Sojurning Servants

 

A Poem and Reflection for IX Sunday After Pentecost      Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Nags Head, NC           August 7, 2022

SOJOURNING SERVANTS

Genesis 15:1-6
Psalm 33:12-22
Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
Luke 12:32-40

There are two references about the Patriarch Abraham in the lessons for today. First from the Book of Genesis, in the Abraham Mythopoetic saga, where Abram is at the end of his faith and about to call it all off unless he can get an outward and visible sign that he can stop his wandering and find a home. As in most of Mythopoetic sagas, the Hero is flawed; he has tremendous courage but he also approaches the border and enters into the land of being, what polite people call, NDG, short for “No Damn Good”.

The second reference is from that is called the Epistle to the Hebrews, but which is not an epistle and not addressed to the Hebrews, but is well named as a polemic for followers of the Risen Christ to continue to hold onto faith. The writer of this polemic sanitizes the hero Abraham and sees him as a model of unshakeable faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Abraham lived with his father Terah their home in Ur of the Chaldees, where Terah worshipped other Gods. Terah is called by God to come to a Promised Land of Canaan. Abram, Terah's grandson Lot, and Sarai, Abram's wife, join Terah as far as Haran, where Terah falters, longing for a home and missing the home he left in Ur of the Chaldees. In his longing Terah dies. Abram, buries his father, and picks up his father's mission. And wanders where there is no Mapquest. He cannot return to Ur, nor even to Haran,' He has no home, has no idea where he is going; but he goes. He has more than a few moments of fear where he is afraid that the God who called his family, may have lied to him and he will never have a home. In this lesson, God appears to him and asks him to look to the stars for reassurance of putting his trust in God. In essence God's message is a little like T. S. Eliot's line from Little Giddings, “For us, there is only the trying, the rest is not our business.”

Abram will be a sojourner, a man without a stable home. He makes it as far as Shechem in Canaan where he sets up some altars to God. But as he starts to settle down, there is a famine in Canaan and Abram packs up his family and goes to Egypt where he lives as a alien. While there, he also enters into NDG territory while out of fear, he will lie and swindle; which gets him into trouble there and has to leave to go back to Canaan, where he continues to dwell in NDG behavior, lies again and then gets involved in a Civil War. He will claim a lot of land but in fact, the only land he will actually own will be the plot of land that he buys to bury his wife, Sarah, when she dies. It would be nice to say he always had faith, but he didn't. As broken as he was, as NDG as he is, he ends his life and finds his home in the heart of God

Where is your home?

I was born and spent two days of my life in the hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, then I lived in homes in Rolla Missouri, then El Salvador, then Pennsylvania, then Ohio, then New York State, then Chapel Hill, then Wrightsville Beach, then Raleigh, then Boone, then Danville, VA, then Sewanee, Tennessee, then Blacksburg, VA, then Lynchburg, VA, then Macon, GA, then Southern Shores, and then Nags Head. I found a home in all of those 16 places, and I left them, and will some day leave Nags Head, because, like Abraham, I am a sojourner, a transient, a sometime, more often than I would like to admit, also dwelling in NDG territory, who is just passing though, whose real home is in the heart of God.

In every one of those 16 homes that I can remember, there was always a place where I felt I could be safe from the outside world. I am an extreme introvert and I need to be alone to center myself. There was always a place, an office, a den, where I thought no one could bother me without my permission. I signed bushels of mortgage agreements and paid lots of property taxes; but I never really owned the houses, they owned me and kept demanding to be taken care of. While English Common law suggests that a person's home is their castle; I was not an absolute King over my palace, as my walls were like sieves, because of my sense of wanting to being indispensable, which was my treasure which fed my ego. As Jesus says in the gospel; “Where your treasure is there will your heart be also.” I found that I could get very good at keeping God out, if I got real busy doing lots of things---and if you want to keep God from interfering in your life; get real busy doing church work.

Nineteen years ago, God's spirit brought Pat and I to the Outer Banks and brought us home to a place I had never been before. One of the things we did when we moved to the Outer Banks was to bless the house turning it over to do God's work of welcome. Jesus addresses this issue of trying to keep God out,in the Gospel lesson for today. Jesus points out that God is the owner the house. Jesus suggests that while we may pay the mortgage, we may have the deeds filed in local courthouses; all the houses, and all owners, and all the guests are invited to be in the heart of God. Again to quote Eliot, “For us, there is only the trying, the rest is not our business.”

SOJOURNING SERVANTS

Lives are full of pillows for heads to rest,

but we keep sojourning from one room,

to another until, when our days consume,

we finally arrive at the goal of our quest.

We tried to find homes of concrete, wood,

glass and wires which we'll claim to own,

with papers to prove, placing our own throne,

in order to rule, hopefully for our own good.

Histories tell us those rulers become slaves,

as their palaces gradually start to own them,

keeping up facades as joy becomes numb,

until those hopes for glory inters in graves.

How about, instead of ruling, we do serving

in the larger mansion, working, conserving?