preacher) is merely the prompter standing in the wings, reminding them of their lost lines.” <sup>4</sup><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Just ask Jesus!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">NOTES:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 15.3333px;">[1]</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> <span style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-size: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial;">“<strong><span style="font-weight: normal;">Soulwork Toward Sunday: Liturgical Year as Mystical Journey. Epiphany 4 c Jesus in the Synagogue (continued)” January 31, 2016 Suzanne Guthrie </span></strong></span><a href="http://www.edgeofenclosure.org/epiphany4c.html">http://www.edgeofenclosure.org/epiphany4c.html</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">2</span></span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Suzanne Guthrie, Op. cit.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">3</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Theodor W. Adorno,1903-1969(quoted in <u>The Silent Cry</u>, Dorothee </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Soelle), quoted by Suzanne Guthrie, Op. cit.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoFootnoteText" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><b><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">4</span></b></span><b><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> </span></i></b><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">“</span></i><i><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">Kierkegaard's Writings, XX: Practice in Christianity</span></i><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">” b</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">y Søren Kierkegaard XII:214-5, page 234 </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(34, 34, 34);"><a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9BdnzMOcoaAC&pg=PA235&lpg=PA235&dq=soren+kierkegaard+%E2%80%9CPeople+have+an+idea+that+the+preacher+is+an+actor+on+a+stage&source=bl&ots=WJj0sZvFlA&sig=Kb2rUEU-yMehCrnVREaD4HqjYaM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjJn-7O3cPKAhUC5WMKHRDeAv4Q6AEIKTAD"><span style="color: rgb(102, 0, 153);">Kierkegaard's Writings, XX: Practice in Christianity</span></a> </span><cite><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 102, 33); font-style: normal;">https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1400847036</span></cite></p></div></body></html>