A
Reflection for Feast of Epiphany (Transferred) All Saints’ Church,
Southern Shores, NC January 4, 2015 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
Letting
Synchronicity Shine
There
is a concept called “Synchronicity”, where two or more, not
caused or rationally-related, events happen around the same time,
and meaning is given in the connection by an observer. I had that
happen this week. I was all set to plan a service for the Second
Sunday of Christmas, which should be celebrated on January 4th
, the 11th
Day of Christmas. I came into work and Judy, the Parish
Administrative Assistant, cut me off before I retreated to my office
and gave me a note from Steve, out Organist/Choir Director, asking if
we would be transferring the Feast of Epiphany from January 6th
to January 4th.
I have done it before, but according to the rubrics, I can’t do
that – so don’t tell the Bishop.
There
was something about that day when I was talking with Judy. The
lessons for daily Morning Prayer were from the Feast of the Holy
Innocents, the day when the Gospel lesson from Matthew remembers how,
after the Wise Men had left the Holy Family, Joseph had a dream where
an angel warned him to take the family and flee the coming violence
and immigrate to Egypt because Herod, ruled by his own paranoia, had
ordered the slaughter of all children in Bethlehem under the age of
two.
Years
pass as the Holy Family are undocumented aliens in a foreign country,
and Jesus lives through the beginning of his life as a homeless
refugee in Egypt. The lectionary schedule for the 2nd
Sunday of Christmas tells the story of the flight into Egypt and the
return after Herod’s death but leaves out the slaughter, probably
because they didn’t want the story to be a downer for the children.
However, I knew that I would have to include the story when I first
looked at the lessons a couple weeks ago, and I knew I would need to
speak to how we have this human tendency to reduce people to objects
for political or economic purposes. The title was going to be “A
Voice is Heard in Ramah”, and it would focus in on the line which
Matthew quotes from Jeremiah, “A voice is heard in Ramah, wailing
and loud lamentation, Rachael weeping for her children, because they
are no more.” That seemed to fit because 2014 had been a year of
weeping over horrible slaughter in the world, all those children
fleeing violence trying to cross the border into our country, and for
more than enough deaths in our parish.
I
walked into the office and, boy, I did not want to talk about the
tears of 2014. I saw that Steve’s question gave me an out – I
could leave that all behind and jump to the joy of the Wise Men
coming to find the Holy Family and bringing gifts. We would sing “We
Three Kings of Orient Are” and I would laugh instead of cry as I
remembered when I was a child and corralled into being a Wise Man in
the Christmas pageant. Before we would go on, the other two Kings
and I, in our bathrobes, would giggle our way through the parody, “We
three kings of Orient Are trying to smoke a rubber cigar, it was
loaded, it exploded . . . we two Kings of Orient are,” and so on,
and on. I thought this was synchronistic, and I thought the meaning
of the two unconnected events, my reluctance to go into my own tears
and Steve’s way out, was a gift telling me to leave all tears
behind in 2014.
But
after I turned on my computer and started to study the lessons for
Epiphany to prepare for the Bible Study class I use to sound things
out, I opened up the word processing program and there was an open
document I did not remember putting on the computer. It was a poem I
had not seen before. Maybe I had forgotten – as an old man, that
sometimes happens - or maybe somebody had used my computer. I called
Keith Dey, the Lutheran Pastor who had done a Memorial Service on
Sunday afternoon in the All Saints’ Sanctuary at the same time I
was doing an Internment of Ashes up in Pine Island (I did tell you
there has been a lot of death). Keith had downloaded the poem and
had forgotten to close the program, but it was exactly what I needed
to read - more synchronicity taking place. The sonnet is called
Tears,
written in 1891 by Lizette Woodworth Reese (1856-1935):
 |
| Lizette Woodworth Reese |
When
I consider Life and its few years --
A
wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun;
A
call to battle, and the battle done
Ere
the last echo dies within our ears;
A
rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears;
The
gusts that past a darkening shore do beat;
The
burst of music down an unlistening street,--
I
wonder at the idleness of tears.
Ye
old, old dead, and ye of yesternight
Chieftains,
and bards, and keepers of the sheep
By
every cup of sorrow that you had,
Loose
me from tears, and make me see aright
How
each hath back at once he stayed to weep:
Homer
his sight, David his little lad!
The
poem suggested to me that a life without tears, or a life without
joy, is flat and one- dimensional. Tears, as she says, “make me see
aright.” Tears are part of the very fabric of the universe and the
very essence of being human.
More
synchronicity occurred as I talked that day with a man who soldiered
during one of our country’s many wars, and he said, “Humans are
the only animals who kill for purposes other than food.”
The
next day I was talking with a man who was out of town on the day of
Jim MacDonald’s service, but he related that as he was with his
family, he was able to speak of things that needed to be talked about
with his own extended family, and it was precious time. I suggested
that maybe they were able to talk together because they realized that
life was too important to be wasted.
I
decided that we needed to take a look at the entire story of this
part of Matthew for it gives us a more complete vision of what was
going on in the world of the Holy Family and what goes on in world of
our families. The Wise Men were astrologists who believed that human
life was reflected in the stars, and they studied the stars and
humans with wonder. They came from the East and saw the cruelty, the
love, the tears, the joy of being that into which our God chose to
empty Godself out and become full human. They were wise because they
understood that wisdom in life is fully discovered when we realize
that we are selfish and generous, cruel and loving, tearful and
laugh-filled creatures of the God who loved us so much that God
became human, that humans might shine with the light of Christ into
all the world.
 |
| Fannie Lou Hamer copied from http://socialjustice.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/ |
I
am reminded of a woman I heard speak at a meeting in the 1960’s,
named Fannie Lou Hammer, the youngest of 20 children born to a black
sharecropper family in 1917 in Mississippi. By age 13 she would pick
200-300 pounds of cotton a day. Without her knowledge or consent, she
was sterilized by a white doctor in the State’s effort to keep down
the black population. She got involved in the Civil Rights struggle
and her family lost their jobs. She said, "They
kicked me off the plantation, they set me free. It's the best thing
that could happen. Now I can work for my people."
She was jailed, beaten, and left with permanent damage to her
kidneys, but she said later,
"I guess if I'd had any sense, I'd have been a little scared -
but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do
was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they'd been trying to do that a
little bit at a time since I could remember."
One time she and a group of activists were riding to a meeting and
the bus broke down in the dark in Klan country, and there was so much
fear and so many tears, so she sang hymns to keep spirits up. One of
them became the title of her autobiography, “This
little Light of Mine”.
I remember hearing her and Pete Seeger sing it on the stage that
night, and if you know it, please sing along with me:
This
little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
This
little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
This
little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.
Let
it shine, let it shine, let it shine
All
around my neighborhood, I’m going to let it shine
All
around my neighborhood, I’m going to let it shine
All
around my neighborhood, I’m going to let it shine
Let
it shine, let it shine, let it shine
Everywhere
I go, I’m going to let it shine
Everywhere
I go, I’m going to let it shine
Everywhere
I go, I’m going to let it shine
Let
it shine, let it shine, let it shine
The season of
Epiphany says that the light has come into the world and the light
helps us to see the shadows we would like to ignore as well as the
joy that we get too busy to see. The light of Christ shows us that
there is no place on earth that is hidden from God’s love. Today
let your light shine. “Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”
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