A Reflection and Poem for XV Pentecost C Proper
20 St. Andrew’s Church, Nags Head
September 22,
2019
Thomas E Wilson, Supply Clergy
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
13th 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.
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