A Poem and Reflection for 10th Sunday after Pentecost August 14, 2022
All Saints Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, NC Thomas E. Wilson, Guest Celebrant
Isaiah 5:1-7 Psalm 80:1-2, 8-18 Hebrews 11:29-12:2 Luke 12:49-56
DIVISIONS
The Gospel Lesson for today from Luke remembers Jesus warning about divisions. Luke will write more about those divisions in his Gospel and in the Acts of the Apostles; between the disciples on who is the greatest, between Jesus and the Jewish religious establishment, between Jesus and the Roman political establishment, between the Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, between the apostle Paul and the disciples in Jerusalem. Paul and others will write letters about the divisions between Christians in their own churches. History, for the next 20 centuries will tell us about the divisions between theologians over the nature of Jesus, (human, or divine, or a “tertium quid”, “a third thing”). Divisions between Creeds, division between different views of scripture, division between different kinds of worship, East versus West, Latin versus Greek, for or against slavery, different views of “salvation”, different views of end time. You name it; the church has had divisions about it, where we fly the banner of the Prince of Peace and work to destroy those who believe the other side of the division.
In my three quarter of a century of life, I have never known a time without division. Tomorrow, August 15th, is the 77th anniversary of the announcement by the Japanese Emperor Hirohito of the acceptance of an unconditional surrender by the Empire of Japan. The victorious forces of the Allied Armies started fighting, having open divisions, between themselves as soon as, and even before, the war was over. Divisions over the future of the countries that had been under the rule of Nazi Germany or the Empire of Japan - the losers of the war, or the Colonial Empires of France and Great Britain - two of the bankrupt victors of the war. Divisions between incompatible social and economic systems, systems of economics and governance.
In 1948, my father, who had been in combat in the wars, got a civilian job in El Salvador in Central America. Soon after we got there, there was a coup d'etat where the leader by a rigged election was overthrown by the army, as one garrison on one side of the capital city shelled another garrison on the other side of the city. My parents, their two sons and their infant daughter, fled to a coffee finca on a mountain overlooking the city to be safe and watched in safety the artillery do its work on each other.
Up until two years ago, we as a nation bragged, that we were not a Banana Republic, which attempted coups instead of peaceful transitions of power. So much for that division!
When we moved back to the United States we found a country divided along political, economic, social and racial divisions. My father was a Roman Catholic and my mother was a Presbyterian and the way they settled those division was to raise the children as Episcopalians. However, one way I learned how to be an Episcopalian by singing a song, “I Am An Anglican” about how important it was that we were divided from other Christians.
By the time I went to college, I was trying out being a radical left wing post Christian. I joined a campus debating society and learned how to sneer effectively and score points for whatever side I was on. It made me feel good to hate. Giving me a sense of purpose to sneer. I was with groups that protested the remnants of Segregation and then against our militarization in Southeast Asia. How good it felt to be right and to hate. After my father died, hate wasn't as much fun and I started to return to a Christian view of the world. In the meantime the Episcopalians were fighting each other over prayers books and schisms.
Even my mother tried out a division. When I bought a Subaru, a Japanese import car, in 1981, my mother, who in World War II had stayed in California, near the Marine Base outside San Diego, each day filled with fear that her husband would be killed by the enemy, while my father was fighting the Japanese in the South Pacific from 1941 to 1945, said to me in alarm, “How could you buy that car? Those people ( the Japanese) tried to kill your father?”
Yes, there are divisions. That is a reality but what are we do do with those divisions if we are asked in the middle of the divisions. David Brooks, in a New York Times editorial of July 21, 2022, wrote;
“Sometimes in life you should stick to your worldview and defend it against criticism. But sometimes the world is genuinely different than it was before. At those moments the crucial skills are the ones nobody teaches you: how to reorganize your mind, how to see with new eyes.”
In reorganizing our mind, we learn how to ask questions of the people on the other side of the division. To go even deeper and listen to their pain and their fears. The question for people of faith is to ask where is God in the middle of all this.
In Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural Address, in the closing days of the Civil War and the country's division, he showed how to reorganize the country's mind and spirit;
“With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
A century and a half later after that address, one of vestiges of “the nation's wounds”, Racial Discrimination was addressed. Last month a great injustice was faced, reviewed and fixed when Buck O'Neil, a Star Player and Manager for the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Baseball leagues from 1937 to 1955, was formally admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. For decades he was not admitted because he was black, and the white Major League teams were segregated. He became a scout for the Chicago Cubs in 1955 and in 1962 the Cubs named him the first black coach in the Major Leagues, but even then, he was not allowed to coach during the games, as 3rd or 1st base coach. He had been turned down in 2006 for admission to the Hall of Fame, but he said at the time:
“God's been good to me. They didn't think Buck was good enough to be in the Hall of Fame. That's the way they thought about it and that's the way it is, so we're going to live with that. Now, if I'm a Hall of Famer for you, that's all right with me. Just keep loving old Buck. Don't weep for Buck. No, man, be happy, be thankful."
What O'Neil did was to demonstrate what St. Benedict wrote in his rules for the Benedictine Community, whose members were to actively listen to each other, “listen . . . with the ear of the heart” and prayerfully consider what was said and then act in obedience to God. O'Neil listened and heard what was being said behind the words. He understood that the official words covered the bigoted, racist fear of the white baseball establishment. He knew the truth of his own God given, and Buck developed, skill. Instead of bitter weeping and fury; O'Neil chose to put his energy to joyfully help others to break the barriers.
When I do pre-marital counseling, I ask the couple to bring in a fight that they had. They usually proclaim that they never fight. But, by the third session they agree that all this wedding preparation and the moving in together plans may have been the occasion of a hard disagreement. As we go through the “disagreement”, I ask them each to share what they felt about, or thought of, or meant in that comment they gave and when did the groundwork for the fight start before the disagreement ever came to the surface. Usually it has to do with how they treat one another in being “right” and did they listen to what was really said. I keep telling them “Good fighters, who listen and cherish each other, make good lovers. Lousy fighters, who only want to win, make lousy lovers.”
Jesus tells us what we already know, we live in communities of division. That is part of being human. Jesus shows us by his life that we have a choice; we can either create battlefields of burnt ground or we live in community with those with whom we disagree by treating the space between us as Holy Ground where we “listen . . . with the ear of the heart.”
DIVISIONS
(One) I'm much smarter, brighter and cuter than you,
far more deserving of an Almighty's approval,
as you can plainly see if you give a fair perusal,
how my side is really the only one that is true.
(Two) The other side gives, “So's your mama!” retorts,
as a way of presenting a full reasoned argument,
aimed to move into sulking silence punishment,
before moving into dueling chapters and verses.
(One) I heard the sound of hurt in you, can't we stop
for a moment and just listen to spaces shared?
(Two) Please let us see
there is a power that cared,
that we'd find a way to have
arguments drop.
(Three) Lets agree to stop the Cain and Abel stuff,
and agree love is much more than enough.
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