A Poem/Reflection on II
Epiphany St.
Andrew’s Church, Nags Head, N.C.
January 19, 2020 Thomas E. Wilson, Supply Clergy
|
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 12th, 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.
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.
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