A Reflection and Poem for X Pentecost All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Southern Shores, NC July 24, 2016 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
When Asking Gift From Friend
Every Sunday we have a couple people who come up out of the congregation, take communion, and pick up an oil stock before going to the back of the sanctuary to meet with people coming back from communion who wish to ask for Prayers of Healing. The oil is used to anoint the person for whom or by whom the prayers are requested. When we do a baptism, we take an oil stock and anoint the person being baptized, as we did last week at the 8:30 service. The celebrant places his or her hand on the person and dips a finger into the oil stock, making the sign of the cross on the forehead saying, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever.” The oil is the outward and visible sign of spiritual and invisible grace. I have used an oil stock when I am designating a person for a special ministry, and sometimes I get carried away. I remember one person observing that her hands felt like a french fry after I anointed her hands for ministry.
In the more Anglo Catholic Episcopal parishes and in the Roman Catholic tradition, there are three kinds of oil used. They are all olive oil but one has balsam added to it, and they are used for three different purposes. During Holy Week when the Bishop blesses the oils, he will use three different prayers. There is Oil for the Infirm (sometimes marked as OI) which is used for healing the sick. The next is OS for Oil Sanctorum which is used for baptisms and exorcisms to give strength to follow the promises made. The last one is Sacred Chrism (SC), the one which has balsam added and is used for the setting apart for special ministry like ordinations and the like. However, in most Episcopal Churches, the Chrism is used for all three - healing, strength, and being set apart. Our Bishop in Holy Week blesses the Chrism which we use for whatever we need.
Once upon a time I thought the difference between the oils really mattered, but as the years progressed, I realized that it was what was behind the anointing that was important and less the content of the oil stock. I
believe God’s Holy Spirit is in the space between two or three people
whenever, or not, we acknowledge that fact of creation that the breath
of God, which brought forth all life, is still breathing in and through us.
It is the intimacy of the breathing together with God that allows us to ask from God. Jesus alludes to that intimacy when he teaches his disciples how to pray. He tells them there is already an intimate relationship when he starts off with the intimate use of the word which we claim as our Father, not a stranger but someone whose image we carry in our very DNA. They, and we, are invited to proclaim “Hallowed by Your Name”, as an acknowledgement that the nature of God is the source of all anointing power. We ask that we be made aware of our own holiness in our relationship with God; asking that “God’s Kingdom come” is to ask that God come within us and make God’s home within us.
Asking for “Daily Bread” is a metaphor which means that the presence of God is not only when we do religious activities, but in the mundane action of daily living. Think of the story that Jesus is telling about how much the man in it is asking of his neighbor. In Biblical time, bread was estimated to be 50 percent of people’s diet. Each morning a member of the household would have to work three hours to grind the barley or grain into flour enough to last for lunch in the field, evening supper, and for breakfast at dawn the next morning. Then the whole process of preparing daily bread would begin again. Whenever the grain is ground into the powder of flour, the germ is crushed, exposing it to oxygen, and the oxidized fatty acids of the germ start to become rancid quickly. In biblical times, unpreserved flour could not be kept for any long period of time, so it was a daily process to have daily bread. That flour would be added to oil (interesting how we keep coming back to oil) and water, then a fire would be built to make an oven hot and so the bread could be cooked. Think of how much the man in the story was asking. He asked his friend
for three loaves of bread; it would be his friend’s and family’s
breakfast before they started off to work the next day. If the family
was to have their own breakfast at dawn the next morning, they would have to get up out of bed and start grinding the grain. A great deal of time and labor was being asked, and the metaphor is used to say that because God is our friend and not a stranger,
it is a gift within the context of the relationship. Jesus will say
later on in the last supper that he is the bread that God gives to us.
The
bread is meant to give us strength to forgive, as we ask that we be
forgiven as we forgive. We have been anointed to set people free,
canceling the debts that others have rung up to us, and we will no longer have to live with anger and resentment with a fellow child of God.
But forgiveness is hard and trust is difficult,
so we ask deliverance from the times of trial when we have a hard time
forgiving, a hard time trusting, a hard time living into our anointing, a
hard time living into what the writer of the letter to the Colossians, which we continue this week, says that they are doing. The way they, the Colossians, and we, are able to forgive is to realize how much they, and we, have been forgiven, how much they, and we, have been brought back to a blessed life with the fullness of the divinity of God. The Risen Christ lives within them, and us. Their, and our,
time of trial is learning how to trust in God and not all sorts of
other religious paraphernalia superstitiously borrowed from other cults.
The writer prays for them, and us, to have the strength which God so freely provides.
The book of Hosea, which we begin today, shows how our anointing can bring us to times of trial. Hosea is an anointed prophet who finds himself drawn to a woman named Gomer, and he takes his marriage as part of his anointed ministry. There is a problem because Gomer’s behavior and unfaithfulness make her a person who requires a lot of loving to even come close to forgiving. But Hosea shows in his life how much God loves and, because of that, Hosea is able to live through the times of trial when he wanted to cast Gomer away, as an enacted metaphor as God wanting to cast Israel away, but doesn’t. Hosea and God give compassion and forgiveness rather than revenge. Hosea hears God saying that God will claim them all, and us, as children of the Living God, no matter what they, and we, have done.
When Asking Gift From Friend (poem)
When had a dream or at least felt like one,
where was asking friend for a blessing
anointing work, healing, and strength
Friend says “Sure, piece of cake! Now
be anointed with the blessed holy oils.
When lifted head up to receive oil touch
or smudge on forehead crown with a
first drop. Then two, and another, then
shy rivulet flowing on head, warm, clean
luxury, which bubbles to unquiet brook,
brook evolve to a river, rising to monsoon.
When called to stop; only wanted small blessing,
almost a “blessing-ette”. If flow continue
lives have to change. Oil kinds are three:
of compassion, strength, as one sets aside.
When stripping masks hid behind, now could
all see imperfections. Eyes do change as
vision seeing all covered with blessings.
ears hearing only thrice healing oil song.
When tongue long acclimated to lashing mode
now forms out shiny barbless, soft words,
as teeth used to biting could rip no longer.
When chrism laden, drenched hands greased so
that could no longer be able to hold onto
to grudges and, slights that now slip away
the wish to grasp and clutch, all could do
was to open hands to slide the overflow
oil of healing with a caress onto another of
the pilgrims sliding on thrice barrelled gift.
When once covered with triune oil it is hard to
stomp and crush an enemy; for each attempt
empties any semblance of balance to land a
good kick without coming out worse for it.
When covered with oil is feeling like a French Fry
on plate of fish and chips ordered up to feed
seeming joyless, hopeless deeper love hunger
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