A Reflection for V Lent All Saints’
Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, N.C. March 13, 2016 Thomas E.
Wilson, Rector
Alice Comes Home
Several weeks ago when I first started
planning the reflection for this Sunday service, I noted the theme of
“coming home” in the readings. I chose the song “Softly,
Tenderly Jesus is Calling” as one of our hymns for today, and I
thought I would use it to underline that we as Christians are always
“coming home” in this life. Years ago, I did not like that song -
I considered it sloppily sentimental, maudlin, and beneath my
precious intellect and sophisticated theology - but during the
previous week I heard the song haunting my brain, and I found it
coming unconsciously to my lips and I found comfort from it. I asked
Steve, our organist, if we could substitute it for our
previously-selected first hymn, and he suggested that we sing it for
the offertory since Keith, the Lutheran Pastor, was going to be
playing at the later Sunday service.
In the Hebrew Testament lesson is a
song from the prophet Isaiah to the exiles from Babylon coming home
to the land of promise. The Psalm for today is another “Song of
Ascent”, a pilgrimage psalm sung by faithful people coming to the
Temple to come home to God. The Epistle from Philippians has a theme
of finishing the race, “coming home” to God's Kingdom on earth as
it is in heaven. I figured that the Gospel could be spared for this
Sunday, except for a line that I had ignored about the perfume being
used for the anointing of Jesus' body for burial. He was also “coming
home”.
On late Thursday afternoon of last week
I realized that there was a synchronistic reason I was given that
song as an ear-worm to sing. I had received word that my
brother-in-law's sister, who is also an Episcopal Priest, had died
that morning. Alice Irene Sadler, known as “Mother Alice” by the
people in her home churches, had died in her sleep, and people became
concerned when she had not shown up for the morning services. She
had never, never, missed a service in her fifteen years of ministry.
She had “come home”.
Alice grew up in a religiously active
Presbyterian church with weekday family devotions and church
attendance twice on Sundays. There was something different about
Alice though for when she was eleven years old, her father was
volunteer ushering at a Billy Graham Crusade event and while she was
supposed to be looked after by her big brother, Jim, she slipped away
and joined the crowd during the choir singing of “Just As I Am”
and dedicated her life to Jesus. She grew up conventionally but
after working as a teacher and later business in the private sector,
with a passion for strenuously sailing her boat, even though she was
a brittle diabetic, showing up male crew members with her skill, hard
work and dedication, she took a break, quit work and sold her
beloved boat and waited to see what the Lord was calling her to do.
After several volunteer mission trips through her Episcopal Church,
she was told through one of those overseas contacts that she should
think of becoming ordained.
She was almost a half a century on this
earth when she went to seminary. She threw herself into her studies
but she had something they can't teach at Seminaries; an openness to
God with a passion for being a sacramental presence of God's grace in
this broken world as her faith continued to deepen. Her theology was
much more conservative than mine, but we avoided clashes because she
loved my beloved younger sister and I loved her beloved older brother
and we had nieces in common and together officiated at the weddings
of each of those nieces. They loved and admired her, for they are
good judges of character and know authentic grace when they see her.
I was especially thankful for her when she was able to provide
pastoral care for a colleague of mine who had moved down to Florida,
and she had helped him arrive at a peaceful death. She disagreed with
some choices that people made, but she never let disagreements get in
the way of love. She had the quality of being at home with people
because she cared enough to listen to others and to know herself, so
that she was at home with herself and with others.
Despite the fact that the song “Softly
and Tenderly” is often used at funerals, “Coming Home” is not
an event that happens when we die, but a process that begins when we
are fully alive to the presence of Christ in the space between us. In
his poem, “Death of a Hired Hand”, Robert Frost writes
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to
take you in.”
Last month I told you all about staying
at my daughter's house and re-reading Homer's Odyssey while I
was there. The Odyssey is about a homecoming for Odysseus -
how does he return and what does home mean? There is an underlying
theme as well about how we treat guests, friends, and strangers who
come to our home. This is a concept in Greek known as Xenia, how we
deal with Xenos, meaning strangers. We recognize that word when we
say “Xenophobia”, which means fear of strangers and which we see
especially at work with fear mongers during elections. Xenia, the
quality of obligations between host and visitor was honored by the
Gods in Homer's works. In the Iliad, Paris violates Xenia when
he visits Menelaus and seduces his wife Helen. The Trojan War is not
just seen as a love affair gone wrong, but on a deeper level,
breaking the sacred obligation of how people treat each other. It is
not only in Greek poetry, but how we love God by loving our neighbor
is at the core of scripture. It is at the core of all major religions
that the encounter between a host and guest is triangular with God as
the third part, indeed the energy infusing the relationship.
We see this especially in the Gospel
lesson for today where Martha and Mary are hosting Jesus. He is a
guest and Mary shows him love by anointing his feet. Judas is
offended by this act of hospitality, of Xenia. Judas has been with
Jesus for three years, and he has yet to accept the love that Jesus
has showered on Judas as his guest. Jesus has been softy, tenderly
calling him to “come home” with him wherever they will go
together. The tragedy of Judas is that he was too busy with his own
agendas to live into being a host or guest in this world.
The work that
Alice did in the two churches she served was to help furnish a home
for those for those who came into her orbit. She understood that she
was both host and guest wherever she went. It is what we try to do in
this place; we have an obligation of Xenia to visitors, to the
homeless, to our neighbors, and to ourselves. I thank God for sharing
Alice with me and for her being a host for Jesus in her life. I
regret, but also am glad, that she has “come home” for the last
time.
“Softly, tenderly Jesus is calling,
calling for you and for me. . . ye that are weary come home.”
Something is wrong.
The Priest is not here.
How can the service begin?
Services began 14 billion years ago,
give or take a couple million,
with a bang, big, as our home
began construction and we
tardy ones arrived late
trying to remove welcome mats.
Services continue when we really say,
“Come Risen Lord and be our guest
as the Holy Space between us”,
anything less is cocktail chatter.
Mother Alice sends her regrets,
she has a previous invitation
from an old dear friend
to come home.
No comments:
Post a Comment