Reflection for Easter

A Sermon for the Feast of the Resurrection All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC March 31, 2013 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Isaiah 65:17-25 1 Corinthians 15:19-26 John 20:1-18

From John’s Gospel for today:

Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

Tombs in Jesus’ day were not large affairs. They were caves carved out of the rock, and there was one big room about 4 by 6 feet and about 5 feet high, big enough to crouch in, with a slab to lay the body on, and there were several small holes off that room - the openings the size of a pizza oven and the depth the length of an adult - where a prepared body could be slid into. When a person died, the men of the family would carry the body to the burial site and place the body on the slab. Here the women of the family would wash the body and wrap it up with some spices to cover the smell of the decay. The body would then be placed into one of the openings and the opening covered over with rocks and masonry for about three years. Then the remains would be slid out, the bones placed into a small box, an ossuary, and the box would be buried.

However, if you were a capital criminal, your body would stay and decompose on the cross as a warning to others, until the bones fell to the ground and were finally thrown into a pit where other criminals’ bones had been tossed. Families were not allowed to mourn or bury criminals because that would be a sign that they were accomplices in the crime. But the political and religious authorities, wishing to avoid any marring of the festival time, allowed Jesus’ body to be taken down by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus and placed in Joseph’s own tomb which he would not need for several years. Joseph was doing a kindness since all of Jesus’ followers had fled to avoid possible arrest. It was too late in the day to prepare the body, and so the body was hastily wrapped up in a shroud and placed on the slab until the women could come and do their work after the Sabbath was over. And later there might be men - and that was unlikely since they were in hiding - showing up to place and wall the body in. That was the plan. But as the old Yiddish proverb goes, “Man plans and God laughs.”

Mary Magdalene could not mourn her loss, since she had work to do. It is one of the ways that we put off dealing with loss - we get busy so we don’t have to enter the empty place in our lives. The disciples could not mourn their loss because they were so busy being angry at themselves, each other, and the religious and political authorities. That is another way we avoid dealing with the empty place in our lives - if we can just find someone to blame. We tend to blame God if there is no other victim available; after all, if God were running a good and proper universe, this loss would not have happened. What we are really mourning is the re-discovery of the lack of control of the universe we want to have. In that loss of control we find what it means to be a creature rather than the creator. We find that we are fully human, and in this life, loss is part of being human. In the end we will lose everything, but in the midst of loss, we can gain our very selves. To be fully human is to give and let go and embrace a new life where we are not the center.

In our Lenten series we were looking at loss and how we find the strength to go through the loss into a new and deeper life. On the morning of the night we were to have the class on the loss of parents, I woke up as I was dreaming a song that I remember being popular when my father died, and I realized that the song pointed to the way I dealt with that loss. Does anybody remember a song in 1966 called “Winchester Cathedral”? 

 

The song is about a man who is sad over his girlfriend leaving him after he had planned to bowl her over with a day trip to Winchester Cathedral. The song goes:

Winchester Cathedral
You're bringing me down
You stood and you watched as
My baby left town

You could have done something
But you didn't try
You didn't do nothing
You let her walk by

Now everyone knows just how much I needed that gal
She wouldn't have gone far away
If only you'd started ringing your bell

In the song, the Cathedral, the religious outward sign of the presence and majesty of God, is a failure at being a good magic servant or genie who will grant all of our wishes. The song implies that God doesn’t care, and it reflects the popular idea of the 60’s that God and religion were anachronisms that outlived their usefulness in the human pursuit of individual happiness. The question “What has this God stuff done for me lately?” is answered “Not much it seems!”

When my father was dying, my older brother and I went to the hospital, my brother on leave from the Marines and I on leave from college. We were both facing the loss of my father and the way we avoided dealing with it was to fight with each other over the Vietnam War. Anger was easier to get to than the awareness of loss of control of our universe. I just kept feeding the anger against God, who could have done something and seemed not to try. For years, as long as I fed the anger against God’s incompetence to do what I wanted God to do, then I didn’t need to enter the depth of the loss. There are lots of ways to avoid going into those places that seems forsaken by God. We can use busyness, substances, denial, blame and anger. But the problem is that, when we get stuck in those ways, we cannot get into a new life.

Mary goes to the tomb and when there is no body on which to get busy, she runs away and will not enter into the God-forsaken place. The disciples cannot use their blame and anger anymore because they cannot figure out what is going on. The Gospel writer wants to tell us about how they hesitate to enter the tomb: if they enter the tomb they have to enter the God forsaken place. 

 

However, they enter into what they think is God forsaken and, while they do not understand what the deeper message of new life is, they come to an awareness that there is no place where God is forsaken. God has never left them- it may feel like it, but God’s spirit has been with them, ready to give strength in the time of loss. The older we get the more we realize that loss is part of life. The first necessary loss is when we lose our place as the center of the universe. Our ego has to lessen in order to give God room for God to bring in new life, to bring in what Isaiah in the first lesson refers to as the “creation of a new heaven and a new earth”.

When Mary returns to the tomb, Jesus as the Risen Christ tells her not to clutch on to him but to open her hands and heart so that we might all be reunited with God. For Mary, the letting go is the living into the new heaven and the new earth. There are two major feasts in the Christian year in which people show up at church - Christmas and Easter. Christmas is when we celebrate the divine entering the human and Easter is when we celebrate the human entering into the divine. These two feasts are mirrors of each other and they complement the fullness of each other. There is no real Christmas without Good Friday, there is no depth of nativity without death and resurrection, and there is no gain without redeemed loss.

Jesus dies because of the fear of the political and religious authorities of his time. They were afraid to let go of their power to control - a power that was only a fantasy in their minds, but they ordered their lives around this delusion. Jesus spent his ministry letting go of his life and ego, giving and forgiving, in order to participate in the ultimate reality of the ground of being. By giving up his life, Jesus becomes the Christ and teaches us how to live abundantly in this world and the next. Jesus dies because of the fear of others to lose control, and Jesus lives into the Christ because he gives up control as an entrance into a deeper life.

Today we celebrate an event that happened almost 2100 years ago, but if that singular event is all we celebrate than we miss the point. The meaning of the feast of the Resurrection is about today and the strength to allow losses to become doors through which we are able to receive from the power greater than ourselves the strength to live a life of letting go and giving ourselves for a love greater than our attachments. Following Christ we will rise to go deeper in this life and the next.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia, Alleluia!

Preparing for Easter- Easter Eve

A Reflection for Easter Eve All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. March 30, 2013 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Genesis 22:1-18   Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21  Ezekiel 37:1-14

Romans 6:3-11  Luke 24:1-12

On Easter Eve at the Vigil we have, for the last several years, done the Paschal Sermon attributed to St. John Chrysostom, the Bishop of Constantinople in the late 4^th and early 5^th Century. It is a great sermon; he probably didn’t write it, but that did not keep it from being read in almost every Eastern Orthodox Church around the world on this night. The theme is that Christ is the Victor over death and what seems like a defeat on the cross is actually a victory, as Christ descends into the abode of the dead and breaks open the gates of Hell, bringing the righteous into paradise. 

I like the story of the Harrowing of Hell because it fits nicely into my theology that there is no limit on the amount of God’s love. We like to put limits on love and forgiveness, saying things like “I would forgive him/her if only they would come to me say that they are sorry!” Jesus does not forgive when people say they are sorry; Jesus forgives before they are sorry. While the nails are still being driven into his hands, he forgives. 

 

On this Easter Eve we tell the stories of the God who is able to redeem all things. We tell the story of Isaac who is at the brink of death at the hands of his father, who thinks that God is a monster who demands his son’s death. We tell the story of the Hebrew Children caught at the Red Sea with Pharaoh’s armies bearing down on them, and God sends God’s spirit to open a path in the parting of the waters. We tell the story of when the prophet goes into the Valley of the Dry Bones, and God’s spirit breathes on the bones and brings them back to life. We tell the story of Paul’s lesson to us that we are being raised with Christ. We tell the story of the women who come to the God-forsaken place of the dead to find the body of Jesus, and they meet two men in dazzling clothes who tell them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.” 

 

I think people do want to get away from God because they believe God in a vengeful sadist who wants to punish us as we deserve, and so there are these Hells that people make of their lives, where they think that they are safe from the Hound of Heaven, as Frances Thompson called God’s love. I think that God is gracious and allows people to stay in the Hells they have made for all eternity, but God’s love never stops calling. Jesus tells us that God is the father of the Prodigal who keeps looking for us to return to the divine love. God continues to call with irresistible grace until Hell is emptied. God does things differently than we do, as God sings in Isaiah (55: 8-11 The Message):

“I don’t think the way you think.
    The way you work isn’t the way I work.”
        God’s Decree.
“For as the sky soars high above earth,
    so the way I work surpasses the way you work,
    and the way I think is beyond the way you think.
Just as rain and snow descend from the skies
    and don’t go back until they’ve watered the earth,
Doing their work of making things grow and blossom,
    producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry,
So will the words that come out of my mouth
    not come back empty-handed.
They’ll do the work I sent them to do,
    they’ll complete the assignment I gave them.

On Easter Eve we gather in the dark, because that is where we spend a lot of our time as we long for the light. We light candles to remind ourselves that God’s light never goes out and continues to flicker in the recesses of our souls. Tonight may you find the light to drive the darkness away.

Jesus remember me

A Reflection on Good Friday                                                       All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. 

March 29, 2013                                                                                                  Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

As part of the service today we sing, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”  We did not sing, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord”, because we sang it on Palm Sunday.

Good Friday did not have to happen. I don’t believe that Jesus had to die on a cross because of our original sin to satisfy the justice of God by having Jesus pay the cost of accumulated sin. I don’t believe that the loving God requires an innocent victim to be slaughtered as an atonement. I do believe, however, that Good Friday was probably inevitable given the circumstances of corrupt political and religious institutions that used violence to control the thoughts and actions of those who were under their control.  I do believe that, out of cowardice, laziness, or frustration, we tend to go along with evil actions if those actions are presented as being for the greater good. 

What if I was there when they crucified my Lord? If I were part of the crowd that agreed for Jesus to be crucified, I wonder if I would have said things like.

Jesus is a disrupter; he keeps messing things up wanting to change our vision of the world. He wants to tear down the structure of the Temple. Well, yes the Temple authorities and practices are venal but, you know, so many people find this kind of worship helpful. The Temple has been part of the understanding of the people for a thousand years and it does do some good and it is good for the economy with its trickle down effect. What would they have without it? Isn’t it better to leave it alone, “to bear those ills we have than to fly to others we know not of”? 

Jesus does not urge the people to rise up and fight the Roman occupiers and that makes it look like he is not a good patriot. Jesus keeps saying that we are citizens first of the Kingdom of God rather of the nation of our birth, all of us Jews or gentiles, native born or foreigners are connected to each other by having the same heavenly parent. He suggests that the first thing to change is not the outside of the governments but the inside, the heart, the will of the people. He goes on and on about stopping our love affair of violence and trying to get our own advantage over our neighbor.  But come on; governments are easier to change than people.

Jesus wants us to change our economic structure around. He keeps urging us to care for the poor and, while we have nothing against charity for the deserving poor, how about all those people who are getting a free ride? The first thing we need to do is increase efficiency and order and, out of those profits, then charity will get its fair share. That is the trouble with this country - that we have too many prophets giving disruptive message which get in the way of profits. 

Well, of course there is an injustice going on here, but come on, I have a life to lead. What good is it going to do me if I just tick off or go against the popular will. I’m too busy right now and I have to pick and choose my battles.

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.” Jesus, help me to remember you as I live in my Kingdom so that I might realize where my true allegiance is.

Reflection for Maundy Thursday

A Reflection on Maundy Thursday                                             All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C March 28, 2013                                                                                                 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

In the Gospel of John, Jesus begins and ends his ministry with his disciples by turning the world upside down with the use of water. You remember the first miracle at the wedding of Cana in Galilee. The way people ate at the table was to recline on a couch which would be placed around tables of food like spokes around the hub of a wheel, with their feet facing outward. Resting on the left arm, the guests would reach in with their right hand to get food out of the common bowls.  Roads were primitive and most were not paved because roads were also used as receptacles for household garbage and chamber pots.   Feet were filthy, and there were large pots of water there in which guests would wash their feet. The regular people would wash their own feet, and honored guests would have their feet washed by the servants. Only on rare occasions would the really important guests have their feet washed by the host, and that was usually a political act to show how important the guests was, like a King or a creditor who held the mortgage.

Washing feet was not something people really wanted to do; in fact, servants could not be forced to do it since it could be humiliating, but with the state of the roads, it was something that needed to be done. Feet were also intimate. When the authors of the Bible wanted to use a circumlocution for “genitals”, they would use the word “feet”.  In Exodus when Moses is on the road to go back to Egypt, Moses’s wife circumcises their child with a flint and touches the foreskin to Moses’s “feet”. In Ruth when Naomi sends Ruth to seduce the sleeping Boaz, she instructs her to “uncover Boaz’ feet”. When the angels appear to Isaiah in the Temple, their six wings were two to fly, two to cover eyes, and two to cover “feet”.  In the comedies in the early Greek theatre, the main comic characters always wore exaggerated codpieces and, as the comedies became less risqué by the Roman Censors and later by the Christian moralists, these were later replaced with oversized shoes, which we still see with modern circus clowns. Even today when the newlyweds drive away after the wedding, shoes are often tied to the getaway car.  

The water for the washing of the feet was considered beneath notice, but Jesus uses that water and turns it into wine, the wine that was proclaimed as the best wine of the feast. The message is that God uses that which is lowly and overlooked to do God’s work.  Jesus sets the tone for a ministry of humility.

At the end of his earthly ministry with his disciples, Jesus has supper with them. Chances are that the disciples had already washed their own feet as they came into the house, before they reclined down to supper. Jesus interrupts the meal by getting up and taking off his clothes. I don’t know about you, but if my host starts to take off his clothes, I start looking for an exit.  Jesus then takes a towel and wraps it about him and offers to wash their feet. Remember the feet are already washed; there is no need for this activity unless Jesus is trying to make a point. 

It seems to me that there are two main points he wants to make. I think that Jesus is acting out a metaphor of his ministry. Jesus, who was part of God in heaven, empties himself to become human and then returns to heaven after his work is done. At supper Jesus leaves his place of honor and, after emptying himself out to be a servant, he resumes his place of honor when his work is done.  Jesus invites people to follow his example and become vulnerable with each other. I think the second point is about how we are to deal with our enemies. Jesus will wash the feet of the one who will betray him. He could have stopped Judas, but he chose to love him instead.

Feet are how we stand on the earth, our connection and orientation to the reality of life. Karl Jung said, “When you walk with naked feet, how can you ever forget the earth.” In the same way, when your naked feet are washed in love as a remembrance of Jesus’ love, how can you ever forget that you did not earn that love you are given?

The church continues this ritual of emptying out oneself for the neighbor and the enemy. The new Pope will wash the feet of youth in prison as an outward and visible sign of his ministry. I invite you to this metaphor of Grace. All may- some should- none must.

Homily for Alex Lassiter 3-16-13

A Homily for the Celebration of the Life of Alex “Al” Lassiter                                        Jeanette’s Pier, Nags Head, NC                                March 16, 2013                      

                                         Thomas E. Wilson, Chaplain

We come together to re-member Al Lassiter. To re-member does not just mean to go through a mental exercise, like remembering the capital of South Dakota, but to call to our present moment a loved and important member of our lives. To re-member is to have time and space collapse on each other and to connect the member again with us one more time.

There is a book of stories by Ray Bradbury called Dandelion Wine about events that occurred during the summer of 1928.  In one chapter the young boys in this small town go the home of an old man who is a human time machine, and he tells stories of his youth in the Civil War and the Old West, and as he tells the stories they hear the yelps of the coyotes, they smell the buffalo, they see the Indians, and they taste the dust from their ponies. When the old man dies, the buffalo start to disappear.  To remember means to place within the present stream of continuing memory those we love as they live within us.

Alex was not all that big at spending time trying to define God. When one of his nurses asked him about his Spiritual life, he said, “I guess I am probably an agnostic.”  The he paused and smiled and continued, “Maybe a dyslexic agnostic - I’m not sure I fully believe in dogs.” The 12^th century theologian Anselm would say that God is that which is greater than could ever be imagined. If you could imagine it, whatever it is you imagined was not God. In fact, whatever you said after “God is” was probably too limited.  As Al’s mother said, “Al never wasted a minute of his life.” 

For Al there was something much greater than himself, and this which was greater than himself was what caused him to have an awe about life and gave him an excuse to love and accept love. You can see this awe in his art - there are colors and images so bright and vibrant that they had to come not from nature but from the connection to that which was the ground of being under nature, that spiritual reality which he had, the spiritual gift to see and reflect in his art and life. You can see this awe in the hours he spent surfing, connecting with the waves - not to show off, not to be noticed, not to be “better” than someone else in competition. His mother called him a “sole”,  S O L E surfer, but I would call him a “soul” “SOUL” surfer, in that his deeper self - we do not have souls, we are souls - his deeper self connected to the deeper meaning of life. 

Al surfing

You can see this awe when he came across people, people made in the image of God, who needed help. How many surfing trips changed focus when he gave away his possessions to the people he met who were living in poverty? How many kids without a place to stay in the community were brought home to find a place of refuge?  His mother said, “Al never brought home stray animals, but he did bring home stray children.” One of our tasks may be to forgive Al for when he would shut us out. When he was in the hospital, he always wanted the door closed because he did not want to be a burden, and he limited the number of people who he allowed to minister to him. He was so used to giving he found it hard to receive.

Al lived all of the 23 years of his life around the water of the Outer Banks. My own metaphor for life and death has been influenced by my living close to water. For me it was rivers and canoeing and rafting which meant having to read the river, to understand it, to be at one with the water. I see life and death as part of a continuous stream of energy, the water of life that begins in the heart of God. My experience resonates with the visions of the Prophet Ezekiel and the writer of the New Testament Book of Revelation of the River of the Waters of Life flowing from the Throne of God. 

We begin in the overflowing heart of God which allows our ancestors to be carried by love, and from their love we flow into the waters of the womb of a fellow swimmer in the waters of life. When the time comes for waters of the swimmer’s womb to break, we flow with all others and, as the old Gospel song states, “gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river”. This River of Love flows to the sea and returns to the heart of God. We are moistened by the one current in different streams of experience. On our journey, we are helped by other swimmers as they teach us to love and to read and have awe for the River. Others may hinder us. One of the things we do today is to remember Al who infected fellow swimmers with love. I listened to Brandon who tells us he was his friend for life, and to Julia and Joanna and Sara, who all returned that love faithfully. Part of our task is to spend time together and tell stories about our friend, because true friends remain so long after death. We mourn because we think we have lost him. Relationships are formed but the river continues to flow, and as the ancient Greek Philosopher, Heraclites, reminds, we “cannot step in the same river twice.” The River changes and we change; we do not have the power to remain static in one place as everything changes. If we are lucky, we will thankfully hold on to memories of our time together. If we are lucky, we will allow the river’s forgiving cleansing to wash away all the debris from our memories that gets in the way of thankfulness. For the River changes and we change. Others will reach the great sea before we do, and we may want to hold on to them, but the river moves us and them, and we all empty into the sea where we flow back to the heart of that which is greater than ourselves.

Today at the Intersection of the waters, as we hear the water beat up against the beach, who are the people who we still carry in our souls? I remember and treasure friends. I carry and continue to work on forgiving those I need to set free and turn them over to the power greater than myself, to give myself the strength to treasure and forgive so I may swim graciously uninhibited. Al was able to sing, surf, create, and love uninhibited. He did not sell his soul out for the approval of others, he went his own way and that way was love.

There are ways you can remember Al. One way is to contribute to the foundation set up in his name. However, if you really want to fully re-member Al, then ride the waves as if you were connected to the deeper reality. If you want to re-member Al, then create by seeing with the deeper eye of the spirit, be generous and considerate to others. If you want to re-member Al, then be gracious in accepting love as a gift rather than your due. If you want to re-member Al, then love, for Al’s sake, love the way Al taught us how to love.