Saturday, November 16, 2019

Poem/Reflection: Creating A New Heaven and A New Earth:


A Poem and Reflection for XXIII Pentecost (proper 25C)       St. Andrew’s, Nags Head, N.C. 
November 17, 2019                                                                  Thomas E Wilson, Supply

Isaiah 65:17-25          Psalm 98         2 Thessalonians 3:6-13            Luke 21:5-19

Creating A New Heaven and A New Earth



 The Hebrew Testament lesson for today is from the Book of Isaiah, which many scholars have divided into three parts. The first part is set in the 8th Century BC. The prophet Isaiah is in the Temple in the year that King Uzziah died (742 BC) when he has a vision calling him to confront the leaders of the Kingdom with the rampant corruption of the legal and religious institutions which end up with the poor and vulnerable being abused. He calls on a reform to live into God’s vision for the community of God in which there would be care and respect for the poor and needy. He is in a tense relationship with the Temple, on the one hand he knows the Temple has been part of his and the communities’ life for hundreds of years and it is corrupt. While it is part of the problem, Isaiah still has hope for the better angels of their natures to answer God’s pleas for justice and mercy.



The first 39 chapters of the Book of Isaiah belong to this 1st (or Proto) Isaiah. He will gather a group of younger disciples around him who will continue the message after Isaiah dies. There are some sporadic reforms, but they are short lived, and the old ways do not die out. Finally, the Kingdom falls to the Babylonians and the Temple is destroyed in 587 BC. The destruction of the Temple was a horrible tragedy, but part of the cost of the arrogance of the leaders. The exile was a horrible thing but one of the best things to happen to the faith of the people. The exiles found that their LORD was to be found not in a building but wherever and whenever two or three would gather together in prayer. 



The school of the Prophet Isaiah holds on to Isaiah’s vision and will continue sharing the original hope of the prophet with the exiles in Babylon. They are to forget the Temple made of stone and remember a relationship with the God that is not trapped in a building. 40 years later, the Babylonian Empire falls to the Medes and the Persians and the Persian rulers allow the exiles to return home.  The followers of Isaiah write to those coming home to look not for a Temple as the center of their worship to solve problems but a to continue as a community working together to build a new commonwealth of justice and compassion. True worship is in caring, sharing and working together with God’s spirit. The part of the Book of Isaiah covering this ministry to the exiles and the welcome of their return we call 2nd or (Deutero) Isaiah.



The same spirit of the original Prophet Isaiah now faces the time after the exiles return and the hope for the future. These chapters are what we call 3rd or Trito Isaiah, which sees God working through them to build a new Heaven and a new earth. It is a vision of the future. There is no Temple there for the true Temple will be in their hearts and in their lives.



However, the people build a second Temple and place God in there instead of in their lives. Four centuries later, the Temple gets all tarted up by Herod with Roman help, so that it looks like a real downtown Temple like all the other Gods have. Jesus looks at it and sees this corrupt and gaudy building, all impressed with itself, with the eyes of Isaiah and sees a waste of energy and money. People are putting their faith in a building and ritual instead of placing their lives in relationship with God.



The destruction of the Temple, while a real tragedy, was one of the best things to happen to the followers of Jesus, because it sets them free to live fully into the living Spirit of God. Jesus’ followers do not build Temples and buildings, for they see the real temple as God’s resurrected Christ’s spirit living within the changed people and in the space between them in the community coming together in Christ’s name. Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians warned about people just going showing up instead of working by giving the gifts that they were given by God; everybody had to work together to bring change into the world. The English word “church” comes from the Greek word kyrios, meaning Lord; church meant the people who belonged to the LORD, not the building belonging to the people. Another Greek word for church is the ekklesia, meaning the people gathered.



However, that started to change when the church got legal in the Roman Empire and wanted to look like a “real” religion and have fancy buildings with lots of gaudy trim to impress the outsiders and themselves with how important they were. In that configuration the church came to mean buildings and those who staffed them, hired ministers. These churches tended to become as corrupt as the old Temple concept, where the church was seen to meet the needs of the members instead of the vision of God.  Jesus kept reminding them that stone buildings don’t last, only God’s spirit lasts. We are not here to throw holy water on corrupt institutions. Billy Sunday used to say: “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.”



Over the coming centuries Prophets and saints would come and call us to return to the vision of Isaiah and Jesus. One of those people was a man we remembered two weeks ago at the Wednesday service. He was William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury during World War II. Who said: “The church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.”



In the history of Nags Head there was a chapel built in the 1850’s, during a time in history when most Southerners had little problem with what they called “our way of life” or “our peculiar institution” of the exploitation of fellow images of God based on the color of their skin. The State of North Carolina’s Constitution backed up what most of the churches in the state taught and put a limit on the number of slaves that could be set free and laws kept slave owners from Baptizing or educating their slaves because they realized that real Christianity might help them to hear about God’s love instead of the state’s fear. The time came for facing that corruption and injustice in the Civil War, choices needed to be made.



On one side, for example, we have Bishop Leonidas Polk, of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana, born in Raleigh and his first church was in Fayetteville.  He took leave of his calling and, because of his connections and previous military training, he was a classmate with Jefferson Davis at West Point, he became a General in the Confederate Army of Tennessee. He announced his decision because of his belief that Federal Government had no power to ruin the “Southern way of Life,” meaning slavery. As a North Carolina native, he believed slavery was God’s will for inferior people, as well as an economic necessity for profitable agriculture in the South if they would have to pay workers rather than own them.



On the other side, runaway slaves escaped to the Outer Banks which was held by Union soldiers and the slaves were kept as wartime contraband, not full human beings until the Emancipation Proclamation a few years later. The runaways needed shelter, so the chapel was torn down for timbers to build shelter for the contraband. It was horrible to tear down the Chapel, but it was one of the best things to happen to the church that replaced it. The metaphor of the loss of arrogance helped future members of St. Andrew’s to start to remember what a church was supposed to be: a community devoted to changing the world instead of an institution to throw holy water on corrupt and unjust ways.



This is where we are right now as we search for a new Rector. What are you looking for? Are you looking for someone who will run an institution to meet the needs and desires of the people who claim membership in this parish? Or, are you looking for someone who can enter into, and challenge, a community with members and model what it means to live in the Spirit working together to do God’s work in the larger community of the Outer Banks? The buildings of St. Andrew’s are beautiful, but they are not the mission of St. Andrew’s. The services are inspiring, but they are not the mission of St. Andrew’s. We are here to change the world, not retreat from it. We are, as Isaiah says, called to be co-creators of a “new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;”


Creating A New Heaven and A New Earth

Third Isaiah has a new vision for the people,

coming back to the light, ending darkness,

clutching hope, standing on ruined edifice,

to raise a new faith, not just another steeple.

Centuries later looking at a ruin soon to be,

Jesus will repeat all the three Isaiahs hopes,

arrogance brings ruin, but God changes folks,

to dream of new times when they'll be free.

Free from past seduction by tawdry grandeur,

being able to see true worth of work meant,

to change worlds, to sing rather than lament,

of sharing riches rather than abusing of poor.

Timbers of a church housed runaway slaves,

teaching us churches are not religious caves.

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