<html><body><div>This is "raw footage", so to speak - unedited.</div><div><br></div><div>Part one of a sermon begun sometime last week and given an ending last night.</div><div><br></div><div>Peace and hope in the midst of water, smoke, fire - oh, and locusts. Anyone seen any locusts?</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Bob</div><div><br></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>THE FOURTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>EXODUS 12:1-14<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>10<sup>th</sup> SEPTEMBER, 2017</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>ROMANS 13:8-14<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>PROPER 18a</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>MATTHEW 18:15-20<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 149</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>The wonderful musician, Jordi Savall, who is also a renowned musicologist, wrote, “‘I believe that people conserve their music through the generations because this music is very important to them. It helps people to survive. You are Scottish – (I liked that part) – you are Scottish – well, think of the Scot in America. He uses the music to remember his origins. This helps people to survive, so it is important to them, in their hearts. We use our music to identify ourselves.’</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>“This comes quite naturally from a Catalan, who says he can feel at home in Madrid or Grenada, or Istanbul, or Sarajevo, but never forgets the soil from which he sprang. ‘All of us have to preserve a certain dignity for ourselves. In small countries, if they are part of bigger states or they are overshadowed by great nations, we have to speak our language and preserve our culture. You don’t have to be an academic to understand this. It is natural.’</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>…”Cultural homogeneity, he says, is a mistake because the attraction of people becoming more universal is an illusion. ‘A person is always right to defend his own roots – not in opposition to other cultures but simply because this is part of him. I can read books at home written in Spanish. If they are written in Catalan, they are different. That is who I am.’” <sup>1</sup></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>I find this extremely interesting, not only because I am in this country which is not the land of my birth, but also because I am a Christian in a culture and land which is increasingly less and less Christian, however we define this. And because I am deeply influenced by music, I resonate with the idea that, in order to survive, I need to remember things that remind me of who I am, and, among these things is music, composed in certain styles, performed in some particular ways, which talk to me about my immediate past as well as my ancestral past. Similarly with my faith.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>Notice that neither Jordi Savill nor I am saying anything about other music – whether it’s “good or bad”, whatever that may mean. Savall, in fact, is quite clear to point out that another individual has her or his own particular set of musical impressions and memories which talk about roots and philosophies which are not the same as anyone else’s. He’s just saying that we each have our own story, even if it <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>IS</u></b> connected in some way to the stories of others who have come together to live and benefit from particular cultural families. Like the Scot Savall mentioned, that person may remember and appreciate specific aspects of Scottishness which nourish other Scots who may live nearby, or are connected in some way.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>All of this prompted me to think about how we live and interrelate as individuals and as communities – communities of faith, communities of culture, any sort of community in which we may be engaged.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>We’re so prone to following the lead of other voices. We’re being taught not only to isolate ourselves from one another, but we’re being taught to reject, to despise, to try to eradicate the values of others. We’re encouraged by so many forces, from the media, to advertising, even to the act of sitting having coffee with someone; we’re encouraged to impose our wills and views in such a way that it seems that we want to wipe away that which makes others “them” as individuals. It’s as if we’re saying that there’s no place for difference; there’s no place for remembrance; there’s no place for honouring our ancestral roots which bring us the reassurances as well as the questions on which we depend for our daily lives.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>I wonder if you remember the heartbreaking words of Psalm 137 “How shall we sing the Lord’s song upon an alien soil?”</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>The majority of the people of the nation of Judah had been taken to Babylon as slaves after their country was ransacked and their iconic buildings knocked down or desecrated. They felt that they could no longer remember the songs, the music, the very heart of their faith because everything about them was different, from the geographical surroundings to their social status. They could not remember what it was that God had spoken to Moses when they were in similar anguish in Egypt almost a thousand years previously, the story that we heard once again this morning.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>I am with you, God said, despite the pain and the bitterness. I am with you and I am going to give you something to hold on to as you are about to find release from everything that troubles you. I am with you as you discover that you’re going to have to live differently; you’re going to have to take on some difficult tasks. Things won’t be the same, but I want you to hold on tight to what I am about to give you. “This day (, said God,) shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.” </span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>We – the whole world’s population – cry out for release from slavery placed on us by all sorts of agents.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>We’re slaves of time. We think we never have enough of it. We start something then, almost in unison, our spiritual and mental ADD kicks in. We arrive somewhere; we begin a journey or a task; we open our hearts to someone; until we start to think about time. Are we spending too much time on this? Might we be better employed doing something else? We get nervous about silence, about listening, about reflecting, possibly afraid that we have to fill the silence with noise rather than risking hearing something. Or are we afraid we’ll miss something else?</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>To this, God says, This is the day, the time, the moment I have made for you. Savour it. Examine it. You <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>WILL</u></b> find freedom in it.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>Or we’re afraid of what we see around us.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>There’s so much that’s destructive; there’s so much that makes us feel that everything is out of control. We see people whose opinions are opposed to those with which we’ve grown up and on which we’ve based our identities.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><br></p></div></div></body></html>