A
Reflection for XII Pentecost (Proper 16 A) All Saints’ Church,
Southern Shores, N.C.
August 27, 2017 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
Transformation
Stories
There
is a story that is told in the Wilson family about how we were once
landed gentry in eastern North Carolina until the dark days of “THE
WAHWR”, or the “Recent Unpleasantness’, or the “War Between
the States”. In that story, the Wilson, the landed gentry of the
Old Family Plantation, enlisted in the cause and, before he left for
service under the glorious Stars and Bars and Confederate Battle
Flag, buried the Wilson family treasure for safe keeping. He was
captured by the Yankees and died in the prisoner of war camp in
Elmira, New York. The massive treasure was never found, and that is
why we only looked like Rednecks. The children grew up out of poverty
and, as a young boy, my grandfather, known to us as “Daddy Wilson”,
hopped a troop ship to the Caribbean and found work there. After many
adventures, he later went to Johns Hopkins, got an Engineering degree
and restored the family fortunes, served in France in World War I,
worked in projects all over the world, was a man bigger than life,
and never went back to Goldsboro where the family treasure is
probably buried under the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base.
That
is a lovely story - except the Wilson, according to the census
records, came down from Virginia to Goldsboro as a telegraph operator
where he also had a small farm, a boring middle class life, but did
die as a prisoner of war in Elmira, New York long before Daddy Wilson
was born. I do not think there will ever be discovery of the Wilson
family treasure in time for my retirement. Family stories are like
that, based in some truth and surrounded with a floral blanket of
decorative additions. There are some facts, there are some floral
additions, it is highly edited, but the main truth that comes in this
story and the reason it was told is that Wilsons are people who (1)
fulfill their obligations and duties, (2) don’t have to be trapped
in the past, (3) are expected to rise up from adversity and (4) do
not go back only forward. That is the truth that each of us children
passed on to our children.
Each
generation passes on the story to the next and adds its own
interpretations. Daddy Wilson passed it on to his son, my father, and
to me and my brothers as he would tell the stories of who we were,
with the emphasis on duty and ambition. My father died before his
children were married and had children, but my brothers and I passed
it on to our children. My generation passed on the duty and ambition
and to our grandchildren, but we had learned to edit the story to
have no reverence for the Confederate Battle Flag as a symbol of
violence and racism and a shameful past, whose lies the Wilson
believed leading to his death and the detriment of his children. In
that, we teach them we learn from the past, we are not trapped in it.
The
Hebrew Testament lesson for today from the Book of Exodus begins with
a story set in the past: “Now
a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.”
The
Bible is not a history, science, chemistry, geography, psychology, or
math text book, so if you are trying to base a definitive study of
history, science, chemistry, geography, psychology, or math on the
Bible, you will run into trouble. The Bible is single book but a
diverse library of myths, folk stories, songs, poems, legends,
polemics, editorials, letters, reminisces, novels - both historical
and romance, slanted accounts, lists of people, descriptions of
architecture, and more.
While
we have no independent historical or archeological evidence to back
up the story of Joseph or the Exodus, we do have evidence that there
was a movement of Western Asiatic people in the time of the Egyptian
2nd Intermediate Period, the time between the Middle Kingdom and the
New Kingdom, from about 1800 BC to 1500 BC. This Intermediate Period
was a time when the Native Egyptian rulers were very disorganized,
the Kingdom disintegrated, and many foreigners started to dominate
the political and economic life. The Story of Joseph was probably an
historical novel set during these times when the Hebrew people
remembered being part of this movement of Semitic people into Egypt.
The
“King that knew not Joseph” is a character in the story that
seems to be set in the time of the New Kingdom, after the native
Egyptians were able to reassert control over the Western Asiatic
dominated areas and instituted an economic and political system that
harshly exploited the outsiders. Some of the Western Asiatic people
were able to migrate back to the places from which their ancestors
centuries before had come. The Book of Exodus is the tribal family
story passed on down through the years and became the basis of the
Hebrew understanding of themselves and their God. They understood
that while some of the characters may not have been historically
factually accurate, the deeper truth is more important than the
facts.
Every
year, for more than three millennia, the Hebrew people have had a
ritual where they tell this story that we will tell over the coming
weeks. They start the story by asking: “Why is this night different
than any other night?” “Why are we different?” The answer is
that we are people of God’s love and care. The truth of the story
is that God hears the cries of the oppressed and calls upon us to
band together to help the poor and marginalized. They are called to
remember that they were once oppressed people, strangers in a strange
land, they were once poor but with God’s help, they were able to
make it through many hardships and they still have a hope for a
future. The telling of the story was important as a warning not to
conform to the practices of the larger society based on exploitation,
but to become transformed into being the people of the long ago story
as they live in the present day, so that it becomes their story.
That
is their truth which they have passed on to us because our brother
Jesus gathered his friends together to tell the story, and he
reinterprets the story for his followers. Each week as we eat the
bread for the journey through the wilderness and drink the wine, the
symbol of the blood of the sacrifice, the story is repeated for us to
pass on to our children’s children so that it becomes our story..
We
tell the stories so that we may remember that we are faithful to our
heritage passed on to us as part of our transformation to follow God
faithfully. Paul in his letter to the Romans told them – and us -
to present ourselves as living sacrifices, not conforming ourselves
to the outer society, but to be transformed so that story of God’s
love lives in every moment of our lives.
Transformation
Stories
Tell
us the story again, one more time
to
remind us of who we are and where
do
we come from and of who is the heir
when
we breathe deeply before bedtime.
Let
our dreams be filled with heroic acts
of
years gone, by people of same name
and
how they grew from victim to fame
facing
demons with walls against backs.
Let
the stories weave us with the past
molding
us to into more sterner sinews
necessary
so our heritage continues
to
the present day and beyond the last.
Oh,
this is stuff of which we are made,
walking
with spirits in whom we prayed.
