Saturday, April 28, 2018

Poem on Retirement April 22, 2018


Rector Saying Goodbye
Five thousand, four hundred days abiding
as brothers/ sisters in shared sacred space
seeing into each other's souls face to face
even during three thousand times presiding.
Sunday I'll give you back keys to the door
which you'll bestow on the one following;
s/he'll then lead you in your holy offering
to the divine and neighbor in peace or war.
I'll give you back the Rector's cross I wear
given me by the Vestry of some years past
and the record books of services amassed
but I'll never give back memories we share.
I'll give a key as sign that I did find apart:
nothing in church it fits except my heart.

Thursday, April 26, 2018

What Is There To Prevent Us?


A Reflection for the V Easter             All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC   
April 29, 2018                                      Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Acts 8:26-40                  1 John 4:7-21                 John 15:1-8          Psalm 22:24-30

What is there to prevent us?

A couple of weeks ago I attended a service of Yom HaShoah with the Jewish Community of the Outer Banks, a Holocaust remembrance service held close to the annual anniversary of the uprising of the Warsaw Ghetto in April of 1943. The uprising failed but it is a reminder of the need to actively stand against any kind of hatred masquerading as “business as usual”. Never again do we go down the road of letting hatred rule our lives.

At the service we light the candles, listen to the poems, hear the high school students read their prize-winning essays about the current rising wave of Anti-Semitism in a contest sponsored by the Ministerial Association, read a couple hundred names of the six million who were slaughtered, and we say the Mourners’ Kaddish. The Kaddish is said at most services, but especially it is an act of mercy to say to say it in the name of a person after they have died. It is not about death but about helping the person who has died say “Amen” to God. It is a mitzvah, a good deed done in connection to God. In the Hebrew tradition there are 613 mitzvot, and therefore, at least 613 ways to connect to the Blessed One. It goes:
Glorified and sanctified be God’s great name throughout the world which He has created according to His will.
May He establish His kingdom in your lifetime and during your days, and within the life of the entire House of Israel, speedily and soon; and say, Amen.
May His great name be blessed forever and to all eternity.
Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and lauded be the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, beyond all the blessings and hymns, praises and consolations that are ever spoken in the world; and say, Amen.
May there be abundant peace from heaven, and life, for us and for all Israel; and say, Amen.
He who creates peace in His celestial heights, may He create peace for us and for all Israel; and say, Amen.

What is it like to say “Amen”?

When I was a child, I watched the Warner Brothers cartoons and at the end of each of them, the figure of Porky Pig would burst in the center and say, “Th–th- th- that’s all folks”.  That is what I grew up thinking that was a translation of “Amen” at the end of a prayer: “That’s all folks!”

Later I came to understand that Amen meant that I was saying “So be it”, “I agree”, “Let me sign up for the plan, the hope, the mission.!” Amen is used in good times as well as difficult times. In successes we say “Amen” as a way of giving thanks to God. In failures we say “Amen” as a way of saying that God will redeem and forgive all things.

When I looked at the lessons for today I could see that they had in common a call for an Amen. In John’s Gospel lesson, Jesus is saying to his disciples that they must be connected to him as the branches are to the vine and abide in him as he abides in us, So be it. Amen. I understand that is the core of our reality, connection.

The Letter from the Elder  says that we cannot love God without loving our neighbor. So be it. Amen. We understand that our loving connections to Christ call for us to enter into doing at least 613 loving mitzvot for our neighbor or our enemy.

The 22nd Psalm begins with the cry, “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me” which is the worst of times, but continues to hold on to the hope that “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, * and all the families of the nations shall bow before him.”  The singer of the Psalm makes the pledge that the singer’s soul will continue to live for God; another way of saying Amen. It is the Psalm that Jesus sings while he is on the cross before he commits his soul to God. Amen.

The Ethiopian eunuch in the lesson from the Acts listens to Philip and then comes to the point of either saying “Well that is interesting; but no thanks” or make a decision to say Amen by entering into the waters of Baptism and re- entering into womb of God to be born into a deeper way of living. Philip’s work is done and the spirit takes him to another place where he can say Amen. There are always more places to say “A-men”

One of my favorite movies is the 1963 Ralph Nelson film, Lilies of the Field, where Homer Smith, played by Sidney Poitier, driving through the Southwest nowhere, comes across a group of German nuns, for whom he agrees to work to build a chapel. At the end when his work is done, he steals out of their lives while he is leading them in singing, the spiritual, “Amen, Amen, Amen, amen, amen.”

It is time for me to leave this church so that you will find a new Rector. What is there to prevent us from saying a Holy Amen to each other - Amen to the successes that God has given us the will to do, Amen to the failures we have known which we believe in the light of the resurrection will all be redeemed, Amen to the past, Amen to the present time to give thanks to God and you, Amen to the future where Paul promises, “God, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.” 

What is there to prevent us from saying “A-men?”

 What is there to prevent us?
Ethiopian Eunuch said; “Look, here is water!”,
which in a wilderness is cause to be surprised,
“What is to prevent me from being baptized?”
Running to embrace the future he did not falter,
even though by so doing, leaving Philip behind,
then returns to his Queen on his way rejoicing.
You and I are practicing our farewells voicing
shared memories of us making haste to be kind.
As the Spirit led Philip to different destinations,
so also am I  being led away onto another path
knowing that the love you shared with me hath
blessed with gracious joy all of my life situations.
Thank you for swimming in sacred water with me
now in diverse streams but flowing to a same sea.

Friday, April 20, 2018

God Listern To Us


A Reflection for 4th Sunday of Easter      All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC 

April 22, 2018                                           Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

God Listen To Us!


One of the things that I see in the lessons for today is a demonstration of leadership. It flows out of the imagery of the 23rd Psalm. In the Acts lesson, Peter becomes the Spiritual Father of the Jesus Movement, standing up for its healing ministry against those forces that seek to destroy it; he is the good Shepherd standing in the presence of the enemy so his Community will have no fear. The lesson from the Elder John is a reminder of what is expected of the Spiritual Teacher of the Community of Believers regarding how to behave with and care for each other, as the good shepherd who is anointing with oil and making sure the cup is filled for all. The Gospel lesson has the original model, Jesus, speaking of what is required of leaders following him, which is walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Some commentators believe the 23rd Psalm began as a poetic song of David, the King and the Ruler of Israel. David was a man with a checkered history of good and bad judgment during his reign, and he had cause to look at all the people he let down and the disastrous consequences of some his actions. One of the best things about failure is that it gives us a chance to learn from our mistakes. I think he wrote this song to remind himself how much he needed God in his life, and he passed it on to be a mirror for future kings who confuse their role as king with being independent of the Power greater than themselves. Good rulers need to know that just because you have the title doesn’t mean that every idea is a good idea.

In the Episcopal Church the title “Rector” comes from a word meaning “ruler”. I cannot tell you how many times I was in a clergy support group with a group of clergy who kept taking themselves so seriously with the “Rector” title that we had to warn them that a certain planned action was a result of their own ego instead of listening to God. Rectors, rulers, need to understand that they are vicars of Christ, serving vicariously in a parish as the Good Shepherd’s - Christ’s - Lamb to assist the ministry of Christ in that congregation.

The title “Pastor” comes from the Latin word for shepherd, the one who leads people, guides sheep into pasture and defends them from all enemies, which is what Jesus is talking about in the Gospel lesson for today using the imagery of the 23rd Psalm. But how we interpret the Shepherd image has a variety of options. I had a classmate from Australia in seminary whose image of a Shepherd was a yelling man on horseback cracking a whip accompanied by dogs snapping at the heels of the sheep to keep the herd in line. That image of a tough, sometimes brutal, taskmaster is not only to be found Down Under. Part of the history of the church had Warrior Popes, Bishops, and Priests keeping order for the sake of the concept of Christendom, as they defined it, by being strong advocates of political and societal viewpoints even to the point of war to kill the “enemies” of the church as heretics and infidels.

In the Episcopal Church as an example of that view of Pastor, we have the Rt. Reverend Leonidas Polk. He was born in Raleigh, educated at West Point Military Academy, and then attended Virginia Seminary. Upon graduation it was found he had never been confirmed, and therefore he was confirmed and ordained the next day in Fayetteville. He became a Bishop of Mississippi and was one of the founders of the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee where I attended Seminary. Polk resigned his Bishop’s office in order to become a general in the Confederate Army in the American Civil War for his friend and West Point classmate Jefferson Davis. The Leonidas Polk Memorial Society wrote in 2014: “When asked in Richmond if he was putting off the gown of an Episcopal bishop to take up the sword of a Confederate general, to which he replied, 'No, Sir, I am buckling the sword over the gown,'" indicating that he saw it was his duty as a bishop to take up arms.”

Davis continued to support Polk who was a popular general among the ranks of the Confederate Army, but was viewed by many of his fellow generals as genial but pompous, incompetent, refusing to take orders, and slow in implementing them. General Bragg called Polk “an old woman, utterly worthless”. In one battle, one of Polk’s subordinate generals urged his soldiers on by yelling, “Give ‘em hell, boys!” To which the Bishop/General, aware of his dignity, called out “Give it to ‘em boys, give ‘em what General Cheatham says”. Polk was killed in battle during the Atlanta Campaign on June 10, 1864.

The title “Priest” comes from the Old English and German Preost from the Latin Presbyter meaning the one appointed to act as an interpreter of the unknown mysteries and as a leader presiding over rites and rituals in ceremonies of connection with deities and spirits. They were descended from the Shamans, medicine men and healers. Priests were the ones who could confer and withhold blessing based on the worthiness of a person. There were some preachers who made their living with so-called “Crusades”, using hour-long sermons whose aim was to drive the sinner down to his knees with guilt, God’s condemnation, and visions of hell in the first 50 minutes in order to raise him up with Grace in the last 10.

There were others who were given a title of “Parson”, Old English for the weird person with a deep spirituality who could see things with different eyes and could speak God’s truth regardless of the convenient party line. Parsons believed that God’s love is not a reward for repentance from Original Sin, but that love is the hallmark of the original blessing in Creation and the incarnation of Jesus.

Many people call me “Father”, as they called Margaret, the founding Priest here, “Mother”. It is a title that is full of ambiguity. Many priests have had to deal with parishioners with father or mother complexes that were waiting for trapdoors to be sprung by “monstrous mothers” or “seductive fathers”. On the other hand, it is a name to be taken seriously by the person who wears the title. I remember years ago, a couple of churches back, when I had a parishioner who really did not like me, because he thought, correctly, that I was full of myself. He would address me frostily as “FAAAther”. I confronted him one day and said, “Why do call me “FAAAther” when it is a title of relationship?” He put me in my place by pointing out that, in the military, one salutes the uniform and not the man. This is where Pat came in helpful; she softened me a bit, and when I left the church, he still called me “FAAAther”, but it was his accent and the warm tone that I heard instead of the scorn I had imagined. We ended up seeing each other as beloved brothers in Christ loved gracefully by God.

There is also the title of “Preacher” in the role of teacher who have documents of authority issued by Seminaries and Bishops. However, true spiritual authority is not conferred by organizations, but rather is granted by parishioners who have found true worth in the relationship, allowing the Preacher to be a trusted soul friend.

In a couple of weeks you will begin the task of prayer for a new Rector for All Saints. It is important not to rush into making your decision based on what you would like to remain the same. It is the journey, not the destination, that is important. I know God has someone in mind for you, but your task is to enter into a prayerful search for the heart of God in this matter. I cannot be with you on this journey, but my prayers will be.

God Listen To Us!
Ruler, either Rector or Regina, is wanted
by us who we will choose over us to rule,
not like as if over naughty ones in school,
but will tackle our hard tasks undaunted.

We want a Pastor, in the Shepherd mode,
who’ll lay us down in soft green pastures,
keeping us safe from all fearful disasters,
leading us near where living water flowed.

We want one to function as our new Priest,
speaking God to us before we’d be scattered,
speaking to God for us all together gathered,
doing rituals for lives included and deceased.

We want one be a Vicar of your healing love,
demonstrating what forgiveness does look like,
oft in a real world between people who’ll fight,
over things that don’t matter; helps gets rid of!

We want one to be our weird one as a Parson,
who sees the divine in the overlooked ordinary,
feeling breaths of God calling us to the visionary
tasks of sharing grace with all and sundry person

We want one to address as Father/Mother
to turn to when things get somewhat rough,
assuring that we will have strength enough
relying on the Spirit’s strength and no other.

We want one to be a Teacher of the right paths
to inform us walking in faith of the ways of past
journeys made by our ancestors in feast and fast
seeing baptisms as commitments not just baths.

We want one to be our true most trusted friend
keeping all of our secrets, sharing joys and woes,
laughs or tears of stories of All Saints s/he knows
in our hearts, faithfully holding them to the end.

Friday, April 13, 2018

Doghouse Blues


A Reflection for 3rd Sunday of Easter All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. April 15, 2018 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Doghouse Blues

From John’s 1st letter (3:7) “Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.” How many of you always do what is right?

Sometime ago a friend greeted me and said “It’s nine o’clock in the morning and I am already in the dog house!” He then listed a series of offenses and slights that he had committed that had lowered the temperature significantly in the home he shares with his wife. I, of course, told him that I knew nothing about doing that in my own life. We had a good laugh over that because we both knew how flawed we both were and that our wives kept finding reasons to wonder what ever did they see in us to take the plunge and accept the proposals they received from us. We also knew what it was like to be on the giving end of the blame stick as we would sing in our minds the old spiritual “Nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen./ Nobody knows but Jesus.” Yet here is the difference - we both knew that, while we (and they) could at times be annoying, we were loved and that love between us would survive. We would remember our vows and we would forgive and ask forgiveness in order to move our relations back to what the Bible calls “righteous”.

Righteous” in the New Testament is not about doing things perfectly but about being in a faithful relationship, or what is called a Covenant, with another where both sides make a commitment to love and honor one another. The commitment is held together as long as the partners in the covenant keep it alive and renew their commitment by word and deed. That is what we do in church

Earlier this month, on the 50th anniversary of his assassination, there were a series of reflections about the meaning of the life, death, and ministry of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and one speaker shared that in the African tradition a man is not fully dead until he is forgotten. If we forget Dr. King, we run the risk of forgetting the covenant for equality in this nation and the dreams for our nation’s wholeness.

The early church had to deal with the death of Jesus and so it told the stories of the man Jesus and the Spirit of the Christ as a way of keeping him alive in their hearts. We continue to do that every week and we remember and live into the covenant of God’s love, forgiveness and hope.

The Book of the Acts of the Apostle, from which we will be reading for the next several weeks of Easter Season, has a certain structure which will be repeated over and over again. There is first a challenge, a situation which needs to be addressed. Then there is a response by one or more of the apostles who call upon the Holy Spirit for guidance and help. Filled with the Holy Spirit, the Apostles respond to the challenge or situation. Then there is a sermon in which the Kerygma, the core of the Christian understanding, is retold. The understanding is the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth; his birth, death and resurrection has changed the world and the Spirit of the Resurrected Christ is alive and available to all who call upon his name. After the sermon there is a reaction by people or the authorities which will then set up another challenge or situation.

In this week’s lesson Peter and John, as they were going up to the Temple to pray, meet a lame beggar asking for alms. The situation is then set up as to how they were to respond to the brokenness of this world. Peter says, “Silver and gold have I none, but what I have I give to you”; he gives the lame beggar the Spirit’s gifts of wholeness and the beggar begins running and jumping and praising God. The beggar had been at the Beautiful Gate for years and was a well-known fixture, so when people see this sight, they started asking what was going on. Peter begins the Kerygma and says that the crowd also needs wholeness as well. They had been part of the crowd who had called for the death of Jesus; they had allowed their leaders to do the murder. Peter tells them that he wants them to be in a righteous relationship with God and assures them of God’s forgiveness. For Peter, it is more important to be in a righteous relationship than it is to be right.

In the Gospel lesson from Luke, the body of the dead Jesus is not there, but the women who have come to anoint the dead body meet two men in dazzling clothes who tell them that the Lord is Risen. The women tell the disciples who think the women are just being hysterical with wishful thinking and dismiss their witness. It is only later when the two men who have met the Risen Lord on the road to Emmaus run back to tell them that they had seen Jesus and recognized him in the breaking of the bread. Even though the witnesses were men, the disciples are still disbelieving and wondering what is going on. In the middle of the disbelief, Jesus comes to be with them, bringing his Peace with him. He does not waste time blaming them for not believing, but he sits down to have a meal with them. This is the expectation of what goes on in a Christian community. The community knows that that center of their faith does not make sense; it cannot be understood by rational argument but only by righteous relationship of immersion in a community that shares God’s Peace, eating together at meals as if Christ was there whenever two or three are gathered together in the breaking of the bread and committing to grow deeper in the faith, to give what they have to the broken world in which the Risen Lord’s Spirit still lives.







Doghouse Blues
Morning at nine, and he’s already in doghouse!
Living together with one another really is rough,
but doing this whole mindreading thing is tough
on mere mortals like a friend, parent or spouse.
Forgiveness isn’t only reserved for the big stuff,
but for petty misdemeanors of an everyday life
scraping away like a sandpaper gloved midwife
trying to do a life giving act with a snarling gruff.
They bump into each other, on her toes he’ll trod.
Without thinking, she reacts with one more carp
added to long litany of the past offenses in sharp
relief demonstrating how much he is so flawed.
Fore the sun goes down, they’ll recall that above,
beneath, between and through lives forgiving love.

Friday, April 6, 2018

Locked In Fear


A Reflection for 2nd Sunday of Easter All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC April 8, 2018 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector
Locked in Fear
Years ago, before I went to seminary and when I was still sane, I was teaching Social Work in a college. At the beginning of each semester, I passed out a syllabus for each class I was teaching. It was usually three pages long, and I read it out loud on the first day of the class. The syllabus listed the title and overview of the course, the books required with the suggested due dates on the chapters in the books to be covered, the articles on reserve, the learning objectives, the titles of each week’s focus of lectures and discussions, the description of the term paper and its due date, the schedule and dates of the midterm and final tests, and the numerical breakdown of each part of the grade – such as midterm test 30 points, final 30 points, paper 30 points, attendance and MEANINGFUL and INFORMED (underlined and in bold print) participation in class discussion 10 points, a total of 100 points. I was not there to give them a bunch of facts which they were to regurgitate on a series of tests, but I was there to educate them to think and to prepare them to join a profession.

Many times, students who had no idea about how to answer essay questions would bomb out the midterm exam and I would schedule a time meet with them and go over the basics of answering an essay question:
1. Read the question,
      1. Write down your understanding of the question, because if my question is imprecise I want to know the question you thought you were answering,
      2. Reflect that you have thought about and understand the information contained in the lectures, books, learning objectives and discussions,
      3. Write a coherent answer to the question demonstrating your mastery of the material, and
      4. Pay attention to the comments I made to your last essay questions. After the session, I would offer an opportunity for a make up on the essay portion to improve their scores. I did not care about their grades; I wanted them to learn!
Do you know what? Some of them had locked away their minds, and although they signed up for college, they had no intention of keeping their minds open to new thoughts and ideas. Some of them had been bright in high school but knew only how to cram and use short term memory for short answer tests; now they were struggling to learn a new way of thinking. There were some of these locked-up minds each semester that came to me asking that I change their grade because they did not understand the requirements. 
 
The minds of these young people were locked, locked out of fear, fear of growing up. Oh yes, their bodies were getting older, but what was lurking on the other side of the locks is the need to take responsibility for their lives. They want to stay the eternal child, the Peter Pan living in Neverland, the man child, what Jung would call the “puer”. The eternal child looks like an adult, but in stress, suddenly the adult mask slips away and we see things like the spoiled brat throwing a tantrum when they don't get their own way, yelling “You're fired!”, “I hate you!” or “It's all your fault!”. They have refined the search for magic solutions requiring no effort on their part, the blaming of others for their own failures, the refusal to make adult commitments to a relationship based on love rather than adolescent attraction of wish fulfillment or prurient exploitation, the desire to stay as a dependent child in faith development rather than moving deeper into a relationship with the Divine. We see the eternal children of all chronological ages all around us, and we spend a lot of energy decrying against those “other” people in public life and governments; but if we are honest and look hard enough, we see them within each of us, locked away in our private fantasies. As the Old Testament Prophet, Pogo, said, “We have seen the enemy and they is us.”

I am reminded of them when I read this lesson for today about the Disciples who had been with Jesus; step by step he taught them what following him was about. It was not about spouting off perfect formulas but about acting boldly, to share God’s love and healing. On the morning of the Resurrection, the message had been “Do not be afraid.”

Here it is on the evening of the Resurrection and where are they on their final test? They are in a locked room shaking in fear after being told explicitly not to be afraid. It was like they hadn’t read the course outline, didn’t get the memo. True to form, one of the Disciples, Thomas, had a conflict on the day of the final and said he thought the class had been canceled but asked for passing grade anyway. Jesus will give him a make up the next week about the Holy Spirit because they hadn’t learned a thing the first evening and had gone back to the same locked room. 
 
In this church complex of All Saints we have 13 doors that can be locked to and from the outside world and for years, at least once a month, I would get phone calls in the middle of the night from the Police Department to come and lock one of the doors that had been left unlocked so that thieves didn’t get in. That is a minimum of 180 phone calls to deal with locks. We like locks because they are a way we can deal with all the fear in our lives; locks give us an illusion of safety. The reality is that most door locks keep out only the lazy or the honest. But there are so many kinds of locks.

William Willimon, a retired Methodist Bishop and Professor at Duke Divinity, tells a story about a dying downtown church that kept having break-ins by homeless people. It was costing them a lot of money to repair the damage and it would cost them much more money - money they did not have - to install the proposed state of the art security system. They decided to leave the doors unlocked and to welcome the homeless. But once they welcomed them, they realized that they had to help them, and the church found new life because they had a mission of grace rather than hiding in fear in a locked room. The dying church grew and Willimon’s theme is that Jesus keeps breaking into all the locked rooms of our lives.

One of the joys of being here is that you have helped me open up some of the locked rooms of my life, and I am a lot freer than I was 15 years ago because you welcomed me. The Resurrected Christ that is in the space between us has been entering our locked rooms, touching our wounds as we reach over and touch the wounds of Jesus by responding to the wounds that world inflicts on our neighbors. I came to this church because I saw that you were unlocking a dependency on others and took responsibility for ministering to the world in which we live. While you knew how to play as children, you avoided being childish in relationships, in responsibilities, in dealing with the past and present and in faith. You understood that staying childish was a sign of fear of not being able to handle the burden of adult faith. But you heard Jesus say, “Come unto me, you that are heavy laden and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” 
 
Church was not about prancing around altars in locked sanctuaries but about entering into sharing the yoke of Christ unlocked in this world. You were not interested in hiring a Rector to be the only adult in the room, but you wanted to share Christ's yoke with me as you learned to grow deeper, and I wanted to be with you and not be locked in fear.
Where are your locks?

Locks
There was a combination to the school locker,
keys to the door of almost never locked house
designed to protect both the child and spouse
from the threats from riots, thieves or stalker;
some of many things of which we are afraid.
Yet, the greatest fears are to do with change,
seeing all the once familiar things as strange
driving down their values, and more degrade.
It isn't about things that change but about me,
my mind growing in ways beyond my control,
ideas shattering ceilings of a comfortable soul
calling it to stretch beyond where I can foresee.
Part of me wants a lock to keep my Lord out
and the other wishing the spirit seed to sprout.