A Reflection for 3rd Sunday of Easter All Saints’ Church,
Southern Shores, NC April 10, 2016 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
Opening
The Eyes Of Faith
You know about movies and television shows that have
ratings and warnings about content? Let me warn you know that this reflection
is rated “J” for containing multiple quotes and references to Carl Gustav Jung.
Jung was a contemporary and colleague of Sigmund Freud, but who differed
significantly from him about the nature of the unconscious and the importance
of a spiritual reality. Freud was interested in people getting rid of neurosis,
which meant exposing the preconscious determinates of behavior. He considered
most of the unconscious as junk and clutter to be gotten rid of. Jung was
interested in people living into wholeness of mind and soul by bringing the
deep material of the unconscious to light and claiming it and using it to grow.
I started off as a Freudian to understand how humans
act, but as I grew deeper in faith, I started to depend more on Jung, and the
work that I have done on dream work is deeply Jungian. Jung saw dreams as a way
that the Divine, the ground of our Being, the Collective Unconscious, who for
convenience we call God, speaks to us in symbolic form.
When I look at the stories in scripture, I look at
them as if they are like a dream given to me, and I look at how the symbolic
actions speak to me here and now. I am not really interested in having a
newspaper account of the events, but I am interested in what God might be
saying to us through these stories. I look at these visions/stories/dreams as if
they are gifts from God for me.
First of all, let’s take a look at the Collect for
this Sunday. The word Collect comes from the early church practice of
collecting the intercessions and petitions for prayers of the people in the
congregation. Later they became regularized to be a collection of the thoughts
and themes in the lessons for that Sunday. Sometimes the Collect is referred to
as the “Prayer For the Day” as a way of avoiding the use of “churchy” words. One of the themes for the 3rd Sunday
in Easter is exploring how we know and connect with this Risen Christ who is
still meeting us in scripture and in life.
The Collect for this Day, the third Sunday of Easter,
has a petition: “Open the eyes of our faith, that we may
behold him in all his redeeming work”. We see the Risen Christ with eyes of faith,
meaning that we look deeper than the surface. Meeting with the Risen Christ is
a quest for the “attainment of wholeness requiring one to stake one's whole
being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes,
no compromises.”
Let
me give you an example of looking with the eyes of faith. I wake up early in
the morning and walk my dog before I do my work out. It’s a slow walk and I get
a chance to look at the moon and the stars. Now I know through my rational mind
that the moon is a lifeless satellite in orbit around the earth, kept in that
orbit by the gravitation pull of the earth during an approximately 28 day
cycle. Living on the Beach, I know that the tides are affected by that cycle
and that cycle has mental and physical effects on human beings as well. But
with the eyes of faith, I see the moon as a beautiful gift from a loving God. I know that I cannot prove this vision by any
rational argument to take the place of the scientific explanation, but I choose
to take it as true at a deeper dimension because it helps form the basis of how
I live my life. It gives meaning to how I spend my time, my energy, my money.
Without the eyes of faith, what I do could be seen as ridiculous - and it would
be.
Looking with the eyes of faith has
to be an experience done by every person instead of just relying on some sort
of passed-on dogma to spare the effort. As Jung says:
“A
dogma is always the result and fruit of many minds and many centuries, purified
of all the oddities, shortcomings, and flaws of individual experience. But for
all that, the individual experience, by its very poverty, is immediate life,
the warm red blood pulsating today. It is more convincing to a seeker after
truth than the best tradition.”
The stories in these lessons for today are about
what people saw with eyes of faith. In the Revelation from John passage for
today, he shares how his eyes of faith interpreted his dream. I look at this
vision as if it was a gift from God for me. Am I open enough before the Divine
that I see with the eyes of faith, to sing my song with a full voice, and live
fully into my ministry?
Almost a half century ago I was acting in an Outdoor
Drama in a cast of about sixty people. They hired me for my acting ability, but
I was too young and immature to understand that singing fully was not the same
as singing loudly. To sing fully is to give up control over the song and make a
disciplined commitment to join with others in something greater than oneself.
Therefore, in my dreams, to sing with a full voice is a symbol of making a
commitment. Jung, in his Psychology and
Religion, wrote: “The attainment of wholeness requires one to stake one's
whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no
substitutes, no compromises.”
In
the lesson from the Book of Acts, Saul of Tarsus, wanting to please the Dogma
of the religion of his youth, sees the followers of the Christ as heretics and
tries to destroy them. At the core of his faith is a vision that God is loving,
but his following of Dogma makes him respond in acts of hatred as he tries to
purify his vision to fit with the Dogma. This internal conflict causes a break-
down, and he loses his ability to see. If I am Paul in this vision/story/dream,
then what part of me keeps me seeing what is poisoning my faith and life? Is it
my desire to be the one who is so sure of the answers? Again to quote from
Jung:
“If you carefully
sterilize everything that you do, you make an extract of the impurity and leave
it at the bottom, and once the water of life is poisoned, it doesn't need much
to make everything wrong.”
In my dream, that part of me
of which Ananias, a follower of the Christ, is a symbol, who hears about this
Saul coming to town, is relieved that Saul is afflicted with blindness. But
with the eyes of faith, he sees that Saul, his enemy is beloved of God, and
Ananias hears Jesus call to him to minister to his enemy with love. Ananias has
found meaning in his life with the Risen Christ and, to be true to this life,
he has to follow it. It is the quest for “attainment of wholeness requiring one
to stake one's whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier
conditions, no substitutes, no compromises.” If this were my dream/vision/
story, then what fear am I called to face in order to authentically love? Again
as Jung says:
“Let
us assume, to love life, but if one loves life then surely something should
come from it. You see, life wants to be real; if you love life you want to live
really, not as a mere promise hovering above things. Life inevitably leads down
into reality. Life is of the nature of water: it always seeks the deepest
place, which is always below in the darkness and heaviness of the earth.”
In the Gospel lesson, the life that the disciples
were leading led them to get their hands dirty following the Risen Lord. They
tried to go back to fishing as a way to escape, and they found that their life
in this Christ came into their daily reality, interrupting a fishing trip with
the presence of the meaning of their life, Christ himself. They saw with the
eyes of faith. If this were my dream/story/vision, what is it that gets in my
way so that I become too busy to see with the eyes of faith?
In this church I see people on a regular basis
metaphorically singing Christ’s song with a full voice. Last week we had as our
guests a number of homeless people through the Room in the Inn program, and
this congregation saw it not just as a “Good Deed”, but saw it through the eyes
of faith as a means of connection with the Risen Lord. We sang fully God’s song
of welcome in service to our neighbors - “no easier conditions, no substitutes,
no compromises”.
Two weeks ago
we had a memorial service here, and people came to give their best. This was
Easter Week and people had their own lives to lead, but they committed their
energy to help this family, for they saw things with the eyes of faith. We had
the Hospitality Committee empty themselves out to minister to this family - for
them there was “no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises”. With their full voices, they sang God’s song.
The tables were groaning with food, but more importantly, with God’s love.
Steve Blackstock came and played here on his
vacation. He has a full-time job as a principal of a school, so he is never
really away from that responsibility, but this week was planned to be with his
family. Yet he saw this through the eyes of faith and came to symbolically sing
with full voice of his talents to minister to help this family. Of course he
was paid, but it is never what the gift is worth. His quest is for “attainment
of wholeness requiring one to stake one's whole being. Nothing less will do”.
He does not fake his way through; “there are no easier conditions, no substitutes,
no compromises.”
The plan that Steve has presented for the Organ
enrichment fund for bringing the instrument up to the level that is required to
give the instrument’s best in worship of God is one “in attainment of wholeness
requiring one to stake one's whole being”. The Organ’s quality is not in the
volume it makes but in the fullness of its voice of worship. “Nothing less will
do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises.” The
extraordinary and encouraging amounts pledged for over a two year period is
over a $140 thousand, and the amount
paid so far, over $60,000.00 from 47 different people is not a result of fund-raising,
but the fact that pledgers saw the program with the eyes of faith and have
chosen to sing with a full voice. The whole plan will need another $30,000 over
the next two years. I am hoping that more people will have allow their eyes to
be opened and join with the organ to sing with a full voice.
I see Steve do this with the choir, pushing them not
for performance - performance is the easy way to satisfy one’s own ego - he
pushes them to see what they do in singing through the eyes of faith as the
hard dedication of worship, to sing, not loud, but with a full voice. “Nothing
less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no
compromises.”
What are these dreams/stories/visions telling you to
see with the eyes of faith?
Opening
The Eyes of Faith (Poem)
Remembering
in a cast of sixty roles
marching
in costume in triumph song,
I
sang loud, not paying attention long.
Stand
out! Call attention, to my goals!
Refusing
to empty my ego is so wrong
resisting
being part of a larger throng.
Even
now tempted in or out of stoles
braying
overpower nature’s birdsong.
Faiths
eyes know songs to God belong.
Ceding
to the divine will, true controls,
claims. as our own, our deepest souls.
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