Poem/Reflection for Pentecost 2020 St. Andrews-by-the-Sea Church, Nags Head, N.C. May 31, 2020 Thomas E. Wilson Supply Clergy
Sins
Retained?
Earlier this month as it started to get warmer, I
took out all the plants that had wintered inside the house and put
them out on the deck. For the late fall, winter, and early spring,
when it was too cold, I have had to water all the plants on a regular
basis. Some of those plants I have had for years and have not yet
killed them with my care. One of the ones I have had the longest and
brought into this marriage is a “Crown of Thorns” which flowers
in the wintertime inside. It is described as “a bushy slow-growing
succulent native to Madagascar, is an easy-care flowering houseplant
that thrives on neglect, blooms throughout the year, grows indoors or
outdoors, and is very easy to propagate.”The day after I took them out, God's rain just poured on them and you could almost see them breathe deeply and happy to be where they should be. The Crown of Thorns, prickly as it was, attracted some careful hummingbirds to feed on the flowers. All the plants were tired of the imposed quarantine as well. In a way they were like the disciples closed up after the crucifixion in the Gospel lesson, or the disciples closed up in the Upper Room waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit in the lesson from Acts, longing to get out and do what they wanted to do. Maybe some of you know what that is like?
From the Gospel of John: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” The Holy Spirit gives the disciples the power to forgive and get out into the sunshine of new life. In the Book of Acts, the disciples are given the gift of the Holy Spirit to move out of their quarantine and share the gift with others outside to break down the barriers that separate people.
On Pentecost Sunday we usually focus in on the Disciples receiving the Holy Spirit and their ability to speak in all sorts of languages as part of that gift. Later, Paul, in his correspondence with the Church in Corinth, suggested that the Holy Spirit gives differing gifts to differing people, The Holy Spirit is a gift given to all by God. God loves us so much that God does not force any of us us to accept the gift. The disciples in the Upper Room had prepared themselves to accept the gift and they did; using it to break out of their narrow limitations and change the space between them and their neighbors.
Before I went to seminary, I was on a retreat with a group of other people trying to go deeper in faith. During a deep moment of prayer, I was troubled by a series of words and sounds I did not know. I went beyond troubled into fearful. I was in the same room with other people and I was afraid that I would say these sounds or words out loud. In my mind there were three possibilities: 1) this was the gift of tongues, or 2) I was going into a Schizophrenic break in reality, or 3) I was being set up to be a fool by an unconscious defense mechanism to derail any more movement into going to seminar, in order to keep in business as usual.
Unconscious Defense
Mechanism: I knew I was conflicted about changing my life but there
were easier, more enjoyable and more efficient ways to sabotage a
calling without loss of face. I had been successful in avoiding the
calling for years.
Break in Reality: I did a
brief Mental status exam on myself: I knew who the President was,
where I was, could subtract by 7s, and figured out while I was tired,
under stress and more than a little neurotic, I was not psychotic
that particular day.
Gift from God: That left
it being a gift of God, which I did not want and saw no reason to
use, because Speaking in Tongues is not a hot seller on the clergy
discernment sweepstakes in the Episcopal Church.
Yet the compulsion was there and after a few minutes,
I let the words, sounds, escape in a barely audible whisper. I was
relieved. I don't know if the gift was meant to be used at that
particular moment, like it was in the Acts of the Apostles Pentecost
story, or if was to be a lasting gift. Whichever it was, a gift had
been offered to me and I had refused God's gracious gift. Over the
last more than 40 years it was often I felt like the character Bessie
Bighead in Dylan Thomas' play Under Milkwood
where the narrator says: Bessie Bighead
“…picks a posy of daisies in Sunday Meadow to put on the grave of
Gomer Owen who kissed her once by the pig-sty when she wasn’t
looking and never kissed her again although she was looking all the
time.”
God's Holy Spirit is
gracious. She gives gifts all the time. The gifts are meant for our
spiritual growth and ignored to our detriment. Jesus talks about that
when he shows up in the locked room after the crucifixion and
resurrection. “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of
any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are
retained.”
To forgive someone is a
spiritual journey. When someone does something that is hurtful to us;
we ask three questions: Was it intentional? Was it serious? Can you
overlook or excuse it? If it was an accident; that is the way the
world is; accidents happen and accidents don't need forgiveness, only
maturity. If the hurt is minor, suck it up; life is too important to
waste on holding on to slights. If you can overlook it or excuse it,
do so! We don't need to add burdens on our neighbors.
Forgiveness is for when
you were really hurt in mind body or spirit AND it was intentional-
they meant to do it AND you have trouble letting it go. Then you go
through the spiritual process of being in touch with your anger,
then hating what was done, then confront the offender, then make the
decision that you don't want to keep living with all that anger and
hurt and are willing, out of love for the offender, to pray for the
Holy Spirit's help to find a way to pay the cost yourself. When you
forgive, you are able to set them, and yourself, free from your
anger, blame and hate.
If, however, you refuse to
ask to receive the gift of strength offered by the Holy Spirit, then
the sins are retained, and your anger, hurt and hate continue.
Forgiveness is not about changing the other person but about changing
your soul to let go for God's will to be done. The Holy Spirit only
offers gifts that you are free to accept or reject.
The author of John's
Gospel remembers Jesus saying, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to
me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has
said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living
water.’” If we refuse to forgive, it is like carrying around a
cauldron of stagnant, poisoned and boiling water in one's heart and
soul; threatening to pour it out on and scald anyone who crosses your
path. To forgive is a gift from the spirit to bring life-giving water
to the garden in which we share.
When I started thinking
about what to say this week, I looked at the Crown of Thorns and
wondered why did it hold on to the thorns? Why do any of us hold on
to our thorns, or keep God's spirit away?
Sins Retained?
The Crown of Thorns
stopped its blooming,
says it is just dog tired
of being held inside,
asking to be picked up and
taken for a ride,
to the deck where it can
stretch out looming,
almost five feet tall in
its pot as if protecting,
of this house and all the
delicate ones here in.
Eons ago had its ancestors
been hurt by a sin,
that was going to happen
again if unsuspecting?
Had it once been trusting
but couldn't forgive,
some details of which were
hard to remember,
but the hurt's there, not
daring to let be tender,
but suspecting that its
anger didn't need to live?
Looking, I wondered, “Is
that like me again,
holding on to past sins in
order to them retain?
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