The King Longing For Flesh of a Bathsheba

The King longing for flesh of  a Bathsheba in my dreams
in the night of the light of the waning half moon, as she
and I have compacts with that moon.Oh gods help me;
she as my Nikkal-wa-ib, goddess of summer fruit, seems
to call to me out of that fading inconstant of silver shining.
In first quarter of life, under a waxing mirror of half moon
to be noticed or adored by LORD or by women consume
growing, yet under the shadows of my big brothers pining.

Then I consumed the second quarter with fame of victories
as I was marveled at by those longing to share my promise.
Jonathan came closest to sharing my love, if I being honest,
or as honest with myself as entering those cloudy memories
when attracted all those wishing to rise my comets of hope
as they were seduced one by one to say words of adoring
to keep the old ghosts of Divine and family's slights scoring.
Now becomes force of habit to of those my hands to grope.

Now full moon of life is passed by, as old powers dimming
when light had I coming to expect, now beginnings to flicker
as words jumping out of reach in mid thought  more quicker
vanish into ether as once favorite Psalms no longer hymning.
Oh come to me Bathsheba of my dreams harvesting the fruit
long past ripe. Murmur words I long to hear though carnage
strew the path and my shiny forged reputation now I tarnish
when brave Uriah I plot an end, to die under an enemy boot.

But YHWH long silent, as I take neglecting silence for assent,
stirs in the dreams of the Nathans of this world to sins recount
and counting, and counting, even once again building a mount
celebrating arrogance, calling me for  recourse only to lament
that I posing as lover only plotting to taking and not to giving,
not just to the Bathshebas of my life for they are, so too, many
outward signs of people, places, things I consumed all and any.
Please this day I ask forgiving, so that I may begin new living.

Quaking

A Reflection for 11 Pentecost (Proper 14)                 All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC   August 9, 2015                                                           Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33            Psalm 130            Ephesians 4:25-5:2           John 6:35, 41-51

Quaking

From today’s selection from the Letter to the Ephesians, “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.” The writer begins by quoting the first part of Psalm 4:4; “Be angry and do not sin” from the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Testament into Greek. The Rabbis who knew Hebrew did not say that it was alright to be angry, but as Biblical Scholar, Robert Alter, suggests in his translation of The Book of Psalms:  “The auditors of the poem were exhorted to tremble as an act of conscience that will dissuade them from forms of transgression, then commune with themselves in the solitude of their beds and speak no more.” Or, as he translates it:  “Quake and do not offend. /Speak in your hearts and be still. Selah”

The meaning of the word “Selah” is unknown, but it is used 71 times in 33 Psalms, and many interpreters used it as an instruction to wait a minute and think about what has just been said. We see that theme repeated in the Psalm for today where “My soul waits for the LORD* more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning/ O Israel, wait for the LORD* for with the LORD there is mercy.”  When we are in the darkness of our anger, hoping for the Divine Light, waiting is the only way that mercy can grow so that we might feed on the bread of heaven, referred to in John’s Gospel for today, instead of the salty tears of bitterness. Anger that we sit on destroys us and the people we are with. 

My understanding is that anger is usually connected to another feeling because anger is easy to get to, but if you can find out what feeling the anger hides, then the anger will have no reason for being. Anger then is a choice we make for it never stands alone. For instance, suppose as a teenage boy I get angry because my girlfriend is talking to a boy and I think she is flirting with him. If I express my feeling of anger, then I will blame her behavior for my anger and, lashing out at her, I will drive her away. However, if the anger is covering a deeper feeling, one of which I am ashamed, such as fear based on my own feelings of worthlessness and insecurity, or the powerlessness of not being in control of other people, then I have to come to grips with claiming those feelings and can deal with them instead of projecting my fears onto her. 

The story behind the Hebrew Testament lesson for today is a story of living with anger and dying with it. It is the story of Absalom, the second oldest son of David. He has an older half-brother, Amnon, who is the heir to the throne, and Absalom would only become the heir to the King if something were to happen to Amnon. It comes to pass that Amnon thinks that he has fallen in great love with his half-sister Tamar, Absalom’s full sister, and he wants to have sex with her. He and a friend work out a plan for Amnon to go to bed and act sick and tell David that the only way he could ever get better is for Tamar to fix him some special cakes and for him to eat them out of her dainty little hand. David, ever the doting but distant father, hears about it and orders Tamar to feed Amnon. She, being a good daughter, goes into Amnon’s bedroom and when she refuses his advances, he rapes her. 

Absalom and Tamar by Guercino

After the rape, he is disgusted with her for refusing and, instead of marrying her and saving her reputation, he has his friend throw her out of the house into the street and bolts the door. Amnon has a choice between shame or anger and he chooses anger, because anger seems easier to live with.

Tamar runs to Absalom and tells him what happened. Absalom sits on his anger, which grows deeper when David does nothing except get angry, because that is the way David is with his sons. He will give them anything they want but time and guidance. David chooses to get angry because it is easier than doing a fearless and searching moral inventory of his own failings.

Absalom sits on his anger for several years as Tamar lives in Absalom’s house with his wife and children, and then he arranges an ambush to kill Amnon. Amnon is killed and Absalom runs away to his father-in-law’s kingdom and is in exile for several years. Remember, he is now the direct heir to the throne. Joab, the slimy nephew of David, knowing that Absalom is the heir, decides to try to get close to Absalom and get David to allow Absalom to come back. 

David allows him to return, but will not allow him to come into the Royal presence. David holds on to his anger, but for Absalom it is hard to tell the difference between sullen anger and neglect. That does not come out like Joab would want, so he starts to avoid Absalom. Absalom gets angry with Joab and gets his attention by burning fields of Joab’s crops. So Joab is blackmailed into urging David to give Absalom one more chance. When someone is convinced of the “righteousness of their anger”, they become more arrogant in what they think are their “justified” responses. What they call “justice” is actually revenge for them not being in control of other people’s actions.

Absalom is allowed to return and starts acting like he is the “King-in-waiting”, driving chariots through town with his beautiful long hair streaming behind him, with a squadron of guards running alongside him. That hair of his is so long and lovingly taken care of that, according to the writer, when he would get his hair trimmed once a year, the sweepings would weigh five pounds. Absalom, still sitting on his anger, starts to secretly put David down to undermine David’s rule and gather support to overthrow David. He sneaks off to Hebron, which has been resentful since David moved the capital to Jerusalem, and Absalom has himself anointed as King and raises a revolt. David retreats from Jerusalem to gather up troops, but he gives orders that Absalom is not to be harmed. 

Absalom marches into Jerusalem and symbolically rides a mule through the city as the symbol of being God’s chosen King. We will see that same symbol ten centuries later when Jesus rides into Jerusalem. Absalom wants to humiliate David and so he rapes all of David’s concubines in front of the cheering crowds of supporters. All of this anger building up over the years explodes in an orgy of revenge. 

Death of Absalom by Gustave Dore

Absalom’s generals urge him to one particular plan of action to defeat David, but Absalom’s arrogance leads him and his troops to defeat, and on a headlong retreat through the woods, the mule he is riding goes under low-hanging branches of a tree where his beautiful, thick, full, and long hair gets caught and tangled, and he hangs suspended in the air. Joab’s armor bearers come across him and, on Joab’s order, kill Absalom because he knows that David, even now, would convince himself that “boys will be boys” and take Absalom back in. Joab shows he is still angry about the field that Absalom burned. Anger always breeds anger in return.

The way to break the cycle is to quake and ask for help to turn the anger over to the Power greater than ourselves so that we, together with God, turn it into a blessing for others. Today we will be blessing the playground, Maddie’s Place, for The All Saints School which opens next week. Maddie’s death was an obscenity as it was a result of what a six year old survivor, referring to the shooter, called “a very angry man”. It was almost three years ago  that this “very angry man” lashed out his revenge on whoever was around. The playground is an attempt to turn that obscenity into an opportunity to bless other children.  Our faith is based on the example two thousand years ago when a young man was the victim of the anger of a troubled people lashing out and hanging him on a cross to die. Jesus took that anger and converted it into love, to be made a blessing for us. 

Quaking (poem)

Anger is a friend of mine

Who, I inviting from time

to time, comes and snuggles

while in my heart struggles

with revenge in  pipe dreams

of sending dark lurid beams

shining darker bitterness

into the noisy wilderness

of my supposed old hurts,

making the pain so worse.

I should pull up welcoming

mats when she is a coming.

But I am afraid to be alone

opening up times to atone.

Suppose we spent the times,

reading between those lines?

Would I miss that old might

shouting that I was so right?

Anger can no longer caressing

be transfigured into a blessing?

 

Becoming a King

A Reflection for VIII Pentecost (Proper 11)              All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C.

 July 19, 2015                                                                  Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

2 Samuel 7:1-14a              Psalm 23              Ephesians 2:11-22            Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Becoming a King

This week I will be leaving for a couple of Sundays (July 26, August 2) off on vacation, and I will vacate. Jesus in the Gospel lesson from today begins by telling his disciples, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while." Pat and I will take his advice. 

You already know that I have trouble vacating because I get worried about how things are going when I am not the center of the All Saints’ universe. I have this magical thinking that, when I leave, people will die.  I have to keep reminding myself that even though my leaving for vacation has coincided with people dying, my leaving did not cause the death. It is an ego thing where I tell myself how much I am needed, as if I didn’t trust the lay leadership of this church - or God, for that matter. I am the Rector of this church, which comes from the Latin root of the word for “ruler”. Vacation is a time to get back to sanity and away from the delusion that this is “MY” church. This is not my church - it is God’s church, and I am only one of several hundred ministers ministering in this place.

The story from the David Saga recounts that Nathan, the prophet, has a dream, an encounter with God, in which God speaks to Nathan to give him a message to give to David, the “Ruler”.  Before he had the dream, Nathan was a good “yes man” and said “yes” to David’s thoughts about building a huge Public Works project to build a place for God to hang out. I believe that God speaks to all of us in our dreams, and our task is to enter into a dialogue with the dream in order to translate its symbols into conscious language. Nathan is able to enter into a dialogue with the dream and, from that translation into words, Nathan comes forward to remind David that David’s plans to build a Temple, a house for God, is really too full of David’s ego. There is nothing wrong with building a Temple, but if it fits into David’s plan to have the Temple as “his” Temple rather than God’s, the temptation that David is struggling with comes from that part of himself that is fearful of not being in total control as he hopes to live into the archetype of being a King. T. S. Eliot has Thomas Beckett say in Murder in the Cathedral,  “The last Temptation is the greatest treason; to do the right thing for the wrong reason.” 

In the male psyche there are four major archetypes that dwell within us folk with the “Y Chromosome Disorder”: Warrior, Lover, King, and Magician (to use the terms of Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette in their four books on decoding the male psyche). Each of these archetypes can be lived into only when we are able to go deeply within ourselves and encounter these archetypes and their shadows. The fully-developed person must deal with all four of these quadrants of the male psyche. The archetype of King has its beginnings in the earliest primitive cultures, and it has to do with how we use power. Power is not bad; it is how we are able to use our skills and talents to bless the world. The inability to claim the fullness of that archetype leads to tendencies to behave like an active tyrant on one end of the spectrum or a passive weakling on the other. The other quadrants of the male psyche require that the Warrior find his way between the active sadist and the passive masochist, the Lover between the active addicted Lover and the passive impotent Lover, and the Magician between the active Detached Manipulator and the passive Denying “Innocent” One. 

Jesus is an example of a person who is able to live fully into being a Lover, a Warrior, a King and a Magician providing blessing. Notice the number of times he has to get off by himself to do the work of knowing the fullness of his being, and he encourages the disciples to learn the discipline of going deeper into themselves to find the power inside each of them to do Christ’s work in the world. Prayer is not just saying words out loud to something “out there”, but rather it is about going deeper into oneself to listen and interact to the indwelling spirit of God.  David, on the other hand, shows us the opposite, as a person who acts out with compulsive behavior so that he vacillates between being an addicted lover with women - which you will hear about in the lessons for the next two weeks when he has an encounter with Bathsheba - and impotent with his children, as you will see as he deals with Absalom his son in the lesson in three weeks.

The writer of the Epistle to the Ephesians assures us that, when we do the work of having a disciplined pattern of seeking union with God, we can be freed from the compulsive actions that come from not being at peace within ourselves:

So Jesus came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. 

David did have an understanding of God, but he did not realize that this “Ruler” stuff got in his way as he strayed from the fullness of his relationship with the Divine as we can see in the 23^rd Psalm of his earlier faith. Let me read to you a translation from Robert Alter, a professor of Hebrew and Comparative Religion at Berkley, who I heard give a couple lectures while on vacation five years ago at a Chautauqua Conference, and I was astonished at the depth he was able to give to his translations of Hebrew texts:

1 A David Psalm.

            The LORD is my shepherd,

                                    I shall not want.

2          In grass meadows He makes me lie down

                                    by quiet waters guides me.

3          My life He brings back.

                                    He leads me on pathways of justice

                                                for His name’s sake.

4          Though I walk in the vale of death’s shadow,

                                    I fear no harm,

                                                for you are with me.

            Your Rod and Your staff—

                                    it is they that console me.

5          You set out a table before me

                                    in the face of my foes.

            You moisten my head with oil,

                                    my cup overflows.

6          Let but goodness and kindness pursue me

                                    all the days of my life.

7          And I shall dwell in the house of the LORD

                                    for many long days.   

Becoming a King (poem)

An ermine robe and gold crown would be nice

prancing around and showing off my power

having mere peasants and Lords bow twice

in deference due to my mein of royal glower.

Yet the nagging question of what of ruler just

is he who not even able ere quiet rule passions,

Plantagenet sized sulking anger, envy, or lust

which for Priest is completely out of fashions?

Be it as may I am still meant to practice Kinging

to bring a Royal Touch, not to cure “King’s evil”

as in olde days, but breaking walls with singing

of the love that existed before the time primeval.

It is not of the notes we hit or the tune we carry

but of God’s peace between lives making merry.