All Are Created Equal
For the You Tube Video of this go to:
http://youtu.be/PvSWfd74ymg
A Reflection for III Pentecost (Proper 8) All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Southern
Shores, NC June 29, 2014 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
Today we continue the reflection from last week
looking at the myths in the Genesis stories. A reminder that a myth is not a
lie, but a story which may or may not be factually correct and which people
tell in order to understand the way things are. Myths are usually about
speaking a deeper truth about relationships between God and humans, humans with
other humans, and humans with their own true self. They are like dreams in that
they are more meant to shed light and understanding than they are to pass on
facts. Dreams and myths give meaning not about surface events in the dream/myth
but about the symbolic interaction within the dream.
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| John Trumbull's painting 40 years after the event |
Let me give you an example about myths using the
commemoration of the 4th of July coming up next week. These are the
facts: representatives from the colonies
met and, on the 2nd of July, they came up with a Declaration of
Independence from England. The myths that came forth out of that meeting have
been told many different ways, including elements about John Hancock’s signature,
the mass signing on the fourth, the cracked Liberty Bell, and other details
which are based on the belief systems of the people looking back at the event
over the passage of time. Since it has been only 238 years since that day in
1776, the myth has not yet fully developed or reached its final form. This
American myth is told, retold, and re-interpreted based on the needs of the
later generations to remember who we really are.
Here are the facts of the Abraham story of the
binding of Isaac: in ancient times, there were many deities that required
parental sacrifice of a child in order to thank those gods as a quid pro quo
for good things happening or to influence the deity to a future course of
action. That is all we know, and
scripture has stories of Israelite rulers and warriors sacrificing their
children and prophets denouncing the practice, as well as many stories of the
slaughter of innocent women and children to their God. I think this is a myth
about who God is and who we are in relation with God and others by writers at
least a thousand years after the Abraham/Isaac stories were first told. There
is a remnant of sacrifice in the offering at the Temple as a payment for the
acknowledgement of blood being shed during the birth of a child, which could be
a left-over from the earlier sacrificial practice. Jesus’ parents went of Jerusalem to pay a
sacrifice of thanksgiving for his birth.
The Rabbis in the Talmud used to embroider this myth
with some extra dialogue. For instance,
in one variation, God asks for a volunteer angel to go down to Abraham to tell
him to kill Isaac. All the angels refuse and tell God that if God wants to have
this horrible deed done, God alone is going to have to do it. Apparently the
Rabbis wanted to pass on the myth with another dimension - that even angels don’t use the “I was
only following orders” excuse, and we are all responsible for our actions.
While both the Bible and the Muslim Quran agree that
the sacrifice was to be done on Mount Moriah, which they also agree is the
present site of the Temple Mount and Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the Quran
tells this myth with Ishmael taking the place of Isaac.
However, I don’t think the myth is about child
sacrifice once upon a time. Rather, I think that the public dream that is the
myth goes deeper, speaking to our conscious and unconscious tendencies to treat
people as objects for our own agendas. What does the myth tell us?
Two things:
(1) God is the giver, not the taker and
(2) we are to treat God’s gifts as
subjects of awe, not as objects of malice.
In this myth God indeed is the giver
of all things, even the child Isaac. While Isaac is a gift, he is still created
equal with Abraham, and God loves and cares for them both equally. God still
owns the gift, but we are asked to be stewards of that gift. The responsibility
of Stewardship means any gift is given by God and is to be honored for the
betterment of the community of faith. Our children do not belong to us to do
what we want to meet our needs; they are to be loved for who they are and
helped to grow into who they were created to be. Our spouse is not an object to
be used for our needs but to be loved and helped to grow into who s/he was
created to be and for the mutual creation by the couple of an icon of forgiveness,
respect, honor and self-giving care. Our neighbors are gifts from God and are
not to be manipulated or exploited for our profit, but we are to work together
to create a community of grace. As the Gospel lesson for today reminds us, we
are to be welcoming of all gifts from God. Even our enemies are gifts from God in order
to grow in that love which overcomes all differences, creating a commonwealth
of peace and justice - “thy will be done on earth as in heaven.”
I think that the myth tells us that the God who
continues creating the universe, who continues to walk beside us and live
within us, this God sees no real purpose in answering petitions for taking
sides about national boundaries or in religious squabbles or in party
affiliations or in financial schemes or in generational power struggles whose
main purpose is to take advantage of another person. This God laments the
divisions we tend to engender between the gifts God has given us. We were not
created to consume people, places, and things for our own selfish gains. We are
the equal gifts of God given to the world. When we live into that truth, we are
able to love the giver of the gifts, we are able to love ourselves as precious
gifts from the divine, and we are able to be in awe and wonder over all the
other gifts given to us in this world that are placed in our collective
stewardship.
Part three is in the Tomes in the July Trumpeter.
Which
I am including now : Parson Tom’s Tomes
“All
People Are Created Equal” (Part 3)
This continues the reflections in the sermons for
June 22 and 29. It starts with a dream. When God created the entire universe,
God gave a dream to all of creation which became part of our collective
unconscious as human being. The dream said that we, all the atoms of creations,
are all connected to each other and all persons are created equal.
In India, the Hindu centered their moral laws on Dharma; “One should never do that to another which one regards as injurious to one’s own self. This, in brief, is the rule of dharma. Other behavior is due to selfish desires.”
In Ancient Egypt the Goddess Maat weighted the souls of the dead so they might enter the afterlife and at the center of the Code of Maat was “"Now this is the command: Do to the doer to cause that he do thus to you.”
The Hebrew people enshrined in their law about the treatment of strangers: “But treat them just as you treat your own citizens. Love foreigners as you love yourselves, because you were foreigners one time in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”
The Buddha spoke against violence of any kind: “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful.”
Jesus took the whole of the law and summarized it in his encounter with a lawyer: “And one day an authority on the law stood up to put Jesus to the test. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to receive eternal life? ‘What is written in the Law?” Jesus replied. “How do you understand it?” He answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Love him with all your strength and with all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do that, and you will live.”
And so it goes, as people in every land have
encountered the dream and either followed it or shaped it to their culture, or
ignored it.
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| Lincoln 80 + years after the event |
Our History show that in the 238 years since that day in Philadelphia we continue to encounter the dream anew in
every generation and re-interpret it as “All People are Created Equal” This
month let us dream the dream again.
Shalom
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