The Problem with THEM

A Reflection for V Easter                                              All Saints Church, Southern Shores, NC April 24, 2016                                                                        Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Acts 11:1-18                Revelation 21:1-6         John 13:31-35              Psalm 148

The Problem With THEM!

When I was younger there were things that I knew that I knew that I knew. There was never any question that what I knew was the end of the discussion. For instance when I was a child I knew that the Sun rose every morning and set every night. That was the language we used. Except, as I my father explained to me that it was the earth and all the other planets that were moving in elliptical orbits and the sun remained where it was. So I then knew that the sun was the center of the one and only galaxy which we called the Milky Way and we there were thousands of stars. Except, I learned that our solar system is 27000 light years away from the Galactic Center and there are hundreds of billions of stars in this galaxy and billions of other galaxies and they are all part of an expanding universe in which 95+% is dark matter and dark energy. There is still much I do not know. Did the suns, planets and stars change? or the Universe? or the nature of energy and matter? None of these things changed; only my perception is constantly changing.

When I was very young I was taught people were poor because they were lazy and they were “happy” being poor; obviously since there were so many jobs available in the miracle of capitalism. If they would just get off their behinds, and go to work! Except, I learned that there were not enough jobs for everybody; in fact people were kept at low wages when there was a fear of being unemployed and the greater the mass of unemployed the lower that wages were payed and businesses made more money if wages were kept low. When I started working for minimum wage I learned the very real lesson that minimum wage does not equal a living wage. Did capitalism change? Minimum wage did change when I worked at my first part time job in 1961 the minimum wage was $1.15 an hour, which when adjusted to 2016 dollars would equal $9.00 an hour in buying power. The current state minimum wage in North Carolina is $7.25 an hour, and the state legislature, in its wisdom, has denied localities to change minimum wage higher. My first job out of college in 1968 was $5,000.00; and it was tight with my house, a two bedroom, den, 2 bath, corner lot bungalow in Wrightsville Beach costing $15,000.00 paying one quarter of salary on mortagae. Everything has changed and my perceptions most of all.

I was taught that Anglo-Saxons people and people of color were very different. I believed we had different blood, brains, emotions; they were unfortunate and needed to be treated kindly but not as equals. Except all my ideas of race were based on racism, which was part of the very air I breathed for thousands of years. Shakespeare had Shylock speak against this kind of thinking in the Merchant of Venice on this the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death:

                                   I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.

330 years before I was born, poets knew that there were no real differences in people in race, religion, or national origin; it just takes time for science to come up with the evidence that the poets, prophets and apostles already knew; and the demagogue, preachers and fear mongers keep denying. My perceptions changed.

When I was growing up we used words like “queer” or “pansy” as a way to put down people. I was taught that people who were homosexual or lesbian were sick people who were driven by perverted lust based on an early sexual trauma and if not stopped would sexually abuse or kill young children. Then when I was 15, I went to work as an apprentice in an equity summer stock theater. There I ran across people who were normal in every way as I was but were different in sexual orientation. Shylock’s speech applied as my perceptions changed.

A couple of thousand years ago the followers of Jesus were split on the idea that gentiles were different from Jews. There were the purveyors of the old fears and prejudices in the followers of the Risen Lord and they thought that gentiles could never be part of God’s plan. Peter thought that way until God gave him a vision to see that all were fellow children of God. Have the gentiles changed or has Peter’s vision changed him?

Peter should have known better for of course he had been exposed to the Psalms, like the Psalm for today, Psalm 148. The God the Psalmist knows is not a tribal God that backs up local prejudices but a Cosmic God over all of the universe. The Psalmist sings that this is the God of the heavens and sea monsters, of hail and snow, of all people in all places. The Psalmist helps us to change how we perceive God in this world

The writer of the Revelation to John dreams of the home of God being among mortals; for in the dream there is a new heaven and a new earth in his vision. Has God changed or has our vision?

In the Gospel lesson from John, Jesus tells his disciples that there really only one Christian commandment; that they love. Love which has nothing to do with approval, or emotions or even liking, is that action, -for love without action is dead- that works for the best for each other. Had God through Jesus changed, as if Jesus was God’s plan B; or was it that Jesus helped us to see more about God and our perceptions changed?

When I was a kid I thought only good people went to church; because the purpose of church was a finishing school to associate with good people, to be entertained and enlightened in how we should be even better people, by getting away from the big bad world into a place of safety. The only drawback was when I felt especially sinful; I thought that I was an affront to the rigorous God if I dared to show up and especially if I tried to take Communion if I was unworthy. Later on I came to see that church is not a stained glass clubhouse for saints so we can prance around the Altar better, but a hospital for broken people who come to gather together to give thanks for God’s blessing and to find strength to help mend the deepest pains of our broken world as a way of putting love into action.

Before I came here I thought that the purpose of fundraising was to raise money to trick other people into paying the church bills. I came here and they helped me to see that the purpose of fundraising is to come together to have fun and to raise money to help support the love in action to all the people of this community in which God has so richly blessed us. Did the concept of “church” change or did the vision change us?

There was a time when we knew everything but as Bob Dylan sang in My Back Pages “Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.” May Christ continue to give us the strength to be open to be changed into the image of the One who created, and recreates, us so that we might perceive how God sees things.

The Problem With THEM! (Poem)

Rousing from the torpor; remembering tirades about THEM

I say; “I AM different than THEM!”

Their eyes are different,

because they see different.

They walk way different

            because their bodies fit different.

Their noses are different,

            because they smell different.

They pray different,

because they believe different.

They hear different,

because they think different.

They eat different,

if I were a cannibal they would taste different.

Life would be better without THEM!

I would be happier without THEM!

I would be richer without THEM!

I would be safer without THEM!

I don’t want to have deal with me;

let me dwell on THEM!