<html><body><div>I heard a TED Radio Talk on Sunday as I drove to lunch, and started writing this then. Of course, I'll read it over many times..</div><div><br></div><div>Happy Tuesday!</div><div><br></div><div>Bob</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>THE SEVENTEENTH 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 17:1-7<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>PROPER 21 a</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>PHILIPPIANS 2:1-13<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>1<sup>st</sup> OCTOBER, 2017</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>MATTHEW 21:23-32<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>PSALM78:1-4, 12-16<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></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 many of you have a God-complex? I’m really curious. I know I do, from time to time, and it’s not because I get to be up front here, talking or gesturing with my hands. It’s because, according to the thought of one economist, <sup>1 </sup>I and many, many others can have difficulties with failing. People are so used to being told that if one fails, if one doesn’t do well in things as varied as choosing dessert for a dinner party, to answering a difficult question, to making a really important decision in life; people are becoming used to being told that they’re a failure that it becomes embedded in their personalities. And how we deal with this can be both visible and invisible, to ourselves as well as others.</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>What really intrigued me the other day was when that economist suggested that some people respond to failure, especially when they’re told repeatedly that they’ve failed; what intrigued me is that they shove that thought, that experience, to the back of their minds. They refuse to listen to any suggestion that they’ve failed in the past and that it’s in their DNA to fail again and again. They think about ignoring mistakes and failures, even if they’re deliberate. So they take on a God-complex. They begin to think that they’re incapable of failing.</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>But only God doesn’t fail. Only God gets it right all the time. Only God doesn’t need to take into account whether or not what happened last week was good or is never to enter God’s thinking again.</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 if God is the only One who <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>DOESN’T</u></b> fail, then that means that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>WE</u></b> <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>DO</u></b> fail, way more often than we admit. But the great news, the wonderful news, is that this never stops God from loving us, from caring for us, for being right there with us, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>ALL THE TIME!</u></b><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></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>We’re back with the Hebrew people in the desert, the wilderness, back to the whining short memories, to not being able or willing to think about everything that’s gone right. We might be accused for thinking that God might take a page out of Ronald Reagan’s playbook and say, “There you go again!”, as if to imply that, of course, we the people repeat ourselves in both word and deed.</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>Yes, we <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>DO</u></b>! In fact, if we didn’t, if we didn’t challenge, if we didn’t question what’s happening, if we didn’t bring up the same things that continue to trouble us, then we’d be failing in our responsibility as God’s children.</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>God longs to hear what’s going on in our lives. God doesn’t want us to hold back, although I’m sure that God would breathe a little easier if we managed to relax a bit and get it right now and again.</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>Notice that it’s Moses who’s so worked up, as Peggy said last week. Moses was human too. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>HE</u></b> wasn’t God, even if God chose him to speak out from time to time. Moses, like us, was completely human. Maybe he was thinking like ‘enry ‘iggins in “My Fair Lady” – “Why can’t humans be more like God?”</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 God took him by the hand, and whispered that Moses gather up some of his good friends, and that they all let their blood pressure settle back down, that they get away by themselves. Then God asked them how they coped when things went right the last time they ran into a problem. God had them think of the positives and set aside the negatives.</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 like us this should be! I can’t read your minds, for which I’m really thankful, so I don’t know what you think, but I suspect that, like me, when something goes less than satisfactorily, we dwell on that. When we find that we’re hurt or feel threatened by a particular person or situation, then we remember that. We don’t look for the positive.</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>This, in itself, tends to be part of our makeup as human beings. Since we <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>AREN’T</u></b> God, then perhaps this is another point in our lives in which we admit the failure, but set it aside, to think of what good can come out of it.</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>Moses was told to confide in his friends. He was to listen and speak with people whom he trusted. He was to learn to let stuff roll off his back, because <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>GOD</u></b> had his back.<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></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>God’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>NOT</u></b> saying that there’s nothing more fun than a Saturday or Sunday morning spent imagining all the ways in which we mess up. What God <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>IS</u></b> saying is that before we even start running over in our minds what’s been happening, that we take a deep breath, that we repeat silently or out loud, “God is in this place”; “God is present;” “God cares.” Then we can go on from there. We can admit our human frailty, but we can bring to the front of our minds what went well; what we really enjoyed; what gave us hope; what really fed us richly.</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>In addition to gathering his friends, Moses was told to go to find his staff. “Remember what you had with you when you felt your world was falling apart?” God said. “O, yes! My staff!” <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>NOT</u></b> the people, although they <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>ARE</u></b> important, but the tool which he’d been given by God. Use that with which God has blessed you. Keep it close to you. Lean on it, as a visible sign that things <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>DO</u></b> go well.</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>What do you and I have that can act like that for us? Remember the definition of a Sacrament? “An outward and visible sign of the grace of God for you and with you.” What is sacramental to us? A photo of a loved one, or of a really happy occasion; a letter; a tangible gift, chosen for each of us and given to each one carefully; a book; a poem – something that shines colour into our lives – any and all of these may inspire us to feel the loving presence of God as well as of some other person, whether physically there or not.</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>Think back to the times when someone or something was given to us at precisely the right time when we seemed to be headed to a new low in our lives; and remember how that person, that object, brought a smile to our lips and a warm feeling in our hearts and minds. These are wonderful graces from God, designed not just for the moment we receive them, but to take with us for the rest of our lives.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><br></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><br></p></div></body></html>