Traits of A Grandmother

 

Reflection and Poem for 12^th Sunday After Pentecost        Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant

Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Hertford, NC                  August 20, 2023

Genesis 45:1-15          Psalm 133         Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32          Matthew 15: 21-28

Traits of a Grandmother.

The stories in the lectionary are about how faith evolves from hatred to love. The Genesis lesson for today has the story of Joseph. You remember the story of Joseph. His brothers had so much jealousy towards him that they got rid of him by almost killing him and then selling him into slavery. Their intent was murderous. They told Joseph's father that a wild beast had killed Joseph and showing his “Coat of Many Colors” all ripped up and covered with goats' blood. For years Jacob, Joseph's father would have dreams of his beloved son being devoured by a wild beast. The brothers laughed and made money from the slave traders. Joseph spent years plotting revenge on his brothers. Then it came to pass and Joseph could get his revenge. And he did, he played with their need for the food that Joseph's brothers desperately needed. He framed them for theft and he laughed at their predicament. Except now he could not go through the charade. He found that revenge is not sweet but bitter. He made the decision to forgive his brothers and wipe out the barriers that existed between them. Life is better when we see one another as not something to be feared but someone to love.

Jesus, in the Gospel lesson, is being bothered by a Canaanite. In the communities he grew up in, he had been taught to see Canaanites as people who were not as good as Israelites. He learned from his neighbors that Canaanites were just trash, sub-human trash. Maybe is was something passed on from his family, like information is passed on by Grandmothers and Uncles about which prejudices to hold onto. Yet Jesus, the human Jesus, after spouting off some of his prejudices, saw that this woman was a human being, made in the image of God, who loves her child with the same kind of love his Mother Mary had for him. He is brought short and all the stuff that had been passed on to him about Canaanites had to come into God's light. It was time to lose his superiority and love his enemy rather than waste time on hate.

When I was growing up we had two Grandmothers and we gave them different names to differentiate them. My Mother's Mother we called “Mamita”, a variation of Spanish for “Little Mother”. There was nothing Spanish about her, she was born and bred Scottish Pennsylvania Presbyterian who distrusted “Papists”. The preacher in their city spent much of his sermons warning about how the faith and well being of Christians, meaning Presbyterians, were constantly being threatened by Papists in Northern Ireland and in America. My mother passed on a story about that preacher, set in 1928, when she was 10 years old and he had preached against the election of the Democratic Candidate for President, Governor Al Smith of New York who was a Roman Catholic, a supporter of of the Repeal of Prohibition and working together with the Southern States. The Preacher prayed for the election of the Republican Hebert Hoover and the defeat of Smith, the symbol of “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion”.The community in which she lived tried to teach her how to hate.

My Father's Mother we called “Nana”, which was the name given her already by our older cousins. She was a devout Roman Catholic. She was a woman of the South and proud of her Confederate Heritage. My Father was born and raised in Asheville and when he was 10 years old, he saw the Racist Movie “Birth of A Nation” and he and a couple of his friends liberate their parents bed sheets from the clothesline and dressed up like the Klansman in the movie to save the heroine from “A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH!' Nana objected to the use of those sheets and reminded my Father that the Klan didn't like Catholics either. The community in which he lived tried to teach my father to hate.

So, my Mother and Father came from two different worlds with two different things that Grandparents had taught them. The thing Nana and Mamita had in common was that they loved their children.

My parents met in college in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and they fell in love. As the country prepared for war they knew was coming, my father was given a commission in the Marine Corps and my mother finished her degree. On a sunny day on August 11, almost 4 months before Pearl Harbor, they were married by a Presbyterian Minister in the Rose Garden of my Mother's parents' summer home After the war, when children started to show up; my parents, splitting the difference, baptized the four of us into the Episcopal Church.

Whenever my older brother and I were palmed off to the Grandparents in Pennsylvania's house for part of the summer to give my parents some rest to take care of the two younger, better behaved sister and brother, my brother and I went with them every Sunday to the Chapel of the Presbyterian College. We felt at home there and Mamita would quiz us about what we learned in the VERY LONG Sermon. After a couple Sundays we learned to pay attention; usually a variation of Jesus wants us to be good. After the time was up for us to go home, my Grandfather's older sister, an amazing woman would get on the train with us and accompany us home. She loved and admired my Father, but she still had trouble with the Church of England and tell stories  how the Evil Archbishop of England  in the 175h Century tried to take over the Church of Scotland, for which the good Presbyterian rose up to help the England King and Archbishop be overthrown and executed. She would have loved for us to be Presbyterians but she loved us and our parents.

When my parents would want to go out of town to have some time alone with each other, like taking a trip without children, Nana would arrive on the train to stay for a week to take care of us. I would often accompany her to the Roman Catholic Mass on Saturday. I delighted in the smoke and ritual of the Latin Mass and she taught me how to use the Rosary. The Homily was very Short and was almost always a variation of Jesus wants us to be good. On Thanksgivings, we would take the long drive to join with our cousins and Nana would check to see how I was doing on the Rosary. I learned how to practice the week before the visit.

Later, after my farther died, both Nana and Mamita  who were very conservative, worried about my becoming too liberal. We could disagree about many things except our love for each other.

In the lessons for today, Jesus and Joseph came to the conclusion that the world is too small for hate and time too short to hold on the grudges. What have you found out?

Traits of a Grandmother.

She said, “Remember who you are!”

as a way of living into family pride,

from when we're born until we died;

to never shame the family lodestar.

Looking over our companions to see,

if dirty necks, or improper words came,

to eye of sight or on her ear declaim,

or social lepers who'd our burdens be.

We had to be careful of in places seen,

questionable organizations belonging,

or suspect political objectives longing,

of which our ancestors were not keen.

She was quiet and to us never shouted,

and of her love, we all never doubted.