21st Century American Corinthian

Poem/Reflection for 3^rd Sunday after Epiphany     January 26, 2020

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

Isaiah 9:1-4     1 Corinthians 1:10-18       Matthew 4:12-23       Psalm 27:1, 5-13

21^st Century American Corinthian

In the Epiphany Season this year, the readings from the Epistle will usually be from Paul’s first letter to the Church in Corinth. Today I want to focus in on one verse. “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”


So, how foolish were the Corinthians?  Let’s start at the beginning, the first King of Corinth was the mythical figure of Sisyphus. In the myth of Sisyphus, for his arrogance and habitual telling of lies, he is condemned after his death to spend all eternity in Hades and roll a huge boulder up a hill and then when he got almost to the top, it would slip out of his grasp and roll down to the bottom again. He must then start the whole process all over again, over and over and over. The justice of Hades was that he was condemned to do after his death what he, by his arrogance and lies, made others do in his life on earth.


By the first century A.D, Corinth is a flourishing port city for shipping and trade in the Mediterranean. Paul comes to that city and works with fellow Jesus followers to build a church community. He leaves to go to other communities and the new leaders start to find their own way. The problem was the arrogance of the people (remember Sisyphus), and they start fussing about which spiritual gift is the best gift, who is the most holy or important, and who is exempt from mere rules. Scholars think that Paul wrote 4 letters on this subject. 1^st Corinthians being the 2^nd letter and 2^nd Corinthians being a combination of 3^rd and 4^th  


Some people never learn, for later, some forty years later, there will come, at the end of the 1^st Century, letters from Clement the Bishop of Rome calling the Corinthian Church to account. Listen to part of that 1^st letter:

Every kind of honor and happiness was bestowed upon you, and then was fulfilled that which is written, "My beloved ate and drink, and was enlarged and became fat, and kicked." Hence flowed emulation and envy, strife and sedition, persecution and disorder, war and captivity. So the worthless rose up against the honored, those of no reputation against such as were renowned, the foolish against the wise, the young against those advanced in years. For this reason righteousness and peace are now far departed from you, inasmuch as every one abandons the fear of God, and is become blind in His faith, neither walks in the ordinances of His appointment, nor acts a part becoming a Christian, but walks after his own wicked lusts, resuming the practice of an unrighteous and ungodly envy, by which death itself entered into the world.

Even those who do not share our faith have heard this report so that your thoughtlessness has brought the name of the Lord into disrespect, to say nothing of endangering your own souls.

Clements’s  letter sounds a little like it could have been written to this time in our national life where we are so filled with our own arrogance, our foolishness, that we have forgotten what Paul referred to as God’s wisdom of the cross; the self-emptying of Christ on the cross. 


The Corinthian Church is divided into at least four different groups, each proclaiming themselves as the true followers of Christ. There is the nostalgia group that longs for Paul to return and answer all of their questions. They see him as the last good leader, even though he has moved on and been gone for several years. There is a faction that says, “we belong to Apollos.” Apollos is a bright young boy from Alexandria (Egypt, not Virginia) not old like Paul. He is full of energy but with some ideas that are different from Paul. He has moved on and this group misses him terribly Then there is the traditionalist group that says “We belong to Cephas,” Cephas is another name for the disciple Peter, the legend who had the advantage of knowing Jesus when Jesus walked the earth, and this group believes that his physical knowledge of Jesus makes him a sentimental favorite to knowing what the rules need to be. Peter may have visited there once, and left a strong impression. Then there is the group of ultra-spiritual who proclaim, “We belong to Christ.” This group says they have all the answers because they are more in touch with the deepest levels of the spirit. 


In my experience of being a church member or employee, I have known, or been a part of each of those different groups. I have been the bright young boy with all the answers, right when I first got out of seminary. I have been “the last good rector.” I have been the “expert” determined to “fix” any broken person, thing or practice. I have been the insufferably spiritual. The reality is that when I am the most anxious, I am still tempted to change into any one of those costumes. I remember one church where I was called, one of my predecessors had later been elected Bishop. I went to him in frustration over the divisions in that church and he laughed and said he had the same problem when he was there, and his third predecessor back was the “last good Rector.”

The divisions in myself were not just chronologically but continuously simultaneous. I am a person who is a Corinthian person with all sorts of divisions within me and my task is to find a way that I can  negotiate a peace treaty within me, with the love of the cross as the overarching  metaphor. Is my metaphor to be the wisdom of Sisyphus or the foolishness of Christ. Every person I know, or have ever met, is a "Corinthian" person.


In this church in Corinth, there are at least those four groups, and who knows - maybe more, ruled by their arrogance in being right. The quarreling divisions are filled with accusations, charges and counter charges of who are the true followers of the Way.


Paul writes to remind them that there is a “foolishness” which Christ taught by his example on the cross, giving blessings in the face of curses, forgiving those who hurl insults. This “foolishness” was trusting in redemption, not revenge. However, trusting in God’s power, not their own, is seen by members of the battling Corinthians as weakness. While the arrogant of Corinth see an easy shortcut by playing fast and loose with the truth, Paul sees that as a betrayal of trust. The people who trust only in their own power see other faithful members of the church who disagree with them as “all-day suckers,” while Paul sees a brother or sister who loves God, who follows Christ and demonstrates the true gifts of the Spirit.

The Corinthian church existed in the 1^st Century AD, but it still comes back to life in the life of every church over the centuries facing change.  The reality is that every church is a "Corinthian" church, full of divisions; the difference is how we can love and respect each division to find the gracious community that is called together. Every community is a "Corinthian" community. Every town is a Corinthian" town. Every state is a "Corinthian" state. Every nation is a "Corinthian" nation. As we go further into Outer Space I believe we will find that every world is a Corinthian world. The thing is that we are always facing change and we can find hope in Paul's letter; “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”



21^st Century American Corinthian

Discussions reach and exceed “Yur Mama!” stage,

where we stop listening to each other and sneer

insults at the other, or plan to for rest of the year,

as a way of filling the space between us with rage.

We share a same earth, air, gravity and even sky,

given graciously to us by the same God and creator,

not to mention that some of us share a same savior,

yet we’ve set deep red lines; where love goes to die.

Can we just stop for a moment, and learn to be kind?

Opening our ears instead of mouths, hearts not bile?

Hands not fists, dropping an instinct the other to rile?

Replacing it with a knowledge our futures are twined?

Paul, we hear once more, speaks to us from the past

into present, so shadows of the cross might be cast.

Stick to Prayers (Poem/Reflection for 19 January 2020

A Poem/Reflection on II Epiphany                    St. Andrew’s Church, Nags Head, N.C.

January 19, 2020                                                   Thomas E. Wilson, Supply Clergy

Isaiah 49:1-7               1 Corinthians 1:1-9                 John 1:29-42          Psalm 40:1-12

Stick to Prayers

My text is from the Opening Hymn for today, which mentions the call of St. Andrew and his brother Peter as told in the Gospel lesson for today, Jesus Calls Us O’er The Tumult” verse 3. “Jesus calls us from the worship of the vain world’s golden store; from each idol that would keep us, saying Christian, love me more. saying Christian, love me more.”


Richard Rohr wrote in his blog last week about the practice of confession in the church.

The Early Confessors taught that we had to deal with the sins of the world, the flesh and the devil; in that order! . . .  As a confessor, I know for a fact that many people beat their breasts about trivial things while not spotting the real evils that are likely poisoning their hearts and minds and countries. I have often said that hearing most (though not all!) Catholic confessions is like being stoned to death with marshmallows. We trained people to feel guilty about certain “sins” but allowed them to neglect the evils that are all around us and ignored. 

On April the 12^th, 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama a group of clergy published an open letter, “A Call For Unity”. The authors were Two Episcopal Bishops, Two Methodist Bishops, one Roman Catholic Bishop, one Moderator of the Presbyterian Synod, the Pastor of First Baptist and a Rabbi. They were considered White Liberals and all good men who opposed segregation. One of the Episcopal Bishops, Bishop Carpenter in 1951, had refused permission to an Episcopal church in Mobile to have a Day Care Center unless it was Integrated. They had approved of the U.S. Supreme Court decision, almost 10 years earlier in 1954, outlawing segregation in the school systems, as Chief Justice Warren called for to be done “With all deliberate speed”. Many of the signers of the letter had been the target of threats from the White Citizens Council and the Ku Klux Klan. They were good people who prayed in their own churches and wanted people to stay and pray in their own church.


The purpose of the letter was to call for an end to the demonstrations and sit-ins to oppose segregation by breaking the law. They believed that the fight against segregation was a legal matter to be settled in the courts. The Bishops warned about “Outsiders” coming in and upsetting the community. By “Outsiders”, they meant the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who years before he moved back to Atlanta to head up the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, had been a pastor in Montgomery, 97 miles away. They praised the restraint of the Police under Bull Connor, the one who, they did not mention, ordered Police dogs and fire hoses opened on demonstrators.

King, who had been thrown in the Birmingham jail roughly by Connor’s Police force, wrote back in his Letter From The Birmingham Jail, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly ... Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."


About his fellow clergy’s cry for peace where there is no peace and the duty of preachers to stay inside their churches, he wrote:

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection . . .  I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.

The Gospel lesson for today had the first followers of Jesus being called to a new kind of ministry; something different from showing up at the Synagogue and being told to obey the rules and just be peaceful, upright and moral citizens. I can just imagine the Synagogue leaders trying to be nice, invite Jesus to address the congregation. But after he starts speaking, and he speaks the truth which most would prefer to ignore, the religious leaders join the crowd in giving Jesus a bum’s rush out of town.


Jesus had this message that upset religious folk. The religious folk could put up with Roman occupation, racial discrimination against Samaritans, the exploitation of the poor and vulnerable  and Temple corruption embracing the powers of this world because the violent Romans enforced peace, turning a blind eye to justice, pandering to popular prejudices and greasing the wheels of ritual, which were all good for business as usual, to thrive and make money.


Jesus dares to speak against the brokenness that he sees. The religious leaders, like the Pharisees, would prefer to only notice the sins of breaking the laws that constitute moral behavior, or dietary restrictions. The Pharisees understood that if they focused on sins of Individuals, they would not offend the powers in power. 


Several centuries after Jesus’ death and resurrection, when the Christian church made common cause with the Roman Empire they started doing the same thing of limiting their attention to sins of the flesh, so they could get better seats at the table of worldly power. So we had things like the Church  in the name of the Prince of Peace and defender of the poor and vulnerable, burning enemies of the church hierarchy, supporting crusades, ignoring discrimination, admiring and advancing of predators, worshiping  practices of coercive power and blessings of exploitive economic and social policies.


Many churches teach that prayers are (1) private words addressed to God in the safety of a church building, or (2) Public statements at the beginning of a meal or public event. However, Jesus, Andrew, Peter, King and so many others teach us that prayer is life lived in the middle of real life, working to help change the world to allow God’s Kingdom come, God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Stick to Prayers

The Bishops scolded King in jail, to confine himself to prayer.

But what does prayer look like?

Does it mean doing Sunday liturgy?

OR

Is it a finger that calls attention, a palm that wipes other’s tears,

a fist raised to sign resistance, a hand ready to pledge struggle,

an arm to entwine with another’s, a cheek to absorb the unjust blow,

a nose to sniff out hypocrisy, an ear to hear cries of victims,

an eye to see the future in hope, a throat to swallow curses,

a tongue that is a stranger to lies, feet to walk the path,

legs to stand tall. a back to stand up straight,

lungs to sing out load, an imagination to have a dream,

lips to play the certain trumpet, voice to sound a clarion call,

knees to bend to kneel and to sit down to talk,

a determination to repent and call to repentance,

memory to forgive past slights, a justice sense calling for change,

a humility to see himself as a Drum Major and not the band itself,

a life to be risked instead of hoarded?

Looks like prayer to me.

On Occasions Of Remembering --- Service for Otis Hurd

On the Occasion of a Service of Celebration of Life for Otis Hurd       January 11, 2020                        St. Andrew’s Church, Nags Head, NC                                Thomas E Wilson, Supply Clergy

On Occasions of Remembering

Ecclesiasticus 2:1-6,11   2^nd Timothy 4: 6-8          Luke 24 13-16, 28-35

We have been blessed today to have two friends who spoke about their friend who has died. They shared their love for this man and they thanked God, and the Hurd family for sharing him with this community. Otis Hurd made a difference in people’s lives. In the words of Arthur Miller, “Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a man.”


 In the Gospel Story for today, two Disciples are walking to Emmaus with the Risen Christ, but they do not recognize him, they do not pay him close enough attention. They talk with him about their friend Jesus and the difference he had made in their lives as if they were talking to a stranger. They were so busy talking they did not even notice that the person they were talking about was right there. They asked him to stay with them, “Stay with us for it is almost evening and the day is nearly over.”  Luke is telling us that it is only when we slow down that we are able to see the Spirit of the Risen Christ in our lives. We get so busy with our own agendas that we cannot see who is walking with us.  


When we get through with this service, all of you are invited to the Lone Cedar to gather for some refreshment: “Stay with us for it is almost evening and the day is nearly over.” The task will be to relax and tell stories of Otis Hurd, for his spirit had been already with us as we had communion together and heard stories told here. 


The prophet Micah said: “What does the LORD require of you? To do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” In my own theology, the purpose of life, no matter how long we live, is to have a life haunted with an  awe of creation, to laugh deeply, to love extravagantly and to change the world  with a compassion for others in such a way that people will laugh and tell loving stories about us and others, before and after we die.


I try to take a walk every morning before the sun comes up so I can slow down from all my busy work for the day. It is in those moments that I can listen and know without reacting. Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “People say that walking on water is a miracle, but to me, walking peacefully on the earth is the real miracle.” On clear days the stars shimmer with the light years that have travelled from the edges of the universe. I am aware the planet on which my feet touch is hurling through space at a speed of thousands of miles an hour and I have not fallen off.  I walk solo, but I am never alone. The stories walk with me. In what can be loosely called “prayer,” I remember with thanksgiving the people who have touched my life, those with whom I share this speeding earth and those whose feet no longer walk on this earth. 


I am still practicing to be a human being, and my friends, alive and dead, tell their stories in my imagination, as I learn from them on how to love, how to laugh, how to be reverently in awe of what God is doing in our lives and how to make a difference in a world which seems so busy with ego driven agendas that we avoid the task of doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with our God. When I walk in silence, I am awash in their stories. It is not like a standard committee meeting where everyone doesn’t really listen, but rather they just wait so they can throw in their own opinions. Rather, it is a holy stillness attuned to the wisdom that is being passed on by people I have encountered.


One of the highpoints of my job is to sit down and ask people to tell me about someone they have loved. Many times something changes in the room and we are not alone, for the other person’s spirit is there as well in the telling. When I do pre-marital or marital counseling the other person is there in body. When I am preparing for a funeral the spirit of the person who died is there in the Holy Space between us.


Sometimes, they will share things that they think is really strange, or they might be going crazy: for after all, the other person is dead, as dead can be. My mother used to do that, after my father died, for years she would think of something and then she felt she needed to tell my father, Bill. She gets his name out, and the first couple words, and then feels crazy. Sometimes she would think about something and wonder what Bill, my father, would have to say about it. She stops, listens and in her silence, she has a conversational encounter without words, and she, in her heart can hear what he might have said. I don’t think she was crazy; she loved him until she died many years later; and even then, the love did not die but it had been passed on to her children, and through us to others.


In the Communion service we have a phrase which the Priest says: “Therefore with Angels and Archangels and all the company of heaven . . .” Heaven is not a geographical space; it is a state of being connected with God and others, in this life and the next. Sometimes we get so busy with our own inner committee work that we just never get around to catch anything but a mere fleeting glimpse of heaven. Sometimes, we have to wait until after we die, because it is only then that we slow down enough.


Today I am asking you to slow down and remember Otis Hurd. Listen to what the remembrance tells you about how you are living your life, how you might laugh and love and act with compassion to help a neighbor. Have an occasion of remembering.

On Occasions of Remembering

In pre-dawn walks, I talk with friends

who have touched my life over years,

giving me occasional laughs and tears,

uninterrupted by beginnings and ends.

They are all there; like Tom, Jack, Jim,

friends with strong surrounding arms,

holding me so tight that I hear yarns

whispered in ears behind time's scrim.

There are others who I never met in life,

yet whose earthly friends shared stories

of people who shared with them glories

while walking with them in joy or strife.

Moon casts only one shadow on my walking,

but not on those shades with whom I’m talking.

Remembering The Song - Poem/Reflection for January 12, 2020

A Poem/ Reflection for First Sunday after Epiphany             St. Andrew's Church, Nags Head, NC January 12, 2020                                                            Thomas E Wilson, Supply Clergy

Isaiah 42:1-9               Acts 10:34-43 Matthew 3:13-17 Psalm 29

Remembering the Song

In the Hebrew Testament Lesson for today from the book of Isaiah, the writer we call 2^nd Isaiah is writing a song for the exiles in Babylon to tell them that they are chosen to come back from exile and return to the Promised Land to begin a ministry of being God's  ministers of reconciliation of the world; “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.”



Matthew remembers that song centuries later and uses it to tell the story of when Jesus came to the River Jordan. John the Baptizer is on the border to the Promised Land helping people put the past of spiritual exile and separation from God behind them, washing their ghosts away in order to enter a new future. Here he meets Jesus. John tells Jesus that Jesus has no past to forgive, but Jesus says, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” The Greek word that the Matthean author uses is “δικαιοσύνην”, (dikaiosuné) which means something that the God of all Creation would really smile upon.



My favorite way to define “righteousness” is not about being especially good or well behaved but about being able to sing with God in a way that transcends all differences. In the mid- sixties there was a duo who sang songs like “You Lost That Loving Feeling” and “Unchained Melody”, and some black Marines from El Toro Marine Base heard the singing with what would later be called “blue eyed soul”, and said to them, “That was righteous, brothers!” They took the name as a compliment. I take the term as a definition of how we are to sing with God, God's songs, in our lives to break down all barriers. When I told Pat about this as I was writing the poem and about listening to Unchained Melody, she said, “Tell me, please, you aren't going to sing that song from the pulpit.” Well I haven't made up my mind yet, but it has been recorded at least 1,500 different times by 670 different artists in 14 different languages since it was first written in 1955. Maybe after I get rich and famous off being a Supply Clergy, I will record it. Maybe not.



When Jesus submits to Baptism by John, he is breaking down the barriers. Ignatius, the 2^nd Century Bishop of Antioch, wrote in his Epistle to the Ephesians: “For our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived by Mary according to the plan of God, he was from the seed of David, but also from the Holy Spirit. He was born and baptized [έβαπτίσθη], that he might cleanse the water by his suffering.”



“To cleanse the water”. In a human body there is between 50 to 75 percent water. On the surface of the earth, 71% is covered by water. The air is filled with water vapor. We are born into this world when the water breaks after it covers the baby for nine months. In dreams, water is the symbol of the unconscious, which we must spiritually enter to understand to depths of creation, the mystery of our lives and the mind of God. It is through the water of Baptism that we hear God's song and through communion, taking the body and blood into ourselves in the hope that we become what we eat, the body of Christ in this world, as we sing God's song by bringing justice, mercy and healing into this broken world.



Too often Baptism has been seen as a washing away of sin, but Jesus saw it as a new birth of singing a song with God. We humans are obsessed with sin, so much so that we never quite get around to cleansing the water with our blessings. In many churches there is a small basin of water found near the entrance to the sanctuary, a “font” from the Latin meaning a spring, in which a person dips his/her finger into the water and blesses themselves with the sign of the cross and saying, “In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”. It is a simple act of rededication of one's self to be a blessing to all with whom we come in contact. It is a reminder of our own baptism, not of our being sinless, but our main work in life is to bring blessings and healing to a broken world.  The sins and ghosts of the past pale in importance to the gracious spirits of loving action in the present and the future of healing the world.



Often when I come to the font I am reminded of the font, the spring of living water, and rededicating myself with spiritual water, I will sing another song, a hymn written in the 18^th century:

Come, Thou Font of every blessing,

tune my heart to sing Thy grace!

Streams of mercy never ceasing,

call for songs of loudest praise.

Teach me some melodious sonnet,

sung by flaming tongues above.

Praise the mount! Oh, fix me on it,

mount of God’s unchanging love.

Oh, to grace how great a debtor

daily I'm constrained to be!

Let that goodness, like a fetter,

bind my wandering heart to Thee:

prone to wander, Lord, I feel it

prone to leave the God I love;

here's my heart, oh, take and seal it,

seal it for Thy courts above.

Last year that song became especially important to me as I was with some of my nieces and nephews and a bunch of the grand-nieces and grand-nephews. Thaddeus, age 9, wanted to give me a present, so he sang that hymn he had memorized for the church my nephew Mike, his wife Kristy and their seven children attend. I looked at him, with his red hair and clear soprano voice, and I remembered the faith I had when I was his age and the song took me back to that place. It was a gift to break down the barriers of 60 plus years. As he sang the second verse, the version he memorized has the old words, “Here I raise my Ebenezer”; and the old Theologian in me wanted to ask him if he knew what an “Ebenezer” was. It means a “stone of help”, an outward and visible sign of God faithfulness, a rudimentary altar to remind the Old Testament Prophet Samuel, and us, of God’s grace and love. When he finished the song, I knew his singing was an Ebenezer. Sometimes we don’t need to define; we just have to encounter. Thaddeus blessed me.

Today, remember to sing the songs of God in your lives.

Remembering the Song

Righteous Brothers, singing Unchained Melody,

blasting out of the juke box as a freshman's beer

uncovered the bottom of his glass and of his year

at that school in which he had found no remedy.

His school work was behind and he lacks a clue,

of how he'd catch up with growing a year older,

yet not being anyway close to a maturity holder,

about knowing differences 'tween false and true.

Left behind were his Sunday school ideas of sin;

empty, as there hadn't any lightning bolts divine,

only there had been a lack of meaning in his time,

longing for touch of joy coming from deep within.

Decades later I tell him; "Comes from caressing

actions of reaching out to others, giving a blessing."

Joseph Moments

A Poem and Reflection 2^nd Sunday of Christmas      St. Andrew’s Church, Nags Head, N.C. January 5, 2020                                                     Thomas E. Wilson, Supply Clergy

Jeremiah 31:7-14        Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a          Matthew 2:1-12            Psalm 84: 1-8

Joseph Moments

When I was a child, I remember my Grandmother tell us children that we were descended from Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland. She told it within the context of the old chestnut about the Bruce and the Spider. The story goes that Bruce had been defeated three different times by the hateful Sassenach, English, Army. He was now an outlaw and in hiding in a cave for months. Over the time of hiding he saw a Spider try to build a web. The Spider kept tossing herself off a rock and failing three different times, but she kept trying, and on the fourth she succeeded. The Bruce took heart and he gathered his troops together one more time to come back came back and won the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, even though his men were outnumbered ten to one.

We tend to tell the stories and legends to the next generations that we need to hear. I knew my grandmother faced lots of difficulties, but she kept on coming back. The point of the story was lost on me for several years because I was enamored of being from royalty. I would have fantasies of the Scottish authorities looking me up and offering me the crown of Scotland. They never showed up, which I guess is alright since my older brother would have rightly inherited the throne.

I imagine Joseph being told as a child that he descended from the line of King David, with perhaps a fantasy about the rulers of this world acknowledging him as the rightful offspring to the Davidic line.  But Joseph, like all of us, had to learn to grow up out of fantasies. There is no long-lost relative who is going to leave wealth to us so we will never have want. There is no magic cure that will fix everything. There is no lottery ticket that can give us peace. The past cannot be expected to be our future. All we can do is to live into the present moment and claim the heritage of the wisdom of our ancestors.

The story my grandmother told may not have been factual. I may not be a blood descendent of Scottish Kings. Robert the Bruce may have never noticed a spider when he was hiding in a cave, but facts are not the same as truth.  The story my grandmother passed on to me was told for two purposes; 1) To tell me never to give up or be discouraged. “Try, Try Again”. You may need to change the tactics a bit, but you need to be faithful to your goal.  2) You don’t come from a line of quitters. Every generation has had to struggle, and they expect you to be faithful to the heritage of hope passed on through the generations.

As I grew older, I heard stories about my family that had facts as well as truth. From my mother I would hear stories of what her parents had gone through in the depression and adversities through which they struggled. I would hear stories my father would tell of his father and all he went through. I was part of the story as my parents had to deal with me. Yet, while they may have wanted to cut their losses on me, they never gave up.  The way we learn how to not give up is when people have not given up on us.

 Joseph, part of the heritage of David, had grown up enough and did not expect to see his son grow up to be King. He, like all fathers, wants his son to grow up and be part of the shaping and healing of the society in which he lived.

I want you to imagine the scene of the Gospel story for today. Joseph gets up from his bed one morning to work and help take care of his son, when he hears someone knocking on the door of the house. (Matthew doesn’t know anything about a stable or a census).  He opens the door and there is this band of foreigners asking to see the King, his son. Joseph has had some dreams and he and Mary have talked about what they have discerned through dreams and visions, but their son being the successor to the political throne of David wasn’t past of their fantasies.

But it was the fantasy of Herod the King, the politician currently holding the office. Herod, like all tyrants who will do anything to hold onto power, lived and ruled in a cauldron of hate and suspicion. He had come to power, not because of the will of the people, but by the foreign influence of the Romans who had conquered the area. Herod was set up to rule as a puppet for Rome. Whatever Rome wanted; he would do; and he did. Any threat to his throne, Herod would need to destroy, not just for his sake but because Rome needed stability for the benefit of the ruling clique by whatever means necessary.

The band of strangers had met with Herod earlier in their search and were distrustful of him, for they found that lies come easier to wannabe tyrants than truth. Herod was as crooked as they come. That night the strangers share a dream to go back home by another way to avoid Herod. Joseph, while impressed with the visit by the strangers, has trouble sleeping and in his dream, he discerns the need to get out of town. He and his family flee into Egypt.

Joseph leaves behind all the fantasy of being the new David and moves into a life where he will care and love his wife and son and not give up building a new future for his family. He does what all our families are called to do, to lovingly life fully and completely, working hard, not giving up, but with a trust in God’s grace each new day that all will be redeemed.

If you ger a chance, I invite you to take time to read or re-visit C. S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles. He has ordinary young boys and girls become Kings and Queens who rule over Narnia under the leadership of Aslan the Lion, the Christ figure. It is a story that has no facts whatsoever but plenty of truth.  May you find that you have the choice of being Kings and Queens over your life, but always under the rule and guidance of the one that is greater than ourselves.

Joseph Moments

Waking from dreams, we Josephs know,

of a loving in blessed space between us,

a changing world, pregnant utterly thus,

while something deeper begins to grow.

No longer about goals of our tiny self,

rather now aware that true life shared,

delivers us from place where we dared

not hope to be ever taken from a shelf.

We were safe there, with our tidy plans,

where all things fit, nothing out of place,

leaves no room for an Emmanuel grace,

yet now our fingers move to open hands.

Giving our self away,

welcoming new day.