<html><body><div>An early start!</div><div><br></div><div>I thoroughly recommend Scorses's film "Silence". I saw it last night.</div><div><br></div><div>Bob</div><div><br></div><div><div><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST, ALBAN, ALBANY<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>THE FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY a</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>MICAH 6:1-8<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>29<sup>th</sup> JANUARY, 2017</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>1 CORINTHIANS 1:18-31<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>PSALM 15</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>MATTHEW 5:1-12</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>How incredibly appropriate our Scripture readings are as a morale booster for the day of our Annual Meeting! </span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I don’t believe that God pulls strings like this. God simply hopes that we’ll be open, continually, to prompts to see God in all around us, and to pay attention to how the words of the prophets and of Jesus are a strong moral compass no matter in what age we live.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>So, whether we hear, and whether we respond to God’s guidance, is, once again, maddeningly, up to us. I’m sure some of us might gladly give up part of our brain and part of our conscience in return for God making all the choices. But that’s not how God works! Remember that telling couplet from the prayer of confession? “…by what we have done, and by what we have left undone …” or “we have left undone those things which we have ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done …” or, again, “… the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf …”</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>There doesn’t seem to be of an out for us. We <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>ARE</u></b> responsible – for what we say and do; for the way we interrelate; for the actions at the annual meeting; even for the food we bring to offer one another.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>So how do we decide? On what do we base our decisions and our actions? The advice passed on by the prophet Micah has grabbed people’s attention for twenty-seven hundred years. “</span><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>The Lord has told you mortals what is good, and what it is that the Lord requires of you: only to act justly, to love loyalty, to walk humbly with your God.” (6:8)</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>Both Amos and Micah lived in times that were very prosperous. “Micah had, like Amos, the simple heart of a country-man. He was not lured away by the glittering façade of the new culture – fine houses, advanced fashions, get-rich-quick businesses – but kept a firm grip on the moral realities that make for true national greatness. He shared Amos’ passion for justice, and was particularly concerned with the same ruthless expropriation of peasant farmers as Amos had protested against in Israel. Like (a) previous namesake Micaiah-ben-Imlah (1 Kings 22:14-28), he was not afraid to speak the unpopular words, and to speak it all alone.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Perhaps the worst difficulty facing Micah was that which also faced Micaiah (and countless prophets in multiple generations) – the popular and welcome belief that because Judah was God’s people, their security could never be destroyed.” <sup>1</sup> And many then, as now, hold that if you’re doing well, whether physically, emotionally, or economically, then that’s a sign that you’re right in step with God, and that God is beaming.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The problem is that life , life as God defines it and as God wishes us to focus on it, is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>NOT</u></b> defined by our physical health, or emotional health, or economic health. Life is defined by relationships, by the way that we interact with one another, by the way we imitate Jesus, by how we honour God by honouring one another. Justice, Loyalty, Humility – I wonder why these words, these ideals haven’t made it into a nation’s motto. What would such a nation look like? What </span><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>would such a congregation look like?</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>And turning to the Gospel reading – the famous Beatitudes – especially in Matthew’s carefully nuanced version, we may be led to consider that economic status and so on aren’t what Jesus was driving at. And we’d be right – up to a point. What Jesus said cuts across all economic groupings, all health issues, and so on. What Jesus talks about is the way in which everyone has to accept the attitude of humility before God and one another. When we talk about “Me first”, no matter who’s talking, then justice and loyalty fly out of the window. <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>When the window is shattered in such a way, everyone gets trampled. Dignity, compassion, mercy, peace, above all, love, the very things which filled Jesus’ conversations with the people of His day, they become lost – and so do the people! <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>THIS</u></b> is that from which Jesus came to save us, to reform and renew us.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Martin Scorsese’s film “Silence” has just been released. It’s both harrowing and very inspiring. It’s based on a novel written about fifty years ago by Japanese author Shusaku Endo and deals with the introduction into Japan of Christianity and then the persecution of both clergy and laity when too many challenges were raised, when the power of the local lords was threatened.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The first chapters of the book are written as letter from Fr. Sebastian Rodrigues after the intense persecution had begun.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>He said, “My hunch from some time back was not wrong. What are Japanese peasants looking for in me? These people who work and live and die like beasts find for the first time in our teaching a path in which they can cast away the fetters that bind them. The Buddhist bonzes simply treat them like cattle. For a long time they have just lived in resignation to such a fate.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Today I baptized thirty adults and children. And not only from here; for the Christians make their way through the mountains from Miyahara, Kuzushima and Haratsuka. I then heard more than fifty confessions. After Sunday Mass for the first time I intoned and recited the prayers in Japanese with the people. The peasants stare at me, their eyes alive with curiosity. And as I speak there often arises in my mind the face of one who preached the Sermon on the Mount; and I imagine the people who sat or knelt fascinated by his words. As for me, perhaps I am so fascinated by his face because the Scriptures make no mention of it. Precisely because it is not mentioned, all its details are left to my imagination. From childhood I have clasped that face to my breast just like them person who romatically (sic) idealizes the countenance of one he loves. While I was still a student, studying in the seminary, if ever I had a sleepless night, his beautiful face would rise up in my heart.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><br></p></div></div></body></html>