A Reflection for IV Epiphany All Saints’
Episcopal, Southern Shores, NC January 28, 2018 Thomas
E. Wilson, Rector
Teaching As One With Authority
The Vestry and I went on a retreat and I assigned them
the same question that I assigned you for meditation before this service: “How
do you “teach with Authority” in your life? Who did you know who did?”
To me teaching is not something that is limited to a classroom
but it is the passing on of wisdom about how to live a life of integrity. There
is a line from the Movie Mark Felt: The
Man who Brought Down the White House where Felt, Deputy Director of the
FBI, the one Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein named “Deep
Throat”, broke the rules that the Nixon White House had imposed on Federal
employees about leaking information to the Press. He became the main source for
the exposure of a cesspool culture of corruption, deceit, and malfeasance. As
he is trying to figure out how to decide between the competing legal and
ethical authorities, Felt says: “My father taught us to make our lines vectors;
lines with force and direction.” Felt played by actor Liam Neeson is shown not
as a plaster Saint or paragon of virtue, but portrays Felt as a person who both
fails and lives into that wish of his father. As Luther keeps reminding us, we
are “Simul Justus et Peccator”, at
the same time righteous and a sinner.
To live a life ethically as a vector, a line with
force and direction, Felt defied the authority of the corrupt legally elected
government in order to follow the authority of his conscience and the
understood authority of the dictum that government needed to be a government of
law rather than the whims of powerful people.
Power is the ability to force people to do one’s will.
Mao Zedong said: “Power comes from the
barrel of a gun.” Authority, on the other hand, is deferred to influence one’s
life’s choices. The people who attended the synagogue service in the Gospel
lesson for today are used to seeing people all over the place who have power
over them in their government and religious legal authorities. Legal so-called
authorities are always backed up by power to control by force or by the dead
hand of tradition, dictated by the ones in power. The people are used to having
power over them, but they are unused to having people speak out of their own authority,
people living lives as vectors, lines of force and direction.
Jesus challenges power and in the end that power will
kill him; that is what power can do, it can kill the body but not the soul. The
way we destroy the soul is to abdicate the responsibility to choose to live as
citizens of a Deeper Kingdom and a Higher Authority. Sooner or later those in
power will feel threatened if they are challenged long enough and they will
crush whoever dares to stand against them. The resurrection of Jesus tells us,
on the other hand, that Power does not have the last word in God’s Kingdom.
The Book of Deuteronomy was written centuries after
Moses, and it is another look at Moses’ words of interpretation of God’s
vision, hence the name - Deutero
meaning second and Nomos meaning
norms, another view of the law. When the Book of Deuteronomy was collated,
there had been years of misrule by the legal authorities, the Kings and their
sycophants, and the Priestly elite. Prophets arose to challenge the power
structures and claimed an authority that came from their communication with God
in dreams or visions. The prophets led lives as vectors, lines of force and
direction
God keeps calling prophets throughout the Jewish
History and Jesus is one of those. The tradition continues with those who
follow Jesus who keep challenging the power structures. In the Corinthian
passage for today Paul is challenging the dead hand of tradition because he
claims the authority of love as opposed to law. Paul, in his conversion to
Christ as his main source of authority, made the choice to stop living as if
the law were the final arbitrator of authority and chose to follow Christ as
the source of a new life, of being a vector, lines of force and direction.
In the Vestry retreat, we introduced ourselves to each
other by relating when we had lived our lives in integrity and in a deeper
authority than custom. This was necessary for we have to learn how to trust
each other in the months ahead when the Priest leaves and the Vestry leads the
search for a new Rector. You, the members of the church, are being asked to
trust them as men and women of integrity and vision of something greater than
their own agendas.
There are two outward and visible signs of this trust
being well placed. The first is if they will continue to listen deeply to see
the joys and pains of our parishioners and the larger community. I am an old
man so I will repeat myself from yesterday’s reflection. This last week I was coming out of the Office area
onto the gazebo to make a home visit, and there were some children from the All
Saints School playing there. As I came out, I was greeted with calls of “Hey,
Father Tom!” They came up to tell me about their joys, such as one little girl
had painted fingernails, and their difficulties, as a series of kids pointed
out their “boo boos.” That is what we do in church - we share the joys and
enter into solidarity of the “boo boos” of all sizes and magnitudes in this
life. It is why we pray for the strength to get through the challenges we have
and for thanksgiving for all the blessings.
The second sign is to make the choice always to tell
the truth as a default position. We are surrounded by many examples of so-called
authorities having as a norm a default practice of deceit in order to further
an agenda. I remember 20-some years ago at my previous church where I had a
habit of sitting on the chancel steps with the children sitting around me,
looking up at me as I told an interpretation of one of the lessons which would
form the basis of the sermon I would preach later for the adults. Children keep
interrupting and that day was no exception as little Hannah Ackerman piped up:
“You know what? You know what?” I smiled and said, “No, Hannah what?” And she
replied, “You got boogers up your nose.” I was embarrassed but she was talking
about the reality of life, speaking truth. We do not pretend but we live into a
deeper and at times painful reality. We expect that the church is to be a
trustworthy place where people try to live into being an image of God and
sibling of Christ, “where the Yes is Yes and the No is No, all else from the
Evil One” as Jesus says after the Sermon on the Mount. Your leaders and
congregants must have and expect the ability to speak truth openly. This is how
we teach, not by what we say but how we live our lives.
These are high standards and we do not always live up
to them. This last week was the 33rd anniversary of my ordination to
the Priesthood and over those years there have been times when I have lived up to
those standards and times, too many times, when I have not. The reason I am
still a Priest is that I believe in the forgiveness of sins of commission and
omission. My prayer for the Vestry, for you, and for me in my path ahead is
that all of us will be able to forgive one another so that we will be
remembered as vectors, lines of force and direction, growing deeper in
relationship with God and neighbor.
Teaching As One With
Authority
Speaking at Lectern answering question
shifting between lines from self or Lord’s;
on who’s authority is coming the words
vectors filled with force and direction?
Hearers are waiting to discern targets,
hoping they are not caught in the sights
of prophets shining out with new lights
shooting praise or scorn at this market.
What are the real credentials presented;
No comments:
Post a Comment