"All Of It"

 

A Reflection for the 10^th Sunday After Pentecost             Thomas E. Wilson Guest Celebrant and Preacher

Grace, Plymouth, and St. Luke's Roper, NC`                            July 28, 2024

2 Samuel 11:1-15           Psalm 14.              Ephesians 3:14-21.                John 6:1-21

"All Of It"

When I looked at the lessons for today I saw a theme: “All Of It”.

“All of it!” In the Collect, I saw a message that with God's Message is that with God's help we can get through all of the garbage that life seems to throw our way sometimes. “ All of it!”

“All of it!” In the Hebrew Testament David the King wants all of it! What ever it is that his little heart, or whatever part of his body desires; he wants all of it. The story begins with the line,"In the Spring, Kings go out to war." David sends his troops out, but he himself doesn't go out to war. Because there is something else he wants. David has several wives and they have children. But he wants more. Much more to fill his appetite.

“All of it!” David's palace is the highest one of the city, because he wants no one to look down on him. He looks out of his windows and he can see everything that is going on in HIS City, it is not for nothing that it is called the “City of David.” He sets up his capital there on this Hill city, but one problem he has to deal with is that it is hard to get enough water. It will take another three centuries before a water Tunnel is built by King Hezekiah, as he prepares to resist an invasion, so that there will be enough water to get to the cities west side.

“All of it!” One day, David looks out from his perch over his city, and he watches Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, one his commanders taking a bath, purifying herself after her period. The author of this passage wants to point this out, to show that she was not already pregnant, since Uriah was away serving in the army. David looks at Bathsheba and he wants her. At first all he wants is a dalliance with her, what the British used the phrase, “a little slap and tickle”. After all he was King, King of the whole shebang of a country, and she should be honored that he picked her to solve his boredom. He assumed she would not tell her husband, after all Uriah was David's property as his general. David wanted both the husband AND the wife.

“All of it!” The problem is that Uriah was a man of honor. When David finds Bathsheba is Pregnant, he sends for Uriah to come home from the front. He tries to get Uriah to go home to his wife and resume marital relations so they could just declare the child's birth as “pre-mature”, as at 7 or 8 months. Uriah had made a pledge to be faithful to his call to war and he was a faithful man. And for his honor, he had to die, so David's dishonor would not be made known. David wanted it all. He would even go through a ceremony of adopting the child Solomon. David wanted to have it all. As William Steig used to say: “People are just no damn good!” And yet, our faith tells us that we are loved.

“All of it!” In Psalm 14, the Psalm for today, the 1^st line is; “The Fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God' ”. The author of this Psalm, some say it was David himself, has this moment where he see how we are all fools at one time or another and we act as if God is only a fable which our ancestors passed on to us. That Psalm is a perfect fit for David, Uriah and Bathsheba. It is the game we play when we say to ourselves, “Let us pretend that God, if there is one, is off, busy or sleeping, in a parallel universe and is easily confused.” A perfect fit for David, Uriah and Bathsheba and for me more times than I would like to think of.

“All of it!” Paul who know what it was like to be a scoffer of Christ and a beloved by the same Christ and even at the same time. When Paul writes to the people of Ephesus in today's Epistle, he assumes that all of us have the need for a strength greater than ourselves: a perfect fit for the Davids, Uriahs and Bathsheba's of this world and the Pauls, Disciples and Saints of our acquaintance and for those of us who fit into both camps more than we would like to admit. C. S. Lewis’s view of prayer is that we pray not to change God, but to change ourselves. As Paul writes: “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

“All of it!” In the Gospel lesson for today, Jesus is working and more people show up than expected. There is not enough money in their treasury to buy enough food for all . So Jesus takes what is given, all that a young boy has he gives away, five loaves and two fish and breaks it and distributes it to all. Every one is fed and there is enough left over to fill 12 baskets. All of it is given and yet, there is more than enough left over.

“All of it!” This story is a prelude to a story that comes later in the Gospel when Jesus is taken and broken and set on the cross to die. There were so many times Jesus could have taken a different path, but he does what he does with the feeding of the multitude. Jesus has a meal with his disciples where he take and blesses the bread and breaks it giving it to his disciples as an outward and visible sign that this will be done to him. He will be taken by the authorities and ripped with a lash and broken on the cross and given for all the world,. All of it! Every breathe he has, he uses to forgive his tormentors, his companions, his disciples. He dies and in the Resurrection he gives his spirit to all who come to him; not drips and drabs, but all of his Spirit. His spirit, all of it, is in each one of us; if we open ourselves to receive it. The power to forgive; all of it, is given to each one of us so we and the people who we have harmed and the people who harmed us can enter into a new relationship of love; all of it!

“All of it!” Love is not based on approval or merit, but of a decision that is made to love; come what may. We are in a place of history when we wonder what will come next and what is left for all of it and all of us.

“All of it!”When I started to think about this reflection, I began with my own experience with love between me and another human being. In my first marriage which ended in divorce; I was 21 and we went into it with how we could each benefit. By the time came for me to enter a second marriage, my focus changed to how I could give all of myself and accepting and caring for all of her.

“All Of It!”

When younger, I went into a relationship,

Holding back and didn't give all of myself;

Fearing, I'm afraid of losing my very self

When I did enter into a deeper partnership.

I held the other one at distance and at bay

For fear of being swallowed into a mass,

Which only just looked as a nice romance.

It did finally end, one long expected day.

Then I learned what this “love” was liken,

Giving all of myself, accepting all of her,

Giving freedom to each new moment there,

Growing into each new day of deeper ripen.

Even after her death, I still remember it all;

We were blessed, in every moment I recall.

Ignorance In Asking

A Reflection for the 9^th Sunday After Pentecost     Thomas E. Wilson Guest Celebrant and Preacher

Grace, Washington, and St. Luke's Roper, NC`       July 21, 2024

Ignorance in Asking

        2 Samuel 7:1-14a         Psalm 89:20-37         Ephesians 2:11-22.          Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

This is my first time preaching here at Roper and Plymouth on a Sunday morning and unless I am told never to return, I will be back next week. I visited both churches at least a decade and a half ago The purpose of that visit? I was supposed to ask you what your ministry was in these places, what help you needed and what kind of vision you had for the future. I was on the Stewardship Committee and the Executive Board of the Diocese and one of the unstated reasons we were visiting was to shake churches down for more money for the Diocesan budget. I was supposed to ask you what your ministry was in these places. Sometimes the answer was something like “to get through this year in the black ink!”

Often when I write a reflection, I try to put my thoughts into a poem , often a sonnet format. The rhyming sequence and number of lines, forces me to look deeper and open up new thoughts. This is my poem for today on how I should have approached you so long ago and how visitors may want to ask you now to answer.

Ignorance in Asking

I was supposed to ask what you were doing?

I should have been asking who you were?

What were those things giving joy here?

What loving mission were you reviewing?

What is getting in the way of finding joy?

Who now works with you hand in glove?

What do you do to grow in deeper love?

What nature of prayer do you best employ?

How I can I more fully learn from you?

Can you teach me how you like to dance?

Can you give this clumsy person a chance?

Is laugher allowed to ring deep and true?

Lead me behind your Prayer Book facade,

Allowing me to see into your heart's God,

This week, I am especially interested in the lessons from Tract 1 in the Sunday lectionary. Tract 1 is an attempt to get Episcopalians to open their minds to the fullness of scripture. We are in Year B right now and the lessons in the season after Pentecost are from the Davidic Covenant and Wisdom Literature This week and next week we are finishing up the David Cycle. This week David is getting bored and wants something to do. In his boredom, he thinks about the glory he so loves. He suggests that he take on the task of building a Temple for God to dwell with God's people. Nathan, the prophet, who is usually a “Yes” man on which to be counted, says, “Sure go ahead!” But, with David, God sees the vanity behind his desire to build; so God talks to Nathan and tells him to withdraw the building permission.

Building buildings is something that has a part of ego and pride that goes along with it. In my 36 years professional career as a Parish Priest, after my mid life crisis sent me to seminary, I found myself in the building of additions at 2 of the 3 churches I served as Rector. There was more than a touch of my hubris in both of the building projects. My time would have been better spent in helping to build faith in the hearts of my parishioners and community. But it is a ego rush to approve plans to more than double the size of the old building and to raise money. I am so happy that I am not in the church building business and now limit my enthusiasm in help people to grow deeper in their faith rather than increase church square feet and budget.

David does not take the news well of not doing the surefire building routine and searches for a way to deal with the boredom of being a King. Charles Baudelaire, a 19^th Century French Poet, hopeless Romantic and drug addict, saw all the evil of the world as born in a place described as: “An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom'. Next week, we will see the story of David and Bathsheba as David finds new ways to feed his ego. I have found boredom comes to me when I have no vision except for ways of getting my ego desires met. Usually I end up going nowhere fast. Boredom is not conducive to growing deeper in faith but in killing the time. My task out of the boredom is not to find ways to escape the boredom, but to embrace the boredom and go deeper.

Neel Burton, a British Psychiatrist, in his article “Surprising Benefits of Boredom” writes:

Schopenhauer said that boredom is but the reverse side of fascination, since both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other. So instead of being outside a situation, learn to get inside it, however hard this may be.

In The Miracle of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh advocates appending the word "meditation" to whatever activity it is that you find boring, for example, "waiting in an airport—meditation."

Or, to bring it to the present moment; if you are having trouble following this sermon, you make this a moment to enter into this as a meditation. You can call it “Sitting in my church - meditation”.

When Paul writes the letter to the Ephesians; he does not see the people as strangers who need to be made helpful to the larger institutions, but to claim a kinship with all the other Christians in “whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.” The purpose of ministry is not to be God's helpers in doing church work, but in being dwelling places for God in every day life. God is not the guest on Sunday morning who graciously listens to a well done performance; but God is the spirit in every breath we take. God is not in the words but in the heart beats, and in the silence in which we can actively listen to each other between the notes of every song line or prayer phrase.

In the Gospel lesson for today the disciples are exhausted by the amount of work that they were able to do in preaching and healing. Now, Jesus tells them to go off by themselves so they might reflect deeper into what had been done by them so they might understand what was happening to them. They were not heroes in and of themselves; what they were doing was emptying themselves out of all their own ego to be aware that it was God's power which was released through them to bring about healing.

I noticed something this week. My sister, a year and a half younger than I, from Chapel Hill, was visiting me part of this last week. In the last fourteen months both os us have lost our spouses. We know what it is like to love and lose; and yet keep the love we had so freely been given. One evening, we turned on the tube and the the film version of the Rogers and Hammerstein musical, “South Pacific” was playing. I saw that movie first more than a half century ago and over the years I have seen it several other times as well. But, I found myself singing, under my breath, parts of the lyrics of so many of the songs. My sister laughed; I can't carry a tune in a bucket, but the lyrics riddled my consciousness. I no longer just listened to lyrics but I was more aware of the message that love crosses many boundaries to bring healing. As the lyrics came back to consciousness, I was more aware of the divisions we are living with in this country with the politics of hate. How easy it is to sing songs, but if we are very lucky, the songs enter our ears and into our hearts and souls, to sing, and live, the songs in our lives.

We spend a lot of time in church singing, but what is the song that God is singing to you and me today? The disciples of Jesus heard Jesus speak to them but it was God's song and lyrics that he and the disciples were singing.

What is God allowed to do in this church; or to and through, each one of us? What are the steps to God's dance here with you.

A Holy Year

 

A Reflection for the 7^th Sunday after Pentecost             Church of the Holy Trinity, Hertford, NC

Thomas E. Wilson, Guest Celebrant                            July, 7, 2024

2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10               Psalm 48                 2 Corinthians 12:2-10             Mark 6:1-13

A Holy Year

Some weeks ago, I told you that the Books of Samuel would tell you of the history of the Kingdom of Saul and David. Saul was the great young leader who met with early success, but his arrogance plagued the last years of his Kingship. David will start off well and this week shows the young man at his prime. However, the authors of the Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles have a deeper message to tell which was a warning about the Kings, in fact about any ruler who strays away from the path of following God's will to be a servant first and foremost. When “Rulers” understand that they must first be a faithful servant, then and only then can they rule wisely. This message will be reiterated in the Books of the Chronicles: “No matter how good a ruler wants to be; his or her arrogance will place them in tension with what God calls the rulers to be.”

Yes, the books are about the tension between Kings and Prophets of the past. But the deeper reason they were written was not only about the tragedies of the past, but also as a warning about the bitter comedies we, Kings and Peasants alike, tend to create in our own lives. It is all about human nature; we may begin as heroes of our own stories and imagination, but we can end up filled with arrogance if we follow our own agendas instead of God's. Almost all the Kings wanted to be seen as Heroes but they usually ended up one way of the other, to use the old Yiddish term,”Schmucks”.

In a 2010 article in Forward Magazine, Etiquette for Schmucks, Schlemiels, Schlimazels and Schmendriks, the author wrote:

“attempts to draw a distinction of the term "schmuck" from other Yiddish terms for stupid and inept persons: schlemiel, schlimazel, and schmendrik, a distinction not properly drawn in dictionaries. After a number of comparisons, the author concludes: "A schmuck is, in short, someone who lacks not intelligence, but all insight into what is humanly appropriate and what is not. This makes his condition remediable. A schlemiel, a schlimazel and a schmendrik are irredeemably what they are. A schmuck can be enlightened.”

In the Epistle, the Apostle Paul, who writes in Greek, not Yiddish, and uses the word “ἄφρων” (aphron), “foolish” when he refers to the temptation he has to think so highly of himself. He is the Leader of the church, a man who has the Risen Lord speak directly to him, being aware of his own difficulties in being in charge, his own “schmuckitude”.

In the Gospel lesson for today, Jesus returns to his own old hometown. The people don't know what to think of him, because he is pushing them to go deeper in their faith. They refuse to change, to be challenged to grow; and in essence they, brand him as a schmuck, not worth their consideration; “Who does he think he is?”

You would have thought that he would have just given up; but Jesus does not give up; he changes opportunities. In the Gospel lesson, Jesus takes the disciples deeper into their faith. He sends them out two by two, so they can build a deeper relationship with each other and God. They begin to use the sacred space between each other and, out of that sacred space, God's healing blossoms.

Over this last year, I told you about the first time I met my future wife. It was the first week working after graduating from Seminary in the new diocese and how little impressed she was with me, because she saw me, rightly, as so full of my own importance . As a good former Roman Catholic girl brought up in Toledo, Ohio, I am sure that the word “schmuck” did not occur to her, but I am sure she thought of a good long list of synonyms. It took her five years for her to think about working with me. Then, and only after we worked together; we risked going deeper in relationship. When we entered into the relationship, both of us worked hard to grow into and become the person the other wanted us to become. We entered into the sacred space between us to go deeper than we ever imagined into faith.

Your search Committee has done its work and has chosen a new Rector for this church. If I were ruler of the Universe, and I am not- I just want to be; one of the titles that I think should be junked in the Episcopal church is the title: “Rector”. The word “Rector” means “Ruler”, one of the worst titles to give a servant of God; right up there with King. But on the other hand, it may be helpful to remember that the Rulers, Rectors, Kings always needed Prophets to remind the Rector, Ruler, King, if even in their own mind, that they need to keep being reminded that they are not called to rule but to serve. As Jesus says in the 22^nd chapter of Luke: “For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”

When I first became a Rector of a church, after being as assistant at my previous church, I taped that reading from Luke: “I come among you as one who serves” to the door of my office, not to remind them - but to remind myself before that stuff about being a Ruler/Rector all went to my head and I ended up as a Schmuck. I had to keep reminding myself that if I entered a relationship with a congregation; I needed to work hard to become the person they wanted me to be. Often it was reciprocal as members of the congregations I served chose to go deeper into faith and served in ministering with me to others inside and outside the church.

When the Books of Samuel and Kings end; the prophets return to hold the leaders and the Kings to a path of being faithful; a path from which they keep wandering. The prophet Micah will thunder out to the Kings and to the people: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8).

This past week we celebrated the 4^th of July, a day we remember our history when we refused to have Kings rule over us. We joined together to create a new nation. The writers pointed to- “ A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

This is the 7^th Sunday after Pentecost 2024; a year ago in July 2023 on the 8^th Sunday after Pentecost, I came to this church and preached and celebrated. My wife had died a month before, and the funeral was to be held in about 10 days. I was on sort of an auto pilot, but I do remember how kind you were to me. I want to thank you for this year, for you have been part of my healing as you ministered to me. You forgave easily and chose not to dwell on my shortcomings. The new Rector is a fortunate person. Bless you in your new ministry together.

A Holy Year

It was July, the middle of the year,

When there were grace moments,

In coming together as components,

Of sacred times of grace held dear.

Losses and sadness were underneath,

While shared laughter and joy ruled,

Those spaces between whole, souled,

Folk being joy as flowers to a wreath.

The outward signs of a loving beauty,

Came into being Holy Space renewed,

Made into new life, hope's new attitude,

Blossomed more opportunities of duty.

This Priest came to lead some prayer

but ends up treasuring your new care.

Thank you for your ministry to me this past year! May you and the new Priest bless each other and this community in these coming years.