A Reflection/ Poem for 3rd Sunday after Epiphany Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant/Preacher
Holy Trinity Church, Hertford, NC January 21, 2024
Fiddling With Fate, Dancing With Destiny
This is the season of Epiphany, a time to see things in a new light, to see those things of which we are so accustomed; to see them in a new way. That is a theme that is going on in the lessons for today.
Let me start off by making a confession to you all. I have to admit some thing to you, and I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me. Here it is; but be kind, I beg of you. I … am ... a ... serial ... cinephile. Shocking I know, but I am one of those people who week after week spends times looking at, and adoring, movies.
Back in the dark ages, 2006, Professor Howard Suber of the faculty of the Film School at UCLA, published a book, The Power Of Film, which was made into a film, now showing on six nights on Turner Classic Movies on Cable. The second lecture of film in the series is an episode called “Trapped”. Suber's theses is is that many movies we go to see have an element of characters being “trapped”. Trapped in a situation where no escape seems possible. People are trapped due to Fate and/or Destiny.
Fate is that which begins in the past, like “written in the stars”, or Holy Script: seemingly part of our DNA. Think of the Ancient Greek Tragedy of Oedipus Rex. The King, Laius, is told before his child is born, that this son will kill him and take his own mother, Jocasta, as his wife. This was to fulfill a curse that an enemy had asked the Gods to punish Laius for his own misdeeds. When Jocasta bring forth a male child, Laius has to act. He loves this child and will not kill him, but in order to save his wife, he causes the child to be bound by the ankles and left abandoned on a lonely road. The servant has pity and palms the child with the swollen feet, the Greek word for “swollen feet” is “Oedipus”, off on a shepherd. Years later, when the boy with swollen feet, is full grown, Oedipus meets a arrogant man driving a Chariot; whose pride pushes him to claim the road all for himself. He tries to run the stranger over but the stranger, Oedipus, lashes out and the arrogant man falls out the chariot dead. Oedipus does not know that the arrogant man is his father Laius. Going into the city he comforts a recent widow and innocently marries Jocasta, his mother. Fate, the will of the Gods, creates traps which cannot be undone.
Destiny, on the other hand, is not set in the cosmos, but is the result of the choices that one makes in facing challenges.
The lessons for today are about the differences between destiny and fate. In the Hebrew Testament lesson from the legend of Jonah, the Hero. Jonah, is called by God to go Nineveh, that Great City, and bring the people to repent, and thereby changing their destiny. Jonah tells God that God is too soft hearted, and nothing could change the fate the people of Nineveh richly deserved. Jonah is afraid that Fate, the will of the Gods, will be changed into destiny. So instead of going East to Nineveh, that Great city, Jonah went West to the coast, onto a boat heading due West to Spain, the end of the earth. During a storm that threatens to wreck his escape plan, he said he would rather die than lift a hand to help the dwellers of that accursed city. He asks the crew to throw him into the deep to drown. God helped change his desire to be a martyr to Fate and changes him to be a child of destiny with God suggesting the road to take. Through God's mercy, Jonah gets swallowed by a whale, where he is protected and he becomes a passenger to the east and then coughed up the Nineveh shore. Jonah hates saving the people from what he sees as fate to be destroyed. But he is called to help people he hates, to be travelers of Destiny into repentance. Jonah hates the whole idea, but goes to work; just going through the motions, not putting his heart into it. His message was probably something like a monotone: “Well, Yeah, the Lord God told me to tell you to repent. My hope is you die any way, but if you got nothing better to do, then repent and tell God you are sorry.” However, before he is barely in the city limits, the people are repenting, which really ticks Jonah off. He goes to sulk and sits under a shady tree to sulk and die; thinking that would really show God. Well, God puts a worm into the tree and the tree dies and now Jonah is really ticked off. God suggests that Jonah is worried more about a tree and his own comfort and hatreds, than about the thousands of innocent lives. God sees all people as Creatures of Destiny and not as Prisoners of Fate.
When this church was founded 175 years ago, there was a difference of opinion about Fate and Destiny. The mood in this state saw that people who were born black were Prisoners of Fate; no matter what; they would never rise to the level of white folk. The Wilson family living in Goldsboro, North Carolina at that time, sent their boys to fight a great Civil War about that issue. One of them would die in a Prisoner of War camp in Elmira, New York. Six decades later, my father, William Wilson, was born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina and was taught by the culture and the segregated schools that blacks could never be the equals of White Folk. I remember one evening living in Upstate New York in a totally white suburb, in 1960 or 61, when my father was watching Sing Along With Mitch Miller on television, and there was there was this whole group of white men singing and then a young beautiful black woman, Leslie Uggums, joined them on screen singing. My father was shocked that, as he exclaimed at that moment, “She is a Negress!” He understood that she was violating the rules of Fate which he had learned growing up in North Carolina.
My Father was a very good man, and I loved him, and he loved me. We disagreed about so many things. He died in 1966 when I was in College. We disagreed about Fate and Destiny, but we never lost our love for each other.
In the Gospel passage from Mark for today, Jesus, the Man from Nazareth, was in the area of the Galilee. His accent would have labeled him an outsider, for as another person in another Gospel would observe, “What good comes out of Nazareth?” This outsider come to where men were working with their father fishing, as they has done for generations. It was seen as their Fate and they understood that they would probably have children, and grand children and continue fishing there until the end of time. Yet Jesus, this Outsider, comes and invites them to join him into a new Destiny. These four men chose Destiny rather than Fate.
Paul in his Epistle to the Church in Corinth writes to tell them that the days of Fate are over and they have a new Destiny when he observes: “For the present form of this world is passing away.”
The Life, Teachings, Death and Resurrection of Jesus was not a product of Fate but of Choices made about Destiny.
Our destiny is not to hold on to the past, controlled by ideas of Fate but to enter the future of Destiny, as Prisoners of Hope. This church is having its annual Parish Meeting after this service and you are in the process of finding a new Rector. You have a choice; you can see this meeting as a step on the road to Fate, or as the determination to find your new Destiny.
It is a rough time for churches in small towns. How do we get through rough times? I am reminded of a phrase of the American Black experience which we can learn from, remembered by the the Rev. Dr. Otis Monk III, Professor of Homiletics at the School of Theology at Mercer University in Atlanta. His father heard an elder ask a Parishioner: "How are you doing, Mother?” She said, “I’m living between "Oh Lord" and "Thank you, Jesus".” That is where we all find our faith: “Living between "Oh Lord!"and "Thank you, Jesus!"”
If you want to sum up my message today, I as asking you as individuals and you as a community of faith, to embrace Destiny and not surrender to Fate.
Fiddling With Fate, Dancing With Destiny
It's a little bit easier to just accept any line as truth,
Not having to move thoughts and actions around,
Making decisions that what's said is really sound,
Wanting only surrender to Fate's call to our youth.
Problem is, that we have to listen to quiet refrains,
Calling us to dance in a way out of our usual steps,
Letting go of many of our beloved personal effects,
Allowing more room for new ideas into our brains.
It is then that we're set free from the old thoughts,
Which had hobbled our ancestors ideas and hopes,
Binding us to that once upon time with old ropes.
But faith's swords can sever those Gordian knots.
Set us free to adopt a new, and faith filled, stance,
To be God's partners, by entering Destiny's dance.
