August 21, 2011
St. Benedict’s, Los Osos CA
The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh
Isaiah 51: 1-6 Ps 124 Romans 12: 1-8 Matthew 16: 13-20
The 19th C Russian Orthodox bishop and saint Theophan the Recluse once wrote this when asked about prayer:
You must descend from your head into your heart. At present your thoughts of God are in your head. And God Himself is, as it were, outside you, and so your prayer and other spiritual exercises remain exterior. Whilst you are still in your head, thoughts will not easily be subdued but will always be whirling about … like clouds of mosquitoes in summer.
Now, to my ever-quirky mind, Theophan’s words relate directly to the Gospel passage this morning. Jesus is having a discussion with His disciples - and it is a “head” discussion, the wandering rabbi engaging and challenging His pupils on the meaning of Scripture. The phrase “Son of Man” is a semitic idiom originating in Mesopotamia, used in Hebrew, denoting “humanity” or “self”. Used in Greek, it can mean “offspring of Man”. The phrase was presumably evolving by Jesus’ time, and the disciples offer both traditional [some say Elijah or Jermiah] and “modern” interpretations [some say John the Baptist]. Jesus then changes the drift by asking, “Who do you say that I am?”, and Peter – in one of those sudden shifts of consciousness that all therapists and clergy love - blurts out, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God”. It is a seemingly wacko, disconnected response ….. but one that Jesus was, I think, hoping for and obviously, by His response, delighted in.
The whole thing has suddenly shifted from the head to the heart. The cloud of mosquitos has dispersed. Peter, speaking for us all, voices what we have come to call the “a-ha!” moment – which always surprises us, and which we usually can’t explain. They are what people online call OMG moments – Oh My God! Abraham had one with the Three Strangers; Jacob one at Bethel when he awoke from his dream and exclaimed “God is in this place and I did not know it!”; and Peter, when he said, “Now I know that God shows no partiality!”
Jesus’ response to Peter was: "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."
Many Christians, especially the Roman Catholic Church, have taken this literally and interpreted Jesus’ words to their ends. I leave you to decide the legitimacy of that. What I am engaged by is the inner and mystical meaning. This is how I see it: Peter’s “heart” has caught a vivid blinding glimpse of the vast and infinite Love that is God in the person and action and words of Jesus. I choose to believe that this awareness lies hidden in every human heart, waiting to be touched and ignited by the fire of the Holy Spirit. The awareness of the vast and infinite Love that is God is the rock on which the community of God, of Love – the “church” – is built. And, as the parable of the house built on sand or rock reminds us, it is the only base on which the Church – and by extension, the human community – can be sustained in any authenticity as a manifestation of what God desires of us.
It is not possible fully to enter the Kingdom, to receive the keys to the Kingdom, unless we are blinded, struck dumb, by the light of the Divine Love. Jesus told us that His Kingdom was “not of this World”. He told us that the Kingdom was “within us” - among us, so very near and yet often so very far from our consciousness. The Kingdom does not manifest Itself with any clarity in the World unless it lives in our hearts. In Heaven, all is in accord with God’s Love. To the extent that the overwhelming wonder of Divine Love lives in us depends what is bound or loosed in the World: fear or freedom, hate or enfolding, division or unity, despair or joy, war or peace.
At the end of the passage today, Jesus tells His disciples not to tell anyone that He is the Messiah. Why? My interpretation is because He does not want anyone to settle for the superficial easy solution of how we are “saved” – a military or political or economic one. Jesus is the transformer of the soul - and that is the path to which He calls all humanity.
Every now and then, I’ve had to revise a sermon. One Christmas Eve, I was all prepared and ready ….. until that morning I read the cartoon “Hagar the Horrible”, and had to revise the whole thing. This week, it is the fault of my esteemed colleague Amma Donna. We were having an online discussion about my Reflection on St. Theophan’s words, and about “spiritual practice”. She emailed: “by "practice" I didn't mean the habitual things we do to try to stay in the same ballpark as God, whether liturgy or reading or meditation, etc. I meant, what do I have to do to move out of my bumbling, self-protective "head" into my more generous "heart"? And what do I do to train my heart towards more generosity? If I'm Peter and I momentarily "get it" (and I think he did), how do I get back there the next time I'm functioning as plain old Peter again?
Lucky for me, she just asked what we need to do, not how to do it! So I offer only one, and you all can think about your own answers this week: We need to enlarge our Love. We need to enlarge our consciousness of the vastness and infiniteness of the Divine Love. I can be pretty circumscribed in my love! I have a whole long list of people I don’t want to love or whom I think don’t deserve my love. But something has been happening in me, especially since I retired from parish ministry (whatever that might mean!). My sense of God has been expanding. I’ve been getting out of my head and “descending into the heart” – and there God is beyond all the stuff that human heads put on God. Beyond institutional church and beyond theologies and creeds. I wake up in the morning these days and I’m aware that I’m awash in a great cosmic, all-embracing sea of Divine Love. All the other stuff of Life pales in comparison.
I can suggest one place we can start in descending from the head into the heart. We have each other. This is in part what the church, and our own St. Benedict’s community, is about. We are all different, and we have different ideas; we agree or disagree, sometimes quite strongly. But we can practice interacting with each other as fellow fishes in the Sea of Divine Love.
I do not denigrate or undervalue the work of the intellect or philosophy or science; in fact I deeply value them. But may we remember the 17th C words of Brother Lawrence:
[God] alone can make Himself known as he really is. But we go on
searching in philosophy and science, preferring, it seems, a poor copy
to the original that God himself paints in the depths of our souls.
The deepest love I have for my Dennis, or for you, or for myself, is not for anything external. It is not for any “poor copy", but for the Original in the depth of the soul. It is the same with God. In the heart – which in ancient thought is the place of deepest Knowing – is the vastness and infiniteness of the Love which is God and you and me.
To seek and live this Love is our Life in Jesus the “Messiah, son of the Living God”.
The Rev. Brian H. O. A. McHugh
Isaiah 51: 1-6 Ps 124 Romans 12: 1-8 Matthew 16: 13-20
The 19th C Russian Orthodox bishop and saint Theophan the Recluse once wrote this when asked about prayer:
You must descend from your head into your heart. At present your thoughts of God are in your head. And God Himself is, as it were, outside you, and so your prayer and other spiritual exercises remain exterior. Whilst you are still in your head, thoughts will not easily be subdued but will always be whirling about … like clouds of mosquitoes in summer.
Now, to my ever-quirky mind, Theophan’s words relate directly to the Gospel passage this morning. Jesus is having a discussion with His disciples - and it is a “head” discussion, the wandering rabbi engaging and challenging His pupils on the meaning of Scripture. The phrase “Son of Man” is a semitic idiom originating in Mesopotamia, used in Hebrew, denoting “humanity” or “self”. Used in Greek, it can mean “offspring of Man”. The phrase was presumably evolving by Jesus’ time, and the disciples offer both traditional [some say Elijah or Jermiah] and “modern” interpretations [some say John the Baptist]. Jesus then changes the drift by asking, “Who do you say that I am?”, and Peter – in one of those sudden shifts of consciousness that all therapists and clergy love - blurts out, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God”. It is a seemingly wacko, disconnected response ….. but one that Jesus was, I think, hoping for and obviously, by His response, delighted in.
The whole thing has suddenly shifted from the head to the heart. The cloud of mosquitos has dispersed. Peter, speaking for us all, voices what we have come to call the “a-ha!” moment – which always surprises us, and which we usually can’t explain. They are what people online call OMG moments – Oh My God! Abraham had one with the Three Strangers; Jacob one at Bethel when he awoke from his dream and exclaimed “God is in this place and I did not know it!”; and Peter, when he said, “Now I know that God shows no partiality!”
Jesus’ response to Peter was: "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."
Many Christians, especially the Roman Catholic Church, have taken this literally and interpreted Jesus’ words to their ends. I leave you to decide the legitimacy of that. What I am engaged by is the inner and mystical meaning. This is how I see it: Peter’s “heart” has caught a vivid blinding glimpse of the vast and infinite Love that is God in the person and action and words of Jesus. I choose to believe that this awareness lies hidden in every human heart, waiting to be touched and ignited by the fire of the Holy Spirit. The awareness of the vast and infinite Love that is God is the rock on which the community of God, of Love – the “church” – is built. And, as the parable of the house built on sand or rock reminds us, it is the only base on which the Church – and by extension, the human community – can be sustained in any authenticity as a manifestation of what God desires of us.
It is not possible fully to enter the Kingdom, to receive the keys to the Kingdom, unless we are blinded, struck dumb, by the light of the Divine Love. Jesus told us that His Kingdom was “not of this World”. He told us that the Kingdom was “within us” - among us, so very near and yet often so very far from our consciousness. The Kingdom does not manifest Itself with any clarity in the World unless it lives in our hearts. In Heaven, all is in accord with God’s Love. To the extent that the overwhelming wonder of Divine Love lives in us depends what is bound or loosed in the World: fear or freedom, hate or enfolding, division or unity, despair or joy, war or peace.
At the end of the passage today, Jesus tells His disciples not to tell anyone that He is the Messiah. Why? My interpretation is because He does not want anyone to settle for the superficial easy solution of how we are “saved” – a military or political or economic one. Jesus is the transformer of the soul - and that is the path to which He calls all humanity.
Every now and then, I’ve had to revise a sermon. One Christmas Eve, I was all prepared and ready ….. until that morning I read the cartoon “Hagar the Horrible”, and had to revise the whole thing. This week, it is the fault of my esteemed colleague Amma Donna. We were having an online discussion about my Reflection on St. Theophan’s words, and about “spiritual practice”. She emailed: “by "practice" I didn't mean the habitual things we do to try to stay in the same ballpark as God, whether liturgy or reading or meditation, etc. I meant, what do I have to do to move out of my bumbling, self-protective "head" into my more generous "heart"? And what do I do to train my heart towards more generosity? If I'm Peter and I momentarily "get it" (and I think he did), how do I get back there the next time I'm functioning as plain old Peter again?
Lucky for me, she just asked what we need to do, not how to do it! So I offer only one, and you all can think about your own answers this week: We need to enlarge our Love. We need to enlarge our consciousness of the vastness and infiniteness of the Divine Love. I can be pretty circumscribed in my love! I have a whole long list of people I don’t want to love or whom I think don’t deserve my love. But something has been happening in me, especially since I retired from parish ministry (whatever that might mean!). My sense of God has been expanding. I’ve been getting out of my head and “descending into the heart” – and there God is beyond all the stuff that human heads put on God. Beyond institutional church and beyond theologies and creeds. I wake up in the morning these days and I’m aware that I’m awash in a great cosmic, all-embracing sea of Divine Love. All the other stuff of Life pales in comparison.
I can suggest one place we can start in descending from the head into the heart. We have each other. This is in part what the church, and our own St. Benedict’s community, is about. We are all different, and we have different ideas; we agree or disagree, sometimes quite strongly. But we can practice interacting with each other as fellow fishes in the Sea of Divine Love.
I do not denigrate or undervalue the work of the intellect or philosophy or science; in fact I deeply value them. But may we remember the 17th C words of Brother Lawrence:
[God] alone can make Himself known as he really is. But we go on
searching in philosophy and science, preferring, it seems, a poor copy
to the original that God himself paints in the depths of our souls.
The deepest love I have for my Dennis, or for you, or for myself, is not for anything external. It is not for any “poor copy", but for the Original in the depth of the soul. It is the same with God. In the heart – which in ancient thought is the place of deepest Knowing – is the vastness and infiniteness of the Love which is God and you and me.
To seek and live this Love is our Life in Jesus the “Messiah, son of the Living God”.
