Standing Up Together

A Reflection for Palm Sunday St. Andrew’s Episcopal, Nags Head, N.C. April 12, 2025 Thomas E Wilson, Preacher Luke 19:28-40 Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 Isaiah 50:4-9a Philippians 2:5-11 Luke 22:14-23:56 Standing Up Together We have just gone through a heck of a lot of scripture in this service so far and It took me a while to try to figure out what I might focus on. So, when in doubt I write a poem, and let that lead me. The poem was about when we finish the service and we stand up together to go into the world as witnesses of the Cross. In this story, there are four times the disciples stand up together. The first time is when they are with Jesus walking with him as he rides into Jerusalem, all of them praising God joyfully. We do like to follow Jesus when all is going well. The second time is when the disciples are at the table and get into an argument about “Who is the Greatest Disciple!” Like the disciples, we like to compare ourselves with others, which allows us to pass judgment on others. The third time is when the disciples all get up and run away from the government forces arresting Jesus.after Judas betrayed him and them. Like the disciples, we do like to make ourselves scarce when times get rough. The fourth time is at the place of Golgotha when they stand with the women at a distance as witnesses to the Crucifixion; and that is when we all stand up together as witnesses. As the old Gospel song goes: “Were you there when they crucified my Lord. Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.” There was nothing they could do to fix the world going wrong. Yet, there is a fifth time of standing up together and that is at the end of the service when if we are captured by love, we are unleashed into the world. Or we can just leave and beat the Methodists to lunch. In the 1970’s, before I went to Seminary, I was teaching Social Work in a college in Virginia and spending the summers in Boone, North Carolina where I was working for some summers in an Outdoor Drama and had to grow a beard for the part. My priest at the church in Boone told me that a call went out for people with Beards to pose for an artist named Ben Long who was doing a Fresco of the Last Supper on the walls of an neglected Episcopal Church at Glendale Springs in the next county over.. My white hair and beard was red at the time. A few years later when I finished my second year at Seminary, the Bishop sent me to the Episcopal churches in that county as a field placement as an assistant to the Priest, and one of my job duties was to be available to give lectures about the Fresco paintings to visitors who came to see beauty and a hope these visitors might grow in faith. I spent a great deal of that summer using insights from Ignatian Spirituality to grow deeper in my faith. Ignatius Loyola had been a soldier but when he could no longer fight, he turned to finding peace. When he was a soldier, after the battle, he would go over the battle in his mind, step by step, searching the things he did right and the things that were not helpful;.using a two step method to go deeper. When he became a man of peace, he used that two step method to go deeper in faith. The first step was to enter into God’s vision; to look at a situation where Jesus is following God’s calling to help us go deeper into our faith. Putting our egos aside, he would take the stories of Jesus and see the world from the loving vision of God. The second step was then to use imaginations to enter into each of the participants in the story, vision or dream. This particular Fresco was of the Last Supper, at the moment when Jesus is telling them that one of us would betray him. That Fresco opened up my world for me. The fresco was of dynamic tension in the space in, and between, each of the disciples at that moment. The Fresco itself was an invitation for visitors to live into a moment of decision or betrayal; decide to enter into love and follow the vision of Christ, or into betrayal for our own advantage. In the Fresco, most of the disciples are living into the moment between love or betrayal. As I posed for one of the disciples; I was acutely aware that betrayal was not a stranger to my behavior. As I posed, I thought of how much I was unworthy to be a disciple of Christ. I had, and still have, so many flaws. There were so many barriers in committing myself to God. I approved of God in the abstract, and as an anchor in the middle of a storm, but a day by day relationship was not my style. I did professional work as a therapist and as a teacher, but there was always a comfort in a professional distance. But God has this habit of elbowing God’s self into my imagination. How could, if I became a Priest, place my trust in people who might disapprove of some of my actions and turn on me, as so many clergy knew from first hand experience? Being a minister of the Gospel meant that I would be judged by my flaws; and I knew only too well that there were far too many of them. I could do lectures on what I knew, but could not then speak about any personal relationship with the divine. Prayers with God were not dialogs, but rather a series of spoken memos directed at the Ether, As I went deeper into the character that I was posing for and yet who was really me, I came to understand that the disciples were all made of equal portions of saint and schmuck. They were like me, and yet they were the ones chosen by Jesus. He knew them (and us) well and yet, he still loved them (and us) and gave them (and us) charge of his ministry on earth.That Fresco experience that summer was over, but when I went back to the college to teach, I came to a decision that I needed to make a commitment for a deeper spiritual life and a change in the way I was working at a job, and I went to seminary. My plan was to be a worker Priest, where I would be ordained and be a pastoral Counselor and stay away from Parish Work. My first job after Seminary was to be a College Chaplain. There is an old line that keeps coming back to me: “If you want to hear God laugh; tell God your plans.” Standing Up Together After the services we tend to go home, Alone in all our separate ways keeping Our visions closed until we’re sleeping, Dreaming until our imaginations roam. Into crowds of dangerous waving palms, All of us together as if we really believed, From all our mourning we’d be relieved, Replaces our dirges with hope in psalms. That what we feared might be a myth, For there’s so much challenging hope Fearing that the story was a fond trope, Which we’d package nice dreams with. Yet, death is not just the final chapter, But finding we know love’s our captor.