3 Lent reflection redux

A Reflection for III Lent                                            All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC  March 3, 2013                                                                 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Exodus 3:1-15             Psalm 63:1-8               1 Corinthians 10:1-13             Luke 13:1-9

God says to Moses, “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." Moses has come looking for Holy Ground.  He is an alien in a foreign land and he has undergone many losses. We are having a Lenten Study Series in which we look at “Living With Loss – Finding Hope”. Loss is part of life and, when we experience loss, we enter into a desert of the soul - which is a necessary journey in order for healing to begin. Without the courageous journey into the desert, we remain stuck in our loss and lead embittered or/and shallow lives dominated by the fear of other losses. The way to survive, and even thrive, in this desert is to rediscover the spiritual truth about ourselves and our changed lives in the space of Holy Ground, out of which we find hope.

Let’s take a look at the losses that Moses has had in his life. He has lost his family several times over. His Hebrew family gave him up to a privileged Egyptian family in order to save his life. He will be brought up in a family in which he feels like an alien in a foreign land, but it is the only family he knows. His confusion about where he belongs leads to a fatal attack on an Egyptian overseer abusing a Hebrew slave. He will lose the Egyptian family as well when he has to flee into exile to avoid a charge of murder. Raised in the Egyptian family he would have learned about the Egyptian Gods and the emphasis on order to maintain the status quo. Raised in the Royal Family he would have been known about the sense of “Holy Ground” in the Temple of Karnack complex, north of Luxor, and he would have lost any access to that Holy Ground ever again. 

Here was the Holy Ground for the Theban Triad of Amun-Ra, the King of the Gods and creator, Mut, the Mother Goddess, and their son, the falcon-headed Moon God which gives new life, Khonsu. The Temple complex was their home and only the Royal family - since the Pharaoh was considered Divine - and the Priests were allowed to enter these imposing collections of Temples, pylons, monuments, and the breathtaking Hypostyle Hall. I remember 20 years ago walking through this complex and being in absolute awe of these columns, 30 to 60 feet high, with connecting beams weighing 70 tons balanced on these huge columns. When I looked up to these epistyles, I could see the decorations and art painted on the underside 60 feet in the air with the colors so vivid  it was hard to believe that they were painted more than three thousand years ago. The pollution from auto traffic in Luxor is eating away at the paint, but it was awesome. This place was not meant for peasants like me to walk through; it was meant to be Holy Ground, reserved for the God’s and their closest retainers. 

 

And yet here was Moses, in the desert, the edge of regular life, filled with his sense of loss, as rumors swirled about the increased suffering of his Hebrew family, who he had never known, caused by his Egyptian family in the name of their God, from whom he was estranged. He felt deeply the loss of both the Gods of the Egyptians and the God of his ancestors’, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Out of this desert of the soul the God of his fathers' speaks to him and tells him that in this seemingly God-forsaken place is where Moses will find God. 

The God of his fathers’ goes even further and says the name of the God, “I am who I Am.” This is the ground of being itself, not restricted to a Temple far away, but walking with those who seek the ultimate reality of deeper being. It is this encounter with the one who defines reality that gives Moses hope and strength to meet the days ahead and challenge the forces of oppression. Moses cannot do it alone and therefore asks for the strength from the power greater than himself to change himself and to change the world he lives in.

The story of Moses is the story of all of us who go through loss, and it is only when we stop and realize our emptiness, entering bravely into the desert of our souls, that we find the strength to enter a new reality we call hope.

The story is true for religious institutions as well. Christian religious institutions, of which All Saints’ is one, have undergone great losses. It used to be that Sunday mornings was when families went to church in order to find Holy Ground on which to stand in a world in which loss was always a threat. But churches have squandered that trust of being places of Holy Ground as we became apologists for the status quo and trying to keep everybody happy. We have abdicated our responsibility to be a hospital of healing by becoming condemners of sinners, encouraging those who are seen as less than complete or who do not agree with us to not sully us with their presence. We have been complicit with predators and have refused to deal with the evil of the world as we try to protect out institutions. Part of our new task is to keep pointing to Holy Ground not as fixed to a particular place and ritual but as being at the very ground of our being. God is here, offering healing even when it doesn’t feel like it, because God’s graceful love is greater than the limits of our meager senses and broken religious institutions.

The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning reminds us of the fullness of God’s presence:

And truly, I reiterate, . . nothing's small!
No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee,
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;
No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere;
No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim:
And,-glancing on my own thin, veined wrist,-
In such a little tremour of the blood
The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul
Doth utter itself distinct. Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more, from the first similitude.     

  

This was given yesterday at Ecumenical lenten program and I am still thinking of using it for this coming Sunday but  I am not sure this may be too much history where people may miss the point. Working on something else today.

A Reflection for III Lent                                                                                 Outer Banks Presbyterian Church February 27, 2013                                                                                        Thomas E. Wilson, Guest Preacher

Exodus 3:1-15                    Psalm 63:1-8                      1 Corinthians 10:1-13                     Luke 13:1-9

The founders of the three great Abrahamic religions - Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad – are each led into the desert to have an encounter with the Divine. Deserts are the edges of life, where ordinary daily life is disrupted, where business as usual is impossible, and where we are set free from petty distractions and can focus on that which is the core of life and meaning.

A couple of weeks ago we heard the story of Jesus going into the desert to fight the enemy within himself. The enemy’s temptation is to have the relationship with the Divine be all about him. Jesus resists because he did not want to found a new religion; rather, he wanted to get back to the core of faith with which and with whom Moses struggled and bring that relationship back to the people of his generation and community.

Moses went into the desert in order to find himself, and he also found the God of his people. Moses was a Hebrew who descended from one of a group of Semitic tribes that had come down from Asia Minor into Egypt and gained power as the old Egyptian governmental systems fell into confusion at the end of the 18^th century BC. The new rulers brought in new ideas of God and ruled for several centuries. However there came a time in the mid-16^th century when the Egyptians rose up and subjugated the old foreign overlords. The Hebrews, who had had a place of privilege, were now the targets of discrimination and were reduced to slavery, and as the Book of Exodus begins, “And there arose in Egypt a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph.” 

The old Egyptian religious systems were reinstituted by the New Kingdom where Gods, who were forces of nature itself, operated in a cyclical system.  In the balance of different forces of nature, as you would see in an agricultural system based on the flooding of the Nile, they were committed to the maintenance of the status quo and had to be appeased by ritual, bribery, flattery, or magic or else disorder would break out. Out of the fear of disorder, these Gods were locked into doing things the way they have always done - even the Gods were not free. “Holy Space” meant space that belonged to the Gods. Gods had temples where they were housed and could interact with other Gods and Priests but from which the regular people were excluded. Gods were not all that interested in individuals but in the prevention of disorder in society and in the heavens, and for that, they needed ritual rather than relationship. Individual life was cheap and people disposable for the good of “order”.

However, some of the Hebrew ideas about the divine as monotheistic were kept in memory as we see in the mid-14^th century when the Pharaoh Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten and tried to institute a semi-monotheistic religion based on Aten, the God of the Disk of the Sun.  The attempt failed, and the Ramses line of the 19^th Dynasty came to power, treating the memory of Akhenaten as heresy while it brutally reinstituted the old religions.

We think that, during the rule of Seti I, the Hebrew slaves were more despised because of their monotheism and of their ties to the enemies of centuries before. In an attempt to shelter him from a life of slavery, the story goes, Moses was raised as a Hebrew foundling in a house of Egyptian privilege. He did not really belong to either group, distrusted by the Hebrew slaves and patronized by the Egyptian masters. As an outsider, he was able to see clearly the inequalities of the system, and his passion for justice caused him to lash out and kill an abusive overseer. He had to flee for his life and escaped into the desert away from all the luxury and privilege he had known. Here the story could have ended as Moses lives as a refugee hiding from the Egyptian authorities, except he meets a monotheistic Priest named Jethro, whose daughters Moses had saved from harassment. Jethro takes Moses in and allows him to marry his oldest daughter, Zipporah, and they have a son who they named Gershom, a name meaning, “I have been an alien in a foreign land.”

As the story progresses, the Egyptian King, Pharaoh Seti, dies and the Hebrews hope that his son, Ramses II, will be a more lenient leader. It was not to be, and the oppression gets even worse, so bad that the news filters up to where Moses is in hiding and disturbs his refuge. He goes into the desert to find himself and his God. The story goes on that he realizes that he cannot understand the world which he inhabits until he rediscovers the heart of his faith. Here he encounters the force who discloses that link with the Semitic tribe that had come down to Egypt centuries before - “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph” - not just some God of some tribe or part of a pantheon of some nation, but the Divine force that undergirds all being, the “I am who I am”, the one who is free from the bounds of all support of the human status quo and whose compassion makes the arc of the universe bend toward justice.

This God, the ground of being, declares that God-forsaken piece of desert as Holy Ground. There are no Temples, no Priests, no reminders of Glory, only the claiming of intimate space between the individual and God. This God is free from the needs of an institution and will live and move and have the Divine Being with the people. This is the God who is free from the shackles of the past, free from the fate of the future, free to be in the moment where each individual life is precious and loved. This God claims the space between us and says that the Holy Space is in the space between two people and how we treat our neighbor. To follow this God is to treat each breath as a gift and to walk so lightly on the earth since all is Holy Ground.

Moses enters into the heart of God, and because of that, also enters into the heart of the oppressed. He walks with God who walks with him, and together they set the people free to start a new relationship with God where each individual life is precious and loved. Over time the Hebrew people will decide that the maintenance of order is more important than justice, that life is cheap and individuals are disposable, and Holy Space is restricted to Temples where God needs ritual rather than relationship.

Then Jesus goes out into the desert to rediscover himself and the connection with the heart of God and the oppressed. He walks with God who walks with him, and together they set the people free to start a new relationship with God in which each individual life is precious and loved. Over time the followers of Christ will move to the position that the maintenance of order is more important than justice, that life is cheap and individuals are disposable, and Holy Space is restricted to Churches where Christ needs ritual rather than relationship. 

And so it goes until each of us enters the desert, the edges of life, where ordinary daily life is disrupted, where business as usual is impossible, and where we are set free from petty distractions and can focus on that which is the core of life and meaning. If we are lucky we can call that a Holy Lent, when we allow ourselves to take off our shoes and walk on Holy Ground and rediscover ourselves and the connection with the heart of God and the oppressed. Shoeless in the desert, we can walk with God who walks with us and together set people free to start a new relationship with God where each individual life is precious and loved.

A Reflection on Helen Yelton

A Reflection on the Occasion of

the Celebration of the Life and Death of

Helen Reid Poovey Yelton

February 23, 2013

All Saints Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, NC

Thomas E Wilson, Rector

Romans 8:14-19,34-35,37-39 Psalm23 John 14:1-6 

Today we gather together to do two different things which can seem contradictory but are really complementary.  We are here to say good bye to Helen Yelton and we are here to welcome Helen Yelton home and to have a meal with her. She has dies and we will not see her physical likeness again on this earth and so we give thanks for her life. In our tradition we believe that every time we celebrate communion, all those who we hold in our hearts are on the other side of the Table. Jesus is our host and Helen is the guest of honor. All are invited to come forward for Helen’s welcome home party.
 
Emily and Nancy  told me that with Helen's death, the family was struck with the poem by George Gordon, Lord Byron, She Walks in Beauty.

She walks in beauty, like the night

   Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

   Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

   Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

   Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

   Or softly lightens o’er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express,

   How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,

   So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

   But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

   A heart whose love is innocent.

The poem is supposed to have written in 1814 when Byron saw one of his cousins across a crowded room attending a party while dressed in mourning clothes. The image of the party full of sparkling women all dressed up latest brightly colored Regency dresses showing lots of skin celebrating the joy of life set off by this woman dressed in the black mourning clothes, all covered up in the old fashions of the past honoring someone who has died, By the next morning the poem was written with its startling images of light and dark in tension and perhaps even complementing each other. There is the beauty of the light which is the visible beauty of the woman and there is the beauty of the dark, the hidden, the interior of this beautiful woman. The outer beauty, the light, fades but the dark, the internal beauty, is what lives even in the midst of death.

Byron's friend Issac Nathan collaborated with him to publish Byron's poems set to Nathan's music in 1815 in a volume called Hebrew Melodies. Nathan set She Walks in Beauty to the Sephardic Synagogue tune Lcha Dodi which is sung on Friday evening before the Shabbat services where the Queen of the Sabbath is welcomed as darkness falls into the beginning of the Holy Day of Sabbath, the Day of Rest. A candle is lit as a reminder that even in the darkness God is with us. You may notice that we have a candle lit, the Christ Candle, which is dedicated at the first service of Easter, which is held in the darkness before dawn on Easter Sunday to remind us that life does not end into darkness but continues into the light of resurrection.

It is fitting that this service that we do is on the end of the Sabbath Day and we remember the poem as we remember Helen Reid Poovey Yelton, this much loved Southern Lady, who did hold on to, and honor a lot of things in the past, the Daughters of the American Revolution, Children of the Confederacy, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Civil Air Patrol, who has now entered into her day of rest, where we will no longer see the outer light of her face but are reminded of the internal beauty which continues to live on in the lives of people who were touched by her.

The lessons for today also fit the poem brought to mind this entering of rest. Paul's letter to the Romans is written to remind them that nothing ever separates us from the light of Christ. “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The Gospel lesson for today has Jesus remind the disciples that he is preparing a place for them, for in his Father's house there are many mansions. There is the old Hebrew Song/Poem which we know as the 23^rd Psalm where the Shepherd, the Lord,

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:

He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name' sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: For thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou annointest my head with oil; My cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.

I remember when I was in my Chaplaincy training at the Hospital in Chapel Hill, one of the assignments was to write about our own death. I finished my writing with coming face to face with God who greeted me like my father used to when I would come home back from college. God, which seemed based on my own father would sigh as if to say I finally made it home, what took me so long- and then would come the recitation of the things about which I had fallen short. Later on I started seeing God and myself in a different way as the foolish father in the Prodigal Son who wrapped the wandering son up in loving arms, all over him like a cheap suit; rejoicing that they were fully together again.

I have this vision that as Helen died, Jesus turns to his friend Lord Byron and says; “George look, its Helen! And like you said, she really does walk in beauty.

'She walks in beauty, like the night

   Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

   Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

   Which heaven to gaudy day denies.'”

Welcome home Helen!

A Reflection on telling stories

A Homily for II Lent All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC February 24, 2013 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 Psalm 27 Philippians 3:17-4:1 Luke 13:31-35 

The Psalmist for today urges us not to walk our own path but to find our meaning in life by being servants of God’s promise. It is a Psalm in which the singer is asking God’s protection against the enemies who surround the singer when even family disappoints. The singer begins and ends with verses of absolute dependence and faithfulness to God:

The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom then shall I fear? *
the LORD is the strength of my life;
of whom then shall I be afraid?

And then the end:

O tarry and await the LORD'S pleasure;
be strong, and he shall comfort your heart; *
wait patiently for the LORD.

Let me do some translation of the poetry for you. The word “comfort” does not mean a soft pillow, but it comes from the Latin “with strength” or “cum fortis” meaning strengthen. “Heart” is not the place of emotion but the seat of will. “To wait patiently” means to Hope. The word LORD, all in capitals, is the singer’s attempt not to say the name of God out loud, and possibly in vain, so the singer uses, instead, “the LORD”.

I like Rabbi Robert Alter’s translation of the last verse: “Hope for the LORD!/ Let your heart be firm and bold and hope for the LORD” 

 

 Last Monday morning I did not get up early and go to exercise because Sunday night I stayed up late and watched the final chapter of this season’s Downton Abbey on PBS. I enjoy watching the series, which is basically a soap opera; the acting is average for British television, but there are a couple of actors who really impress. The costumes are splendid and the characters know how to wear them. The costumes are really important, for each show has at least one scene in which the character changes into clothing which will define their activity - either a servant putting on a uniform or a Master putting on a gown or suit. The clothes are not just ornaments, but they are ways the characters remind themselves about who they are and how they fit into the larger promise. 

 

The scripts have some flavor of a time long ago but with some tension between modern issues of change and how we adapt to a changing world. Servant or Master, these are really all servants - people who struggle with either being faithful to the position in which they find themselves or breaking away. The owners of the manor especially are struggling with the question of whether the land, or even their bodies, belongs to them to do with as they will, or if the land and their bodies belong to the descendants who will come after them. The servants see their lives defined by doing what is best for the Manor. Servant or Master, their lives are not their own, most seeing themselves as stewards for those who come after them. At times, watching the show is a guilty pleasure, an enjoyable waste of time, each episode having a beginning, middle, and end which teases us to the next episode and season. 

 

This year two characters died off, but the world will not be changed if characters die in a make-believe world. What is important is the story and what it says for their time and for ours. There was a good scene a couple weeks ago where both the Masters and Servants had to work together to win a cricket match - each player’s own agenda had to be placed aside for the greater good. Last week there was a theme of contrast between the characters who live and work in Downton Abbey and the characters who live and work in a castle in Scotland. The people in Downton have hope because they understand themselves as part of something larger, whereas the people in the Scottish castle have no hope because they are caught in the hopeless crossfire between competing agendas covered over with nostalgia. Maybe we need to hear these stories more often.

Real life, in the real world, continues nevertheless. The show ended a little after 11:00, and I could not get to sleep for another hour while I thought about the story. However, I’m glad I stayed up because it got me to think about how I might have responded in that time and place if I saw my life as stewardship for those who come after me.

I think that is the whole process of what we go through every week when we look at stories about people in faraway times and places. It can be a waste of time if all we do is hear the story without thinking about each of the people and what each has to do with our lives right here and now. Today’s scripture stories have to do with people who choose to go on a journey because they feel called by God, despite their uncertainty about the outcome of their trip. There will be times when they are not sure if they should continue. There will be times when they will be tempted to go down other paths. There will be times when they will not be sure they have the energy to continue; but they will wake up each day, put one foot in front of another and continue, not just for themselves but also for the people who come after them.

In the first scripture story for today, Abram has a promise and he holds on to his promise because it defines who he is. Day in and day out he cannot get away from that promise. He has left everything he knows, as his father had left Ur of the Chaldees and moved to Haran, and Abram hears the call of God to continue the life of a wanderer to go to a land that will not be his but will be for his descendants. He is a steward of the promise of the generations yet to come. Each day he will rise up again and live his life as if he was not the center of his universe, but a servant of the promise.

Paul in the letter to the Philippians warns his friends about people “whose God is their belly”. These are the people who just think it is all about them and what they can consume. He reminds his friends that joy is available if they live a life of stewardship to their Lord Jesus. He reminds them that they are “citizens of heaven” whose task is not to live as it was all about them but about the one whom they are called to follow. Each day they are to rise up putting one foot in front of another on a different kind of path and live their lives as if they were not the center of the universe but servants of the promise.

Jesus, in the story from Luke, is warned that he might lose his life and liberty, and they urge him to be safe. Jesus responds that it is not all about him. Each day he will rise up, put one foot in front of the other and live his life not as if he is the center of his universe but a servant of the promise.

When we said that we would be followers of Christ, we said that our lives are not ours to do with whatever we want. The promise is that we will live as if our lives are defined by God and neighbor being as important as ourselves. We promised that our God would not be our bellies, we would not be defined by what we consume. We accepted our part in the cosmic drama of real life, where we would not play the role of the “Lord of the Manor” but rather commit ourselves to the role of servants of the promise of the Lord of the Universe.

“Hope for the LORD! / Let your heart be firm and bold and hope for the LORD.”

Reflection of vestry retreat

The Vestry Retreat was going on last weekend and going well as there was an easy feeling between us. The church has plenty of problems but none that produced anxiety. We approached the planning for the coming year with awareness that changes would be made but change is the norm for living on earth.  We cannot go back to the past and nostalgia has never been our long suit. 

Wright House, Kill Devil Hills

We were at the Wright house, the cottage owned by the Judges and loaned to us for the day. It was a place full of memories for me. Almost 10 years ago this was the venue where the whole of the search committee had interviewed me. Pat had fallen in love with the group that had come to visit us in the previous church and had warned me not to screw up the interview because she really wanted to be part of this church. I was pleased with what I had seen but I thought it was much too soon for me to make a commitment. My prayer was that I would be actively listening to what God wanted for me and for the church. I was sitting in a seat with my back to the windows overlooking the beach and ocean as the committee fanned out in a semicircle facing me and the windows. I knew that the ocean was beautiful and I could hear the cries of the seagulls but I wanted to focus on what was happening in the room.

After several hours of questions and discussion, the chair of the committee asked me to give a homily which I had been asked to prepare. My calm evaporated as quickly as the World Series hopes for the Chicago Cubs evaporates each summer after Memorial Day since 1908. I froze as I remembered that I had indeed been asked to prepare a short homily. I asked for a moment of prayer. In that moment I asked that my mind be cleared of all the noise of the gulls, which had seemed to get louder since I had closed my eyes. Panic threatened to overwhelm me until I remember the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus says: “Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?^{” (Mt. 6: 26-27)}

The Spirit calmed me as it spoke through me of the need that both the committee and I had about not worrying about the outcome of the search process. Our task was to trust God for help in discernment. This was not a sales job by them or me; doors would open or not, what was important was that we remained faithful to God and to ourselves.

I do not know what tomorrow will bring for me or for this church. Doors will open or not but the task remains for us to stay listening to God’s Spirit each day.

Shalom: