Guess they’ll have to recalculate.

‘I am the way.’ ‘Show us the way, asks Thomas.’  ‘We don’t know where you’re going.’  We know that the early Christians were called the ‘way’ as we talked about last week.  What did Jesus mean?  Now the ‘way’ in Jewish thought was the path of righteousness.  Jesus may have been referring to the path through the wilderness to the new Jerusalem that Isaiah speaks of. 

Of course that wilderness path is the path to the cross.

In many ways our salvation in Christ is already a reality.  He has conquered sin and death on the cross and all who believe in him will not perish but have everlasting life.  But all of us know from experience that our walk with God is just that—it is a walk, it is a journey, it is a way. 

To follow Christ is to walk with him on the way.  It is to walk with him to the presence of his Father.  One of the things we have lost is the whole concept of pilgrimage.  Muslims go to Mecca, Jews go to Jerusalem.  We go to the mall.

To walk with Christ is to follow the rabbi who is going to the Father.  The path is narrow, the path is difficult, but the path makes us new people. 

Peter’s whole emphasis in his letter is the new people.  The people of the new birth and the new way.

I mentioned before the paradoxes in 1 Peter.  A paradox is two things that appear contradictory but that are at the same time true.  The Trinity, for example, is a paradox…

Peter calls his church the diaspora or the exiles.  These are loaded terms.

To be dispersed after being conquered is to find yourself without a home—like the experience of a refugee.  This was the history of Israel and what Peter’s community in a sense looks like, a group of irrelevant, persecuted Christians with no home.  But the paradox is this:

Once you were not a people,

but now you are God’s people;

once you had not received mercy,

but now you have received mercy.

I use 1 Peter 2 when I teach my New Testament class to undergrads.  I ask them to apply the passage to give me a working theology of the church.  Peter speaks in glowing terms of the church:

Christ is the Living Stone—you are living stones.  And then this description:

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

He also refers to the church as the ‘Zion’ of the people of God’s expectations—the fulfillment of prophecy.

I won’t go through the whole of this passage but I will look at this one verse which has much to see.  But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

What is a chosen race? This is an interesting way to describe the church.  Humans get in trouble when we put too much into ethnic pride or ethnic superiority.  History is replete with terrible examples of this kind of thing.

However, to be a Christian is to be purchased by Christ and brought into a new family. Baptismal water is thicker than blood if you want to put it that way.  All of the richness that we experience in a human family is a foretaste of a spiritual reality that we have as the body of Christ.  The Eastern Orthodox have a wonderful tradition of crowning a couple that is getting married.  This is to point people to see the human family as an icon of life in the kingdom of heaven.  The family is seen as a ‘micro church.’

The church is the elect of God—chosen before the foundation of the world as Paul puts it.  We are the chosen ones, not because of anything we have done, but because of God’s mercy in Christ. 

What is a royal priesthood?  We are good ‘ol Americans that militate against anything that has to do with a ruling King.  We have no concept of royalty.  There are no royal families in our midst.

Any talk of royalty in Scripture would cause the reader to remember David and Solomon.  You don’t become royal you are graced with royal blood.  You inherit it.  In the Christian sense, we are adopted into a royal family because of our relationship to Jesus—the son of David and Son of God.  We, then, by extension have ‘royal’ privilege.  In Christ we are kings and queens in the Kingdom of Heaven.

What does he mean by ‘priesthood?’  The priest in the Old Testament was the one who had special access to God.  He was allowed to go into the holiest of holies in the Temple to offer sacrifice and into the Shekinah of God—the presence and glory of God.

For us, Christ is the presence of God and we are the Temple of God.  Christ is the Shekinah and we are allowed, as the book of Hebrews says, to boldly approach the throne of God through him. 

Luther called this the ‘priesthood of all believers.’  Every Christian has access to God anytime, anywhere.

Why then, have Christian priests?  Christian pastors and priests do not mediate Christ to people.  We are here to remind all of us of the sacredness of going into the presence of God.  The liturgy does not go against the priesthood of all believers—it reminds of what the priesthood of all believers looks like.  As protestants we rightly remember the supremacy of the Scripture and the access that we all have to the Scripture—Peter says to long for the spiritual milk which in part is the Scripture.  But through the liturgy and the Sacraments all that is in Scripture comes to life.  What if all you ever did was read about food and never actually ate it?  What if you only read about kissing your spouse but never actually kissed them?  What if you only read about climbing the 14ner and never actually climbed it?

What if you only read about the priesthood of all believers but never saw the reverence and seriousness of entering into the presence of God?  What if you only read about God and never actually experienced him? 

What is a ‘holy nation?’

Of course Peter’s readers would have as their guide the people of Israel, God’s chosen people.  Israel was a theocracy ruled by Torah.  Is this what Peter is getting at?  Is this what we want?  Do we want America to be a theocracy?  Should the ‘holy nation’ be a geographical reality?

I mentioned the Muslim scholar that said the Koran never envisions Islam as a minority and the New Testament never envisions the church as anything but a minority. 

So what is a holy nation?

This is what we are called to be.  It is more important to be a part of the Church (the body of Christ in all times and all places) than the part of a particular nation of land.  Thank God we live in this land, but we are not defined by the stars and stripes but by the cross.

What does it mean to be holy?  In the biblical sense, it is to be set apart for special use.  Anglicans understand that certain things are set aside for special use.  Like the chalice.  We could use any ‘ol cup for the Sacrament but we choose to use something that is set apart and something we care for in a special way.

So it is for the body of Christ.  We are a like a chalice offered to the world.  We present God to the world.  We re-present Christ.  We are brought out of the darkness of this world into his marvelous light.  Then we show the way to others.

The way the truth and the life—this is what Jesus is.  We are to show him to the world.

There is this church I know of that is not perfect but has represented Christ.  This church:

1. Bought a special wheelchair for a little girl with cerebral palsy whose life has been wracked by pain and countless surgeries.
2. Thrived when their demographics changed from all white to a large percentage of blacks.
3. Sent care packages to shut ins every Christmas.
4. Covered the cost to bury a 2 year old girl whose parents couldn’t afford even a burial.
5. Walk together in the midst of many different points of view politically.
6. Welcomes little children who do little children things during worship.
7. Has a leadership the majority of whom receive no pay.
8. Eats together, prays together, and studies together.

There is a scene at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last crusade.  Indiana Jones is on a quest for the Holy Grail—the Cup of Christ used in the Last Supper.  He makes it into the last of many obstacles and finds a room full of chalices guarded by a thousand year old knight.  Most of the chalices are ornate and covered in jewels and gold.  The knight tells Dr. Jones to pick a chalice and drink from it, if it does not kill him, it is the Holy Grail.  One of the bad guys already chose unwisely.

Indiana Jones looks at the room of chalices and finds one that is wooden and simple.  He says, ‘this is the cup of a carpenter,’ and lo and behold it is the correct one.

I look at this congregation which I just described.  And I say ‘this is the cup of the carpenter.’

This is the community of the way the tru

You can’t read this story without marveling at Jesus’ willingness to ignore the propriety of the culture in those days.  What is he doing in Samaria in the first place? A Jew didn’t associate with Samaritans because Samaritans were half Assyrian conqueror and half Jewish.  Secondly, they worshiped on Mt. Gerazim rather than in Jerusalem.  They were unclean because of their mixed blood and mixed religious practice.  Not only that, it was unthinkable for a Jewish man to openly talk to a Samaritan woman.  A single Jewish man wasn’t supposed to talk to any woman, much less a Samaritan.  Not only was it bad enough that he talked to a Samaritan woman, she was a loose Samaritan woman at that.  Or at least she was perceived that way.  Remember Deuteronomy 24:1 allowed men to divorce their wives ‘if they did not please them.’  She may have been unjustly divorced the first time (or the first two times) and thought, hey, what is there to lose now?  I’ve already come this far, there is no redemption for me.

It is significant that she comes at noon.  No one came to a well at noon.  Noon was the heat of the day.  Noon was a time to be inside resting. The community of women would come first thing or when it was cooler.  This woman came because she did not want to be seen.  For shame and cultural propriety.  5 times married. Jesus went out of his way to ignore the religious and cultural barriers to offer her living water.  The woman was probably confused at first and may have even thought Jesus was looking for a date.  A well was a common place to meet people.  Don’t forget Jacob himself found his wife at this very well.  And when Jesus asked about her husband, and she said, ‘I have no husband,’ she may have been giving him an invitation.  But that was not Jesus intent.  He broke all rules of the religiously correct to reach into this woman’s world and heal her.  His intent was to change her life—to bring her freedom.

Jacob’s well was an important place.  It was the well that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.  It represented the calling of Israel for Jacob’s name was changed to Israel.  It was a tie to holy and ancient past.  It was a well that had been there as a reminder of God’s care for his people.  It was almost like a shrine of God’s pouring out of the waters of his blessing.  What does Jesus offer immediately to this woman?  Living water, water that when you drink it, you never thirst again.

A few reflections.  First, where is Samaria to you? What part of the world, the country, what part of the city?  Why is that place or that people off limits to you?

In a meeting the other day I was reminded of an acronym saying that works well in our neighborhood: NIMBY

What is NIMBY?

Not in my backyard!

Often we know where ‘Samaria’ is not so much by where we would or wouldn’t go, but what we want around us.  Or do not want around us.  Some NIMBY’s are valid but many just reveal the sinfulness of our hearts.

Little Italy or China town or mini Juarez are a nice place to visit, but when the neighborhood becomes 12% or more of a certain kind of people then, well it’s time to move on.

Lent is a great time to visit your own Samaria’s and NIMBY’s and then ask yourself what the Lord would do with your NIMBY.  He went far to search for this woman.  He leaves the 99 to find the one lost sheep—what about you?  Remember your baptismal vows:

Will you proclaim by word and example the Good

News of God in Christ?

I will, with God’s help.

Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving

your neighbor as yourself?

I will, with God’s help.

Will you strive for justice and peace among all

people, and respect the dignity of every human

being?

I will, with God’s help.

Will you do these things?  I think the baptismal vows are more important than our HOA rules don’t you?

Where is Samaria for you?  Your NIMBY?

Second, what is your version of living water?

Look at the wonderful contrast between Nicodemus and this Samaritan woman.  Though neither of them wanted to be seen, Nicodemus comes at night and the woman by day.  This is a contrast that John wishes to underscore.

Also, both throw some distracting theological questions Jesus’ way, but one walks away confused and the other walks away changed.  One does not drink the living water (yet) and the other leaves behind the earthly water for the heavenly.  ‘Come and see the one who told me everything I have ever done.’  Paraphrase, come and see the one who knows everything about me, but loves me anyway!

It is instructive that the educated theologian walks away scratching his head and the Samaritan sinner walks away with perfect clarity.

The broken understand their brokenness the satisfied do not.

What for you is living water?  Is it Christ or is it something else?

Entertainment?  Comfort?  Retirement?  Money?

Are you your own living water?

A self-help book from the 1980s says it well.  What You Think of Me is None of My Business.

We took that title seriously didn’t we?

You remember Whitney Houston’s song The Greatest Love of All? You know what the greatest love of all is? ‘Learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all.’

We shouldn’t feel bad about ourselves of course, but a couple of decades of ‘me,’ shows us the fruit of our thinking.

Interestingly, the woman at the well repents simply by walking away from her lifestyle and towards Jesus.  She doesn’t call herself a ‘worm’ or call attention to her grief over her sin.  She simply walks in a different direction.

She knows her own brokenness and chooses to walk towards Jesus.  This is repentance.  It takes the realization that we are sinners but it really isn’t that complicated. Just walk in the direction of Christ.  And away from our own selfishness.

A reflection from Fr. Albert Holz is instructive.  His book is on his pilgrimage around the holy sites of Europe.  He writes of a church in Toledo Spain that is interesting.  It is the monastery church San Juan de los Reyes.  This part of Spain was under Turkish rule for 360 years.  Toledo was one site where Christians were sold into slavery.  In the plaza around the church, ‘High up on an outside wall, hanging in neat rows…are ankle chains taken off Christian slaves freed from the [Turks] by the victorious Spaniards in 1492.  I stare at these grisly reminders of slavery, and try to hear the story they tell of slaves being set free from captivity and returning joyfully to their homes and families.  It strikes me that the side of a church is a perfect place to display the broken chains of Christians who were once held captive.  Our God is, after all, in the business of breaking chains.  We believe that the Word became flesh, suffered, died, and rose again to free us from the chains of sin and death.’

The Samaritan woman was set free.  Do you need to be set free?

I have a fundamental assumption.  This is an assumption that goes for just about everything—church life, home life, school life, family life.  When we put ourselves in the Lord’s presence, when you put yourself in the Lord’s presence—change occurs—and it is the kind of change that leads to the kind of life that Jesus describes.  It doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t occur in isolation. But gradually qualities seen in the Sermon on the Mount occur.

The lives of the great men and women of faith attest to this:  the early Christian martyrs, Benedict, Francis, Teresa of Avila, Julian of Norwich, Mother Teresa.  Their time with the Lord changed them, from the inside out.

But what is also true is that transformation that occurs leads to something—it leads to outward action.  I see this also as Jesus teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, one foot in the Kingdom, one foot firmly planted on the earth.

Our tendency as Americans is to see the life of faith as something private.  From the cowboy on the frontier praying on the top of the mountain to the woman in the bookstore reading about spirituality we would rather leave faith to the private individual.

The problem is, that is not Jesus’ vision at all for the people of God.

Our own John Wesley said, ‘If we keep the Christian religion from being seen we make it ofno effect,’ and ‘to turn Christianity into a solitary religion is to destroy it.’  And Deitrich Bonheoffer says, ‘Flight into the invisible is a denial of the call.’  As much as we would like to hide our faith or only see it as something we do invisibly at church, Jesus has other ideas.

Jesus has two simple images for the people of God, be salt and light.  Salt and light.  Salt purifies, cleanses and provides taste.  Light is something that is to be seen to show the way.

Notice Jesus says ‘you are the salt of the earth,’ not ‘you must be the salt.’  As Bonhoeffer says, ‘It is not for the disciples to decide whether they will be the salt of the earth, for they are so whether they like it or not, they have been made salt by the call they have received…Once again it is not: ‘you are to be the light,’ they are already the light because Christ has called them, they are a light which is seen of men, they cannot be otherwise, and if they were it would be a sign that they had not been called.’

Bad news for Episcopalians.  Now you noticed I have gone quite awhile without saying the ‘E’ word.  Maybe I’ll avoid it altogether and give us a picture of what salt and light can be.

Jesus images of salt and light imply that the people of God are encountered in the culture in intimate ways.  You cannot provide light for the path or preservation for food—without there being a direct encounter with darkness and food.

A nun in China asked Thomas Merton why Catholics there were not evangelizing more and why they were not trying to convince Buddhists and Hindus of the truth of Christianity and Merton replied, “What we are asked to do at present is not so much to speak of Christ as to let him live in us so that people may find him by feeling how he lives in us.”

You can’t have ‘saltiness’ if no one has a ‘taste’ of what you are about.  We can’t be salt and light if we do not see ourselves as salt and light.  St. John Chrysostom says, ‘You are accountable not only for your own life but also for that of the entire world.’

What does that mean?  This is not something that is easily defined.  We know it is not the legalism of the Pharisees, we know it is not selling out to culture so much that we are indistinguishable.

It means being salt and light—to the extent that the world changes because of the people of God.  In 1969 Malcolm Muggeridge, a British journalist went to Calcutta to do a documentary on Mother Teresa.  This was before he was a Christian—he had been the editor of a satirical magazine.  At first Mother Teresa refused but changed her mind saying ‘Let us do something beautiful for God’ (The first time she had used that term); so, they began filming. Leadership magazine says, “When they began filming, something strange happened.  Even though there was not enough light in the hospice for filming, the finished film was bathed in a particularly beautiful soft light.  [Muggeridge saw it as the love of God surrounding the process]  Later, he wrote a book about Mother Teresa and eventually became a Christian.”

To be salt and light is to have love for those around us, to the extent that we feel accountable for the whole world.

It is like the words of Isaac of Ninevah:

“Let yourself be persecuted, but do not persecute others.

Be crucified, but do not crucify others.

Se slandered, but do not slander others.

Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep: such is the sign of purity.

Suffer with the sick.

Be afflicted with sinners.

Exult with those who repent.

Be the friend of all, but in your spirit remain alone.

Be a partaker of the sufferings of all, but keep your body distant from all.

Rebuke no one, revile no one, not even those who live very wickedly.

Spread your cloak over those who fall into sin, each and every one, and shield them.

Salt and light: Those who are salt and light feel accountable for others, in the words of Wesley, ‘We should follow after love, and desire to spend and be spent for our brothers [and sisters].’

But I can’t live that way.  I don’t have time to be salt and light.  And what’s in it for me?  Why should I care about ‘them.’

Jean Vanier, founder of L’Arche communities, tells this story:

“I know a man who lives in Paris.  His wife has Alzheimer’s.  He was an important businessman—his life filled with busyness.  But he said that when his wife fell sick, ‘I just couldn’t put her in an institution, so I kept her.  I fed her.  I bathed her.’  I went to Paris to visit them [says Vanier] and this businessman who had been very busy all his life said, ‘I have changed.  I have become more human.’  I got a letter from him recently.  He said that in the middle of the night his wife woke him up.  She came out of the fog for a moment, and she said, ‘Darling, I just want to say thank you for all you’re doing for me.’  Then she fell back into the fog.  He told me, ‘I wept and wept.’

Sometimes Christ calls us to love people who cannot love us in return.  They live in the fog of mental illness, disabilities, poverty, or spiritual blindness.  We may only receive fleeting glimpses of gratitude.  But just as Jesus has loved us in the midst of our spiritual confusion, so we continue to love others as they walk through a deep fog.”

Salt and light: The people of God are accountable not just for our own lives but also for the whole world.

Amitai Etzioni, a professor of international studies at George Washington University writes this about an interaction he had with an audience about our current economic downturn:

‘When I asked an audience, “Do you really need a flat-screen TV? An inflatable Santa Claus? Plastic pink flamingos on your front lawn?”  they chuckled with agreement.  However, when I added, “A 4G phone?”  the room went awfully silent.  The bigger question is: will Americans learn to live with—better yet—find—some new sources of contentment, in the austerity many millions will face for years to come, or will they continue to be sharply disappointed that they have to make do with less?”  Later he writes, “There is no way on earth Americans over the next decade will continue to experience the kind of increases in income, and hence standards of living, we have seen since WWII.  The question is if they will respond in anger—or benefit, by dedicating themselves, once their basic needs are met, to spending more time with each other, their children, in social activities and cultural pursuits.’

This is a secular author writing for CNN.  He hopes that, because of the economic downturn, people will discover what Psychologist Abraham Maslow put forth—that once a human being meets his or her needs of the body—he or she would then learn to fulfill the needs of the soul and the spirit.  This takes looking to God and looking to others.

The problem is, we have so long been looking to ourselves.  We in the Western world have for decades been living at an economic and technological level unprecedented in the history of the world.  We have become spoiled, mobile, restless, and uncommitted.  Spoiled, mobile, restless and uncommitted.  We have become consumers not only of goods and services but also of relationships and locations. Joan Chittister writes, “Every store window holds a better bargain.  Every relationship promises a more satisfying partnership.  Every new place and new person and new possibility tempts me to try again, to try over, to try once more to find the perfect place or at least the place perfectly suited to me.”

The antidote comes from our Benedictine topic this morning.  I have listed it as conflict, but it really a way to address conflict and consumers—it is the concept of ‘stability.’  A monk or nun in the Benedictine tradition makes a vow to a community and a place—a vow of stability.  No matter what, that monk or nun will live and die in that community.  It is a vow, as Chittister says, ‘designed to still the wandering heart.’

Our time is an unstable time that calls for not only the monastery but also the church to be a place of stability—where people are committed to Christ and one another come what may.

Jeremiah wrote in a time that was even more unstable.  Jeremiah is writing this portion of his book to the exiles from Jerusalem who were carried away by Nebuchadnezzer of Babylon.  The Temple was destroyed and the walls of Jerusalem razed.  Many of the people were taken to Babylon, away from their home and away from their place of worship—Jerusalem.  In contrast to the false prophets, who said that the exile would only last a couple of years—Jeremiah says, no, it will be 70 years, almost two generations.  What to do with the next 70 years?  Lead a rebellion?  Pray for the destruction of Babylon?  Don’t pay taxes?  Be a burr in the saddle of Nebuchadnezzer?  No.  Jeremiah writes:

This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:  “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce.  Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease.  Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”

Basically, settle, raise families, seek the peace and prosperity of the city—and—pray for Babylon, ‘because if it prospers, you too will prosper.’

Have a bunch of kids and pray for your enemies.  Seek the welfare of those who destroyed your Temple, your city and your home.

Basically Jeremiah says, ‘Commit to this place, you’re going to be here awhile.’

Commit to this place, you’re going to be here for awhile.  This is something we have difficulty doing.  We are always looking for other options.  This job, this new relationship, this new place.  There is Disney-like magic to be found if we just spend more time looking.  I remember encountering someone who wanted to be baptized.  He had married 7 times and had gone from Buddhism to Jehovah’s Witness, to Christianity.

Maybe we are not that extreme but we have learned to flit about until we rest on that ever fragrant rose.

But—every Rose has its thorn.

Benedict, while he was all about hospitality, made sure that his communities understood—someone can be a guest for awhile, but eventually they will have to start living by the same rules as everyone else.  In fact, guests were given three days to observe the community before they were then required to work and pray like everyone else—whether they felt a vocation or not.  This is why he said, ‘Do not grant to the monastic life an easy entry.’

It is the hospitality of Benedict that is attractive but the stability that makes one a monk.  Similarly, God puts an attraction in our hearts for himself and for the church, but it is the commitment to Christ and his church that makes Christians.

We stress welcome and hospitality, love, and Christian fellowship, and so we should,  but living the vows of our baptism, day in and day out—that is the stability piece that is missing in so many lives.  It takes a curious and longing heart to ‘sign up,’ but it takes perseverance and the grace of God to really make a difference in our lives.

Those who received Jeremiah’s letter must have thought, ‘pray for who?’ ‘pray for blessings for our enemies?’ ‘for 70 years?’  ‘Commit to this place, you’re going to be here awhile,’ was all Jeremiah could say.

But we would rather cut and run.

In our culture people grow weary of jobs, people, spouses, cities and the easiest thing to do is simply remove ourselves from the problem. ‘Get a new one.’ Is the phrase we use the most, whether it is a spouse or a new house.  [don’t get me wrong, I am not referring to poisonous relationships or poisonous situations]

One of the powers of stability in community is the realization that only Christ binds us together, we are flawed and we are difficult to be with.  This is true in marriage, family and church.  In the Christian community it is Jesus and only Jesus that makes us brothers and sisters.  Therefore, the first step in stability, after we have accepted the beliefs and ways of the Christian faith, is to become disillusioned and disappointed.  We want to have ideals for Christian community, but the sooner we can kill the idealism of Christian community the better.  I want to read to you from Dietrich Bonheoffer’s Life Together.  Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran pastor and theologian who was killed under Hitler’s regime.  He says,

“Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely we must be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves. By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world…Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight…the sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both…The one who loves his dream of Christian community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the Christian community, even though his or her personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.”

Many people say ‘I hate churches because they are filled with hypocrites.’  That is the case.  ‘I loved that church , but someone gave me a dirty look’.  Yup.  ‘They are so judgmental.’  ‘They don’t practice what they preach. They are too conservative.  They are too liberal.’

That’s not to excuse bad behavior in church, we have the Bible and the Prayer Book as our written ‘rules’ that remind us that Christ is the center of our lives and we should look that way but the sooner we can kill the idealism the sooner we can begin to live in solid, Christian community.

It didn’t take long for Sarah to realize that prince charming I am not.  But, now armed with that knowledge, our ‘community’ is deeper and more real at home.

Similarly, the sooner we realize that the people around us in this place will disappoint us and disillusion us, the sooner we can love them in Christ.  As Bonheoffer says, we are not looking for a social experience or a ‘wishful idea of religious fellowship,’ but a community of brothers and sisters, all of which are sinners saved in Christ, by Christ, for Christ and because of Christ.  The running and striving and rushing and restlessness is put aside when we have real, Christ-centered community.  Stability.  A people and a place for God to do his work in our lives and in the lives of others.

Esther de Waal puts it well, “Instead of this bewildering and exhausting rushing from one thing to another…stability means accepting this particular community, this place and these people, this and no other, as the way to God…Everyone needs to feel at home, to feel earthed…Without roots we can neither discover where we belong, nor can we grow.  Without stability we cannot confront the basic questions of life.  Without stability we cannot know our true selves.”

Joan Chittister says, “Stability, the willingness to grow where I am, ironically, is the ground of conversion, the willingness to be changed.  With these people, in this place, at this time I dedicate myself to rebirth and growth and maturity.”

There is no perfect community—there is only Christ centered community with sinners on every side striving to be what we ought to be.

Karma is a neutral, self-perpetuating law of the inner cosmos, much as gravity is an impersonal law of the outer cosmos. In fact, it has been said that gravity is a small, external expression of the greater law of karma.”

Now, Christians and Jews don’t believe in reincarnation but the concept of sowing and reaping we find in Scripture itself.  Among some of Jesus’ contemporaries there was a basic assumption: if you are blessed in this life it must be because of something you have done.  Riches were a sign of God’s blessings and suffering of his displeasure.  You remember the disciples asking about a blind man that Jesus was about to heal:  ‘Who sinned, this man or his parents that made him blind?’

Which is why Jesus’ parable today would have challenged many of his listeners’ assumptions.  Reaping and sowing seems to have gone in reverse.  Even the whole idea of a Rich man in hell would have caused some to raise their eyebrows.

The point of the parable is straightforward—show compassion in this life for in the Kingdom there is a great reversal.  Being poor does not automatically make one righteous, but the soil of a poor person’s heart is often more hospitable to God.  Conversely, those who are rich—their hearts are less hospitable to God and less hospitable to others.

In life the rich man ate from a bountiful table—not even aware that Lazarus was begging nearby with dogs licking his sores.  Conversely, in the Kingdom, Lazarus eats at Abraham’s table unaware of the rich man’s plight.

Abraham tells the rich man, “Son, (by the way, he speaks the way the father spoke to the older son in the parable of the prodigal son) remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.”

The great reversal—something that would have made Jesus’ hearers scratch their heads—a sowing and reaping turned on its head.

Jesus is not saying that doing good things across your lifetime will outweigh bad.  What Jesus is dealing with is the condition of the rich man.  He has is a condition of the heart—a condition of the soul.  A condition of hospitality or a spirit that is inhospitable.

In case you haven’t guessed, today’s Benedictine principle is ‘hospitality.’  The Rule of Benedict, of course, deals with those who are received in the monastery.  He says:

“Any guest…should be received just as we would receive Christ himself…Guests should always be treated with respectful deference.  Those attending them both on arrival and departure should show this by a bow of the head or even a full prostration on the grounds which will leave no doubt that it is indeed Christ who is received and venerated in them…The greatest care should be taken to give a warm reception to the poor and to pilgrims, because it is in them above all others that Christ is welcomed.” (Rule Chapter 53)

Great principles from Benedict—the stranger is someone who ought to be reverenced by a bow or prostration. Ultimate respect.

Jesus is saying in his parable that the one who lies in the street may soon be a prince in the kingdom of heaven—carried by the angels themselves!  Therefore, welcome the poor.

Kathleen Norris, a Benedictine lay person (called an oblate), wrote that the ‘heart of Christianity is hospitality.’  Someone read her words wrote to her and said, ‘no you should have said that the Center of the Christian Church is fear.’

Why would someone say such a thing?

Now I haven’t heard a ‘fire and brimstone’ sermon for decades, though I hear they are still being preached somewhere in America.  But I know that even folks who are interested in coming to church find the whole thing scary.   There is a language to learn and a culture to engage.

People hope to find among us a spirit of hospitality.  That spirit of hospitality we cannot fake.  Those who have it in the church also have it outside the church.

Sometimes we feel inadequate, but as Joan Chittister says, ‘[we are] to pour ourselves out for the other, to give ourselves away, to provide the staples of life, both material and spiritual for one another.  The question is not whether what we have to give is sufficient for the situation or not.  The question is simply whether or not we have anything to give.  That’s what hospitality is all about. Not abundance and not totality.  Just sharing. Real sharing.’

Ask yourself—who is welcome in our church?  Who is not?  Why not?  Who is welcome at your table?  Who is not?  Why not?

Of course how you answer the question shows a condition of the heart.  It says something about how you view others.

But it should also say something about how you view your church.  Is it a refuge for the lost?  Or, is it just any other public place?

And of course it says something about how hospitable our hearts are when we reject others and keep them from our own table.

To love the stranger is not just Christian duty, it is to bring richness to our own lives.

Chittister again says,

“we must continue to beg the stranger to come into our lives because in the stranger may come the only honesty and insight we can get into our plastic worlds…to become whole ourselves we must learn to let the other in, if for no other reason than to stretch or own vision, to take responsibility for the world by giving to it out of our own abundance, to make the world safe by guarding its people ourselves.”

We are less when our hearts are inhospitable…Catherine Doherty said, “every human face is an icon of Christ, discovered by a prayerful person.

In Christ there is no Karma.  We are not received by Christ for our merit.  Neither do we receive (or refuse to receive) others based on merit.  What we receive, we freely give.

I repeat again Benedict’s words:

“Any guest…should be received just as we would receive Christ himself…Guests should always be treated with respectful deference.  Those attending them both on arrival and departure should show this by a bow of the head or even a full prostration on the grounds which will leave no doubt that it is indeed Christ who is received and venerated in them.”

I close with the words of Thomas Ken:

“O God, make the door of this house wide enough to receive all who need human love and fellowship; narrow enough to shut out all envy pride and strife, Make its threshold smooth enough to be no stumbling block to children nor straying feet, but rugged and strong enough to turn back the tempter’s power. God make the door of this house the gateway to thine eternal kingdom.
AMEN.”

Thomas Ken (1637-1711)

Inscription on St. Stephen’s Church: Walbrook, London

On a ‘teachable’ scale are you average, above average, or below average?  What prevents you from learning more?  What (or who) encourages you to learn?

Benedictines are known for their scholarship, but it is a scholarship that is not purely for the sake of knowledge and trivia.  As a culture, we have unprecedented access to knowledge and information, yet we are deficient in learning, wisdom and moral character.

What the Benedictines brought to the world is an ability to meditate and contemplate the things of God beyond the academic.  It is a perspective on learning, a way of observing.  It is a way of hearing Scripture, the world, and each other.  A way of learning.

Paul speaks to Timothy in Paul’s last will and testament.  This is Paul’s letter from prison in anticipation of his death.  He is telling Timothy what a father would tell his son before he dies.

When Paul was ministering in Lystra, he heard about a young man named Timothy.  The book of Acts tells us that Timothy was well spoken of by the believers in Lystra and Iconium.  So, Paul took Timothy under his wing.  Timothy’s mother was a Jew and Timothy’s father was a Gentile, the only thing we hear about his father at all in the Scripture.

Paul heard of Timothy’s faith and potential, and took him right into the field.  Timothy’s task was to imitate Paul.  Timothy would have been a part of the imprisonments, beatings and suffering for the sake of Christ right along with Paul.

Paul entrusted Timothy with the Church in Ephesus.  It is possible Timothy would have met and ministered with John the evangelist, whom tradition puts in the city of Ephesus for a time.

As Paul says, Timothy had a Jewish mother named Eunice and a Jewish grandmother named Lois who taught him the faith.  They were his spiritual mothers.

We don’t know when, but at some point Paul laid hands on Timothy and ordained him as bishop and pastor.  But also—since we do not hear about Timothy’s father—it is likely that Paul became his father.  He certainly talks as such.  In fact, he was more than a physical father—he was a father in God—a spiritual father.

There is between them a language of intimacy.  Paul was Timothy’s spiritual father—what did that look like?  It was a relationship of love and mutual affection—it was a family relationship.

But it was also a learning relationship.  Paul encouraged Timothy to:

• Not be afraid or ashamed of the gospel.
• To keep the apostolic fires burning.
• To be a man of holiness.
• To guard the faith delivered to him as a deposit.
• And lastly, Paul encourages Timothy to imitate him.

So was the teaching from Paul to Timothy.  And we know that Paul took each of those points seriously—to the point of suffering and death.

I won’t go through all of these points today but who do we have in our life that encourages us:

• Not be afraid or ashamed of the gospel.
• To keep the apostolic fires burning.
• To be a man or woman of holiness.
• To guard the faith delivered to him as a deposit.

And who is there for us to imitate?

I think to boil it down—what we need in our Christian walk in the area of learning is someone to love us, someone to challenge us and someone we can emulate.

Someone to love us.  Paul loved Timothy.  There is affection, tears and familial intimacy between them.  ‘To Timothy, my child, my son.’

In the Christian faith and life we need someone who exemplifies the love of Christ.  I do not believe that the faith can be communicated without love.  In fact, we don’t deserve to be heard without love.  Look at St. Francis, whose Feast Day is tomorrow.  Thomas of Celano, Francis’ biographer tells the story of Francis, who was at first repulsed by the sight of lepers, one day was confronted with one in the woods while he was on his horse.  Rather than running, Francis felt led to kiss him and show him Christ’s love.  Celano concluded, “Francis therefore resolved in his heart never in the future to refuse any one, if at all possible, who asked for the love of God.”

Who is there to challenge us?  Paul encouraged Timothy to rekindle the apostolic fire that was given to him in his ordination.  St. John of the Cross said, “A disciple without a master to lead the way is like a single burning coal—he grows cooler rather than hotter.”  We need those who challenge us to keep the fires of the gospel burning in us.  Frederick Von Hugel, was aRoman Catholic writer and spiritual mentor of the last century.  His niece said of him: “He preaches Jesus.  And when he tells of God his face is lit and illumined by some interior fire.”

Who is there to challenge us in holiness and guarding the faith?  Timothy was told to guard the faith, like a deposit.  This is investment language.  The faith we have is a treasure.  A treasure of two thousand years to be invested and protected, not in a reactionary way, but in a way that shows its value.  John, you understand this and this is something of what you do for  Nathan.  You are to keep the faith, like you are protecting wealth—and pass it on to Nathan, who will guard the faith and pass it on as well.  It is protecting the investment, but watching it grow as well.  This is what we do in baptism.  We pass on the treasure from one to another.  Nathan will need his mom and dad to teach him about the treasure and he will watch them pass it on.  We in the church have the responsibility to do the same as well with Nathan and all those who pass through the waters of baptism.

Which brings us to the last point.  Imitation.  Who do we have to imitate, to emulate?  Whose footsteps can we follow to lead us to the savior.  Imitation and apprenticeship were the ways of learning in the ancient world.  This is how Paul taught Timothy and how Jesus taught his disciples.

“Jesus style of instruction embodied a pedagogy that invested life in the learner through an incarnation of the message being taught.  This teaching was not something that was conceptually defined for his disciples as much as it was lived, experienced, tasted and touched by the learners…in the sweat of shared work as well as the dusty exertion of shared travel, they were always in the classroom. By the sea…in the fields…in the stimulation of the sensual barrage of the city with its crowds, bazaars, buildings, soldiers, markets—they were always in school, always becoming a community of learners whom he called disciples” (Reese and Anderson, Spiritual Mentoring, pg.18).

‘In the ancient world skills were handed down from father to son, and so apprenticeship also carries with it the implication of a father-son relationship.  It involves imitation, and long, patient watching and copying, a shared learning that owes much to the fact of daily living together.’—Esther de Waal.

Imitation.  Patient watching, copying, a shared learning.  St. Aelred said, “There is you and I, and I hope a third, Christ in our midst.”  Julian of Norwich said, “I look at God, I look at you, and I look at God again.”

Someone to love us, someone to challenge us, and someone to imitate.

I close with these questions:

• Take a moment to look at your own life and ask:
• Who has created a safe space in which to tell my own story?
• Whose ‘song of faith’ has rung most powerfully in my life?
• Whose life do I desire to imitate or emulate?
• Then:  how can I be that for others?

Let us pray:

Lord, give us someone to love us, to challenge us and someone we can imitate in your ways.  Help us to pour ourselves out for the other, to give ourselves away, to learn to follow and to be worthy of emulation.  In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Larry Crabb tells a story when he and his wife were touring Miami beach.  He writes,

“One block west of the luxury beach hotels—the ones pictured on all the postcards—was a very ordinary big-city street, noisy, dirty, heavily trafficked with cabs and buses and plumbing repair trucks.  The street was lined with less-than- elegant businesses and shops and row dwellings, with the occasional green shrubs poking its way out of a square foot of dirt in the concrete.  A patch of blue sky was visible only if you looked straight up.  No one was snapping pictures to send home or put in scrapbooks.  At one point, we walked in front of a wood-slatted porch, maybe ten feet deep, with perhaps sixty feet of sidewalk frontage.  At least a hundred chairs were arranged in neat rows and columns, none touching, each in exactly the same position to the others.  The occupied chairs (and most of them were) each held one motionless retired man or woman staring straight ahead at the street.  I can’t recall seeing anyone rocking, though I’m sure someone was.  I do remember that no heads turned to follow a passing taxi or pedestrian, or to chat with another porch-sitter…There were no paperback novels or newspapers, not even a cup of coffee or a glass of iced tea…there was no conversation…I remember thinking, ‘all their lives everyone on this porch worked hard in Detroit or New York with the dream of retiring in Florida.  And now they’ve made it…Everything they’ve lived for has come to this…sitting in chairs looking straight ahead, never into another person’s eyes, never knowing anyone, and known by no one.’”

Welcome to the American dream.  There are many different directions I could go with this.  In many ways this story was the inspiration for this whole series on Benedictine spirituality and I will return to it often because it says the worst about our epidemic of individualism.  And about or values and what we consider success in life.  Remember the three areas of focus—obedience, conversion and stability.  Last week we talked about possessions and put it under the heading of conversion, this week we’ll talk specifically about conversion.  Why do I choose this story?  Because obedience, conversion and stability can only take place in the body of Christ.  Of course we listen and obey as individuals, are drawn to Christ personally, but we were made for more than staring off into space in rocking chairs that don’t even face each other.  We are made for communion with God and each other.  Today we talk about specifically about conversion.

One key aspect of conversion for Benedict was to consider the end of one’s life—which ought to dictate how we live life now.  Benedict says, “Yearn for everlasting life with holy desire.  Day by day remind yourself you are going to die.”  Pratt and Hamon say, “The power of conversion is invested in the sense of our mortality.  It slaps us with the question we’ve reduced to shallow meaninglessness rather than face like grown-ups.  You’re going to die…So what are you going to do with your life?”

Again, this is not far from what Jesus is saying in our gospel lesson.  The time is short, he has a sense of urgency and says,

“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division!’  Matthew’s version is less soft, ‘not peace but a sword.’

Jesus is a threat to every social order and convention.  Jesus brings division.  Jesus brings fire.  The baptism he is referring to is his baptism.  These words of Jesus do not fit in with the wise sage Jesus of popular religion, but we can’t get around Jesus’ words this morning.  They are meant to bring conversion.

You might say, ‘I am already a Christian, I don’t need to be converted.’  That is true.  Jesus paid the price for our salvation on the cross.  Those who have committed themselves to Jesus in faith need not fear for their eternal destiny.

However, the Christian life is more than fire insurance.  It is a transformation of life.  It is not very common to have that transformation take place instantaneously.  I mentioned Eugene Peterson’s image of the Christian life—it is more like literature than journalism.  Each and every one of us have areas in our lives that need to be converted to Christ.

You remember the 80s song ‘One moment in Time?’

I want one moment in time
When I’m more than I thought I could be
When all of my dreams are a heartbeat away
And the answers are all up to me
Give me one moment in time
When I’m racing with destiny
Then in that one moment of time
I will feel
I will feel eternity

Life rarely works this way, when it does, it is somewhat of a disappointment. That’s why actors, entertainers and athletes are so messed up.  Life doesn’t usually work in a moment when everything comes together and neither does the Christian life.  No instant transformation.  But there is urgency and conversion.

Jesus means business.

Jesus brings division.  Father against son.  Mother against daughter.  Mother-in-law against daughter-in-law.  These are some of the most intimate relationships that we encounter in the human experience, and yet Jesus says that his presence can divide even the most intimate of relationships.

It is difficult for us in our culture to get the drift of what Jesus is saying.  But we have heard stories families of other religions that have disowned other family members who have become Christians.  In radical cases around the world, converts to Christianity are killed on the spot, sometimes by close family members or friends.  This has been true in communist countries when converts to Christianity bring the new faith home.  And whether it is family members or neighbors, the cost can be high.

I read these words from an Anglican missionary who is following the situation in Iraq:

“Most of one Iraqi congregation in Bagdad has little food, electricity for about 1 hour a day, and many are getting threatening letters nailed on their doors advising them to leave, or die.  I will never forget what a visiting chaplain told them.  He said, ‘I couldn’t pretend for them that all was going to be all right.  I couldn’t tell them that they wouldn’t die.  I told them that my only consolation, the only thing I could offer was that when they see Jesus they will be like Him.  And so after a time, they were moved to praise God.”

The cost is high in many places.  But perhaps it is more difficult to live for Christ in our context.
No matter where you live or who you are, Jesus means business.  Jesus sets father against son.  Jesus brings division because he shares loyalty with no one, not even our closest family and friends.

Not only does Jesus bring division, but more dramatically, he says he brings ‘fire.’  ‘I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!’

The metaphor of fire that Jesus refers to is the purging fire of judgement, brought about by the Holy Spirit.  This is far from destructive fire, though, this fire is restorative, purging, or purgative fire; fire that refines and transforms, however painful it is to be within its heat.  Another aspect of conversion.

Jesus is God’s love revealed.  He is God’s unconditional love made flesh.  But it is an inadequate portrait of Jesus and an inadequate portrait of love to characterize him only in terms of peace and sentimentalism.

Jesus is not only the love of God, he is the power of God and he brings the conviction of God.  He asks us to be converted.

‘I have come to bring fire,’ says Jesus.  He has come to bring his Holy Spirit among us to take us beyond our depth, to take us beyond where we want to go to change us, to transform us, to make us new.  To convert us.

‘I have come to bring fire.’ The Lord wants us to be aflame, not only burning with desire for him, but also refined and transformed by his Holy Spirit.  Love brings repentance, as our reading from Hebrews says, love brings discipline.

‘I have come to bring fire.’  What does that look like for you?  What areas of your life needs conversion?  What does the flame of the Holy Spirit bring to your life?  How would you want the power of the Holy Spirit to transform you?

Of course the power of God is not magic.  The transforming fire of God often takes time and happens in a variety of circumstances.  Jesus spoke of a ‘baptism’ he must undergo.  He was referring to his death.  Crucifying the Son of God on a bloody cross of wood is the primary event God has used to bring life and transform his people.  This is no magic wand way of curing all ills.  The cross is a reminder that it takes blood, grit, and the deepest kind of love to change us.

And why the image of baptism for the cross?  Because not only is baptism a dying and rising to new life, it is a cleansing.  The cross of Christ is a cleansing of the sins of the whole world.

‘I have come to bring fire on the earth.’
Today is traditionally the Feast Day of St. Mary the Virgin, actually it is the commemoration of her dormition, or ‘falling asleep’ of Mary.  Putting aside debates about the Virgin Mary, there is a tradition that her pious parents Joiachim and Anna dedicated her to the Temple, like Hannah dedicated the prophet Samuel as a child.  One tradition says that Mary, like Samuel, grew up sleeping near the 10 golden lamp stands, by the ‘bread of the presence’ just outside the holy of holies.  There she was near the presence of God.

Eventually, as foretold by the angel Gabriel, that presence of God would envelop her and she would become in herself a sort of Temple.  The presence of God was contained in her womb.  Jesus, the Son of God, whom the early church fathers deemed like the sun in the sky, grew inside of Mary.  She became the ultimate ‘fire-bearer.’

What would it look like for us to be God-bearers, or fire-bearers?  What would it look like for us to be a fire for God, so much so that his presence envelops us?  What would it look like to be converted?

Ruth Haley Barton, whom I took a class from in July, has written on the experience of discovering silence and other spiritual disciplines in her own life.  She found these things the hard way—because she had become desperate in her own life.  She said that about age 30, she was burned out by life.  She had three small children and was doing some ministry work in a big church—yet she was extremely dissatisfied in her own life and walk with God.  In fact, she found that she no longer knew how to love her husband or children.  She felt frustrated and wanted to get away from everything.  She found a spiritual director who told her that she was fried and primarily needed stillness, to be silent before God.

We may not realize the places in us that need converting.  We go to the doctor usually when we have what?  Symptoms.  What are symptoms that we need to be converted in a certain area?  Galatians five give us a good indication.  We know the fruit of the Spirit, but Paul also talks about the ‘acts of the flesh.’  He says,

16 So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. 17 For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. 18  But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.

19The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

There are ‘biggies’ in Paul’s list but notice the subtle ones:  “hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy.”  Sounds like a couple of hours at your office does it not?  Or in our houses or in our cars…

Back to Miami Beach.  Larry Crabb uses the image of turning the chairs to face each other as a solution to ending life in a chair facing no one looking at nothing.  How do we do that?

Joan Chittester, a Benedictine nun offers 5 places for conversion to take place: in silence, in community custom, at the community table, lectio and what she calls ‘statio.’

I won’t look at Chittister’s 5 things today.  But two are important for us to take with us.  Silence and statio.  Before we can face our chairs to each other, I believe we must turn those chairs towards God.  In silence we are making a very deliberate turn of the chair towards God.

How do we get there?  How do we find silence amidst noise and chaos?  Find a place in your home, or in your office, or at the park, or here at the church where you will meet with God on a regular basis.  Make it holy ground.  If you have to start with 5 minutes a day, that’s where you start.  Have your Bible, light a candle, use an icon.  Anything to get yourself out of the chaos for a time.  Holy gound, holy time.

You might start small with one verse of a psalm like Psalm 62

For God alone my soul in silence waits; *
from him comes my salvation.     He alone is my rock and my salvation, *
my stronghold, so that I shall not be greatly shaken.

Or Psalm 130

I wait for the LORD; my soul waits for him; *
in his word is my hope.

Find time this week to be with God in silence.

Another way to ‘face the chair’ towards God is to practice an oft ignored discipline which Chittister calls ‘statio.’  Statio is a Roman military term which was adapted by the Benedictines.  It means ‘stations.’  What happens when you take your station?  It means you line up in rank and wait for what comes next.

Basically it evolved in monastic (and Christian) terms, it became an opportunity to be aware of time within time.

That’s a fancy way of saying to be aware of what is going on around you in the ‘in between times.’  Waiting in line, driving, preparing for meals, waiting for an appointment.  It is these ‘down times’ that we simply take inventory of our own soul.  While I’m driving to I really need to hear about the latest Bronco injury at training camp? Do I really need the tube on before bed?

When we are making changes in life we often keep track of little things we are buying or extra calories that we eat or how much sleep we’re getting.  Our spiritual lives are similar.

In the ‘in between times’ of our day we can bring what Chittister calls, the ‘virtue of presence.’  She says, “Statio is the monastic practice that sets out to get our attention before life goes by in one great blur and God becomes an idea out there somewhere rather than an ever present reality here.”  It is turning our chair towards God in every moment in acknowledgment that he is always with us.  Practicing the presence of God as Brother Lawrence called it.  It also gives us a chance to do inventory.  ‘Why do I want to blow up the guy that honked at me?’ ‘Why did I say that to my wife?’ ‘Why did I show off in that meeting?’ ‘Why does there always have to be noise in my day?’

For your homework, look at those times, be silent before God, and find those places that need conversion.

None of us want to end up living for Miami Beach and no relationship with God or others.

Benedict was born in Nursia 480 A.D. died 550A.D.

Educated in Rome, he was appalled by the immorality of the city.  Benedict fled to the countryside for solitude and perspective.  He left to be a hermit in Subiaco.  Other monastics were attracted to him and asked him to be their abbot.  The relationship was a huge failure, Benedict was too strict and the monks tried to poison him.  He left and established decentralized monasteries with one abbot each.  Eventually he ended up in Cassino and founded a monastery that he remained in the rest of his life.  There he wrote his ‘Rule.’

The rule is a combination of teaching on Christian virtues, the structure of the liturgy of the hours, the balance of work, study, eating and praying, and how to discipline the wayward.  Key elements in the Rule and the elements I am most attracted to for our life together are the principles of obedience, conversion and stability.  Briefly stated:

Obedience:

The word“Listen, my son, to the precepts of your master, and incline the ear of your heart, and cheerfully receive the admonitions of your loving father…”  “Listen willingly to holy reading.”

Benedict had a close friend named Servandus, a deacon and abbot of a nearby monastery. They would meet regularly for an exchange of ‘sweet words of life.’ He and his sister Scholastica acted as Benedict’s spiritual ‘directors.’

Why is it so difficult for us to ‘listen?’  Who acts as a ‘father’ or ‘mother’ in our own lives?

Conversion:

“Prefer nothing to the love of Christ…hold nothing dearer than Christ.”

Is conversion a once for all experience or is it a lifetime of experiences?

Stability:

“The workshop in which we perform all these works with diligence is the enclosure of the monastery, and stability in the community.”

A Benedictine monk promises to stay in his community for the rest of his life.  Why is it so much easier to ‘cut and run’ from community—church, family, and other relationships.

Churches need that kind of discipline.  There is a loyalty there that says, ‘I’m here in this community for the long haul.  I will give without asking anything in return.  I am not a customer, but a part of the body. Therefore, I give, without asking anything in return.’  One writer says, ‘The very gift of sacrificial giving defines what it means to love each other.’

All of our topics over the coming weeks will touch on these three topics—they are simply a subset of them.  It’s really the Christian life itself:  we listen and obey Christ in all things, we are constantly converted more and more to him, and we do it not as individuals but with others in the body of Christ.

I mentioned how easy it was to find biblical passages for the themes of Benedict.  He ends his rule by stating that his rule is a guide, but nothing like the Bible.  Today’s topic is ‘possessions.’  How simple it was to find, and I didn’t or won’t change the lectionary readings for our series—how simple to find what Jesus said about possessions in our gospel today.

Jesus said to his disciples, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

He then goes on to discuss the urgency and immediacy of the kingdom in comparison to possessions.  There seems to be an exchange here—trade your possessions for the kingdom.  He repeats this three times in Luke.  In Luke 14 Jesus says pointedly, ‘So therefore, none of you can be my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.’  Benedict says in his rule that no one should own anything, except for what the Abbot wishes.  You only have what you need, you have a two habits: one to wear, one to wash—everything else, books, everything, belongs to everyone.

His Rule says, The vice of personal ownership must by all means be cut out in the monastery by the very root…let no one all or take to himself anything as his own (cf. Acts 4:32). 

This is the kind of thing we expect from monastics, but Christ’s words seem even more stout.  ‘If you don’t give up your possessions, you cannot be my disciple.’

Joan Chittister says, “do I have to have the top of the line in everything?  Isn’t it one thing to indulge myself in one aspect of life—my clothes, or my furniture, or my toys—and entirely another to do it in everything?  The point is that once I begin to clutter my house with things that separate me from life, I have become unfree, a prisoner of consumption, a hoarder of artifacts…I have to surround myself with things that are not real and do not fill the inside of me or of anyone else.  They own me now; I don’t own them.”

We can all in some way relate.  It’s like the movie Wal-E that pixar did.  Wal-E is a robot who is left alone on earth.  The people of earth have escaped to space because the world has been filled with trash and junk.  The Wal-E robots were created to dispose of it, but life on earth became unlivable and little Wal-E and his friend the cockroach is the only one left.  But I don’t want to push you into a state of guilt and despair.  What I want to do is give us a sense of spiritual awareness about this—this is the point of Benedict, and the book of Acts and the words of Jesus.  The more you have, the more anxiety surrounds you and the more you have to lose.  As Dostoevsky said, ‘blessed are those who have nothing to lock up.’  And St. Francis:

“If we had any possessions we should need weapons and laws to defend them.”. Also, Francis reasoned, “what could you do to a man who owns nothing? You can’t starve a fasting man, you can’t steal from someone who has no money, you can’t ruin someone who hates prestige. They are truly free.”

It’s not so much that possessions are bad, it’s that the more we have, the more we have to lose.  This is exactly what is behind Jesus’ words, ‘give up all your possessions.’  His desire for his disciples was for them to follow him without holding anything back.

And his solution is actually just as important.  Give what you have to the poor.  Why the poor?  Of course out of compassion and love.  But also there is a principle of Jesus—give to those who cannot return the favor.  And be free.  Upside down reciprocity.  Give to those who can never pay back or give back, give with absolutely no strings.  It is not only freeing for the recipient, it is freeing to the giver.

This is what Jesus means by making ‘purses’ for the kingdom.  The investment on your return when you give to someone who cannot return the favor is an investment in the Kingdom of Heaven.  This is not some ‘earn your way to heaven,’ just a principle of the spiritual life.  Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

If your treasure is your stuff then your heart is in your stuff.  If you don’t have much to hold on to, then your treasure is in the Kingdom and in others.

So how do we get there?  There is an instinct in us that looks at monastic principles and looks at the words of Jesus and we saw in our hearts, ‘yes, that’s true,’ but we have no way of getting there.  The purpose of taking so many weeks to be looking at Benedictine spirituality is to help us get there a step at a time.  There is inner work that needs to take place and outer work will follow.  The first principle and goal is simply to listen to what God is saying.  Then to act.  Conversion of life is not a one time event but a slow process—almost like AA.  With each of these topics we need to come to a point where we say: ‘I am powerless against possessions…’ and admit that to the Lord.  I believe when we make space for his Word to penetrate us, actions will follow.  I’m going to leave this open-ended and commend you to your study guide.  The last step is an action step for God to speak and lead you.  Some may be called to live in community or leave anything, I don’t want to leave that option out.

I close with a story about Emperor Charlamagne.  Charlamagne was one of the most powerful Roman Empires in history.  He actually ruled from France and divided the whole empire.  The story is told that when Charlamagne died, he was entombed still seated on his bronze throne with his purple robe wrapped around him and a crown on his head, surrounded by his riches.

180 years after his death officials of the Emperor Ortho were sent to open his grave to loot the treasures.  When the officials came to the tomb they found riches after riches.  But they also found something quite unexpected.  There was a skeleton sitting on a throne still dressed as a king–but there was an open Bible on his lap.  The dead emperor’s bony finger was pointing to Mark 8:36, which reads, “For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  The more you have, the more you have to lose.