Living Together

Reflection for the First Sunday of Christmas                         Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant Grace Church, Plymouth, St Marks/St. Anne, Roper December 28, 2024 Living Together Isaiah 61:10-62:3  Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7      John 1:1-18 Psalm 147:13-21 Today, the 5th Sunday of the month, it is your habit to gather the two churches together and we have a meal together as an outward and visible sign to yourselves and others that there is a deeper connection than just being Episcopal churches in the same part of the state. While most of the services these churches do are held in the respective churches, you get along well, in spite of the fact there is often a spirit of competition in Episcopal churches. Every place I have lived in my life there are Episcopal churches in driving distance from each other. We Episcopalians get used to going to one church , and when we feel just like trying out something different we might visit another venue, but our heart  stays in the church of our family.  However, you on the 5th Sunday of the month acknowledge that there is a deeper connection rather than  a competition.  You have agreed to live together, to see yourselves, and that is important as a sign of a “deeper reality”;  what, to use a phrase from a Christmas sermon by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King called “an inescapable network of mutuality”. Dr. King said in that Sermon:  “It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality.”  In the Hebrew Testament lesson for today the Prophet Isiaiah is welcoming  the people who have been in exile back into a deeper relationship with God and God’s people. The purpose is not a return to the past but a new beginning of what King called that; “inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny.” I have been really hit with that concept of how we are all tied into a single garment. Before Christmas this year, I got a visit from Scott, one of my nephew’s and his family. Scott, his son and I all share the same middle name of my Grandfather Wilson’s first name, Everitt.They came up from Florida to visit me in Nags Head, and  then drove over to visit my sister in Wilmington, and their cousins in Chapel Hill, and  went sledding in the Mountains with his brother Mike and his family, then back to visit  my younger brother and his daughter in Florida, then his mother and sister in another part of Florida. Hundreds of miles driven with the desire to connect with family; that “inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny.” As I was writing this reflection on the day after Christmas, I was thinking about my daughter and I called her to tell her that I loved her. She is 55 years old with a great husband and two wonderful grown up sons aged 23 and 21; but she is still my baby that I held in my arms after we brought her home from the hospital where she was born, more than a half century ago.  I embarrass her when I remind her that she will always be my baby, but she admits she is swamped  with emotion when the oldest son who has moved out of the house to be on his own after he graduated for college last year, said that next year he wants to take some of his ornaments to put on his own tree.  Distance may give us an illusion that we are separated but  in that “inescapable network of mutuality.tied into a single garment of mutuality.” On the 22th of this month you hosted the Rev. Tommy Drake as your celebrant; he had been with you for years before he went to Nags Head. That is where I met him as I started to attend the church in which he was the Associate Rector. I grew fond of him. Then, this month he was called to be the 4th Rector of All Saints Parish, the church in Southern Shores, where I had served as Rector as the 2nd Rector for 15 years before I reached the mandatory retirement age of 72.  I was called back to that church last week to fill in as Preacher in the Christmas Eve services and the Celebrant and Preacher of the Christmas Day service. Three points in the conversation with parishioners was (1) how they were fond of me, Tom, as their old historic Rector,  and (2) how much they missed my wife who had died a year and a half ago, and (3) how much they were thrilled that Tommy was coming to be their new Rector. In my sermon in the  Christmas Eve services, I thanked the congregation on how they loved my wife and made her and I feel welcome to join them in the interrelated structure of reality of that church and urged them to love Tommy and his spouse as deeply as they loved us. If I had been bright enough to look ahead to this week I would have used the phrase; “the inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny.” An important part of the work of the church is outside the boundaries of the church buildings and engage in the work outside of church walls as Dr. King urged us to do work and “to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality.”  This work is with and for the people to whom we are not related or even fellow parishioners, but people, neighbors and strangers, who need to be loved and encouraged and prayed with and for. May your hearts be open to help to identify these people to be with you in this“inescapable network of mutuality.” Living Together Words spoken decades before, echo again, but now in different circumstances calling Justice to flow down over us when falling asleep, no longer noticing neighbor's pain. The new voices of those renewed prophets, echo those voices heard centuries before, warning to no longer forget days of yore when we most longed to see higher profits. Can we have new Isaiahs awakening calls to see the space between us as sacred soil and everyone's labor as God blessed toil, when we're working to tear down walls. Knowing that we are all tied together with those destiny garments forever.

Christmas Day 2024

A Reflection and Poem for Christmas Day                               All Saints , Southern Shores, NC

December 25, 2024                                                                   Thomas E Wilson; Guest Preacher

Isaiah 9:2-7                Titus 2:11-14                 Luke 2:1-20                     Psalm 96

Christmas Day 2024

Fifteen days ago, I finished writing the reflection I gave last night and delivered it to the office with the bulletin. I don't usually write so far ahead, but I was getting ready to go visit my daughter, her husband and my two grown up grandsons in Colorado and I did not know how much time I would have after I got back to the Outer Banks.. The times I have with my daughter so far away and, my now all grown up, grandsons are so precious that I did not want to have any church work to get in my way.

Well, so much for plans! I had to cancel my trip to Colorado when Yoda, the Wonder Dog, got awfully sick and I had to take him to the Vet, instead of dropping him off at the Kennel. It is not that I love my grandsons less; it is about being a responsible person to the dog Pat and I found at the shelter to help heal some of the pain we had when the dog we had died. Long time members of this church will remember that both of these dogs used to sleep during the sermon, and before and after, try to find the snacks that parishioners smuggled in to slip to them. I had to cancel my trip to be a good parent to my dog, and will put off my trip until June when both of the boys will be at home. It is what the Letter to Titus urges us to do: “and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.”

The family is not all that big into religion, but I will not be there to convert them; I will be there to love them. Love is more important than views about theology. I think of lines written by 19^th century poet, Emily Dickinson whose school put on a full court press to get her to be an evangelical. She resisted their bullying and went deeper into her soul by writing about what it is to love deeply, instead of bargaining for approval. Love is a gift not a commodity over which we bargain.

            There is a solitude of space

            A solitude of sea

A solitude of death, but these

Society shall be

Compared with that profounder site

That polar privacy

A soul admitted to itself —

Finite infinity."

Ministry is not about prancing around an altar; but about opening our human lives to the presence of the Holy in every moment of our lives, like Dickinson's “Finite infinity”; a living in the dynamic tension of the finite human life and dwelling within the infinite of Holy Love. This Jesus that we remember being born into human life is the entering of the infinite of God into the finite of humanity. We who follow Jesus, fully human that we are, are also touched with the infinite as death is no longer the end, but the passage into a new life.

Years ago, when I was in college, before changing my major a couple times, I was a drama major and one thing I was in was a performance of the Second Shepherd's Play, in the style of the Medieval Mystery Plays I was an actor and I knew how to play roles. I was good at it. I could play a person who is spiritual, but after awhile reality creeps in, and we have to step off the stage. For people serious about having a spiritual life it is not about convincing other people, but to go deeper into all the time off the stage, or away from the Altar. It is about the time where there are no lines to recite, but there are questions each soul must answer.

Henri Nouwen wrote a series of daily questions for us regular dog faced people

“Did I offer peace today?

Did I bring a smile to someone's face?

Did I say words of healing?

Did I let go of my anger and resentment?

Did I forgive?

Did I love?

These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.”

These are the questions I decided to ask myself every evening before I would go to bed each day of my visit. I didn't intend to quiz anybody in the family and give them a grade on the test. For myself, while I, in all modesty, am a grade A Priest, but, at a lot more times times than I want to acknowledge, only a grade C- person. I need Nouwen's direction into the daily spiritual check in.

“Did I offer peace today?

Did I bring a smile to someone's face?

Did I say words of healing?

Did I let go of my anger and resentment?

Did I forgive?

Did I love?

Also as I was writing this reflection I read in the paper that Nikki Giovanni, Poet, had died and I thought of her lines from her poem Laws of Motion:

Man we are told is the only animal who   

smiles with his lips. The eyes however are the mirror of

the soul

The problem with love is not what we feel but what we   

wish we felt when we began to feel we should feel

something. Just as publicity is not production: seduction

is not seductive.

One of the dangers with doing Christmas Services is that we might be tempted to enter the past and not the present. We are tempted to remember all the times we did Christmas services in the past with people who no longer walk on this earth. We are tempted to complain that we do not have the present of the presence of people with whom we shared so many Christmases before. However, we who follow Jesus, fully human that we are, are also touched with the infinite as death is no longer the end, but the passage into a new life. Those who we miss seeing at the services, are with us still, in our hearts and hopes. We will meet again on another shore.

This afternoon, I will be a guest with a family that has lost some people who were loved by them and by me. We will miss seeing them, but will be with us in every breath we take and every laugh we make./

Christmas Day 2024

Now, just a shepherd without a flock

still called to try to touch a mystery,

in present moments, not just history,

wherever our feet take us for a walk.

Like the Gospel Shepherds' answer,

to that call of those angels' songs,

disrupts what an old routine longs,

so that faith will have an enhancer.

White candles were lit last night,

and wax drops hit the holy floor

as we tried to respond to do more

to say there is given a new light.

Today, we'll open a few presents,

as outward signs of Holy presence.

All Saints Christmas Eve Gifts

Reflection for Christmas Eve 2024                               All Saints Episcopal, Southern Shores, N.C.

December 24, 2024                                                      Thomas E Wilson, Guest Preacher

Isaiah 9:2-7                 Titus 3:4-7                     Luke 2: 1-14

All Saints Christmas Eve Gifts

This is Christmas Eve, this day we remember the Christ Gift being given. Madeleine L'Engle wrote about that gift;

Was there a moment, known only to God, when all the stars held their breath, when the galaxies paused in their dance for a fraction of a second, and the Word, who had called it all into being, went with all his love into the womb of a young girl, and the universe started to breathe again, and the ancient harmonies resumed their song, and the angels clapped their hands for joy?“

Today is a day we remember and cherish the gifts we have been given in our lives and look forward to tomorrow when we claim the gifts that are already in out hearts to give to others. It depends on if we can really receive the divine gifts in the manner in which they were given, or sing with the ancient harmonies and clap our hands for joy with the angels.

Thank you for having me here on Christmas Eve. I cannot think of Christmas without remembering what it was like when Pat and I were on Sabbatical studying at St. George's College in Jerusalem almost 30 years ago when there was more of a lull in the tension between Jews and Arabs, Hamas and Israel. One day the class we were in about 20+ clergy types and some assorted spouses took a trip to Bethlehem, and as we arrived in the evening there was a great light shining over the city. The light was for the Il Bambino Gift Shop sign where could buy thousands of souvenirs made in Manger Square of Bethlehem, or China, or the Philippines, or in Italy, or wherever, we could take home for souvenirs or help in deepening faith or as gifts to give to friends back home. Across from the square from the shop is the Church of the Nativity, where centuries after the birth of Christ, we visited an Undercroft of a church in Bethlehem where it was claimed was THE place where the Baby Jesus was born. In my western mindset, my first impression was that it was so cluttered and garish with centuries of devotion, that it was hard to see the lowly stable that it was meant to call to mind. But, off to one side. I saw a Palestinian father and his son, where this father was showing his very young son how to pray. Gently holding his son's hands together, the father was teaching his son the outward stance of prayer, and by example the inward attitude of prayer, and the lesson that we never pray alone in the sight of the Holy, as the words to say that had been passed on for centuries in the presence of that which is beyond words.

All over the world, at this moment, or in this day, there are people taking time to stop and pray, in different languages, in different styles of Prayer, all asking that Holy will stop to listen to what is behind the words, and inside the meditations of their hearts. There are people who will disagree with us in politics, in economics, in theologies, and religious practices; but the Holy listens to each and every one of them. As medieval theologian, St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa reminded us: “Whatever is received is received in the manner of the receiver.” Looking at that son and father, I realized that I had to change to be open to the Holy that was there in the space between this father and his son, and was also in the space between Pat and I as we had traveled half way around the earth to go deeper in faith.

On this Christmas Eve, I am reminded of the time, a couple decades ago, when Pat and I, in another pilgrimage, moved 600 some miles from a church in Georgia to this church in Southern Shores. Pat was carrying some wounds which she had received being the wife of a particular Pastor in a particular place and she was coming here for healing. And, this is the place where she found a community that cared for her. And she blossomed here. Your gifts to her was a gift to my soul and the courage to take deeper steps into faith.

She got a gift from being in the choir. For years, when we visited other churches in different places around the world, where she had to sing next to me as I was droning on and she learned how to hold her own in order to sing somewhat on tune. Here, in this church, she loved how Steve worked with every member of the choir, lovingly, patiently, helping them to learn how to sing together.; many voices becoming one deeper, complex sound. For Steve it wasn't a matter of a Hobson's Choice, of take or leave it, but gentle invitations to work together for something greater than one's self. Thank you for that gift, of Steve and the choir. Thank you for your tolerance of my singing with gusto, if not by skill.

She got a gift from being on the Altar Guild, where careful preparing the place for worship, was part of a preparation of herself for her own worship in community with others. When I was in Seminary, I did a yearly Rota of being on the Altar Guild at the Seminary Chapel. I learned what needed to be done, and as some of my Professors who were celebrants at Seminary Communion services, I was aware that mistakes made by me, a mere student, would be noted as a sign that I wasn't taking worship seriously. Since graduation, in the decades of my being a Celebrant at altar many, I depended on the Altar Guild for never having to worry about things being where they were supposed to be. Thank you for that gift of an Altar Guild, and a congregation, I could always count on.

Soon after we got here, Mary Mason and Pat got together and cornered me that we do a Church Bazaar here. That idea just froze my soul. I had been a Rector of a church that did a yearly church Bazaar and how I dreaded it. I asked Pat, did she not remember those days? The competition between vendors who were fighting for the best spaces, or who got the better trash and treasures or who kept tasting the soup and adding more salt on the sly. I could think of nothing worse. At that church when we added a new addition, there was now more space to squabble over. Yet, there was something happening here that changed, the people had fun and no one more than Pat. Thank you for that gift of a church having fun together, instead of trying to be God's frozen chosen.

My greatest honor was in being able to be with people who were going through joys, changes and challenges in your lives. I did not always fix everything, but I was honored by that trust. Thank you for the gift of allowing me into your lives of faith.

You are in the process of opening your hearts to having Tommy as your a new Rector. I have known him for several years and am impressed with his heart as he was the associate at the church I was attending on a somewhat regular basis. I also have done some fill in work at churches where he used to minister with and to. They had nothing but joy to remember how helpful he had been to these small churches. I am happy that you have been given an opportunity to have a fresh start. My prayer is that you will treat him, and his partner, as a gift, and they will also see you as a gift from the loving God.

All Saints Christmas Eve Gifts

It'd be nice to live in the moment,

but what about times of the past,

when memories were first cast,

and bound into life's enrollment?

They do come for us to cherish,

honoring for making our hearts,

filled by gratitude for the parts,

that'll never be allowed to perish.

These times for us to give thanks,

grabbing the chances for moments,

risking forgiving of our opponents,

from afar and those on our Outer Banks.

God grant us all of the gifts to cherish,

we've received, or given, in this parish.