<html><body><div>Here's the first part of my draft for this Sunday.</div><div><br></div><div>Peace!</div><div><br></div><div>Bob</div><div><br></div><div>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(32, 32, 32); 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>THE NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(32, 32, 32); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>EXODUS 32:1-14<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>PROPER 23 a</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(32, 32, 32); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>PHILIPPIANS 4:1-9<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>15<sup>th</sup> OCTOBER, 2017</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(32, 32, 32); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>MATTHEW 22:1-14<span style="margin: 0px;">
</span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>PSALM 106:1-6, 19-23</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(32, 32, 32); font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; color: rgb(32, 32, 32); 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;'>Brother David Vryhof reminds us
that, </span><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>“When it’s all said and done, the
question we will be asked on the Day of Judgment will be: Did you love? Were
you a lover after Christ? Did you have room in your heart for those whom Christ
values? This is what matters most.”<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><sup>1</sup></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
what is it that turns us from this? I mean, we <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>KNOW</u></b> what Jesus said about how we’re to live. Yet, as the
readings for the past several weeks have shown, people from the beginning of
time think that it’s easier to stray away from that like lost sheep than to
work through questions and doubts.</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>A writer questioned the other day
where we are as church in our society, and what it is that’s ruling it. She was
thinking out loud, because that’s what people in church are supposed to do. She
was thinking out loud among people whom she knew and trusted, not because they
all agreed with her, far from it. But she was thinking, she was asking, she was
trying to finds basic answers to basic questions: what <b><u>IS</u></b> the
church? What should the church be like? What should the church be doing?<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>She was just as you and I are, I hope, asking
what our tradition, what our understanding about the Bible, have to offer us to
help us make sense of what’s happening in the world on the sidewalk outside
these doors – perhaps no further than a hundred feet away from where we’re
sitting. What’s going on in the homes closest to this building? What is
troubling the people within these homes and what’s giving them pleasure and a
feeling of security? And here’s where we may all question, what do the
scripture passages read this morning have to say about life? Where are we on
the journey of Love?</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>Not to dwell continually on the
negative, although we know that these are the things that fill the media and
grab our attention far quicker than anything else; not to dwell on the
negative, but it seems to get a little bit more difficult to live up to the
Great Commandment each day. And it never hurts to learn where there may be new
or different potholes on our pilgrimage.</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 what if we start with our
worship. How are we to keep an even keel without throwing up our hands or
burying our heads under a pillow?</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 style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Different
parts of the Eucharistic Liturgy strike me at different times and seem to tug
at my sleeve. Perhaps this happens to you too. It may be a word or a phrase in
the collect or the hymn “God, we praise you”. It may be something in the creed
or the prayers of the people. It may be in the Prayer of Consecration or Prayer
of Thanksgiving after we’ve been drawn into Communion with God and 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>In any and all of these, something
may seem to strike a chord within us to bring new light and understanding about
the incredible limitlessness and expansiveness of the love of God – something
of which we need God to remind me, and possibly you, every day, it seems.</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>One of the touching expressions
that’s been working on me for the last month or two since we’ve been using
Eucharistic Prayer C is the description of the way in which we succumb so
easily to destructive tendencies. It’s as if we’re either extraordinarily dense
or extraordinarily self-absorbed!</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>Listen to this: </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>“>From the primal elements you
brought forth the human race,</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 style="margin: 0px;"> </span>and
blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made 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><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>the
rulers of creation. But we turned against you, and betrayed</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 style="margin: 0px;"> </span>your
trust; and we turned against 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><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Have
mercy, Lord, for we are sinners in your sight.” <sup>2</sup></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 has, as it were, handed us
everything on a plate. God has created for us and gifted us with so much that
it’s incredibly embarrassing when we think how much we have, and how much has
been done for us. Even on our best days, we may be excused for thinking, “Who
am I that the Creator should be so amazingly generous?”</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>“Thy table now is spread, thy cup
with love doth overflow,” says one of our Communion hymns. But it’s not just at
the Altar, as wonderful as that is. It’s everywhere we turn. To deny this is a
sin. Everything we see around us; every person we see around us, has been
brought into our lives, as the psalmist says elsewhere, “for the sport of it”,
for the sheer unadulterated joy in which we may bask with 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>We’ve been listening to Exodus
stories about the Hebrew people for some time now, because we need to be
reminded of our roots, not just ancestral, but our more immediate ones. We’ve
been rediscovering how God has been matching the Hebrews’ footsteps, walking
with them, guiding them, advising them, sometimes even being a step ahead of
them so that peoples’ needs will be cared for. Even when correcting them, God
seemed relatively restrained. So why would the people want to do anything to
jeopardise God’s love? Why would <b><u>WE</u></b>? </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>Why would they want to do anything
to reprioritize within their own lives and put something, a block, a coolness,
a sense of uncertainty and restraint, between themselves and God? Yet they did.</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>As the Prayer of Consecration puts
it so bluntly, we lose it so frequently. We don’t understand and don’t take
time to think things through, or else we’re such deliberate narcissists if we <b><u>DO
</u></b>understand. However it happens, we move God within our lives. We take
what <b><u>IS</u></b>, and always <b><u>SHOULD</u></b> be, at the centre of our
lives; we take what should be at the centre of everybody’s lives; and push God
into a cupboard somewhere.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><br></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><br></span></p>
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