<html><body><div>Friends,</div><div><br></div><div>Along the road with Jacob. During Pentecost sometimes I seem to concentrate on the stories we don't always hear discussed.</div><div><br></div><div>Anyway, I have the regular liturgy on Sunday morning and a wedding in the afternoon. The wedding is outdoors, twenty miles north. I have a homily drafted for that too. Here's part 1 of the Sunday homily.</div><div><br></div><div>Happy weekend!</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><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>THE SEVENTH 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 28:10-19a<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>PROPER 11 a</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>ROMANS 8:12-25<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><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>23<sup>rd</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 13:24-30, 36-43<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>CANTICLE: “A SONG OF GOD’S STRENGTH IN MERCY” <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>(WISDOM 12:13, 16-19)</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="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“Almighty God, the fountain of all wisdom, you know our necessities before we ask and our ignorance in asking: Have compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give us those things which for our unworthiness we dare not, and for our blindness we cannot ask; through the worthiness of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever. Amen.” <sup>1</sup></span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Today’s Collect: It’s an old problem, one that can make things difficult, one that can make people doubt God’s existence, or at least the existence of a God who has any sort of an interest in us. Even those who have faith can find themselves tested severely. They can show up in worship situations week after week; they pray; they read the Bible; they share with people. Yet, somehow, they feel they’re still missing something.</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing. In fact, these situations may be the best places where faith-work is done.</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I know that I’ve been in that situation more than once. I’m sure that most of you have also. It’s so hard to figure things out, sometimes. It’s so hard to know whether, indeed, we’re on the right path. Part of it may be because there’s so much noise around us. Whether it’s at home, or in this worship space, or practically anywhere else, the noise of traffic is constant. It’s so distracting, even disturbing. And it’s not simply vehicular traffic. </span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Or we go into a store, or a restaurant, an office, even a funeral home, and there’s music playing. Background music, I grant you, but still music, constantly sounding out. And then there are folk who feel uncomfortable taking a walk outside unless they have something stuck in their ears, something conveying words or music, filling the space between their ears as if a vacuum is to be abhorred.</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I know I’m as guilty as the next person, wanting to listen to music so much of the time. And it’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>NOT</u></b> really that bad. Music can uplift, it can bring back memories, it can soothe, it can calm people and help them to focus on the task at hand. It has been proven to stimulate the brain in a positive way, and it’s recognized as being beneficial for the development of infants’ sensory systems.</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Yet music, or any other noise, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>CAN</u></b> be used as a means to escape from dealing with, from wrestling with, things that are bothering us, or are necessary to our health. </span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Sometimes we look for something to excuse us from confronting what’s in our minds. Sometimes, we can become oblivious to what’s around us, and what we may actually find to be helpful for our spiritual and emotional growth. At the very least, there are times when we have to silence ourselves so that we can listen – listen to our own hearts and minds, and how we interact with others; listen for a sound that tells us that, in sacred mysteries, although we can never know the mind of God fully, we can discover glimpses in sound and light which help us find the path that’s best for us and focus on our goals.</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Jacob was on a journey. He’d so much on his mind. He was still a bit of a brat, and Isaac, his father, was still pulling the strings. I doubt if either were really intentional about doing a whole lot of listening to God, at least as much as they should have. Isaac was controlling whom his sons would marry. Granted, that wasn’t that uncommon in those days. Although they lived in a land where there were many different tribes, with interaction among them; and although Esau had taken two wives from among those </span><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>tribes, Isaac insisted that his sons and heirs marry women from their own ancestral lines.</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>Was there suspicion about what was different? Was there fear that one tribe, one village group, would dominate the other and that what was unique to the blessing and inheritance Jacob had received as a descendant of Abraham? Sometimes it takes so little to threaten identity. What may have seemed relatively insignificant to us, may have been important to Jacob. Fear, then, may have had a lot to do with why Jacob was on this journey. <span style="margin: 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41);">He knew where he was supposed to end up, even if he’d never been there. But what lay in between on the journey, whom he might meet on that journey, and what difficulties he might encounter – of this he hadn’t any idea. He set out, day after day, making slow progress towards his promised reward.</span></span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Everything must have seemed strange. The sounds he heard would have come from the countryside through which he walked – twigs snapping in the heat; grass rustling in what breeze there may have been; animals scurrying as quietly as they could from one area of shade to the next. The landscapes, the wild animals, perhaps the occasional traders and flock tenders – picture them, and mix into that a recurring question about where the next oasis might be. And, remember, Jacob was the one who’d spent his formative years in and around a tent with his mother. He wasn’t the rough and ready outdoorsman that Esau was. Frankly, it was a wonder that he’d survived thus far on his journey.</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>What Jacob thought about as he walked, and stopped, and rested, and walked again; what he thought about regarding what lay ahead, we don’t know. What he thought about God, we don’t really know either, but there was a degree of faith within him that made him continue his journey.</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>This is like us. We may have an idea where we’re headed. For instance, I flew from Scotland to New York, for study in New Jersey, having seen nothing of what lay in front of me except photos of the Statue of Liberty and, on the night before I flew out, an old black and white movie in which I saw deserted, rather eerie streets in New York City. But I kept on.</span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></p><p style="background: white; margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(29, 33, 41); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"><br></span></span></p></div></body></html>