Reflection on Simeon looking into the eyes of the Christ child

A Reflection on the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus        All Saints Church, Southern Shores, NC February 2, 2013                     Thomas E Wilson, Rector

Malachi 3:1-4 Hebrews 2:14-18 Luke 2:22-40 Psalm 84

When I was an acolyte, the collection of the Alms and Oblations was a big deal in the Episcopal Church. The Priest would say a few words of scripture, and then, with the acolytes’ help, set up the altar from the Credence Table. Meantime the ushers would come forward and shake the people down for money while the choir sang an anthem. Then as part of my job, I would draw the Altar Rail closed to keep the riffraff out of the Holy Space. When the Anthem was over, everybody would sing another hymn, or in the church I attended, in order to underscore that we were patriotic and hated Communism in those Red Scare days, one of the acolytes would lift up the American Flag and everybody would sing the last verse of America while the ushers brought forth the plates. I, or one of the acolytes, would get the collection plates from the ushers and take them up the steps to the Priest who would raise them up and we would all recite part of 1st Chronicles 20:14; “All things come from Thee, O Lord and of thine own have we given thee.” Then the Communion would start.

When the 1979 Prayer Book was adopted they streamlined all that stuff and had representatives of the people bring up the Bread  and Wine and the offerings and the communion would begin without another hymn or the verse from 1st Chronicles. Sometimes you will see me sneak that verse back in –likely because I have fallen through the Swiss cheese of my memory and regressed to being a small child in the presence of mystery. “All things come from Thee, O Lord and of thine own have we given thee.”

That passage from 1st Chronicles is when David is looking over all that has been collected for the building of the Temple and blesses it while handing the plans for the Temple over to Solomon. The Temple was the place where the people acknowledged that all things were gifts from God and where they came to give thanks for all they had received. In the case of Mary and Joseph in today’s lesson the family has come for two reasons. 1) For the purification of Mary forty days after the birth of the child. The spilling of blood during the delivery required that she come and go through the purification rite, and  2) Presenting an offering of thanksgiving for the new child. In the ancient understanding blood was the sign of life and all life was precious so whenever blood was shed, there needed to be an acknowledgement of that life. All life belonged to God and the first born son, like the first born livestock, or like the first fruits of the harvest, was meant to be offered back to God or an offering made in its place. “All things come from Thee, O Lord and of thine own have we given thee.”

But the author of Luke goes forward in his retelling of this event and he remembers the two characters Simeon and Anna, who are touched by the Holy Spirit and are able to see in this child the fullness of God. There are hundreds of people in the Temple that day, giving money, doing religious activities but only Anna and Simeon are open enough to be able to see deeper than just the outward appearance of this child. They have heard no stories of his birth by the shepherds or the Magi. They have heard no eye witnesses of what Jesus does in Miracles. They have heard no stories of his death and resurrection. They have no facts at all except the child they hold in their arms. Their only witness is the Holy Spirit coming into their hearts, minds and imagination. They see this child as a blessing from God and they give a blessing in return. Simeon sings:

Lord, you now have set your servant free *
    to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, *
    whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations, *
    and the glory of your people Israel.

A blessing is received and given; “All things come from Thee, O Lord and of thine own have we given thee.”

This story is a conversion story and is the core of all the other conversion stories in scripture; we are not converted by what we were taught to believe growing up. We are not converted by attendance at religious activities, by giving money for religious establishments or by saying recited creeds of scriptures. We are converted when we allow God's life giving Spirit to change our way of seeing and to see with God's eyes and then to respond and do God's will by giving up our very selves to God. “All things come from Thee, O Lord and of thine own have we given thee.”

Every week we enter into an act of imagination and faith and see the Holy in a piece of bread and in a cup of wine. We see the Holy and enact the taking in of the Holy into ourselves, so that we might be reminded that all children are Holy to God. Every week as I give out the bread, I grab a poor child from the arms of a parent and I hold the child, and not just because I have a grandparent withdrawal but, like Simeon and Anna, I might see the presence of the Holy in that child. I want you to see the child as you take the Holy into yourself. I am not deluded to think this child is a perfect child but I am aware that God's Holy Spirit dwells in every living being and our task is too see it in ourselves and others. Christ came into the world to reconcile all of God's children to God and to cure us of our spiritual blindness when we refuse to see the Holy in our neighbor. If we could only see the Holy in the other then we can give the holy in us to the other and back to God. “All things come from Thee, O Lord and of thine own have we given thee.”

As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said:

"Everyone, everyone, without exception, everyone, even the most unlikely, even the most undeserving -- the down-and-outs, the derelicts, the louts, the drug addicts, the substance abusers, the prostitutes, the pimps -- if we had but the eyes to see, we would discern even in dark conditions, that they were God-carriers, precious in the sight of God, with a value that cannot be computed. But where we might have felt we needed to recoil, we should, in fact, genuflect, kneeling before them as Saint Francis knelt before the beggar"

“All things come from Thee, O Lord and of thine own have we given thee.”

"We are ...we are the saints,/ we signed our life away" Reflection

A Reflection for III Epiphany                   All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC

 January 26, 2014                                                   Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Isaiah 9:1-4             1 Corinthians 1:10-18             Matthew 4:12-23                   Psalm 27:1, 5-13

I don’t know about you, but there are times when I say something and then look back at what I said and cringe. It is in those moments that I wish I had “a standard-issue neuralyzer”, that kind of device used by Tommy Lee Jones as “K” in the Men in Black movies that erases memories.

 I could have used “a standard issue neuralyzer” last week. We had a couple of visitors who were vacationing here, and I was speaking to them after the service. The vacation place they have is south of Nags Head, and they had to drive past another Episcopal Church to get to ours.  While I obeyed the 11^th Commandment, “Thou shall not speak ill of any other Episcopal Church”, saying nice things about that church and its Rector, deep down inside me is a competitive streak a mile wide, so I smiled and let the phrase “Well, yes, they are a bit more conservative than All Saints is” slip out of my shadow demon.  I violated the whole point of what St. Paul was writing about in the document called 1^st Corinthians from which our second lesson came. Paul was addressing divisions and here I was giving eviction papers to the Risen Christ and making All Saints- “MY CHURCH”. I am not the church, not the owner of the church, I am part of the body and Paul in this letter is doing for me what the church is supposed to do: “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”

In my smugness I relished the division which the depth of my being had created. Most of you know that I am pretty left-wing.  Actually, anyone more left wing than me would probably be falling off the earth. I like thinking I am right and especially like having people agree with me, but without people different from me, I would not be able to grow deeper into my faith. I have to have people who disagree with me to keep me sharp.

Let me give you an example: I am an introvert, and when I need to figure out what I think about an issue, I get off by myself and go deeper, undisturbed, in my mind.  And so who did I marry? I married Pat Wilson - who is an extreme extrovert, and when she needs to figure out what she thinks about something, she gets with 60 of her closest friends to talk it through. Without Pat, I would have two sets of clothes and live in a small cabin as a hermit, writing a blog reviewing movies I see alone on Netflix.

These are the differences in how she and I interpret reality. Of course none of us is pure in our introversions and extroversions for we are on a continuum between the extremes, and in order to grow fully, we need to feed our strengths AND our shadows. It is a little like the weight work we do in our work outs - it is just as important to build your strong muscles by lifting a weight as it is to lower it slowly which builds the opposing muscle group. It is dynamic tension between what is usual and its opposite that keeps us fit - physically, mentally and spiritually.

Paul asks the Corinthians who they think they are following when they have all these divisions in their church. They are supposed to be following Christ? He shouts at them the question, “Did Christ make divisions?”

He will spend the rest of the Letter answering that question with a resounding “No”. Paul sees Jesus as the reconciler, the path to union with God and neighbor, the one whose arms of love are stretched out wide on the cross to embrace all people, male and female, Jew and Gentile, slave and free, and all means all. We see Jesus in the Gospel reading for today from Matthew being open to all who answered his call. When he finally got the core of his followers, the twelve disciples, he had a Motley Crew.

Motley Crew, not “Motley Crue”, a Heavy Metal band founded by bass guitarist Nicky Sixx, and  drummer Tommy Lee, which sang, “Shout At the Devil” (original title was “Shout WITH The Devil”) and “Saints of Los Angeles”,  with lyrics like:

Tonight...
There's gonna be a fight
So if you need a place to go
Got a two room slum
A mattress and a gun
And the cops don't never show

So come right in
Cause everybody sins
Welcome to the scene of the crime
You want it? Believe it
We got it if you need it
The devil is a friend of mine

If you think it's crazy
You ain't seen a thing
Just wait until we're going down in flames

[Chorus:]
We are...we are the saints
We signed our life away
Doesn't matter what you think
We're gonna do it anyway
We are...we are the saints
One day you will confess
And Pray to the saints of Los Angeles.

I listened to both songs while writing this sermon. Both songs are good rocking ear-blasting music and I liked the noise. I have a difference in interpreting reality with their lyrics. I find that they are nihilistic, hedonistic, misogynistic, and a lot of other “istics” as they search desperately for a power that gives meaning. Christianity is far from their solution, so we differ in where we find meaning, but we are similar in the need to search. I do not pass judgment on them. I do not condemn them. If I can see my common identity with these people with whom I disagree, then it is a piece of cake for me to work with others with whom I may not always agree. It is not about me and what I want, but it is a question of to whom do I sign my life away?

When Jesus gathers his Motley Crew together, they sign their lives away to him. Together they will include

two pairs of brothers, James and John, and Simon Peter and Andrew. In my family, brothers were very different, and maybe it was true in this group of brothers. For instance, Andrew was a follower of John the Baptizer and, as far as we know, Simon Peter had no previous interest in religion. We know that all four of them were fishermen on the same Lake of Galilee, so I suspect they were rivals and yet they joined together on this mission with Jesus. Later on there would be others brought in, like this guy called Simon the Zealot. Now, a Zealot was a member of an underground movement engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Roman occupying forces and the puppet stooges who collaborated with them. So Jesus calls a Zealot, and who else does he call? Enter Levi, or Mathew, the Tax Collector, who got rich from working for the Romans. Sworn enemies, two people as different as different can be and yet the differences are less important that the Christ that binds them together.

A community is not filled with people who agree on all things, but by different, and differing, people who find a deeper identity when they come together for a common purpose. They become one body, one mind, one spirit. What is important is not how we are different but the fact that we are all loved equally by the Christ. No one is outside of God’s embrace. There is no one in our Motley Crew of people, or even in the Motley Crue who can do anything that is greater than God’s love. What is important is that we are joining with the Motley Crew of the Saints of Galilee who fished with Jesus, with the Motley Crew of the Saints of Corinth who disagreed on so many things but were urged by Paul to become one body and one spirit, with the saints of other churches and denominations and faiths whose polity, creeds and practices are different - and we have the one Lord.  We are with all those saints of the past or present or future just as we are all on the continuum in the process of signing our lives away to the God who cherishes all, and with them we can join in singing at least a part of the chorus:

We are...we are the saints
We signed our life away

 

Committment to what or to Whom?

A Reflection on II Epiphany                                          All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. January 19, 2014                                                   Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Isaiah 49:1-7                       1 Corinthians 1:1-9                          John 1:29-42                       Psalm 40:1-12

I changed the question for meditation in the bulletin this morning to “To what or to whom do we commit ourselves? The idea of the question for meditation is for those who come to worship here to have a question to begin an internal dialogue with God as you wait for the church service to begin. My hope is that today’s Bible lessons and the sermon might help us to continue our internal dialogue, sometimes called individual prayer, and our corporate dialogue, or Common Prayer, in this body of Christ assembled, or as we know it, “All Saints’ Church”.

The Gospel story for today is about

Commitment. I think that it is a condensed story in which a series of statements actually cover a long period of time, but are remembered or edited into one day, which begins when two of John the Baptizer’s disciples decide to follow Jesus. They go as people who have received a recommendation from John about checking out this person named Jesus. That is usually how we begin commitments, when something attracts our attention. Later they commit themselves to being a shopper and checking out the goods about this person. Jesus then challenges them about what they are looking for. They commit themselves to check him out further by going to learn from him, and they call him “Rabbi”, meaning teacher. They have an agenda of “What is in it for me?”, or a cost-benefit analysis, and that is how shoppers and most of us go into deeper commitment. They begin a relationship with him and support his ministry by giving their time, money, and attendance, moving from “consumers” to “patrons” when they ask where he is staying; they are announcing their intention to move in with him. They move to the next level when they announce to others their affiliation and get public support for the relationship. We see that when Andrew comes to his brother Peter and brings him into the fellowship. This is where the story for today ends, but the story will continue in the rest of the Gospel as the disciples come to grow closer and start to see that their relationship goes deeper, and greater commitments are made. They will break bread together and travel together. Some will decide that they don’t want to go further, as they do at every step, and in the final step, most intimate of all, they pray together, becoming one body, one will.

 

Let’s review the stages of commitment.  They are:

1)      Attraction to a person, place, or thing

2)      Shopper continues to examine and is challenged to go further.

3)      Testing for benefit

4)      Support by patronage

5)      Movement toward closeness in relationship

6)      Trusting intimacy develops

7)      Loyalty developed through combined activity

8)      Testing of further trust

9)      Commitment of lives

10)  Testing as time, circumstances, and people change

11)  Commitment of soul into union of one body, one will, one spirit.

Sound familiar? These are the steps we go through in any relationship, be it romantic or profession or faith or church. Every step of the way, we make commitments. If you grew up in the church, your parents probably had to drag you to church like mine did. Dressing up in a suit was a pain and having to give a dime out of my 50 cent allowance was a burden, but when I got to church and met friends and had fun, it turned out to be a positive shopping experience for my leisure time. I continued also because it seemed to make my parents happy and, underneath it all, I wanted to have a true spiritual relationship. But I wanted it to be handed to me - like Paul on the road to Damascus. I felt I was powerless to change, but the reality is that I did not want to change. There was a service of commitment called “Confirmation”, and I was dragged to that at age 12 and had to memorize a bunch of stuff, but I was too immature to make my own commitment because I still wanted faith to be magic. My mother still got us up and dragged us all to church. It was not bad, but it was a leisure time activity. When I went to college, I decided that church, God, the whole thing was no longer of benefit to me. I still had the attraction, but it wasn’t until my daughter was born that I decided that there would be a benefit to taking her to church. From then on, there was a series of commitments made that stretched out for years.

Today we install our Wardens, members of the Vestry and Clerk, and we commit them to their ministries and commit ourselves to support them in prayer. Our church needs prayer, our vestry needs prayer, and your Rector needs prayer. I’m not saying that in any pejorative or back-handed way, like “Boy, YOU really need some help!” Prayer is not a referral to the appropriate authority, as in “Well s/he really needs help!” Prayer is an act of love where the person who prays enters into intimacy with God and, by an act of imagination, both hold the person and their ministry in their hearts so that person knows s/he is not alone and s/he is loved by you and by God. Prayer is not an agenda or shopping list, not something we do “to” or “for”, but “with”. 

Long before I went to seminary, I was approached about being nominated for the Vestry in the church I was attending. I was attending that church first as a seeking tourist who did not know much about how to connect to this God, if there indeed was one. Later on, I signed on to the idea that I ought to support the church with time, money, and attendance because I agreed with some of the things we were doing. The Priest was having some difficulty with some church members, and a person who I knew was very angry with the Priest was sitting just down the pew from me during one service. During the Prayers of the People in the intercessions and thanksgivings, this man said in a loud voice, “I give thanks for Article XXVI of the Articles of Religion.” There was this pause and then a rush of “flip-flip-flip” as the pages in the Book of Common Prayer were turned to page 873, which assures the people that, even if the Minister is “evil”, the effects of the sacraments are not hindered; it is God’s grace that is acting, not the worthiness of the minister. I committed myself to the Vestry, was elected, and spent the first year heading up the committee called “State of the Church”, designed to deal with the need for better communication.

An 1806 Vestry of which I was not a part

Thirty three years ago, when I left the Vestry and went to seminary, my ministry changed and I vowed I would NEVER, NEVER be a parish Priest. My goal was to be a college chaplain, teach, and be a prophet without having to deal with the messiness of the church. However, I came to see that it is in the joys and even messiness of our lives that we find God’s grace. Paul in the letter from Corinthians for today calls the response to commitment a call from God. He doesn’t know anything about Christian ordination - that whole concept doesn’t come into play before 200 AD - rather he assumes that God called all of us to become members of the one body of the Resurrected Christ. We may all have different functions but we are all making commitments. Paul echoes Isaiah’s song from the Hebrew Testament lesson for today which suggests that God called us before we were born and keeps calling us to make commitments of union with God and neighbor. The Psalm for today is another song of commitment; you can see the levels of commitment undergirding each verse of the Psalm.

Commitments are not made once and for all.  They are made on a daily basis as we go deeper and work on the relationship. Each day I still have to make the commitment to love God, to follow Christ, and to seek the Holy Spirit. Each week I have to make the commitment to open myself up to hear God so that I might speak what I hear, or see, or experience, or study, or dream. Each month I write a check, not because the church needs the money – it does, but that is beside the point. I give because it helps me to go deeper. I do worship, I study, I dream, and I pray because it helps me to go deeper into unity with neighbor and with God: “Thy will be done.”

I remember a Sunday morning in a church in which I was serving when Pat announced before the Vestry Meeting that she would be going into the chapel to pray at the time of the meeting and she invited others to join her. Well, you should have heard the indignation from some of the vestry members.  They had never heard of such a thing because they thought that prayer was you telling God that so and so really needed help. They thought they were perfectly capable of doing their work without outside interference. The beginning of that Vestry Meeting was, as the saying goes, “a Teachable Moment”. 

Today we will pray for the Vestry members not just because they need it, but because we really need to pray as a way of continuing to make commitments to union with God and neighbor. A suggestion is that each of us continues to reflect on the question for meditation this week: “To what or to whom do we commit ourselves?”