<html><body>Part 1 - here's this weekend's draft.<div><br></div><div>Bob</div><div><br></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY THE TWENTY-SECOND 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;">JEREMIAH 31:27-34 PROPER 24 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;">2 TIMOTHY 3:14 – 4:5 16th OCTOBER, 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;">LUKE 18:1-8 PSALM 119:97-104<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;"><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;"> Do you hear the knocking? Has it been going on for a long time? Have you and I just noticed it? Or are we unsure what it is?<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;"> Life isn’t always easy. I wish things were more clear cut, that everything were labeled, that we didn’t have to decide what is good and what is suspect, what is true and what is false.<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;"> Can we hear the knocking yet?<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;"> Bekah stood in line in Starbucks. Did anyone hear anything like knocking? Possibly not. Who knocks in Starbucks, after all? And it can be fairly noisy, even if it is a pleasant sort of a noise.<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;"> Seriously, though, even if you hear the knocking, do you open the door?<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; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> “Tyler knocked on (Claire) Olsen’s door. Olsen was reluctant to answer, thinking the person on the other side of the door could have been a scammer, …” <sup>1</sup> After all, this was Florida and Hurricane Matthew had just blown through, devastating the neigbourhood. Fortunately, Tyler kept knocking. Of course, this is 2016. Someone could have picked up a phone. Oh, wait. Phone service was down. Not one of Claire’s family across three states could call her. They’d been trying for two or three days, with no luck. Had Claire and her home flown off in the wind? Was she under a tree?<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; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> So Tyler knocked, and kept knocking, again and again. Finally, Claire answered from the other side of the door. Tyler said that he had a pizza. “Go away,” said Claire, “I didn’t order a pizza.” It went on for quite a while, knocking, talking, Tyler showing a pretty fair amount of patience and tact.<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; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> Turns out Claire’s grandson in Nebraska had called the Papa John’s and had given his phone number, along with very specific instructions.<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; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> So Tyler, as he stood outside the door, banging away, called the grandson and Claire talked to him, finally, relieving the whole family that she’d made it, that her house was still standing, that there was a way to communicate and pass along prayers and messages.<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; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> Do you hear the knocking?<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; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> Bekah in Starbucks was having a horrible day. All sorts of what she felt were wasted meetings and appointments, never mind what she thought was useless information. The last thing she was expecting was to hear someone knocking, and, even if she had, she’d probably have simply let the noise go on unanswered.<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; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> Or was she the one knocking and she didn’t know 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; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> Life seems to be a tapestry of conflict, of destruction, of anger right now. Tapestry may be far too refined a word for it. There’s so much that all it takes is a cross-eyed look and someone can be set off in a rage.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> “</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">R</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">age is today’s ruling online emotion. So concluded a 2013 study of (a) Chinese mini-blogging network … —a platform that resembles Twitter and boasts twice as many users (by) Beihang University researchers.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);"> … (so much so that)</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> nd we have tothat angry tweet of yours has the potential of fomenting rage to the third degree! But it’s not just our smartphones sowing the seeds of all this discontent.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Edward Wasserman, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California–Berkeley, was quoted in <i>Scientific American</i> as saying, ‘Mainstream media have made a fortune teaching people the wrong ways to talk to each other, … People understandably conclude rage is the political vernacular, that this is how public ideas are talked about.’” <sup>2</sup><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Maybe this is why things are so messed up in our worlds. If we get bad news; if someone says or does something with which we don’t agree; even if someone makes what, in ordinary circumstances, would be a perfectly reasonable request, we yell, we scream, we lash out. We don’t believe anyone, preferring to think of conspiracies and that people are out to get us. And you know that old joke, “Just because you’re not paranoid, doesn’t mean that someone isn’t out to get you!”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> A writer in a recent article in <i>“Christianity Today”</i> wrote, “</span><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Anger and frustration are everywhere. We see it and feel it every day. But what’s driving it? According to Rabbi David Wolpe, the answer has to do with our sense that tomorrow may not be any better than today.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “‘All of us,’ conjectures Wolpe, ‘[see] history as an ever-increasing march to enlightenment. If you believe that things should get better and better, then it is infuriating when they do not.’<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Wolpe is on to something, to be sure. But,” wrote the article’s author, “I believe our disappointment goes even deeper. It’s not just that we’re not making progress, it’s that we have this unshakable sense that something has gone terribly wrong. Deep within we believe that life should be good and true and beautiful, but it is far from it. And when the information highway becomes a daily demolition derby, as it so often does, we strike out in frustration.”<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;"> According to the compiler of Jeremiah’s prophecies, things had been in a terrible state in Judah before the exile in Babylon. We know how frustrated the people of Judah were. They were lashing out. They didn’t trust many, not their neighbours, certainly not the Babylonians, not even God. One thing seemed to keep them going, though –besides the letter from Jerusalem referred to last week. They hammered away at God. They didn’t stop yelling, and cursing, and pleading with God. They kept knocking on God’s door, perhaps wondering if there was anyone on the other side.<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;"> Then God’s spokesman piped up again, “God hears you, whether your loud or quiet. God hears you whether your nasty or polite. God hears you whether you’re totally wrong or totally right – or somewhere in between.”<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;"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><br></p></div></body></html>