A Reflection for the 9th 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 19th 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.
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