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,
- Write down your understanding of the question, because if my question is imprecise I want to know the question you thought you were answering,
- Reflect that you have thought about and understand the information contained in the lectures, books, learning objectives and discussions,
- Write a coherent answer to the question demonstrating your mastery of the material, and
- 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.
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