Thanksgiving for Don Bryan

A Reflection for Thanksgiving Day All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC November 28, 2013 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Deuteronomy 26:1-11 Psalm 100 Philippians 4:4-9 John 6:25-35

Today’s Epistle lesson is taken from Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi and urges them to couch everything in thanksgiving. This is the holiday called Thanksgiving Day; so what are you thankful for? Well, let’s start off with Paul’s advice on what to think about in thanksgiving:

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Are there people or things that come to mind? This coming Sunday, December 1, we have a concert coming up by the Simon String Quartet.

This sanctuary has the best acoustics for music, and I am thankful for hearing beautiful music wonderfully played. Yet I cannot just give thanks for the music concert alone. I have to think of the person who made this music program

possible - Don Bryan. Don died this last week, and he heads my list of people I am thankful for this year. Don knew how to love, which is an art not a science. The concert is sponsored by the Don and Catherine Bryan Cultural Series, which Don set up in thankfulness for the joy of the creative arts that he and Kay shared. Don lived his life not just feeling or talking about love but by doing love.

Don knew how to love. He loved his country, and when Pearl Harbor hit, he enlisted in the Army and ended up in the Army Air Corps in World War II where he was put to work as a gunner on a B-17. It was a new kind of war, and the America Air Corps had a lot to learn about strategic bombers. When Don started doing the daylight bombing of Germany, crews stood a less than even chance of returning. Much later as the tactics changed and longer range fighter escorts were developed, the odds improved, but it is estimated that over one third of the flight crews of B-17s did not survive the war.

Don was an artist, and there is this painting he did of a gunner looking out at the viewer, and you can see the apprehension in his eyes which show above the oxygen mask as the B-17 is being attacked. It was a memory self-portrait looking into his soul and the soul of every veteran, full of the horror of war. Don was not a war lover, yet because he loved his country, he did the full tour. However, he said that the next time would not be in such a vulnerable position, and so he qualified as a fighter pilot and served in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, retiring as a full Colonel. Don was not “a summer soldier or sunshine patriot”, rather he loved the only way he could, by doing.

Forty years ago, after his 30 year hitch was up, he retired to a place he loved, Nags Head, where he and Kay would be able to slow down and he could paint. Nags Head was really a rugged place where people went to get away from it all. As the saying went, “It was not the end of the world but you could see it from there.” He loved Nags Head and he did not just feel or talk about that love, he worked to make it a place of honor. He served on many state and county commissions and committees of governance and served as Mayor of Nags Head for 13 years. The joke Don told was that the hardest part of moving into Spring Arbor was that he had to change his zip code from his beloved Nags Head to Kill Devil Hills. 

 

He moved into Spring Arbor because Don loved Catherine, his wife; it was a love not just of feeling or words but of actions. As Kay got more and more ill, Don changed his life by taking care of her. The hardest part of Don’s last illness was that he was physically separated from her and could not be there for her because, for Don, love was what you do.

Don loved art, the creative process, and did not waste time feeling or talking, but he set up the foundation as an outward and visible sign of his and Kay’s love for each other, in thanksgiving for their life together on these Outer Banks, and to encourage all sorts of arts. The foundation’s inaugural performance was a breathtaking piano concert. Subsequent events have included a performance of “An Evening with Thomas Jefferson”,

a lecture by the Historian David McCullough who was here researching his next book on the Wright Brothers and the beginnings of manned flight,

a workshop for veterans on writing as a means of healing the wounds of war led by the Poet Laureate of North Carolina,

now the Simon Quartet, and later a retrospective of Don’s paintings. Next year’s plans were being put together when Don died and will continue because of Don and Kay love for each other and their beloved Outer Banks. Love does not die, people do, but love continues.

There will be a service for Don on December 8^th and I have to be out of town, but he and Kay will be in my prayers. If you want to remember Don, make a donation to the Don & Catherine Bryan Cultural Series or the USO and share in Don’s love. If you really want to give thanks, then follow his example and love. Don’t just say it or just feel it, but do it.

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

... and do it.

Being a "see-er"

A Reflection for I Advent All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC December 1, 2013 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Isaiah 2:1-5 Romans 13:11-14 Matthew 24:36-44 Psalm 122

I have returned to my winter habit and have grown a beard. I first grew a beard so I would look older when I was 17 and a college freshman at Chapel Hill. If the sun hit it just right, you might be able to see some fuzz. The next year, when I got a summer job at an Outdoor Drama in Florida, I was cast as a Spanish Conquistador and I was able to grow a full red beard. It indeed made me look older, but dang!! - a beard can be hot in Florida summers. So I decided that I would only grow one during the winter. The problem now is that the red is gone from my hair and beard and they are both snow white. I went to visit a parishioner last week who had a toddler grandson visiting, and when I rang the doorbell, he came to the door, his eyes full of astonishment, and he cried out “Santa Claus is at the door!” Our parishioner grew in the estimation of his grandson who believed that his grandfather was close friends with Santa Claus. I tried to dissuade him, but he stubbornly held on to the illusion. However, as he grows up, he will realize that I am not Santa Claus, and he will see the truth that I am a friend of his grandfather and then grow into his own dreams. That is what life is about - getting rid of illusions by seeing the truth and then living into one’s dreams.

The Hebrew Testament lesson is from the 2^nd chapter of the Book of the prophet Isaiah. A prophet is a “seer”- one who sees things and tells the truth about them, and then sees the dreams God has and point us in the direction of the fulfillment of those dreams. The first thing Isaiah does is to strip away the illusions and speak the truth as God sees things, and he starts chapter one of the Book by pointing out to the people the truth behind their facades when they come to worship. Listen to how the translation of The Message reflects what Isaiah says that God sees:

“Quit your worship charades.
    I can’t stand your trivial religious games:
Monthly conferences, weekly Sabbaths, special meetings—
    meetings, meetings, meetings—I can’t stand one more!
Meetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them!
    You’ve worn me out!
I’m sick of your religion, religion, religion,
    while you go right on sinning.
When you put on your next prayer-performance,
    I’ll be looking the other way.
No matter how long or loud or often you pray,
    I’ll not be listening.
And do you know why? Because you’ve been tearing
    people to pieces, and your hands are bloody.
Go home and wash up.
    Clean up your act (12-17). . . . (and)

Oh! Can you believe it? The chaste city
    has become a whore!
She was once all justice,
    everyone living as good neighbors,
And now they’re all
    at one another’s throats.
Your coins are all counterfeits.
    Your wine is watered down.
Your leaders are turncoats
    who keep company with crooks.
They sell themselves to the highest bidder
    and grab anything not nailed down.
They never stand up for the homeless,
    never stick up for the defenseless. (21-23)

Any of that vision of the truth sounds familiar to you? Isaiah is speaking the truth in the 8^th Century BC, and here we are in the 21^st Century and it sure sounds like the here and now with our love of violence as we tear people apart with words or weapons, our inequality of wealth brought about by greed and the exploitation of the poor and marginalized, and the sale of our leaders to the highest bidders.

The second job of the prophet after stripping us of our illusions is to paint a vision of how God would like to see us, and here in the second chapter we see those who follow God beating swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks, and people no longer studying war. The prophet is a see-er who sees the truth behind the lies we live and also sees the dreams God has for us. Two weeks ago I woke up from a dream with an old 1950’s song written by Ed McCurdy rattling around in my head, and I realized why this week when I looked at the lessons. You may have heard the song (we used to sing it in peace demonstrations back when I had a red beard) “Last Night I Had The Strangest Dream”:

Last night I had the strangest dream
I ever dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war
I dreamed I saw a mighty room
The room was filled with men
And the paper they were signing said
They'd never fight again

And when the papers all were signed
And a million copies made
They all joined hands and bowed their heads
And grateful prayers were prayed
And the people in the streets below
Were dancing round and round
And guns and swords and uniforms
Were scattered on the ground

Last night I had the strangest dream
I ever dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed 
To put an end to war

Pete Seegar singing song- I heard him sing it in 1965

How many lies we tell ourselves and others to justify war. Wars end when we rid ourselves of our greed to possess what our neighbor has. The beginning of the end of war is me renouncing greed on a daily basis. Wars end when we stop glorifying violence. The beginning of the end of war is me renouncing violence on a daily basis. How many hours are we watching movies, television, and playing video games which teach us the joy of killing people for our own advantage? The beginning of the end of war is me renouncing the learning of war on a daily basis. How much money do we spend on weapons both as a nation and as individuals? In two weeks we remember the one-year anniversary of a disturbed young man, who spent hours on end playing violence-glorifying games, arming himself with weapons of mass destruction and going forth to live into his fantasy by slaughtering little children. We were appalled - and then we lost our nerve for we did not want to divorce ourselves from violence and weapons. Wars end when we give up our love affair with weapons. The beginning of the end of war is me renouncing weapons on a daily basis. How many times do we brood about revenge? Wars end when we rid ourselves of the desire to get even. The beginning of the end of war is me renouncing revenge on a daily basis.

The means for achieving turning swords into plowshares is simple, not easy but simple; we just lack the will to try to live into God’s dream for us. Living into the peace of God which was proclaimed was not attempted and found impossible; it was just found difficult and not attempted. Every week we proclaim in the Creed that we expect the return of Christ. This Advent I invite you to be a see-er and ask for the Risen Christ to return and give us the will to do what he asks. As the Gospel reminds us: “Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour."

Song of Zechariah - A Father For His Son

A Reflection for the Feast of Christ the King                         All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC November 24, 2013                                                                        Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Jeremiah 23:1-6                                Canticle 16 (Luke 1: 68-79)            Colossians 1:11-20          Luke 23:33-43

this is alo on youtube at : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tppF5TyEKMY&feature=youtu.be
 

The ancient Song of Zechariah, called the Benedictus Domininus Deus , which is Latin for the first line “Blessed be the Lord God”, is a song of Thanksgiving sung by a Priest to his child at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel. It has two parts; the first is the Thanksgiving for what God has done, is doing and will do for God’s people, and the second part is the sharing of the dream the father has for the child.

One of the high points of the Sunday service for me is when I snatch a baby from the arms of the parents as they come up for communion and hold the child as I continue to hand out the bread. Then I share the dream I have for this child with him or her as we return to the parents. Part of why I do this has to do with parent/grandparent withdrawal since I can no longer pick up my baby and grandbabies any more because they live far away - and they’re too big. I used to hold my baby - she is now 43 - in that first year of her life when she would wake up and cry or when I would rock her and feed her and I would talk to her about my dreams for her. Of course she did not understand any of the words I said, but I wanted her to know the holy space between, over, under, and through what the words could not express about how much she was loved. 

Zechariah is a faithful old Priest. The idea of Priesthood began in the wilderness of Sinai as the people coming out of slavery in Egypt made a covenant with God, and God declared to Moses in Exodus:

And Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shall you say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel; You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure to me above all people: for all the earth is mine: And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel.

Over the centuries, the people decided to pursue their own agendas and outsource the work of being a Priest and to give the work of ruling to Kings. Kings and Priests had the same four-fold task:  (1) to help people connect to God, (2) to declare forgiveness, (3) to minister to those who are in the shadow of darkness and (4) to guide people into a life of peace. The passage from Jeremiah for today bemoans how those chosen priests and Kings have been false shepherds who have abandoned their responsibility and worked only for their own agendas. The Kings and Priests exploited the people, led them into wars, and built palaces to separate rulers and their cronies from their people. 

There are notable exceptions, like Zechariah, who lives in the hill country of Judea with his wife Elizabeth. He is on the Rota of Priests who come in to work at the Temple helping people with their prayers and offerings. His name means “Yahweh, the God remembers”, and I imagine him with his heart breaking when a couple asks for prayers for a child, feeling that God seems to have forgotten the similar prayers that he and Elizabeth repeatedly offered up, for they are childless. 

The Temple is full of false shepherds and corruption is rampant, but there are those like Zechariah who stay faithful to the four-fold task of being a priest at God’s altar.  

One day as he is attending to his duty in the sanctuary, the Angel Gabriel comes to him and tells him that he will be part of “raising up a mighty horn of salvation in the house of David”.  This is the literal Greek translation, but the metaphor sounds funny in English, so the translators changed it to “raise up a mighty savior in the house of David”.  Zechariah is so overcome that he cannot speak. The Temple administration puts him on disability because he cannot perform the ceremonies.  I think Luke’s Gospel remembers this detail to be a symbol that the Temple and its hierarchy are no longer really able to proclaim the love of God and that a new way of communicating God’s love must be found. There needs to be a new kingdom of priests for a new covenant with God, and Gabriel is telling Zechariah that he will have a son who will grow up to be the trumpet announcing the coming of the King, the new Priest, Jesus. This is the vision, the dream that God has given to Zechariah, that his son is going to be John the Baptizer. In the song Zechariah sings, he devotes his son’s life to the four-fold task of being a priest, but outside the Temple structure: (1) to declare freedom to live in loving communion with God without fear, (2) to proclaim the forgiveness of sins, (3) to show the tender compassion of God who shines light on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and (4) to guide feet into the way of peace. 

The medium becomes the message as John the Baptizer grows in a house of love and then becomes a messenger of God’s love in this broken world, far away from the false shepherds of the Temple.

John the Baptizer is to pour out his life for the sake of the love he sees in his cousin Jesus, the fulfillment of that love. Jesus will continue the task of being the embodiment of that love, the four-fold  sign of the new Kingdom of God - loving communion with the divine, forgiveness, compassion for those in shadow, and the presence of the peace that passes all understanding. Like John, Jesus will make enemies with those who profit from alienation, guilt, self-centeredness, and conflict, and they will work against Jesus and will kill him as we see in the Gospel lesson for today.

Luke remembers the story of the crucifixion and shows how Jesus on the cross demonstrates what a priest and King looks like in the new Kingdom of Christ:

(1) Jesus is raised up. Kings and Priests are usually raised up to positions of honor and given wonderful robes to wear, but Jesus is stripped and is vulnerable and is raised up on the cross to a place of shame. The norm for the new Kingdom of Christ is that we are not to exalt ourselves, but to become vulnerable, entering into loving communion with God and the brokenness of God’s people. 

(2) Jesus declares forgiveness. Kings and Priests are used to handing out sentences of punishment, but Jesus forgives those who crucify him. The norm for the new Kingdom of Christ is to live and die with forgiveness on our lips and in our hearts. 
 

 
3)  Jesus turns in compassion to the thief and all others who live in darkness. After he dies he enters into the place of darkness and brings God light to those who dwell in the darkness. The norm of the new Kingdom of Christ is to shine the light of Christ into all the darkness. 

(4) Jesus commends his spirit to God on the day of his death as he has done every day of his life. The norm of the new Kingdom of Christ is about living our lives in 100% stewardship of all that we have received: “All things come from thee O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.”

Christ shows us what a true King and a true Priest look like. He remains our King, and all of us are Priests  in that new Kingdom. In 1^st Peter we are reminded: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” John, in the book of his dreams of Revelation, drives home the point: “and He has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father-- to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

This next week we will begin Advent, and I ask you, fellow Priests, to join with me as we prepare the way for the King to rule in our hearts at Christmas and every day. A suggestion is that each of you start by holding a small child in your heart, and then tell them of what you believe God’s dream is for them. Then listen to what Christ is whispering to you.

Finding strength in a shattered world

On video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7pyli89huk&feature=youtu.be

A Sermon for XXVI Pentecost (Proper 28)                  All Saints' Church, Southern Shores, NC November 17, 2013                                                  Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Isaiah 65:17-25                  2 Thessalonians 3:6-13                  Luke 21:5-19

Last week I talked about the differences between living in a world that seems shaken and living in a world that seems gently stirred, and now I want to take a look at living in a world that seems shattered. In my daily Morning Prayer, the Lord gave me a memory of the end of the service and Paul’s advice to the Ephesians: “Now to God who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (3:20, 21)

 

The lessons for today are about living in a world that has been shattered. In the Hebrew Testament lesson from Isaiah, the people have come back from exile and they find total devastation. The walls which protect them are gone, the Temple is destroyed, and property claims are all sorts of confused because other families have taken over abandoned homes and fields. There is a complete void in their lives, and as their entire community will need to be rebuilt, there is a fear that the void will never be filled. In response to the fear brought on by this shattered sight, Isaiah has a vision, a dream of the community coming together and opening themselves to their re-creation by God in this place. The vision depicts something greater than merely returning to normal. Isaiah’s God dares to pass on a greater vision where God’s peace will flow through the people and their neighbors and enemies and then into the lands and environment where even, as he sings: “The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent-- its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.”  In Isaiah’s vision, the shattering is the beginning of something new, which is greater than they can ask or imagine.

When Paul writes to the Thessalonians in today’s lesson, he sees some giving up hope in the face of what they believe is the shattering of their lives, and he urges them to gather together as a community, as a community of hope, to live into a new vision. 

In the Gospel lesson Jesus warns of the time of devastation to come. It did not take special vision to see that the Romans would sooner or later lose patience with this rebellious province. There is the old piece of advice about “reading the Bible with one hand and the New York Times with the other”.  It is a metaphor for the way Jesus understood the world, that he paid attention to the Spirit of God and to the undercurrents of the events of the world at the same time.  Luke’s Gospel is written because the Jesus movement remembers Jesus warning them of how the Temple would be destroyed - and they had seen it happen. The Gospel, the good news, sees this catastrophe as the beginning of something greater than they can imagine. There is a difference between hope and wishful thinking.  Wishful thinking is ignoring the facts of the present and portents of the future, whereas hope is the trusting in God’s help and strength in the middle of the harsh facts and portents.  Wishful thinking is the closing of eyes and crossing of fingers, whereas hope is the joining together of hands and building a new community together.

 We have only to look at our major news stories this past week for examples of the lesson from the Gospel. We saw the Typhoon smash through the Philippines and devastate the islands. The country has been shattered, and it will take the world community to come together to try to fill the void caused by the entire destruction of the infrastructure and the critical need for food and clean water.

Maybe it was a coincidence (I prefer to see it as synchronicity), but this week in my Netflix mailing, I received two movies of shattering, movies I had chosen months ago. One movie was Fill the Void,

an Israeli movie in Hebrew of a family of the ultra-Orthodox Haredi sect in modern Tel Aviv in Israel. The family is happy and the 18 year old girl, Shira, looks forward to upcoming negotiations for an arranged marriage, until the night of the festival of Purim when the Biblical story of Esther is remembered. On that night at the family gathering, Shira’s pregnant older sister, who is named Esther, goes into labor and dies in childbirth. The family is devastated and the wedding plans for Shira are put off, and in their grief, they focus on Esther’s child, Mordechai, who the widower Yochay brings over to the family house for them to look after. Shira’s life is destroyed because a woman in an ultra-Orthodox home is considered pitiable if she is not married. It is a beautiful film of a small disaster of smashed lives in which broken individuals and the community faithfully come together in loving self-sacrifice and fill the void -and not just fill the void, but create something greater than can be asked or imagined.

The second movie really relates to the disaster of nature. The Impossible, a 2012 Spanish film directed by Juan Antonio Bayano, is based on a true story about a Spanish family on vacation nine years ago at a resort on the coast of Thailand when a tsunami hit. It recounts how they were tossed by the waves, ripped apart by the force and, due to the collapse of the area’s infrastructure, unable to find each other until the end.

In order to get more money from American audiences, the family’s nationality and language was changed to English. It focused on the short time this privileged family had to endure living in a smashed area and how, in the end, they got on a plane paid for by the insurance company and, flying high above the devastation with no thoughts about how the natives would survive, they returned to their home. Those quibbles aside, the movie is very realistic and challenges viewers to imagine how they would react in similar circumstances.  The family represented is overwhelmed, yet in the middle of the disaster, they interrupt their own struggle and work to help others. They come together at a deeper level when they reach outside of their own desperate needs and minister to the similarly suffering.

These are disasters clear across the globe and yet they are universal. We are all vulnerable to death and nature. The second movie had a special resonance with its focus on people who are in a beautiful and vulnerable place where a freak event could wipe out everything they know. Sound familiar to us on the Outer Banks? If not, please look at the projections of what Southern Shores will look like with just a one foot increase in sea level and a storm surge, which can be found at

 http://sealevel.climatecentral.org/surgingseas/search.php?q=.  

and then type in the zip code- in our case 27949

 Let us just say that Duck Woods Golf Course will have a beauty of a water hazard, and we would have to swim the labyrinth. But let us go one step further - now combine that with an off-shore earthquake! What would happen if this church building was shattered and destroyed? What would happen if the resulting tsunami with a thirty foot wave just ripped through these walls, and the Baptismal font, pianos, organ, my office, even me, the Rector, and all the outward signs of the religious institution got swept into the middle of the sound? Would the church itself be destroyed? I think the institution would be shattered, but my hope is that All Saints’ would gather together and hold hands and turn to the power greater than ourselves - and see and work for a vision that is greater than we could ask or imagine in helping our neighbors. The work of the church is not about trusting in people, places, and things but about honoring the Holy Space between us as God is working within and between us for a new creation.

We live in a world that is filled with minor and major shatterings, and we cannot keep them from happening.  But we can gather together and hold hands and turn to the power greater than ourselves, see and work for a vision that is greater, and sing “Now to God who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

Shaken Not Stirred A Reflection for XXV Pentecost

A Reflection for XXV Pentecost (proper 27) All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC November 10, 2013 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Haggai 1:15b-2:9 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 Luke 20:27-38

“Shaken, not stirred.” That is James Bond’s line, and it is how I usually mix a martini.

Some purists would say that martinis need to stirred so as not to “bruise” the gin. Writer Somerset Maugham is supposed to have said "a martini should always be stirred, not shaken, so that the molecules lie sensuously on top of one another", and there are times when I am feeling pretty mellow and the stirring is soothing. But I am not a purist, and there are times when I like the violence of having all things shaken up - after all, the world is pretty much shaken up already. Surprisingly enough, and I know you’ll be shocked, the word “martini” is never mentioned in the Bible, but the experience of the people in the Bible is of living in a world that is violently shaken and not gently and sensuously stirred. 

In the Hebrew Testament lesson for today, Darius, the Persian King, has allowed the exiles to return from Babylon where their faith has been shaken a great deal. Now they want to just lie low and take it easy, focusing on their own personal and family welfare, refusing to join in a vision of a new community. Their point of view is “It is time to stop dreaming - and now what do I get out of this for me?”, living into what poet David Whyte,

in the 3rd stanza of his poem The Sun from the collection House of Belonging, observed

… Sometimes reading
Kavanagh I look out
at everything
growing so wild
and faithfully beneath
the sky
and wonder
why we are the one
terrible
part of creation
privileged
to refuse our flowering...

However, the prophet Haggai says that God is not through with the shaking process, and it is time to get to work rebuilding a new Temple as an outward and visible sign of their dependence on God. He tells them not to be afraid for, in the middle of the shaking, it is the process of going deeper into the relationship with God that will get them through. The question changes from “What do I get?” to “How do I give myself to work for the dream?” The translation from the NRSV says that “in this place I will give you prosperity”, and it fits with the talk of splendor and gold and silver. But in Hebrew, the word cited is “shalom”. We tend to think of “shalom” as meaning peace and well-being, and it does, but in this situation, there is never a return to paradise, but the finding of peace in the middle of a conflicted world.

That is the peace that Paul is addressing when he writes to the church in Thessaloniki. He had talked with them about the coming of the end of the world and they were shaken. They ask themselves, “What do I get out of this end? Am I going to get into heaven before the other guy?” Paul begs them “not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us.” Yes, there will be an end, as all things must end, but the Thessalonians are to “stand firm and hold fast” to that relationship with God that Paul demonstrated and passed on to them, that shalom, that peace that passes all understanding.

In the Gospel lesson, Jesus is dealing with a group of Sadducees. Sadducees are a group that consider themselves faithful Jews and they know that they are living in a shaken world. The Romans have taken over, the country is occupied, and they are captives in the occupied state. The world looks pretty bleak. The Pharisees and Jesus look forward to another existence after death where all justice will prevail and shalom will finally prevail over turmoil, but the Sadducees see that as “pie in the sky, by and by” talk. They think that the world is already too shaken and can never be put back together. Therefore, all we can do is get what we want, use God to back up contracts (e.g., “so help me God”), and do the religious duties in the Temple for form’s sake. Their central question in this life, since they presume there is no afterlife and God seems restricted to the Temple instead of real life, is “What is in it for me and mine?” For them, shalom means making a profit and passing it on in your family, where they and what you have given them, are the afterlife.

The Sadducees ask the “gotcha” question about the woman widowed seven times, who, by virtue of her sex is not a “real” person after all, and only gains her identity as the “property” of her husband. It is a question that shows their mindset of “What is in it for me?” Jesus dismisses the question as a waste of time and invites them to a life of a living relationship with the God of Moses, of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. His final answer to them will be in the shaking of his destiny. He will give of himself, his whole self, as part of his faith in that God. For Jesus the point of life is not what you get but what you give.

We refer to the church as the “body of Christ”, we give out bread and wine each week so that all may receive the body and blood of Christ, so that we might become what we eat, and give ourselves. Too often churches sell themselves as places where you can get what you need. Some churches stir up a “get out of hell free card” mentality. Some churches make their buildings look like fortresses, stirring up the image of a safe place away from the shaking world, a place of peace. Some stir up a place of beauty and awe. Some churches stir up a place where one is known, loved, and given worth. There is nothing wrong with those things as long as we realize that the focus of coming to church in this shaken world is not to discern what we can get for ourselves, but to figure out how we can give ourselves as the living body of Christ. Do we refuse to flower into who we were created to be or do we give ourselves in flowering for God’s glory?

We long for being stirred so gently and sensuously, but we are meant to be shaken, not stirred.