A Reflection for I Advent                                  All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, November 30, 2014                                         Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Isaiah 64:1-9    Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18    1 Corinthians 1:3-9       Mark 13:24-37

Being a See-er  for Advent

This is the first week of Advent and we lit the candle representing Hope. The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome about hope (8:24-25): “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

Part of being human is that we find it hard to see hope. We get so involved in doing all the things that our ego demands to be in control that we do not stop and see things with God’s eyes. The lessons for this the first week of Advent have to do with seeing hope with God’s eyes. Prophets like Isaiah are called Seers – one who sees with God’s vision. They have visions and dreams, and as they try to understand what they have seen, they translate it for the people. After prayer and meditation, Paul writes letters to churches, as in today’s selection from one of the letters to the church in Corinth, in order to tell them what he sees as God’s vision about the problems in their church. He sees hope for them as he says the church in Corinth has been given every spiritual gift they need to do God’s work. The author of the Gospel of Mark is writing what he sees in God’s vision after the Temple has been destroyed in 69 AD, and he remembers Jesus saying that bad things will happen, but God’s vision of hope is shown in the Resurrection as God shows us that nothing, even death itself, is greater than God’s love and redemption.

Chagall's Calling of Isaiah

Let me start off with a quick overview of Biblical prophecy. In the Hebrew Testament lesson from the Book of Isaiah, things are just not working out after the exiles come back from Babylon. This section was probably written by students in the School of Isaiah between 530-510 BC. The school was founded by the Prophet Isaiah who prophesied in Jerusalem of the Kingdom of Judah from 742 to 701 BC.  He listened to God and, in the name of God, he denounced the exploitation of the poor by the rich and the powerful. He was part of a series of Prophets in the 8^th Century BC - Amos and Hosea in the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and Micah in the Southern Kingdom of Judah - all of whom railed against economic injustice. They warned that the destruction of the community of care for all the citizens would be the destruction of the very political reality of the Kingdoms. In essence, the message was that the undermining of the soul of the nation, the spiritual center based on justice and love of neighbor, would be a precursor of the destruction of the nation. 

In 721, their warnings came tragically true when the Assyrian empire conquered the Northern Kingdom and scattered the people there to other provinces of the Empire. Psalm 80 which we read today was written as a song for the Northern Kingdom (the tribes of Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh) as a Prayer for God’s help in facing the Assyrians. The people did not listen to what the Psalmist saw and relied on their own power. The Assyrians then tried to conquer the Southern Kingdom in Jerusalem, but a plague broke out in the besieging Assyrian army about the time of a palace coup in the Assyrian Capital of Nineveh, modern day Mosul in Iraq. The Empire fell apart, collapsing under its own weight and greed, and Isaiah saw this as God giving the Southern Kingdom a new chance to create a more just society. They sang Psalm 80 when they were in trouble, but their leaders did not seize the opportunity to change and the students of Isaiah had to continue to warn the rich and corrupt. These students keeping the tradition of Isaiah of listening to God will be joined by prophets like Nahum, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk and Ezekiel, all seeing the same vision of God. 

Finally in 587 BC, the Neo-Babylonian Empire, which had replaced the ruins of the Assyrian Empire, conquered Jerusalem and scattered its leaders into the different parts of the Babylonian Empire. Jeremiah was kidnapped and taken into Egypt where he would die, and Ezekiel would go into exile with his people. The students of Isaiah continued and wrote songs of encouragement to the exiles. The Babylonian Empire, as all empires do, collapsed under its own weight and greed and was replaced by the Medes and the Persians in 539 BC. As a result of learning about the collapse of the Assyrian, Babylonian, and later the Egyptian empires, the Persians decided to de-centralize their empire and allowed the exiles to return. Second Isaiah continues to record visions of encouragement to the exiles in their return. However, the reality of difficulty in coming together as a semi-autonomous province under Persian Rule would prove frustrating, and the old habits of greed and injustice did not die out. This is where the ministry of group of anonymous writers, which we lump together as 3^rd Isaiah, come to the fore and will be joined by Haggai, Zechariah, Obadiah and Malachi, all calling for the people to remember that a relationship with God means a just relationship with all of God’s people.

In today’s lesson, the writer of this section of 3^rd Isaiah leads a confession for the people, a confession of how they, as the old Prayer Book used to say, “had done those things they ought not to have done and not done those things they ought to have done.” He asks for God’s help in shaping a new life as they realize that they can only be who they were created to be if they allow God to be the potter of the clay of their being.

The image of us being creatures of clay comes from the second Creation myth in the Book of Genesis where God takes the humus of the earth and molds it together creating a human, named Adam, from the word Adamah meaning  ground, soil.  The message from the seers is that they see hope in the fact that God is not finished working on us yet. As God pronounced that what God created is good, so also God is helping us to work with God in making this world a good part of God’s creation. Hope is here if we can just forget about trying to have it our own way.

Some of you may ask what has happened to all the prophets, the seers who see what God is saying and sharing what they see in their soul in their conversations with God. They are still around, they are the people who listen, who stop to look at God and let their egos take a break. I go to poets a lot when I want to hear prophets who are seeing the world with God’s vision. This time I will not share a poem that I wrote but a poem by a prophet from the 19^th century named Emily Dickinson who wrote this poem about Hope:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

Emily Dickinson

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

In this the first week of Advent, please stop and listen to the way God sees this world with hope and maybe write a poem about what your soul sees when you listen to God. My prayer for you today is that you will be a “seer” - one who sees with God’s vision.

Cheerful Giver

A Reflection for Thanksgiving Day                    All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C.  November 27, 2014                                               Thomas E. Wilson Rector

2 Corinthians 9:6-15                             Luke 17:11-19

Cheerful Giver

Today is the official Thanksgiving Day when you are expected to give thanks; so are you ready for giving thanks? What are you thankful for? Do you have to think about what you are thankful for? I remember when I was younger and the family would gather around the table, my brother and I would have a rough time finding anything for which to be thankful. We were so self-centered and entitled that we assumed all we had received was our due - we had earned it. We did not cheerfully give thanks. Paul in the lesson from 2^nd Corinthians writes: “Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” What makes a cheerful giver?

In my understanding cheerful givers are those who realize that they are part of something greater than themselves and they are aware of how much they receive before they give. I was very aware of this last week when I saw so many generous givers of their time during the Holly Days celebration. I saw people bake and make things to sell in the Bake and Craft Shops. They offered them not as fund raisers but as things that they had learned how to make and that gave them joy to create and to give them. I saw the Jewelry Ladies who spent hours cleaning and fixing up recycled jewelry not only to make money to help the church, but because it gave them pleasure to see and handle beautiful things. I saw this in some of the vendors as well. Yes, they wanted to make some money, but they also were fed from the admiration of their work, and they gave their time to people who did not always buy their material. All of the sellers had been welcomed here as honored guests, and our volunteers stood out in the cold and made sure they were welcomed. The sellers were able to give their time because they had received the gift of worth from the volunteers.

Holly Days 2014

We give because we receive. Cheerful giving begins with the attitude of gratitude for all we have received. Some of you know that I am an introvert and being around a whole group of people drains me of energy. I am lousy at working the crowd but part of the job of being a host is to meet the guests who come to your house. I consider this my church, and it is necessary for me to welcome people here as I was welcomed here. I remember when I was a visitor here on my job interview and how sincerely I was made to feel welcome. It is only natural that I give back what I receive to others. The people who were visiting here were not members of my congregation, but they were people in my parish; a parish is not a church but a geographical unit, and I am responsible for bringing the Gospel of Jesus to all who live within my parish or who visit here, the strangers whose faces I have not yet remembered, as I was ministered to when I was a stranger.

Holly Days 2014 Buyers Frenzy

There were times when I was walking up the halls during Holly Days that I felt like I was going against the salmon-spawning run, with the crowds of people moving towards the bargains in a frenzy of destiny. I would get smiles from some of the people enjoying themselves, and from time to time, I would get pulled over by someone who spotted my collar and wanted to talk about something or someone who was close to their heart. I would listen because I had been listened to and would pray with them as I had been prayed with. I gave time to people who were worth my time because someone had once thought me worth their time.

We give cheerfully and gracefully what we have received cheerfully and gracefully. Today may I suggest that each of us look at what we have cheerfully been given. Start off with each breath you take, from the first breath upon waking each morning. The oxygen has been given to each of us gracefully. We did not have to pay for it, we did not have earn it; it was a gift from God who knew we needed it to strengthen our bodies. Work up from the simple breath which is a gift and move to people who God gives us as gifts. It is not about Thanksgiving but about Thanks-living - living in an attitude of thanks.

Cheerful Giver (Poem)

I walk All Saints halls thanks living

With the noise of pure joyful pace

Of Holly Days; a pre-Thanksgiving.

With friends of unremembered face.

Bumping into crowds of fives and twos

Parish members but not really “pay-ers”,

But now “neighbors” for a visit but whose

Feet never got around to come to prayers.

I am grabbed to listen as my collar gives

Me away to someone whose heart breaks

For whose daughter or wife or son lives

In crossroads of which mis-spent life takes,

Yet needing someone to give attention. I'm

Called to treat them with respect and honor,

Artist or buyer both worth the gift of time,

As they ask of me, “Pray for them Father.”

Words are said, the thoughts to heaven fly

Uniting us in that, not holly, but holy daze

Where I, not comprehending the divine ally

Say words encasing hopes for ahead days.

My head's inner introvert sees me as giving,

Yet I am thanking for some gifts of meaning

Instead of killing time watching lives living

I enter into moments of God my soul healing.

Thanksgiving is for me not one day's food

But the feasting of being in God's space

Where my parish as whoever is viewed

With encountering God in another's face.

When Shadows Like Fog Creep In

A Reflection for the Feast of Christ the King                  All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C.     November 23, 2014                                                            Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24                 Psalm 100            Ephesians 1:15-23            Matthew 25:31-46

When Shadows Like Fog Creep In

I am going out on a limb and suggest that I am probably not the only one here who has ever felt sorry for himself. It is a natural thing that we do when we feel so bad that we silently start to sing the children’s song, “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I’m going to the garden and eat some worms.” 

That sadness will last for a while and then it will change into thoughts of revenge to make me feel better. That revenge doesn’t have to be taken immediately, indeed as the old saying goes, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” I went to my 50^th high school reunion a couple of months ago, and I wanted to run into an old girl friend who had dumped me right after the Junior Prom. There was still a small memory - and by “small” I mean that the memory was small and I was small for even holding on to it - but my small fantasy was to show her what she had missed out on, and “Boy”, I thought, “Will she be sorry!” Well, she was there and she was sweet, and the river had flowed past 51 Junior Proms and I didn’t have to eat worms or have revenge.

Everybody has thoughts of revenge when feeling bad about one’s self. The 3^rd Century Desert Monk, St. Antony, once said to one of his disciples, “You can’t keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from nesting in your beard.”

I looked at the Hebrew Testament lesson from Ezekiel and at the Gospel lesson from Matthew, and as I, in my imagination, talked with Ezekiel and Matthew, I thought I heard some revenge fantasy and worm-eating going on. 

Ezekiel was a Priest in Jerusalem in 593 BC and saw the abuses of the rich elites who continued to exploit the poor even while paying tribute to Babylon. Some of the rich decided to try to ally themselves with Egypt and get a better deal with the Pharaoh to exploit the poor more. This ticked the Babylonian ruler, Nebuchadnezzar, off and in 587, the Babylonians conquered the Kingdom of Judah and destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, taking the leaders of the people, which included Ezekiel, into exile to Babylon.  He ministered to his people there and had a series of visions and dreams which are contained in this book. Chapters 1 through 24 are visions and dreams he had while still in Jerusalem and, in these dreams and visions, there are a lot of things that come close to “worm-eating”. Chapters 33 through 48 are visions and dreams which he had about the restoration of the exiles to their home and union with God. The vision described for today has to do with his hope for the people being returned out of exile and his hopes for the vengeful judgment on the former elite rulers who got them into this position of exile. He gets over the revenge fantasy and, a couple chapters later, has a vision about how will take the valley of dry bones and bring a new life with God - and in this new life, there is no room for revenge.

In Matthew’s Gospel from Chapter 21 through 25, Jesus is in the last week of his teaching ministry in Jerusalem, and it is apparent that his ministry has been gathering enemies. I think Jesus might have been tempted to say, “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I think I will go to the Garden of Gethsemane and eat some worms.”  Our theology tells us that besides being fully God, Jesus is also fully human, and as a human has some natural thoughts about vengeful judgments flying into his head and coming into his teaching. Today is one of those “good sheep and bad goats” kind of moments. Beginning in chapter 26, he will experience the last supper, his betrayal, and crucifixion where, on the cross, he cries out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” and enters fully into human despair. He dies on the cross and is placed into the tomb where his enemies think that he will be eaten by worms. However, in Chapter 28, there is resurrection and he does not waste time proclaiming vengeful judgment, for there is no room for vengeance in new life.  

Vengeance and self-pity are parts of living in this broken world of humans; we all have these moments in the dark side of our very selves. Now, what do we do with the dark sides of ourselves? One thing we can do is lie to ourselves and make the darkness acceptable and call it something that it is not. Our “worm-eating” is mislabeled as “shyness” or “humbleness”, and our “vengefulness” is mislabeled as “a passion for justice” or “dedicated to law and order”. Another option is that we can pretend these dark shadows aren’t here inside us, and we achieve that by projecting these dark sides onto other people. We can sure spot the darkness in others, and we say things like, “I just hate judgmental people and God will make them pay for being judgmental.” Or, “I just can’t stand being around whinny people; they just ruin my day.” 

Truthfully claiming our shadows for that which they are and that they are ours is a spiritual journey of healing, for if we do not claim and lovingly come to terms with our shadows, our fear of them will gradually control our lives. We will live as one-dimensional people, and the shadows will jump up in worse form when we least expect them. One of the reasons I do dream work is that dreams help us come to terms with our shadows and understand how they are influencing us.  Richard Rohr, a Franciscan Monk, in one of his daily Meditations last week wrote about how Francis of Assisi was able to claim his own shadow in order reach out to others: “After his major conversion, which is where he embraced a leper whom he had previously avoided as nauseating, Francis identified with the poor, the marginalized and those on the bottom, which you normally cannot do until you embrace the wounded leper within yourself.”

Next Sunday we begin the season of Advent.  As we prepare for the coming of God’s love in human flesh, let us take into ourselves and claim all, every part, of our very selves for healing, so we can live into what we believe.

This is what I believe:

·        I believe in the words of the last verse of the Psalm for today: “For the LORD is good; God’s mercy is everlasting; and God’s faithfulness endures from age to age.”

·        I believe in a God of justice who calls us to care for the oppressed and disadvantaged and gives us the power to do so.

·        I believe in a God of love, an unlimited God who keeps calling us to return to relationship with God and neighbor.

·        I believe that people do horrible things to other people and that God calls us to repent for what we have done.

·        I believe in the symbol of “sheep and goats”, that they both exist within me, and that God’s love is not limited to the sheep.

·        I believe that God’s love is not limited by our response and God will continue to call us to union with God in this life and the next.

·        I believe that we can create hells out of our own lives and live only one-dimensional lives.

·        I believe that Christ’s love will overcome all obstacles and that sin cannot stand against that love.

·        I believe in Hell; but, in light of Christ’s love, I believe there is nobody there.

When Shadows Like Fog Creep In (poem)

Shadows bird-like sweep in

Stubbornly building nests

For hells of our own makings

Judging ourselves and others.

Stubbornly guilt-ing nests

Resisting moments of mercy

Judging ourselves and others

Saying “It serves them (us?) right”.

Resisting moments of mercy,

But what is good about being right,

Saying “It serves them (us?) right”,

If all we do is condemn each other?

But what is good about being right

For hells of our own nesting

If all we do is condemn each other,

When shadows bird-like sweep in?