A Reflection for VIII Pentecost (Proper 11) All Saints’ Church, Southern
Shores, N.C.
July 19, 2015 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
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 23rd
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.
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