<html><body><div>Here are a few notes for our celebration tomorrow. We use the 1662 BCP as it was the one in use when the founders were working away.</div><div><div><br></div><div>Bob</div><div><br></div><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY INDEPENDENCE DAY<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">DEUTERONOMY 10:17 -21 4<sup>th</sup> JULY, 2018<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">MATTHEW 5:43-<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Last Sunday the sermon began with the prayer of confession we usually use, revolving around loving God. Here’s the first reading this morning, however, using both King James’ English and the older, broader-termed description of “fearing God” – fearing in the sense of showing the utmost respect that one can muster.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> That makes sense. The fear – in the contemporary sense – the fear that you and I may feel comes from wondering whether or not we <b><u>HAVE</u></b> done our best. And, lest we wonder whether or not we may have missed it, yes, the word “love” IS mentioned in the first reading too. However, the love which we’re commanded to offer is to the stranger – not necessarily the weird, but the person who doesn’t usually sit beside us in a church or on a train or plane. The stranger may well be the person in front or behind us in the grocery check-out line; the stranger is the person who is not yet our friend because we haven’t yet had a chance to talk much to her or him and ask her or him to come sit with us over a cup of coffee and a frosted cup cake in the parish hall.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> “Love the stranger” – “Fear God” – two sides of the same coin, picked up in what Jesus said to His best friends. “You have to do more than just keep the law,” He said.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> It can be so easy to say that we’ve done what the law requires. Basically, the laws regarding drivers talk about keeping within the speed limit and at a speed appropriate to the road conditions, about signaling one’s intentions to slow down or to turn around, about obeying signs placed strategically along the road we’re taking. The laws don’t say anything about cutting people off in traffic, or about yelling at the person who doesn’t start immediately after the light turns green. To do these, to behave as if we respected the other drivers on the road – that takes grace, often, as the very word implies, grace that we never knew we had, because God gives it to us, makes it available if we can recognise and receive it.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> This is at least one of the things which Independence Day celebrations call us to acknowledge. First, we remember that we can’t do or know everything by ourselves. We have to keep our mind, our heart, our spirits open at all times, to see what the other, what the stranger is doing and what the stranger is needing. More than that, though, in addition to being aware of what others around us need and may be trying to talk to us about, we’re to keep alert to the fact that God is present, that God is willing and eager to share with us the grace that we need in order to live a life of love.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Another thing which we remember today is that, no matter who we are – remember, as Deuteronomy quoted, “God regardeth not persons”, God doesn’t take physical appearance, or the number of friends on Facebook, or even the number of people we have on the phone list we keep in our pockets – none of that is what impresses God; we remember today that are here because of what hundreds, if not thousands, have said and done before us. People experienced dissatisfactions, or difficulties, or fear, and so they moved from one place to another; they risked everything they had to get to a port and find a ship to cross what could be wild seas; they arrived and, over a few generations, they crossed this land till Albany was founded, was platted, was built up and we came along.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> A few in our current congregation were born here, but most of us moved here at varying ages, depending on help and word of mouth to give us encouragement. We live here because of what our forebears did for us. And, when you come down to it, we are here, specifically in this building, because of what God did, what Jesus did, what a small but enthused group of people did to encourage us in our faith.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> And, yes, we remember today that we have those “certain inalienable rights”, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. Nothing is written into the Constitution about religion other than that it is a freedom which we may choose for ourselves, but this too is something we celebrate – whether or not to respond to God.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> Still, all of this comes back to how we take what we’ve been given and share it for the good of all. How do we respond to the stranger? How do we love the one who is not well-known to us? How do we do for others what God and our ancestors have done for us?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> There <b><u>IS</u></b> freedom encompassed in our celebrations today, but it is a freedom which bears an awesome responsibility within it, because we believe it is granted us not as the world gives it, but by God. Keep this proud boast, then, as a recent translation of the last verse of Deuteronomy puts it, “our God has done for (us) these great and terrible things which you (and I have seen for ourselves.)” Minister to all without exception. Pray for those whom you and I may consider our persecutors, because <b><u>ALL</u></b> are God’s children, and God wishes to bless us all with grace.</span></p></div></div></body></html>