<html><body>Here's the rough draft for Sunday.<div><br></div><div>Part 1</div><div><br></div><div>Bob</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY THE SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">JEREMIAH 4:11-12, 22-28 PROPER 19 c<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">1 TIMOTHY 1:12-17 11<sup>th</sup> SEPTEMBER, 2016<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">LUKE 15:1-10 PSALM 14<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><b><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><b><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"> </span></b><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Business as usual? Full speed ahead?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"> This anniversary – what do we make of it? How may it draw healing out of infection; how may it build up after destruction? If we can’t find ways in which to heal and to build, while honouring those whose lives were snatched from them, then we’re still trapped in the vicious tentacles of terrorism.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><b><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"> </span></b><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">As Brother Mark Brown put it, “</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(32, 32, 32);">If God’s vision for the human enterprise is to unfold in all fullness, we need a people ready, willing and able to embrace that which is timeless and carry it forward. And people ready, willing, and able to subvert what needs subverting.” <sup>1</sup></span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"> From the beginning of the stirrings of any sort of feelings about a god or gods who had some, if not all, control over the earth and its inhabitants, people have been wrestling with the connection between their faith and what was happening in their lives and the world around them.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"> I suppose it made perfect sense. You had a deity in charge of the sea. Another in charge of the sun, and one for the moon. You had a deity for crops and another for rain and a third for the wind. To have some single deity was beyond initial believers. How could one God keep everything in balance? So people sacrificed to so many gods that it became a perpetual dance, and if the forests caught fire and threatened homes and farmland, to which god did you sacrifice first?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"> Even when the Hebrews joined a few others in believing in a single god, there wasn’t the total relief people expected. Folk became careless and indifferent about their responsibilities to God and to one another. And this led to such beliefs and acceptance of, for instance, what the prophet laid out in our first reading. “You didn’t do this,” he said to the governing leaders, “so <b><u>THAT</u></b> will happen” – “that” being, in this case, unrelenting drought, and high winds, and the eroding of the landscape.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"> In other words, it was the people who ticked off God, so God was simply replying in kind.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"> You still find this today. Hurricane Katrina and most of the other flood and wind disasters; earthquakes in Japan, New Zealand and Oklahoma; canyon fires east of Los Angeles; - some still say there’s a religious reason for these. Theses and that attacks on the eleventh of September, 2001, were due to all sorts of social disorders which had riled up God to the point of a temper tantrum. Some religious leaders <b><u>DO</u></b> actually say that today. As ridiculous as it sounds, it was because of Gay Pride marches in New Orleans that Katrina tore through much of the south of the U.S., according to some.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"> You know, it IS remarkably easy to blame one group or incident for causing God such a pain that a thunderbolt is released. It’s much more difficult to say why hurricanes hit certain spots, why “the big one” hasn’t hit the Pacific Northwest yet. And why those few terrorists planned and executed their plots on the location in New York, and Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania; why they and countless others vent such rage and try to reduce nations to spineless jello idiots, all for the same of power.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"> Jeremiah <b><u>DID</u></b> point out at least one correct fact, however. People’s behaviour<b><u> DOES</u></b> matter, <b><u>EVERY</u></b>one’s behaviour. If you kick a dog often enough, even if you imply try to take away its food, it <b><u>WILL</u></b> bite you. If one individual, one group, one nation continually inflicts disrespect and abuse on others, at the very least unrest results and often leads to open rebellion. Prophets, leaders, Mother Theresa, now St. Theresa of Calcutta, all speak of the way that our treatment of each other causes ripples across the globe. Whether we ignore something or pay far too much attention to it, consequences are severe. The only difference between our behaviour and beliefs of and those of two thousand years ago is that we usually don’t try to bring God into the picture as the one who causes the flood, or the earthquake, or the act of terror. God, e believe, is very uch in the picture today, but not as a vindictive, spiteful Deity. Instead, we believe that God’s eyes are filling with tears, and God’s heart is breaking, because of our deliberate and careless behaviour, or the things done on our behalf.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"> I think Jeremiah would have, unfortunately, felt very much at home in our day and age. He’d still be speaking out about inequity, about injustice, about greed, about short-sightedness – you name it!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"> Where is the healing in all of this? Where is the rebuilding? Where is, in the thought of Brother Mark, where is the readiness, the willingness, the ability to seek and embrace what is timeless, to carry that forward instead of hugging to ourselves that which is so temporary, so narrowly focused, so self-serving. Is not this which lies at the heart of what troubles us, troubles society these days.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"> In that incredibly moving and strengthening prayer for generosity attributed to St Ignatius Loyola God is addressed in such a way as to admit how we can focus on ourselves, on the wrong things, even on the wrong people sometimes. “Lord, teach me to be generous.</span> Teach me to serve you as you deserve; to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to toil and not to seek for rest, to labor and not to ask for reward, save that of knowing that I do your will.”<o:p></o:p></p><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"> One commentator on the prayer wrote, “</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">I’ve prayed the Prayer for Generosity many times, thinking that Ignatius wrote it. Does it matter that he didn’t?</span></p></div></div></body></html>