by: Marceline Donaldson, 2014
We were saddened to hear of the death of Spencer Rice on January 15, 2014. He was a larger than life figure as rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in the city of Boston from 1982 to 1992.
There is always that extra amount of grief when someone you know dies, – someone who was your mentor for a period of time, especially at a life-changing moment of your life. and that is who Spencer was to me. He was very insightful and could put his finger on what you were going through without long discussions to wear out the problems and sometimes without the fact that you were experiencing a problem with all its particulars even discussed.
Spencer ministered to a lot of people on the fringes at Trinity – people you would not think the rector of such a large Church would even notice – and he did it quietly with no fanfare and only those closeby noticing his good works. In conversation with several people who knew Spencer, one thing was mentioned by every one – his generosity.
The best way I could think of to remember Spencer is to reprint one of his sermons which I feel encapsulats his core beliefs. This sermon was preached on John 1:43-51. . The Rev. Dr. Spencer Morgan Rice was powerful, conflicted, with a raging internal war which produced sermons that reached the hearts and changed the lives of many.
“WE HAVE FOUND HIM, COME AND SEE” (John 1:43-51)
Preached from the pulpit of Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston, MA.
“This is a time of crisis. It is not only a time of crisis in the political and military affairs of the nation, but it is also a time of crisis in the soul of our nation. The Gospel this morning is appropriate to this crisis. Philip said to Nathanael, ‘We have found Him of whom Moses and the prophets wrote: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’ Nathanael said to him, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and See.’
This morning, I would like to reflect with you upon dogma, upon the peace of God, upon the treasure of God.
‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ We have heard the text many times and felt of ourselves that we readily understood Nathanael who gave this despairing, perhaps even cynical response to Philip. Yet the matter presses upon us this morning as we, in this country, find ourselves often divided from those around us in terms of our convictions as to what should or should not be done in world affairs. It is a crisis. Men and women in every day and time, in every circumstance of life, are tempted to slide easily into Nathanael’s trap with a generic, doctrinaire, despairing, myopic point of view. Those who differ from me, are they not from Nazareth?
We have seen in the life of our country many instances in the last fifty years in which these matters have been tested. Those of you who are old enough to remember the days before World War II can well recall that the America First Committee was very powerful in the United States. We were a nation that described herself as isolationist. Charles Lindbergh warned us that if we entered this war, which was none of our business, we would find that we had lost our freedoms at home. Franklin Roosevelt was saying in the same time frame, ‘We must become the arsenal of democracy.’ For us, this was a crisis, as difficult as war itself. There were many opinions.
During my undergraduate studies, I and many other young men saw the beginning of the war in Korea, having just been discharged from the Armed Services. Many of us were called back. Open protests at that time were not common; our opposition was a seething, underground, resentful condition that existed among men and women. Korea was called a police action, an undeclared war. The sides were there; the crisis was there; the difficulty was there. We have all seen the difficult circumstances surrounding Vietnam, overseen by three different presidents of both political parties. We have seen men and women of conscience throughout the life of the republic differing passionately with one another.
In our enduring credit, our Congress before hostilities began in Iraq, had the freedom and the courage to witness to the world open, passionate, heartfelt debate. It is a time when we must examine closely the temptation to join Nathanael in characterizing those who disagree with us as from Nazareth. Christians are called, as indeed we are called as citizens, to hear those with whom we passionately disagree.
We all seek peace – peace in the world, peace in our souls, peace with our God, and Philip comes to us and says, ‘We have found Him.’ I ask of myself in the context of this Gospel, why then do men and women (including myself) under stress and in trauma, resort to rigid, doctrinaire, inflexible, unhearing positions? I know, and I suspect that you know, that we are a lonely, frightened people. In our aloneness, in our fright, we are given to protecting ourselves. We are searching all of our lives for someone with whom we can share our most intimate fears, with whom we can find peace. We search at work, we search in church;we search at parties; we search on the streets of life.
Thomas Yeomans, poet, fellow parishioner and clinician, in his recently published book The Flesh Made Word, talks of our searching. He says,
‘In airports, or in shopping malls,
we probe each face for some relief,
some soul to recognize our grief.
But crowd averts its eye, inmeshed in time and always late.’
‘We have found Him’ It is personal. We have found the person who can look into our souls and recognize our grief.
As we look for peace in the world and in our own souls in every conceivable way, we hope to be those people, those Christians, those citizens who can be open to their fellow citizens, whatever their stance may be. One thinks of the verses in May Sarton’s poem ‘Now I Become Myself’ in the recent anthology ‘Cries of the Spirit: A Celebration of Women’s Spirituality.’ She writes,
‘Now I have become myself.
It’s taken Time, many years and places;
I have been dissolved and shaken
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there….
Now to stand still, to be here.’
‘We have found Him’ To stand still and to acknowledge this Jesus, the Christ who calls us to be open to hear our fellow citizens.
The measure of God is a person. And Philip says to us, as he said to Nathanael, ‘Come and see.’ We ask ourselves, what is the treasure that this Christ brings us, that treasure that is beyond tolerance? We are called of God beyond patience, beyond tolerance. We are called to a condition of life that is open to those with whom we disagree, to reach out intellectually, and indeed even emotionally, to see why they perceive things the way they do. We are called of God.
How do we get there? What do we find in this treasure? What do we find in this Christ? We find forgiveness. We find acceptance of ourselves. For nineteen and a half centuries of Christianity, the preponderance of people understood forgiveness as something that they allocated and accorded to another. It took the social scientists of your generation and mine to reach into the intimate lives of men and women to remind us, in the voice of the mystics through the centuries, that forgiveness in life begins with my acceptance of myself, my forgiveness of myself, given to me by this Christ. Only through that forgiveness can I open myself to hear, to respect someone with whom I passionately disagree.
No. we are not called to a new condition of doctrine or dogma, we are called not to those defensive constructs of mind that wall us off and say of the world, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ What we are called to is personal; it is trusting. It is trusting that we have been forgiven; it is trusting in the spirit of the disciples when they come and say, ‘We have found Him. Come and see.’
In 1973 I was invited to a luncheon on Telegraph Hill in San Franciscol A modest home, perched on the side of that artistic community, looking out over San Francisco Bay, with all of its majestic, physical glory. There were only two guests at that luncheon given by a parishioner. I was one of the guests and the other was the recent widow of the late Jacob Bronowski, internationally renowed scientist and poet, famous for his work at Cambridge University in England, later at MIT and at the Salk Institute at the time of his death. He wrote a book entitled The Ascent of Man that many read, and I presume many more saw on public television the BBC-produced documentary series with the same title, which Bronowski wrote and presented. In one of the last programs of the series he is standing by a pool of water and he turns to the camera and says:
It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers.
That’s false, tragically false. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flashed the ashes of four million human beings. This was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance…..This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
A few sentences later, he quotes Oliver Cromwell: ‘I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.’
In the crucible of our Gospel this morning, as we hope and pray that we can hear our fellow countrymen in their convictions, whatever they may be, we acknowledge that doing so is not a renunciation of your convictions or mine; it is the humility born of forgiveness, and in that forgiveness is the capacity to let go of our dogmatic categories of mind and soul.
Alice Walker, in one of her poems, says,
Looking down into my father’s
dead face
for the last time
my mother said
without tears, without smiles
just with civility
‘Goodnight, Willie Lee,
I’ll see you in the morning.’
And it was then I knew
that the healing of all our wounds
is forgiveness
that permits a promise of our return
at the end.
The treasure that God brings to us in the Gospel this morning is that you and I are forgiven and healed, and that whatever our convictions may be about this war, about the difficulties and complexities that surround us, you and I can find peace of soul. That is our treasure. We can be open to our fellow citizens. It is personal. ‘We have found Him. Come and See.’
Let Us Pray:
Heavenly Father, our nation stands on the precipice of a crisis. Passionate convictions clash and contradict. Lift us above the dogma, the “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ mind set to a place of Christian listening.
We seek peace in the world. We seek peace in our souls. We are searching. We have worn many other people’s faces. Now, let us stand still to be here. We have found Him.
Finally Heavenly Father, this Jesus, our Christ, brings us the treasure of forgiveness that we may forgive and accept ourselves, that honoring our convictions, we may have a new humility born of forgiveness, that we may hear and respect one another. It is personal. “We have found Him. Come and See.’ Amen.”
Spencer – May your soul rest in the knowledge that it is healed, forgiven and is in that place of peace which passes all understanding! May the God we worship be with you always and may your soul continue its journey as it seeks its eternity! We are listening in the stillness to hear that you have found that treasure and know without contradiction that it is personal! – We will, one day, come and see!
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