About Being Works In Progress

A Reflection for Proper 18 C September 7, 2025 St. Thomas Episcopal, Ahoskie, N.C. Thomas E Wilson, Guest Celebrant About Being Works In Progress Jeremiah 18:1-11 Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17 Philemon 1-21 Luke 14:25-33 Thank you for allowing me to come back to St Thomas. Years ago,  when I would come to fill in, my wife, Pat, would join me in the trip up here and she already knew what I was going to say, having heard my sermon as it was being put together in the week leading up. She acted as a good editor with comments such as, “Oh come on! You don’t really believe that. I know you better than that.”  She was used to studying scripture. When I met her, I was a newly minted Deacon straight out of seminary and she was the Director of the Diocesan Educational Resource Center and was  heavily involved in the Education for Ministry Program. She was less than impressed with my Biblical knowledge and spiritual depth. I was less than impressed with her At our first meeting, she asked me if I would visit her son who was a student at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, where I had been recruited to serve as the Assistant to the Rector of the Episcopal Church there and serve as a Chaplain to the Eliscopal students there. Her son had found a group of friends who were not Episcopalians. She wanted me to bring him back into the fold. I left a message on his dorm room door and  received no response. His mother considered me a failure. I figured that her son was wanting to get free from his mother’s apron strings. Our relationship  started off badly, and only in hindsight, were we able to see that it was a work in progress. After a couple of years, I became a Rector of a church in Lynchburg, Virginia and I was able to use her expertise in helping me to  deepen the educational programs at the church. Our relationship continued to be a work in progress and five years later we got married. I was an extreme introvert and she was an extreme extrovert, and we learned how to live with each other over the next thirty-four years together and grow deeper in faith and love. I am the Person and Priest that I am, because she saw me and our love as works in progress.  On June 23, 2023, a couple months over two years ago, after a series of illnesses, Pat died. There is not a day that goes by that I do not miss her, but I am who I am because she took the time to love me. However, as Joanna Seibert reminds all of us: “Death is not a period at the end of a sentence but more like a comma. The relationship still goes on.” The lessons today are about how God sees us all as works in progress. The prophet, Jeremiah, relates that God, whose relationship with humans began with the shaping of the body of humans, is like a potter who takes the clay that each of us is and gently, with our cooperation, if we allow it, molds us to become God’s children. The letter Paul writes to Pilemon is about Onesimus, a slave whose name is a Greek word for “useful”. What a horrible name, “useful”. The name Philemon is a derivative from the Greek Philemus which means “Kiss” or “affectionate”.  Objects are useful, but people  are meant to be in a relationship with other people. He was a runaway slave who ran away from Pilemon’s household to be with Paul. Paul had found Onesimus useful, but out of love, sent him back to Philemon to be a brother in Christ instead of a slave. He asks that their relationship of master and slave, to be a work in progress as affectionate  brothers in faith. The Psalm for today is about how we are to see all of our relationships as works in progress, moving deeper to see the sacred space between each of us. The song is a plea for each of us to see our neighbors  not as objects to be used, but as gifts from a loving God.  Pat was a gift from God for me and the other people in her life, and in the same way I am meant to be a gift to others. Each of us is meant to be a gift from a loving God for God’s creation. So, how are you giving your very self away as a gift to others, and how are you seeing others as God’s affectionate gift to you? Today, to whom are you meant to be a gift for?