Moreover the Dog

A Reflection for XVI Pentecost C Proper 21             St. Andrew’s Church, Nags Head, NC 
September 29, 2019                                                            Thomas E Wilson, Supply Clergy

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15     Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16   1 Timothy 6:6-19               Luke 16:19-31

Moreover the Dog

The Risen Christ gave us two commandments. The first is “Don’t be afraid”. And the Second is “Feed my sheep, tend my Lambs”. We are not to be afraid for even if we fail; all things are redeemed, even death itself. We are to love our neighbor by work in hope of bringing about a better world.


The Gospel lesson for today about the Rich man and Lazarus the beggar at the gates who longed to eat some crumbs dropped from the Rich Man’s table. In the King James version, it recounts “Moreover the dogs came and licked the sores of the feet of Lazarus.” Lazarus was viewed by the Rich Man as like the garbage on the streets. In this story Jesus turns everything upside down to tell the story from heaven’s viewpoint. When Jesus tells the story, Lazarus has a name and the Rich Man doesn’t. The name Lazarus means in Hebrew, “God is my helper”. 


The Pharisees, listening to the story, would have sneered and make the connection to the fact that the one who had the name didn’t look as if he had any help from God. That fit their view of the world that if you were rich, it was because God loved you and if you were poor it is because God wanted you that way because of your sins or the sins of the father. The Rich Man had no name for he thought he didn’t need God’s help and certainly didn’t want to disrupt his lifestyle to care for the poor man at his doorstep. The unnamed Rich man would have to step over Lazarus who had a name but nothing else. 


However, names are important, Shakespeare in Othello has the villain Iago have a good speech about names (He often gave good lines to bad people).

Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands:
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.

The Rich Man has lost his soul by spending his life to gain the full purse that is “trash”, while Lazarus had his purse stolen from him but kept his name. 


In 1939 James Street. a former Baptist Preacher, journalist, screen writer and author, wrote a story for the magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, called The Biscuit Eater, about two boys, one white and one black and the dog they shared. The dog as a puppy was a failure as a hunter and one man named him a “no account- egg sucking, biscuit eater”. A biscuit eater is a dog that “wouldn’t hunt anything except his biscuits and wasn’t worth the salt in his feed”. The boys traded some items for the dog and since being called a “biscuit eater” made the dog cower, they searched for a real name; until one of the boys remembered a Preacher reading a text from the Bible; “Moreover, the dog”.  They renamed him “Moreover”. They made two movies out of this story; one in 1940 and the other by Disney in 1971. 


Street, the ex-Baptist Preacher, I think started this story as a parable, a way of responding to the parable that Jesus was telling in Luke’s Gospel. Parables are made up stories, lies, that point to a deeper truth and call for a response. In Street’s story, the two boys join to help what is viewed as a failure, reaching across race and class lines, to help the outcast dog and work to create a better world. 


Working to create a better world is also a theme of the lesson from Jeremiah. The prophet had been a real headache to the last Kings of Judah. Jeremiah keeps telling them that their main job is to take care of the community by ministering to meet the needs of the poor and vulnerable. He thunders against the greed of the Priests of the state supported religion. He warned against a practice of parents sacrificing their own children to gain favor from false Gods. But the Kings are too busy helping the rich to live luxuriously by cheating and exploiting those very same vulnerable people. They were too busy committing their resources to wars of global power plays between the Ammonites, the Egyptians, the Assyrians and the Babylonians. They kept putting their trust in playing off one enemy against another and switching sides when it might be beneficial to them. This plan backfired on them because they kept guessing wrong and always ended up on the losing side. Finally, the Babylonians came out on top and Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BC defeated their enemies and made the Kingdom of Judah pay ruinous reparations to Babylon. Judah had to strip the Temple of many of its treasures to meet the ransom.  


Nebuchadnezzar killed the King, and his son who succeeded him, for their treachery and put a tame 21year old uncle, Zedekiah, on the throne as a puppet to Babylon. Later, Zedekiah, true to the family tradition, started getting annoyed with Jeremiah who kept harping on the need to care for the poor and stopping the corruption of government, clergy and the rich. Then, Zedekiah, true to the family tradition, enters into a secret pact with Egypt and raises up in revolt against Babylon. Jeremiah warned against this and the ruling clique with Zedekiah’s permission threw Jeremiah in a pit to starve to death, accusing him of being a defeatist. He was rescued and placed in custody in a prison. 


Meanwhile the Babylonians marched back, beat back the Egyptians and surrounded the city and laid a crippling siege. Jeremiah as an act of prophecy does the buying of property as described in the lesson for today. He buys the property as a sign of the hope for the future, a future in which he hopes that the people will finally learn to care for their neighbor. 

For us in the Outer Banks, it would be a little like a category 5 Hurricane hitting Hatteras Island and heading straight for Nags Head and St. Andrew’s. Then a good person emptying out their entire life savings,  paying cash for the full price of this church, (the latest Treasurer’s report lists the assets as over 3 million, dollars) and gives the money to the vestry, so the people who survive the storm will be able to start again to do ministry of doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with our God.


In 587 BC, the Babylonians, destroy Jerusalem’s city walls and level the city. When Zedekiah and his family try to escape; they are captured.  Zedekiah’s sons are killed before his eyes and since that is the last image he will see, he is blinded, put in a cage and carried back to Babylon. The Kingdom ends, its demise caused by its perfidy and greed. 


But, the message of Jeremiah continues to live in the promise of hope. That promise will sustain the inhabitants who are taken to Babylon to live in captivity for forty years. God ministers to them, even in Babylon, and a new generation will begin again. Generation to generation the message of responsibility for the welfare of our neighbors is repeated as in the lesson from 1^st Timothy for today warning against greed which distracts us from caring for our neighbor.


The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus has been looked at in many ways. I have heard this story as a means of proving the Divine Economy of heaven and hell with a horrifying description of the architecture of hell and pleasant one of heaven. I don’t think that was Jesus’ purpose of telling this story, as in the same way the previous Parables we looked at about the Dishonest Manager and the Lost Sheep and Coin are lessons on how to run a successful business ethics program. 


If I were to put into a couple sentences about what I think the point is of this Parable. It would be the purpose of my life is to be part of a community which loves God and neighbor. The Rich Man asks for Lazarus the dead man to come back from the dead and change the rich man’s brothers’ habits of greed. But he is told “No”, the job of the dead is to rest, while the job of the living is not greed but to love and make the world a better place. That message hasn’t changed for thousands of years.


Let me tell you the first time I personally encountered the ministry of St. Andrew’s Church working to help. Over 16 years ago, I was called to become the Rector at All Saints, before the Interim left and before I met people other than the search committee and Vestry, I had toured the empty church building complex, but I was really interested not only in the architecture but the emotional and spiritual “mise en scene” or gestalt. The Sunday after we unpacked, Pat and I snuck into the Sunday service dressed as civilians to see what it felt like to be strangers and to get a better feel of the service before they put on their best manners for the new Rector. I was nervous; what had I gotten in to? 


As I went up to receive communion there was a lovely older lay lady who served at the altar. She gave me the cup to drink alleging that it was the blood of Christ shed for me; as if she thought that was true. She was giving me an outward and visible sign of Christ’s love; medicine for my soul’s strength for the journey ahead, a balm to heal and forgive the past, and a taste to celebrate living with joy in the present. 


Later I was to find out she was not a member of All Saints; Ruthie Rigor was a member of St. Andrew’s, but she had been helping out the fledgling church by volunteering to be a Minister of the Eucharist. She was doing some Stewardship, which is about living, using the gifts we have in time, treasure and talents, as if the point of life was about making the world a better place. There were plenty other lay Eucharistic Ministers at the church, but this was a gift she was giving across the barriers of church membership. Later I was to find that there were many other ways she reached out to the larger community. She was never going to leave St. Andrew’s for All Saints, she loved St. Andrew’s and, out of that love for the God she knew at St. Andrew’s she was a good Steward in St. Andrew’s and in the community. She was constantly busy doing all sorts of work without calling attention to herself. There is a British slang word for that, “a dogsbody”. I was touched by the sacrifice this old woman was making to drive up from time to time to give herself for a church of which she was not a member. She died as a devoted member of St. Andrew’s and she left a legacy to continue her ministry of making the world a better place. She is a person worthy of remembering her name, a jewel of her soul.

Moreover the Dog

She raised the cup for him to drink,

saying words not as a ritual read,

but as if she meant what she said,

to taste the truth, ponder and think.

She was, as they say across the pond,

a “dogsbody”, always pouring full

energy out to love to push and pull

to bring in healing, faith spawned.

She reminded me of the dog Moreover,

coming for healing of Lazarus’ soles,

and continues until tending our souls,

her stewardship gift was being a lover.

Words said then are gone with wind

yet still within his heart entwined.

The Dance of Patrica deGroot Froehlich

A Poem and Reflection

for a Service of

Thanksgiving for the Life of

Patricia deGroot Froehlich

September 25, 2019

Let me begin with a message which Christine, Pat’s daughter, posted:

My mom passed away yesterday morning. She had a heart attack and went quickly like she always wanted from the good Lord. My heart is heavy and sad, and my body numb, but I find comfort in her peace.

Mom taught us simple yet profound lessons by the way she lived and loved. . .” let it roll off your back like a duck”, “don’t be fussy”, “do whatever makes you happy”, and “if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all.”

Growing up, “Miss F” was like a second mom to my friends whom she always welcomed and always fed, whether, or not, they were hungry. An amazing mom, wife and friend she became “Nana”, perhaps her best role of all. Always ready to have fun and make us laugh, she showed us all how to be silly and love big. Thank you, Mom, for everything. We will find our way, but it won’t be the same.

What Christine was doing was not writing a biography but a beginning of a Gospel. After the disciples were scattered after the Pentecost experience, they formed communities all over the known world from India to Britain, Germany to Ethiopia; communities based on their experience based on their understanding of Jesus and how he worked through his life and theirs. When these first followers of the Risen Christ died, the communities would go through their grief by telling the stories of the Good News they knew. That is what the word “Gospel” means, Good News. It is not an attempt to do a factual story to sum up and put to rest, but a collection of remembrances on how lives were changed and to keep alive the spirit that shone forth in their memories.  



In the early centuries of the Christian enterprise there were bunches of Gospels full of memories and stories- some with much more skill and imagination than others, each with their own version of the truth they experienced.



In a quest for order the church started whittling down the Gospels down to four which they included in their Holy Scripture. But Good News did not stop but rather it is happening all the time in the lives who pass on the spirit of the Risen Lord in their life and work. The Gospel of Christ was alive and well in Pat's life and after her death for the last five days this community on the Outer Banks and friends and relatives from other places have contributed their stories, some with more skill and imagination but with great hearts filled with sorrow and joyful thanksgiving.  After the service, during the informal time of the reception, you are invited to share your stories with each other to tell the Good News of God’s gift of Pat. There will be good food as well because as Christine mentioned her “friends were always welcomed and fed, whether they were hungry or not.”



We read the story from the Gospel of John for the service. Scholars suggest that this Gospel came from a Community of the Beloved Disciple who tradition calls John. The stories are a bit different from the communities of Matthew, Mark and Luke. And it reflects the concerns and joys of that community, but there is a lot they share. The editors of the community remembered this story.



Jesus said, "Do not let your hearts be troubled”. It is his way of saying “Don't be afraid” Jesus has seen the handwriting on the wall, and he knows it is going to end badly for him as he faces down the Religious, Economic and Political elites in Jerusalem. He knows he has two chances of getting out alive; slim and none. But he will not let himself let fear rule their lives of his. He says:



“Believe in God, believe also in me”. The word that Jesus uses for “Believe” in the Greek does not mean an intellectual assent to a proposition. Like do you believe there is a town named Omaha, Nebraska even if you have never seen it? The word means more like trust. Jesus is saying “Trust God, put your faith in God whom you cannot see and in me whom you can, trust me.”  The community will remember that statement as the core of their faith and it helps them to encounter the resurrection as God’s answer to fear.



“In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going." I think he is saying; “You know this religion we follow in Jerusalem is much too small where God is limited to some special buildings. God is bigger than this." He is saying that God is also not to be limited to somewhere up there above the sky but is dwelling with us in daily life. God has not gone off on vacation but is right here and right now in the middle of all our fear. He continues, let me teach you a way of living and dying, a way that allows you to breathe deeply of God's Spirit so you can grow in the way. The early church did not call itself a church but “The Way.”



Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?" This is a joke, a pun, the editor of John uses puns all the time to show that people just don't understand.  It is not that they are stupid, but sometimes people just don’t get the joke. Thomas, he of very limited imagination, by the way my name is Thomas and I keep struggling to keep a sense of awe instead of thinking I know everything. I am well named and keep trying to live beyond the confines of that name. The pun is in the word “way”. Thomas thinks it is a path to a destination, a map to get from Point A to Point B. He thinks it a Google Map on how to get to Heaven in a life after death. Jesus is talking about a way of eternal life that begins before we die and continues after we die. It is a way of life instead of a way to life, Two little two letter words, of and to; where the only difference is one letter- a difference that makes all the difference in how we live this present moment. It reminds me of an old joke where a man gets off the plane in New York City and he catches a cab. He says to the driver, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall? The cab driver answers, “Practice, practice, practice.”



 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." I think he means My way of life, of love, compassion, and trust in a power greater than myself needs to be your way of life, for all eternity and it begins today..



Jesus says, “I will show you the way to the Father.” I think he means that he will lead us though life and through death, through hurt and through joy, through moments of emptiness where you want to cry out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”, to moments of blessed assurance.



What does Pat’s Gospel tell us? I never met the woman, but I have known and met people who have. The first one who told me of Pat was Phil Glick. He admired her and he called me after Bill called him. He was already out of town and wanted to make sure there was a Priest who could care. Phil had visited my wife Pat and I when she was in the hospital in January when we were afraid, she was going to die. Phil and I met when we were still in seminary and I trusted his opinion of the family and I owed him big time.



The image I got from listening about Pat Froehlich is that she lived her life as if it were a dance between being a gracious guest of God in this universe and a loving host creating a house, Nana’s, Miss F’s House, where there was room for many dwelling places.



As a guest there were stories of how she went out of her way to be kind and how she tried to tell people how much they meant to her and how she appreciated any gift of love. She made gifts of love for people to ease their burdens. Yet creating these gifts were also a way to burn off all this energy she had to make the world a kinder place. The early church used to have meals to feed each other as a way of showing love. Unfortunately, as the church got official it all too often turned into ritual where they gave out something, they told you was bread and a sip of wine. Apparently when you came to Pat’s house, she was not going to welcome you so meekly. Pat and Bill knew what it was like to be treated as a stranger rather than as a brother and sister from another mother you just had not got around to welcoming yet. As Christine said, “you were fed whether you were hungry or not.”



I heard this one story about how Bill loved argyle socks and Pat wanted to knit him a pair in thanksgiving for being loved. It was a gift from her to him, whether he needed it or not.  She worked hard and it was difficult getting the right mixture of colors and patterns. She finally brought forth one sock and set to work on its mate. She finished it, but it did not match. She went ahead to put together another and that one also did not match. They took pity on her and he was presented three socks that did not match. It was a treasure because it was a gift of love and a good story for her Gospel of how she learned not to give only to meet a need but as an outward and visible sign of love.



The stories continued how she did not fear death, but she was anxious about not being incapacitated by illness and not being able to be a host to share her love. Her family saw that the merciful God heard her prayer.



My brothers and sisters we are not only to be consumers of Gospels but to live them. What Gospel are you writing today in in the way you dance as gracious guest and loving host, in the lives of your family, your neighbors, your communities, your enemies, your world, your universe and in the loving heart of God.



Patricia deGroot Froehlich: The Dance

Her life was like a traveling dance studio,

one place to another. Where she'd a chance

she would stop, pay attention to deep dance

of being both host and guest, fast or slow.

She was guest when she listened to a tune

of spheres filling her with awe and wonder,

learning the difficult steps of being mother,

wife, lover, while swaying to Divine croon.

She was host when elbow deep in dough,

she'd say, “Oh you must be fed and loved”,

pulling more oven treats out, a mitt gloved,

one way she had of saying, “I love you so!”

Her travel is finished; but the music goes on,

to dance the steps, she taught to a new dawn.

Thomas E Wilson, Supply Clergy
St. Andrew's Church, Nags Head, NC

Lost Way of Life

A Reflection and Poem for XV Pentecost  C Proper 20        St. Andrew’s Church, Nags Head September 22, 2019                                                               Thomas E Wilson, Supply Clergy

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1       Psalm 79:1-9        1 Timothy 2:1-7        Luke 16:1-13

Lost Way of Life

Last week we had some Parables of Jesus about “Lost Things”, the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin, the third Parable in that chapter, the “Lost Son” you heard during Lent. As we continue in the Gospel of Luke, we have Jesus tell us a story of the “Lost Way of Life”.

Remember a definition of a Parable: it is a made-up story, a lie, told to reveal a deeper truth. We are more accustomed to Fable which is a made-up story to push a moral point. Think of the Tortoise and the Hare, a fable about the need to keep at your job. Jesus did not seem too interested in pushing a Moral Agenda to get people to adjust to a corrupt system; he left that job to the Pharisees and Scribes who were only too eager to point out other people’s sins. Jesus would say to them that they were so busy pointing out the spot of dust in someone else’s eye than do anything about the log in their own eye. Jesus understood, as Scott Peck used to say, “Life is difficult”, and we have to make daily choices on how to live a life of integrity.

Jesus was also a thorough going Eschatologist. The Greek word “escxaton” meant “Last” and “logist” meant “someone who studies and pays attention to”. Jesus believed that he was living in the Last Days and his stories were about how do we live as if our way of life was about to end. How do we pay attention to this moment, being able to not be afraid of the future nor burdened by the past? How can we creatively adjust to the changes and losses in our lives so that we can grow deeper into God's spirit?

Jesus had left his home town of Nazareth and was on his way to Jerusalem. He could see the writing on the wall. He knows he is entering his own last days. The Religious, Economic and Political Elites would not let him continue his work of getting people to pay attention to a deeper relationship with God. The official Religion was constructed as a private affair of sin as a moral matter where people needed help to get God off their backs by ritual.  The Political Elites thought their whole purpose was to allow law to be used so that people of the Economic elites could prosper and exploit the poor and vulnerable who would be controlled by the fear of legal force by the armies of the Puppet Ruler Herod or the Roman Occupiers. Life in Roman Occupied Judea for most of its citizens was, to use Thomas Hobbes term, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.

Jesus’ ministry was about getting people to “repent”. The Greek word for the English “repent” is “metanoia”. Repent does not mean feeling guilt and sorry but to re=again, pent=think, meta= consciously be aware, “noia”= way of looking,  think again, pay attention and change from a life of what Hobbes called “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”, into a way of living in a cooperative community of faith based on love of God and neighbor.

Cooperative community did not mean that they would all think alike. Jesus in his selection of disciples included Mathew, the former Tax Collector who had worked hand in glove with the Roman occupiers, and Simon the Zealot, who had actively engaged in guerrilla activity against the Romans. They were able to work and live together not because they ignored the differences between them but because they were aware they were living and working together on something more important than their differences; they were members of a family who could fight but chose not to, because time was too short to waste not having respect for each other.

Each of the disciples knew what it was like to lose a way of living and adjust to whole new way of looking at life. They knew, like Jeremiah in the Hebrew Testament lesson for today, that no magic cure to fix the situation, no balm in Gilead, no physician that could restore the old way of life.

The story that Jesus tells about the “Lost Way of Living” has been difficult to look at.  We don’t know what to even call it. Some call it the Parable of “the Dishonest Manager”, to tell you that they are uncomfortable with a thief and swindler as a hero. That did not bother Jesus, because in other stories he will use the metaphor for the Spirit of God being a burglar breaking in a house or a corrupt Judge.

The editors for the Gospel of Luke, over the years before it was included in a Bible, had put four different conclusions on this story; as you can see in the last paragraph. It is a little like an old Warner Brothers Cartoon I remember when Porky Pig is about to say “Th-th-th-the- that’s all folks!”, and Daffy Duck keeps interrupting him in order to get his last word in.  

That difficulty in finding an ending is an apt metaphor of what it is like to let go of the past and move into a whole new way of living. Most of you know what that is about. I remember times when I had to let go. One was fifty-three years ago. My parents had gone to Florida to take a vacation and also to visit my mother’s parents. One night my father collapsed with a burst aneurysm in his brain and was taken to ICU unit where they put him on life support and the family was called in. I was a student at Chapel Hill, my older brother was an enlisted man in the Marine Corps, my younger sister was college in Virginia, and my little brother was in high school staying with a friend back in New York State. There was no Balm in Gilead to fix this, and for more than a week my older brother, my sister, my Mother and I camped out in my Grandfather’s house and in the ICU waiting room as my Father did not get better. I was annoyed with God and began my vacation away from God. My brother and I chose to spend time together arguing about the Vietnam War. We could not stand to “pay attention” to the present because we were mourning the past and were afraid of the future. We made life miserable for my mother, and when Paul’s leave was up, and Anne and I were getting further and further behind in school, we were all shipped back. A week later he died, and I did not know how to get on with the future. So, I got really busy doing a lot of stuff as a way of not paying attention in a new way of living. It would take me years before I would be ready to accept going through the grief process; for grief is not something you get over but what you go through.

When I graduated from college, I was unprepared to do anything, but I found a series of jobs in helping professions. I dealt with people going through changes in their lives; like kids dropping out of school, parents trying to learn how to no longer abuse or neglect their children, people dealing with mental health problems, marriages reaching crisis situations, college students getting an education to learn how to help others. For the people I worked with, their “Ways of Life” were changing and I learned to listen and pay attention. That was a change of a way of living for me; for when I began I was used to my mind staying busy even when I was talking with someone. I should have been paying attention.

Some of things I had to do was to lose the old ways of looking at people. I was used to placing people into categories which told me what I thought I knew. In my way of living growing up, people of color were one dimensional and their race told me all I needed to know about them, and if they were not around, I could use ugly language to reduce them to a thing and not a person. I did the same thing with people with whom I disagreed, with people of different sexual orientation, of people differing mental health diagnosis, of people who had previous or current trouble with the justice system. In my old way of life, I could slap labels with the best of them. I grew up with a self-centered swaggering arrogance about people different than me. Except, when I listened and paid attention. When I saw that the other person and I were shaped in a similar image of God, I began to lose the old way of life. The English writer L.P. Hartley had a first line in his novel, “The Go Between”; “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

Yet, before I went to seminary I had thirteen years of getting into a habit of treating the people I worked with as “Clients”. I was the Professional who kept a professional distance. I was courteous when they were in my office or classroom, but if I saw them on the street in public, I would only respond if they talked to me first. MY personal and professional life were separate and were meant to stay that way. That is how I was when I finished Seminary, by keeping the wall as a “Way of Life.” The beginning of my ordained ministry I was a Helping person who was also a religious functionary, courteous but with a proper professional distance. In a way it was part of my understanding of God; concerned but always keeping a distance.

Let me tell you the moment that changed. My daughter was going off to college and my marriage fell apart. The Bishop told me that what he knew of that church in which I was serving, meant that the parishioners would not accept that situation. So, I submitted my resignation, but to my surprise –  the vestry refused to accept it. They were accepting me as a complicated person not a paragon.

Two years later, Pat comes onto the scene. entering into the life of the church, and loosened me up. Pat's Priest, Deborah, did our pre-marriage counseling and gave the Bishop her approval. The Bishop came to the church on a late Sunday afternoon, the day before Labor Day, to preside at our wedding. Deborah preached and my daughter, in her bare feet, read the first lesson. Deborah and the Bishop gave the bread out. Pat and I gave out the wine to the people who had promised to help support us in the vows we had made. One of the people coming to the rail was Arthur Brown, a wonderful retired Priest who was also hard of hearing. When Pat gave him the wine, Arthur exclaimed in a voice that could be heard outside the city limits, “THANK YOU MRS WILSON!!!” The Bishop blessed us and to the accompaniment of the Hymn, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee” we went down the aisle together.

I was the Rector of the church; the Title comes from the Latin for “Ruler”, but The Way of Life of my being only a Professional Religious Functionary, a Prancer around Altars and Professional Counselor, was now lost and I added a new ministry of being what Urban T. Holmes (Terry) defined as a “Parson”, the old 13^th Century English word for the weird person of the community with whom  you could talk about God in real life, and you knew the Parson would offer your concerns in his or her private conversations with God. I learned how to love as a member of a community as a way of life.  One title, “Rector,” the Bishop confers and the Vestry approves; the other designation, “Parson,” is what is given as a gift by the community and accepted with fear and trembling, needing God's help. Terry Holmes wrote, "Our goal is the Kingdom, the completion of God's creative vision, and we are God's hands in bringing that vision to pass." My vision of Heaven is not up there somewhere, but God dwells in that space between, and in, us and is closer than our breath. When your search committee finds the new Rector, you need to show her or him that surely the Presence of the Lord is in this place and work to help him or her to become your parson.

When I became a Parson I was able to sit and hold hands with people I loved; paying attention to what was happening in change. I remember one time, when a fellow Priest was dying. He and I never really agreed on anything. We had moments of resentment towards each other for having stances on some issues, as if that ever should make a difference. One day, I reminded myself life was too short. I decided that I should pay a pastoral visit and not let death have the last word. Acutely aware of the Losses in our lives, for the first time we really talked and listened to our dreams and hopes of what being a Priest meant, what was a purpose of life and our hopes and fears about death. There was no Balm in Gilead that would change the course of his dying, but there were moments of God’s healing grace in the Holy Space between us. The Divine Physician brought us both into new life. His earthly life ended and I lost the old way of living with resentment and entered a new way of living without carrying that resentment.

In the 19th Century a Swiss Philosopher, named Henri-Frédéric Amiel, wrote: “Life is short, and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind!” I stole and adapted that quote and say it out loud five or six times a week and silently to myself at least 50 times that amount. My brothers and sisters; pay attention for “Life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. So, be swift to love and make haste to be kind.”

Lost Way of Living

There had been so many times of loss,

some necessary, some beyond control

which felt then like stepping in a hole,

painful, finding that he wasn't a boss.

Realizing it was a way of living to be lost,

he paid attention to what was going on

inside each moment of resentment gone

as in spanning the river and gulf crossed.

Now holding hand of other, walking,

as if thru a parted Red Sea of love,

rising up, then covering as a glove,

claiming, joined in a deeper talking.

Being lost; beginning of being found,

then standing, claiming Holy Ground.

Lost Things

Reflection/ Poem for XIV Pentecost C Proper 19             St. Andrew's Episcopal, Nags Head, NC

September 15, 2019                                                            Thomas E Wilson, Supply Clergy

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28                     Psalm 14                     Luke 15:1-10

Lost Things

We had a hurricane come through here and we were advised by the authorities to be careful. This year I followed that advice and stayed hunkered down. When I was much younger, almost a half century ago, living in Wrightsville Beach, I went out on to a pier in the middle of a storm as I was trying to make sense of my life. I screamed out a speech that Shakespeare's King Lear gives on the heath in Act Three which begins: “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks!” 


You know, it just is not all that bright to do that. What was I thinking?


The Gospel lesson for today has two parables. Jesus is back at it again and telling stories that get him into trouble with the Scribes and Pharisees who are grumbling up a storm about why Jesus continues to hang around with tax collectors and sinners. After all it is just common sense to stay away bad folk because everybody knows you will be judged by the company you keep. The scribes and Pharisees would have cherry picked from the lessons from Jeremiah and the Psalm for today pointing out sinners deserve punishment and removal of love. Jesus goes out on a metaphorical pier in a storm and tells stories, which Luke calls “Parables”; parables are made up stories that lie in order to reveal a deeper truth. The first thing we must know about Parables is that they don’t make sense to the casual human way of thinking.


David Foster Wallace, writer and English professor, who died about 13 years ago, in a commencement address at Kenyon College, Ohio gave an example of a parable:

“There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, 'Morning, boys, how's the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, 'What the hell is water?' . . .
(Parables are) about simple awareness--awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: 'This is water, this is water.'”

This week this Chapter in Luke is divided to tell a series of three made up stories to give us an awareness of what is real and essential using lost things Today we are looking at the stories of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin. In Lent earlier this year you would have heard the third part of this collection of the “Lost Parables” with the story of the Prodigal Son.


Lets go through these two stories for this week. The first one is about Sheep in first century Palestine. Here are some of the points where the audience would would have had a hard time keeping from laughing.

        Number of shepherds: In this case is only one.  There are limits of how many sheep can be led to pasture by one shepherd. Maybe he had a couple of herding dogs that Jesus didn’t get around to mentioning. A Shepherd taking a herd of sheep out by him or herself is just asking for trouble. To go out alone he or she would have to take only about 25 at the most. Usually shepherds had a family to go with him or her. There must be someone else to share the load if he or she are going to have some rest or eat or sleep.

        Number of sheep: In this story there are a hundred sheep. This is one dumb shepherd. There is no way he or she can look after this many.  He or she must expect to lose more than a couple each day. Right now I want you to imagine St. Andrew’s Preschool having one teacher and a hundred children. State law would not allow it and common-sense rebels considering.

        Place of pasture: In this story it is the Wilderness. If any of you have ever been to the Holy Land you will know that its biggest crop in the wilderness is rocks. Very little grows out there. Here we are; one shepherd, a hundred sheep and very little to feed them; it is a waste of time and energy. If this is the way he or she runs their business, they will be broke in less than a year.

        Action of shepherd: This shepherd misses one sheep. Big surprise! He or she deserves to lose a whole lot more for their poor planning. He or she leaves them in the wilderness, and he leaves the ninety and nine in the wilderness, where there are wolves running around, where there is no one else to help. This is not new math; one does not equal 99. Then when he finds the sheep and returns home, he calls his or her friends and holds a party to celebrate finding the one no-good sheep. If the shepherd is a Metaphor for God would you hire this God  as the head of your religion for your nation or family?

        Action of sheep: The sheep did not ask for help and deserved to be lost since he or she did not follow the rules. Surely one has to be responsible for their actions that put everybody at risk and the reward of a party just encourages further bad behavior. On top of that, this sheep was not in the slightest repentant. He should have at least said he was sorry.


Next we go to Lost Coin.  Let’s see what is wrong with this story. The coin is one of 10 drachmas. A drachma is the equivalent of a half a shekel, or half a day’s wage. She spends the entire day looking and then lights her lamp, burning up at least that amount of oil to look for it. As far as we can tell the coin is not in the slightest repentant, but she holds a party any way because love is more important than being right.


These stories do not make a lick of sense if we look at them from a point of view of economics, political policy or moral rules of society. Jesus was not nailed to a cross because he told stories about being nice to one another, the authorities preferred the people to stay on script of how the world worked instead of being awakened to a deeper reality. Jesus told disturbing stories about God and they did not want to hear about that God, they had their own. 

It reminds me of what one of the bright young boys in the Pentagon said during one of the wars we were in at the time. He said, “Well, it is not the army we wanted, but it is the army we got.” Jesus is saying to the Scribes, Pharisees, Religious and political leaders of his time and place; “Well. This might not be the God your egos wanted but it is the God we got." And they crucified him because he told the truth in his stories and life, and death.


For Jesus the water of life is love, the kind of love that goes beyond self interest itself.  The parables remind us that the center of the universe is not about control or approval or fear or advantage but about love. 


We began with Act 3, scene 2 of King Lear, basically the whole play is an extended parable; let us go backward to Act 1, Scene1 where old Lear is trying to control his three daughters into taking care of him, to get them to do something to earn a reward. For Lear love is conditional. His third daughter Cordelia refuses to play that game and sell her love when it is already freely given without hope of a reward or punishment. The King of France sees what she is doing and remarks: “Love is not love/ When it is mingled with regards that stand/ Aloof from the entire point”


Lost Things

During the storm the foolish Lear screamed

for cataracts and hurricanoes to really spout

providing backdrop of what this life's about

that love's not chasing after desires dreamed.

Jesus on lonely hill was killed and crucified

because he just wouldn't listen to good sense

that point of life is caring for dollars or cents

while setting of a world's mores as our guide.

Yet, tis fine madness to go to heath or hill

to pose questions how to live another way

not centering on how we'd in comfort stay

by ignoring lost others and eat our full fill.

What if love's about hands being held

allowing outward differences to meld.

allowing outward differences to meld.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

A Reflection and Poem for XIII Pentecost, C, Proper 18              St Andrew's Church, Nags Head, NC

September 7, 2019                                                                              Thomas E Wilson, Supply Clergy

Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17        Philemon 1-21          Luke 14:25-33

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

From the Book of Common Prayer Psalm 139:14 appointed for today: “I will thank you because I am marvelously made; your works are wonderful, and I know it well.”



Today is the Sunday after the Labor Day weekend, so the summer season is officially over and the massive number of visitors will go down, a bit. The people came here because they envy us who live at the edge of the earth with the sea at our feet which gives us here moments of awe and wonder. Many have come to the Outer Banks for Spiritual Healing from busy lives, a few will come to church but most come to worship at nature's throne. Wendell Berry in his Art of the Commonplace, a series of Agrarian Essays, wrote:

We must learn to acknowledge that the creation is full of mystery; we will never entirely understand it. We must abandon arrogance and stand in awe. We must recover the sense of the majesty of creation, and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For I do not doubt that it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.

We also had a hurricane come to town  this week and the call went out for visitors to evacuate because what is awesome before a hurricane can be awful during one. We are lucky in that we live here and can re-enter easily, with a lot less driving, into awe and majesty when we have a chance and we clean up and rebuild. Yet, no one has to clean up or rebuild or go far to be in awe; as St. Augustine in his Confessions pointed out:

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.

I think Augustine is saying that opportunities for humility and reverence are as much more numerous and closer than we think. When I was growing up my life was full of things that I saw and was impressed by. Since I was so self-centered, usually I would just say something like: “That is nice”, and I might stay for a moment to let it soak in, congratulate myself on how much taste I have. I may take a picture or buy a souvenir, but I go on my way unchanged. I tried to remember my first experience of abandoning arrogance and being in awe with a sense of my life was changing because of being in awe.



That experience was when I was walking back and forth holding my newborn daughter and looking at her on her first night home from the hospital. The words of the Psalm for today came back to me from the King James Version: “I will praise thee; for she is fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.”



To be in wonder! Except, I did not attribute anything credit to God. At that time in my life I was on a sort of vacation from God; paying my respects every once in a while, like a good guest is supposed to do, but did not expend any energy in a relationship with God. My energy was going into making MY money which I made from working at MY job, in order to buy MY house where I could live MY life and paying I for MY clothes and food. It was all about ME and MY possessions. It was in that mindset that I was tempted to consider that little daughter as MY daughter to meet MY needs of having someone to make me feel better about myself. She was in danger of becoming one more of MY possessions. If that had happened, the awesome moment of awe and wonder could become the beginning of something awful.



That is what happens when you “Fall in love” with persons, places and things. “Falling in love” is different than loving wonder and awe. “Falling in love” is like a Psychiatric Illness where one projects all sorts of psychic energies onto a person, place or thing as a way of fulfilling one's own desires and easing one's own fears and one must possess that person place or thing in order to give an  internal equilibrium or other advantage. Freud defined Psychological projection as a defense mechanism in which the human ego defends itself against unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others. For instance; if I have a hard time loving myself as I look at all my shortcomings then I will long for someone to love me unconditionally and when I meet a suitable candidate I begin to attribute to her or him the qualities of extreme patience and desperate need to be loved. I want to make him or her dependent on me to make me feel better about myself. The goal of “Falling In Love” is to possess for one's own benefit. Loving wonder and awe, on the other hand, is seeing the person place or thing as a gift from God to be appreciated and cared for, to be honored and not exploited, and finally to see the space between us as “Holy Space” where God's Shalom and Peace is to be honored. It is the difference between Possession and Stewardship. Possession says I want to own it and Stewardship says I want to honor as part of our shared relationship with a power greater than ourselves.



When Jesus tells us the Gospel lesson for today from Luke; “So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions." He is not talking about the amount of money you give to the church; he is talking about the way we look at the world we live in. In a Universe of Possession, where I am the center of the Universe dominated by a fear of scarcity, everything becomes a commodity to be used or abused for my own benefit. However, on the other hand, in a Universe of Awe and Wonder, where every person, place or thing becomes a a possibility of experiencing God's grace, we are called to walk as if we were living on Holy Ground by caring for the creation from which we all a part.



Thirteen point eight Billion years ago there was a tiny element in the hand of God and God spoke and the element exploded, expanding, constantly expanding into the universe of stars and planets and mountains and oceans and life; developing from the stardust from that explosion of the Big Bang. We are all collections of stardust, connected to each other and to all of God's creation.



We see an example of this in the lesson from the Letter of Paul to Philemon in today's lesson. Philemon had a slave who he possessed, a human being for his own benefit. He called him Onesimus, which in Greek means “Useful”, as an outward and visible sign of Onesimus’ purpose in life; which was to be “useful” to Philemon. However, Onesimus ran away from Philemon, in order to follow Paul in freedom. Paul writes that indeed Onesimus was “Useful” as he helped care for Paul in Paul's imprisonment. Onesimus gave time and energy to Paul out of love not out of obligation to an owner. Paul sends Onesimus back to Philemon with a letter asking Philemon to change the way he treats Onesimus, not as a slave to a master but as a brother in Christ, seeing each other as a gift, walking together on Holy Ground.



Last week my wife, Pat, and I celebrated our 30^th Anniversary together. We “fell in” love but we were blessed as we moved from “Falling” in love to living in loving awe and wonder of the Holy Space between, and in, each of us. “Falling” in love always fades with time as it gradually occurs to the people that the projections are just their projections on each other rather than reality and the Prince or Princess move down more than a few notches on the nobility scale. We had to withdraw our mutual projections in order to return to sanity, away from an addiction to an object we worshiped for its imagined benefits and move to commitment to a relationship with a subject of love. It took us a while before we were able to be in awe and wonder of an ordinary human being who is a gift from the gracious God. That does not mean that we don't have more than a few minutes of being annoyed with each other or not approving of each other's actions. Even though I am difficult to live with, and she has her few moments, we continue to ask God's grace to see each other as gifts from a loving God for which we are stewards not owners.



Sometimes unconscious psychological projections are not only of love but of hate and fear as well. It is how we begin to have enemies when we refuse to face our own dark shadows and project them on to someone else, so I could be afraid of them instead of claiming that shadow within myself and bring it to consciousness so I can work on it. I had to learn that the people I projected as enemies had been taken by me as possessions in my psyche that could control my life. The withdrawal of projections of fear and hate  are accomplished by the spiritual practice of forgiveness and the commitment to love the enemy, to want the best for them, to see them as fearfully and wonderfully made brothers or sisters, fellow descendants of stardust from the original big bang of creation. I am free to love them; I may still have to have prayerful discussions with God about them, I may not like them, I may not agree with them, I still may, out of self-protection, be careful of my safety around them, but the fear and hate will not rule my life. 

In 1964 The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said:
“I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind’s problems, I’m not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love; I’m talking about a strong, demanding love. For I have seen too much hate. ... I have decided to love.”


My brothers and sisters remember please knowing you are fearfully and wonderfully made to love one another in a universe that is fearfully and wonderfully made. May our prayer be today: “We will thank you because we are marvelously made; your works are wonderful, and we know it well.”





Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Walking, one step in front of another and back again,

bouncing, hold her in fashion of a jerry-rigged womb,

bobbing up and down, his joy for her begins to bloom,

making promises to protect and keep from her all pain.

“Fearfully and wonderfully made”, softly whispering

over and over as kind of mantra reminding them both

that her father would strive to love and keep his oath,

specially in times of patience and approval flickering,

by seeing an image of God, sharing the DNA of stars

exploding in dance responding to first Divine Word,

and he'd pause to awe again when the echo is heard

as his once rationed love is unfurled to heal the scars

that he once so easily inflicted thoughtlessly on others

before he realized that we were all sisters and brothers.

Reflection and Poem on Joe Beckett (April 2, 1936 – August 19, 2019)

Reflection and Poem on Joe Beckett

(April 2, 1936 – August 19, 2019)

Ecclesiastes 3, 1-8^: To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

Poet and writer X. J. Kennedy ( his real name was Joe Kennedy, but he got tired of being confused with the Ambassador to the Court of St. James, and father of a future President) wrote: "I like poems where you don't really know whether to laugh or cry when you read them."

As Kennedy feels about poems, that is how I feel about people; the people who don't know how to dissemble or otherwise hide themselves under “a shallow mask of manners”, to use Oscar Wilde's phrase. Joe Beckett was that kind of person. With Joe there was often laughter, sometimes profound, sometimes impish laughter, and more than a few times down right puerile, to which he would add with a mirthful twinkle in his eye “Oh, I guess I should say, 'Bless me Holy Father for I think I was close to sinning!” But even the impish laughter was as close as the tears as entrances into his soul. Over the years that I have known Joe, there were many opportunities to cry together and even more to laugh together, yet in sharing tears or laughter, God was always there in the sacred space between us.

Joe was a sailor who knew the sea and would entertain us with stories of finding his position anywhere on earth with the stars to guide him to find his way home. The image I had when he would tell those stories was of Joe as the dove that Noah sent out from the Ark to find evidence of a place to return to dry land. In that story the dove brought back an olive branch, a symbol of peace. Being with Joe was often like him bringing back coordinates to find peace.

The Bible tells us that we are all aliens and sojourners in this life and therefore we are to treat aliens and sojourners with respect and justice. I came here a stranger and Joe made me welcome. Joe was my first Senior Warden at All Saints and I grew to trust him on getting used to this new church with his wisdom on how the church worked, or not. He was a faithful partner in prayer for many years. He would tell stories about how this or that parishioner had faced difficulties and how other members of the parish had come to stand beside him or her. He had the eye and the inclination of looking and finding redemption. I grew to depend on him to give me coordinates so I could sail the seas of Southern Shores and for helping me find my way home here.

The Bible tells us that we are aliens and sojourners in this life for we know that life has limits and we will be returning at the end of our journey on this earth to the arms of the creator. We are to live as if we have one foot on earth and one foot in God's spirit. Joe demonstrated how to live fully in this life and in spirit claim being in the presence of the divine.

We give thanks to God for Joe showing us how to love our partners as he loved Mary Lou. Joe showed us how to extravagantly love children, starting with his own three girls (Jean, Jane, and Jennifer) and two grandchildren (Jacob and Antigone). His overflowing love did not stop at the family limits, and for those of us who were not blood family, he taught us how to gracefully receive love. Joe demonstrated with his life how to serve his country and how to work hard and faithfully at employment and in volunteer organizations. He showed us how to hold on to faith in the middle of horrible situations. The lessons he gave us live in us and give us strength to meet the days ahead.

Joe Beckett

There was a laugh at creation's beginning,

that sheer joyful hope of divine playing,

with stars, worlds and creatures praying

as Joe echoed first laugh by his grinning.

He also echoed the first sob of human fall

of reaching limits and wounds of loss

when our meager pride forgot who's boss

and love is the only medicine to give at all.

He would hold us in his arms, tears like rain

falling into the fertile soil of the holy ground

between us, while humming a hopeful sound

of consolation, 'fore words could begin again.

The sailor is home, reminding me of the dove's

return to Noah carrying signs of greater loves.

Thomas E Wilson