Sermon for: July 20, 2008 Brian McHugh, priest
Season: Proper 11A_RCL, Track 1 St. Paul’s, Cambria CA
It is one of the great privileges of my life as a priest to stand at the altar as an “icon” of the priesthood we all share in Jesus, and to preside at our Eucharistic meal. Thank you for inviting me to be with you this morning. My partner Dennis and I are glad to share worship with you.
St. Paul says to those he loves in the church in Rome this morning: For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and – listen closely here - will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. [Rom 8:19-21].
Ah, yes! This is why you and I are here this morning. There are many reasons why we come together as “church”. But there is one core reason that we stick with it Sunday by Sunday and year by year, often through many frustrations and disappointments. God knows there have been many times in my life when I just wanted to chuck it all through 35 years of priesthood and over 40 in ministry. We stick with each other, and with the Scripture, and with Sacrament because we were called from deep within us, some perhaps recently, some perhaps many years ago. We were called, some gently, some shockingly, by the Christ who dwells at the center. A vision, a hope, was awakened within us. It is a vision of the possibilities for ourselves and for the whole Creation. In Paul’s words, it is the vision of the glory of the children of God.
There are perhaps some hardened souls whom the vision never touches or who don’t allow it to touch them. Such people have created and continue to create havoc and suffering in the World. They often suck many others in because of fear or deception. But most of us, in some way, have caught a glimpse of , well, let’s call it God, and we hunger for it to flower.
Jesus told many parables about the path that leads to the Glory. We gather around one of them in our worship today. But before we look at it, let me “rattle your cage” a little bit. Let’s first talk about the Bible. How people understand the Bible is the fundamental divisive issue among Christians today. Not just how they interpret it, but how they think it came about. Being a “good Episcopalian”, you can make your choices and you certainly don’t have to accept what I say! But I’ll tell you where I have gotten in over 40 years of thinking and meditating and studying and listening to greater intellects than mine.
Some believe that God dictated it word for word to various scribes. Others, that God somehow mysteriously manages by the skin of His teeth to get Her message across through the written experiences of the peoples of the Bible. Most are somewhere in between. (By the way, I use Him and Her for God interchangeably, just to remind us of a longstanding Anglican principle enunciated in what are known as the Articles of Religion (see BCP). The First Article says, God is a spirit, without body, parts, or passions - thereby reminding us that God does not have a gender, and that it is misleading and dangerous to box God in with one or the other.) I’m far to the “skin of His teeth” side. There is an icon often seen in the Eastern Orthodox Church, an icon of Christ the Teacher, holding a closed Gospel Book. This icon is to remind us of something I have believed and taught for a long time: that Christians interpret the Scriptures through Christ, and not the other way around. Once you understand this, as I think the Church did in the early centuries and until the ascendency of the Western Church, you understand why it is important to have an intimate relationship with Jesus, to know the core of His Being. It is His teachings and, most importantly, His Love, grounded in and manifesting the unconditional Love of His Father, that define how we understand and interpret Scripture.
Let’s look at the parable of the Wheat and the Weeds (or tares if you prefer). I do not believe that Jesus interpreted His parables to his followers. As I said, the Gospels are a combination of what Jesus might actually have said, and additions by the early church in the decades following His Death and Resurrection, expressing their understanding of what Jesus said and meant. They would in no way have thought that they were falsifying or misinterpreting Him. The “interpretation” we have today is, I believe, one of those additions. And to me, it doesn’t sound like Jesus. Neither God nor Jesus goes about destroying people and sending them to the “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. I think it comes from the early community defining its specialness as against the surrounding Jewish and pagan cultures and religions. Many scholars agree. And of course, you can do your own thinking.
Jesus, as usual, is clear in his parable today. It is about hope and faith in a loving God Who, having created us, knows what we human beings are like. We can choose Good and we can choose Evil. This is the human condition. And all of us, like St. Paul, have cried out in desperation at how often we fail in choosing the Good, often bewilderingly so. But God wants us, as Romans says, to shine like the sun in the kingdom of the Father. God has a covenant of Love with all of us, symbolized in the covenant with Jacob. The promise is that, despite all, God will stay by us, shower us with mercy and forgiveness and strength and hope, lead us like a faithful shepherd Who is even willing to give His life for the sheep - as He does in every Eucharist.
Our destiny is to have all causes of sin burned out of us, till we shine like the sun in the Kingdom. Even a little success brings light to our own lives and to the World. Our part of the bargain is to be as faithful as we can in repentance and humility, acknowledging our failures and accepting God’s grace and Love. We “come to church” to be held on, and to help each other along, that path.
In the words of the lovely Psalm 139: 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. This is the God we love and trust and serve.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Monday, July 14, 2008
Brian H. O. A. McHugh, priest
Sermon for: July 13, 2007
Season: St. Benedict’s, Los Osos, CA, on their Feast of Title
What do we know about Benedict? Personally, relatively little. He was the son of a Roman noble, born about 480, in Nursia, in what is now Italy. It seems that at about age 19, he became disgusted with the way of life of Rome, which he thought dissolute. He may also have been jilted in love. These things are deduced from the only “biography”, more a character sketch in the hagiographic style, done by Pope St. Gregory the Great. Benedict left the city, taking his nurse and a servant, to live quietly, apparently in some kind of association with a group of “virtuous men”. He apparently knew the Gospels, and was drawn to the life they manifested.
Benedict received the distinctive monastic habit from a monk in the areas named Romanus, with whom he had discussed the reasons that brought him to Subiaco, where Romanus had his monastery. At Romanus’s advice, Benedict became a hermit for 3 years, and he lived in a cave above the river, pondering the Gospel and how one should live to be a part of the Kingdom of God. Some monks begged him to be their abbot, but that experiment failed, and Benedict returned to his solitary life. But many people, attracted by his sanctity and by the various miracles that he is recorded to have performed, came to join him. He had 12 monasteries built, where 12 seekers lived with an abbot. Benedict lived in a separate monastery with a few close followers. Somewhere in this time, he wrote a Rule for his monks, based on an earlier rule called “The Rule of the Master”. Benedicts “Rule”, described by Gregory as “firm but reasonable”, became the basis for Western monasticism in following centuries and up until the present day.
Benedict intended the Rule to be a way of life that honoured Christ’s teachings. The rule allows all that is necessary to each individual: sufficient and varied clothing, abundant food (excluding meat from quadrupeds), wine and ample sleep. Possessions could be held in common; they might be large, but they were to be administered for the furtherance of the work of the community and for the benefit of others. While the individual monk was porr, the monastery was to be in a position to give alms, not to be compelled to seek them. It was to relieve the poor, clothe the naked, visit the sick, bury the dead, help the afflicted, and – what became a central Benedictine character - to offer hospitality to all strangers. The poor came to Benedict to get help to pay their debts, and for food.
Work was critical in the common life, and even more important than liturgical prayer. This is enshrined in the famous phrase, “Laborare est Orare”, to Work is to Pray, and it reflects Gospel teaching that religious faith must manifest itself in good works to be authentic. Work was not to be considered the task of slaves, but seen as a necessary path to for holiness for all men and women. But Prayer was the common bond; the average day provides for a little over four hours to be spent in liturgical prayer, a little over five hours in spiritual reading and private prayer, about six hours of work, one hour for eating, and about eight hours of sleep. The entire Psalter is to be recited in the Divine Office once every week.
All possessions were held in common. And all were equal, whether once slave or noble. Benedictine communities are families. The local community is more important than the larger order, a character that is reflected in our Anglican tradition, where parish communities are the heart and the diocesan level serves the local communities. Unlike many religious orders which take the vows of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, Benedictines take the vows of Obedience (so that God comes first), Stability (so that the prime place where holiness is sought is in one’s parish family), and Amendment/Conversion of Life, the goal being to become as Christ. These vows reflect the Baptismal vows.
Benedict is the icon of our community of faith here, what we call our “patron saint”. We live under his bright shadow. Most people are not called to be monastics. But Benedict is a worthy icon for us as followers of Jesus. We are here because we have the same desire as Benedict and his monks did. I was a monk for 15 years. I only knew many years after why I was led to try the monastic life. The monk is an archetype – a symbol of the radical call to become as Christ. Which is the same as the radical call to become fully human and fully the unique individual we have been created to be. But even more amazingly, to become Divine – for that is what the Gospel says we are, an incarnated expression of holy love.
We are not called to be monks or nuns. But Benedict’s radical search for the Gospel life is our search. That is why we come together around the altar and the Eucharist and Scripture. Archbishop Cranmer, in the early 16th C, apparently designed English parish life on the Benedictine model. We pray together, we seek to understand the Gospel life. We commit to obedience to God, to a stable parish family life, and to learning in that family how to let God shape us in the image of Christ. And we work together to reach out to those in need, especially offering hospitality to those on the journey to God, as our mission statement says.
Today we gather to join Benedict on the path to holiness. To thank and honour him as a faithful model and guide for parish life over the last 1500 years. And to recommit ourselves to each other as diverse people brought together by God to help and support each other on our journey of transfiguration into people of Divine Light.
Sermon for: July 13, 2007
Season: St. Benedict’s, Los Osos, CA, on their Feast of Title
What do we know about Benedict? Personally, relatively little. He was the son of a Roman noble, born about 480, in Nursia, in what is now Italy. It seems that at about age 19, he became disgusted with the way of life of Rome, which he thought dissolute. He may also have been jilted in love. These things are deduced from the only “biography”, more a character sketch in the hagiographic style, done by Pope St. Gregory the Great. Benedict left the city, taking his nurse and a servant, to live quietly, apparently in some kind of association with a group of “virtuous men”. He apparently knew the Gospels, and was drawn to the life they manifested.
Benedict received the distinctive monastic habit from a monk in the areas named Romanus, with whom he had discussed the reasons that brought him to Subiaco, where Romanus had his monastery. At Romanus’s advice, Benedict became a hermit for 3 years, and he lived in a cave above the river, pondering the Gospel and how one should live to be a part of the Kingdom of God. Some monks begged him to be their abbot, but that experiment failed, and Benedict returned to his solitary life. But many people, attracted by his sanctity and by the various miracles that he is recorded to have performed, came to join him. He had 12 monasteries built, where 12 seekers lived with an abbot. Benedict lived in a separate monastery with a few close followers. Somewhere in this time, he wrote a Rule for his monks, based on an earlier rule called “The Rule of the Master”. Benedicts “Rule”, described by Gregory as “firm but reasonable”, became the basis for Western monasticism in following centuries and up until the present day.
Benedict intended the Rule to be a way of life that honoured Christ’s teachings. The rule allows all that is necessary to each individual: sufficient and varied clothing, abundant food (excluding meat from quadrupeds), wine and ample sleep. Possessions could be held in common; they might be large, but they were to be administered for the furtherance of the work of the community and for the benefit of others. While the individual monk was porr, the monastery was to be in a position to give alms, not to be compelled to seek them. It was to relieve the poor, clothe the naked, visit the sick, bury the dead, help the afflicted, and – what became a central Benedictine character - to offer hospitality to all strangers. The poor came to Benedict to get help to pay their debts, and for food.
Work was critical in the common life, and even more important than liturgical prayer. This is enshrined in the famous phrase, “Laborare est Orare”, to Work is to Pray, and it reflects Gospel teaching that religious faith must manifest itself in good works to be authentic. Work was not to be considered the task of slaves, but seen as a necessary path to for holiness for all men and women. But Prayer was the common bond; the average day provides for a little over four hours to be spent in liturgical prayer, a little over five hours in spiritual reading and private prayer, about six hours of work, one hour for eating, and about eight hours of sleep. The entire Psalter is to be recited in the Divine Office once every week.
All possessions were held in common. And all were equal, whether once slave or noble. Benedictine communities are families. The local community is more important than the larger order, a character that is reflected in our Anglican tradition, where parish communities are the heart and the diocesan level serves the local communities. Unlike many religious orders which take the vows of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, Benedictines take the vows of Obedience (so that God comes first), Stability (so that the prime place where holiness is sought is in one’s parish family), and Amendment/Conversion of Life, the goal being to become as Christ. These vows reflect the Baptismal vows.
Benedict is the icon of our community of faith here, what we call our “patron saint”. We live under his bright shadow. Most people are not called to be monastics. But Benedict is a worthy icon for us as followers of Jesus. We are here because we have the same desire as Benedict and his monks did. I was a monk for 15 years. I only knew many years after why I was led to try the monastic life. The monk is an archetype – a symbol of the radical call to become as Christ. Which is the same as the radical call to become fully human and fully the unique individual we have been created to be. But even more amazingly, to become Divine – for that is what the Gospel says we are, an incarnated expression of holy love.
We are not called to be monks or nuns. But Benedict’s radical search for the Gospel life is our search. That is why we come together around the altar and the Eucharist and Scripture. Archbishop Cranmer, in the early 16th C, apparently designed English parish life on the Benedictine model. We pray together, we seek to understand the Gospel life. We commit to obedience to God, to a stable parish family life, and to learning in that family how to let God shape us in the image of Christ. And we work together to reach out to those in need, especially offering hospitality to those on the journey to God, as our mission statement says.
Today we gather to join Benedict on the path to holiness. To thank and honour him as a faithful model and guide for parish life over the last 1500 years. And to recommit ourselves to each other as diverse people brought together by God to help and support each other on our journey of transfiguration into people of Divine Light.
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