A Reflection and Poem for VIII Pentecost All Saints’ Church, Southern
Shores, NC July 10, 2016 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
“Ye
are Gods Dying Like Mortals”
This is Year C in the three year cycle of the
Revised Common Lectionary used by us and many Christian churches. This plan
divides up the Bible so that, in a three year cycle, people attending services
will be exposed to an overview of the Bible. The Sunday lessons contain 6% of
the Hebrew Testament and 41% of the New Testament. There are a hundred and
fifty psalms so that most of the Psalms will be read over that time. The
seasons of the years have different emphases: Advent, how do we prepare
ourselves for the gift of Jesus in our world; Christmas, how do we celebrate
the coming of the savior; Epiphany, how do we reach out into the community and
share the light of Christ; Lent, how do we prepare to follow Christ into the
suffering of the world; and Easter, the time when we celebrate new life through
the resurrection. In the season after Pentecost, the Hebrew Testament lessons
are Genesis through Judges in year A,
the Davidic Covenant and Wisdom literature in Year B, and the prophets in Year
C. The Gospel lessons are Matthew in Year A, Mark in Year B, Luke in Year C,
and John inserted throughout the three years.
The cycles
begin on the 1st Sunday of Advent (the Four Sundays before
Christmas) in each year. I came here to
All Saints in the summer of Year C when Luke and the Prophets were the main
focus. If you look at my reflections over the years that I have been here, you
might notice a simplified overview that I tend to use. Year A asks what does the journey of faith
look like from the ancestors of our faith in the Hebrew Tradition and, from
Matthew, what does it mean in daily life to follow Jesus. Year B focuses on
what it means to be a community of faith and on Mark’s question of who is this
Jesus as the center of our faith. Year C focuses on how do we in faith reach
out into a much larger world using the words of Luke and the Prophets.
Look at
our lessons for today. First, today’s Psalm is a metaphorical poem in which God
speaks to all of the lesser gods that we have created in our own images and
dismisses these gods as not worthy of worship by God’s people. They walk around
as the centers of their own universe and ignore the plight of the poor, the
broken, the vulnerable while abetting with silence injustice as they suck up to
the malefactors of great wealth.
We see the
prophet Amos standing up to the political, economic, and religious structures
and calling them corrupt in how they deal with the poor. They have made gods of
their own worship. The Northern Kingdom, split off from the Temple in
Jerusalem, built competing worship sites that are resplendent with a wondrous
Golden Calf standing in front of the Shrine. The worship centers are outward
and visible signs of the affluence of the society as the Priests like Amaziah
limit worship to sycophantic sucking up to the power structure with messages of
“You have never had it so good!” Jeroboam II is King and the military
adventures have stretched to Syria and annexed some of that territory, and the
economy is booming.
Yet Amos
points out the soft underbelly of the elite who have cheated the poor and
exploited the economic systems for the sake of their own luxuries. He warns that a nation so divided between the
selfish opulence of the elite and the grinding poverty of the poor cannot
survive. He uses the image of a plumb line and shows how the recent earthquake in
760 BC had undermined the structures and uses that as a metaphor to predict
that the whole corrupt economic and political system will soon collapse. The gods
in which they trusted ending up dying like mortals. Indeed this rich and
corrupt prize weakened by misrule will be conquered by the Assyrians in 721 BC.
Prophets are not people who foretell the future but who see deeply into the
present with a spiritual vision and tell the truth as God sees it so that those
who will listen can change their lives.
Luke has
Jesus answer the question of who is my neighbor who I am called to care for and
love. The lawyer has his own God, the
God of the people who are just like himself and he wants this God to limit love
to only those who belong. Jesus tells the story about the Samaritan who acts
like a neighbor who is doing God’s will of mercy. The Priest and Levite see the
wounded man bleeding on the side of the road as a distraction from the agenda
of their own making and mercy as an unwelcome interruption. Their God is their
religion and will also join the Gods dying like mortals - for to do justice,
love mercy, and walk humbly with our God is the only reason we are here on
earth.
Let’s take
that phrase “Gods dying like mortals” upside down and ask who will be the Good
Samaritan for Jesus, when he is like “Gods dying like mortals.” All four of the
Gospel writers tell the story of the man Joseph of Arimathea who steps forward
when all of the disciples had fled and left him alone. Joseph takes the body of
Jesus and places it in Joseph’s own tomb. Joseph lives out his faith in the
midst of death.
A sight in camp in the daybreak gray and dim,As from my tent I emerge so early sleepless,As slow I walk in the cool fresh air the path near by the hospital
tent,Three forms I see on stretchers lying, brought out there untended
lying,Over each the blanket spread, ample brownish woolen blanket,Gray and heavy blanket, folding, covering all.
Curious I halt and silent stand,Then with light fingers I from the face of the nearest the first just
lift the blanket;Who are you elderly man so gaunt and grim, with well-gray'd
hair, and flesh all sunken about the eyes?Who are you my dear comrade?Then to the second I step—and who are you my child and
darling?Who are you sweet boy with cheeks yet blooming?Then to the third—a face nor child nor old, very calm, as of
beautiful yellow-white ivory;Young man I think I know you—I think this face is the face
of the Christ himself,Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.
What would life be like if we would but see the face of Christ in all we meet? That is what God does with all of us; God sees in our faces the face of the beloved Child. The central message of these lessons is an invitation to go beyond a religion that is centered on personal morality or religious purity but is instead about joining with God to, on this continuing 8th day of creation, finish the creation so that God can once again look on it and declare it “Very Good”.
Ye Are Gods Dying Like Mortals (Poem)
In the predawn walk with my dog, I
give thanks
for all those sounds of the birds
and the waves.
Yet my thanks are tinged with small resentment
that I am not more in charge. The
blood sucking
mosquitos need to go; for I want my
skin so soft,
free from bites and blemishes. I
want to walk in
bright warm sun without putting a
skin doctor’s
kids through grad school with my
medical bills.
I want central casting Beulah to
peel me a grape.
I want to win the lottery so that I
can go beyond
dreams of avarice and have people
suck up to me
telling me how wonderful I am. I
want powerful
might enough to crush all who would
dare to rise
against the benevolent despot that I
wish to fill a
vacant position that seems to be
presently empty.
I stop - for the bird song has died,
slaughtered by
my wishes to be a God creating
my own image,
like Amos’s Amaziah and Jeroboam,
like Luke’s
lawyer, priest and Levite. A child
of Most High,
a God, dying like a mortal; I stop
and listen now
for
Samaritan to come to bind my Self inflicted.
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