A Reflection on Mary, Martha and an Anniversary

A Reflection on IX Pentecost (Proper 11)                                            

 All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC 

July 21, 2013                                                                          

Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Amos 8:1-12            Colossians 1:15-28            Luke 10:38-42

When I first started this business of being a Priest I focused in on the externals of liturgy - am I doing it “right”?; of theology – am I teaching it “right”?; of budget, how much money was going out versus how much money was coming in; and of attendance, how many people were at the services or in classes or at functions because they were for me a sign of how I was doing as a Priest. In the testosterone-loaded clergy meetings, within the first five minutes of a conversation with a new clergy acquaintance, information about the size of each other’s parish would enter the conversation.  Under the surface of mutual support at the clergy meetings, we were always in competition with each other, and at the yearly convention we would check the numbers of the other churches of the diocese to see how we were doing in comparison. When I came here, I knew it was a smaller parish, and it freed me of the competition inside my soul. Instead of seeing myself in comparison to another, I got to see myself without comparisons. Not only are comparisons odious, but as the character Dogberry in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing expresses the malapropism, “Comparisons are odorous”.  And he was right - they smell to high heaven.

Mary and Martha are in the process of comparing each other as to who serves Jesus better.  Is Mary’s quiet contemplation better or is Martha’s dedicated service better? The answer of course is “Yes”. Each is better for them, and they are different but each beloved. The differences are less important than the faithfulness as they work together and respect the different gifts they bring to the relationship. One of the things I keep pushing parishioners to do is to seriously ask themselves the question “What is my gift that I can give to the church?”, not “What is the job I should do in the church?”.  The gift we can give is ourselves, the thing that gives us energy when we do it. 

One of the things I do with couples as they enter into premarital counseling is to ask them to take a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment, and I ask them to bring in the results as we look over their communication and fighting skills. The MBTI is a questionnaire that asks people to make choices on how they see reality, process information, and make lifestyle choices. Catherine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, designed the tool using Carl Jung’s psychological insights on the personality in which Jung said that each of us lives with a dynamic tension of sets of opposites within ourselves. For instance, each of us live in a dynamic of male and female; I am a male and that is dominant, but since I am a product of a dynamic  genetic interaction between a male and female, a mother and father, I have both within me.  The female shadow of myself, what Jung called the “anima”, needs to be recognized and honored to give me depth, for something without a shadow is flat and one dimensional.

According to Jung, the dynamic tension of sets of opposites is given to us in attitude as well, which has as its opposites the Outward Turning or Extraversion (E) and the Inward Turning or Introversion (I). In the Mary and Martha story, Mary seems to be content to quietly listen and mull things over inside herself, while Martha is not content to mull things over but goes to Jesus to enlist his help about what to do with Mary. No one is 100 % one way or the other, but we tend to go to our strength and live out a preference.

The next three dynamic tensions of opposites are in the functions of how we see, judge, and respond to reality. The way we perceive reality is either sensing (S), through the use of sight, touch, taste, smell, and sound, or through intuition (N) which is based on hunches. The next function is how we judge the worth of what we see, the dynamic tension between thinking (T) and feeling (F). The last dynamic is the Lifestyle tension between perceiving (P) which wants to get a bigger picture and judging (J) which urges “get it done”. 

In the Mary and Martha story, Mary seems to see the world based on the intuition that Jesus is a man she can trust, and she judges her experience based on the deep feeling she has as she is listening to Jesus and she wants to hear more.  On the other hand, Martha’s view of reality is dominated by the way the dinner is being prepared as she touches the plates, tastes the food, sees how the tables are set, smells the food burning, etc.  She judges worth by the thoughts she has about the importance of this guest and the task that needs to be accomplished - and she wants it done now! In the MBTI Mary would be an INFP, an introverted, intuitive, feeling, perceiving personality, while Martha would be an ESTJ, an extroverted, sensing, thinking, judging personality.

They are different and yet they both need each other, for the dominance of one helps to re-enforce the shadow of the other. If both were introverts (I), they would not have invited Jesus; if they were both sensates (S), they would both be in the kitchen and no one would pay attention to their guest; if they were both feelers (F), the dinner would be a mess; and if they were both Perceiving (P), the dishes would never get done.

There are so many stories about Jesus.  Why did Luke include this one? I think Luke sees the house of Mary and Martha as the church in miniature, as different people come together, respecting and honoring their differences, to give the different gifts they each have to the guest who comes to dwell with, and within, them. All the divisions we want to think are so important, as in last week’s story of the “Good Samaritan” where the perceived enemy is really the true neighbor, fade away if we honor the differences. Luke will continue with that theme of having Jew and Gentile, men and women, saint and sinner, leper and healthy, coming together - for nothing separates us from the love of Christ. 

The problem of the institutional church is that we tend to divide over differences, wanting to be “right” rather than seeing the sacred ground that binds us together. The cross, the very symbol of our faith, is the dynamic tension between two opposites, the horizontal and the vertical - the horizontal holding east and west in tension, and the vertical holding heaven and earth in dynamic tension – and speaks to our unconscious mind, calling us to the deeper truth of who is this Christ within us. The church splinters over the unimportant stuff and neglects the deeper message.

The way I use the results of the MBTI with couples in the pre-marital process is to help them see that they were attracted to each other by the differences they saw in each other, intriguing the neglected side, as they risk becoming whole; the introvert (I) is attracted to the (E) extrovert’s ease in dealing with people, the (S) sensate is touched by the (N) intuitive’s ability to read the undercurrent of the world, the (F) feeler finds a fuller sense of reality by the (T) thinker’s use of facts, and the stuck-in-a-rut, nose-to- the-grindstone (J) judger is freed by the spontaneity of the (P) perceiver. The problems arise when challenges and outside stresses come into their lives, and each person anxiously wants to go to their own strength and is annoyed that the other person sees and reacts to reality in a different way. 

This is what is happening with Mary and Martha in the Gospel lesson.  Martha is so frustrated that she tries to triangulate Jesus into making Mary feel guilty as a way to change Mary. In marriages when stresses build up, the couple can get so frustrated that they want to make the other into their own image so that they can win the fight and be “right”. But the secret of marriage is not that one plus one equals one, where one person is dominant and the other gives in, nor one plus one equals two, as when marital partners become two roommates who share the same bed but have grown into strangers, but one plus one equals three, a trinity united by honor and respect of differences, living in the dynamic dance of a relationship. The difficulty is that sometimes we get so busy doing family and work stuff, Jesus in the story uses the word “distracted”, that we don’t spend the time to honor the differences as gifts rather than viewing them as hindrances.

Today at the 10:30 service we will have a renewal of vows on the 50^th anniversary of the wedding of Tom and Kay O’Brien. These are two different people who at times will disagree but who, at the same time, honor the differences - as the French say, “Vive la difference!” They see each other not as competitors for the same limited space in a universe of scarcity, but as two individuals who share the same sacred space together in a universe of abundance, connecting the Christ with and within them. The church does weddings not because we want to throw holy water on relationships but because healthy relationships remind us of who we were called to be as a church. They remind us of what the church can be if only we work out our differences with love and respect and honoring the Christ living within and with each of us.

Thank you, Tom and Kay, for helping us see in the way you treat each other the Christ reality in a different light.

"Here I stand"

Parson Tom’s Tomes

“Here I stand I can do no other!” It is a good line attributed to Martin Luther during his trial at the Diet of Worms, even though historians can find no trace of it in the accounts of the trial itself at the time. Luther was “Standing his ground” against the accusations of heresy by the Roman church, in which he was an Augustinian friar. The church wanted to “Stand its own ground” from the assaults on its theology, and therefore declared Luther an outlaw which meant anyone could kill him with impunity. From Luther’s stand the ground shook under the feet of the comforting illusion of solid, unchangeable, united, Western Christendom and we get the Reformation and so began a series of religious wars that lasted for centuries and the blood of millions poured into the ground from the slaughter from both sides.

There is something appealing about “standing your ground” and I have a tendency to point to the times of “standing my ground” with more than a hint of pride. However, the recent events in Florida with the trial George Zimmerman slaying of Travon Martin in which Zimmerman was acquitted because the law allowed him to “stand his ground” with deadly force made me want to review my pride.

I remember a conversation in the early hours of the morning in the dormitory when I was a freshman- almost a half century ago. The boy/men (I was 17 the others were 18 and older) were discussing how it was legal to kill another person. It was proposed by a pre-law student, oh so wise in the ways of the world- as we all thought we were, and agreed by the group, that if one shot a burglar trying to break into their house, they would need to drag the body into the house and say that the burglar had made it into the house and say the shooter acted in self-defense in defense of his home, a man’s castle. I remember thinking at the time that I had nothing worth stealing that was worth the life of another human being.

Almost 40 years later, when I accumulated a bunch more “stuff” someone stole a set of porch furniture one dark night off the front porch of the Rectory, having used bolt cutters to cut the chains bolted into the floor as a theft deterrent. I was filled with red rage and wanted to catch the culprits and do major damage to them. After calming down and lots of prayers, I realized it was not that the stuff was that important, but it was ego, my pride, that had been assaulted. I did not want to live in a life in which the comforting illusion of in vulnerability was exposed.

The problem is that we do live in a world in which we are vulnerable. My pride invites me to “stand my ground” but my faith says it really is not my ground for that on which I stand is “holy ground” and the space between me and another person is sacred.  I can only speak for myself, but I invite you to ask yourselves on what it is that you “stand your ground”?

SHALOM     

A Reflection on how we treat strangers

A Reflection for VIII Pentecost (Proper 10)                  All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C.  July 14, 2013                                                                     Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Amos 7:7-17                       Colossians 1:1-14                             Luke 10:25-37

How do you treat a stranger who comes to town?

Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem; anybody with any brains knows that this is an up and coming prophet who is gaining a following. A prophet is one who sees, a seer, what God is saying to God’s people in their time and place. That is both good news and bad news. The good news is that some people who are hearing the good news are overjoyed because it challenges their view of the universe - that they are the isolated center of the universe - and they now understand that God is with them in their daily life.  They rejoice in thanksgiving of knowing God’s love in their lives. The bad news is that some people who are hearing the good news are threatened because it challenges their view of the universe - that they are the isolated center of the universe - and now they are in fear that that they have missed the point of their lives. As usually happens when people get defensive, they try to limit the damage by attacking the messenger.

I have spent a lot of years in academic settings - one undergraduate degree, working on two Masters’ degrees, most of a Doctorate, being on the faulty of a college, and being a chaplain at a university - and you can tell when an academic is threatened by a presenter or a visiting lecturer. It is called the time for questions after the lecture. The question goes something like this: “Professor, could you expound on the particular point you were making when you said . . . ?” But that question is not the real question because the real question is the follow up question, which contains a “gotcha”. In the case of today’s Gospel lesson, the lawyer asks the softball question about what must he do to have abundant life. Since he is a lawyer and not a Pharisee, he probably doesn’t believe in an afterlife as a reward, so  “abundant life” for him means having God pleased with him and God giving him his just reward of material prosperity in this life. The question is settled by the quoting of the law, and so he now asks Jesus the “gotcha” question, “But, who is my neighbor?” He wants to narrow the definition down so he can calm his anxiety and congratulate himself on being justified by God. The answer he wants is the literal definition which is “the people who live next door to you, your family, and close friends and partners.”

Except Jesus tells a story about the enemy, the stranger, the undocumented alien, the religious heretic, the half breed, all rolled into one as the neighbor, which we call the Good Samaritan story. The neighbor is the one who acts in love and how does it change you when your enemy is acting as your neighbor. How well did the answer go over? Well, the lesson ends on verse 37 and verse 38 begins with the words, “Now as they went their way they came to another village . . .” so the implication is that Jesus and his followers were given the bum’s rush out of town.

How do we treat the person who is different from us? I think that is one of the themes of the other two lessons as well. In the Hebrew Testament lesson from Amos, Amos is a visitor from the Southern Kingdom of Judah, and he is attending a sort of Bi-Centennial event in Bethel, the Spiritual Center of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.   The Kingdom’s elite are celebrating their material wealth and prosperity, rejoicing that it is God’s will that some have prospered. The Kingdom’s prosperity is high but narrow in that it is enjoyed by only a small portion of elite, the one percent of their time and place, and built on the exploitation of the poor, the use of a regressive tax system, corrupt government, and crony courts to cement their advantage. Amos is not a licensed prophet, a lapdog of the state bought and paid for by the rich. His profession is a shepherd and a dresser of the sycamore fig fruit, which is food for the poor, but Amos says that God called him to be a seer, one who sees what God might be saying to God’s people - in this case, good news for the poor and bad news for the corrupt.  How does the message go over?

If you read the paper you may have seen how the government in Raleigh is dealing with people who give that same kind of message, standing up for the poor against the rich and well connected, on what is called “Moral Mondays”, as of now over 700 hundred people have been arrested. Last week my daughter sent me a picture of  my ex-wife, her mother, being led away in plastic handcuffs by two burly policemen on that Moral Monday in Raleigh. They get arrested for disturbing the peace and since we live in a democracy, they submit to arrest as part of the faith in civil disobedience. Leonard Pitts wrote in his column last Wednesday: “Civil disobedience is, almost by definition, an act of faith. Not faith in government, nor even in law, but faith in vindication. It is an act that says, I am right, so I refuse to obey this law and will take my medicine until you see that I am right.”

Amos and Jesus as seers do not say they are right but how they see that God is right, and for that they were willing to pay the price in the hope of vindication. Vindication for Jesus is in the resurrection and for Amos that his words still resonate as he says: “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Jesus lives in 1^st century Judea and Amos faces 8^th century Israel and both were not democracies.  Amaziah, the Master of Ceremonies at the Celebration, brings Amos to the attention of the authorities for disturbing the peace and says to Amos, "O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom." Amos is declared an enemy of the status-quo and we don’t know what really happens to him. A legend written down seven centuries later says that he was tortured and killed by Amaziah’s son.  That is one way to treat people who are different from us - label them as outside agitators, enemies, strangers, undocumented aliens, and religious heretics all rolled into one.

In the letter to the Colossians, the writer is probably one of Paul’s followers using Paul’s thoughts, when Paul was the stranger, who was also the seer, the one who sees and proclaims God’s message.  How does he approach these strangers? He prays for them and gives thanks for them. He treats them as neighbors and is willing to help them and share their load and calls them brothers and sisters and fellow saints. “Saints” does not mean people who are good but people who are loved by God.

I remember 523 Sundays ago a stranger walked into this church called All Saints’. The search committee had vetted him and the vestry had hired him, but to most people, he was a stranger intent to be a seer, one who sees and proclaims what God sees and is doing. He wanted to go to work immediately and assume the role of Rector, proclaiming that the stranger indeed had a place here, but the vestry had said that he would assume the position at the beginning of August and not the second Sunday of July. So the stranger was nervous because he could not dazzle them or have the authority of preaching from the pulpit or officiating at the altar, and all he had for protection was the good will of the people, some of whom would probably not agree with all of his ideas. But the people, who all came to the Outer Banks from somewhere else, knew something about being a stranger themselves. Like Amos, you have stood up for the poor and for justice for the outsider. Like the writer of the letter to the Colossians, you prayed for and gave thanks for the stranger - me and my family - and treated us neighbors, agreed to disagree, and were willing to help us and share our loads and call us brother and sister and fellow saints of All Saints’. Like the Samaritan you have helped bind my wounds, and put me up. I thank you for that following of the Good News and for being neighbor to me and mine and so many others.

Come; let us continue to work on how we can see together what God sees and is doing.

A Reflection on Thoreau’s night in jail versus Psyche’s journey

Reflection on Thoreau’s night in jail versus Psyche’s journey

Two stories which are at war in my mind this morning. One is an anniversary this week of  an event on July 12, 1846 , when Henry David Thoreau was arrested and spent the night in the Concord Jail as an act of Civil Disobedience for refusing to pay the poll tax to protest the government’s policy of support of slavery, and/or another account against the imperialistic was on Mexico. The story goes that he was visited by his friend and neighbor the transcendental philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson, through the bars in exasperation asked, “Henry, what are you doing in there?” Thoreau replied, “Waldo, the question is what are you doing out there?”

I always loved that story, which neither Emerson nor Thoreau record in their writings, because it calls to mind the duty of all of us to stand up for justice. My daughter sent me word that her mother, my ex-wife, had spent the night in jail in Raleigh for protesting the actions of the NC General Assembly in its cutting of benefits to the unemployed as a way to afford a tax cut to the wealthy and well connected. She has been one of 700 citizens arrested so far as part of the Moral Monday protests. The old activist in me is asking myself, why am I up in the woods in Maine when there is so much work to do?

Yesterday, as part of my quiet time by the bay, I was reading a book in preparation for the Dream Group Leaders Class starting next month. The book Natural Spirituality  by Joyce Rockwell Hudson. is an introduction to using the insights of C. G. Jung to explore the depths of the unconscious  in which dreams are a way to reconnect to the true Self, the Christ within us. Dreams, which use symbols as a way to communicate with us, are a way around the rational ego’s attempts to keep everything on the surface. Hudson retells an account of the old Greek myth of Psyche and Eros. One part of the is when Psyche (Greek means soul) out of her longing for the God, Eros (Greek for love), has to go into the underworld. She is armed with two coins which she keeps in her mouth so she cannot say anything and two barley cakes, one in each hand so she will not be tempted to use her hands to do work. The coins are to pay the ferryman who takes the dead souls across the River Styx, the way into Hades, one to get in and one to get out. The two barley cakes are to distract the fierce three headed dog guarding the gates of Hell, one to get in and the other to get out. An interpretation of that part of the myth is to let nothing get in the way of our journey into the depths of the unconscious where we find our true selves.

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I hold these two stories in tension as in the same time I wrote a sermon for this Sunday when I return to work in the church on the Outer Banks. One of the lessons in the lectionary is Luke’s account of the parable of the Good Samaritan. In that story the Priest and Levite are so busy doing religious stuff that they pass by the injured person on the road; which brings us back to the question, “What are you doing out there Wilson?” 

 The Inner Journey is where my energy is at this time.

Reflection in Maine after a family reunion

It’s morning in Maine and it has started to rain and I have gone in to sit at Bob Stickland's computer to write down some thoughts. 

After a highway crowded with vacationers (like us) returning from or going to their destinations- highway I- 95 going in the opposite direction was bumper to bumper from Maine to Massachusetts.  We were coming from the family reunion in Pennsylvania and going to visit friends in Maine and we arrived road weary but strangely invigorated after the last 8 miles on a two lane road with no traffic and now going so slowly we could appreciate the rock formations on the curves, the people walking their dogs in the early evening. Our friends greeted us and apologized for the heat- they had been trying to cool down the upstairs all day- this is a house and area which are strangers to air conditioning. The upstairs- sleeping quarters for guests and children are rustic and besides why would anyone need air conditioning in Maine on the coast? But the world is changing and apologies are given for it not being a luxury suite in a hotel. But I came for the company and the simplicity of life in this summer cabin on the water outside of Friendship, Maine.

Not the dock but it sure looks like it

We went to bed early (9:00) and I got up late for me (5:00). It was cool in the evening and very cool in the morning waking up to the sound of lobster boats busy at work. I climbed down the narrow stairs and went out to the porch and watched the work of the lobstermen and listened to the birds sing and signal to each other from the trees in the forest to the gulls, ducks and mergansers in the water. My mind slowed down and instead of reading the books on Jung that I had packed to prepare for the course I was taking beginning in late August, I stopped and gave thanks for the honor of being alive and being with friends and family.

I thought over the last several days of being with the Farmer family reunion. I am not a Farmer by occupation or name but my father’s sister married Len Farmer and the six Farmers children and the four Wilson children shared two of the same grandparents. Three of the Farmer boy cousins, Len Jr., Joe, and Michael have died and we were placing Mike’s ashes into the family grotto on his “farm”. The family had gone on a dinner cruise on a paddle wheeler on the Susquehanna River and OH the noise of the children from two year olds to teenagers greeting their cousins and running up and down the two decks! It reminded me of the times when I was a child and the cousins would visit- yes it had been a year since we had last seen each other but the time evaporated and the renewing began. My father of course would never have allowed all that noise and would have to stop us numerous times- but this time there was no one who wanted the noise to stop. My cousin Susan and I were the only members of those cousin gatherings of long ago alive and attending this gathering. At the family picture taken Pat and I were put in the front row seats with the younger children at our feet and the younger members standing behind – about 50+ of us -because we were the part of the senior members- how a half century changes your place in a picture. But everybody was there. I looked at Len, Joe and Mike’s children and grandchildren and saw their fathers in how they laughed or got serious. Being right and wrong in matters did not seem to matter. It reminded me of a poem by Rumi: “Beyond the ideas of right doing and wrong doing there is a field. I will meet you there.”

One member of the clan got off by himself and downwind smoked a cigar. My grandfather used to smoke a cigar- heck all the adults used to smoke then - but now he was the only one of these new generations gathered to smoke. I was flooded by memories of how the grandchildren would go into his room and he would give us tootsie rolls and ask us how we were doing- and always the cigar smell of that room. I thought it was great! The me memories blossomed as I thought of riding in Little Len’s (that is what the cousins called Len Jr. in the southern fashion) new convertible with the wind blowing all around us and my grandmother had to put a scarf over her hair and act as if she was having fun. I remember Mike getting into trouble yet again and we thought he was so cool. I remembered Joe’s wedding to this absolutely gorgeous Italian-American girl in Scranton and how I was bowled over with her beauty and the fact that she had learned how fix food for Joe and his diabetes and nephritis because she loved him. That memory was even greater as I looked at his widow – still gorgeous and all of their straight from central casting darkly Italian looking children and grandchildren- so different from the Scotch-Irish, French and English pale skin types but now so much a part of the family – as she helped Mike’s widow Jan who had been cooking for weeks, and Len’s children and Susan children put all the home made food on the groaning tables for breakfast and dinner. I saw the original cousins’ boys gathered around the grills cooking the ribs, steaks, hot dogs, and chicken wings and sharing stories of their children and sharing advise about should you allow a 15 year old to go steady? , and about how some of them were doing at college.

Pat and I did not stay for the whole reunion- we are the old people now and we left early to go back to the motel to get rest for the long trip the next day. The reunion would continue for hours more as they would gather around the fire pit and tell stories of the past and hopes for the future. It was a blessed day and a blessed life.