<html><body><div>I'll try this in one mailing this week, since there are no references....</div><div><br></div><div><div>I drafted this about a week or so ago, and typed it yesterday. It may change a little, but ...</div><div><br></div><div>Happy Thursday!</div><div><br></div><div>Love,</div><div><br></div><div>Robert</div><div><br></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 SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>GENESIS 125:19-34<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>PROPER 10 a</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>ROMANS 8:1-11<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>16<sup>th</sup> JULY, 2017</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>MATTHEW 13:1-9, 18-23<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>PSALM 119:105-112</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Isaac loved Esau, because he was fond of game.” What terrifying words! What on earth was Isaac thinking of? Don’t answer – we just heard that he was thinking with his stomach.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But “Rebekah loved Jacob.” Equally terrifying! What on earth was <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>SHE</u></b> thinking of?</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The story’s as old as the hills. Dad loved <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>ME</u></b> best. Or Mum loved <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>ME</u></b> best. Favouritism – the key to family, congregational, national disaster. But it’s such an easy trap into which to fall. In fact, seldom do we ever see it as a trap. It’s – well, I’m tempted to say that it’s natural, but that’s the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>LAST</u></b> thing that it is. It’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>UN</u></b>-natural. As easy as it is to do, it’s the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>WORST</u></b> thing that we can do. It sets up jealousy, animosity, bigotry, prejudice, everything that’s worst in human beings.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Now I can hear all sorts of rationalisations – both from three thousand years ago and from this morning. Was Joseph so locked in to macho stereotypes that the only sort of son whom he’d praise was someone who lived by chasing down food, by engaging in rough sports, by sitting around the camp fire at night,</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>Drinking beer and belching. You know, manly things!</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>But Jacob – Jacob stick around the tent, dusting, washing dishes, making sure the drapes were hung just right. He cooked – possibly receiving things from Esau, who probably embarrassed his brother when he dumped the antelope, or gazelle, or other wild animal on the kitchen floor. You can picture it, I’m sure. Jacob didn’t do anything worth being called work.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I can hear the intake of breath from at least half the congregation already, and possibly even the hackles starting to rise. So, Stereotypes set in far before the time of Jacob and Esau, and continue right into the present. One sort of activity is acceptable, another is not. One is seen as indicative of praise, another is taken for granted and left unmentioned.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Where <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>WERE</u></b> Isaac’s brains when he set up this conflict? Where was Rebekah’s head when she followed suit? The problem arises so easily when people insist on making one person, one activity, one – well, you name the categories. All this trouble because of favouritism that starts out so carelessly and builds up into full scale conflict. We see it in families – “I’m so disappointed in you for not going to university!” “I keep wishing you’d do something else, or hang out with different people.” And, perhaps the ultimate put-down, “Well, you’ve been down that road so long, you’ve made your bed, you’re just going to have to lie in it.”</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Thus we categorise everyone. We make assumptions that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>WE</u></b> have the only rational understanding of what a person should look like, how a person should live, what a person should prefer in terms of religion, and so on. We love the one and we despise, or ridicule, or hate the other.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It’s such a sad state of affairs, more so because it’s such an easy trap into which to fall.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>That’s one of the prime reasons Jesus was lynched. He didn’t play favourites. He didn’t think before He accepted dinner invitations. He didn’t worry about on whose head He laid his hands. He reached out all around the three-hundred-and-sixty degree spectrum of humanity to heal, to reinvigorate, to encourage, to accept <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>EVERYONE</u></b>. No exceptions. No favourites.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I have a wonderful refrigerator magnet. The caption says, :Jesus loves you. But <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>I’M</u></b> His favourite.” I keep it there as a reminder that it’s totally and absolutely untrue.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Remember the parable that Peggy just read a few minutes ago? “A sower went out to sow.” The way that Matthew and the other Gospel writers set up their stories, we’re led to believe that when “Jesus went out and sat beside the sea”, He cast His eyes around to see who was in the crowd and what was going on around Him. If He were here, it would be highly unlikely that He’d be in this building for long. He’d far more likely be sitting on the cracked hazelnut shells, leaning against the city water tower fence, pointing across the street towards the Dari Mart, and saying, “There was a person who stopped at the door of a market, counting through a coin purse to see if there was enough to buy a pint of milk.” Or maybe He’d look up, smile and say, “Three young children walked into a store together and came out, sharing one ice cream cone among them in total pleasure.”</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In today’s case, Jesus must have looked up the slope running away from the sea shore, and said, “A sower went out to sow.”</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Now, in today’s high tech agricultural scene, probably you CAN set your farm equipment to discriminate so that the seed doesn’t fall where the farm worked chose <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>NOT</u></b> to have it fall. But this wasn’t the case when Jesus told the [parable. As Jesus told it, the seed flew everywhere. It landed wherever the cast of the hand and the force of the wind took it. And Jesus was being specific. The seed was the word of the Gospel which talked about complete acceptance, and welcome, and encouragement, the equal treatment of everyone, and full access to what made life healthy and fulfilling. The seed was scattered everywhere and was only diminished in its capacity to grow by the conditions others placed on it – by not clearing stones, or pulling out thorns, or eradicating any sort of an obstacle.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>God has no favourites. Put it another way, in what is, perhaps, an oxymoron, everyone is God’s favourite. No one is better, no one worse than the other. All of us have the capacity to accept or reject the incredible lavishness of God’s invitation. It’s US, it’s you and I, who, unfortunately, find it so easy to discriminate, to withhold care and encouragement; who shrug our shoulders when it comes to any number of things necessary for human life – like food, or clothing, or educational opportunities, or healthcare – the list goes on and on.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Isaac loves me best, we think, so we pattern our lives on pleasing and emulating him, and we start to allow his standards to dictate how we behave. But, said Jesus, the seed falls everywhere. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>ALL</u></b> are to be helped to be able to respond in as fair and as equitable a way as we can possibly arrange. And if one person wishes to hunt, great; or another to cook, wonderful; or another work in an office; terrific; or – and this list goes on too, no one better, no one worse or lesser than the other. And if one, for whatever reason, cannot get rid of the stones, or the thorns, or is continually picked on, then it is our responsibility to work alongside that person too.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Our Christian heritage can be a royal pain sometimes. Just as the font in the middle of the aisle can slow us down a little, or make us turn sideways, in order to move up and down, so Baptism into the family of God keeps getting in our way. We have to slow down to think about what we see, what we say, what we hear, what we touch, and, as we’re asperged with the water of Baptism ourselves, what we taste. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>ALL</u></b> of our senses are engaged by Baptism. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>ALL</u></b> of our beings are reminded again and again that we are all equal before God in Jesus. We are <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>ALL</u></b> called to take on the awkward mission of ensuring that we are all God’s favourites in Christianity.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>In a few moments, children will be brought to the water to be welcomed into the household of God, such a household in which <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>ALL</u></b> gifts are treasured and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>ALL</u></b> stereotypes are banished. The parents, the Godparents, and all of us make promises that we will ensure that this will happen.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>We don’t baptize and say, “Good luck, kid! Your parents, and this congregation, and maybe even God likes your brother, or your sister, or your cousin better. I hope you’ll make it. And don’t look for God to make up the difference either.”</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>One of the ways in which we’ll demonstrate that we are marked as Christ’s own will be through the way that we set aside all that divides, all that inhibits, all that discourages others from growing to fullness in Jesus Christ. Instead, we’ll show the mark of Christ in how we celebrate and value diversity, because this is how the fruit yields an hundredfold, and sixtyfold, and thirtyfold. And no one is measuring to see who might appear to come out on top. The only thing that matters is if you and I follow Jesus, and make it possible for God’s Spirit to blow and to scatter the seed in order to bring others with us. What matters is how we all live out the promises we’ll remake in a few minutes.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>What matters is how we accept the most vulnerable in and into our communities and societies, and help them to know how important they are, and how they’re loved.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The first reading today contains a perfect example of how <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>NOT</u></b> to do this in life, even if you thing or feel you may be on the important people list. The Good News, however, is that we all have the opportunity to change, to correct our courses, to learn that God <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>HAS NO </u></b>favourites. As Brooklyn and Brody as followers of Jesus, it’s our responsibility to teach them that this is so. That and get to work clearing away those stones, and pulling out the thorns, and so on, that will inevitably be in front of them – and everyone else.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Here’s a vocation we may never have considered: stone clearing, thorn pulling, making the way easier for people to know that they’re loved, as we are loved, to God’s uttermost – and beyond.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='background: white; margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><br></span></p></div></div></body></html>