Beginnings of Birth Pangs

 

A Reflection for the 26^th Sunday after Pentecost                          Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant

St. Luke/St.Anne's Roper and Grace, Plymouth                            November 17, 2024

1 Samuel 1:4-20        1 Samuel 2:1-10       Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25           Mark 13:1-8

Beginnings of Birth Pangs

As I was looking through the lessons for today, I saw a theme of people living lives that they wanted to change, and yet and the same time feared, to change. What was seen with fear and loss of hope was transformed to be the beginnings of the birth pangs for something beyond imagination.

In the Hebrew Testament Lesson from Samuel, Elkanah was a Levite, a tribe that was given responsibility of being intercessors for God's people to God. Elkanah, makes a yearly pilgrimage to the shrine of Shiloh, with his two wives. His first wife, Peninnah, has given birth to children. But his favorite wife is Hannah, who has no children. On that pilgrimage, he sees her acting strangely and thinks she is under the influence of spirits of alcohol. However, she is under the influence of God's spirit in prayer with God, asking for a change in her life, to bring forth a child. God grants her that prayer and she gives birth to Samuel, the name could be something like “Borrowed from EL” El is the Hebrew word for God.. Thus the story continues that Hannah will wean Samuel, a gift from God, and then she will not give, but lend, Samuel, to God through the Priest Eli, who will raise up the child. Hannah will live with her husband and have three sons and two daughters and every year she and her family would come on pilgrimage to see her son whom she had loaned to God. For Hannah, what was seen as a lack of hope, turned into the beginnings of the birth pangs to a new life for her and the people of Israel.

Her son Samuel, the one borrowed from God, will be one who will preside over the birth pangs of a new Nation of Israel with Saul and later David as King.

Hannah sings the song,The Song of Hannah, a song where she gives thanks for the reversal of her life, from barren to full of blessings. The song will be an influence to the Virgin Mary who sings her Prayer, The Magnificat, whose life has changed from being a a woman who might be under the shame of being an unwed mother to being the Blessed Mother of Jesus. Biblical Scholar, Walter Brueggemann, suggests that the Song of Hannah paves the way for a major theme of the book of Samuel, the "power and willingness of Yahweh to intrude, intervene and invert." To change life from what seems like a failure and allow it to be transformed into a life of joy; a life following what became birth pangs of a new life..

Before I went to seminary, one of the things I used to do was to work with people who had been addicted to substances and they came to a decision that they could no longer live as an addict. They knew what the past looked like, but now they had to leave that behind and enter into a new way of living. My job was to help them see that they were not alone in facing a new unknown. They came to realize that sheer will power was not enough, and they would need a power greater than themselves to make it into wholeness. Almost every thing in their lives is going to change. If they have a job; the eight hour job tasks may remain the same, but the spaces between each moment of those eight hours needs to be seen in a new light in how they deal with those hours, which can now be filled - rather than killed. Their lives begin to have meaning. They will go through new birth pangs; bringing forth a new life in place of the old.

The writer of the Book of Hebrews echos this promise of strength given to people in difficulty, and reminds them that the waiting for the return of Jesus, will need to be seen as living into daily birth pangs into a deeper faith.

“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching. “

In the Gospel story, Jesus and disciples are wandering through the magnificent Temple of Solomon which had rebuilt and then expanded and all dolled up by the Tyrant Herod the Great, the King who wanted to kill the child the Wise Men sought to worship. The disciples are really impressed. The death of Jesus in 33AD, put to death by the Romans, will be the beginning of the end for the Temple which is destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, 27 years later. But Jesus sees into the future where that splendid temple will be turned into rubble, but that failure will be the new birth pangs beginning of leading into the new life of following the Risen Lord.

“When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

In my life, I went off to college and majored in Drama so I would be a professional actor. I loved the idea of immersing myself in the lives of characters which were parts of my own psyche. Then a couple years into my four years as an undergraduate, that dream became uninviting as I saw a need in people's lives. So, instead of heading off to New York to be a legendary actor, I graduated and got married and later we had a child, the birth pangs of being a parent. I think of that often when I realize that we do not own our children, we are only loaned them, to bring them up and pray for the best.

My mission in my working life was in the birth pangs of a life of helping others, I started working as a counselor with school drop outs, then a therapist with people, then a college professor teaching people how to work with people, then I went to seminary to help people find the strength if God's love in their lives within a Parish of faith. Now I am retired and when my wife died, I thought that it was the end of my life. It was. I mourned and then asked for signs how my life might find meaning. Looking for the new Birth pangs.

Next month, I will turn 78 years old and I still don't know what I am going to do when I grow up! I am still in the waiting for the birth pangs; of the next part of my life. I don't know what these birth pangs will look, or feel like. But, every day I end my prayers with two special prayers. The first is using the words of St. Francis, found in the back of our Prayer Book:

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we
are born to eternal life. Amen.

Then I use my loose translation of Henri-Frédéric Amiel, a Swiss 19^th Century Moral Philosopher, Teacher, and Poet, to show me a way I can help live into my faith.

“Life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. So be swift to love and make haste to be kind.

Today, this Sunday can be just the same old, same old life you had yesterday. OR it could be the beginning of birth pangs into a new life. A new life where you are not the center of your universe.

Beginnings of Birth Pangs

My first appearance as a discomfort,

was tolerated by my mother awhile

But then at birth, I gave a big wail,

she whispered sounds of comfort.

When my wife informs me of a birth.

to be expected in the months to come,

I alternated between wanting to run,

or giving support for all I was worth.

I was clumsy, figuring how to dad,

after years of my being for myself,

there was no easy book on the shelf,

yet I learned how to be a loving dad.

It wasn't perfect, I made mistakes,

but I learned loving was what it takes.

Wherever you will be, I will be

A Reflection for the Sunday after All Saints                    St Anne's/ St.Luke's, Roper and Grace, Plymouth

November 3, 2024                                                          Thomas E Wilson, Guest Preacher and Celebrant

Ruth 1:1-18      Psalm 146                   Hebrews 9:11-14                 Mark 12:28-34

“Wherever you will be, I will be.”

In the Hebrew Testament lesson for today is the story of Ruth. Ruth is a woman of Moab who married the son of Naomi, a Hebrew woman, who moved with her husband and sons into the country of Moab during a time of famine in Israel. The two sons marry local woman in Moab, but then the father and the sons die and Naomi is left alone in the land in which she is not a native. She is vulnerable, there is no one to protect her. Naomi hears that the famine in Israel is over and she plans to return in hope that she can join with distant relatives. Knowing the Jewish prejudice against people of Moab, she tries to send her daughters in law away to find some Moabite husbands. However, Ruth out of love and concern for her mother-in-law, affirms that wherever Naomi goes, Ruth will go. She says “Wherever you will be, I will be.”

This week after All Saints Day, I saw an ad on line for a 8” by 11” Collage of 36 Icons of Saints, for All Saints Day 2024, and in the center of the bottom row was an Icon of Ruth and Naomi together, united in love. Ruth who offers to be with Naomi, and Naomi who brings Ruth into her heart. One who loves and the other who allows herself to be loved and returns it. That is one of the themes of the lessons for today when people love and allow themselves to be loved. It is like all relationships of freely sharing love. One for the Other, risking love for each other, “Wherever you will be, I will be.”

When my wife and I got married 35 years ago, we bought a couple of wedding rings which had the Hebrew letters written on the bands proclaiming the promise of Ruth to each other; “Wherever you will be, I will be.” She had been married before, and in her first marriage, her husband a medical doctor, had been drafted and they spent the first couple years on an army base in Texas. She wanted to get the inside of the ring to be inscribed with “Anywhere but Texas”. But she came with me to Lynchburg, Virginia, and Macon, Georgia, and helping me working on my doctorate in Sewanee, Tennessee, and to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. But the promise was more than geography; it was a promise to be together in good times as well as bad times. Since the 23^rd of June, 2023, when her physical body died, she still lives in my heart. Bodies die, but love can live forever. As Ruth said, “Wherever you will be, I will be.”

My father died when I was 19, but there has not been a day when Bill Wilson has not lived inside me, in how I see, and treat my neighbors. We disagreed on many things, like music, religion and politics; but how you treat your neighbor was not one of those disagreements. In the winter of my 4^th grade, we were living in Upstate New York and then one day the first snow came down. There was no question that my older brother and I were expected to shovel the drive way and walk. But my father sent us out to first shovel the driveway and walk of our next door neighbors, Mr. and Mrs Lyon, Walter and Millie. He had been the managing editor of the Binghamton Sun-Bulletin morning newspaper, since 1920, and was retired. They were an elderly couple, they were in their 70's. younger than I am now. who had been so kind to us when we moved in that summer. She was so gracious and they both told marvelous stories. If I live another year, I will be as old as he was when he died. We were instructed to do it quietly, without being asked, and to not expect, or accept. any money. These were our neighbors; and that is what neighbors do- help one another, out of love. “Wherever you will be, I will be.”

My father was a lapsed Roman Catholic who married a Presbyterian girl, so they split the difference and the children were raised as Episcopalians, He had a hard time believing in religious doctrines about God, after battling in the South Pacific as a Marine in World War II; but he believed in the ethic of faith, which he saw was in kindness to your neighbor. The church taught me religion, my parents taught me faith. The church told me that as a faithful Christian, I had to be ready to face to Lions in Roman Coliseums. My father taught me that I had an obligation to help Mr. and Mrs. Lyon next door. “Wherever you will be, I will be.”

The passage from the Book of the Letter to the Hebrews , which is not a letter but a polemic, and is not to the Hebrews but to Christians; but otherwise well named, is that this Jesus did not come to earth to do religious ceremonies but to give himself away for others and allowed himself to be vulnerable to be loved. I am pretty sure that Bill Wilson did not study the Book of Hebrews, but he lived it. “Wherever you will be, I will be.”

In the Gospel lesson for today, Jesus meets a scribe and tells him that he was holding the scribe in his heart. Now the scribe belongs to a separate political party than Jesus. Yet Jesus says; “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” The Gospel does not tell us what happened to that scribe, but I am persuaded that wherever that scribe went, he was in Jesus's prayers and love wherever the scribe physically went in his life. However many miles away he was, he was never far from the Kingdom of God. Jesus knew how to love and be loved. Jesus loved Judas, and Judas betrayed him. Judas said: “The one I kiss, is the man you need to arrest.” The reality is that you can only be betrayed by someone who you love and who loves you. “Wherever you will be, I will be.”

One of the things I have seen in your churches is that when you hold people in the congregations in your heart. But more than that, your hearts expanded beyond the building. Your hearts expanded to be present with the people of Western North Carolina going through such devastation: you were with them in the Kingdom of God. You went out of your way when you understood that you were not the center of the universe. You understood that saying a prayer of thanksgiving for being spared from the Hurricane was not enough. You understood that you were spared not from, but for. You understood, that while you might throw a party, but you understood that the purpose of the party that was you were to help these neighbors hundreds of miles away. You understood the words of Ruth, “Wherever you will be, I will be.”

This coming week, on Tuesday, election day, we have a chance for moments when we will not all agree and there will be a least two different camps of partisans. One camp will win and the other will lose, but we do have a greater duty if we are to have a democracy we must have respect and love our political adversaries. We do not have to agree, we don't need to even like, but we do have to love, even the people with whom we disagree. My prayer is that before the last vote is counted, it will be a chance to treat them and think, or say, to our opponents; “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.” “Wherever you will be, I will be.”

It is like going to church, where Christ is the guest of honor, but the purpose of the party is to try to get ready to help a neighbor. We pray for growth in faith, but the faith is lived out when we walk outside the church doors, when the echos of the organ song fades and then hear the cries of our neighbors come into our hearts and will. Our hands are not there to pat ourselves on the back but to reach out to meet the needs of our neighbors. As Ruth said, “Wherever you will be, I will be.”

“Wherever you will be, I will be.

There are people who continue living in memory,

They were there helping me grow up, and deeper,

Walking me with me as paths were getting steeper,

Sharing stories to be told from pulpits or refectory.

These are you people who showed me how to live,

Live as if each moment was meant to be savored,

With guests of loved friends meant to be favored.

Extra special twists we'd really would want to give.

Recalled as saints who didn't from their labors rest,

Tasted again as if it was wine from a vintage rare,

Treasured as if was always really meant to share,

Calls us to love fully with every second as the best.

Some went ahead, but soon I will join you,

And we will dance together as lovers true.

Confessions Of A Retired Expert

A Reflection for Proper 24, Year B                St. Luke's and St Anne's Roper, and Grace Plymouth, NC

October 20, 2024                                          Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant

    Job 38:1-7, 34-41        Psalm 104:1-9, 25, 37b          Hebrews 5:1-10           Mark 10:35-45

Confessions Of A Retired Expert

The Bible begins with the story of Adam and Eve, whom the story goes, are asked to care for the world in which they live. It is God's creation, not theirs. They are not owners, but tenants on the land that belongs to God. They are the servants of God. That story goes that they did not want to be servants, they wanted to replace God with their own desires to be like God. Therefore, the story goes. since God became aware of the sin, God punished them by driving them out of Eden. The moral is given that if you do not obey God; God will make your life a living hell or save up until you are dead and then give you the real thing of hell. This is based on the concept that God gifts good things to good people and bad things to bad people.

However, in today's lessons this theme is challenged when God mutters: "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” This passage of Job is from the end of the Book and is God's response to Job, Job's counselors, others and us, when we react to the concept that God is our servant, and all who demand that God be held accountable as an inadequate servant, when bad things happen to good people. He is saying that in this world, Bad things happen, but God is here with us in the middle of all the bad things.

The Passage from Hebrews underscores this message with the idea that Priests are not the ones who control God, but they are servants of God's creation. They do not command or control God; they listen. They are servants of God's healing in this world. “able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward.” The writer of Hebrews knew fully that Jesus never went to seminary, he was not part of the Priestly caste, but he did the important stuff like “deal(ing) with the ignorant and wayward.” like each one of us is called to do.

One of the things I do is to say to people “Let me pray for you!” It is not because my words are magic. It is not because I have a special relationship to God that make my prayers more efficacious in persuading the Big Boy upstairs, but because it is a way we people have of letting each of us know we are not alone in facing what we are going through. We are joined; heart to heart.

The Gospel passage has Jesus underscore that he, the son of God, is not the ruler but the servant of God and God's creation. This is who we are to be: servants of Go and God's creation:

“You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Every life we have on this earth is not to be seen as just that life as living only for itself, but as a way we are able to see ourselves, and each other, as gifts from God - to see God's living creation for whom we are to care for.

This year I am 77 years old: in 2 months I will be 78, and 60 years ago I was an expert. I knew everything I needed to know. It was the 2^nd month of my being a Freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, that is about the time the first tests are given in the first classes at college. That is when I found out there was a whole lot of stuff I did not know. I found out that I needed to pay attention. Around the same time, my girlfriend I left behind in my home town, hundred of miles away from the college I was attending, was letting me know that she had her own life to lead, because I was not to paying enough attention to her.

It would be nice to say that I learned my lesson and I no longer encountered stuff I did not know if I just paid attention. The lessons today are about reaching the limits of what we can really know. And, even if we knew everything, we must come to grips with the understanding that we are not in control of the universe. We have to come to understand that no one divinity had died and left the position open so we could be God. We are called to follow, not replace, God and minister to all of God's children.

I work as a Priest in churches part of my life; but I am meant to live in sacramental relationship with all my neighbors, my friends, my enemies and my God in all of my life. I take my cue from Frederick Buechner who wrote:

A SACRAMENT IS WHEN something holy happens. It is transparent time, time you can see through to something deep inside time.

… Needless to say, church isn't the only place where the holy happens. Sacramental moments can occur at any moment, at any place, and to anybody. Watching something get born. Making love. A walk on the beach. Somebody coming to see you when you're sick. A meal with people you love. Looking into a stranger's eyes and finding out they are not a stranger's. 

If we weren't blind as bats, we might see that life itself is sacramental.

Confessions Of A Retired Expert

It's sacramental when we recite the Psalter,

but when we leave behind the church labors

and then approach any of our neighbors,

it is only then ,we approach the true Altar;

The place where God fills all the spaces

'tween us: holiness's away from church.

It's there, we really don't need to search,

Our world is filled with sacred Places!

Where our eyes have only to wish to see,

That the Peace of God is being shared

With anyone who'd just stop and cared,

Filling the chasm between me and thee.

Don't need be experts in understanding,

Faith's growing when love's expanding.

job of Job

22^nd Sunday after Pentecost: a Reflection                   St. Luke's and St Luke's Roper, Grace Plymouth

October 6, 2024                                                         Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant

Job 1:1; 2:1-10              Psalm 26    Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12                    Mark 10:2-16

“The Job Of Job”

From the Book of Job in today's Hebrew Testament lesson: “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”

One of these days when I get rich and famous being a Priest, I am going to really retire and I am going to put on and act in a play called J.B.by Archibald MacLeish. Usually I write a poem first to try to make sense of the lessons for that Sunday, but if you have a world class poet like MacLeish, lets use him. The play is in verse and begins:

“If God is God He is not good,

If God is good He is not God;

Take the even, take the odd,

I would not sleep here if I could.

Except for the little green leaves in the wood.

And the wind on the water."

Louis Kronenberger wrote a summary of the play:

J.B. was Archibald MacLeish's re-enactment, in a contemporary setting, of the Book of Job. It was also,  in a double sense, a theatre piece: the action took place inside a night-lit circus tent where a sideshow Job had been performing. Two out-of-work actors, Zuss and Nickels, toying with the Biblical masks of God and Satan they find lying around, are suddenly aware of a Voice from outside them and are caught up in a story near at hand. In the story, J.B. is a rich, admired American industrialist with a devoted wife and five children. Then disaster looms and mounts: his children are senselessly killed or brutally murdered; his possessions are lost, his house is destroyed, his wife goes away, his body festers. All this happens against a crossfire, Biblical and profane, between Zuss and Nickels; then J.B. wrestles with his soul, with his comforters, with his God, till at the end his health is restored and his wife returns

How does God allow evil to happen? Most people think that any first class God worth its salt could be counted on to fix things, like our mistakes or hurricanes, before they happen. Even if the power of hurricanes are increased by our disregard of global warming and our refusal to change the way we pollute; we want God to be like a genie in the bottle and fix things.

The ancient Greeks used to do plays, called Comedies, because they end up well, which would be finished with a “Deus ex Machina”, a God in a Machine, where an actor dressed up as a God would be lowered in a basket from a high pillar, hanging over the scene like a God in the palace of the Gods, and explain how the problem is being fixed by heavenly power. Except if God is not fiction, we need to come to grips with a God that does come down in a machine to fix things. The crowds at the feet of the cross taunted Jesus that if his God loved him, that God could fix things to turn it into a comedy.

The play was MacLeish's attempt to come to find meaning in the events of his life living through (1) his serving in France in World War 1, (2) going through the post war economic depressions and hatreds, (3) the slaughter of World War 2, and (4) the insanity of Cold War. Poetry Foundation wrote of the poetry:

Like Job, J.B. is not answered, yet his love for Sarah affirms, in the playwrights phrase, “the worth of life in spite of life.” That worth is found in a love that paradoxically answers nothing but “becomes the ultimate human answer to the ultimate human question.”

In the Gospel lesson for today There are two different strands of the teachings of Jesus. On the one hand, he is asked about divorce and he answers that divorce is a sin. Every three years I have to hear that; it is not what I want to hear. The day after I graduated for college, I was anxious about living an adult life, so I married my girl friend who was a divorced woman. Jesus is reported to say that was adultery. We lived together for 19 years until our daughter went off to college; then we got divorced. Count 2 for my adultery. Later, I married another woman who was divorced. In baseball that is strike 3. Pat and I were wonderfully blessed and married for 36 years until she died 15 months ago. We learned how to love and forgive each other, every day of that marriage. Instead of being satisfied with a legal agreement, instead of moaning about the past, in spite of being failures in marriage; we learned how to give blessings to each other. We shared what MacLeish called the “worth of life in spite of life”.

In the play and in the Book Job has "comforters" come to him, but they want to get God off the hook and want Job to admit that God must be punishing Job for a sin he must have committed. But Job was blameless. - the word “comfort” does not mean providing soft things but it comes from two Latin words “com”- which means “with”, and “fort” which means “strength”. When my wife died, I had comforters that were true to the meaning of the term; I was the recipient of lots of moments when I was prayed for, hugged, fed, helped by the sitting with, in loving silence by, friends, family, neighbors and former parishioners. It was the worth of life in spite of life. They did the job of Job.

In the second part of the Gospel passage for today, Jesus, in the viewpoint of his disciples, is interpreting the serious work of Jesus' teachings. The disciples are centered on getting the important tasks done, but some pesky children are in the way. But Jesus rebukes his disciples saying:”Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” The author continues “And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.” He loves them and he is teaching his disciples and us that love is a gift; it is never earned or to be earned – only given freely. It was the worth of life in spite of life. It is a job of Job.

In this country we have an economic system that says you get what you earn. Except I do not work for a living; I am retired and I get pensions for (1) the work I did as a priest, and (2) the work I did as an Assistant Professor in a college in which I taught before I went to seminary and (3) social security for all the jobs before then since I was 16, 61 years ago. One of the things I do two to three times a month is to get in my car and drive here, charging you with my mileage and doing holy work around an altar and make with a message, for which I pay taxes. You are paying me to to keep my mind and soul alive. So I thank you for helping me, your neighbor, The job of Job is to give thanks to God for whatever you have received, both good and bad. It was the worth of life in spite of life.

I am especially proud of these two congregations. When the storms hit Western North Carolina, a couple of hundred miles away, not your next door neighbors, you dug down deeply into your hearts and pocketbooks to comfort and renew, You received the bad news of what was happening to your neighbors far away, and you heard in your hearts God's good news about being comforters, “strength givers”, to those neighbors. You opened your mind to pray for all those facing difficult days ahead. It was the worth of life in spite of life. You were living into the job of Job.

As I was writing this reflection I got word that another hurricane called “Kirk” was east of Bermuda and was expected to keep heading toward Ireland. The weather warning says: “Impacts with the highest likelihood are an increased Rip Current Threat and rough surf. Ocean-side coastal flooding impacts are also possible with the increased wave action bringing potential for ocean overwash and beach erosion, greatest chance for eastward facing coastal areas.”

Life happens and this hurricane will probably only cause me minor inconvenience, but I need to pay attention to my neighbors. I live on the Outer Banks, facing east and like you, “live in the worth of life in spite of life” and am “living into the job of Job”.

Living With Esther

A Reflection and Poem for Proper 21 in Trinity Season                        September 29, 2024

Christ Church/ Plymouth and St. Luke/St Anne, Roper     Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22           Psalm 124       James 5:13-20                    Mark 9:38-50

Living With Esther

This is the 5^th Sunday of the month, when the Episcopal churches in Roper and Plymouth come together to have a joint service and a covered dish luncheon. These churches have a history together as they celebrate the present and look forward into a future..

The Hebrew Testament lesson is from the Book of Esther, and if Martin Luther had had his way, the book would not be part of the Christian Bible. Esther began as a short novel about a young Jewish woman who intermarried into the Persian Ruler's household, standing up for her Jewish people. In the original Hebrew version, the word God is never mentioned and there are no scenes of Esther, or anyone, praying for divine help.

In the Bible, the Book of the Song of Songs and the Book of Esther were used to underline ceremonies and parties. The Song of Songs was used for Passover where God's love is present for the people, even in in bondage of Egypt and wherever faithful Jews find themselves. The Book of Esther was of God being present for the people in Exile in Persia. They became excuses to have yearly parties commemorating the power of the Jewish people to counteract the usual stigma of being Jewish in a gentile country.

For the Book of Esther, the celebration is called the “Feast of Purim” and it is a yearly celebration of being proudly Jewish. There are overflowing plates of delicious courses of so many Jewish foods giving energy to a loud and raucous celebration of the story. Not only is food over the top but the noise of booing, hissing and using loud noise makers at the mention of the villains and cheering the heroes. With centuries of having to secretly hide their religion; Purim is the place to loudly proclaim their pride in their faith and in their heritage. My wife and I were lucky enough to have good friends in Temples and Synagogues in some of the communities in which we lived, and we were invited to participate in feast and joy at Purim celebrations. They were usually in the beginnings of Spring when we Christians decide to go overboard in being somber in Lent.

Despite all of the loud noise, Purim is an exercise in memory. The story of Esther was a at first a novel, a made up story with no historical evidence. But the story was told so often that it became a part of how the people talked about their ancestors. They told the story over and over again to each generation and the fiction was gradually accepted as fact.

I remember the stories that my Grandparents on my father's side, who we knew as “Daddy Wilson” and “Nana”, my Grandparents, on my Mother's side, who we would call “Madegar” and “Mamita” and along with our Great-Aunt Ora, the oldest of my mother's Aunts, would tell my brothers, sister and I about the families experiences of centuries before. The stories were full of heroes and villains. I think every generation had put an extra layer of spin. We were told these stories to show how we had the right kind of heritage to live into. We were to see ourselves not as a haphazard collection of DNA, but a a group of people from whom much was expected. My father would tell “Daddy Wilson as a young man” stories when he would tuck my brother and I into bed at night when we were young. How much of the memories was really an attempt at nostalgia to control the future? It depends on when you ask? I know that I have passed on stories to my daughter, and much later my grandsons, when I would tuck them into bed at night.

I remember one of my favorite songs “Try To Remember” from the off-broadway play The Fantasticks, about memory based on nostalgia to control the future, to which I was introduced in the mid 1960's:; The lyrics were engraved in my heart

Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.
Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, follow, follow.

As the Jews became more and more dispersed, they tended to speak in the language of the ruling classes in the places they lived, often which was Greek. The Jews started to translate their literature into Greek, called the Septuagint, meaning the “70 books”. These translators of the Bible did not do a mere translation of the novel of Esther;; rather they re-wrote the book to include the elements of faith, prayer and divine intervention. The Septuagint were the documents used as the Roman Church translated it into Latin for their Bible.

In the Reformation, the Bible started to get translated into the languages of the people. Martin Luther had problems with the Roman Bible and started to cut away books he though as less than helpful. Luther had started his ministry with a friendship toward the Jewish people, but when they did not convert to Christianity, he became more and more an antisemitist, and he debated including Esther into the Apocrypha. The book of Easter barely made it into his Bible. The English Bible translators did not share Luther's hesitations. The monarch, King James, in whose rule the King James version of the Bible was compiled, especially liked the idea how people who disturbed the peace of the realm were punished by death as God's will..

The Book of Esther is about standing up to power. When it is so easy to just hide and avoid noting injustice, the heroine of the Book of Esther by her example calls people to strive for justice. Since we have included the Book of Esther in our lectionary; we are called by that book, not to keep silent, but to denounce any time a person is taken advantage of. We are called to risk our safety of silence and speak out.

When I was a teenager, we attended the small Episcopal church in our suburb. I was confirmed by our Bishop Peabody. It was not a magic moment of transformation for me, but it was the growth of an awareness that as an adult I was called to do something more with my faith than just sit in Church pews. Later, in my Senior year of High School, as I struggled to live in a way to being a confirmed Christian, my Bishop's wife showed a side I had not usually seen in my Episcopal Church. She was Mary Peabody, the 75 year old wife of that then retired Bishop and the mother of the then Governor of Massachusetts. She with a group of people, went down to St. Augustine, Florida to join with some black people to desegregate the Episcopal church in that town. She was hustled out of the church and arrested later for disturbing the peace, by moving their protest to a restaurant.. For me, she was the embodiment of Esther, who stepped away from her position of privilege, to stand up for what was right and just.

A couple years later, when I was in college, I was a drama major and I accepted a part in the Outdoor Drama in Saint Augustine. I had been offered parts in other Outdoor Dramas,that summer, but I took the St. Augustine position because it paid twenty dollars a week more. That summer, on a day off from laying on the beach with my girl friend, I walked into the church where Mrs. Peabody had been evicted and arrested. I was 19 years old and my life seemed so unimportant. Yet, in that empty church building, I now agreed with the physicists who were telling us that the universe was expanding; because my universe was expanding and it told me to make a decision to change my major at Carolina from Drama to Education, and then to History and to be more involved in social justice. Mary Peabody was my Queen Esther, being a model to urge me to go deeper to do good and make the world a better place. It was the beginning of what Mark in his Gospel for today calls being “salted with fire”, a beginning of burning for justice. Also I saw as what I had been doing earlier was what James in his Letter for today called “wandering from the truth”. For the first 13 years after graduation. I worked as a Social Worker, got my Master's and later taught Social Work at a Undergraduate College while working with counseling people. In 1981, I left that, in my mid-life crisis, to go to seminary. In 1984, a little over 40 years ago, I was ordained .

Today, you former members of divided churches come together; once formally divided by race, you come together to share a service and a meal; knowing the God who passes all understanding, whose love of us all, brings us together. We challenge each other to find ways that we can unite deeper to help our communities celebrate tough women, and men, who challenge the tired status quo. We are not prisoners of the past, but we are free for a future that is beyond our imagination.

I was blessed this Friday as I was writing my draft of the reflection and I came across , and stole, a part of a reflection that morning by Br. Curtis Almquist, a member of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist about generosity:

There is something about participating in life as a gift, not clinging to it, not hoarding it, but cherishing it, then sharing it with a kind of reckless abandon that is the real deal, because that's like God. We are invited to be generous with the things in life to which we have been entrusted, as well as with our kindness, attentiveness, gratitude, gentleness, and interest for others.

My brothers and sisters, you have been entrusted with your life to make the world a better place. Thank you for taking on that calling.

Living With Esther

There are times, Esther's in our hearts,

When they open to hear her standing,

Away from privilege, and demanding,

That we listen to voices of many parts.

We aren't all of the same persuasions.

Not holding all of the same memories,

But we're passing hopes into treasuries,

Filled to the rim for the new situations,

'cause we're opening into a new future,

Untinged by all the whiffs of nostalgia,

Unburdened by a remembered myalgia,

Freed from the old past without a suture.

All those good old days are now past.

It's a time to give blessings that'll last.

Attention, Attention Musr Be Paid

 

A Reflection/Poem for XVII Sunday after Pentecost                         September 15, 2024

St Luke's & St. Anne's, Roper and Grace Plymouth, NC                   Thomas E Wilson Guest Preacher

Proverbs 1:20-33                         Psalm 19    James 3:1-12                   Mark 8:27-38

Attention, Attention Must be Paid

Last Sunday I went to attend the Second Sunday of the new Priest at the church in Hertford. I had done some fill-ins, a couple times a month, for that church for a year until they called a new Rector. I called the new Rector and welcomed him and then asked permission to visit the church and him on his 2^nd Sunday, and take him out to lunch after the service.

He is different than I am, but I was not there to grade his performance, I was there to welcome him as the new minister to some people that I had grown fond of. I was there to share support and wisdom; wisdom without support is meaningless. It was his church and not mine. He was their Pastor now and I wasn't. So, part of why I was there was to trust their choice and to be able to leave; to leave the church alone so the new relationship could grow. Part of me did not want to go since I had accepted the invitation to fill in a couple days after my wife's funeral and I needed to do something to help fill the emptiness I had inside my heart. I was reminded of a quote from Therapist Marion Woodman whose books we had read when my wife and I had been doing dream work, She wrote: “It takes great courage to break with one's past history and stand alone”. Woodward also wrote “How we see ourselves determines what happens to us in our lives. If we do not respect and love ourselves that will carry over into our relationships and others will not respect us.”

I was reflecting on what a ministry of any church is, and I was also reading about Edith Hamilton, a scholar who translated and re-introduced ancient Greek and Roman Stories and myths into the last century and into common understandings of ourselves.I spend a lot of my life looking at ancient texts of my faith and try to translate them into 21^st Century American mindset. Robert Kennedy trying to make sense of his brothers deaths, was so enamored by Hamilton's books that he carried a copy of one of her books wherever he went. In a speech he gave, he said: “"Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago––to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world." In one speech he quoted Aeschylus from memory: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran Pastor in Colorado wrote about her wisdom about how to leave: “The truth is that we can only hold handfuls of life at a time and room must be made for what enters next. Maybe to live a human life is to lose everything while also gaining everything.”

In the Hebrew Testament lesson for today, the Spirit of Wisdom is like a mother who comes to the market place to warn her children of the need to hold onto the Divine Wisdom. “ For waywardness kills the simple,/and the complacency of fools destroys them; but those who listen to me will be secure/
and will live at ease, without dread of disaster.”

I am reminded of when I went off to college and my parents individually would set me down from time to time as the day to leave for college was drawing near, and they passed on their wisdom about how it was to leave what you knew and enter into an unknown future. Wisdom comes at the time of need when our old homes and our lives are changing.

In Mark's Gospel for today, Jesus is letting his disciples know that he will be leaving them, so that they will be able to live deeply into a new future with the Holy Spirit. Peter wants to hold tightly on to the present and desperately on to the past. Peter is rebuked because Jesus is speaking that the deepest wisdom is that he (and we) are called to give your (and our) life away in love.

This last week ,we remembered the events of terrorist attacks on 9/11; the death of so may innocent people. We keep trying to make sense in days after the 9/11 attacks in New York City. Prime Minister Tony Blair gave a speech honoring British victims that he ended with the final lines of The Bridge of San Luis Rey:, a novel written by Thornton Wilder in 1927 about the collapse of a bridge where five characters fell to their death. In the novel, the bridge is a metaphor for the path each of us take between life and death.

But soon we will die, and all memories of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love. The only survival, the only meaning.

This week, Deacon Joanna Seibert wrote about reflecting on Thornton Wilder's The Bridge Of San Luis Re. “Love is all we have to contribute to this life that will be lasting. Love is all we will carry with us into the life of the resurrection. Love is the bridge between these two territories.”

Decades ago, when I was so much younger I was acted in a play, “Death of a Salesman” written by Arthur Miller and I played the character of Willy Loman. In his introduction to the play, Christopher Bigsby wrote

Death of a Salesman had its origins in a short story Miller wrote at the age of seventeen (approximately the age of the young Biff Loman), when he worked, briefly, for his father’s

company. It told of an aging salesman who sells nothing, is abused by the buyers, and borrows his subway fare from the young narrator. In a note scrawled on the manuscript Miller

records that the real salesman had thrown himself under a subway train. Years later, at the time of the play’s Broadway opening, Miller’s mother found the story abandoned in a drawer.

But, as Miller has noted, Death of a Salesman also traced its roots closer to home. Willy Loman was kin to Miller’s salesman uncle, Manny Newman, a man who was ‘‘a competitor, at all times, in all things, and at every moment. My brother and I,’’ Miller explains in his autobiography, ‘‘he saw running neck and neck with his two sons in some race that never stopped in his mind.’’ The Newman household was one in which you ‘‘dared not lose hope, and I would later think of it as a perfection of America for that reason. . . . It was a house . . .

trembling with resolutions and shouts of victories that had not yet taken place but surely would tomorrow.’’

The part in the play; it was haunting because I was in my own life almost running in a race that never stopped in my mind. The play ends with a warning about such people running those kinds of races :

"I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person."

In your life, in your family, in your neighborhood; is there someone for whom “Attention must be paid.”?

Today, my hope is that each of us will remember the wisdom that was shared in our lives and how we are able to hear that love that comes with the wisdom.

Attention, Attention Must be Paid

Decades ago, I played the character, Willy Loman;

a week on a stage, and for some years in my life,

I'd often find myself in his shoes and in his strife;

of course long before becoming a small theologian.

Today, usually I can try to find paying attention

to a wisdom, a power, much greater than myself,

speaking to me to pick up some books on a shelf.

to use as a path of prayer to a deeper dimension.

Or, to turn to friends in whom I'd have some trust,

to listen with the ear of a loving heart, and to speak

after thinking deeply, maybe from translated Greek,

a small peace might come from what we discussed.

It is what happens. when some attention is paid

and I am not alone while the fear begins to fade

Faith: Disciplinarian or Lover?

A Reflection and Poem for September 1, 2024                St. Luke's, Roper and Grace Church, Plymouth

15^th Sunday after Pentecost                                             Thomas E Wilson Guest Celebrant

Song of Solomon 2:8-13        Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10             James 1:17-27          Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Faith: Disciplinarian or Lover?

On May the 26^th, Jim, my sister Anne's husband, died after he had a hard illness, During his illness I had prayed for both Jim and my sister using standard ChristianTheological language and understanding of prayer. He grew up a Presbyterian, he married an Episcopalian, His sister and I were both Episcopal Priests. However, organized religion had lost meaning for him and he did not want a religious funeral and we respected his wishes. However, Irene, one of his daughters, who is a Buddhist, thought we should do a Buddhist ceremony of Thanksgiving for his life and for strength for his family in living the days ahead.

Fourteen months before, my own wife, Pat, died and the family had come to give me strength and to share their love. Eight days ago, I joined the family for Jim's service. One of the things I found out was, if you are an old man like me and when you attend a service at a temple and a very kind person, like the Rev. Shaun Song, rushes up and offers you a chair out of care for a visitor; take the chair.

While I hate to admit that I am really an old man, I went into denial and I made the excuse to myself that I wanted to show that I honored their traditions and so I proudly sat on cross legged on a pillow on the floor. So far so good. It is a quiet service with some chanting, and meditation. There is a moment when we are invited to come up, face Jim's picture and say a blessing or thanksgiving to him. You know the old proverb, “Pride goeth before a fall”? I was invited to come up and when I got up, I realized that my legs didn't feel any substance below my knee caps because of my attempt to deny reality, and I staggered backwards and fell down on the floor. It was not the most graceful way of my coming forward to thank Jim for loving my sister. My advice holds; if they offer you a chair; take the chair!

The Rev. WonGong So, the Buddhist Priest and dharma teacher, leading the service tried to help me in my humiliation. She was kind and loving to me and the family. She is the kind of person I would look for as a Priest for me. Her gentle and wise manner reminds me of a saying of the Buddha:‘Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.’

Let us start off at the beginning. Christianity and Buddhism are different, in that in Buddhism there is no God. No supreme being in charge of the Universe. Christianity believes in a Supreme Being which created the universe, and we believe in a Christ event that redefined our understanding of God, and in a Holy Spirit which guides our lives surrounding us with Grace. But, as a Hindu believer, Mahatma Gandhi warned us western Christians about our faith: “To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.” Frederick W. Schmidt, an Episcopal Priest writes about the need for faith growing out of belief : “I am not talking about some kind of soft social consciousness, never mind a body of political beliefs. Instead, I am referring to the capacity to look at the world around us through the eyes of God.”

As Grant Ethan writes:

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy that originated in India and spread throughout Asia. Unlike other major world religions, Buddhism does not have just one god, but rather includes a wide array of divine beings that are venerated in various ritual and popular contexts.

These beings are known as devas, asuras, yakshas, and nats.

According to Buddhist teachings, gods are not considered to be eternal and all-powerful beings. They are believed to be subject to the same laws of impermanence and suffering as all other beings.

In fact, the Buddha himself discouraged his followers from becoming too attached to the gods or seeking their help in achieving enlightenment.

The concept of God as the one and only supreme being, and not just one god among many, was just coming into acceptance among Jewish scholars about the time the Buddha was born. This God concept may not have ever reached him.”

Buddhism and Christianity are similar in that both urge us not to be concerned with our own ego. Both are about forming a relationship with a deeper dimension. Both are about loving yourself and others; about forgiving self and others, about caring for one's neighbor, about not being seduced with the outward temptations of prestige, wealth and social standing, about serving others and not ruling others. Both Buddhists and Christians hold onto the deeper truth in the verses in today's Psalm 15:

Whoever leads a blameless life and does what is right, *
who speaks the truth from his heart.

There is no guile upon his tongue;
he does no evil to his friend; *
he does not heap contempt upon his neighbor.

Buddhists and Christians would understand the verses of the Song of Solomon for today:

"Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away;

for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,

and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land.

The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.

Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away."

The Buddhist and the Christian can claim common ground on the message from the Epistle of James for today;

You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God's righteousness. Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.

But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act-they will be blessed in their doing.

If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. (Faith) . . . is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

No Buddhist would object to the lines from the Gospel for today:

For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

I see the Gospel message lived out in my niece Irene that she put into deeper practice when she became involved in the Buddhist temple. She gave a talk there about how she was learning how to stop her inner chatter of what she “should do” and live into her name ,“Irene” which means peace. I envied her not wasting more years of her life. I was older than her when I learned to stop 'Should-ing all over myself.”

One of things I learned many years before is help people grow deeper into faith and not necessarily into being Episcopalians. I used to do volunteer work in Alcohol and Drag Abuse Treatment programs. Step 2 in the 12 step treatment programs is “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Step 11 is “Sought through meditation and prayer to improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”

I can say of the Rev. WonGong, she did not try to convert me; she ministered to me with her wisdom. She and I have started an exchange of notes as I was writing this reflection and poem. She always ends with the wish “Palms Together” letting me know she is praying for wisdom and peace for me. Her wish in one message was of encouragement: “I am sure there will be lots of joy in uncovering the wisdom within and all around you in the spirit of God.”

I would like to pass on her wisdom and Peace to you Episcopalians. While I would like you to go out in your neighborhoods and bring in new people into the congregations; your more important job, like the Good Samaritan, is to minister to your neighbor. You are not on this earth to approve of people; you are here, like she is, to honor others with your care, to help them into a deeper life. A Spiritual life is not nourished by looking into a mirror, but by seeing oneself reflected in a neighbor's eyes.

Faith: Disciplinarian or Lover

Walking in the door, seeing that they are different:

we'll focus on points in which we are not the same,

reassured our faith has a different shape and name

from each other, and we'll agree to be considerate.

Honoring one another's view of the same mystery,

which can't be reduced to the level of many phrases

strung together. Rather we sing each other's praises,

for attempting to live into a different loving history.

We struggle for centuries of living purposeful faith,

hoping for insight for one meaningful day at a time,

as we faithfully on this mountain of meaning climb,

for to hear what old ancestors said prophets “sayeth”.

It's a different day, when we'll not say we're right,

but we'll stop to see a fellow traveler in our sight.