Reflection
and Poem for I Epiphany All
Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. January 11, 2015 Thomas E.
Wilson, Rector
The
first lesson for today from the Book of Genesis is the first part of the
Priestly account of the Creation myth. It is called the “Priestly” account
because scholars make a guess that it was probably written during the Babylonian exile by a group of Priests exiled from the destroyed
Temple in Jerusalem,. After the years went by the children of the exiles were
learning the Babylonian stories of the creation myths as well as other creation myths from other captives
from other conquered places. In these stories the archetypes of gods were
either merciless warriors who conquered other gods or archetypes of fertility
having sex with other gods and out of that activity of sex or violence the
world came into being. As all myths do, these stories reflected the points of
view of the tellers of the stories, reinforcing the notion that myths are
public dreams. The Priests of the Hebrew God were afraid that their children
would get a warped idea of God, so they set down in writing the old stories and
myths that had been floating around for centuries in oral form. In their view,
the archetype for God was the poet, the artist, the worker who shapes and molds
something beautiful.
I
was lucky this week. I saw an image of God as I was thinking about this lesson.
It was part of my community outreach to be on a Rota of local pastors who say
an opening non-sectarian prayer before a meeting of the Board of County
Commissioners. This was the first meeting of the year, so first on the agenda
was the recognition of county workers. They began with giving out 10 and 15
year pins and continued with the selection of the worker for the month of
January, a woman who works in the office that does property evaluations. This
was followed by the previous year’s Worker of the Year’s introduction of the
winners of the 2014 monthly Workers of the Month - clerks, recreation workers,
professionals, etc. – from whom was chosen the worker of this New Year. The new
winner, a public safety officer, was surprised and said very little in his
expression of thanks. But, the winner of the previous year’s award, under the
heavy hand of custom, was condemned to give a speech.
He is a sanitation worker who had nothing written down, but his speech came out of a head full of knowledge, a heart full of commitment and a lifetime full of wisdom about working. The Commissioners were all sitting at their desks, all dressed up in business attire, members of the audience were dressed up because they would be coming before the Commission to do presentations, I was dressed in my black shirt and clerical collar - but here was the award winner, dressed in his work uniform, ready to take out the trash. There was simplicity in the way this man spoke, and he was proud of his work. He said, “I do my job the right way.” He goes home every night and if he has done his best, then he, like God, calls his day Good. He handles our garbage but he knows that in so doing he makes the world a better place. He said he knows that the strong ocean winds can blow over the cans, and he is the one who gets of the truck and picks them up, because he wants to do his job the right way, and he likes making the world better for everybody. Dare County pays this man to take out the garbage, but the way he works with others, the way he puts himself out for others, allowed me to see that he had some sort of deeper calling, and he used the garbage job as a way into that deeper calling.
 |
| Randolph Murray, Dare County Employee of the Year 2013 |
He is a sanitation worker who had nothing written down, but his speech came out of a head full of knowledge, a heart full of commitment and a lifetime full of wisdom about working. The Commissioners were all sitting at their desks, all dressed up in business attire, members of the audience were dressed up because they would be coming before the Commission to do presentations, I was dressed in my black shirt and clerical collar - but here was the award winner, dressed in his work uniform, ready to take out the trash. There was simplicity in the way this man spoke, and he was proud of his work. He said, “I do my job the right way.” He goes home every night and if he has done his best, then he, like God, calls his day Good. He handles our garbage but he knows that in so doing he makes the world a better place. He said he knows that the strong ocean winds can blow over the cans, and he is the one who gets of the truck and picks them up, because he wants to do his job the right way, and he likes making the world better for everybody. Dare County pays this man to take out the garbage, but the way he works with others, the way he puts himself out for others, allowed me to see that he had some sort of deeper calling, and he used the garbage job as a way into that deeper calling.
I
thought about the Gospel lesson about John the Baptizer, all dressed up in his
work clothes, as the people come to him to bring their garbage of sins to be
washed away in the Jordan. I wonder if he was proud of the work he did. His
work was not about him and his reputation but about making the world a better
place so that the loving presence of God could come and say that it was Good. One
day in the middle of his work of helping people get rid of garbage, Jesus, this
carpenter from Nazareth, shows up trying to figure out what to do with his life,
and the focus of getting rid of the garbage changes to an anointing of God’s spirit,
where Jesus is given a deeper calling, a
new direction in life. A couple of verses later in Mark’s account after Jesus
goes into the wilderness to finish working on his vocational plan, John is
arrested and Jesus continues the work of John, moving to Galilee to urge people
to change their lives. Even in Galilee he is helping people get rid of their
garbage, and he takes on all the garbage, the sin, of the world onto himself.
This was his job, and it was called “Good” on a Good Friday.
In
the lesson from the Acts of the Apostle, Paul comes to Ephesus and urges the
people there to go beyond getting rid of their own garbage, the baptism of
John, and go deeper to open themselves up to God’s spirit, to lead a new life
where they work to make the world a better place so they can call it “Good” in
God’s eyes.
The
church employs people like me to help people deal with the garbage in their lives
and to help people see that there is a power greater than ourselves who can
give us strength to make the world a better place, ‘on earth as it is in heaven”
as Jesus taught us to pray. It is what all baptized persons are called to do,
not just professional Christians like me.
So
what is your job? I know some of you are saying, “I am retired.” Or “I go to
school.” But there is a deeper calling for all of us on how we make the world a
better place. I ask each of you to remember your own baptism and ask if it was
just to get rid of some garbage or was it for a deeper purpose?
He
Speaks And Pronounces It “Good”
That gentle, gentle,
man straightens his body out
knowing that he must
now speak. “I have no paper
but what I want to say
is in here.” Words out taper,
one after one, dug from
depth of experiences’ bout.
All of us, dressed so
fine, look over on him in quiet
amazment. Yet, an earth
on which we so trust, shakes
for us as we hear the
dignity of the sounds he makes
of the indignities that
has been his daily chosen diet
in work of taking out
our collective garbage of trash.
“I am proud of the work
I do!”, he shamelessly offers
to our mild toleration
as his artless speech our coffers
of pride empties, to be
gathered and turned into ash,
to be used on a future
Wednesday, when we kneel to
understand that he, in
his work, is the divine image too.
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