A Reflection and Poem for 2nd
Pentecost (proper 4) All Saints’
Episcopal, Southern Shores, NC May 22,
2016 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
Venturing much?
Today the question for meditation in
the bulletin asks you to remember a day of decision when you ventured much.
When the 1979 Book of Common Prayer
was being put together, the drafters thought about what kind of prayers and
thanksgivings would be helpful to a community. There were no prayers for
Memorial Day because it was not a religious holiday. Memorial Day started off
almost 150 years ago after the Civil War when civic groups thought that something
should be done to fix up the graves of the soldiers that had been slaughtered
during that war. At first it was a movement of sorrow for all the young men on
both sides. The end of May is when flowers start to bloom, and there was a hope
to take the flowers and decorate the grave.
There had been 2.1 million Union soldiers mobilized and 880,000
mobilized Confederate soldiers. About 750,000 soldiers were killed - 2 out of
three died from disease - and of those, 90,000 were prisoners. It was a brutal
war that brought out the worst in us. Longfellow wrote a poem on Decoration
Day in 1882 where the last stanza reads:
Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours.
We deck with fragrant flowers;
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours.
But the question is, “What is the memory that shall be
ours?” After the war, the political demagogues got in the act, and the memory
became be a way to demonize the other side.
There developed the habit of “waving the bloody shirt” during re-election
campaigns where a red-stained piece of cloth was waved by the candidate and
identified as belonging to a local boy who had died in a particular battle
fighting the enemies on the other side who were members of the opponent’s
political party. So the memory became the glory of each side’s cause rather
than the horror of what we had done treating images of God like disposable
objects for economic or political goals.
During the American Civil War, the
Diocese of the Episcopal Churches in the South, finding themselves in a
different country, formed the Episcopal Church of the Confederate States of
America, but during the Triennial General Convention of the larger Episcopal
church held in the middle of the War, the Convention went on under the fiction
that the Southern Dioceses were unavoidably detained and refused to consider a
censure. After the War and to this day, there is still hesitance about an
Episcopal Memorial Day observance, because of its being hijacked as an
opportunity for division by the time of the revision of the 1892 Book of Common
Prayer. But then again, the early Episcopal Church had a hesitancy about
a 4th of July Celebration in the 1789 Book of Common Prayer because
so many of the church members had been British loyalists. It was not included
as a major feast until the 1979 Prayer Book, and I think the church decided not
to push Memorial Day as well, Things always take a lot of time in
churches.
Outside the church, there was
resistance to a national Memorial day, and in my lifetime, my father, a good
North Carolina boy, would always ask us to celebrate Confederate Memorial Day
on the official North Carolina date of May 10th , the anniversary of
the death of Stonewall Jackson from wounds sustained in the Battle of
Chancellorsville. That date did not change until 1969’s General Assembly took
the courageous step to align state holidays to federal holidays. I remember the
moans of complaints from the heritage folks. My father had died more than two
years before so I do not know how he would have reacted, but I know that we did
not own a Confederate flag and my father saw all battles as failures of leaders
to find better solutions.
The battles are not quite over, for
just last week, the US House of Representatives had a vote on an Amendment to
the Veteran’s Appropriations bill to ban the use of Confederate battle flags
from national cemeteries except on Memorial Day and Confederate Memorial Day.
It narrowly passed, but last year that amendment caused the shutdown of
legislation, and this year might be interesting since the final bill will be
coming up on the 1st anniversary of the Charleston, SC church
shootings.
The Prayer that we will use today as
the Post Communion Prayer is the Prayer
For Heroic Service drafted by Caroline Rose for the 1979 prayer book as
there was felt to deal with the divisions that the Vietnam War and the Civil
Rights Struggle had brought forth and the need to pray in unite in thanksgiving
together for warriors and peacemakers, Northern and Southern, ancient and
modern.
hearts the men and women of our country who in the day of
decision ventured much for the liberties we now enjoy. Grant
that we may not rest until all the people of this land share the
benefits of true freedom and gladly accept its disciplines. This
we ask in the Name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
The “day of decision venturing much”
comes on many days, and it is the venturing much that we hold in memory. Our
lessons today have to do with people venturing much. In the Hebrew Testament
lesson, Elijah comes forth in the third year of a drought and confronts King
Ahab and Queen Jezebel at the risk of his life and safety, challenging the
people to turn away from the worship of the Phoenician and Canaanite rain and
storm god, Baal. The story that we told today is an abbreviated version because
the longer story has the ending that the old men loved to tell around the
campfires for hundreds and thousands of years - Elijah celebrates his victory
over the Priests of Baal by slaughtering 450 of them. They would laugh and
cheer because the only way they knew was how to deal with enemies was to kill
them and then wave their bloody shirts in victory.
There are three choices we have in
dealing with enemies - one is to cower in fear and carefully go along with them
to see what you might be able to get out of it, two is to try to destroy them,
and three is to confront them lovingly.
In the Epistle, Paul had done
missionary work in Galatia and had been successful in helping many to have faith
in Christ. But when he leaves, there appears on the scene a kind of “truth
squad” from the home office in Jerusalem telling them that Paul was misguided,
for if you really wanted to follow Jesus, then they would have to convert to
Judaism and no longer associate with Gentiles. The “truth squad” boys said
converts first had to become a Jew as Jesus had been a Jew by circumcision and
following the ritual laws. Paul shoots back a letter telling them that the love
of God in Jesus is not in exchange for following ritual rules of purity and
circumcision. Paul had tried all of his life to live into the legal and ritual
demands, but it was only through Grace that he was able to be one with Christ.
Jesus had been Paul’s enemy and Jesus returned his hated with love. Paul
confronts his enemies but he will not try to destroy them because he follows
the example of his Savior Jesus. By his confrontation Paul sets us free to
Grace.
In the Gospel story from Luke, Jesus
is asked to heal the servant of a Roman centurion of the occupying forces, an
enemy if there ever was one. The religious leaders have benefited materially
and financially from the generosity of the enemy, and they urge Jesus to do
what the Roman centurion wants because there could be some advantage to it.
Jesus goes to meet the enemy, not out of fearful collaboration but out of
loving respect for a fellow human being in pain. The centurion, out of respect
for Jesus, stops him so that Jesus will not be ritually defiled by entering
into the home of a gentile and asks him to just say the word and the servant
will be healed. By Jesus’ love, he sets
us free to love our enemy.
It would be nice to say that the
Romans were so impressed that they helped Jesus out, and Jesus gets married and
has children and retires off a Roman pension, living a long and healthy life.
However, Luke remembers later in his Gospel that it is a Roman group who
crucifies Jesus, even though that centurion suggested that Jesus was innocent.
Loving your enemies is always a risky proposition, but then on each day of
decision, we are called to venture much.
Days of decisions are not just one
day, but each day is a day of decision to venture much. 19th Century
American poet James Russell Lowell wrote a poem called The Present Crisis, from which was extracted a couple of very
edited verses, 16 out of 90 lines, and many of those lines were changed and
edited to create a hymn called “Once to Every Man and Nation”, which was in the
old hymnal. The first verse went like this:
Once to ev'ry man and
nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
'Twixt that darkness and that light.
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
'Twixt that darkness and that light.
I remember singing that hymn often,
usually around Memorial Day. However, the hymnal was revised in 1982 and that
hymn was left out. There were two reasons - one was that there are many moments
of decision, not just one; and two, the editing was not really true to Lowell’s
longer poem which ends:
|
New
occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;
|
|
|
They
must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;
|
|
|
Lo,
before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,
|
|
|
Launch
our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,
|
|
|
Nor
attempt the Future’s portal with the Past’s blood-rusted key.
|
On this Memorial Day weekend, what
will be the memory that we hold onto and how will we now venture much on days
of decision to set us free in our lives together?
Venturing Much?
(Poem)
Walking out into the predawn light, the stars stare back
asking how will this day be
different in decisions fretted?
Will I, in playing it safe,
venturing nothing, gaining lack,
losing only another day of this life
to shadows regretted?
Or will this be the day that I will
commit into wind a tack
to calling of my own true self,
learning only by accepted,
hard failures, three steps forward
with two footfalls wrack,
before I’ll have reached that goal
of resonance, embedded
ancient rhyme printed in deep
unconscious, planted goal
before my birth into a God gift of
my much beloved soul.
No comments:
Post a Comment