A Reflection on connections

A Reflection for XVII Pentecost (Proper 19)                                    All Saints’, Southern Shores, NC September 15, 2013                                                                Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28                1 Timothy 1:12-17                            Luke 15:1-10

Today we continue with Jeremiah’s dreams.  One of the problems with taking a look at prophets is that some interpreters want to see in prophecies predictions for the future.  They expect to see a threat by the Almighty to make a grease spot of the land by the abusive parent in the sky. The Linns’ (Shelia, Matthew and Dennis) book, Good Goats: Healing the Image of God,

addresses the difference between a loving parent and an abusive parent. Sometimes all parents get fed up with their kids and threaten something, like when my father was really ticked off with my brother and I constantly squabbling on the long car ride to the grandparents - “If you guys don’t cut it out, I am going to stop the car and let you walk home.” However, only the abusive parent will do it.   I lost count of the number of times we drove our father to frustration, but he never did stop loving us and drop us off on the highway.

A prophet is a “seer”, one who sees information through visions and dreams about the present reality. The dream comes and, in this case, is a nightmare because the people have been so undermining of the community with the evils of exploitation, unchecked greed, neglect of the poor, corruption of government, and abuse of the land.  They are alienated from neighbor, community, the land, and ultimately from the true self, the image of God who is in the depths of each of our being. There are consequences for this behavior; all behavior has consequences. Newton’s Third Law of Motion tells us, “For every action in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction.” The problem is that we think that somehow we are not all connected, and we are above nature and people. But as Bob Dylan used to say, “You don’t need to be a weatherman to see which way the wind blows.”

Jeremiah has a dream; it is a nightmare. Disturbing dreams come to shake us up, to have us pay attention and change the way we are living. This is a dream of alienation.  The alienation that we experience but repress, push down into our unconscious is projected onto the screen of our dreams so that we might come face to face with that which we have ignored. Healing comes when we recognize it and make a decision that we don’t want to live this way - lost in a world of alienation.

In the dream, Jeremiah hears the hot wind blow from the desert, laying the land and people low.

Jung had a concept of “synchronicity” which is when two or more events happen at the same time and while they are not caused by one another, they become connected in meaning.  Such as the experience of thinking about someone and then we get a phone call from them. One does not logically cause one another but we give meaning to it, giving them an acausal connection, where the connection is more important than the cause. Jeremiah’s dream from the Divine is pointing out the connections between the actions of the people and the land itself. Now, of course, we can get all defensive and say; “Don’t blame me for the weather. It is just a coincidence.” But from what we are learning about Quantum Physics, acausal connections is one way the universe works. The deeper we go what seems to be coincidental are seen to be incoincidental. The Eastern Religions call it Karma, the “what goes around, comes around” idea or what the Greeks call “fate”. However, we usually are so obsessed with our own entitlement philosophy that we do not perceive the evil that we do. Jung said, “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.” Jeremiah, the seer, by sharing his dream, is calling our deeds of thoughtless evil to our consciousness where we can see our actions the way that God sees them. He hears God calling through the dream that we can change this seemingly inevitable outcome, but we are going to have to change the way we act and rediscover our true connections with the land, with neighbor, and with our true selves, the true images of God buried under the inattention of our busy-ness.

I was listening to NPR this last week, and it was suggested that one of the contributing factors to the problems in Syria was the four year drought from 2006 - 2010 which dried up farms and forced 2-3 million people, now homeless, to pour into the cities. While the well-off, living in their own little bubble of privilege, were busily finding ways to profit from the misery, the government’s refusal to aid its citizens helped create the situation where desperate people rose up in revolt. The UN warned about possible unrest from this powder keg in 2009, but the regime acted as if greed is normal, violence appropriate to support their own privilege, and poor people were not their problem. It would be nice to say that we Western Christians respond to such situations out of love, but we are often too busy with our own agendas to pay attention to the world - and at home we act the same way, as if greed is normal, violence appropriate to support our own privilege, and the poor not our problem.

God keeps trying to get us to pay attention to the fact that we are intimately connected to the land, to neighbor, and to the true self that dwells in us, but we alienate ourselves from all of those.  In the Gospel story for today, Jesus looks at the two groups of people who act as if they are not connected with each other. On the one hand are the tax collectors and friends who work for the occupying forces. They had been alienated from their neighbor because they wanted to profit from the situation; but in the process they found that they were profoundly alienated from their true selves. They found that money and power could not feed their souls. Jesus came and, in his imagination from the Divine, he told stories which projected God’s loving persistence on the screen of their consciousness, and they found the strength to change and accept God’s love and hope.

On the other hand, there was a group of Pharisees who were so concerned about being “right” in religion that they were alienated from neighbor who did not measure up to their standards, so that they were also alienated from their true selves, the place where the Spirit of the living God dwells within each of us. The problem with being “right” is that we are so filled with ourselves that God doesn’t stand a chance of being heard.  Jesus, filled with the imagination of the Divine, tells a couple of stories about how the Shepherd goes into the wilderness and the woman goes into the dark spaces to recover that which was lost. The shepherd and woman are archetypes and metaphors for God who comes into the wilderness of our unconscious hidden selves and into the dark corners of our souls to help us find ourselves.

The writer of the 1^st Timothy remembers Paul giving thanks to God for coming into Paul’s dark, alienated soul when he, unconsciously  was the lost sheep, the lost coin, obsessed with being right.  The Lord appeared in a vision, a dream, to project onto the screen of Paul’s consciousness the blindness of Paul’s vision. Paul sings “But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”

Jeremiah, Paul, the tax collectors and their friends all know what it is like to have God heal the alienation in their hearts and to have the chance to find the true self, the resting place of the divine who lives within and who hallows us, the land, and the sacred space between us and our neighbor - even the neighbor who is our enemy.

Today, I invite you to listen to the dreams of Jeremiah, the imagination of the divine in Jesus’ stories and the song of Paul and ask; “If it were my dream, if it were my story, if it were my song, will I claim it?” I remember a line the Bishop said at my ordination after I replied “I will” to a bunch of promises: “May the Lord who has given you the will to do these things give you the grace and power to perform them.” To which I responded “A-men”, which did not mean “Bed-de-bed-de that’s all folks”, but “I agree”.

 Now my brothers and sisters, I ask you to remember our own Baptismal Covenant,

on page 304 of the Book of Common Prayer:

Celebrant      Do you believe in God the Father?
People          I believe in God, the Father almighty,
                 creator of heaven and earth.

Celebrant      Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?
People          I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.
                    He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit
                        and born of the Virgin Mary.
                    He suffered under Pontius Pilate,
                        was crucified, died, and was buried.
                    He descended to the dead.
                    On the third day he rose again.
                    He ascended into heaven,
                        and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
                    He will come again to judge the living and the dead.

Celebrant     Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?
People          I believe in the Holy Spirit,
                    the holy catholic Church,
                    the communion of saints,
                    the forgiveness of sins,
                    the resurrection of the body,
                    and the life everlasting.

Celebrant      Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and
                 fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the
                 prayers?
People          I will, with God’s help.

Celebrant      Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever
                 you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
People          I will, with God’s help.

 Celebrant     Will you proclaim by word and example the Good
                 News of God in Christ?
People          I will, with God’s help.

Celebrant      Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving
                 your neighbor as yourself?
People          I will, with God’s help.

Celebrant      Will you strive for justice and peace among all
                 people, and respect the dignity of every human
                 being?
People          I will, with God’s help.

“May the Lord who has given you the will to do these things give you the grace and power to perform them.” To which the people said; …