A Reflection for Pentecost 2B, Proper 5 All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Southern
Shores, N.C. June 7, 2015 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
Being One’s Own Authority
In this season after Pentecost, the Revised Common
Lectionary, which outlines the lessons that are to be read for each week’s
service, directs us to stories in the Hebrew Testament lessons from the time of
the rise and fall of the Kingdoms in Israel. The theme of these accounts is
that if we try to put the ultimate authority for our lives in our leaders and
their institutions, they will eventually let us down. My understanding is that each of us has to
find our own way through the tension between the tyranny of slavishly following
our leaders and the anarchy of individual caprice. It is a delicate tension for,
on one hand, our leaders tend to be ego-driven and their egos and agendas can
lead us into dependence on them to do our own critical thinking. On the other
hand, “just doing it cause it feels good” does not a community make. A Community is not where everybody agrees but,
rather, it can be defined as an entity in which every person is the ultimate
authority for themselves and shares responsibility for the care of others and
joins with others to determine the mind and direction of that community.
Last year in the Hebrew Testament Lessons for the
season after Pentecost, we went through the mythic cycle of stories from the
Creation to the Flood, to the Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and Joshua
sagas. The theme was the journey to follow God and, if you remember, I used
these myths and dreams as a way of listening to God on the journey and applying
them to how we are on our individual spiritual journeys. In this year’s
selection of mythic stories of people building and, alas, destroying community,
my hope is to look at how we might be building or hindering our community at
All Saints’.
Today is also a special day as we are honoring our
high school graduates as they continue in the task of creating the community in
which they will continue to grow. Some of them will leave town and begin a
community somewhere else; my hope is that we will have taught them something
about the necessity of community.
Our first lesson for today is from the last of the
Judges, Samuel. These books of Samuel are compilations of different oral
stories and sagas from the time of 11th Century BC, which were
gathered together by different editors over the centuries until it reached
written form in the 2nd or 1st Century BC. Each editor
has a different point of view, so it is more of a kaleidoscope than straight
narrative. If you expect consistency on the literal level, you will awfully
frustrated.
The story today has Samuel faced with a demand by
the people - they want him to anoint a King so they can be just like all the
other people in this neighborhood of the Middle East. They are afraid of the
neighbors they have and want a leader who is going to bigger, meaner, and
stronger than the neighbors’ leaders. Samuel, whose Hebrew name literally means
“In God’s name”, tries to tell them that having a King like all the other Kings
is really not a good idea. However, as the graduates can tell us, that
oft-repeated line from our parents “Just because everyone else is doing it
doesn’t mean you have to” just doesn’t get much traction. Finally, Samuel in
his vision or dream hears God saying, “Let them do it for that is the only way
they are going to learn.” The people
then spend the next 500 years learning this lesson, over and over and over
again. Even then, they don’t pay attention, for as long as they have a King,
then they don’t need to take responsibility for their own authority.
You would have thought that the Christians would
have learned a lesson, but when they got to be legal, they sucked up to the
Emperor and the Kings that followed in the wreckage of the Empire. Louis XIV of
France was asked about how he was helped to rule the state, and the “Sun King”,
as his sycophants called him, replied out of his arrogance, “L’etat, c’est
moi!”, which according to the Wilson translation means, “The state? Don’t make
me laugh. I am the state”. You see, the
problem is that if you give authority over your life to a person or
institution, that institution or person has their own agenda and you will get
lost in the process.
I wish I could say that only Kings are arrogant as
leaders, but arrogance is no stranger to other institutions. Pat Wilson can
tell you of meeting a new Priest straight out of seminary in June of 1984 who,
she told her friends, was the most arrogant person she had ever met. That
priest was arrogant because he was unsure what he was doing. He had not yet made the transition from
showing he knew everything in seminary to being able to work with others to
create community. Pat’s view of the arrogant priest she held for a number of
years, until she married him, but she still has occasion to revisit that
opinion.
Even in democracies, authority can be subverted by
arrogance. I remember a governing board I attended once where the chair had an
item in the agenda labeled “remarks”, and he came down from the dais and
started off by saying, “I am coming down here to be on your level so that I am
not going to talk AT you but WITH you.” He then proceeded to talk AT us for 20
minutes as he strutted around making excuses, laying blame on others, and
pursuing his own agenda. It was a campaign speech and he had more than three
years before he would run again, but he had never made the transition from
selling himself arrogantly as THE authority during his successful campaign to
being a person who wanted to work with others to help govern a community.
That transition from authority to work with others
to lead a community is a transition I am still learning. You may notice that I
have changed the bulletin notation from “Sermon” to “Reflection”. I am not
standing up here lecturing the right way to see something in the way I used to
lecture students when I was a college professor, but I am here to share with
you my experience. This came about because I keep realizing that there is a
whole bunch I do not know about God. I am not the AUTHORITY on God – I wish I was,
but I am not; all I can do is share what I see that God seems to be doing in
our life together. I can share my journey with God, but that is not a chronic
undifferentiated path for all of you. The Divine energy behind, in, and through
all creation approaches us as a lover approaches a beloved - it is different
for every person. They can be alike but,
as each of us is different, so also the God dwelling in us is meant for each of
us and we share that vision in community.
I think it was my dream work that pushed me over the
edge. When I was a therapist, I “knew” what each symbol meant in a client’s
dream, but in reality, it was only my projection on that symbol. But I am not a
therapist. I am a fellow journeyer on
the road, and only you are your own authority.
Another experience that helped was having my
daughter grow up, graduate, get married, and have children of their own. I am
no longer her authority and have not been for years. She gives me the respect
to listen but she is her own authority. She may make what I think are wrong
decisions, but she knows I respect her choices and I will be with her whatever
she chooses.
Samuel hears God say the same thing for the people
of Israel in the Hebrew lesson for today. Samuel hears Samuel’s God’s thought
and yet allows them to make their own decisions, and even so, promises to be
with them for all time. God continues to love because as far as I know, and has
been known, love never ends.
Today as we honor the graduates, let us remember
that we are all in the process of
graduating. We ask them - and you and me - to become our own authority as we
grow into a deeper relationship with the energy that is the divine community of
the creator of all things, with the one who shows us how to be fully human, and
with the one who gives us the energy to love, persevere, forgive, and to see
with the divine vision.
Being
One’s Own Authority (Poem)
I once knew it all, or
at least I thought so;
for
it
was easier to be the authority
on
all invisible things. Yet,
my knowledge base shriveled
as wisdom grew as a
gift from
the
Divine Sophia, she of the dancing
laugh,
who saw me strutting and
posturing and then wrapping me in
her arms whispered “You
are only
the authority of this ever so,
so
fleeting moment with me.
Come lay you wearisome ego and
agendas on my breast,
filling your
soul
with passing understanding peace
entering
into eternal community and love”.
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