Confessions Of A Retired Expert

A Reflection for Proper 24, Year B                St. Luke's and St Anne's Roper, and Grace Plymouth, NC

October 20, 2024                                          Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant

    Job 38:1-7, 34-41        Psalm 104:1-9, 25, 37b          Hebrews 5:1-10           Mark 10:35-45

Confessions Of A Retired Expert

The Bible begins with the story of Adam and Eve, whom the story goes, are asked to care for the world in which they live. It is God's creation, not theirs. They are not owners, but tenants on the land that belongs to God. They are the servants of God. That story goes that they did not want to be servants, they wanted to replace God with their own desires to be like God. Therefore, the story goes. since God became aware of the sin, God punished them by driving them out of Eden. The moral is given that if you do not obey God; God will make your life a living hell or save up until you are dead and then give you the real thing of hell. This is based on the concept that God gifts good things to good people and bad things to bad people.

However, in today's lessons this theme is challenged when God mutters: "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” This passage of Job is from the end of the Book and is God's response to Job, Job's counselors, others and us, when we react to the concept that God is our servant, and all who demand that God be held accountable as an inadequate servant, when bad things happen to good people. He is saying that in this world, Bad things happen, but God is here with us in the middle of all the bad things.

The Passage from Hebrews underscores this message with the idea that Priests are not the ones who control God, but they are servants of God's creation. They do not command or control God; they listen. They are servants of God's healing in this world. “able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward.” The writer of Hebrews knew fully that Jesus never went to seminary, he was not part of the Priestly caste, but he did the important stuff like “deal(ing) with the ignorant and wayward.” like each one of us is called to do.

One of the things I do is to say to people “Let me pray for you!” It is not because my words are magic. It is not because I have a special relationship to God that make my prayers more efficacious in persuading the Big Boy upstairs, but because it is a way we people have of letting each of us know we are not alone in facing what we are going through. We are joined; heart to heart.

The Gospel passage has Jesus underscore that he, the son of God, is not the ruler but the servant of God and God's creation. This is who we are to be: servants of Go and God's creation:

“You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Every life we have on this earth is not to be seen as just that life as living only for itself, but as a way we are able to see ourselves, and each other, as gifts from God - to see God's living creation for whom we are to care for.

This year I am 77 years old: in 2 months I will be 78, and 60 years ago I was an expert. I knew everything I needed to know. It was the 2^nd month of my being a Freshman at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, that is about the time the first tests are given in the first classes at college. That is when I found out there was a whole lot of stuff I did not know. I found out that I needed to pay attention. Around the same time, my girlfriend I left behind in my home town, hundred of miles away from the college I was attending, was letting me know that she had her own life to lead, because I was not to paying enough attention to her.

It would be nice to say that I learned my lesson and I no longer encountered stuff I did not know if I just paid attention. The lessons today are about reaching the limits of what we can really know. And, even if we knew everything, we must come to grips with the understanding that we are not in control of the universe. We have to come to understand that no one divinity had died and left the position open so we could be God. We are called to follow, not replace, God and minister to all of God's children.

I work as a Priest in churches part of my life; but I am meant to live in sacramental relationship with all my neighbors, my friends, my enemies and my God in all of my life. I take my cue from Frederick Buechner who wrote:

A SACRAMENT IS WHEN something holy happens. It is transparent time, time you can see through to something deep inside time.

… Needless to say, church isn't the only place where the holy happens. Sacramental moments can occur at any moment, at any place, and to anybody. Watching something get born. Making love. A walk on the beach. Somebody coming to see you when you're sick. A meal with people you love. Looking into a stranger's eyes and finding out they are not a stranger's. 

If we weren't blind as bats, we might see that life itself is sacramental.

Confessions Of A Retired Expert

It's sacramental when we recite the Psalter,

but when we leave behind the church labors

and then approach any of our neighbors,

it is only then ,we approach the true Altar;

The place where God fills all the spaces

'tween us: holiness's away from church.

It's there, we really don't need to search,

Our world is filled with sacred Places!

Where our eyes have only to wish to see,

That the Peace of God is being shared

With anyone who'd just stop and cared,

Filling the chasm between me and thee.

Don't need be experts in understanding,

Faith's growing when love's expanding.