May 3

The Rule of St. Benedict: Prologue pt. 2

Let us open our eyes to the deifying light,

let us hear with attentive ears the warning which the divine voice cries daily to us,

"Today if you hear His voice, harden not your hearts."

Our Father Benedict seeks here to inspire in us a disposition of urgent attention so that we may perceive our true selves, deified in God's own light.  This urgency is set against our own lethargy and tendency to harden our hearts to the light and voice of God.  It is set against procrastination and ambivalence--the thought that we can fulfill our calling without giving our all.

St. Benedict strikes this tone at the outset of the Rule because one's disposition at the beginning of a journey sets one's course.  As we begin again, let us do so with earnest, eager, urgent attention to what the Spirit is saying in the actual circumstances of our real lives, the circumstances where God is waiting to be revealed.

Br. Chad

May 2

Feast of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria

The Rule of St. Benedict: Prologue pt. 1

Listen carefully, my child,

to your master’s precepts,

and incline the ear of your heart.

Receive willingly and carry out effectively

your loving father's advice,


that by the labor of obedience


you may return to God
 

from whom you had departed by the sloth of disobedience.

Thus begins the Rule of St. Benedict, one of the most influential documents in the history of Western Civilization.  These words have been read aloud in countless languages, in empires long passed and in nations young and old, among humble wood and towering stone, for fifteen centuries.

To you, therefore, my words are now addressed,


whoever you may be,


who are renouncing your own will


to do battle under the Lord Christ, the true King,


and are taking up the strong, bright weapons of obedience.

Imagine yourself, somewhere along that winding trail of history, hearing as one that has come from the fields as a peasant, or as a noble from the manor on a hill, to the gate of a Benedictine monastery.  You’ve been given food and lodging in the guest quarters, and you’ve been received among the novices where you have studied, eaten, slept, and been instructed for several weeks.  When the time arrives that you have shown yourself ready, you are brought into a common room, you sit down, and the Rule is read aloud to you by your Novice Master.  There is no doubt that it is “you” to whom St. Benedict’s “words are now addressed.” 

What might you have heard that first time?  What would have captured your imagination or cut you to the quick?  What would have scared you?  What would have offered comfort?

As you sit in that room, you hear that your first priority along the Benedictine way is to develop the capacity to listen with the ear of your heart to the Voice of God in your every given circumstance.  Your second priority is to learn to obey that Voice rather than your own.  

You hear that this capacity is to be developed and obedience is to be learned through receiving the loving advice of your Holy Father Benedict.  This advice calls you into an ordered life that holds a gentle balance between prayer, work, and study that will slowly and persistently shape you into a new person, a fully realized being who dwells in the very Presence of God.

Br. Chad

May 1

Feast of Sts. Philip and James, Apostles

The Rule of St. Benedict: Chapter 73

Here at the conclusion of his Rule, St. Benedict models remarkable humility with regard to his own work.  From his example we can learn to hold gently the good that comes from our lives, recognizing that it is by God's love and grace that we have been brought to the place we inhabit.

This final chapter is a helpful reminder that means to do not equal ends, and that it is the end, the goal, the telos of our life that matters.  We are formed by our Benedictine practices to find our true self at home with God, and to find God at home in our lives.  We are all beginners, and we will always need to begin again.

Let us adopt our Father Benedict's humility, then.  Let us seek to learn from other masters of the spiritual life and welcome the company of those on parallel journeys of spiritual formation.  We do not own the pathway along which we hasten "to the heavenly homeland."  St. Benedict would have us, here at the end, to open ourselves to whatever comes next.  We are not to be proud of our identity and closed off to all that is not Benedictine.  Built into our Benedictine spirituality is an understanding that it is not the be all and end all of human striving toward God.  It is but one means to the end, but one for which we can be deeply grateful.

Br. Chad

April 30

The Rule of St. Benedict: Chapter 72

I read a book a while back that I've talked about often called Wisdom of the Benedictine Elders.  In it are profiles of and interviews with the oldest living Benedictines in the United States.  One of the questions put to each elder was "What is your favorite chapter in the Rule of Benedict?"  More than any other chapter, Chapter 72, On the Good Zeal Which They Ought to Have, was said to be the favorite.

I find much resonance within this chapter as a lifelong church goer and as a vowed member of a religious community.  The first sentence rings true as a statement about every community I've ever spent time in.  There is something tangible about the zeal of a group, and the difference between evil and good zeal is as apparent as the difference between a touch of blessing and a slap in the face.  The evil zeal is bitterness, and it separates from God.  If our life's journey was represented on a map, the zeal of bitterness would point us in the direction opposite of where God is at home.  The good zeal consists of mutual honor, patience, and charity and points us precisely in the direction of God's household and our true home.

The source of these two zeals is found in the depths of our inner life, at the intersection of our emotions, desires, and will.  Good zeal must be cultivated and grown within by our clear intentions, consistent effort, and by Divine Grace.  Good zeal is a purse that will not wear out, our treasure stored up in heaven.  Evil zeal is a storehouse in which the possessions of our false self slowly disintegrate, eaten by rust and moth (Luke 12: 33,34).  We embody one zeal or the other in our lives and in our communities, and those with ears to hear, eyes to see, and hearts to feel will perceive it clearly.

Br. Chad

April 29

Feast of St. Catherine of Siena

The Rule of St. Benedict: Chapter 71

In Gethsemane we witness Jesus fully owning his emotions and desires, bringing them before his Abba whom he trusts, and fully releasing them with the words, "yet, not what I want, but what you want."

Our Father Benedict teaches us in this chapter that the road of obedience brings us to God, and I perceive that the road of obedience Jesus walked in Gethsemane is the same road we all must walk among our own emotions and desires.  It is a road from total ownership to complete release.

Benedictine obedience comes down the point at which we, in the thick of our emotions and desires submit to another.  It is a painfully difficult practice.  It requires the laying down of whatever story I tell myself that justifies my self-interested feelings and behavior.  And at no time are my self-interested feelings more intense than when I am in conflict.  Yet it is precisely at this point that our Father Benedict instructs us to face the matter head on, putting aside excuses or blame.  He would have us to own and release our feelings of self-interest.

The next time you find yourself being offended, imagine extending a blessing rather than a rebuttal or a curse.  Seek the place within yourself from which you can own your feelings, release them to God, and genuinely offer a blessing to the one who has offended you.  And the next time you find yourself having given offense, imagine setting aside explanations and asking for unqualified forgiveness.  Seek the place within yourself that you do not need to defend, that is safe enough with God that you are able to be wrong.  This is the inner freedom that St. Benedict seeks to cultivate within us.

Br. Chad

April 28

Feast of St. Mark the Evangelist (transferred)

The Rule of St. Benedict: Chapter 72

I have often found it easy to set myself up as judge and executer.  From my perspective trapped behind my two small eyes, I succumb to the temptation to act as though I see the world as it is, unadorned and objective.  My angry reactions are then justified as acts of defense in the service of Truth and Justice.  Our Father Benedict seeks to uproot this disposition here in Chapter 70.  Sr. Joan comments,

Benedictine spirituality depended on personal commitment and community support, not on intimidation and brutality.  Benedict makes it clear that the desire for good is no excuse for the exercise of evil on its behalf. . . . To become what we hate--as mean as the killers, as obsessed as the haters--is neither the goal nor the greatness of the spiritual life.

As Benedictines, let us consider carefully the posture we assume toward each other, with those we encounter in our daily lives, and with our ideological adversaries.  As much as it might appear at times to be the case, we have not been set up as vigilantes for God's own Truth.

Br. Chad

Faithfulness

Sermon given on the Second Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2014 
St. Augustine's Episcopal Parish, Tempe, Arizona 
Br. Chad-Joseph, OSBCn

Faithfulness

Can I just say that I’ve had a heck of a couple weeks?  I’m a full-time student in a Master of Divinity program at a Christian institution that doesn’t take a break for Holy Week.  So in between the four extra services of Holy Week for which I had significant responsibilities, I was busy reading, writing about, and discussing process theology, mission and evangelism, and Sufi mysticism . . . not to mention that the week ended with THE BIGGEST single service of the year that requires significantly more work to pull off than a typical Sunday.  By the end of the Easter Day Mass I hardly had a voice, and I wanted, after breaking my Lenten fast with a couple good beers, to crawl into my nice warm bed and sleep for two days.  But then came LAST week, which entailed a whirlwind trip to Denver for school on Wednesday and Thursday, making Monday and Tuesday anything but restful as I completed mid-term projects and tried to get a leg up on preparing for today.  Oh, and did I say I have a young family and my wife works full-time? And hey, look, Fr. Gil’s gone, and I’m preaching today!

Sometimes it’s really hard to be a white, middle class, straight, American male, I’ve gotta say.  Life can really take its toll.  Yeah, I’m never truly hungry, and I don’t fear for my bodily safety or fear discrimination or that I won’t have a place for my family to sleep tonight, but sometimes I don’t have time to relax in front of my favorite episodes.  Yeah, I don’t actually work 80+ hours per week cleaning houses during the day and office buildings at night so that I can send most of my earnings to my family in Guatemala, but I haven’t had a proper vacation since last June, and I’m itching to see the beach or hike in the mountains.

The Gospel reading for today features the story of “doubting Thomas,” the apostle whom John the Evangelist throws under the bus while building his case against those who require proof in order to believe in the Resurrection. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe,” declares Jesus at the end of a quite dramatic exchange between himself and the no-longer-doubting Thomas.  I think poor Thomas gets a bad rap, however, not because I find skepticism virtuous or laudable in and of itself, but because he’s no worse than the rest of the male apostles, at least according to Luke’s Gospel.  After Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James returned from the tomb where they had encountered the two men in dazzling clothes and told the remaining eleven male apostles that Jesus had risen, Luke writes about the eleven that “these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”  Yeah, it’s doubting Thomas, right, John?  Nice try.

Most of the preaching I’ve heard about today’s Gospel follows the line of St. John’s thought about the nature of faith, about the role of doubt, and about the place of belief even when we haven’t seen for ourselves the marks of the nails on the risen body of Jesus.  Some say we should be the blessed ones who have come to believe even though we have not seen.  Some say that mature faith embraces doubt rather than forbidding it.  This line of thinking is important, and there is much to be learned from the contrast between seeing and not seeing in matters of belief.  But by considering these issues only from the perspective of the male apostles, regarding only their choices and their actions, it seems to me that our view of the human experience is distorted by the same lens of privilege through which I just presented my experience of being overwhelmed over the last couple weeks.  While looking through that lens, I fail to see the untiring network of relational support that makes my life possible, and, in my case, it is a network of brilliant, kind, generous, faithful women.  I would like for us to attempt to move out from behind that lens this morning.  So, let’s back up a little in the Gospel narrative and ask the question of belief from a different angle.  The question I would like to consider is this:

What does faithfulness look like when you have nothing left to believe in?

To find an answer to this question, we can’t look to any of the men in the story.  According to our Gospel today, when they thought all hope was lost in the wake of Jesus’ execution, they locked themselves behind strong doors for fear of the authorities.  But one detail on which all four of the canonical Gospels agree in their accounts of the Resurrection, and there are not many details on which they all agree, is that the women did not do the same.  Listen to the account found in the Gospel of Mark.

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’

I ask again, what does faithfulness look like when you have nothing left to believe in?  It looks like Mary Magdalene.  It looks like Mary the mother of James.  It looks like the other women, Salome, Joanna, and those left unnamed who didn’t cower behind a locked door, but who spent their money on spices and awoke early to prepare the body of a failed Messiah for a proper Jewish burial . . . a failed Messiah whose crucifixion two days earlier shattered their every hope for the future . . . a failed Messiah whose death indicated that the beliefs he had nurtured within them about themselves, about each other, about the world, about God were wrong.  And yet still they faithfully observed the Sabbath, they purchased expensive spices, and, as the sun came up on the third day, they walked towards what they thought was a dead body on the other side of an immovable stone.  St. Mark continues:

When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, “Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified.  He has been raised; he is not here.  Look, there is the place they laid him.

This is what faithfulness looks like.  This is the place where the very power of the living God to re-create and to transform intersects with the human experience.  We can talk about the eleven and about Thomas and about how they encountered Jesus or the news about Jesus and how they believed or didn’t believe, just like I can talk about my crazy couple weeks and how hard it is to be me right now and all that it’s teaching me about patience and endurance.  But if we want to see the places where God shows up in true brilliance and surprise, we need to remove the lens that privileges the perspective of men and look to the margins where faithfulness endures in the face of heartache and brokenness and exhaustion and hope-shattering failure.

That’s where the real apostles live. 

That’s the place where the first “Alleluia” enters the world.

Amen.