Reflection on Beginnings and Endings

A Reflection on XXI Pentecost (Proper 23)                  All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC 

October 13, 2013                                                        Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7        2 Timothy 2:8-15          Luke 17:11-19

I had a dream last Saturday night/Sunday morning about beginnings and endings, and I have seen that dream acted out in waking life this week. Come on – don’t roll your eyes like that – you know dreams are important to me for I am persuaded that dreams are ways that God prepares us for events that are happening in our lives.

The dream was that Pat and I are traveling and check into a motel. A motel is a symbol of a temporary place to stay, so this dream in about transitions in my life. I am walking outside in the parking lot- another transition place - and am taken prisoner at gunpoint and told I would be held for ransom. The leader of the group looked like a young Peter Finch, the actor who was most famous for his role as the aging news anchorman in the movie Network,

who, under stress because of dropping ratings, goes crazy and after a night of imbibing a lot of Spirits, goes on the news program and urges people to go to the window and shout “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

But in my dream he was young, and he reminded me of when he played the villainous Sheriff of Nottingham in Walt Disney’s 1952 movie Robin Hood.

So; ratings have to do with money and the evil Sheriff extorted tax money form the poor Saxons to pay for the rich Norman Bishops. In both movies the Finch character dies.

What was happening in my non-dreaming life at the time were three things: (1) on Saturday morning we met with and arranged for further meetings with a dream counselor for Pat and I as part of our dream studies to help each of us look at our dreams while being open to the Spirit. And (2) the Federal Government is waiting to find out if they have enough money to operate and there are comments that the government is being “held hostage”, and (3) is the approach of Sunday morning’s Stewardship breakfast, the kick-off of the fall stewardship drive, which raises an irrational preconscious anxiety level in me in that, when I lead the request for money which has an underlying element of being a referendum on my Priesthood, it’s sort of like being held as a hostage pending the ransom payment. 

In the dream I asked Finch if I could go back in to say goodbye to Pat. He agrees and we start moving the mattresses they had piled up for the expected fire fight. The symbol of moving mattresses is the dream’s way of telling me we were about to get to the point and I would “wake up” having no more need of the mattresses. I am aware in the dream that it is 4:00 AM, that darkness before the dawn, and 4 is a symbol of completeness- like the four directions of a compass, so it is telling me that  it is coming to an end. In the dream the Finch character tells me I have three choices: (a) I could run away, and in that case he would shoot me and I would die. (b) I could tell Pat and the church not to pay the ransom, in which case I would die. (c) I could go with the kidnapper in which case I would die because I could identify him.  It was a real “Morton’s Fork”, a between Scylla and Charybdis dilemma which, no matter what choice I made, it would end the same way.  I am in a situation I cannot control; so what does life look like in that situation? Is there a fourth option?

It was then I woke up and when I wrote the dream down, I wondered why I felt so calm about dying. Then I remembered that usually the metaphor of death in a dream is not about physical death but about the entrance into a new beginning. Maybe the fourth option was to see the dying as a new beginning.

All dreams have many levels, and as I looked at the dream, on one level I heard God telling me that the dream was about looking for new beginnings even in places where I had limited control. However the unknown future turns out, it is a beginning of something new; the end is only a prelude to a new beginning.

Four hours after that dream I faced the morning without anxiety and enjoyed the wonderful Stewardship Kick-off, where the theme was “Examine your blessings and celebrate with Thanksgiving”.  Both Karen Arbaugh and Jeff Edwards seemed to express the viewpoint that blessings seem to come, even though at first look they may not be seen as blessings but, upon reflection, they offer a gate to a new way of living. I did not tell them what to say but their minds were responding to the same energy waves as my dream. This is called synchronicity, when an apparently meaningless coincidence in time of two or more similar or identical events is causally unrelated but there is a meaning given to what could be dismissed as mere coincidence. 

The next day after that, I was called by the emergency room at the hospital and so I cancelled Monday’s Bible study where we were to look at these lessons for today. A man had died and his wife asked for last rites from a Greek Orthodox or Episcopal Priest.

The man was dead and I could not fix that, but as I prayed for him and anointed him with oil and commended him to God’s gracious care, giving thanks for his life and ability to love, I was reaffirming my dream -that the end was also the gate to a new beginning. God’s dream gave me the direction of how I was to non-anxiously look at his death and, by extension, my own death. The learning, which I need to keep hearing, is when I am in a situation I cannot control; I must not be consumed with anxiety and trust that there will be a blessing of redemption.

After I lived into the lessons of my dream, I looked more deeply into the lessons for today and saw the same themes. Jeremiah is writing to the people going off to exile. They are in a situation they cannot control; their life is ending in Jerusalem and, instead of blaming them for this event or spending more time in lamenting as he had done, he urges them to use this ending as a new beginning and “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” Jeremiah examines the blessings and celebrates with thanksgiving.

The writer of the letter to 2^nd Timothy remembers a 1^st century Christian Baptismal hymn, which recounts that when a Christian went into the waters of Baptism, they got a new name and went through the waters of new birth.  Her/his whole life changed into an ending, and a new life was beginning.  “If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful--for he cannot deny himself.” I love that song because it says even if from time to time we deny God, God’s love overcomes, denies the denial, for God cannot deny God’s very self’s prime directive of love. The writer of 2^nd Timothy remembers Paul in prison, in a situation he cannot control, examining his blessings and celebrates with thanksgiving.

In the Gospel lesson, Jesus is on the road to Jerusalem where he knows that his life will end. On the way he meets ten lepers whose whole lives are centered on their disease and they have no lives other than to be outsiders. Jesus heals them and sends them to the priests so that might enter into new life. The Samaritan comes back after he has examined his blessing of beginning a new life and falls at Jesus feet and, in the Greek, he uses the same word that we use for the Eucharist, the Great Thanksgiving, he celebrates with thanksgiving.

We are in a universe of blessings as things end, and in the endings there are new beginnings, and all ends and all beginnings contain blessings. So I invite you to dream about your beginnings and endings in your life and examine your blessings and celebrate with thanksgiving.