"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