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.

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