Jesus returned to Nazareth, the town where he had been brought up. And on the Sabbath day, he went to the synagogue, as was his custom. On this particular day, he was appointed to read, and the passage for the day came from Isaiah — the same passage we heard, just a few minutes ago.
Jesus unrolled the scroll, and found the place where the following words were written:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:18-19)
He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.
But every eye in the synagogue was fixed on him. By this time, Jesus already had at least a regional reputation as a teacher, a healer, a prophet. So even there in his home town, folks wanted to know what was on his mind. And so he said words that would lead ultimately to the crowd rejecting him.
“Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:21)
At first they all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. But it went downhill from there.
So for us who follow Jesus, almost two thousand years after that ordinary sabbath day in Nazareth, what are we to make of this passage, when again it is read in our midst? We are not scandalized at what Jesus had to say. We affirm that in Him these words have been fulfilled.
But we also know the whole story. We know that Jesus does not just claim the anointing of God’s spirit for himself. We know that, later in his earthly ministry, he will breathe on his friends and give them the Holy Spirit. We know that he will make this promise to his followers:
I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you… The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. (John 14:16-17, 26-27)
What is Jesus saying? Simply this: the Spirit of the Lord is not just on Jesus. The Spirit of the Lord is given to us all.
He has anointed us to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent us to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
This is true of all the Baptized; indeed, I believe you can make the argument that this calling: to receive the anointing of the Holy Spirit — is meant for everybody. But this evening I want to focus on your community: the Worker Sisters and Brothers, your Companions, and Friends: for all of you, knit together in this consecrated community, are united in your devotion to the Holy Spirit — to the one who has brought you together, empowered you for mission and ministry, and who tonight calls two new Companions and four new Workers to join the dance.
One of my favorite musicians is Arlo Guthrie, son of the legendary folksinger Woody Guthrie. There’s a monologue on one of his live albums where Arlo makes an interesting comment: he says, “You can’t have a light without a dark to stick it in.” In saying this, he reminds us that even darkness has its place in the order of things. And for Christians, this is a subtle invitation to resist the urge to judge some parts of our lives as “good” and others as “bad.”
With this in mind, I’d like to paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, and make this observation: at least here on earth, at least on this side of eternity, you can’t have a Spirit without a Body to stick it in. Just as Christ needed the body that emerged from Mary’s womb in order to make his incarnation manifest, so the Holy Spirit needs the Body of Christ, in a collective sense, but also each of us, as individual members of that Body, in order to make a difference in our world.
Once again, this is true for all of us, but how especially true for your community of brothers and sisters, workers and companions, who seek to bring the love and joy and peace and all the fruit of the Holy Spirit to our world that so desperately needs it. The great mystic and saint, Teresa of Ávila, once said,
Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours, yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the earth, yours are the feet by which He is to go about doing good and yours are the hands by which He is to bless us now.
And if you are getting confused by whether we are called to embody Christ, or the Holy Spirit, the answer is “YES.”
When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I was like many of my peers attracted to the adventure and the excitement of what was then called the charismatic renewal. The gospel passage which we have just heard — “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” — was often cited to proclaim that a life filled with the Holy Spirit is only a request away. Forty years have gone by, and I still believe that God’s generosity is far greater than our willingness to ask for what we need, or for what we secretly believe we don’t deserve.
I’ve heard it said that angels surround us all, but they are so respectful of our autonomy that they will not step in to intervene in our lives — unless we ask them to. And so it is with the blessing of the Holy Spirit. God eagerly waits to transform our lives, but will not do so without not only our consent, but our desire.
Of course, there was a downside to my youthful engagement with the charismatic movement. Unfortunately, I was more attracted to the gifts of the Holy Spirit then to the Holy Spirit herself. Perhaps that was just the folly of youth — and perhaps it is not that uncommon of a mistake that young spiritual seekers make. After all, Saint Francis de Sales once remarked, “There is a great difference between being occupied with God, who gives us the contentment, and being busied with the contentment which Gods give us.”
So as we reflect on how the Spirit continues to call us into a deeper sense of our call as members of the Body of Christ, maybe this is a warning worth keeping in mind. Do not seek the lower gifts, as Paul warned us. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit leads us into all truth, and may we both as individuals and as a community of faith grow to recognize that the greatest gift that is there for the asking is not a manifestation of the Spirit but rather simply the Spirit present and our life in transforming and enlivening ways.
Which means, of course, that sometimes the Holy Spirit will act in our lives without our conscious awareness of the fact. After all Isaiah reminds us that God is a God who hides — so sometimes we experience God precisely by experiencing mystery, unknowing, the dark night of the soul. “You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it,” as Thomas Merton ruefully put it.
But this is not a cause for concern. On the contrary, it is a cause for profound joy. We know that the Holy Spirit has been given to us, regardless of how happy or joyful we may feel — or not. God is present even on the bad days. This is a message we hear in today’s Psalm:
Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast. (Psalm 139:7-10)
We have been given the Holy Spirit, and on our best days we will be breathless with wonder and joy, as we recognize the subtle hints of how the Spirit works in our lives. But the Spirit is present all the other days of our lives as well. And with this great gift there comes a great responsibility.
It is up to us how we choose to conduct the affairs of our life, and whether or not we shall live in a manner worthy of the gift we have been given. And what does this entail? In one word: Love. For God is love; Christ is love; the Holy Spirit is love. When we love, we say “Yes” to God. When we love, we praise the One who has fearfully and wonderfully made us. When we love, we manifest the Spirit for the common good.
Congratulations to the six of you about to take an important step in your lifelong adventure of responding to the Love of God. May your association with this community bring your heart ever closer to that grace which will give you “a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit,” so that you may “be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.” (Isaiah 61:3)
Amen.
Carl McColman with Sr. LaVerne Peter, WSHS, spiritual director of the Worker Sisters & Brothers of the Holy Spirit
N.B. The above homily was delivered on Friday, May 13, 2016 at the annual retreat for the Worker Sisters and Brothers of the Holy Spirit, an Episcopal/ecumenical religious order. At this Eucharist, several new “Companions” and “Workers” were admitted into the community. Here are the lessons for this homily: Isaiah 61:1-3 1 Corinthians 12-4-14 Psalm 139:1-17 Luke 11:9-13
“Christ in the House of Martha and Mary” by Diego Velázquez (1618)
A sermon preached at First Baptist Church, Springfield, Ohio, on October 26, 2014
Scripture: Luke 10:38-42
When I was a little boy, my brother took me to the theater to see my first movie. It was called The Parent Trap. While younger members of the congregation may remember the 1998 version starring Lindsey Lohan, those of you who are about my age will, no doubt, agree with me that there really is only one version of this film, the 1961 version, which was originally billed as “starring Hayley Mills … and Hayley Mills!” The young British actress, decades before CGI or other modern special effects, dazzled and amused audiences around the world by playing identical twin sisters, who were separated at birth, only to suddenly bump into each other as teenagers one summer at camp. The first half hour of the film derives much of its comedy from the rivalry that erupts between Susan and Sharon, two girls who look identical, who immediately take a profound dislike for each other when they attend the same summer camp. Pranks pulled on each other escalate until an entire Saturday night dance is ruined as the girls fight.
But then something interesting happens: to discipline the girls, they are required to spend the rest of their time at camp — with each other. The camp counselor says, “Either you’ll find a way to live with each other or you’ll punish yourselves far better than I ever could.” Shortly thereafter, Susan and Sharon figure out that they are in fact sisters, separated at birth, and the rest of the movie follows their exploits as they work together to help their estranged mother and father to reconcile.
Now, I know that not all sisters — or for that matter, all brothers — can find the kind of storybook happy ending that is the trademark of a Walt Disney film. Still, the charm and the humor of a story like The Parent Trap is built on a rather universal human principle that, thankfully, is true at least much of the time: that two sisters, or for that matter two siblings of any gender, are liable to fight like cats and dogs — after all, we have a term for it: “sibling rivalry” — but underneath the squabbles and the bickering, they’re family, and at the end of the day, they love each other.
Mary and Martha of Bethany are two of more colorful “minor characters” in the Gospel story. They were sisters, and we know from the Gospel of John they had a brother named Lazarus. There has been a lot of confusion over Mary in particular. In the middle ages, Mary of Bethany was frequently confused with Mary Magdalene, although in modern times most scholars believe they are two separate figures. We know nothing about their family, if any of them were married or had children. One legend suggests that Mary and Martha were women of means, and in fact provided financial support for Jesus’s ministry. But this of course is mere legend and speculation. All we know for certain is what we see in the Bible. And the story of the sisters that we find in the tenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel has been one of the most commented upon stories in the entire Gospel.
When Jesus comes to Bethany, he arrives at Martha’s home. We do not know if Mary lived with Martha or not, the evangelist does not say. We do know that while Martha busies herself with “her many tasks,” — presumably related to hospitality for her guests — her sister sits does at the Lord’s feet and listens to what he is saying. We can assume that this is probably not a private audience, that Jesus is teaching his disciples. Mary has broken the rules of society, choosing to sit with the boys while leaving her poor sister to do all the work in the kitchen.
Needless to say, Martha gets annoyed. We might speculate that this is not the first time that Mary has opted to leave the chores to her sister, because as best we can tell, Martha does not confront Mary; no, she goes straight to Jesus. You can almost imagine what is going through Martha’s head as she marches up to the Lord. “She won’t listen to me, but maybe she will listen to him.”
In making her appeal to Jesus, Martha is not above some old fashioned guilt tripping. “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” Unfortunately for Martha, Jesus is smart enough not to get in the middle of this family squabble, so he deftly sets a boundary of his own. “Martha, Martha!” he says, repeating her name twice, presumably because he didn’t get her attention the first time. And then he simply acknowledges her. “You are worried and distracted by many things.” Three different Greek words are used to describe Martha’s state in this brief story:
περισπάω — perispao,
μεριμνάω — merimnao, and
θορυβάζω — thorybazo.
Each of these words carries the connotation of anxious, troubled, worried, upset, distracted. In fact, English translations like the New Revised Standard Version render both merimnao and thorybazo as “distracted.” Martha seems to be a very distracted person.
In acknowledging that Martha is upset, Jesus surprises her because he defends her sister. “There is need of only one thing,” he muses. “Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” In other words, Jesus is saying, “Martha, what really matters here? Mary has made a good choice, so don’t ask me to take it away from her.” We could possibly read this passage as Jesus putting Martha down, since she did not choose the “one thing necessary” or the “better part.” But I think Jesus is not criticizing the work she is doing, but the manner in which she is doing it. It is her distraction that he pushes against. If Jesus were here today, speaking in our contemporary colloquial language, I can imagine him saying, “Martha, CHILL!”
As I said a few minutes ago, this is a passage that has often been commented on, over the ages. In recent years it has been seen as a type of feminist parable, in which Jesus encourages Martha to step out of prescribed gender roles like her sister has spontaneously done. But in the past, Mary and Martha were understood not in terms of gender, but as metaphors for ways in which Christians respond to the Gospel in our lives.
In the fourteenth century, an anonymous book was written called The Cloud of Unknowing. It is a manual on prayer and meditation — on how Christians can learn to grow closer to God through a sustained daily discipline of meditative prayer. The classic word for this kind of prayer is contemplation. In fact, in the middle ages, when The Cloud of Unknowing was written, Christians who wanted to devote their lives to prayer and meditation often would become nuns or monks, so that the way of life found in monasteries or convents became known as “the contemplative life.” By contrast, the life of Christians who got married or otherwise lived out their faith outside of the walls of a monastery were said to live an “active life.” By the fourteenth century, this idea of an active or contemplative approach to discipleship had become a commonly understood distinction within the life of the church.
The author of The Cloud of Unknowing takes the story of Mary and Martha of Bethany and applies it to this way of understanding the faith. Martha, busy with her many tasks, symbolizes an active expression of discipleship. Mary, listening quietly as she sits at the feet of the master, represents the contemplative approach to faith.
The Cloud of Unknowing points out that it is Martha who complains about Mary, and not the other way around. Perhaps not much has changed since the fourteenth century! Activists, people who work hard to build the kingdom of God, indeed doing very good and holy work, might find it easy to criticize those who orient their lives toward a more receptive mode of spirituality. The great poet John Milton declared “They also serve who only stand and wait” — but perhaps the reason he had to put that in writing is because ours is a society that isn’t so sure about such things as meditation or contemplation or prayer. We dismiss such activities as “introspection” or “navel gazing.” A pastor of a large church in Atlanta once told me “I’m more of a practical person than a spiritual person.” I was stunned that he thought there was a difference. But apparently, that is a common idea in our society.
But the story of Mary and Martha is hardly the only case where Jesus challenges the conventional norms of society. He sleeps on a boat in the midst of a storm and takes time to pray even when he is at risk of being arrested. In fact, when we read the Gospel and pay attention, we notice that Jesus withdraws to pray again and again — usually by himself, sometimes with only two or three of his closest disciples present. No one could accuse Jesus of not having an active ministry, Jesus, who healed the sick, cured the lame, raised the dead, and cast out demons. But his ministry of service and healing was fueled by regular, solitary, and dare I say silent prayer.
Few of us are as balanced as Jesus. I dare say that if we went around the room and spoke to everyone we would find that some of us are natural Mary’s, and others are natural Martha’s. Some of us love to get in the thick of where the action is, working hard to get things done, solve problems, fix what’s broken, and right what’s wrong. At home the Marthas are the ones who are handy with tools; at work, they’re the ones you go to, to get things done. At church, you’ll find the Marthas on every committee and busy at every workday. Thank God for all the Marthas in the world, or nothing would ever, ever get done.
Meanwhile, where are the Mary’s? Now Martha might be quick to point out that Mary always seems to disappear whenever there’s work to be done. But perhaps things are not quite that simple. If you looked for her, you would find that Mary is busy praying. When there is a conflict, Mary is trying to understand all sides of the equation so that she can more wisely discern what needs to be done. When a situation seems mired down, Mary is the one least likely to try to push for a quick solution; rather she wants to take the time to make sure that a complicated process is done right the first time. Perhaps most important of all, Mary is patient — you’ll find her with a handicapped child, or a grandmother lost in the confusion of dementia. Mary understands that sometimes, you just can’t solve a problem, but you can help to make it a little bit better. And Mary understands these things because she is a woman who prays.
We run the risk when we read the story of Mary and Martha, of thinking that Jesus is taking sides here. When he says that Mary has chosen the better part, isn’t that a slap in Martha’s face? Isn’t that a way of saying that Martha’s choice is second rate, or second best? But I really don’t think that’s what Jesus was saying at all. And once again, we can turn to that medieval manual of prayer, The Cloud of Unknowing, to understand the real secret of this Gospel story.
“In this part, contemplative life and active life are linked together in spiritual kinship and made sisters, on the model of Martha and Mary,” notes The Cloud. “An active may come this high into contemplation and no higher, except very rarely and by special grace. A contemplative may come this low towards active life and no lower, except very rarely and in great necessity.” Now, I don’t think it makes sense to say that the contemplative life is higher than the active life. But scholars are pretty sure that the author of The Cloud of Unknowing was a contemplative, so naturally he was a bit biased! But we can put Mary and Martha side by side and the analogy works just as well. Mary and Martha are sisters. Like the twins in “The Parent Trap,” they are not above bickering and squabbling. But at the end of the day, they love each other — and that’s just how Jesus wants it.
Like I said, every one of us is a natural Mary or a natural Martha. So if you are a Martha where do you find your “Mary” — and vice versa? I think the answer lies within. Every one of us is naturally right-handed or naturally left-handed, but by the grace of God almost all of us have two hands to use, and sometimes we need that less-dominant hand. Our spiritual lives operate the same way. The natural Mary’s of the world know that they have to do their fair share of work. And likewise, the Martha’s of the world need to make time in their busy lives to simply be still, rest in the silence, and listen for the still small voice of God.
Jesus said “Whoever receives a child in my name, receives me.” In other words, there is a certain holiness to hospitality in the life of faith. We are called to welcome the stranger, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked. We are called to be Martha’s. But we are also called to go into our room and pray in secret, to come aside for a while, to be still and know that God is God. In short, we are called to offer hospitality, in our hearts, to both sisters — to both the Mary and the Martha dimension of the spiritual life. If you’re a natural Mary, offering hospitality to Martha means making more of an effort to pitch in and help whenever there’s work to do. But if you’re a natural Martha, offering hospitality to Mary means taking the time to slow down, relax, let go of all your distractions and troubles and anxieties, and find that quiet place where you can listen to the stirrings in your heart and the whispers of the wind. With every breath, with every heartbeat, we can relax deeper into the presence of God, where we do not have to achieve anything, prove anything, or get anything done. We are simply called to be.
There is a verse in the Psalms — Psalm 65:1 to be exact — that historically has often been mistranslated. But several new versions of the English Bible, including The Message and the Common English Bible, get it right. If you translate the Hebrew word for word into English, the verse says, “To you, silence is praise, O God in Zion.” To you, silence is praise. What a challenging verse, especially for a society — and a religion! — as noisy as ours! After all, Christianity is a rather talkative religion — look at what I’m doing right now — and when we aren’t talking, we’re busy singing. We are a chatty bunch. And the One whom we call “the Word of God” understands and loves our words of praise. But Psalm 65 reminds us that sometimes, the best way to praise God is to SHUT UP and listen. Silence is praise! I think the reason this verse has often been mistranslated is because a lot of Bible scholars are more like Martha than Mary. But we can go back to the original Hebrew, and like Mary, we can sit at the feet of the Lord and we can be silent, and listen. This is the heart of contemplative prayer. It is a beautiful and loving way to worship God. It has been part of Christian history ever since Jesus spent forty days in the desert — we can rest assured he wasn’t talking to the Devil the entire time! — and it is available to us today.
Martha is wonderful, and we know Jesus loved her. But I am inclined to think that when Martha prays, she tells God everything that needs to get done. By contrast, when Mary prays, she listens to allow God to direct her toward what God needs to get done. I hope that every one of us, whether we are a natural Mary or a natural Martha, can find a way to pray by listening in the silence, at least for a few minutes every day. Remember, Martha and Mary are sisters. They need each other. And we need them both.
Our help is in the name of the Lord; the maker of heaven and earth. Amen.
A reflection given at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church, Artane, Dublin, Ireland, on September 28, 2014
Scripture: Ezekiel 18:25-28, Philippians 2:1-11, Matthew 21:28-32
Our Lady of Mercy Church, Artane, Dublin
It is said that actions speak louder than words. It has also been said that our choices determine who we are, or perhaps, who we shall become. Our lessons today highlight this essential spiritual principle. Ezekiel reminds us that when we blame God for our misfortune, often the real cause of our distress lies far closer to home. When we abandon justice to embrace what is evil, common sense dictates that tragedy will soon follow. But those who reject wickedness to do what is right are, in effect, choosing life over death.
Both of these scenarios imply making a significant, life-altering change — not a mere whimsical, spur-of-the-moment choice, but a carefully considered decision. Our Gospel lesson today underlines this point and perhaps even raises the stakes a little bit. Jesus tells us of a father making a request of two sons. He wants them to work in the family vineyard. I think we can assume that neither young man really wants to do his father’s will. The first son is honest about his lack of enthusiasm, although he later decides to go do the work. The other youth, by contrast, says yes to his father’s face but never follows through on the request. Jesus never tells us if the second son had good intentions about doing the work but somehow just never got around to it, or if he actually never meant to do the work at all — in other words, was he guilty of lack of follow-through, or of lying? It doesn’t really matter. Actions speak louder than words. When we say one thing and do another, at the end of the day it is our deeds that seem to matter most.
Jesus tells this story to a specific audience: the chief priests and elders, who were questioning his authority to teach. Typical of Jesus, he refuses to be intimidated by the authorities but he also replies to their challenge by recounting a few parables, of which today’s gospel is the first. When his questioners show that they get the point of the story, Jesus drives the message home by making it clear that no one — not even tax collectors and prostitutes — are beyond the reach of God’s liberating grace, if only they will choose to receive it. Actions speak louder than words. Our choices determine who we are, or perhaps, who we shall become.
Then we turn to today’s New Testament reading, one of the loveliest passages in the entirety of Sacred Scripture. Saint Paul wants his readers to be of the same mind, the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing. He calls upon the Philippians — and, by extension, all the faithful — to have the same attitude, or mind, that is ours in Christ Jesus. What does this mean, to have the mind of Christ? Paul tells us, through a lovely hymn: Jesus, though equal with God, emptied himself, humbling himself in human form even to the point of death. The fancy Greek word here is Kenosis — “emptying.” We embrace the mind of Christ in humility and self-emptying.
Since I’ve given you one Greek word this morning, I may as well give you another — Metanoia, which is rendered in English as “repentance,” a word that we often resist as being too churchy, too pious. But Metanoia, repentance, literally means simply “to change your mind” or perhaps even to go beyond your mind — the Greek prefix “meta-” means “beyond.” When we humbly empty our minds (and hearts) of all that stands in the way of love and life, we create the space for the Holy Spirit to bring healing from within. This is the essence of contemplative prayer — a prayer of radical silence, of emptying ourselves for the purpose of receiving God’s grace.
God’s love is a free gift; we cannot earn it. But we choose whether or not to receive it. When we choose the path of Jesus — the path of humility and silence, of self-emptying and trust, of choosing to do the right thing, even late in the game — when, like the Psalmist, we “wait all the day long” for God’s guidance, compassion and mercy — then we know that God’s grace and forgiveness shall determine who we are, and who we shall become.
A sermon preached at First Christian Church of Decatur, Decatur GA, on September 4, 2011
Scripture: Matthew 18:20
First Christian Church, Decatur GA
“Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
What an amazing statement for our Lord to make. He did not say, “Wherever a properly licensed minister of the Gospel shall be, I am there, ” or “Wherever an accredited Bible scholar shall teach, I am there” or anything like that. He promised his presence to Christians — to all Christians! — wherever and whenever we gather in community. Stop and think about this for a moment. We certainly have exceeded the quorum today, so take a moment, look around you at your Christian brothers and sisters who are gathered in his name. Truly, he is present. He is among us. We do not have to wait until we die to experience Jesus’s presence; we do not have to wait until the end of the age to experience Jesus’s presence, nor do we have to consecrate the bread and wine into Holy Communion in order for His real presence to manifest among us. All it takes for us to simple gather as a community in his name. And it doesn’t have to be a very big community, either. In the intimacy of two or three Christians — a family, or a small circle of friends — who gather intentionally to seek his presence, there he shall be, with the assurance that the very Gospel itself provides.
This is more than just a feel-good statement, my friends. Jesus is being profoundly counter-cultural in this proclamation, — if not for 1st Century Palestine, than most assuredly for 21st century America. For ours is not a culture of community; we are a culture defined by the Lone Ranger, the solitary cowboy in the wilderness, the pioneer making his way into a rugged landscape far from the conveniences of towns or cities. Even now, when most of us live in urban areas and would not know a real cowboy if we tripped over one, this culture — or should I say cult — of individualism still defines what it means to be an American. “I’ll do it my way,” sang Frank Sinatra some four decades ago, and just a few years later a lesser known rock group called Loverboy made it even more plain when they asserted “I gotta do it my way, or no way at all.”
Granted, Christianity honors us as individuals, and we should remember that Jesus instructed his followers to retreat into their private rooms and pray in secret. There is a dimension of intimacy in the Christian life that is reserved for each one of us, alone, with God. But we distort the message of the Gospel if we assume, therefore, that Christianity is ultimately about me, and only me, and how I manage to work things out with God. “Have you been saved?” is about as American a religious question as you can get — and what is beautiful about that question is that it calls each one of us to make a choice, a commitment, to God. But there is a shadow side to that question, and it is this: if I am a Christian simply because I am worried about my salvation, I have missed the point that Jesus comes to us most certainly when we gather, as a community, in his name.
In the fourth century, almost exactly 1700 years ago, the Roman Emperor Constantine declared by edict that Christianity would no longer be an illegal religion in the empire. Within just a few short decades, Christianity emerged from the shadows of persecution to become the dominant faith across the land. The impact that this on the faith community is, arguably, still being felt today, in both good and bad ways. But I want to point out one of the unintended consequences of Christianity becoming the preferred faith in the imperial world. For the ink was barely dry on the Edict of Milan before increasing numbers of Christians, frustrated and frightened at how social respectability was changing the faith, abandoned the cities of the empire to withdraw into the deserts of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, where they chose to live as hermits, devoting their entire lives to prayer, and penance, and hunger for holiness — and the presence of God. Today, we call these heroes and heroines of the faith the Desert Fathers and Mothers, and their writings, teachings, parables and stories have been preserved and are still told to seekers after holiness today.
But what I love the most about the Desert Fathers and Mothers is that they represent the beginning of Christian spirituality, as we have come to know it. In the teachings of the Desert Fathers and Mothers we find instructions on how to live a holy and humble life; we find detailed insight into the nature of prayer, but also instructions on meditation and contemplation. Indeed, if more Christians were familiar with the rich wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, we would realize that eastern spirituality, such as Yoga or Zen Buddhism, are not really foreign to Christianity, for their spiritual teachings are quite similar to the Christian wisdom that emerged from the deserts of the middle East. Let me give you two examples:
First, a Desert Father named Evagrius Ponticus, who lived from 346 to 399, was an early Christian proponent of what most of us today would call “meditation.” “Do not, by any means, strive to fashion some image or visualize some form at the time of prayer,” taught Evagrius. “Happy is the spirit that attains to complete unconsciousness of all sensible experience at the time of prayer.” In other words, prayer, according to Evagrius, takes us far beyond what we think or what we feel. The summit of Christian prayer takes us to a place of profound inner peace, where, in silence beyond the static of our ordinary minds, we can find our rightful place in the kingdom of heaven.
But as anyone knows who has ever tried to meditate, whether as part of Christian prayer or in some other context, reaching this place beyond the commotion of the monkey mind is no easy feat. Here we can turn to another one of the great desert fathers, John Cassian, who lived from 360 to 435, and who was one of the first Christian teachers to advocate the use of a particular verse of scripture, prayed continuously, in his words, “as an endless refrain” to every moment of life: “O God, come to my assistance; o Lord, make haste to help me.” This comes from Psalm 70. Repeat this verse, or another similar to it, as a continual refrain to your prayer, and you will gradually let go of distracting thoughts and feelings, until you finally reach the point where, as commanded in Psalm 46, you can “be still” and truly know God.
I could easily preach this entire sermon on the wisdom of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, but I mention them to point out that they represent the origins of the most profound and transformational dimension of Christian spirituality – in other words, what has come to be known as Christian mysticism.
But these hermits of the Desert, while they lived their lives devoted to the most profound experience of prayer and meditation and contemplation, while they searched without compromise for the gift of true humility and authentic holiness, discovered something that undermined their very way of life. They realized that to be Christian, at the end of the day, involved a call far higher than the impulse to live in solitude. So within just a few generations of the Desert movement, the great Fathers and Mothers of Christian spirituality and mysticism abandoned their hermitages and formed intentional communities of faith. “Where two or three are gathered, there I am among them.”
“If you live alone, whose feet shall you wash?” asked Saint Basil the Great, and it is a question the Desert Christians answered by forming communities where they could live out their faith in relationship with one another. This is a question that you and I may well ponder for our lives today. If we live our Christian faith in solitude, then who shall we serve? Whose feet shall we wash? Where is the neighbor whom I may love as myself?
So within a generation or two, the Desert Fathers and Mothers abandoned their hermitages to form communities, and so the first Monasteries were born. A monastery, after all, is nothing more than an intentional community of people who take their faith seriously enough that they are willing to give their entire lives to others for the sake of the Gospel.
If you want to talk about the history of Christian spirituality — and, indeed, of Christian culture in general — for a thousand years, from the sixth century until at least the sixteenth, you need to be talking about the monasteries. In other words, from the fall of the Roman Empire until the Reformation, the monasteries kept Christianity alive, a beacon of light shining through what historians have rather uncharitably labeled “the dark ages.” And during those same so-called dark ages, century after century produced great men and women who, through writing and art and music, communicated something of the mystery of God and how God’s presence transformed and transfigured their lives. These are the great mystics, and some of their names will be familiar to you: Hildegard of Bingen, Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi, Julian of Norwich, Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross. And there were many others – and nearly all of them either lived in monasteries or were profoundly influenced by the lives of those who understood that to be a Christian meant to be part of a community. “Where two or three are gathered.”
Perhaps no one figure is more important in Christian spiritual history than Saint Benedict, who lived from 480 to 547. Born four years after the fall of the Roman empire, Benedict lived in a time of political upheaval and chaos as the barbarians overran the Eternal City. With the empire in tatters, Benedict abandoned the lure of the city to basically replicate the life of the Desert Fathers, only in his case by living a hermit’s life in a cave some 40 miles east of Rome. But his reputation for holiness spread, and before long other hermits were asking him to be their teacher, or “abbot” as monastic leaders are known. Benedict not only abandoned the solitary life for community, but in the early sixth century composed his Holy Rule for Monasteries, a document brilliant in its moderation and common sense, that became the charter for Christian monasteries throughout the western world. Indeed, our local monastery in Conyers follows that very Rule of Saint Benedict. Now, I promised Paster James that I would be giving you a Latin lesson as part of my sermon, and so here it is. If you ever visit a monastery that follows the Rule of St Benedict, you will learn that the heart of Benedictine Spirituality is “Ora et Labora,” a Latin motto that means, simply, “Pray and Work.” Ora is a Latin word for prayer: think “oratory” or “oral hygiene.” Labora, of course, means work – after all, what is tomorrow: “Labor Day.”
So if you’ve managed to stay awake during this history lesson, what I’d like for us to do now is to think about the relationship between prayer and work in our lives. This seems to be an auspicious time to do this, considering that this is Labor day weekend. And I’d like to suggest that ora et labora as a motto for Christian spirituality can be meaningful even for those of us who do not live inside a monastery cloister. I would like to submit that any kind of community of faith – whether church, or family, or monastery, or any other gathering in the name of Christ needs to be anchored in a balance between Ora et Labora, between the pure prayer of worship, or Holy Communion, of Bible study and personal prayer and meditation, and then the work of building the Kingdom of Heaven: of caring for those in need, and responding to the suffering of the world, and even just taking good care of beautiful churches like this one so that they can be beacons of hospitality in a world that, frankly, seems to be heading toward a new dark age. To be in community means to work together, to find a rhythm balancing Prayer and Work as the two key tasks that bind us together, as we gather in His name — confident that, where two or three or more gather, there he is, present among us.
Ora et Labora also functions as a clue to how we can pray more effectively, and work more effectively. Monks call their daily cycle of prayers and Psalms “the work of God.” In other words, true prayer is a form of work. For that matter, monks also seek to do their manual labor in a prayerful, meditative way. In other words, when approached in the right spirit, good hard work can be a form of prayer. I realize this is a paradox, but Christian spirituality is often paradoxical. But monastic spirituality can inspire all Christians to see prayer and work as two sides of the same spiritual coin. To work is to pray, and to pray is to work. If we take this seriously, we have been given a key to understanding – and obeying – one of the shortest, and most challenging, of instructions in the New Testament: I Thessalonians 5:17, in which Saint Paul instructs us to “Pray without Ceasing.”
If you haven’t visited the Monastery in Conyers, I’d really like to encourage you to go out there some time. Don’t be intimidated by the fact that it is a Catholic monastery. After all, in terms of their heritage for Christians, monasteries are part of all of us. If you want to be a monk you need to be a Catholic, but if you simply want to appreciate the silence and the solitude, the Monastery is for everyone. And there’s a lot to be thankful for when we think about what monks have done for us over the centuries. After all, nearly all of the fruitcakes made in the United States today come from monasteries! Monks from different monasteries also make excellent fudge, biscotti, preserves, cheese, and even beer and brandy — will I get in trouble for bringing up alcohol in this pulpit?
But aside from the great products that monks all over the world make for us all to enjoy, I’d like to focus on two gifts that have particularly come down from the monasteries of the Middle Ages. First of all, monks gave us mysticism, and monks also for centuries were the custodians of books.
I’ve already talked a little bit about the relationship between monks and mysticism. Now I know mysticism is kind of a scary word, but please, think of it this way: Christian mysticism is just another word for a fully embraced Christian spirituality. There’s an old saying that “Christians pray, and Christian mystics mean it when they pray.” So if you are interested in having a richer, deeper, fuller appreciation of Christ’s presence in your life, the great mystics are your guides. And from the Desert Fathers and Mothers all the way down to great mystics of the last fifty years, like Thomas Merton or Thomas Keating who is still alive, generation after generation of the great Christian spiritual teachers have been monks – in other words, Christians who value the place of community in their spiritual lives. You don’t have to be a monk in order to be a mystic, just like you don’t have to be a monk – or a mystic — in order to be a Christian. But for those of us who aren’t monks, I believe we owe a debt of gratitude to the monks of every generation who lived profound lives of Union with Christ in God – and then wrote about their experiences and their wisdom, so that we can learn from them, centuries later.
But that leads me to the final gift that the great monasteries of Christianity has bestowed upon us today: for centuries, it was the monks of Europe who kept the art of writing alive, and so we can truly say that monks gave us the gift of books. I’m honored to be with you this morning as part of the Decatur Book Festival, and if you have never been to the Festival, I hope you’ll take time to come hear some of the speakers this afternoon. We are blessed here in Decatur to have one of the largest Book Festivals in the United States, with well over 300 authors from all over the place here to share their words and wisdom. There are events for children, and featuring both fiction and non-fiction – with categories ranging from cooking to mystery to wellness to parenting to science. There’s something for everybody at the Decatur Book Festival. But for those of us who belong to the community of Christ, let’s remember as we enjoy the many offerings of the Book Festival, the untold lineage of monks and nuns who painstakingly kept books and literature alive for centuries in the so-called “dark ages.”
Now in the face of all this praise for monastic community, I am not suggesting that we should all run off and become nuns or monks. I like being married, and I’m sure most of you enjoy your everyday relationships and responsibilities. No, instead of us going to join the monastery, I think the challenge for Christians here in the twenty-first century is to take seriously the message in the Gospel: Christ is present when we gather together. So what kind of communities of faith are we called to create?
There are many young Christians, mostly evangelical, who are experimenting with new forms of community, looking at ways to be of service to the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. Individuals like Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, or even a Presbyterian Pastor named Troy Bronsink here in Atlanta, have been experimenting with new forms of community that are now known as “neo-monastic” communities: not monasteries in the traditional sense of celibate monks who spend hours every day in prayer, but new kinds of communities, helping each other and reaching out to people who are the most in need. These visionaries remind us that Christ is always calling us to new ways of forming community and coming together, in his name, to make the world a better place.
I wanted to mention this “new monastic” movement because what we are seeing among young people who are forming new types of Christian community is a renewed interest in contemplation: in the very kinds of prayer and meditation that go all the way back to the Desert Fathers and Mothers, seeking to pray continually, hungry for the presence of God. So what is new and exciting in the Church today often has very deep spiritual roots indeed.
It’s an old cliché that love is work made visible. So as we celebrate Labor Day tomorrow, think about how your work is an expression of love, including the love you receive so graciously from God, and the love you share with other Christians, and with your neighbors as yourself. And consider how you can make this loving work a way of praying in your life. Simple little steps like t his, where we learn to consecrate the ordinary moments of our days to God, will go a long way toward helping to see the presence of Christ in our lives. We know by faith that He is here. May our work, and prayer, and all our community relationships, help us to see and know his presence in our lives. Amen.
So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. (Luke 19:4)
When I was a boy I loved to climb trees. We had two pine trees in our back yard, and one of them I could only climb up maybe five feet or so, but in the other, larger one I could get at least ten or twelve feet off the ground, which was pretty high for a ten year old kid! How fondly I remember my clothes and limbs covered with dust when I would finally descend from the branches. Even having to pull out the occasional splinter was worth the joy of bonding with that tree.
Climbing a tree always gave me a new perspective; I would climb it for fun, or I would do it to get away from it all, or even just to think through my homework. I suppose I was also trying to avoid doing my homework, but I never really thought about it in those terms!
In today’s Gospel, Zacchaeus the Tax Collector does precisely this: he climbs the Sycamore tree to get a new perspective on Christ. He’s not satisfied with the rumors and hearsay about Jesus. He wants to see for himself. But he’s not a very big guy, either physically or socially. No one is going to do any favors for Zach. So he takes matters in his own hands, and up the tree he goes. And once he does, — guess what? Not only does he see Jesus, but Jesus sees him. Jesus calls to him. And out of this encounter, Jesus comes to visit Zacchaeus’s home, and Zacchaeus is forever transformed.
I think the Sycamore Tree is the unsung hero of the Zacchaeus tale. It has been relegated to the status of whimsy in a children’s song. But without that tree, the encounter between Jesus and the tax collector might never have happened. Indeed, if we take a step back and look at the entire history of our faith, we will notice that trees appear again and again, always at some sort of pivotal moment in the story of our ongoing relationship with God.
We remember, of course, the two great trees in the Garden of Eden: the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge. Keep in mind also that the Tree of Life reappears at the other end of the Bible, when Zion is transformed into the Heavenly or New Jerusalem, with none other than that great tree at its very center. And let us not forget the tree that was felled so that its wood could be used to build the cross — the “tree” on which Our Lord hung, as he suffered and died. For that matter remember that Jesus and Joseph were carpenters, which means that trees provided the raw material by which they earned their daily bread.
In fact, that’s true for many of us, even today. Trees give us the material by which we live and work. As an author, I am reminded of Thich Nhat Hanh, who in his books asks his readers to give thanks for the trees that died to make the paper on which his words are printed. Perhaps in our day of Kindles and other ebook readers, this is changing, but at least for the moment, so many of the words we read come to us on paper made from the wood of a tree.
When I think about the spirituality of trees, I also cannot help but think about the great wisdomkeepers of Ireland, Scotland and Wales: the Celts. Today, of course, is October 31, or Hallowe’en — but it is also Samhain, the ancient Celtic festival marking the end of summer and indeed the end of the year. Samhain was a day for honoring the ancestors, and if we honor our Celtic ancestors, we remember that they had a particular devotion to trees. This is true not only of the pagan Celts, but even of the earliest Celtic Christians. For example, St. Brigit made her home in Kildare, a name that means “The Church of the Oak.” In Kildare archaeologists have discovered the foundation of a temple where nineteen sisters of Brigit tended an eternal flame. Just a short walk from this site are two holy wells which remain, to this day, sites of sacred pilgrimage for Christians and Pagans alike.
For the ancient Celts, what the sacred flame, the holy well, and the great tree all had in common was their function as portals, or doorways, between the worlds. Fire transforms, water flows, and trees reach high. Each of these, in their own way, signify the alchemy of the human spirit as it is transformed, flows into, and reaches for the very heart of God.
I would be remiss if I did not also tip my metaphorical hat to our Jewish brothers and sisters, and their great mystical tree: The Tree of Life within the Kabbalah. The Kabbalistic Tree of Life is a symbol which represents the various stages of reality, or consciousness, that form a sort of creational continuum between the unspeakable splendor of God and the ordinary reality of human awareness. “Climbing the Kabbalistic Tree” is therefore a metaphor or a symbol for the transformations of human consciousness that take place as we seek to “put on the mind of Christ,” which is how Saint Paul describes the journey of inner transformation.
I would like to suggest a metaphor for us to explore this morning. I invite you to join with me in thinking about the great trees of the spiritual world — whether we are talking about the Jewish Tree of Life, the Celtic Oak Tree of Brigit, the World Tree, Yggdrasil of Norse Mythology, the Cross of Christ, or even the humble Sycamore Tree that Zacchaeus climbed: all these trees function as symbols of the human body itself. We stand, our feet planted on the ground and our hands and eyes reaching for the stars. We are creatures of clay animated with the Breath of God. So like these great trees, we stand between the worlds, the worlds of ordinary reality and the always-transforming splendor of our Triune God.
The philosopher Rudolf Eucken said that humanity “is the meeting point of various stages of reality.” In other words, we are, like the great trees of Celtic mythology, the link between the physical and the spiritual dimensions of the cosmos.
This, then, is why I commend to you the practice of Christian spirituality: of lectio divina, or meditative reading of the Bible; of meditation itself, thoughtful reflection on the great mysteries of our faith, and the summit of our spirituality, contemplation, the practice of allowing all thoughts and distractions to gently rise and fall within the greater silence that is our most natural ground of being. When we enter into meditation or contemplation, we are symbolically “climbing the tree” of our own minds and hearts, and in doing so, we reach a new perspective, a new vantage point, a new place where it is possible to encounter the Risen Lord — but, even more important, where Christ encounters us. And in this encounter, he asks to come into our lives, our homes, and leaves us forever transformed.
The great German mystic Meister Eckhart said: “The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.” This, then, is the heart of contemplation: I gaze at God, and God gazes at me. This is brought about because we climb the tree of contemplation, where, from a new and higher vantage point, this encounter with the Holy is made possible. And when we return from the height of our inner tree, we find that our lives have been changed forever.
So on this Hallowe’en Day, I hope that each of us will take time to reflect on Zacchaeus and his sycamore tree. Give thanks for the trees in your life, whether living are dead. From paper to furniture to floors to cabinets, our lives are filled with the gift of trees. So consider this, and give thanks. But give particular thanks for the trees that are alive, the living, sentient beings that bless us with their fruit, and their shade, their roots that stabilize our soil, and most important of all, their oxygen. And finally, consider the sacred tree that you can find within the theater of your spiritual imagination, where you are invited to climb to a new vantage point where, like Zacchaeus, you may see, and encounter, and be encountered by, the One who can change your life with love with truth and goodness and beauty. For after all, it is in his name that we gather today, for the great feast in which he is both priest and victim. Amen.
