A
Reflection for the Feast of All Saints (transferred) All Saints’
Church, Southern Shores
November 5, 2017 Thomas E. Wilson,
Rector
American
writer William Stafford was born in 1914 and drafted in 1940. As a
result of his status as a conscientious objector during World War II,
he worked in civilian service projects in work camps in Arkansas and
California. After he and other writers got off work for the day, they
were often too tired from their work in the Forest Service to write,
so they would get up before dawn and write before breakfast, a habit
he continued all of his life until his death in 1993. One of his
poems is called Allegiances
which starts off:
It is time for all
the heroes to go home
if they have any, time for all of us common ones
to locate ourselves by the real things
we live by.
if they have any, time for all of us common ones
to locate ourselves by the real things
we live by.
A couple weeks ago I
attended the Diocesan Clergy Conference, and our guest speaker was
Jill Mathis, Canon for Transitional Ministry for the Diocese of
Pennsylvania, on the need to change in the changing times. She
borrowed heavily from Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze who wrote
a report called From
Hero to Host: A Story of Citizenship in Columbus, Ohio.
In that report and other research, they pointed to the dangers of
hierarchy where the Leader is the hero with the vision and who works
tirelessly to bring the vision to life, depending on his followers to
obey orders. High risk means high control; which works for a while in
a strict hierarchical model like the military. Heroes tend to burn
out, and when that happens, the people tend to flounder until another
hero comes forward. It is hard for heroes to make changes because
they are always fighting the war they know instead of engaging when
the battleground changes.
Some of you may have
seen the recent documentary on the Vietnam War. There were many
heroes there, and the tragedy was that they were fighting the war
they knew in the past instead of understanding a different
battlefield, fighting to return to a rehashed past instead of moving
to a new future.
We live in a complex
world with complicated issues suggesting a change from heroes to
hosts. A host gathers people from different disciplines to look at
the situation from different perspectives and gets them to work
together, sharing their different skills to build a new future. The
issue is not problem-solving, but moving into a new future. Hosting
is a four part process: (1) Hosts have to learn to be present instead
of focusing on their own agenda. (2) They have to practice
conversation, not only conversation with others but also the
conversation within themselves, of the different parts of themselves.
(3) They have to learn how to host conversations, making sure that
others know that their contributions are heard and deepened. (4)
Hosts have to be part of the co-creation of a new future instead of a
rehashing of the past.
In the Gospel lesson
for today from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, Jesus urges a shift
from hero to host. The story begins when Jesus gathers his disciples
away from the crowd and teaches them the new rules of engagement. You
remember Jesus has gathered all sorts and conditions of people
together - some fishermen, a tax collector, a zealot - the kinds of
people who see the world differently. He teaches them by example that
the only way to be happy, fortunate, and blessed in the Kingdom of
the Heavens, the Kingdom of God, is to be humble in spirit, to be
able to mourn, to empty themselves out in humility, to work for
justice, to be merciful, to train their hearts to be centered on God,
to work for peace and to accept loss gracefully. This is how to live
on earth as it is in heaven.
The ministry of this
new community is not to be a hero of the faith demonstrating how to
lead a life of perfect following of the law, but to host the Holy
Spirit in the space between people to heal the world by living on
earth as it is in heaven. Jesus was not trying to be a new Moses, a
new lawgiver who, like Moses, does not get to enter into the Promised
Land, but instead trying to be true to his name sake, for the Hebrew
form of the Greek “Jesus” was “Joshua”, the one who leads
others into the Promised Land. The Jesus community will continue to
host God’s Holy Spirit and each other and welcome strangers into
the conversation for the next couple of centuries. From the
beginning, the members of this heaven-on-earth conversation were
called “saints”, people who were hosts in the conversations with
God and others. These saints were flawed people, not at all perfect,
but they were people who were present, conversed and listened and
co-created a community of faith.
However, the Jesus
community gets co-opted by Rome and becomes an official religion of
the state. They gave up hosting conversation and returned to being
heroes pushing agendas for the good of the institution, with a strict
hierarchy speaking from on high for strong internal control over the
people and issuing marching orders on how to be soldiers for the
stability of the Empire and the church. Stability became the norm and
the future, the heaven, was pushed off to the time after each of us
died. The name “Saint”, with a Capital “S” was then reserved
for the heroes of this army and applied only to those in the past who
had shown heroic action.
I entered the
ordained ministry hoping to be a hero and I tried my best to tie into
this ego goal. I spent a lot of time leading campaigns, issuing
marching orders, and hewing to the party line. I tried to be the best
Priest in the history of Christendom to feed my own ego, never
letting go of my agenda. I spent a lot of energy covering up my
shortcomings by finding fault in others while excusing my own
missteps. I overworked and create a model of unhealthy living and
blamed it on God. It was years before I was able to figure out that
my vocation as a faithful priest is to pay attention to what Stafford
calls in poem Vocation, “The dream the world is having about
itself”. He wrote the final line of that poem: "Your job is
to find out what the world is trying to be."
My salvation from
being literally a successful “damned” Priest was to come to this
place where the name of All Saints suggested that we did not need to
be heroes but saints hosting conversations with God and others. We
did not have a past where we wanted to be mired in a stable nostalgia
but rather work together for a new future. We saw change, from the
small things to the big things, as facts of life rather than threats.
We were not here to solve problems but have fruitful conversations
with the community, ourselves, and God. Today we rejoice with Jesus
Recinos and Maricela Zaldivar as their daughter, Alaia, is baptized
into this ongoing conversation.
One
of the things I like about the Vestry is that we start off our
meetings with people sharing answers to a question for meditation.
We begin our business with listening to what God seems to be doing in
our lives. I have tried to send out my sermon/reflection and post it
a couple days before the service to give a chance for conversation
instead of springing on you and speaking from on high on Sunday where
there is no time for conversation. Speaking of that - I wanted to use
the question for meditation as a way to encourage parishioners to be
present and have internal conversation before the service, but there
is so much noise as people are having conversations with each other.
I have had to get used to not being in strict control, and it is not
all bad. All Saints is the place, and the people, where and who are,
as Stafford says in his poem: “time for all of us common ones/ to
locate ourselves by the real things/we live by.”
From Hero to Host
Walking before a
morning sun arises
we have a chance to
ponder a choice
to live into the
being a hero or a host
in a play that the
Holy extemporizes.
Historical Big “S”
Saints are heroes
snarling with
defiance against devils
tempting them to
surrender to revels
worldly, staring
them down to zeroes.
The little “s”
saint is the host to holy
emptying out all of
that glory thirst
so that they might
make Higher first,
not themselves, but
like Jesus lowly
becoming one with
the blessed meek
who rely on a power
greater to seek.
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