Sunday, December 29, 2019

Speaking My Word


A Poem/Reflection for 1st Sunday after Christmas        St. Andrew's Church, Nags Head, N.C.
 December 29, 2019                                        Thomas E Wilson, Supply Clergy
Speaking My WORD.

It is the Sunday after Christmas, the boxes are put away, the tree is starting to shed more needles, the leftovers of food are starting to get a little ripe and the family keeps looking for other things to do. We went to church and God was there in our prayers and in the music. Then today we have John's Gospel telling us that we have to back to the beginning as he starts his poetic prologue:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.”
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.
en archē eimi ho logos, kai ho logos eimi pros ho theos, kai theos eimi ho logos

We begin with what we, for convenience sake, call God, the indescribable energy before, behind, in, over and through all of creation. Theologians tell us if we can describe it, then what we can describe is not God. John says that “ho theos”, the God, before the beginning, begins with “ho logos”, the word. John goes back to the opening poem of Genesis where God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth, where God begins by saying , “Let light be!”

The word John uses for “the Word” is the Greek ὁ λόγος (ho logos). But logos means more than a grammatical construction, something you say. It it rich and can mean a plan, a promise, a ground, a proposal, an audit, the bond, the binding, the conversation or more than a few other possibilities. The community of the Beloved Disciple says that in their experience, the man, Jesus of Nazareth, was the embodiment of a plan, a promise, a ground, a proposal, an audit, the bond, the binding, the conversation or more than a few other possibilities, the Word of God.

Too often we think that the “Word of God” is the Bible, on the surface of the pages and sentences of a Book. The Book is not the Word but it contains the Word and we have to spend time in deep conversation with it to discern the meaning in, under and through the grammatical constructs. Martin Luther said that the Bible is the manger in which the baby Jesus is laid and like in all mangers there is a lot of straw. The Franciscan Richard Rohr posits: “The first act of divine revelation is creation itself. The first Bible is the Bible of nature. It was written at least 13.8 billion years ago, at the moment that we call the Big Bang, long before the Bible of words.”

Frederich Buechner in the third of his four memoirs, Telling Secrets, wrote:
WE BELIEVE IN God—such as it is, we have faith—because certain things happened to us once and go on happening. We work and goof off, we love and dream, we have wonderful times and awful times, are cruelly hurt and hurt others cruelly, get mad and bored and scared stiff and ache with desire, do all such human things as these, and if our faith is not mainly just window dressing or a rabbit's foot or fire insurance, it is because it grows out of precisely this kind of rich human compost. The God of biblical faith is the God who meets us at those moments in which for better or worse we are being most human, most ourselves, and if we lose touch with those moments, if we don't stop from time to time to notice what is happening to us and around us and inside us, we run the tragic risk of losing touch with God too.  

If we are indeed created in the image of the indescribable God then we engage in having Word in our lives with God and each other. Too often we use Words of trash we we converse with each other by insult, or hate. Promises broken and relationships discarded on the basis of cost benefit analysis.Words used to treat people or derision rather than subjects created in the image of God. like objects insteadIn our public discourses of late by notable con men and women we see, and participate in lies masquerading as truth, falsehoods dressed up in slogans to be swallowed by the gullible or hidden in the small print.. We hear excuses over horrible things said like: “That is just locker room talk.” “He just may have remembered it differently”. “Tomayto- Tomahto.” “She just got up in the spirit of the meeting.” We know that when a person says something like , “Legally speaking . . “ or “Technically speaking”. . . what will follow will be a smarmy attempt at obfuscation.

I know this list from reading it in the papers and also by living it as well. How are you hearing the WORD? How are you speaking the WORD? How are you living the WORD?

Speaking My Word
If I give my word, it is my promise
that I'll do whatever I've pledged,
to be there, not in any way hedged,
but the fullness of how I'm Thomas.
Yet, I have broken that word once,
and even more times, when my name
could only be remembered in shame
by those who believed like a dunce.
If I am an image of God, Word giving,
is what my holy breath is meant to do;
be trusted, counted on as he who's true
to sacred purpose of why we're living.
Today, forgiven I make the vow again,
that your trust in me will not be in vain

Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Christmas Morning Poem


Christmas Morning
Up late last night, dragging this morning,
getting so busy doing the big holiday stuff,
in danger of thinking I have done enough,
off the hook, giving the divine a warning.
Yet, it really is all a gift, given not by me,
but by one breathing into this earth lump,
from before I was given as gift of plump
child to parents who deigned let love be.
Letting love be, to grow as it'll blossom,
in freedom of will; in hope I'll give freely,
before I'm asked; in Thanksgiving ideally,
for being aware that God's plan is awesome.
Now, in midst of presents, wrapping paper,
ribbons; I know love's been a mold shaper.

"My Love Is My Gift For You"


A Refection and Poem for Christmas Eve                               St. Andrew's Church, Nags Head, N.C. December 24, 2019                                                                 Thomas E. Wilson, Supply Clergy
My love is my gift for you.”
We have no idea when the historical Jesus was born. There are no reliable birth certificates. Mark and John, in their Gospels, and Paul in his Epistles, are not interested in the place or date, they are only interested in Jesus' ministry and meaning. Matthew and Luke say that he was born in Bethlehem, but they disagree where his parents lived. Matthew has the family's home in Bethlehem, and in his version, Matthew tells of the visit of the Magi to the “home” in Bethlehem. The family will flee from their home in Bethlehem to hide in Egypt away from Herod's wrath. The family will come back and avoid Bethlehem in order to settle in east nowhere Nazareth. Luke has the family staying in a stable due to an official governmental bureaucratic decree. Neither Matthew or Luke share a clue on the birth date.

There was a Roman festival based on the Winter Solstice when the Sun has the shortest day of the year, which calls to mind a mythic representation of the dying of the sun, and a reminder of the fact that we must one day die. However, the Sun seems to come back to life, and it is noticeable as the days start to get longer and hope returns for a new life. This multi day festival was Sol Invictus, where the God of the Sun is not defeated by death. When the early Christians celebrated the Festival of Sol Invictus, they said, “You know this Sol Invictus bash reminds us about Jesus. Why don't we just celebrate the coming into world of Jesus on this day?” And so it was. However, Christmas, the Feast of the Incarnation, God living in the broken world, was seen as a secondary Holiday in comparison to Easter which is about the death of Jesus and of the Resurrected Christ, now safely back in Heaven where we can be if we behave.

The church split on observing Christmas. In the Imperial Roman and Eastern Churches, Christmas became a chance to show off the wealth of the church, by putting on sparkling High Masses, bringing out the brightest and newest rich gifts of approval by the local rulers as outward and visible signs of God's approval of the prosperity of the church and the aristocracy. It was a celebration of Class Status. The common folk were allowed to attend if there was room and if they behaved themselves in front of their betters. Every place to which Christianity spread, there was an already mythic awareness of the death and renewal of the sun and many of these common folk blended their own old pagan solstice celebrations with a patina of Christian symbols out in the woods, away from censorious eyes.

Many of the Reformers, especially Puritans, reacting against the Roman Church, banned Christmas as a Holy Day, because the common folk were too focused on celebration, and as such, as a pathway into sin. H. L. Mencken defined “Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Merchants, on the other hand, found that this Christmas stuff could be good for business and came up with an intoxicating (and at times toxic) 3-G concoction of Gluttony, Greed and Guilt with a huge chaser of profitable Nostalgia.

I look to the heritage of St. Francis saying that we should be living a life as if Jesus really did live in poverty with the cultural outsiders like shepherds. He pointed out that Jesus did not come to palaces, but came to everyday life. He suggested that towns gather on Christmas Eve, with their farm animals to set up a scene of a creche in the stable. The message is that God is right here and right now, and not just after we are dead. All of creation was to hold its breath, humans and animals alike, for the blessing of the Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, emptying himself out to dwell with us. 

This led to Medieval Mystery Plays, where a wagon was built and is camped outside a church to tell Biblical stories in a broad comedy way. When I was an undergraduate we did the 2nd Shepherd's play outside in the quad. The play is about some shepherds watching their sheep by night and complaining about life and their lot in it. They are joined by a local character and thief, Mak. Mak steals a small sheep from them and takes it home to hide. He is chased by the other three shepherds and they enter his home, Mak's wife tries to pass off the small sheep as their new born baby. With a lot of slapstick, the ruse is uncovered and as they are about to punish Mak, he asks for mercy:
MAK At your mercy I am left.
1ST SHEPHERD
Sirs, do what I say;For this trespass
We will neither curse nor chide,
No more deride,No longer bide,
But toss him in a canvas.

The Shepherds throw him in a sheet and toss him in the air a couple times for comedy slapstick and then let Mak and his wife go home in peace. They have shown mercy and in peace they go to sleep. They are awakened by an angel who appears to tell them of the good news that Jesus has been born in Bethlehem. All of the shepherds go to bring their gifts to Bethlehem and join the angels in song. The message is no matter what you have done, or not done, deserve or not, you are given a gift of love.

I cannot improve on that message. My Christmas message for you today is that you are loved, no matter what you have done, or not done, deserve or not, you are given a gift of love. So be in peace and show mercy.

My love is my gift for you.” Poem for Christmas Eve 2019

Slowly, God turning dream to song
singing Word, creates Galactic stew,
image-ing us from stardust of earth,
to hear “My love is my gift for you.”

Fearfully, Mary turns to see the angel
kneeling, hailing “Girl dressed in blue,
we know not why, but you are favored.
to hear “'My love is my gift for you.'”

Joseph wakes in God's ongoing dream,
informing of task; a child to raise true
of heart, mind and soul as precious son
to hear “My love is my gift for you.”

The Innkeeper's wife sees the couple
with no place to stay and time is due,
she offers finest stable straw, and then
to hear “My love is my gift for you.”

The shepherds sense the angels invite
them come to Bethlehem and to view
a child to be their hope, peace and joy
to hear “My love is my gift for you.”

Mary holds all these things in her heart
seeing visions of both pure joy and rue,
raising their child to live and to die and
to hear “My love is my gift for you.”

From the East the Magi come placing
gold, frankincense and myrrh in queue,
leaving quietly as wisdom allows them
to hear “My love is my gift for you.”

We walk away from wrapping presents,
our fingers sticky with glitter and glue
hoping we'd have grace either to say or
to hear “My love is my gift for you.”

The outward packages are never enough
to proclaim what's in our souls we knew;
reason we are together is we were lucky
to hear “My love is my gift for you.”

Church Pageant costumes are packed up now,
mended and cleaned by next generations too,
who will turn to their children, wishing
to hear, “My love is my gift for you.”

We are older, the children have grown and
under the tree shows presents as very few,
yet turning to each other, we pray or kiss
to hear, “My love is my gift for you.”

This new year is a time for us to promise
that each day we'll choose to begin anew
forgiving the hurts, treasuring the joy and
to hear “My love is my gift for you.”

At the service, an offering plate comes
as way giving to God and neighbor too;
but best gift is living in way for God
to hear “My love is my gift for you.”

The day'll come when my table place
will be empty as I bid the world adieu
and on the other shore, again a chance
to hear “My love is my gift for you.” 

Sunday, December 22, 2019

Return to Royal David's City


A Poem and Reflection for IV Advent                       St. Andrew’s Church, Nags Head, N.C.

December 22, 2019                                                     Thomas E. Wilson, Supply Clergy

Isaiah 7:10-16            Romans 1:1-7             Matthew 1:18-25            Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18

Return to Royal David’s City

Today we lit the fourth Candle of Advent which is the candle as a symbol of love. Love, we all know about love since it is a feeling that we can “fall into”. You remember what it is like to fall in love. We look at the object of desire and project all sorts of qualities on that person, place or thing and our imagination starts to sing the song that Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald sang in the 1935 film version of the Victor Herbert 1910 operetta, Naughty Marietta: “Ah, at last sweet mystery of life, I’ve found thee!”

I am addicted to movies, and as with all addictions, they become the way I filter my reactions to the world. This movie, which I first saw when I was about 12, told me that romantic love is an addiction and I could not live without it. Other movies and songs kept being released weekly that sent the same message and my adolescent raging hormones searched repeatedly to find the pusher who could provide me the high of “being in love.” I fell “in love” often, but like Othello, “loved not wisely but too well.” I projected all sorts of magical properties of beauty, grace, intelligence, patience, passion on the object of desire “de jour”, but the most magical property was that she would find me utterly fascinating and would make her whole life revolve around me forever. The supposed supply of perfect girls was only limited by my imagination and, while it might cost me some time, energy and money; I hoped I would not have to change a bit or grow up. But, unlike Peter Pan, we all have to grow up. J. M Barrie, who wrote the play Peter Pan, wrote that Peter Pan would never grow up as long as he remained “innocent and heartless.”


“To fall in love” is “innocent and heartless”. Innocent and heartless? Innocent not as in the absence of guilt but in the naïve and uncluttered un-awareness of the feelings, hopes and dreams of others. Heartless as in the total lack of compassion for others. It is like the standard definition of a sociopath: characterized by a disregard for the feelings of others, a lack of remorse or shame, manipulative behavior, unchecked egocentricity, and the ability to lie easily in order to achieve one's goals, such as wealth, conquest and power.

When we start to grow up, we learn that we are not the center of the universe and that we are cast into the ongoing struggle of people trying to find meaning in their lives. To love, in the context of growing up is real and heartful; to have a heart is not to be swept by emotions but to dream and upon awakening live into the reality we find, and make a decision to change the world we live in.  That meaning in life is love, which is not projection for the purpose of one's own ego desires, but the finding of one's heart meant to be filled with compassion and the desire to change the world for the good of others.

In the Gospel lesson for today, Joseph shows us how to love. He finds out that his fiancée is pregnant and if he had “fallen in love” with her, then he would have had to punish her for failing to live into his projections. He did not fall in love; he loved. What does he do? Joseph opens himself up to listen to God to find out how to respond to his heart being broken. He dreams because he knows that when we dream the conscious ego is usually asleep and the unconscious deeper wisdom of the spirit can be discerned. He hears God tell him to forgive Mary before she even asks for forgiveness in hurting him. He looks at her with love and finds the best way to redeem this blow to his ego. He claims her as his wife and agrees to raise and love a child who is not his biological son. He raises that son and teaches him to love his mother and to bring healing into the world which only longs for revenge. He enters into being an immigrant laborer in Egypt to escape the tyranny of the government of his home and taste the bitterness of being a stranger in a strange land. He, Mary and the Infant Jesus live fully into what it means to be persecuted. Joseph teaches his son, by his example, how to respond to those who hate him by responding with love. Love is not a feeling but a choice on how to live a life that matters on earth as it is in heaven.

About a quarter of a century ago, Pat and I spent part of my Sabbatical studying at St. George's College in East Jerusalem. One day we took an early morning bus down to Royal David's City, Bethlehem for the day, about a half an hour trek if you don't get hassled by the Israeli Defense Force protecting the Israeli settlements surrounding it on the West Bank. The first you notice coming into this very small city is the huge neon lights of the “Il Bambino” Olive Wood Gift Shoppe placed there to get as much of the pilgrim dollars they can get. 

When you get to the Church of the Nativity, built in the 4th Century over a cave in which, since the 2nd Century, Jesus was reputed to have been born. The place has three denominations looking after the church the Armenian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox and the Franciscans of the Roman Catholics. They do not get along, they argue all the time and they are rivals in selling stuff to gullible pilgrims, such as Holy water blessed by religious higher ups, probably by making a sign of a cross over a fleet of trucks packed to the gill with water from the Jordan river. It hit me as one of the tackiest places I had ever been in.


We went down to the subterranean cave and I gritted my teeth in a failed attempt to pray by star of the floor of the cave. Except, I noticed a Palestinian man with his very young son. The Father was kneeling before the star on the floor of the cave where earth and heaven touched and teaching his son how to kneel in prayer, to be in awe that God came to dwell with us in a stable meant for animals. I saw the waves of love the Father was giving washing over the son and I thought of Joseph loving his son. In that moment the tacky exterior melted away and the centuries of loving faith became visible as the world, my world as well, was changing. I ended buying some holy water and, over the years, adding a cap full of the Bethlehem water from the Jordan to mix with the basins of water from the James River in Virginia, or the Ocmulgee in Georgia or the Outer Banks of North Carolina, each time I baptized a child or adult.  The water is gone, but the love never ended and earth and heaven continues to touch.



Return to Royal David's City

Buses pull down the grade, illumined

by glaring lights of  Il Bambino Gifts,

to a baby's birth site, in town full of rifts,

tween religious views of God and human.

The pilgrim grumbles about how tacky it

seems with the pious memorabilia clutter,

any attempts to prayer, reduces to mutter

complaining of difficulty in hearing spirit.

But now a Palestinian father and son kneel;

father instructing his son how to be in awe

of mystery beyond grasp that his faith saw,

and so did the pilgrim as soul began to heal.

Heal enough to see this small town as a David

standing before a Goliath of being so jaded.

Sunday, December 15, 2019

Making a Choice For Joy


A Reflection for III Advent                                        St. Andrew’s Church, Nags Head, N.C. December 15, 2019                                                           Thomas E. Wilson, Supply Clergy

Isaiah 35:1-10                Canticle 15                      James 5:7-10                  Matthew 11:2-11

Making a Choice For Joy

This is the 3rd Sunday of Advent which means that we lit the third candle on the Advent Wreath, the Rose-colored candle, or the Gaudete (from the Latin for rejoice) candle, the candle for joy. So, the three candles that are lit are, the Candle for Hope, the Candle for Peace and now the Candle for Joy. The light of the candles are separate, but also cumulative and the light expended grows, and not only arithmetically but geometrically. In order to have joy; we must first have Hope and Peace.  Next week will be the Candle for Love, the kind of love that Joseph had for Mary in the Gospel lesson for that day. On Christmas Eve, we will light the Christ Candle as an outward and visible sign that the Baby Jesus is the embodiment of our Hope, Peace, Joy and Love.


Hope pays attention to the present and listens to what God is saying to us. Hope allows us to look deeper into the present moment and how God is equipping us to move into the future of the Life with God on earth as it is in heaven. Hope is the gift of Creation. Peace pays attention to look for signs of redemption even in the middle of things not going the way we would wish. Therefore, the paying of deep attention to the present moment to see God’s involvement in creation, which is Hope, is combined with the Peace that passes all understanding, paying attention to signs of redemption, God’s redeeming of all things. This combination sets us up to decide for the Spirit of Joy. In essence, I see this whole process as Trinitarian: Creator of Hope, Redeemer of Peace and Sanctifier of Joy, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 


Each morning I begin my day with a prayer which I learned in Cursillo, years before I went to Seminary:

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth. O, God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations, Through Christ Our Lord, Amen.


Without my heart being filled with joy, I, and I would guess many of you, run down a bit, start being resentful and ask, “What am I getting out of this?” Joy is a discipline, to be chosen each day. We begin to choose joy by giving thanks. Let me give you some examples.


Suppose you are in a relationship and you have settled into a rut of getting so busy that you just never get around to remembering the joy you once had together. You end up being strangers and you wonder if someone else can give you joy. Joy is a choice to slow down, to get out of the busyness, to rediscover the joy of listening to each other and sharing what is in your heart. At the beginning of the relationship you were both is a sales mode, covering up what you were afraid would be rejected. Now you can move from sales to Thanksgiving because, now this other person knows your shadows you wanted to disown, as well as your projections you have unfairly placed on each other. With honesty and with giving thanks for each other, flawed as you both are, you move into holy space.  It is Holy Space because you can be accepted as you are, given a chance for the past to be forgiven and know that you can face the future together with each other, having each other’s back. Making a choice for joy


Frederick Buechner in his book Telling Secrets wrote about making a choice for joy:

I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell. They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition—that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else


One of my Professors in Social Work, Alan Keith-Lucas, kept telling us that any helping relationship has three qualities; Reality, Empathy and Support. He called it a Trinity as well. Reality means giving up fantasies and pretense, replacing them with rigorous honesty. For Keith this was like the first person of the Trinity, where God does not play “let’s pretend” with us but rather says “This is the way it is!” Empathy means an act of imagination of understanding what the other person is going through. You never will know exactly, because each person is different, but you care enough to try. Keith said that it was like the 2nd person of the Trinity who emptied himself out and entered fully into human life but did not sin. Support meant that that you would be an outward and visible sign of the presence of the 3rd person of the Trinity, being with them to help them find hope, peace and joy in their life. You can become real rather than play roles, empathy with each other rather than sympathy or pity and support, meaning it is their work to do, but you are there to help, making a choice for joy.


Let me give you another example. Suppose you live in a world in which people disagree a lot and you end up finding yourself getting angry with the people who disagree with you. That is the time you need to go back to the Prayer for the Holy Spirit and ask for renewal of the face of the  earth between you. Life is too short for us to carry around anger. The writer of the Book of James says: “Beloved, do not grumble against one another, so that you may not be judged.” Pray for strength to love the person with whom you have the disagreement, he or she is your enemy. Pray for the wisdom to see them as a fellow child of God, who God loves and forgives just as God loves and forgives you. Be thankful for the similarity and pray for them to have Hope and Peace and for the strength to find joy. Choose to find joy in them by making yourself vulnerable to them instead of being on the defense or attack. Let them know your secret self so they know you as something more than an enemy, making a choice for joy

Making a Choice For Joy

Joy is not something which is caused,

rather it’s a choice made long before

we were able to open that new door,

leading to moment when we paused.

Then we say, “Yes, this indeed will do!

It’s a good excuse to exclaim and smile

in our hearts, for it does fit that profile

prepared which hope and peace led to.”

The circumstances don’t really matter.

It can be a real bad time in our journey,

when the winds run against us, stormy;

yet, joy moments allow fears to shatter,

when we hold times of kindness or awe,

in thanksgiving for acts of grace we saw.

Sunday, December 8, 2019

Faith On A Beach


A Poem/Reflection for II Advent                               St. Andrew’s Church, Nags Head, N.C. December 8, 2019                                                 Thomas E. Wilson, Supply Clergy                

Isaiah 11:1-10                   Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19                 Romans 15:4-13         Matthew 3:1-12

Faith On a Beach

“You brood of Vipers; Repent!”

There is a part of me that always wanted to start off a sermon with those words of John the Baptizer from today’s lesson. I would list all the sins that I had seen in you sinners, and be like Jonathan Edwards, a Preacher in the Colonial American Great Awakening Revivals of the 1730’s and 40’s, whose most famous sermon was “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” That sermon drove people in the congregations to scream out things like; “What must I do to be saved?” and to swoon into a faint from the images of the burning fires of Hell awaiting them if they do not repent. Edwards did not yell or shout, but matter-of-factly just laid out the scenario. As a former ham actor, I would be tempted to not be so calm and would walk up and down the aisles pointing out people who in my wisdom needed to burn baby burn. However, the only thing I agree with John the Baptizer and Jonathan Edwards, is they and I see people coming to them who were not at peace with themselves, their neighbor or with God. But our peace comes when, in the verse from the Book of Hebrews, we are “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.” When we are not in peace, the best option is to follow Jesus, whose ministry was not about condemning hateful sinners but about grace filled new life for all, the Peace of Christ.

The Greek word for sin is “ἁμαρτία,” (hamartia) which come from an archery term for when an arrow falls short of the target. It doesn’t necessarily mean something that is morally reprehensible, or a sign of the depravity of an individual – it is just a statement of fact. The Greek word for “repent” is “μετάνοια” (metanoia) meta- think about, noia- mind, changing your mind. Repentance begins when we become aware that things that we were once so sure of, don’t seem to be working, we just keep missing the target. They are not in peace with themselves, with God or their neighbor.

John is preaching at the Jordan River, the boundary of the Promised Land.  He is asking people to go to the other side of the Jordan and retrace the steps of the Hebrew Children who had wandered far too long in the wilderness. In the Book of Joshua the story is told how the people had entered into the Promised Land with the Ark of the Covenant, the symbol of God’s peace with God’s people, leading the way, as the water parts to form a dry path on which they walk on dry land as it was done on the Red Sea. John invites the people to come to the Other Side of the Jordan, enter again in the wilderness as a metaphor of wandering around lost and then come into the water, immersing themselves fully, washing all the dust of the past away, ready to begin a new life of peace in the Promised Land. Jesus submits to that Baptism, not to get rid of sin, not because of inner conflict, but because he has Peace in his heart with which to begin a new direction in life.

As I thought of the lessons for this 2nd Sunday of Advent where the focus is on Peace. I define Peace not as an absence of war but as a way of living a deeper life without conflicts in my life. I cannot control other people, and some may think of me as a potential opponent in conflict. However, I spend part of each day in prayer to help me be at Peace with God, my neighbor and myself. When I am not at Peace within myself, I need to go deeper into prayer. When I am not in peace with my neighbor, I may need to ask for forgiveness of what I have done to bring this about. When I am not at peace with God, I need to find someone who will remind me of the Peace of Christ, so I can remember to accept the peace which passes all understanding.

I think of the image of being on this beach on the Outer Banks. We can walk on the beach and agree how pretty it is and how the view makes us feel as an observer. Or, if we see the sea is at Peace with itself, and we are in peace with ourselves, we can get wet and go swimming in the water, in whatever way we are able, as a participant.

This church is looking for a new Rector, I remember the times when I was here on the Outer Banks for my interviews with the Vestry and Search Committee at All Saints. The search committee begins the process with God’s peace if they know where the church is in their walk with Christ, if they are in Peace with each other, the candidates and themselves. With that peace, knowing why they are there, it is easier to know when to say no or yes. When I spent time with that search committee, I knew they were at Peace with their mission and themselves and therefore they demonstrated peace in the space between us so I could be at peace.

The first day of meeting with the Search Committee went very well and Pat and I were at Peace, so that we might begin to really hope. We knew that there were other candidates. But we were at Peace, because we knew that we were supposed to be there at the meetings. They might decide on someone else, but that was beyond our control. As John’s Gospel tells us, Jesus says; “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid”.

A couple weeks later, I was called back to meet with the Vestry. I met with them that day and they met to make a decision while a member of the search committee took Pat and I out to dinner. Before the meal was half way over, the Senior Warden rushed to the restaurant to tell us that the Vestry had issued a call to me and I was to meet with the treasurer the next morning. Usually Treasurers give a long dirge on how rough times are and they must be careful on how much they can pay a new Rector. Every candidate who comes here has some conflict about staying in the church in which they now serve or to wade into the water with St. Andrew’s. At the end of the meeting, the candidate usually says something like; “Thank you very much. My spouse and I will drive back home, and we will pray about this and get back with you later in the week.”

The next morning before dawn I went for a time of prayer walking on the beach. The sun came up and I saw a school of dolphins playing, swimming and diving for their breakfast. I went back to the place we were staying and woke Pat up to walk with me. The dolphins were also a sign for her, and she said; “You are not to tell these people that we will pray about it. You are going to say ‘Yes’ now, before we talk about the money.” It was the moment we decided that we were going to enter the water of this promised land and leave behind the wilderness where we were. We were at peace and trusted that it would be a new way of life. We were not in control of the future, we found out that the money was going to be tight, but we were at Peace and not afraid.

How about you on this beach? Peace is brought about not by the fear of Hell, or the attractiveness of Heaven, but a decision for new life right here and right now in the Peace of Christ. Peace is a decision we need to make every morning. Today, and each new day, is the day we decide to leave the past of yesterday behind in order to play faithfully with Christ, the Risen Lord. As Paul writes to the Romans: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Faith On A Beach

Faith is moving, both toward and away,

one step at a time, new decisions made

about going deeper in water, past wade

status, toes leaving a safe floor to play.

Prayer begins by decisions to leave past

behind, old choices, old habits to float

out of our hands, out of memory's boat,

to sink away into ocean deep and vast.

Jesus sees “repentance”, leaving behind

that which no longer works, to a change

to something that seems a little strange,

away from safe ways; comfort declined.

Arms reaching forward, grabbing water,

swimming now, free, gliding as an otter.