Thursday, June 30, 2016

Second Readings



A Reflection for Independence Day                                 All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC July 3, 2016                                                                      Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
Deuteronomy 10:17-21           Hebrews 11:8-16         Matthew 5:43-48        Psalm 145:1-9
Second Readings
I made an executive decision and switched the lessons that were scheduled for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost and inserted the lessons for tomorrow, Independence Day.  However, later on, I am including an excerpt from one of the original readings. The Hebrew Testament Lesson for Independence Day Celebration is from the Book of Deuteronomy. The word “Deuteronomy”, meaning “second reading of the Law”, comes from the Greek translations of the Hebrew Testaments around the 3rd Century BC when many of the Jews living outside of Judea could no longer read Hebrew and spoke mainly Greek. The Hebrew name would have been chosen from the first words of the text, “These are the Words”, in the same way Genesis was, “In the Beginning”. 

Deuteronomy was an attempt by later generations to look back at Moses and reinterpret Moses for their present time. This is a necessary task for all societies - the redefinition of the past for the present and the future. It is the task of bringing all of the unconscious things that we do and assume, both light and dark, understood and repressed, to conscious light and making a decision on how to proceed. Carl Jung reflected: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”


Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, who has spent his whole professional life looking at our past to understand our present,  said in his commencement address to graduates at Stanford University on June 16:
Each generation rediscovers and reexamines that part of its past that gives its present new meaning, new possibility and new power. The question becomes for us now—for you especially—what will we choose as our inspiration? Which distant events and long dead figures will provide us with the greatest help, the most coherent context, and the wisdom to go forward?  

In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, there is a shipwreck and some of the waterlogged survivors gather together to reflect on why it happened, but Antonio introjects:
We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again,
And by that destiny to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.

Much of the Book of Deuteronomy is like a bunch of sermons on the subject of how they were to live their lives being faithful to the mosaic covenant of being God’s representatives in this world. As God cared for the poor, the widows, and orphans, so were they to care for the poor, the widows, and orphans. As God’s arc of the universe bends toward justice, they are to bend toward justice. As they had periods in their lives when they received no justice from others, so they were not to let this happen to others. As they were loved by God when they were strangers in Egypt, they were also to love the strangers living in their land. Their past was their prologue to their dreams of their future and their discharge.

The author James Michener was not a religious man, but he loved the Book of Deuteronomy and the first Chapter of the Epistle of James as a guide on how to live a good and decent life and as an outline for a just society. In his book, The Source, a character says: “If you want to understand what it is to be Jewish, re-read the Book of Deuteronomy five times in a row.”

Many of my forbears were Scotch-Irish who, out of economic deprivation, had come from lowland Scotland and Northern English border areas to settle in the Ulster plantation region of Ireland. There they met exploitation and abuse from the English absentee landowners and resentment from the native Irish, especially during the English Civil War and the Irish Confederate Wars. After decades of strife, they came to America where all the land was already settled, so they went to the frontier Appalachian region of the Alleghenies and Blue Ridge where land was cheap and they hoped they would be free from injustice. The sentiments in the Declaration of Independence appealed to them, a nation committed to Justice, care for the downcast, and welcome for the stranger. They wanted to be free and serve God in peace. Their past was their prologue to the hearing the words that came in July of 1776: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Over the years, some of the people unconsciously edited that call to say that, of course, “Men” meant only white, land-owning males.  Only they were equal, and everybody else less than equal. Thomas Jefferson himself who penned those words and, even though a slaveholder himself, was deeply troubled by slavery wrote: "Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever." As Paul, the writer of the Galatians reading for today, the 7th Sunday after Pentecost (I told you I would bring it in…) warned about this unconscious editing for one’s own agenda:
Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh; but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest-time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.

That harvest time came for our country when what we had sown was reaped by that lazy, and at the time, a convenient unconscious editing. The nation had to revisit its prologue and had to bring back to the light of consciousness all of the dark and denied and, in its refusal, fought a great civil war. Lincoln in Gettysburg, reflecting on the fact that the Union victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg were accomplished on the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, revisited that prologue of “Four Score and seven years ago”, calling the people to revision what is to come and our discharge in order that “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Ken Burns continued in that commencement address:
You know, it is terribly fashionable these days to criticize the United States government, the institution Lincoln was trying to save, to blame it for all the ills known to humankind, and, my goodness, ladies and gentlemen, it has made more than its fair share of catastrophic mistakes. But you would be hard pressed to find—in all of human history—a greater force for good. From our Declaration of Independence to our Constitution and Bill of Rights; from Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the Land Grant College and Homestead Acts; from the transcontinental railroad and our national parks to child labor laws, Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act; from the GI Bill and the interstate highway system to putting a man on the moon and the Affordable Care Act, the United States government has been the author of many of the best aspects of our public and personal lives. But if you tune in to politics, if you listen to the rhetoric of this election cycle, you are made painfully aware that everything is going to hell in a handbasket and the chief culprit is our evil government.

I don’t think politics is a dirty word. I am honored to have met, known, and admired people of both major parties who have offered themselves for public service, and I pray for all of our elected leaders. I pray that we will have the wisdom to know that we will reap what we sow. If we sow division and hatred to promote our own selfish agendas, that is what we will reap. If we sow justice and mercy, then that is what we will reap. I am under no illusion that my elected representatives will always agree with me, and all of us have flaws. We are very fortunate in that we have had elections in this country for the last 12 score years. While we are ill-served by sound bites, slogans, and huge outpourings of campaign moneys, elections are a flawed but necessary exercise to revisit the prologues of our past, to bring to full consciousness our dark and light, and to discharge the attaining of the dreams of our future.

Second Readings (poem)
The Voter reviews the options in election.
The Vestry retreats to ask about mission.
The Searcher retraces steps to larger home.
The Worshipper returns to give new thanks.
The Memory recasts the plots in old stories.
The Reader rereads and more understands.
The Prayer resounds all those names said.
The Thanker redoubles with deeper praise.
The Priest recalls of becoming a Parson.
The Pastor remembers the visits made.
The Husband revisits his marriage vows.
The Father relooks at daughter’s pictures.
The Neighbor relates a family connection.
The Enemy’s reassesses anew as a sibling.
They all refine again thinking second again.
Trusting refinding deeper meaning to yes,
To renewing prologues of a newer dream.



Thursday, June 23, 2016

Avoiding Beating Up Pilgrim Bullies




A Reflection and Poem for VI Pentecost (Proper 8)             All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. June 26, 2016                                                                                    Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14                 Psalm 16                      Galatians 5:1,13-25                 Luke 9:51-62

Avoiding Beating Up Pilgrim Bullies

Last week’s Hebrew Testament Lesson described how Elijah tried to listen to God, but he was only able to hear God in sheer silence. He placed his face inside his mantle, a robe, to close off all the distractions from his own agenda. He entered into listening to the Divine Spirit who is deep in his soul. The mantle is an outward and visible sign that suggests that God is wrapped around him and in him. Elijah faced his fears and his anger, and the voice told him to return to face the “Bullies-in-Chief”, Ahab and Jezebel. Ahab repented, but Jezebel never did. Eventually they were both destroyed by their own greed. Later on, in today’s lesson, Elijah takes on a disciple, Elisha. When Elijah is taken into heaven, the mantle, which he used to listen deeply to God, is passed on to Elisha. Elisha has ripped his own garment in grief and fear over losing his mentor; he is naked before God. Now, having nothing to hide, Elisha wraps himself by taking on the mantle and listens to God instead of his own agenda. He is making a commitment to a new life.

Last Thursday was the 32nd anniversary of my ordination; a mantle, stole was placed on me as an outward sign that I was making a commitment to a new kind of living. It took me many years to figure it out, and it is still a work in progress, but it involves listening in the sheer silence of God for God’s will. Thomas Merton, in Thoughts in Solitude, wrote:

the will of God is not a 'fate' to which we submit but a creative act in our life producing something absolutely new . . . something hitherto unforeseen by the laws and established patterns. Our cooperation (seeking first the Kingdom of God) consists not solely in conforming to laws but in opening our wills out to this creative act which must be retrieved in and by us."

Years ago, from 1978-81, before I went to Seminary, I had been an adult who volunteered to work with the Youth Group in the church I was attending. One night we went to see a popular teenage movie called “My Bodyguard” in which a young boy, Clifford, moves to a new school and the school bully Moody - don’t you just love that name - played by a sneering Matt Dillon, picks on him and shakes him down for his lunch money. Clifford makes friends with other nerds, but there is always the threat of the bully. There is another outsider as well, Ricky Lindeman, a muscular, brooding, silent boy who has a rumored past of violence for which he feels guilty, and he has vowed never again to use brutal force. Clifford approaches Ricky, trying to recruit him to be his bodyguard for fifty cents a day and help with his school work. Ricky agrees just to accompany Clifford around the school. In an arms escalation, Moody recruits his own “body guard”, Mike, a real Neanderthal thug, to beat up Ricky. Ricky refuses to fight despite the humiliation he feels, until the time comes when he has just had enough, and Mike is toast - to the cheers of my Youth Group boys and girls. The movie reaches its climax when Clifford is able to confront and thrash Moody, who like all big talking bullies, is a coward, masking his fear with false bravado. The boys of the Youth Group cheered, but the girls were saddened that cute, sexy, bad boy Matt Dillon should fall so low and have a bloody, albeit still cute, nose.  The movie ends with Clifford and Ricky, two friends walking into the sunset together, sure in their decision to engage in violence as a solution to violence.

The Youth Group liked the movie, and it led to a good discussion about how complex high school really is as they listed off the bullies and the fears. The old saying is true: “life is not like Junior High; it is Junior High.” I tried to steer the conversation into a move away from violence as a solution to oppression, bringing Jesus and Martin Luther King into the discussion. I became aware that, for many of these kids, they wanted God to be the Really Big Bodyguard to finally take care of all the bullies in the world. They liked the idea of Hell where they could visualize the bullies getting their come-uppance. God was the Big Final “sic ’em”.  While I was trying to talk about peace, I guiltily remembered a movie that I cheered when I was their age called “McLintock”,  with John Wayne fighting the bureaucratic bullies from the east and giving a speech to the “heavy”, Leo Gordon, as he makes his decision to use violence:

“I know, I know. I'm gonna use good judgement. I haven't lost my temper in forty years, but pilgrim you caused a lot of trouble this morning, might have got somebody killed... and somebody oughta belt you in the mouth. But I won't, I won't. The *hell* I won't!” – and then he slugs Gordon and the free for all celebration of violence breaks out. 

We can see that viewpoint of refusing to enter into solitude with God for peace and refusing to follow God’s will, substituting giving God some spare change and a little help in the belief that you’ll get your heart's desire.  In the first three verses of the Psalm for today, the Psalmist sings that God is the refuge that keeps them safe and makes trouble for all those who oppose them. We see this theme in a lot of the Hebrew Testament stories where God settles the Sodomites', the Egyptians', the Philistines' or the Assyrian’s hash. We see it reflected in the New Testament Book of Revelation, the glorification of the God who punishes. We see it in daily life when something bad happens and we ask, “What did we do to deserve that?” Or when the character Maude used to say to her husband Arthur: “God’ll get you for that, Arthur.”  I remember one person used a quote misappropriates to Patton and  explained to me that he thought of God that way when he said the 23rd Psalm; “Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil for Jesus is the Biggest Meanest Son of God in the entire Valley!”

That seemed to be a view shared by James and John as they are rebuffed by the Samaritans in today’s Gospel lesson. They see God as the one who would incinerate enemies on cue. Jesus rejects this view of God, suggesting that following Jesus would call for a lot from everyone - they were not to fear their enemies, but to love them. That is hard to do. The bullies of the government and religious establishments were eventually to kill Jesus, even while he was lovingly forgiving them for not knowing what they were doing.

Paul writes to the Galatians and points out that Christ sets them free, but it is not a freedom from abuse by the enemy but a freedom for love of the enemy. He urges them to no longer see God as their servant to do what they want done, but to see themselves as God's willing servants to manifest God's love. Bullies will always be around - that is their nature in this world, to swaggeringly point out convenient enemies and humiliate them for a price.

One way fearful people with the mindset of a “wannabe bully” try to come across is to use the cloak of religion and claim that they are doing this to please their God, and the people that they insult, assault, or kill deserve God's wrath. We see this happening in every major religion as there are fringes of their faiths that see their version of God as the one who calls for blood. It would be nice to think that Christianity would be an exception, but history does not bear that out. The problem is that Christianity has taken the path of least resistance, reducing our faith to a bunch of creeds and rituals where pulpiteers speak their own agendas on God’s wrath. We have replaced talking with God to hearing about God, making prayer a matter of our talking and God being consigned to the role of flunky, taking our dictation. We don’t slow down enough to listen. Thomas Merton wrote about this when he said in his Thoughts in Solitude: “Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us.” and
When society is made up of people who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when they are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, then society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate.

How are we doing in entering into interior solitude so that we can resist calls to servility, resentment and hate?

Avoiding Beating Up Pilgrim Bullies (poem)
John Wayne snarls, cocking his fist back
showing how tough Marion Morrison is
hoped to be seen and feared. I cheered
because at age 16 there were plenty of
people I wanted to slug but that cheer
withered as it hit the air; remembering
seeing Civil Rights demonstrators turn
other cheek as Jesus taught his disciples.
Seething anger is not controlled by will
power directing it to worthy targets. But
by going soul, deep soul, tasting a peace
by claiming my own fears underneath the
anger. Angel mantles sing “Don’t be afraid.”    

Friday, June 17, 2016

Stopping the Pulse: Reflection on Orlando


Stopping the Pulse
The neon of the Pulse is off because
that night is over with air lingering
coppery scent of bodies removed as
relatives notified and rites planned
lounge of “safe haven” was violated.

Rest all my brothers, sisters peace;
you pay the price for yet other egos
impressing themselves on idle Gods
created in their own frenzied image.

Your crime was to dare to live as if
it were your right to love and laugh
while they were outraged that you
hadn't noticed their invisible pain.

How could you not know what the
thoughts coursing through wired
flaming synapses were thinking?

Their vacationing God needed a
voice to displeasure that Divine
whispered into their longing ears.

Your blood gives them meaning
for by your blood they were saved,
saved from fear of an irrelevancy
as if they had never been born.

Hate finds equal opportunities:
religious, nonreligious, female,
male, straight, queer, right, left,
rich, poor, candidate or nonvoter
immigrant, home grown, self, other.

Whatever is cause/ hatred de jour.
Some proclaiming primacy of 2nd,
others resenting enforcing of 1st
but as always, any excuse will do.

We can not presume to forgive
for only you can do that, but you
can help us not to use this as our
excuse to hatefully strike back.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Returning Home: Reflection and Poem for June 19, 2016




A Reflection and Poem for V Pentecost (Proper 7)   All Saints Church, Southern Shores, NC
 June 19, 2016                                                                    Thomas E Wilson, Rector
1 Kings 19:1-15a         Psalm 22:18-27                       Galatians 3:23-29        Luke 8:26-39
RETURNING HOME
From Luke’s Gospel for today:
The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.

How do we return home? Like Robert Frost suggested; “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in.” Thee Psalm appointed for today is the 22nd Psalm and we only did ten verses because it is a long Psalm. But Jesus sang the whole thing when he was on the cross.  It begins “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and continues as the Psalmist describes all the bad and all the redeeming things that have happened and it ends: “My soul shall live for God, my descendants shall serve him; they shall be known as the LORD’s forever. They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn the saving deeds that he has done.” 

The lessons for today have with people coming home after a time when they felt forsaken and they return to declare what God has done for them. Elijah has spent time in the wilderness fleeing from Ahab and Jezebel, and God has ministered to him in the wilderness and now Elijah has to go home to declare what God has done for them.

Paul writes a letter to the Galatians after he hears so many of his students had fallen for the tricks of the boys from the Jerusalem home office that keeps pushing another Gospel which excludes Grace and emphasizes law. At this time Paul cannot come home at this point but he writes a letter to proclaim again all the things that God had done for him.

The Gospel lesson from Luke for today has a man addicted by his demons living as if he had died in the place of the dead. In that God forsaken place he encounters Jesus. Indeed sometimes it is only when we find ourselves powerlessly camping out in what seems like a God forsaken place that we find the only sane option is to turn to a power greater than ourselves. He is healed and the demons are sent to drown with the swine. He has found a new home with Jesus, but Jesus sends him back home to proclaim the things that God has done for him.

Today we have had a presentation from Breda Thacker from an Inmate Program at the Dare County Detention Center, working with inmates so that they be able to eventually return home. I remember the old days when the thinking was that inmates should have no programs at all and actually suffer deep deprivation as a sign of society’s disapproval. I remember when the authorities were satirizing any attempt for rehabilitation as a making of the jail the “Manteo Hilton”. I remember that in the four churches in three states I have served, I visited jails and prisons where some family of my parish had a member as an inmate dealing with the demons of addiction or alienation. I visited people convicted of, or being held for trial, for murder, violence, robbery and all sorts and conditions of crime, even some were innocent but they were all children of God and I tried to show them that whatever they did they were part of our family and whatever church I was serving was still a place that they could call home. It is part of my job description as “Father”. Whenever I would visit them, one of the songs I would sing to myself as I was driving up to the prison of jail was the old Hymn, which we will sing together for the Offertory Hymn:
Come home, come home,
Ye who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home. 

I remember how Jim MacDonald spent a lot of his time and energy helping inmates deal with their addictions and alienation Jim focused on young men who live God forsaken addicted lives, living as if their souls were dead, for them to find that they are not forsaken and to find a new way of living so that they can grow into men who can make their own home centered on Christ and be true fathers of children who teach them that they too can return to their own home to proclaim the things that God had done for them. 

Some of us who are not in jail keep living as if we were dead souls, having no connection to who in whom we live and move and have our being. To live as a person who is a dead soul means that one has sold his reason for being to something that is not God. Some try to mold a God in their own image, a God of death who calls for death of those who are different. Last week we again, one more time when we said that we would work to make sure that it would not happen again, had one more alienated person grab a weapon of mass destruction, a weapon whose only purpose is to slaughter as many of God’s children as possible in as short a time as possible in order to follow the demons that have taken possession of them killing their own souls as they kill others.

One of my favorite books is a novel by Nicolai Gogal, called Dead Souls, written in 1842 before the Emancipation of the Serfs in 19th Russia.  The main character Chichikov, whose name comes from a Russian word for “sneeze”, is a schemer who goes to visit landowners who pay taxes on how many serfs, how many souls, they owned according to the last government census. Since census taking was infrequent some of their serfs had died and they still had to pay taxes on them. The schemer wants to “buy” the Dead Souls, so he can then turn around and take a loan from a bank with the Dead Souls for collateral, for which he will forfeit when he defaults on the loan. The Dead Souls were the dead serfs, but they were also a way of looking at the landowners who lived empty lives addicted to their own wants, desires fears and resentments as the center of life, missing the full riches of this life.

Many of us know what it is like to put something at the center of our lives that is not a loving God. Carl Jung suggested that is part of the modern disease in his book, Man And His Symbols, where he writes:
Yet in order to sustain his creed, contemporary man pays the price in a remarkable lack of introspection. He is blind to the fact that, with all his rationality and efficiency, he is possessed by "powers" that are beyond his control. His gods and demons have not disappeared at all; they have merely got new names. They keep him on the run with restlessness, vague apprehensions, psychological complications, an insatiable need for pills, alcohol, tobacco, food and, above all, a large array of neuroses.

Part of how I see my profession is to keep harping on the idea that we don’t need to walk around as dead souls addicted to focusing only on our own wants and desires or agendas of resentment and fear: there is loving presence beyond ourselves as the center of the universe. I harp on this message because I need to hear it myself so that I might come to my true home and proclaim the things that God has done for me.

The Preacher Returns Home
He strutted away from the lectern, silently
awarding top marks on work he had done;
himself, nobody else, his charm, cleverness,
brains, insight, scholarly aptitude: all his.
And yet, the ego miasma fetid, that solo run
felt like a MacKenzie walk amidst of tombs
where dwelt scores of Eleanor Rigby graves.
He had been willingly seduced into thinking
it was all about how he shines not what God
shines through him away from the holy dance
floors and spotlights and costumes and props
to where invited demons share lunch of tripe
with him just now when he snatched defeat
from opportunity for cross shaped healing.
Again, the old shackling pattern of youth
misplaced worth into the hands of others,
by refusing exorcism, that emptying touch
of freedom. He stopped, suddenly tired of
living in ruins, and vowed to return home
declaring, “Not I, but God had done for me.”
Today he prays his need for new day where
possessed swine take swim in ancient lakes.