How Have the Mighty Fallen and the Weapons of War Perished

A Reflection for 5^th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 8)     

 All Saints’, Southern Shores, NC  

 June 28, 2015                                                                    

 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27         2 Corinthians 8:7-15        Mark 5:21-43

How Have the Mighty Fallen and the Weapons of War Perished

How do we deal with people with whom we disagree; do we engage them in argument or avoid them? How do we deal with people who are different from us - pretend the differences are not there or try to change them? How do we deal with people who are a threat to us; do we run away or threaten them back? How do we deal with people who hate us; do we avoid them or do we return the hate? The lessons for today have as one of the themes that we have a choice to either fear or to love as a response to all of those situations.

Rembrandt's Saul and David

The Hebrew Testament lesson for today picks up the David saga further down the road from last week’s Goliath conflict. Saul was so grateful for the defeat of Goliath that he brought David into his palace. Saul was subject to fits of depression, and David would soothe Saul’s soul by singing songs to him. Saul gave his daughter Michal to David as his first wife to keep him close because he loved him. He made David an officer in command of others and David, leading daring raids, won many battles, and his fame grew even greater than that of Saul. This grated on Saul and made him anxious. David was also very close to Saul’s son,

David and Jonathan French 13th Century Manuscript

Jonathan, and they loved each other dearly, so dearly that Saul grew to be jealous of that relationship. Finally Saul burst out in violence against David and David fled for his life as Saul declared David an outlaw.  Saul even dispatched David’s wife, Michal (and Saul’s own daughter) to be the wife of a flunky that Saul thought was more trustworthy. Why does Saul do all these things? Is he crazy? He might be, but violence is a choice that people often make when they want to restore order when things seem to be slipping out of their grasp. We humans have a tendency to want the status-quo and, uneasy with change, the more we fear, the more violent we get. 

David took to the hills and kept out of Saul’s clutches, being careful not to openly fight against Saul. David made a pretty good living as a bandit and running a sort of protection racket to keep bad things from happening to different landowners. At times, government can be confused with protection, so that in some parts of the Kingdom, especially around Hebron in Judah, he became the de facto leader where Saul’s rule was weak. One time when Saul was trying to hunt David and his men down, David had the opportunity to murder Saul in his sleep, but David only cut off a piece of Saul’s robe and then sent it back to him as a reminder that he still loved Saul. Later Saul and Jonathan are killed in battle against the Philistines at about the same time that David was fighting the Amalekites. Yes, David kept himself safe from Saul, but he continued to love.

David writes a poem, in honor of Saul and Jonathan, which is the lesson for today and in which he declares his love once again. The poem is called the Song of the Bow, which apparently was also included in a now-lost volume of National Songs called the Book of the Upright. The Bow is a reference to Jonathan who was proficient in archery and shows David’s grief at losing his special friend Jonathan, but at the same time David shows love to his enemy, Saul. The lament is for all of those who are killed as the result of fear which grows into violence. The refrain “How have the mighty fallen and the weapons of war perished” underlines the futility of turning to violence as a way of dealing with fear and people different from ourselves.

Paul in the Epistle selection for today writes to the church in Corinth on how to deal with the disapproval of the Gentile mission by the very conservative group of Jewish Christian elders in Jerusalem who thought that Gentile Christians were second class Christians. There was a famine going on in Jerusalem, and Paul suggests that the Corinthians need to show love in the form of a collection to help the group in Jerusalem who look down on them, to repay distain with love.

In the Gospel lesson for today, Jesus is approached by the head of the synagogue to help heal his daughter. On his way they are caught in a crowd, and a woman uses this opportunity to bump into Jesus as a way of getting healing from her hemorrhaging of blood. She could not ask him directly because the purity laws forbade a man from touching a woman who is bleeding because that would make him ritually unclean. This woman is a threat to Jesus and his ministry and so how does he respond? He loves her, forgives her, and grants her peace. 

Jesus and Hemorrhaging  Woman from Catacombs of Rome mid 2nd Century

Word comes that the daughter of the head of the synagogue is dead, and again the ritual purity laws come into effect for if Jesus were to continue to the house and touch a dead person, he would be declared ritually unclean. Jesus gets around it by saying that she is only sleeping and tells the father “Do not fear, only believe.” He continues to the house as an act of love, replacing deadly fear with a new life, for as the author of 1^st John reminds in the Message Translation:

God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love. (4:17-18) 

When I look at the lessons for today, I ask myself of what am I afraid? Why does it keep me from loving? Penny Nash, the associate Rector of St. Stephen’s in Richmond wrote this month’s meditations for Forward Day by Day, and last Sunday, as I was looking at these lessons, I read her mediation which began: “It has been said, and I double checked to make sure it is true, that “Fear not!” appears in the Bible more than 365 times. That’s worth remembering every day, all year.” All I have to say is “A-men to that”, for each day I might run into people who are different, or disagree, or are a threat, or who hate me, and I don’t need to cripple my life with fear.

How Have the Mighty Fallen and the Weapons of War Perished (poem)

Her eyes coldly cut over to me, saying

that I am not worth a breath expending

share of dislike, her distained contempt.

Wondering if a deep hatred is her intent

to try to hurt me or to just herself cripple

with justly hurt pride?

            The waves ripple

between us over years of things unsaid

becoming the substance of daily bread

nourishing estrangement.

                 I hear her sigh

the wish that our love didn’t have to die

of neglect. Fear of failing numbs the hand

reaching to touch, so to my side unmanned

it returns to in air dangle.

                 Spirit giving peace,

give me strength to love so fear might cease,

I pray, asking that be our mighty pride fallen

and as weapons of our war- perish forgotten.

Changing Myths

A Reflection for Pentecost 4 (Proper 7)                     All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC 

June 21, 2015                                                                   Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

1 Samuel 17: (1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49                        2 Corinthians 6:1-13                       Mark 4:35-41

Changing Myths

Archetypal John Ford shot of "Mittens Buttes" in Monument Valley from Stagecoach 1939

Let me start off my reflection on the Hebrew Testament lesson for today, the story of David and Goliath, by telling you about a line in a movie. The movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, is a John Ford 1962 critique and reflection on the nature of myth, especially the myth that Ford helped pass on, the Western saga. Ford was best known for sweeping landscapes of magnificent Monument Valley where the cavalry charges with bugles blowing, sabers drawn, and six guns blazing to clear the wilderness against all odds of Indians and bandits. 

Marvin, Stewart, and Wayne in Ford's Liberty Valance 1962

However, this film is shot in black and white on back lots and sound stages which crowds the characters. Usually Ford’s heroes are young strong men prone to violence to do the “right”. In this film, the two main actors, John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, are both 30-plus years older than the roles they are playing in the flashback at the center of the story, and the close-ups underscore the age differences. In the flashback, the Stewart character tells the story of when he was reputed to have shot the villainous bad-man, Liberty Valance, played with scenery chewing one-dimensional villainy exaggeration by Lee Marvin - except the facts show a different series of events from the legend which was printed at the time, 30 years before, by the alcoholic editor played by Edmond O’Brien. The sober town editor in the present time, played by oh-so-sober Carleton Young, listening to the story refuses to publish the facts and says in this baritone voice of authority the classic line: “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

I think that Ford was looking at the myth of the west he had popularized and this film was a way of suggesting that the myth needs to be re-examined. He said of the way we treated the Indians: “We've treated them badly, it's a blot on our shield; we've robbed, cheated, murdered and massacred them, but they kill one white man and God, out come the troops.” It was one of the reasons he made Sergeant Rutledge and Cheyenne Autumn a few years later as critiques of the bigotry that the earlier sagas had as their dark side. Now, you are probably asking yourself, “What does any of this have to do with the David and Goliath story?

”

I think that the David and Goliath story is a competing myth relooking of the national myth of the Kingdoms of Israel.  The kingdoms had put their trust in their armies and the building up of their military establishment. If you read the Books of Joshua and Judges, we see trust being placed in generals and the power of armies. In this story, the generals with all their armies are stymied; the longer version of this story has the taunting of the troops by Goliath going on for forty days. Forty is one of those numbers that has a sacred and symbolic meaning of time being accomplished - such as forty years in the wilderness wandering, forty years each of the reigns of David and of Solomon, Jesus being tempted for 40 days - which is sort of a tip-off that we are moving into symbolic language, like a dream or myth, rather than a straight historical event.  The villain, Goliath, is big – how big is he? He is so big he is almost 10 feet tall, an Anakim, part of an ancient race of giants in the Hebrew mythology. This giant is a one-dimensional thug who is exaggeratedly overdrawn and all dressed up for battle, a little like Marvin’s portrayal of Liberty Valance in the Ford picture.  In fact, this is not the last time the name of Goliath is mentioned in the history of the Kingdoms, but in those other references, his death is caused by someone named Elhanan, during the reign of King David.

This saga of David is not confined to a recitation of facts about his life but to an understanding of the meaning of his life as presenting a different way of seeing a different meaning in the lives of the people who are passing on the myth. 

I tell people that our lives are not determined by facts but by the meaning we give to the events in our lives.  A person will say, “Boy, he really made me mad when he did this.” I will respond, “He does not have the power to make you feel anything. You have made the choice to have that particular feeling, because of what you thought it meant. The thought did not come out of the ether waves but from belief systems you hold on to, which may be full of lies and fearful myths.” I usually ask people to look at their dreams for better myths which God, or the unconscious, makes available for healing.  William James once wrote: “human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.”

In the perceived reality of the rest of the world, the oldest and strongest is the one who gets the most, the old “possession is nine-tenths of the law” and the “I got here first” mindsets. However, one of the themes in the Hebrew mythology stories is that the youngest son is the one who God keeps choosing, not the one who has the legal right to inherit or is the one with the most physical power. David is the youngest son in his family, of the tribe of the youngest son of Jacob, Benjamin. David is a country boy who wanders on the scene, when the 40 days are over, when the time is “right”. David is so small - how small is he? He is so small that when Saul tries to put his own armor on David, David keeps tripping over it and has to go out without armor, vulnerable. The sword is also too big for David, so the theme seems to be that David, who later will be seen as a personification of Israel, is small and vulnerable, having no protection from the threats of his enemies. David’s only hope is to trust the power greater than himself, greater than all earthly powers. 

The prevailing myth of the nation and of most nations, indeed of most individuals, is that the world is a fearful place and, in order to survive, one must put one’s trust in one’s own power, wealth, and strength, the “I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of death and fear no evil because I am the biggest and meanest Son of a Benjamin that has ever been in charge and I have a bigger rod and staff than anyone else” approach. Yet the Psalm of David is, “I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death and fear no evil for the LORD is with me and thy rod and staff they strengthen me.” In this spirit the David and Goliath story presents a counter-myth, a different way to look at where trust can be placed as we face the enemies of life. Our weapons of choice are not what we make or put on, but the belief system in which we find truth.

Paul lives into choosing a different mystic structure of his story when he, in the lesson for today, gives thanks for all the bad things and good things that have happened to him and re-interprets them as opportunities to show God’s love. He refuses to hold on to his old myth that God gives out wrathful punishment as payment for sins. He is able to see in his light that losing sight on the road to Damascus led him to new vision on the path to join the Corinthians in God’s heaven lived here and now. He agrees with William James: “Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.”

In the Gospel lesson for today, Jesus shows that, in the middle of all the storms of our lives, there is a core of peace which is available to us if we will move away from fear. I believe that Jesus did not come to get us into heaven after we die, but to show us how to change the way we live so that heaven, the dwelling place of the divine, begins right here and now as the divine becomes incarnated in us, even in the middle of the storms. We are called to this place to share that peace each week in the middle of our individual and collective storms and then invited to eat a symbol of God feeding us with God’s very self.

Don’t be afraid; enter into the peace that passes all understanding.

Changing Myths (poem)

Light is dimming in my theater, as images flicker

playing in mythic memories of Monument Valley.

Mittens of east and west buttes framing the sally-

forth of cavalry charges with the desert air thicker 

 with blood stained dust and gun smoked powder

calling revenge for Custer! Now, some new face

of red dies in line of fire while bugle tunes race

in John Ford chassis for slaughter even prouder.

I loved those innocent popcorn fueled myths

where I could play that I had killed for honor.

Now older myths shoulder star spangled banner

off new anvils which tap out tattoos of smiths

call us to quarters when dreams of healing come

urging me to sign up for a different kind of army

to enlist into a soul infested peace giving journey

of drink one sip of wine and eat of bread a crumb.

Myths are warring within my hopes for favor

still tasting blood of  ones I still guiltily savor.

Being Amphibious

A Reflection for Pentecost III (proper 6)                   All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC   June 14, 2015                                                                 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13                  2 Corinthians 5:6-17                  Mark 4:26-34     

“Being Amphibious”

Last week on the Internet there was an article in the East Oregonian newspaper about an Oakland A’s Pitcher who could pitch with either arm and  who was brought into the 6^th inning of their major league baseball game against the Boston Red Sox. The paper’s headline referred to him as  “Amphibious”.  I harrumphed and, like many others, made a joke that the author of that headline was confused. It is always fun to make fun of someone else’s mistakes – bear in mind that this comes from a man who has two Master’s Degrees and most of a Doctorate and still needs Judy to go over my reflections for grammar mistakes and confusing word choices… But we tend to attack those things in others which we want deny within ourselves. The paper apologized in an editorial on Tuesday, calling it a “Big Frogging Mistake”, but I would say that, technically, the paper used the right word because the word “Amphibious” comes from the Greek meaning “having a dual nature”. While the scientific term means being at home in water and on land  – like a frog - we forget that we all have at least dual natures for we all have many different natures. The first is our strength which we have developed and the other is our less-developed or neglected side. They are both sides of the one being. God’s divine energy flows through all things, and spirit and matter are one. As Teilhard de Chardin notes, “Matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen.” I would say we are all meant to be more than a tad “amphibious”.

Today we are continuing the cycle of stories about the rise and fall of the kingdoms of Israel in the Hebrew Testament lessons for the season after Pentecost. We can look at it from a historical point of view and spend a lot of time doing a study of the geo-political forces which formed the Jewish people, and history buffs like me can go to town.  But I want to go deeper and suggest that the stories are not only meant as literal history but as mythic stories based on the meaning behind the history itself. Myths are not made up by a storyteller to prove a particular point, which can be an allegory, fable, or parable, but are sort of jazz riff improvisations on a theme on traditional stories passed on by a culture. 

I have told you before that myths are public dreams and dreams are private myths. I look at myths in the same way I look at dreams in that the identity of the people, places, and events may change but the core of the story is meant to help me to understand the world in which I live. Myths are part of the collective unconscious which speaks to us to bring healing in our lives. I consider dreams and myths as part of the way God communicates with us.

Last week I suggested that one of the themes in these mythic stories of the rise and fall of the ancient Hebrew Kingdoms is how we create community. Last week was about the dynamic tension between developing one’s own personal authority and the need to work together with others for the common good. The failure to develop personal authority sets us up for tyranny, and the failure to work together generates what William Butler Yeats, at the end of the First World War, described in the first stanza of his poem, The Second Coming”:

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

In this story Samuel hears God tell him that the picking of Saul was not  a good choice. Early on in the chapters before this story for today, the writer describes Saul as a son of a wealthy family and “a handsome young man. There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he; he stood head and shoulders above everyone else.” (9:1-3). He is straight from Central Casting, and if you were only looking with your eyes, he would look perfect for the role. He does well for a couple of years as he listened to Samuel and to God and developed an inner spiritual life from which developed a proverb “Is Saul also among the prophets?” (10: 11-13)

However, that promising beginning does not last and his spiritual discipline starts to fade as he develops glory in his military campaigns. Saul is so filled with pride at his success in battle against the Philistines and Amalekites that he stops listening to what God is telling him through Samuel. So filled with his own ego, he sees no reason to listen to God and becomes a stranger to his own spiritual journey because he thinks that he has already arrived at the journey’s end. While Saul would do the outward show of religion, he neglects and refuses to look into his own heart and soul and the heart and soul of his people. Without a spiritual guide to remind him that there is a power greater than himself, Saul descends into delusions of grandeur, paranoia, and madness. To use the term in the baseball headline, Saul becomes one-dimensional and is no longer “amphibious”, no longer spiritual AND material, no longer part of a community working together, but a tyrant bending the community to do his bidding. His divorce from his spiritual self is destructive to his life and to his community.

Now Samuel goes to find a replacement for the unraveling king. Going to Bethlehem, he looks over the sons of Jesse. He is told not to look just at the outside of a person but to look deeper into the reality of the heart, looking for the one who allows the spirit self to grow. He is reminded by his inner conversations with God that he needs to see with both the senses of the eye AND with the heart of the spirit.

One of the deeper themes of this story is that communities and their leaders need to nourish that “amphibious” vision of life to be able to walk on the firm land of the senses and swim in the deep water of the spirit  or, to borrow a phrase from the paper, it is a “big frogging deal”. That we believe in an incarnation of God’s spirit becoming flesh so that we might be aware that God’s spirit is the center of our being. Each person we meet, each animal, each grain of sand on the beach is filled with the Divine Spirit, for “Matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen.”

We here on the Outer Banks are so fortunate in that it really takes a massive amount of denial to ignore the spiritual dimension of the world we live in. Don’t get me wrong - it can and is done every day, but it would seem to be so hard to look at this ocean and not be in awe and realize that there is something more to this world than what we can or seek to control. With this awesome and also awful power all around us – the power to give and take away life - we really have to be dense and self-obsessed not to realize the context of mutual dependency that we need in order to work together. Don’t get me wrong - it can and is done every day, but what a waste of fullness of life when it is so simple to be “amphibious”. It is a big frogging deal.

Last week when the grandkids were here, we came back from the beach and I introduced them to one of the tree frogs living in our outdoor shower where we wash off the sand we collect on our beach excursions. I wrote a poem about the gift of the frog which informed my reflection. 

Being Amphibious

The water is running over my body

to wash afternoon beach walk sand

off, or the early morning eye sand out

or the sweat of the morning workout.

“Blaaart”, not “Ribbit”, sound the tree

frogs who hang out  by the shampoos or

soaps on the second ledge or behind the

old mirror hanging in my outdoor shower.

He/she only stares and I want him/her to

say much more but s/he only looks, as if

to tell me that s/he and I are both spirit and

matter, amphibians, living in dual natures.

S/he living both in water and land and

I swimming in the water of the spirit

with feet planted in the hardy ground

of reason, never one or other fully apart.

“Blaaart”, s/he interjects from behind the

mirror, probably a frog-ish mating call, but

I, in wonder, translate it as a way of saying

to my soul, “life really is a big frogging deal.”

I should have blaarted him/her back, for in

the Divine eyes we are all creatures made in

and for love in awe of that which is inside and

outside of our narrow boxes of holy experience.