St. Philips Day
2 Corinthians 4: 1-6
John 14: 6-14
May 4, 1997
In one of Flannery O’Connor’s short stories [“Good Country People”] she describes an angry, bitter, young woman who lived her whole life with a chip on her shoulder. This woman viewed her well-meaning mother with disgust and found every one else in her little community beneath contempt. As a child, she had originally been named Joy, but changed it to the ugliest name she could come up with. She called herself Hulga.
Hulga had a wooden leg. And as the story unfolds, we come to see how much that wooden leg shaped her life. She was ashamed and embarrassed about herself, hurt by what life had done to her. She didn’t find herself lovable at all, and therefore was unable to give love in return.
In the story, a man comes to town, charms Hulga, and actually talks her into having a date. As the story unfolds, cynical, tough Hulga finds herself trusting the man enough to do the unthinkable. She takes off her wooden leg and shows her friend where it is attached.
It’s a strange story, but it points to something that has a kernel of truth to it – namely, each of us has a wooden leg – those inner wounds, those hidden parts of ourselves that we keep secret. The dark sides of ourselves that we keep veiled. Therefore, each of us can identify with Hulga in some way.
If I have learned anything from life, it is that the more we keep a wooden leg hidden, the larger it looms in our unconscious. Like Hulga, the more we try to bury our wooden legs, or keep them veiled, the more they shape our lives
Let me just suggest one way that our wooden legs impact our lives. In order to minimize it, we often pretend that it isn’t there. And this pretending is costly. Somehow, we have to blind ourselves to reality and often keep people at a distance so that they do not see where our wooden leg starts and ends. This pretending can be so engrossing an activity that it absorbs all our energies.
Several years ago, I attended a conference on the church. The leader gave a fairly accurate analysis of present-day parish life. He outlined a few of the unspoken rules that govern most churches. First, don’t have a problem. Don’t have failures, embarrassments, or anything else that might cause shame. Second, if you do have a problem or something is wrong, get over it very quickly. Third, if you can’t get over it quickly, pretend. Look successful even if you’re feeling like a failure. Act as if you know where it’s at, even if inwardly you’re feeling anxious and don’t have a clue. The conference leader suggested that this was why most churches were something less than healing communities
One of the beauties of our parish is that we carry the name of St. Philip. It’s not accidental that Philip is our patron Saint. Philip, let me remind you, is a disabled, thick-headed, slow learner. Fortunately, Philip lets it all hang out. Every time he said anything, he revealed his lack of comprehension. Almost every time we meet him in the New Testament, he puts his foot into his mouth. Our lesson this morning takes place after the Last Supper, and he is still asking Jesus to reveal God. Jesus answers
“Philip, where have you been all this time? Don’t you get it?” But Philip doesn’t get it. He’s not too swift. He’s not going to win Theologian of the Year – not even best in the Sunday School – he’s still back on page 10 when the rest of us have finished the book. And yet Jesus doesn’t reject him. The good news is not that Philip finally comprehends. The good news is that Philip, in all his ignorance and all his lack of clarity, is still loved, still accepted, still belongs to the community.
Good people, Philip is our patron Saint. Bumbling, stumbling, inarticulate Philip, who doesn’t get it, is the model for the company, the community, this parish that bears his name, and I revel in that knowledge. For if we can truly see Philip in all his vulnerability, then we can begin to take the risk of sharing our own wooden legs. And then someday we might find the grace to embrace that which represents our dark sides.
We began this sermon by mentioning a short story about a girl named Hulga. I would end our thoughts on this Patron Saint’s Day by referring to another story about a girl named Hulga. In Arthur Miller’s play, After the Fall, there is coincidentally a girl by the name of Hulga. Hulga is tortured by Dreams of her past life. And this is what she says: “The same dream returned each night until I dared not go to sleep. I dreamed I had a child, and even in the dream, I saw it was my life. And it was an idiot child, and I kept running from it. But in the dream, it always crept unto my lap again, clutched at my clothes, until I thought, if I could kiss it, whatever in it was my own, perhaps I could sleep. And I bent down to its broken face, and it was horrible, but I kissed it . . . I think (the time comes in one’s life when one has to face one’s vulnerability). When one takes the risk of facing and embracing the brokenness, the dark side, the wooden legs . . .”
That’s what we who are in the company of Philip are asked to do. We are being asked to come clean, to share who we are – even our wooden legs. “Since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged here together in the ministry, we have renounced the things that we hide. And we commend ourselves to everyone in the company – in the sight of God.” Good people of the company of Philip, “let light shine in your darkness…” Amen.