Walking In Firelight

 

A Reflection and Poem for Last Sunday of Epiphany Thomas E Wilson Guest Presider

All Saints Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, NC February 19, 2023

Exodus 24:12-18 2 Peter 1:16-21 Matthew 17:1-9 Psalm 99

Walking In Firelight

The 1^st Letter written by Peter was probably not written by Peter but other wise it is well named because it reflects the living Spirit of Peter. It could have written anywhere between 81 to 250 AD. Someone is passing on an event which reportedly happened to Peter. It was written down in the kind of Greek, which is hard to think an illiterate Galilean peasant fisherman would know how to write and understand.

The translation for today's reading contains the words “cleverly devised myths” as the translation from the Greek “sophizo mythos” I would prefer the translations that translate it as “devised fables” or “contrived fictions”. Again we go to the idea of Peter's authorship; “sophizo mythos: would not be in his natural vocabulary – I'd expect him to say something like “damn lies”.

Scripture is never meant to be reduced to literal language, but speaks in poetic truth, understanding that we are not in Kansas anymore.

Myths are important; they are stories about the interactions between humans and the divinity, or within the divinity. C.G. Jung writes “Myth is not a fiction: it consists of facts that are continually repeated and can be observed over and over again.”

In my spare time, I read mysteries. I love trying to figure out who, how and why something happens in these fictions. Myths are mysteries, but we don't know how it happens; there are no nice clean answers in solving the puzzles of why and we have to get used to not having nice clean solutions. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel observed

Reverence is one of man’s (sic) answers to the presence of the mystery. This is why, in contradistinction to other emotions, it does not rush to be spoken. When we stand in awe, our lips do not demand speech; we know that if we spoke, we would deprave ourselves. In such moments talk is an abomination. All we want is to pause, to be still, that the moment may last. It is like listening to great music; how it reaps the yield from the fertile soil of stillness; we are swept by it without being able to appraise it. 

In the Hebrew Testament lesson, in the Epistle and in the Gospel Passage there are poetic descriptions of what happens when someone comes into an encounter with the Divine Spirit, usually having to do with symbols of light or fire. During the time of Worship of the Temple in Jerusalem it was commanded that there would always be a fire burning as a sign of God's presence. Later Jewish Rabbis called it a “Shekhinah”, a dwelling of Holy Fire, in and between people in their encounter with the Divine.

After the Temple was destroyed, Rabbis listed ways that the Shekhinah could be experienced:

“While a person (or people) study Torah,”

"Whenever ten are gathered for prayer, there the Shekhinah rests."

"When three sit as judges, the Shekhinah is with them."

Cases of personal need: "The Shekhinah dwells over the headside of the sick man's bed", "Wheresoever they were exiled, the Shekhinah went with them."

A man and woman -” if they merit, the Shekhinah is between them. If not, fire consumes them."According to one interpretation of this source, the Shekhinah is the highest of six types of holy fire. When a married couple is worthy of this manifestation, all other types of fire are consumed by it.”

In the Exodus passage, Moses enters into a “Devouring fire” and later the story will be told that Moses had to wear a “Veil” over his face because he had been transformed by the fiery encounter with God. Earlier in Exodus, Earlier in his calling, Moses has the encounter with the fire that does not consume; the Burning Bush.

The Gospel story continues the image of a transfiguring. What should have been a moment of reverence, Peter undermines when he proposes making a quick buck of fame and fortune by creating a tourist attraction. The proposal was immediately rejected by the voice from the cloud of light telling Peter to just shut up and listen to the silence. Interestingly enough, the Church that Peter was supposed to have founded, was just like Peter and they built churches on top of Mount Tabor, which I have visited, the supposed site where Peter was told to shut up and listen.

This is the last week of Epiphany, the season of the light in the darkness of winter. Some years ago, this church was gracious in allowing Pat and I to take a sabbatical by going in Epiphany season to France to study how artists throughout the years in the South of France dealt with light. Almost every time our initial response to the work of each artist was reverent silence. Dali, Picasso, Braque, Van Gogh, Gaugain, Matisse, Cezanne, Chagall, Cocteau, Toulouse Lautrec, Monet and Renoir kept going back to create in silence an epiphany of vision, and we responded in awe and silence. Later on, almost every day, since there were an bunch of ordained types taking a sabbatical together, we would gather to do an act of worship of prayer or Holy Communion, where we would put our experience in the context of worship. Later on, over dinner we would marvel at the food and then we would share our experiences in the light of creation.

There is a Hillside in Provence that Cezanne painted over and over again, because he kept seeing it in different lights and seasons. The more he looked in reverence, the more depth he saw.

This is the last Sunday of Epiphany and Lent begins on Wednesday; I suggest to you that maybe you take this Lenten Journey by getting up early each day and catch the early morning light and enter into prayer of awe in silence.

If you get a chance. take a moment of awe filled silence at Sunset.

Theoretical Physicist, Brian Greene, who has no use for religious doctrine, observed “I have long thought that anyone who does not regularly gaze up and see the wonder and glory of a dark night sky filled with countless stars loses a sense of their fundamental connectedness to the universe."

Here on the Outer Banks, if you get a chance, walk in your neighborhood and beyond, delight in how the light glimmers through the trees on the sound side, or on the waves on the ocean side, or in your neighbor's face wherever they may be met.

Be in reverence with the person you live with or your neighbor, for the light and fire can dwell with them. Remember the fire of God's love, the Shekhinah, can consume the fires of resentment, the fires of envy, and the fires of hatred; if you allow it to do so.

If you look deep enough in the light, it may be that you might hear God say in your heart: “You are my Child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased; listen to the light!”

Walking In Firelight

That Fire shines on them walking,

and talking or smiling or crying,

as I'm seeing them when I'm trying

to listen when God's to me talking.

The Holy is constantly urging me

to pay attention and to put aside

all the excuses I've used as guide;

to see them as they're created to be.

Although, I am not all glad to hear it,

the truth is that God's light's shining,

on them, out of their limits climbing

as containers of the one living Spirit.

I need to set all my reservations free

to see 'em as Saints they're free to be.

Blessed Are You Who Leave The Past Behind

 

A Poem and Reflection 4^th Sunday of Epiphany                      St. Thomas Episcopal, Ahoskie, NC

January 29, 2023                                                                       Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant

Micah 6:1-8      1 Corinthians 1:18-31      Matthew 5:1-12        Psalm 15

                                      Blessed Are You Who Leave Past Behind

In 1994, in the 8^th year I had been serving as Rector of a Church in Virginia, I took a Sabbatical. One part of it was to Study of St. George's College in Jerusalem on “The Palestine of Jesus”. One day the class went from Jerusalem down to the Galilee. We spent the better part of one day on the Mount of the Beatitudes, the place where Matthew places Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount to the crowd that follows them there. It is a grassy hill, a perfect place for a picnic, where you sit down with a picnic basket, getting comfortable where you can look out and see the Beautiful Sea of Galilee and listen to an inspiriting talk, beginning with a poem that starts off with the same word, μακάριος, Makarios, a word meaning blessed, happy, enviable, fortunate; it is a gift. Many scholars suggest that what the writer of Matthew does is to paste together sayings of Jesus, into a poetic structure, to make it easy to memorize the core of the Good News of Jesus. But when I was on that Mount, I put that idea of that analytic part of the brain away and I went to my imagination and I lived into a vision of the crowds who were so intent to hear Good News they followed that wandering Holy man in search of hearing hope. Because Hearing Hope is why I was on a Sabbatical to begin with.

I was in recovery from a building project for the church. The good news was the church had been growing and we needed more room, The bad news was that I did not believe the kind of battles needed to be fought over things that didn't make a lick of sense. We had one meeting dissolve into tears on the debate on the colors of the paints on the walls in the rooms in the new addition over if it would be “off white” or “eggshell” of “Ivory”. Churches pick the silliest things to prove who is in control, or who is the most important, how long they had been members, who had the most children. You name it; churches waste time fighting about it, and it usually has nothing to do with the Gospel.

What was was going on with the writer of Matthew that he entered into the mind of this crowd of people following Jesus? Maybe he had been there years before, in a crowd of people searching for hope, a renewal of faith. Maybe Jesus had said to him that following Jesus is not about following a bunch of religious strictures but a need to change oneself. Maybe Jesus suggested to Matthew, thirty years before Matthew wrote his book, that he needed to enter into emptiness, empty out his own ego and allow his soul to be filled with hope. Maybe Jesus asked Matthew to look at each of what he perceived as weaknesses and find in them the core of strength. Most of the people Jesus is taking to are people who have spent a lot of time losing to corrupt governments, to distrusted grasping religious institutions and contempt by foreign Roman occupying powers. They are looking for a new future

The Beatitudes are placed by Matthew to say good bye to the past and start over in this setting where we can feel the good earth of God's creation. Derek Walcott, a Caribbean, West Indian, Poet, said in his 1992 Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "For every poet it is always morning in the world. History a forgotten, insomniac night; History and elemental awe are always our early beginning, because the fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world, in spite of History."

What Matthew, the poet, is urging those who follow the Risen Christ is to forget about the past, the heritage that they loved and put their energy into the present with the Risen Lord, falling in love with the world so changed by the Christ event. This is my translation of of the Beatitudes: follow along with me

    I learned to mean that when all my energy is exhausted, there is a power greater than myself to get me through.

    If I mourn, it means I loved and that love is where I will find strength- (the word com -fort means “with strength” instead of “soft and easy”.)

    If I give up trying to push people around, my new world is open to a deeper hope and strength within myself.

    If I long for justice I will find it by dealing justly.

    Being merciful is a Habit of letting go of the faults of others cluttering my life.

    Being pure of heart, means I are not wasting my precious time with hate, resentment and finding ways to hurt others.

    For us humans, Peace is what we share with each other and seeing the Good and the God. even in our enemies.

    In the middle of the Hate from others, I find strength knowing I am surrounded by the love of those who have gone before.

    I am in good company and I can be reunited with my better self, the one I abandon when I enter into trying to be stronger, richer and meaner than my neighbor.

Again we call on Derek Walcott who wrote about being reunited with your better self. I came across this poem last week and it haunts me. I already used it once when I did a reflection on the Conversion of St. Paul on Wednesday filling in on a midweek service for a Priest whose wife was going through surgery. He was exactly where he needed to be, and so was I.

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Memorizing the Beatitudes was one of the requirements for being confirmed in St. Mark's Episcopal in Chenango Bridge, New York when Bishop Peabody of the Diocese of Central New York was to visit on March 15, 1959. When I was 13, I memorized the Beatitudes, but I was sure that “Blessed” meant being a martyr. Sure you get a reward after you are dead, but heck who wanted to cry, be sad, weak, hungry and thirsty, merciful instead of getting revenge, pure in heart when fun was so easily available, peacemakers when it was always better to win, being persecuted when all you wanted to do was get along, who wanted to wait until I was dead?. Sure I memorized it, got confirmed and I got my own personal Prayer Book to prove it, but I was not all that sure it was any big blessing.

As the years passed and I gradually learned that my ego was not the center of the Universe, I would begin with the verse from the 121^st Psalm:” I will lift up my eyes to the Hills; from whence cometh my salvation./ My help cometh from the LORD, which made Heaven and Earth.” In my mind, I would move myself back to that small hill, the Mount of the Beatitudes and I would say the blessings over and over again. As I got older, to when my memory wasn't as sharp when I had one more damn thing to do cluttering up my mind and soul, I would open the New Testament and re-read the beautiful poetic words from Matthew or Luke and then I would translate them into what my soul needed to hear.

If you want a much shorter version to memorize, the answer is in the Hebrew Testament Lesson for today from the prophet Micah, “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?”

What does your soul need to hear?

Blessed Are You Who Leave Past Behind

In a room where you're no longer there,

I say, “I'm sorry for what I did not do,

all those years ago, which I now rue.

But let's fall often into love again, here,”

Let's leave history behind, starting again

to find what will really matters this time

without letting our warning bells chime,

we can unleash forgiving spirits to reign.

We can't fix the people, places and things

of our past, that we should have done then,

so now's time we'll say together “A-men”

to anti-prayers. Set 'em free without strings.

When agree to do that, we return to a Mount,

learning about a folly of keeping an account.

Paul's Morning In the World

 Reflection for the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul    St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Nags Head, NC   Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant                                 January 25, 2023   

Paul's Morning In the World

Today is the Feast of the Conversion of St.Paul. This is the day that the Church, one month of the year after it honors the physical birth of Jesus, it honors the Spiritual Birth of Paul. It is also an important day for me as well, since it is the 38^th anniversary of my Ordination to the Priesthood in Blacksburg, Virginia. I was 38 years old at the time and I look at it now as the day in the middle of my life I found myself, the who I was supposed to be.

Paul, like Jesus, is physically born as a good Jew, there was a difference is that Jesus is born to create a new History, while Paul is born as a prisoner of his history. Paul was born and raised a Pharisee, a word that means “one set apart”. During the centuries of Hellenization, the influence of the Greek thought and culture spread after the conquest by Alexander the Great and after he died his empire was divided into three parts by his generals: Cassander took Greece, Ptolemy in Egypt and Seleucus in Babylon stretching from the Aegean Sea to Afghanistan. Both the Ptolemy line and the Seleucus line fought over control of Israel. Finally the Romans conquered them all. During all that time there were people who said, “No, we will not allow those other people to dictate to us what we will eat, wear, or think. We will hold on to being a separate people before a separate God. These were the Pharisees, Paul was proud to be a Pharisee. It was his history and he embraced it with a patriotic zeal tracking down enemies in the Jewish community who would alter that separate, “Holy” identity. He was a prisoner of his history. His meeting with the Risen Lord on the road to Damascus, is the collapsing of his History into a new way of living

Derek Walcott, a Caribbean, West Indian, Poet, said in his 1992 Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "For every poet it is always morning in the world. History a forgotten, insomniac night; History and elemental awe are always our early beginning, because the fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world, in spite of History."

Paul, enters into poetry, if you have any doubt read again Paul poem to Love in 1^st Corinthians 13, falls in love with all the world, in spite of History. He leaves behind being a follower of defensive fear to become a proponent of love through the Christ of the present and future. He is born into a whole new way of seeing the world and in seeing himself, finding out who he really is. Again we return to Derek Walcott:

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Living In The Dawning Light

 

Poem and Reflection for 3^rd Sunday of Epiphany          St Mary's Episcopal Church, Gatesville, NC

January 22, 2023                                                              Thomas E. Wilson, Guest Celebrant

Isaiah 9:1-4     1 Corinthians 1:10-18        Matthew 4:12-23            Psalm 27:1, 5-13

Living In The Dawning Light

From the Gospel lesson for today from Matthew: Jesus proclaims: “The people who sat in darkness
have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”

From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of the heavens has come near.” The Kingdom of the Heavens is not a place of geography but a circumlocution of saying the full presence of God, which is as near as the breath we breathe.

Repent is the English Word got the Greek “Metanoia”. It is not paranoia which the Greek word for Para = distracted and noia = mind means having a distracted mind where you think that you are the center of the universe. Meta = changing and noia = mind. Metanoia, where one comes to ones's senses and changes direction. Metanoia, repent does not mean, “Feel Bad about...”, “Feel guilty about...” It just means “change your mind, and try another direction, Jesus is saying, do you understand that, you need to change your mind, your direction, because you are standing on Holy Ground. God is right here in front of you, when you are all alone or in the middle when two or three are gathered together. God is in the very breath you take. God surrounds every thought you have. God does not make an appointment only for Sunday mornings. Pay attention!!!!”

I hear that call to repent especially when I get into the car in order to drive to do a service at a church. I become more aware that I am a cleric. Being clerical comes from the Latin word for being a clerk, one who spends time talking care of office work. So, the first thought that says to me is that I need everything organized, an almost paranoid thought that everything depends on me. I need to make sure people understand creeds, dogmas, doctrines and the many ways to use the Book of Common Prayer. But I am more that a clerk; I am also a Pastor, Priest and Prophet. But the problem is all that is work related - things that I do; jobs as well as a vocational calling.

But beyond all the work stuff; I am also a person made in the image of God. I am a human being , not a human doing. I like the image put forward by Urban T Holmes III in Spirituality for Ministry: "Our goal is the Kingdom, the completion of God’s creative vision, and we are God’s hands in bringing that vision to pass.” Our lives are as God's hands in this broken world.

When Jesus in Metanoia calls his disciples together and suggests that they will be fishers of people. It did not mean that they should try to hook people to join a congregation and give money for the perpetuation of religious edifices, but that they were to catch and share the vision of the incoming of God's Kingdom in every bit of their daily lives. As George Herbert, a Country Parson and Poet in early 17^th Century England:

Teach me, my God and King,
In all things Thee to see,
And what I do in anything
To do it as for Thee.

“In all things Thee to see,” When I greet someone in the morning, the God of the Kingdom of the Heavens in my imagination is greeting the God of the Kingdom of the Heavens dwelling in the other person. There is a Sanskrit blessing word namasté. which is literally translated as “I bow to you”. Is is exchanged when people meet, and understand the true nature of reality. The closest we Episcopalians come to it is when we exchange the “Peace” in the Eucharist. It does not mean, “I think you are cute.” or “I am putting up with you for this service.” or “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Lets get on with the service, before the casserole in my home's oven gets burned, or the game begins.” Peace means that you and I are on Holy Ground together, near and in the Kingdom of the Heavens on this earth.

When we go to a funeral we do two things; 1) We are sad because we miss them sharing the Kingdom of the Heavens with us on this earth, and 2) We are glad because nothing separates them from living fully into the Kingdom of the Heavens. They no longer get distracted, no longer afflicted with a distracted mind.

When I wake up in the morning, do I remember that it is God's gift of a new morning in God's Kingdom and start off with a prayer of thanks? When I go into a store to pay for something and I greet the cashier, while I may say, “Good morning”, am I saying the formula greeting of one more damn thing to say to be polite, or actually am I acknowledging the it is God's morning we are sharing? When I say “Goodbye” am I remembering that the word is a collapsing of the old Blessing “God Be with Ye”, as the French say “adieu” or Spanish speakers say “adios”?

True faith is not about the words we say in church, but rather how we live into each precious moment we are given in this the Kingdom of the Heavens, right here and right now. It is a movement from a paranoid delusion that we are the center if the universe, to a metanoid awareness that we have the Kingdom of the Heavens at hand as a gift.

Living In the dawning light

Getting in the car, going to work

driving into the once darken west

to talk about light bringing a best,

but fearing a cleric is just a clerk.

But now reminded, call to be more;

as Pastor, Priest, Prophet; a Parson,

helping others make a conversion

to see a world as neighbors to adore.

We waste too much time on old creeds

or dogma, pointing out other's flaws,

getting all hung up on our holy laws;

leaving the path to wander in weeds.

Time to turn around and think anew,

for us to live into a faith that's true.

Even Disappointments Have Hope!

2^nd Sunday of Epiphany                           St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Ahoskie, NC

January 15, 2023                                       Thomas E Wilson- Guest Celebrant

Isaiah 49:1-7                 1 Corinthians 1:1-9                  John 1:29-42              Psalm 40:1-12

Even Disappointments Have Hope!

Last week, I was reading a New York Times Book Review by Carlos Lozada of a collection of articles in a book called Myth America :Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past,” edited by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer, historians at Princeton. The topic is an exploration of the idea of American Exceptionalism. Every nation has a myth of exceptionalism, its fundamental ideals, on how they, or we, are different that any other nation. The book's thesis is posed that many people are questioning the fundamental truths about our nation's history; its myths, legends or lies

Legends are made-up stories promoting an agenda, by the use of historical or semi-historical characters. George Washington cutting down a cherry tree and telling the truth to his father is a legend, originally made up by Parson Weems in his The Life of George Washington published in 1800, the year after Washington died, to promote truth telling by elected officials and heroes. It is meant to share truthful hope in a story without any verifiable historical facts. The Bible contains many legends about heroes which were written centuries after they were dead. Many of them not supported by archeological evidence.

Myths are stories, based on pre-conscious memories, enlightenment or speculation, passed on from generation to generation, projecting far back in time, which try to explain reasons why and how we began to do certain things in the world around us. They are stories meant to tell a deeper truth, but have no facts. Much of the Bible is told in myths which explain the beginnings of behavior; for instance the Creation and Fall mythic structures.

Lies are stories and falsehoods told to gain an advantage by the liars, or for the grifter's personal, financial or political agendas. I don't need to waste time pointing out examples of out and out lying. Our daily Newspapers and the Bible spill a lot ink telling stories of liars who lie habitually.

Lozada in his review, titled “ I Looked Behind the Curtain of American History, and This Is What I Found, ran the quote

In American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony,” published in 1981, the political scientist Samuel Huntington distills the tension in his final lines: “Critics say that America is a lie because its reality falls so short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie; it is a disappointment. But it can be a disappointment only because it is also a hope.”

The Bible Stories we look at in today's lectionary are about people who find hope even in disappointment.

The first reading is from the Book of Isaiah. Some scholars theorize that the Book of Isaiah has at least three different writers from the school of Isaiah. The first was the prophet who was called to be a Prophet in the Year King Uzziah died which is either 750 or 742 BC. The Isaiah of Jerusalem is in the middle of his disappointment that Uzziah dies but then he hears the Voice call: “Whom shall I send?” In the middle of his disappointment, Isaiah answers in that hope: “Behold, here am I!” He did his ministry then and there, working during the time of King Hezikiah where the high point of the reign was the ability of Jerusalem to withstand the siege by the Assyrian Empire under Senacarib in 701 BC. The writer of that period finds disappointment in the damage done to the Kingdom but hope in the ability to hold on.

Then, there is the a series of writings 120+ years later which take place after the Babylonians conquered the Assyrians and then conquer Jerusalem, taking many Jewish people into exile in 582 BC. The writer of 2^nd Isaiah writes of hope and comfort to those in the Babylonian exile. The Isaiah of the Exile writes of holding on to hope in the middle of the strange land; disappointment but still holding on to hope.

The writer of 3^rd Isaiah writes 40 years later when the Medes and the Persians overthrow the Babylonian Empire and allow the exiles to return to the ravaged Jerusalem . The writer speaks of the disappointment by the returning exile in seeing the neglect and ruined damage to the city. This Isaiah speaks of the power greater than themselves which will be with them in the context of the new hope to rebuild.

The Psalmist for the Psalm for today, begins his song of disappointment followed by hope::

1 I waited patiently upon the Lord; *
he stooped to me and heard my cry.

2 He lifted me out of the desolate pit, out of the mire and clay; *
he set my feet upon a high cliff and made my footing sure.

Paul, the writer of the letter to the Corinthians, was disappointed often in the church in Corinth but he writes not just about the disappointment but much more of the hope in putting trust in the Holy Spirit to remain united to God's spirit in the Risen Christ.

Jesus, baptized in the Gospel lesson, hears that “he is the beloved Child”; a phrase he held onto in the years of disappointments. He will meet Peter, the one who Jesus gave the name of “Cephas”. or “Peter” in the Greek, meaning “rock”. Well, Peter is one disappointment after the other, falling far short of Jesus hopes for him. And yet, this broken person is the one Jesus wants to lead the church; even disappointments have hope.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, who we remember this weekend, faced one disappointment after another. In his April 16^th 1963 letter from the Birmingham Jail: King lamented his disappointment in the white church, "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.” Yet, in the five years left in his life, he never lost hope.

King came from an African American understanding of Christianity found in the study of the Bible where they found hope beyond the disappointments. The author of The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible, Allen Dwight Callahan, suggests

African slaves and their descendants discerned something in the Bible that was neither at the center of their ancestral cultures nor in evidence in their hostile American home, a warrant for justice in this world. They found woven in the texts of the Bible a crimson thread of divine justice antithetical to the injustices they had come to know all too well.

I think of my parents, Bill and Marian Wilson, who started off their marriage by him going off to war- disappointment leavened by hope. That hope got them through the war and then, they had to deal after the war with four children they loved and had dreams for. It is one thing to dream about babies but there is the sobering, draining experience of dealing with babies 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I was one of those four and I was one who found so many ways to give disappointment but they never lost hope for me. Their parents did the same with them. We four children had children of our own. If I try hard enough, I can remember times when my bright and beautiful daughter disappointed me. But I have no problem at all remembering my love and hope for her which still continues.

I think of my ordained ministry of almost 40 years and the number of times I disappointed my parishioners, but they paid the cost of forgiving while I held on to the hope they continued to hold that God would redeem all things. There have been times when I would temporarily be disappointed in each of the churches I served, but the hope continued.

German Poet Heinrich Heine in 1856, after spending 8 years sick and bed bound, having so many reasons to be disappointed in God's running of the universe, said on his deathbed, holding on to hope when he joked, “God will forgive me. It's his job." He trusted God, the giver of hope, to do the divine love.

This is his trusting poem he wrote thinking about his death: (translated by Ruth Duffin)

Where?

Where shall I, of wandering weary,
Find my resting-place at last?
Under drooping southern palm-trees?
Under limes the Rhine sweeps past?

Will it be in deserts lonely,
Dug by unfamiliar hands?
Shall I slumber where the ocean
Crawls along the yellow sands?

It matters not! Around me ever
There as here God's heaven lies,
And by night, as death-lamps o'er me,
Lo, His stars sweep through the skies!

Even Disappointments Don't Lose Hope!

Bill and Marian had so much hope

for those, the children born to them,

living into different world to come,

than one in which they had to cope.

As their own parents at their birth,

they had to learn that hope isn't lost:

hope only adjusts in paying that cost

of forgiving, to find real true worth.

If they hadn't risked to grow a love,

that entered beyond disappointment,

timely applying the healing ointment,

with gentleness of descending dove.

“You are our beloved children!”, said

often, so many times in the days ahead.

Holy Names

 

A Reflection/Poem for Feast of the Holy Name               All Saints Church, Southern Shores, NC

Thomas E Wilson, Guest Preacher                                    January 1, 2023

    Numbers 6:22-27         Philippians 2:5-11         Luke 2:15-21         Psalm 8

Holy Names

When I was a student at UNC Chapel Hill, they taught me so many things. One of those important lessons was a fight song for cheering on the Carolina Athletics teams: “I'm a Tar Heel born/I'm a Tar Heel bred/ and when I die, I'm a Tar Heel dead!/ So it Rah, Rah Carolina- lina/ Rah Rah Carolina/ Rah Rah Rah!

Actually, despite what I sang at the time, technically I was not born in North Carolina, but my parents had met and fell in love at Chapel Hill, so “I am a Tar Heel born” in proxy, but there was never a doubt in their mind that I would go to UNC. I was bred at Carolina by: learning how to sneer at other school's athletic prowess, learning semi- pornographic chants about Duke and absorbing worshipful biographies of some of the historic racist governors and Confederate warriors whose names decorated buildings on Campus. But at the same time I was challenged to look deeper, past the propaganda and to work for a new future where I could take the best of Carolina into a new life, until that time, closer than I ever imagined then, that I would be a “TarHeel dead”. As David Brooks in his this Thursday's New York Times Opinion Column reminds us; “As the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre once observed, you can’t know what to do unless you know what story you are a part of.”

It is like any relationship; first there is the attraction, then there is the acceptance on the limits and then you grow. It is what Jesus does in being a Jew. He was born and raised by a couple of devout Jews. On the 8^th day, which we celebrate today, he was given the name Jesus, a Greek translation of the Hebrew “Yeshua”, meaning “God saves”, a reminder that there are limits to any merely human endeavor, without the power of one greater than ourselves. When he was circumcised, his blood was shed for his Jewish heritage. He was raised with daily Jewish prayers. He was taught the Hebrew Scriptures in his synagogue and community; maybe a Yeshiva. He probably had said over him daily the Aaronic blessing in today Hebrew Testament lesson

God bless you and keep you,
God smile on you and gift you,
God look you full in the face
    and make you prosper. ( Eugene Peterson, The Message Translation}

Jesus felt God looking at him full in the face and deep into his heart. He learned the Jewish tradition to love the neighbor and to care for the poor. In a hope in life in, and with, God; he drew the outlines of his ministry from the paths of the Jewish Prophets. In the end, he continued by giving his blood by dying underneath a sign sarcastically proclaiming he was the “King” of the Jews. He was, as the old song could have gone,”born, bred and dead a Jew”. He knew what story he was part of.

There is an interesting story in the papers about a recently elected House of Representatives member, who, it was found, lied about his educational experience, employment career, and about his religion. When the lies were uncovered, he tried to say that while he was really raised a Roman Catholic; he was, an interesting word, “Jew-ish”. I know it sounds a little like my Proxy explanation about technically not being born in North Carolina. Maybe I could find solace in being “TarHeel-ish. In popular culture, with its latent and sometimes blatant antisemitism, almost all of the pictures of, and movies about, Jesus show him as a Northern European, One of the faults of Christian thought is that many of the Conservative wings, think of Jesus not as a Jew but “Jew-ish”. As was stated before Jesus was “born, bred and dead a Jew.”

Jesus took his Jewish heritage seriously, but is was more than going to “worship services”. Frederick Buechner wrote: “Phrases like 'worship service' and 'service of worship' are tautologies. To worship God means to serve God.'” Jesus , Mary and Joseph saw life as serving God and not just as attending religious services.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a 20^th Century Protestant Theologian warned us about what “serving God” means;

We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God’s coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God’s coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.

The apostle Paul, a 1^st Century fellow Jew, wrote in today's Epistle lesson to the church in Philippi, about what Jesus did and how we are called to daily follow;

“Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn’t claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion. ( Eugene Peterson, The Message Translation.]

Yet, in the mist of “selfless obedient” life, there was a trust that all things could be redeemed. While he was “a man of sorrows', to use Isaiah's phrase, there was also a joy in life. With the number of jokes he told in the parables, there has to be, to use a phrase I read in a new mystery book I was reading on the day after Christmas about a detective, “ a man whose deepest creases in his face came from laughter.”

Jesus the Jew goes deeper into his faith. Too often “going deeper” is an academic term to go narrower and become an expert in minutiae. I remember taking Greek classes in Seminary in order to find the right definition to particular words. But the deeper I got, the more I discovered that there were multiple definitions based on the context; the words became bigger, wider. I came to appreciate that the “WORD” was not a technical science of facts which limits imagination; but a complex poem of love to be shared. In the same way, for Jesus the Jew, it meant going wider and expanding the message of reconciliation with enemies, with strangers, with sinners, with outcasts. The Kingdom of God no longer had rigid boundaries. I, and most of you, are gentile followers of Jesus the Jew, who loved enough to love even us more than we can imagine.

As we begin this new year of 2023, let us please ask ourselves, how we can expand the boundaries of our faith. Let us know more fully what story we are part of. Let our New Year take on New Life in which we can enter further into a selfless, obedient life until we then die a selfless, obedient death.

Holy Names

Singing Tar Heel, born, bred and dead,

was once a way I hoped to define me.

Giving a way to fit in for others to see,

if they could be fooled by words I said.

Jesus had a bunch of names to him given,

living into them, trusting where it'd take

him in a mission to do a creation remake:

earth to no longer separated from heaven!

His mission led him deeper than just walking,

but something else was going on in his head,

in his path as good Jew, born, bred, and dead

meant shedding his life blood as his talking.

His life was his Word.

Oh pray it's daily heard!

.

CENTURIES LATE, SHEPHERDS VISITING A MANGER

 

A Poem/ Reflection For Christmas Day       All Saints Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, NC

December 25, 2022                                                           Thomas E Wilson, Guest Preacher

Isaiah 52:7-10 Psalm 98 Hebrews 1:1-12 John 1:1-14

                                              Centuries Late, Shepherds Visiting A Manger

In the prologue to John's Gospel, the writer from the Johannine community proposes that many people saw Jesus but did not understand him or receive his message. Later he will suggest that we need the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Guide of the Holy Spirit to open our eyes. We can see things with our eyes, but it takes the Spiritual guide to help open our minds and hearts

Popular Historian David McCullough, who died this year, came several times to the Outer Banks while researching his book on the Wright Brothers. He said that History is more than reading the official records. He spoke of the need to read the thoughts of the people in their letter and diaries. He spoke about the need to visit the places where history was made; to be exposed to the culture and feel of a place. That had been the subject of his previous book The Greater Journey: Americans In Paris, about the generations of Americans in the 19^th Century who had traveled to Europe and different places as a way of deepening their understanding of the how their culture had been shaped and as a renewal of their art and appreciation of life.

There was a slowdown in the traffic during the Civil War due to increased danger and the awareness that both France and England seemed to favor the Confederate Cause. But after the war with the resulting post-war economic prosperity in the North many flocked to be alive again.

One of those people was Phillips Brooks, at that time the young Rector of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. He had spent the war working with families who had suffered losses, including his own younger brother. Beyond his Parish, he lobbied hard for the Abolition of Slaves. He also worked hard in ministering to the needs of the soldiers of the Black Union Troops stationed outside Philadelphia. After the War, after the assassination of Lincoln, after the War ended in 1865 he sought a break and took a Sabbatical to Europe and the Holy Land. He visited the Little Town of Bethlehem on Christmas Eve and wrote to the children of his Parish about the experience. Three years later in 1868, he wrote a poem for his Sunday School class reflecting on that experience. The organist of the Church took the poem and set it to music and it was sung at the Christmas Eve service and we sang it today.

More than a century later, I took a my first Sabbatical leave from my parish in Lynchburg. The church had grown significantly and had dealt with my divorce and later remarriage. We had a building program doubling the size of the plant, which I swore I would never do another. My daughter had gone off to college and graduated and living far away. My older brother had died. I was exhausted. The sabbatical was planned with a week in Paris, a month in Jerusalem, studying at St. George's College in East Jerusalem on the “Palestine of Jesus”. We studied the historical and archeological sites, the different religious expressions of Islam, Judaism, and Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Anglican Christianity. We visited Palestinian Arab families in refugee slums and visited fully armed Zionist Settler Compounds on the West Bank. Walked the desolate Jericho road of the Good Samaritan and so much more. Then Pat and I spent 10 days traveling in Egypt before heading back home loaded with gifts, books, notebooks and souvenirs. After a year of watching my parishioners roll their eyes during the sermons when I would say, “Back in my Sabbatical . . .” I accepted a call from a Church in Georgia where I could bore them about how much I though I knew.

One day our class took the Bus from St. George's College  to Bethlehem. Going down the Hill, the darkness turned to light as the neon light fired from the Il Bambino Gift Shop, a couple blocks away from Manger Square. - filled to the rim with religious toys, aids  and junk made out of olive wood - souvenirs for the pilgrims to take back home to their churches, offices, dens  living rooms or closets all over the world.

The Bus parked and we walked to Manger Square. There is a compound of Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic and Roman Catholic Monasteries; three of the Branches of Christianity in charge of the churches and Holy sites. They squabble all the time just like they do at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre complex in Jerusalem, about who is responsible for what repairs and the cleaning of what parts of the buildings, about who is in charge of what percentage of collections etc. Underneath the Basilica of the Nativity, which has had hundreds of additions and improvements since the time of Constantine in the 4^th Century, is a grotto where, it is claimed, the place where the manger was is an old cave which might have been the stable for animals. The Holy Site is full of layers of Byzantine, Crusader,  Counter-Reformation and 19^th Century decoration, which I thought was tarting up the place so it looked like a religious brothel. There is a small opening in the floor surrounded by what seems like scores of hanging lanterns with a star surrounding the hole. This is place where Mary is supposed to have laid the Baby Jesus.

So I am here, on this proclaimed “Holy Place”, but I was in no mood to be religious. Thinking “I am here in a religious entertainment Disneyland for the pious.” I start saying prayers for my cynicism to be healed. Then, God opened the door and I stopped formula prayers when I saw a Palestinian Arab father with his very young son, probably 4 or 5 years old, kneeling by the star, placing their hands into the hole. Then the father places his hands over his son's hands to form a gesture of prayer. He then was teaching his son the words to say at such an occasion; teaching his small son how to pray. All I could think of was Joseph, as I was being whisked back centuries in my imagination, teaching his son Jesus how to approach the Holy. I saw with new eyes the centuries of love and devotion poured out in this place. This was a gift of the Spirit of God to open my eyes to see the holy, the Word made flesh, all around and in me.

In that moment I though of Brooks' poem and our Hymn, “O Little Town Of Bethlehem”

How silently, how silently,
The wondrous Gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still,
The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin and enter in,
Be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell:
Oh, come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Immanuel!

I understood that Jesus is constantly being born and adored by those who approach with an open heart, calling to “come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Immanuel.”

“He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of humans, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.”

Centuries Late, Shepherds Visiting A Manger

Coming from Jerusalem, down the final hill,

to come to worship at the site of the Manger;

Il Bambino Gift Shop lights way for stranger

as place for souvenir buyers to get their fill.

All those baubles made by so devout countless

from all over the world, for very special price,

helping make it easier to ask heavenly advice

when, as so often, the mysteries confound us.

The Holy Site's a hole in the undercroft floor,

all covered with centuries of pious decoration;

holiest is Arab father teaching a son adoration,

kneeling, shaping hands, to do the holy chore,

of whispering ancient words, to the One Holy,

continuing, sharing Sprit in life with us lowly.