May 28

Chapter 7 pt. 3

The Rule of St. Benedict May 28

Today is my first full day as a Benedictine canon.  I professed my solemn vows, took the habit and a religious name, and donned the pectoral cross as the Prior (religious superior) of the newly established Community of St. Mary of the Annunciation.  I then turned and witnessed the vows of a new novice, Br. Rawleigh Emmons, and welcomed him into the community.  As I sit here at home this morning, engaging in my practice and orienting myself to the new reality of my life, our Father Benedict's instructions on this day are especially poignant.

St. Benedict reminds me today that I am not the master of anything in my life, not my newly minted vocation, not the new canon community I shepherd, not even my own thoughts.  In fact, the greatest danger I face as I drape my habit over my head, fasten my belt, and place the cross over my chest is the temptation to pride and vanity that slithers among my semi-conscious thoughts.  If I am to overcome this temptation, I must subject all of myself to the warm, gentle, and piercing light of God, who, my Father Benedict says, is ever present within my thoughts anyway.  My work is to stop pretending that what I hide from myself and repress deep within is hidden and repressed from God.  God has always seen all of me, and has loved me all along.  

Br. Chad 2012

Veni Creator Spiritus

O Holy Spirit, by whose breath

life rises vibrant out of death;

come to create, renew, inspire;

come, kindle in our hearts your fire.

In every age and land God calls women and men to imitate their Lord by setting spiritual intentions above worldly considerations, the love of God's little ones above the claims of tribe, and obedience to the divine will in place of all personal ambitions.  The breath of the Creator Spirit kindles within the hearts of the called various gifts and characteristics, charisms, to bring new life, to create, renew, and inspire the Church.  And throughout the ages such charisms abide within her by the order of religious life.

You are the seeker's sure resource,

of burning love the living source,

protector in the midst of strife,

the giver and the Lord of life.

Religious orders spring from the earnest intentions and tireless endeavors of spiritual pilgrims seeking the living Source of the burning love within their breast.  Met with abundant help from the Spirit, they endure the strife of putting away their former way of life, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, so that they may teach others to clothe themselves with a new life, the likeness and giver of which is God alone.

In you God's energy is shown,

to us your varied gifts make known.

Teach us to speak, teach us to hear;

yours is the tongue and yours the ear.

St. Benedict of Nursia embodied divine energy, showing forth the charisms of prayer, lectio divina, and work in his life and in his Rule for monasteries.  Through him the Spirit teaches those who yearn for life and desire to see good days to keep their tongue from evil and their lips from speaking what is false, and rather to attune the ear of their heart and listen carefully to the divine voice which calls daily, "Come, my children, listen to me."

Flood our dull senses with your light;

in mutual love our hearts unite.

Your power the whole creation fills;

confirm our weak, uncertain wills.

"Nothing is to be preferred to the Work of God," our Father Benedict instructs.  When the community gathers for the Divine Office, a Benedictine opens her senses to be flooded by the light of the Holy Spirit.  She raises her voice to join with the Communion of Saints, with Angels, and with the Church on earth in their ceaseless choral offering.  And when she falters, she is girded up by the good zeal of her sisters and brothers along the way.

From inner strife grant us release;

turn nations to the ways of peace.

To fuller life your people bring

that as one body we may sing:

A religious life on the Benedictine path is "a journey through earthen darkness to the dazzling light that already flames in each of us, but in a hidden place left to each of us to find" (Chittister, p. 38).  A Benedictine community is to furnish the human family with a window into the full life made possible through the ways of peace with God and with neighbor.  It is in this spirit that the Canon Communities of St. Benedict (OSBCn) are dispersed throughout North America, hosted by parishes within dioceses in The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada.  It is in this spirit, through the movement of the Holy Spirit at St. Augustine's in Tempe, that the Canon Community of St. Mary of the Annunciation will be established on the Day of Pentecost.  And it is in this spirit with great joy on that same day that I will profess my solemn vows as a Benedictine Canon (OSBCn), be clothed with the full habit, and take the religious name of Br. Chad-Joseph.

Praise to the Father, Christ, his Word,

and to the Spirit: God the Lord,

to whom all honor, glory be

both now and for eternity.

Amen.

The Good Babysitter

Sermon preached at St. Augustine's Episcopal Parish, Easter 4, 29 April 2012

This Sunday, the 4^th Sunday of Easter, is known as “Good Shepherd Sunday” due to the Gospel reading, which is always taken from John chapter 10.  Our lectionary has also included the beloved and pastoral Psalm 23, the most familiar of all the Psalms, with its idyllic opening verse, “The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not be in want.”

Its language is so familiar, in fact, that I wonder if many of us have stopped to really consider what it means for the text to call the LORD “my shepherd”.  What is the job of a shepherd anyway?  What sort of person was and is still a shepherd in the Middle East?  What is the social and economic status of a shepherd in the culture?  For what is a shepherd responsible, and to whom does a shepherd answer?

As I’ve considered these questions, my mind was drawn to seek out what is our own culture’s closest parallel to the job of a shepherd in the Middle East.  And I’d like to read to you what I think Psalm 23 might sound like if it was written for our 21^st century American culture.

The LORD is my babysitter;

            I shall not be in want.

She makes me lie down in my pajamas

            and brings me a cool glass of water.

She awakens my imagination

            by sharing with me her cherished family stories.

Yea, though my light is off, and the house creaks,

I shall fear no evil;

            your first aid certification and cordless phone, they comfort me.

You welcome me into your house and feed me a snack

when bullies chase me home from school;

            my glass of milk is bottomless.

Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

            and I will live with the memory of your loving care for ever.

Does this sound sacrilegious, too trivial or mundane, disrespectful, even, to call the LORD, the God of the universe, a babysitter?

Let’s consider together how a babysitter in our culture is similar to a shepherd in the Middle East. 

First, they are both jobs for adolescent youth not typically done by adults. 

Second, they are both jobs that give a first taste of independence and responsibility to a young person. 

Third, neither job is highly regarded by the dominant culture.  If I were to say, “The mayor acts like a babysitter at the capital,” you don’t hear, “The mayor is doing a splendid job!”  Similarly, if we look at the story of David’s anointing in 1 Samuel 16, Jesse parades all of his older sons in front of the prophet, and doesn’t even think to call David in from keeping the sheep.  All he’s good for is being a shepherd, after all.  I imagine college and high school athlete brothers meeting a professional scout who has come to visit while their 12 year-old brother is down the street babysitting the neighbor’s kids.

Fourth, children and sheep are both enormously valuable to their families, and both are utterly helpless to care for themselves, especially if something goes wrong.

So when the Psalm calls the LORD, “my shepherd,” and when Christ calls himself “The Good Shepherd,” we are not being given an image that jibes with the cultural ideal of power and influence.  Rather, the Supreme Divine Reality is brought into the domestic realm and sent out to do the job that is beneath anyone who has any societal power or status.

And God in Christ, rather than taking this job half-heartedly, as a stepping stone to bigger and better things, does the work with the utmost dedication and concern for the helpless and needy sheep.

The beginning of John 10, before today’s Gospel, speaks about a sheepfold, a gate, about listening to the shepherd’s voice, and about being led out to pasture.  Now, if you’re picturing the British Isles and fields of tall, green grass, you’re in the wrong place.  A sheepfold to a young Bedouin shepherd in the Middle East amounts to a small cave into which the two dozen or so sheep would be led as the sun set.  Stones would be piled up at the entrance to the cave, and over the only opening, the “gate”, the shepherd would gather some loose rocks and some dry thorn bushes.  Then, the shepherd would sleep in front of the gate, outside of the cave, as a guard. 

So when your little 12 year-old self hears the howling and sees a wolf coming towards the sheepfold in the middle of the night, and all you have is your rod, a short stick you use to count the sheep, your staff, a longer stick with a crook you use to direct the sheep, and a sling shot, this where the difference between the Good Shepherd and the hired hand really matters.  This is where we see what Jesus means when he says that the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

When the text speaks of the shepherd leading the sheep out to find pasture, again, this is not the Irish countryside, but the Middle Eastern desert.  And in the desert leading sheep to food involves the shepherd knowing where to look for the little tufts of grass that spring up along the rocky hillsides each morning.  Sheep will not find their own food in the desert.  They must be led or they will wander aimlessly and die from starvation or a predator.

What does it say about us for the LORD to be our shepherd, for Christ to be our Good Shepherd, or for that matter, our Good Babysitter?

For starters, it says that we are of the enormous value.

It says that we are helpless.  We might think we can take care of ourselves, just look at my 4 year-old son, but we can’t.

It says that we are protected and guarded by someone who will bear any cost to keep us safe.

It says that we are guided and led to find the sustenance we need for each day.

It says that we are intimately known.

And it says that we recognize the voice of our beloved shepherd, our beloved babysitter, when we hear it.

Living into this Reality is the work of a lifetime: to humble yourself enough to listen for guidance, to learn how to recognize the Voice that calls you by name, to follow on the path that the Voice leads you, and to trust your experience of the Divine Presence who does not remain enthroned somewhere far off, but who comes close enough to know your every need, to calm your every fear, and who will lay down his own life to defend you from harm.

Amen.

Fr. Al's sermon for Easter 2

Sermon preached by the Reverend Alvin Marcetti at St. Augustine's Episcopal Parish on 15 April 2012

        I have been waiting literally for years to be able to preach on this Gospel lesson.  I am a big fan of John, particularly the beautifully poetic opening of his Gospel.  In many ways, John is short changed by contemporary interpretations of his writing.  Most of us are riveted by his mystical language, with its images of angels, doves, the breath of Jesus - to name just a few.  The style and tone of John’s writing often allow readers to see him only as a mystic, but he is much more than that.

         Put in today’s language, John is writing a sales pitch – and a very effective one at that.  John clearly says that he is writing this so that we may believe because we have not seen, nor experienced, the actual ministry of Jesus.  Most theologians feel that the Gospel was initially intended to end at the chapter from which today’s gospel is taken.  John says in Chapter 20, Verse 30, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that you may have life in his name.”

         However, it is the character of Thomas that I find so engaging.

         While I was training to be a priest at Cranmer Hall in England, we were told that all good sermons must make three important points.  Well, today I’m going to deviate from that dictum and make only two simple points.  These points are about faith and doubt.   Clearly, there is a part of me that I find in Thomas, whose faith has to be supported by physical evidence.

I was nurtured in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, which has a lot to say about faith –not much about doubt –, but a great shipload about faith.  One of the clichés of Anglo-Catholic piety is the following term – a gift of faith.  Some lucky Christians are felt to have been blessed with a gift of faith – unfortunately, I have never felt so blessed as you will see.  The only two people who come to my mind when this term is bandied about are my grandmother and the late Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Michael Ramsay who was my spiritual director while I was training.

         My grandmother was a rather severe Swiss farmer’s wife who held an unshakeable and profound faith in Christ’s healing ministry and the Roman Catholic Church.  From birth in a small mountain village in the Swiss-Italian Alps to the empty farmlands of central California in the late 19^th century, Giovanna travelled through life with the assurance of god’s unconditional love. 

It was this faith that allowed her to venture beyond her safe village life to an arranged marriage with an older Swiss farmer in California.  This necessitated 3^rd class travel on a steamship, the indignities of Ellis Island, and then an exhausting rail trip to San Francisco. 

I only knew her as an old woman, her rosary a constant companion, who attempted to explain how painful it was for her to see her grandsons raised as Protestants.  For her the church – with both a small c and a large C – began and ended with the mediation of the Pope.  Even as a boy, I didn’t buy into this, but I was impressed by her assurance of Christ’s love in her challenging life – this was her gift of faith – an unquestionably elemental understanding of God’s care for her and his creation. 

As I have said, I admired her gift, but from an early age it was clear that I didn’t share it in the same manner.  I had early identified with Thomas.

         John makes it clear in his Gospel that the Disciples have a variable and varying gift of faith.  At times, they are like my Swiss grandmother and at other times they are more like me – rather questioning and untrustworthy.  In Chapter 13, Verse 38, Jesus says to the overeager Peter, “Will you lay down your life for me?  Truly, truly, I say to you, the cock will not crow, till you have denied me three times.”  And, remember he is saying this to someone who has seen and experienced the actual ministry of Jesus.  And, of course, we know that this will come to be.

         So…how many of us have a gift of faith?  We may be like the mercurial Peter - desiring to faithfulness but finding ourselves sometimes falling short.

         This leads us to my second point about doubt.  On the day of resurrection the Disciples are so full of doubt, hopelessness, and feelings of abandonment that they actually lock themselves in a room.  So, we are not in such bad company if we experience times of doubt in our Christian journey.  For myself, these times are ruled over by my intellect, which can be a cruel taskmaster at times.  Most of us value rationality, education, logic, etc. and it is those gifts that can lead us to dark places of doubt. 

And…I don’t feel this is a bad thing.  While I might envy Christians like my grandmother or Lord Ramsay who embody for me a simple, elemental assurance of God’s love, that is not my road – not the road for many others who travel with me.

         However, it is here that I want to point out the irony in my discussion of doubt.  It is these times of questioning that have rooted and secured my faith. In fact, I have come to believe with certainty that for many of us doubt is the integral element of faith.  Christians like myself often struggle with what is called The Dark Night of the Soul. 

This is what St. John of the Cross describes as the struggle and the soul’s journey from the distractions and entanglements of the world towards the perfect peace and harmony of union with God.

The dark night is not pleasant, but for many it allows one to approach nearer to God and His love.  The irony is that this process that leads one away from an understanding and acceptance of god’s love is the very process that makes my commitment to the Christian life deepen and flourish. 

         The means by which questioning and doubt are ameliorated are clearly stated in John’s gospel.  Last week in his Easter sermon, Father Gill pointed out how difficult it is for us as human being to accept underserved outpourings of God’s love – counter-intuitive gifts from the universe that make us uneasy and fill us with questions until we are able to relax into the pleasure of the gift. 

         John loads his Gospel with assurances that those who have not witnessed Christ’s ministry will be given the means to believe through the ministry of fellow Christians.  Christ promises that his prayers are not only for the apostles, “but also for those who believe in me through their work, that they may all be one.”

         Times of doubt bring us like, Thomas, to Christ asking for assurance…and perhaps forgiveness for our lack of surety.  What does Christ do in this situation?  Well, in the Gospel, Christ forgives and reassures…a central theme of what I’ve called the sales pitch in this Gospel.  Rather than being punished, the Disciples are reminded that they, like us, will witness to the good news of Jesus’ ministry here on earth.  In a real sense, doubt is rewarded by assurance…counterintuitive but a model of the message of the cross.

         Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, says, “There is no hope of understanding the Resurrection outside the process of renewing humanity in forgiveness.  We are all agreed that the empty tomb proves nothing.  We need to add that no amount of apparitions, however well authenticated, would mean anything either, apart from the testimony of forgiven lives communicating forgiveness.”

         I particularly like the phrase “forgiven lives”…like the Disciples we are forgiven and renewed in our struggles with doubt.  Within the context of our doubt we begin to gain a foothold on the gift of faith…the assurance of the reign of Christ in our lives.

Reclaiming the Beloved Child

Sermon for St. Augustine's Episcopal Parish 
18 March 2012 
The Fourth Sunday in Lent

1).

I want to cast a scene for you.

Picture a mother nursing a baby boy in a rocking chair.  It’s evening, a lamp dimly lights the room, the boy is dressed in a one-piece sleeper, the mother in a simple nightgown.  You hear the creak of the rocker, the gentle suckle, and a whispered soprano:

For God so loved the world, he gave his only Son, to die on Calvary’s tree from sin to set me free.  Some day he’s coming back, what glory that will be! Wonderful his love for me, for me, wonderful his love for me.

Every night it’s the same scene: the baby is held close, feels the warm, sweet milk fill his belly, hears the creaking of the chair and this song.  And the boy drifts off to sleep with the words, “wonderful his love for me,” still kissing his ears.

There is a kind of knowing taking place here by this baby boy before language has any meaning for him.  This is the knowledge of belovedness, what developmental experts call attachment.  You can screw up a lot as a parent, but as long as you succeed in planting this knowing deep within your child, 99% of your God-given work is done.

And for this baby, as language is acquired and begins to carry more and more meaning within his experience of the world, the words of John 3:16 are imbued with the power of his attachment to his mother and to the Divine Reality she embodies to him. 

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

2).

But the boy was weaned, and soon the cognitive use of language employed by his intellect became the main way he attached meaning to his life.  Slowly a great distance grew between the boy’s conscious experience of the world and the first knowing he ever had.  That distance enabled the boy to function in the world, to develop a personality and an identity of his own.  This is appropriate and normal.  It’s what developmental experts call individuation.  And slowly, a veil was drawn over the knowledge of his belovedness.  He replaced that knowing with a story about himself and the world in which he needed to earn his belovedness.  This particular boy replaced his first knowing with the story that he is loved to the extent that he is approved of, and he built his life according to that false story.  He began to develop habits of thought and attention and emotion that reinforced that story in every area of his life.  Before he knew it, he was out of college, married, and had kids of his own and the story seemed to be holding up pretty well.  There was the occasional anomaly, but there were no serious signs that the fiction was slipping.

But there came a point at which the false story did slip.  And when it slipped, the whole shebang came crashing down around him, and the boy was trapped—separated from his first knowledge by a lifetime of mistaken beliefs engrained by habits of thought and attention, of distorted feelings learned through habits of emotion and reaction.  He could not reach the knowing of his belovedness for anything more than a fleeting moment at a time.  He can’t go back to the rocking chair and listen to the song with infant ears.  He is grown.  He is banished from the garden.

3)

It is at this point that the boy, the man, comes to the true work of the spiritual life.  It is the work of remembering and reclaiming one’s attachment to the Divine, one’s visceral knowledge of belovedness, not by reverting back to infancy and innocence, but by transcending the ego’s false story as a fully grown adult.  This work is done with an ancient set of tools that employ language in the service, not of the ego, of the intellect, which is enslaved by the fiction, but of the soul, our true Self, which includes our unconscious and never forgets what it knows. 

These tools are myth and symbol.  Myth and symbol provide us access to the riches of our inner experience, and they aid the spiritual adult in the transforming work of remembrance and reclamation of her core identity as the beloved child.

4)

Nowhere are these tools seen more clearly in action than in Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John, chapter 3.  Here we see Nicodemus trapped in our boy’s predicament.  His false story isn’t working for him in the way it once did—respected, pious Pharisee on the ruling council of his people—so he comes to Jesus by night seeking answers.  And what does Jesus do?  He feeds him myth and symbol to lead him into the experience of inner transformation.

* Birth of water and of Spirit

* Being born again from above

* The serpent of bronze lifted up in the wilderness to heal those bitten by snakes

* The Son of Man likewise lifted for all to look upon and be cured

* Light coming into the world, and the struggle against the human love of darkness

Myth and symbol calling for Nicodemus to leave the comfort of his intellect and join Jesus on a transforming journey inward to remember and to reclaim what is veiled from his conscious mind.  But Nicodemus, this earnest inquisitor is left perplexed.  “How can these things be?” he asks.  I hear him saying in this exasperated question, “You are asking too much from me.”

5)

What is Jesus asking of him, of our boy turned man, of all of us?  I believe he is asking us to follow him on that inward journey through myth and symbol to the depths of our soul, to our true Self, the beloved child.  He is asking us to employ these tools in the difficult spiritual work of reconsidering our stories, of remembering and reclaiming the knowing that is ours from our earliest days. 

It is a long and tedious process as we, habit by habit, thought by thought, emotion by emotion subject our fictions, our personal darkness, to the exposure of God’s light, as we turn our eyes upon the Son of Man with hope for healing, and as we accept our birth of Spirit, our lives made new from above.

This is a hard path.  It’s no wonder Nicodemus balked at the prospect of following Jesus down to the depths.  It feels like we die when our stories die.  But this is the death of a fiction that frees us to live our true life in the embrace of our Divine Parent where our soul is at rest in the knowledge of our belovedness.  This is life that never ends.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Amen.    

Cultivating Interiority

Sermon for St. Augustine's Episcopal Parish 2.5.12

1)  One

At the beginning of this week, as I began to ponder our scripture texts for this morning, I couldn’t get a song out of my head.  It’s a popular tune from the late 60’s written by Harry Nilsson.  Maybe you’ve heard it.  It begins like this:

“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.

Two can be as bad as one, it’s the loneliest number since the number one.”

Catchy little tune.  The song expresses a widely held sentiment in our culture: that it’s bad to be alone; it’s bad to be “lonely.”  It casts a vision of “the good life” that results from the character of our exterior relationships.

“It’s just no good anymore since you went away . . .” the song goes on to say.

But there’s that sophisticated twist in the second line:

“Two can be as bad as one, it’s the loneliest number since the number one.”

It seems that an external relationship gone wrong can be just “as bad as no relationship at all.

I think Mr. Nilsson had his finger on a central issue of real concern for all of us: From where is derived our identity as human beings?  What is the source of meaning in our lives?

Harry and most of our society conceives of these questions and their answers along the lines of external relationships—a human being’s interactions with her environment, and, most importantly, with the other human beings in that environment.  Let’s think of that environment as a plane of existence, we’ll call it the “plane of exteriority.”  Our society teaches us to find our identities and the meaning of our life by moving around upon this plane.  And on this plane of exteriority we can fix points that represent states of relationship.  We can label one point, “alone,” and another, “together,” and others that represent everything in between.

The great spiritual traditions, on the other hand, conceive of these questions and their answers very differently.  The questions of human identity and the meaning of life cannot be answered without taking into account a different plane of existence that we can call the “plane of interiority.”  On this plane we can fix a whole different set of points that relate to our inner life experience.  In these traditions, including our own Christian tradition, human beings occupy the space between these planes.

2) Mark 1: 35-37

In St. Mark’s Gospel we just heard, “In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”  Jesus withdraws from the plane of exteriority and settles himself deep within his inner life, on the plane of interiority.

But what happens to those he left back on the exterior? “And Simon and his companions hunted for him.  When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’”  I can almost hear Simon singing . . .

“It’s just no good anymore since you went away . . .”

And so what does Simon do but insist that Jesus engages with them the plane of exteriority where “everyone” lives.  It’s as though he is oblivious to the larger Reality according to which Jesus conceives of his life.  He’s completely unaware that a plane of interiority even exists, it seems.  Yet, in Jesus’ Reality, the inner experience gives meaning to the outer experience.  One could say that Jesus brings the power of his inner life to bear on all his dealings upon the plane of exteriority.

3) What is interiority?

What is this interiority, this inner experience?  What does it look like?  What is its nature?

Is it a personality disposition?  Is it to be introverted?  No, an introverted personality is simply a predilection, a preference, to spend time near this point on the plane of exteriority that we named “alone.”

So what is interiority?

This week was a rich week on the liturgical calendar.  On February 1^st we celebrated the Feast of St. Brigid of Kildare, one of the patron saints of our community.  She is known as the patron saint of many, many things from babies to chicken farmers to dairymaids to blacksmiths to printing presses, but central to her identity among the Irish and throughout history is that she is the keeper of the perpetual flame, the keeper of the hearth.  We all understand the symbolic significance of the hearth, even here in Arizona.  The hearth represents the center of the home, the seat of intimacy and warmth, of belonging.  It doesn’t get more iconic—a family sitting around the fireplace reading, mother knitting a sweater, the cat chasing the ball of yarn, etc.

In the language of interiority, the flame that Brigid tends is the fire of the Divine Presence that burns in each soul—in the hearth of one’s true home, deep within.  The inner hearth is the place where we are fully and truly at home with God and God is truly at home with us.

This week we also celebrated the Feast of the Presentation, which is when Mary and Joseph brought the newborn Jesus to the temple and they encounter an old, mystic seer named Simeon. 

From the Gospel of St. Luke we read, “Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him.  It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.  Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying . . .” and he goes on to say what has become one of the primary canticles of the Church, the Nunc dimittis.

We see here a portrait of a man who lived deep within on the plane of interiority.  Simeon communicated with God; he was guided and directed by the Holy Spirit in all his dealings upon the plane of exteriority.

Interiority, it seems to me, is an art; it is a capacity to be cultivated.  It is learning to find your chair by the hearth.   It is learning how to sit there long enough to be warmed by the fire of the Divine indwelling.  It is learning to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit and to be guided onto and along the plane of the exterior.  In short, interiority is intimacy with God.  As St. Augustine of Hippo said, “God is more intimate to me that I am to myself.” 

4) Why interiority?

The question before us now is, why would one desire to cultivate this capacity?  Why would one want to learn the ‘art of inwardness’, as the late Irish poet and mystic John O’Donahue called it?

First of all, it is the path modeled by Jesus for us as Christians, as we see in today’s gospel.  That path is one that engages the exterior plane in light of the interior—to bring the experience of our inner life to bear on all our relationships and all our dealings upon the plane of exteriority.

Secondly, it is by learning this art of inwardness that we are enabled to relate to others in a healthy manner—in a way that transcends our personal programs and agendas.  This art teaches us to engage all in light of our deep awareness of God’s love and our true belonging as a member of God’s family seated around the hearth.  When we bring that awareness with us onto the plane of exteriority we are freed from the need to grasp for our identity by finding some “us” that can be in opposition to some “them.”  And we free others from our need to feel affirmed and approved of and safe because we find the source of our identity and the meaning of our life is on a different plane.

Thirdly, to cultivate interiority is the process of transducing God’s own work into our own work and our own work God’s own work.  It is to convert God’s words into our words and our words into God’s words.  It is to make God’s own breath our breath and to make our breath God’s own breath.  It is the process of becoming fully alive, fully human.

5) How to cultivate interiority

John O’Donahue said that “there is an evacuation of interiority going on in our times,” and that we are in need of “a pedagogy of interiority.”  I am far from being a master of the inner life, but I will humbly offer what I understand to be some rudiments of such a pedagogy as modeled by the masters of interiority we’ve looked at today: Jesus, Brigid, and Simeon.

A first rudiment is solitude.  “In the morning, while it was still very dark, [Jesus] got up and went out to a deserted place . . .”

A second rudiment is silence—silence of mind and thought.  Simple as it sounds, it is not simple at all as anyone who has sat amidst the chatter of the monkey mind can attest.

And a third rudiment is waiting—waiting, like Simeon, for the whisper of the Spirit, for the hope to be revealed.  Waiting, like Brigid, by the fire that was tended and kept for lifetimes on end in Kildare.

Solitude. Silence. Waiting.

After some time, when you’ve become acclimated to the plane of interiority by engaging in these rudiments, you might find that Harry Nilsson’s tune is in need of some substantial revisions, because, as it turns out, one is not lonely in the least.

Amen.

Life Above Water: Living in the Gospel of God

Sermon for St. Brigid's Community 1.19.12


Mark 1: 14-20

This week we celebrated, as a nation, the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Dr. King found himself in a long line of prophets who held up the assumptions of the status quo for all to see and turned them on their heads to show them for the falsehoods they are.  He then called us to live according to what is true instead of according to those falsehoods.

This week we also celebrated, as a church, the Confession of St. Peter, which commemorates his declaration that Jesus is the Messiah.  St. Peter would later, much like Dr. King, find himself prophetically addressing vast crowds with a call to reject their false assumptions and live in the light of the truth he declared at his celebrated confession.

In today’s reading, when Jesus first stepped into the public sphere in the wake of John the Baptist’s arrest proclaiming the “gospel” of God, he holds up, in the prophetic tradition, the assumptions surrounding the great power of his time.  You see, a “gospel” or “good news”—“evangelion” in Greek—was something told about Caesar Augustus, who was the “savior of the world.”  It was he who instituted, through war and occupation, the Pax Romana, the reality in which everyone in Jesus’ audience lived and moved.  “Gospels” were about Caesar, and everyone knew it.

So when Jesus said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the gospel,” people would have heard something like, “Caesar’s gospel is false, it is not “good news.”  From now on it is the story of how God saves the world and how God brings peace that can be the operative Reality of your lives.  Utterly re-orient yourself to live in God’s story, no longer in Caesar’s. 

So what is Caesar’s gospel?  It is a story of power in which power is held in an iron fist and lorded over those with no power.  It is a story in which opposition is crushed and brought into submission by force.  It is a story in which peace is achieved through fear of punishment.  It is a story of “us” vs. “them”, of citizens vs. slaves and barbarians.  It is a story of self-interest at all costs.  This is the gospel of Caesar.

And what is God’s gospel?  It is a story in which power is held in a hand that liberates and heals the powerless.  It is a story in which opposition is met without resistance.  It is a story in which peace is a state of being that arises from inner freedom.  It is a story in which all bear the image of God.  It is a story of kenosis— of self-emptying, of a willingness to suffer death rather than inflict it.  This is the gospel of God, the gospel Jesus proclaimed.

St. Peter confessed Jesus to be the Messiah near the end of the synoptic accounts, after spending years with Jesus who inhabited and embodied this gospel.  The Messiah, the Christ, literally means, “the anointed one.”  It is, first and foremost, a kingly title, and, as such, it is conceived of by most, including Peter, in terms of worldly power—according to some version of the gospel of Caesar.  But Jesus embodied this title in the radically alternative vision that is the gospel of God.  He would not sit comfortably in a palace, but walk among the poor and the outcast.  He would not gather an army to overcome his enemies, but would bear in his own person the effects of their hatred.  Among the final words on his lips would be words of forgiveness rather than curse.

What does it take to make a person like this?  How does one come to live in God’s gospel when our inner and outer landscapes seem submerged beneath Caesar’s gospel?  It’s as though we are made for one habitat and find ourselves stuck in another.  Like we are trapped underwater and can’t get out into the air and onto the land.  We live like fish when, really, we are women and men.  It is as though we need someone to fish for us—to catch us in some net that pulls us up out of anger and conflict into forgiveness and peace, up out of power that serves only self-interest into power that serves to free and empower others, up out of the need to identify and rail against one’s enemies into the ability to perceive the very image of God in each face. 

Dr. King was caught in a net that pulled him up out of the gospel of Caesar into the gospel of God.  That net is called Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.  It is where he learned to fill his lungs with air rather than water and breathe out words of nonviolence.  It’s where he learned to use his feet to march in peace on land rather than to swim in the waters of hatred. 

What net are you caught in?  What pulls you up out of the socio-political assumptions, out of the mainstream cultural and religious stories that make up your watery habitat?

I have found myself caught in a net woven from Benedictine, Catholic, and Anglican spiritualities here in this time and place, in this community.  It’s a slow ride to the surface of the water.  Sometimes the undercurrent is strong.  Sometimes the net gets snagged on a branch.  Sometimes I thrash and struggle against the pull.  But by the grace of God and faithfulness of fishermen like my father Benedict, like Sr. Joan Chittister, like my spiritual director, Fr. Bob Rossi, like Gil, my priest and mentor, I am moving steadily upward toward the air, toward the light, toward the revolution that is the gospel of God.

I ask once more, what net are you caught in?

Amen.