Christmas Eve Sermon

My sermon for Christmas Eve here at the Monastery has been posted on the monastery's sermon site. Enjoy.

A very Happy New Year to all! ¡Feliz Prospero Año!

Last Chance Before Advent...

Another liturgical year has passed, and my blogging has slowed down. I can only plead busyness.

The fall has been filled with work in the monastery library: several kind donors have filled up the acquisitions shelves, and the estate of the late Fr. Karl Layer sent 27 boxes of his library. The auditors have been here and wearing my hat as OHC Corp. Bursar, I have tried to be helpful to them. The Board of Trustees of the House of the Redeemer elected me President once again on Oct. 26. I have been charged with rounding up content for the Holy Cross Magazine, and have finally gotten that off to the excellent Suzette Cayless for formatting. The theme is Vocation, and it features articles by as many of the brethren as cared to write. I have been busy with spiritual direction as well.

Last weekend I led a weekend program at Christ Church, St. Michael's MD, on the Eastern Shore, in the Diocese of Easton. It was wonderful. I was reminded once again of how the lay people in Episcopal churches can take such wonderful care of the fabric and finances of their parishes. It was the Feast of Christ the King, and the program centered on the New Testament as counter to the Roman imperial ideology/theology.

I was asked by our Prior to preach on the Solemnity of James Huntington, the founder of OHC, this week. I tried to lay out themes basic to his life and work.

In this season of Thanksgiving, I want to wish all who read this blog a spirit of gratitude for all God's wonderful gifts to us.

Just a note

Just a note to tell you that my sermon for last Sunday has been posted on the OHC Lectionary Blog, available through this link or through the sermons part of the links page of the Holy Cross Monastery website. Proper 23C, October 9. I haven't stopped blogging, but catching up after vacation took some energy.

I will address the adult education forum of Holy Trinity Church, Manhattan, this Sunday morning, Oct. 17, about Benedictine spirituality. It is part of a series on classic Christian spiritualities.

Vacare deo

One of the expressions monks used to use about what they do is vacare deo, which literally means to empty oneself for God. It is an ideal of the branches of monasticism which focus on the contemplative side of things. The idea is to let go of what is extraneous in one's life and not fill it up with other things, but allow God the freedom to move in. I have always thought of it as related to Jesus' promise in his high priestly prayer that "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them" (John 14:23). Keeping the Word provides room in the heart for the love and presence of God. Clearing out life's underbrush. Opening space for the not-self, the One who is seeking me/you/us, not my/your/our stuff.

The last few weeks have been bliss on the underbrush-clearing front. We had our long silent retreat at the Monastery from the end of July into the beginning of August. 10 days of silence, no director, reduced schedule. We're pretty good about the silence. But we're not silly about it. If something really (I mean, in actual fact) needs to be said, it gets said and whatever it is about gets dealt with. I loved it, as I always do.

On Saturday, August 7, the day after the retreat ended, much of the community went to the monastery at New Skete, near Cambridge, NY, for their open house and a talk by Fr. Michael Plekon, who used to be a Lutheran and is now OCA. He has been a friend of our Monastery for a long time. The whole outing was fun.

I preached on August 8 (not a sermon I wrote down, so not in the OHC sermon blog), and then took off for vacation. I have been staying at the House of the Redeemer in New York, where I have been president of the Board for some years. I enjoy getting to know the current situation and trying to be helpful (or at least staying out of the way) as deep cleaning and renovation projects take place. And of course I love New York City. I usually look forward to times there with an almost childlike eagerness for the activity, the noise, the hustle-bustle, the energy of the City.

But this year something different has been happening to me. I am usually driven to do things on vacation. There are museums to visit, shows to see, friends to look up and reconnect with. I have been doing that, of course, but most of what I have been doing is being quiet. Most of each day is spent reading, getting a bite to eat, napping, reading some more, doing very little. I think without intending it, I have been practicing vacare deo.

I don't know where it will go or what, if anything, will come out of it. I think I am usually so full of myself that simply putting the projects aside, letting go of some of my concerns, allowing my imagination a freer space, I am letting something new in. At least I hope so.

Wanting and Being Wanted

I have tried to write about simplicity, and find that that attempt opens many doors. One of them opened for me yesterday.

I was sitting quietly, enjoying the silence of our retreat. When I do that images, memories, ideas wash over me. And sometimes not. But yesterday the images were of religion in Orange County, when I was working there in the 90's. The images were of religious seeking. There is a lot of it there, or at least there was then, and there are a lot of religious professionals and religious establishments to cater to that seeking. It would be easy to caricature some of it, but I am pretty sure I don't need to do that for those who may read this blog.

The common denominator of those images was wanting. Wanting things -- a better job, a happier family life, a healthier relationship, better health. Wanting good things. Getting involved in religion in order to clarify, identify, find and follow a better path to them. And then as I reflected on these, I realized that I knew a lot of those people, and while they verbalized their desires as things, actually a lot of those desires were more for a life of greater order, stability, productivity, meaning, significance. To have a better job is in some ways to be a better person -- a person who can be productive, a person who is respected for good reasons. To have a happier personal life is to be better at relationships, more loving, more sensitive. To have better health is to be a better integrated self. And so on. The "things" are objective correlatives of deeper personal possibilities.

A fundamental constituent of our lives is desire. We want things, money, what money can bring us. We want sex and we want love, and we mix the two up all the time. We want power, in small as well as large ways. We want recognition. We want answers. We want security. We want. We want. We want. We want so much that we never stop wanting. Wanting seems to be essential to our nature. I can tell you that becoming a monk does not make wanting stop!

And so, it should not surprise us that religion structures itself to deliver on the desire front, as much as any other human activity. You have questions? We have answers, say some. You feel alone? We have community, say others. You're poor and want not to be poor? Come and see Reverend Ike sitting on his golden throne (ok, I couldn't resist one little dig, even though Reverend Ike was in New York and not in Orange County). And those are the less sophisticated religious establishments. The ones that have been in business a long time have honed their appeals quite a lot finer. In fact, most respectable religions offer a smorgasbord with spiritual dishes for most wants and needs.

Is there anything wrong with this? Well, no. If wanting is our nature, then following that nature's needs is not only good marketing, it is in fact a very good, rational way to serve those brought to our doors. It is good if it helps us discern real wants from illusions, and to discern more and more genuinely our nature and its directions.

But the truth is, we never stop wanting. Nothing is ever enough. Have you ever been in a truly wonderful store, filled with things of beauty and quality, the sort of place where you don't have to ask yourself the question, Is this real? Is this the best? And then, being in that store, have you ever looked around to see the other shoppers, the ones who have the money to be there as customers (unlike ourselves, for whom this is a sort of vacation from our Target/WalMart lives)?

How many of those people who can afford to be there seem happy? How many light up in delight when they see the perfect watch, the perfect crystal vase, the perfect scarf, the perfect whatever? In the presence of such beauty, perhaps unsurpassed in the world, are they illuminated with joy? Do their faces show their awareness of the good they can have if they act on their desire?

Well, some of them, perhaps, sometimes. But when I have been in such places, I am struck by their serious, not to say grim, countenances. And I am puzzled. I am usually delighted to be there. Perhaps it is because I can't afford to buy anything there that I am free to see these things for their own excellence and be happy that such things exist, that human beings can have such skill and creativity to make them. But wanting in the context of being able to get often gives us a strange experience -- calculation, fear that someone else will get a better one perhaps, expectation of buyer's remorse later on.

In fact, it is the wanting that animates us, not the getting.

If wanting is deeply embedded in our DNA, perhaps that is a clue to a larger reality. Perhaps it is part of the image-of-God thing in creation. Perhaps the One who made us also wants. I know this thought departs from the philosophically strict concept of God as without parts or passions. He may be without parts, but the God we meet in scripture is certainly not without passions. He pursues the people of Israel with an almost insane intensity. One may sometimes wonder, listening to the old biblical stories, Why does he bother? It's like watching a friend pursue a love affair that is entirely too one-sided. Nothing good can come from it, we think. And of course, nothing good comes of God's pursuit. It leads to the Cross. And, then, to the Resurrection.

If we can't stop wanting, we also can't avoid being wanted. I imagine God's infinity sometimes as an infinite capacity for wanting his creation, every creature in it, including (especially, from my point of view) me.

There is this mutual energy in wanting. I can't fill my desires, no matter how hard I try. And God keeps wanting me, in ways I can't begin to imagine. The things we think we want are really simulacra of God, and that is why everything we get, except perhaps a taste of the divine, leaves us dissatisfied. We really are the rich people in that great shop. Deep down we know that things won't do it for us, that at some level we are wasting our substance on anything but the Real Thing.

Anglican Values 8: The Daily Office

Anglican Values 8: The Daily Office
February, 2000

Sometimes people ask me, What is distinctive about the Episcopal Church? So much seems similar to what others do - our Sunday service, form of church government, forms of private prayer, are all shared with or similar to what others do. But there is one uniquely Anglican form.

It is called the Daily Office, a forbiddingly bureaucratic title which might better be Daily Scriptural Prayer. It is the basic, fundamental form of prayer in our tradition. In its simplest form it consists of reading psalms and Bible lessons in the morning and evening every day. Nothing very special in that - except that Anglicans have evolved a unique format for this kind of prayer over our 450 plus years as a worshiping community.

The Daily Office has its roots in synagogue practice, in which men would gather and read the scriptures each day at a stated time. Early Christians continued this practice. When the monastic movement arose in the 200's and 300's, the monks and nuns would memorize the psalms and often would recite all 150 every day. When St. Benedict wrote his Rule for monks in the early 500's he arranged the psalms and scripture in eight services each day, saying the whole
Psalter every week. The Benedictine arrangement became the pattern for Christian scriptural prayer for the next 1000 years, becoming very complex with the addition of saints days, seasonal variations, hymns, and music.

One of the main agendas of the Reformation was to make Bible reading central to the prayer life of ordinary people. It was the genius of Thomas Cranmer, who produced the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549, to turn the eight daily monastic services into a twice a day format. The psalms were divided into a monthly cycle and the Bible was read through in course, a chapter from the Old and New Testaments twice a day. The new form, called Morning and Evening Prayer, was required to be said by the clergy in the Church every day, and recommended to the laity. It rapidly became the most important part of Anglican worship, supplanting the Eucharist as the main Sunday service in most places.

The Book of Common Prayer set out the readings for each day, and devout lay people as well as clergy soon made it the basis of their devotions. Countless millions of people over the years have started and ended the day with these services, often in family prayer at home. Its use led directly to the Anglican approach to Scripture. It works against a piety resting on proof-texted theological propositions, since a faithful user of this form of prayer will read the whole Bible through many times in a lifetime of devotion and become aware of the rich dialogues among Biblical theologies in that enormously complex library of holy writings.

[Note: This short essay was followed by a detailed and date-specific way to use the Daily Office, which is omitted here.]

Anglican Values 7: Scriptural Interpretation

Anglican Values 7: Scriptural Interpretation
October 1998

There is no more important area of theology today than the question of how we are to interpret scripture. Many of the current religious battles, both within and between churches (including our own), are fought on this important question.

Scripture is not simple but complicated. It is written in different languages and at other times for other people than our own. In the Christian world over the centuries there have been three main ways to interpret scripture.

The first and oldest is to look for the consensus of the faithful in the organized church. This has been expressed mainly in church councils and in the works of important theologians which have been accepted as normative in different ages. In ordinary life it means that scriptural interpretation is not private, but communal, and that what other people have thought over the ages is the shaping factor in interpreting Scripture: we listen to them and contribute to the dialogue from our own knowledge, point of view and experience.

The second is the classic Protestant position of sola scriptura, which is Latin for "scripture alone". In its original meaning to the Reformers this means that Christian belief is to be found only in Scripture, and that no other agency, such as tradition, church authority or personal experience, can be put on the same level as scripture.

The third position is the radical Protestant position of individual conscience, in which each believer is trusted to read the scriptures carefully, and in prayer and careful consideration, to reach the interpretation which the Holy Spirit gives to the conscientious believer.

The Anglican position was developed by the first great Anglican theologian, Richard Hooker, in the late 1500's. Bringing together all three classic positions, he stated that Christian belief had to rest on three principles, each of which had to be present and in accord: Scripture, Tradition and Reason. It is not enough to look to what the text of scripture alone says; nor is it enough to consult the past for the consensus of the faithful; nor is it sufficient to consult human reason individually or collectively. All three must be present and in accord for sure interpretation to be held by the Church.

This is an especially important question because of the growth of a new phenomenon in Christianity: fundamentalism. Early in this century an innovation in interpretation arose called "scriptural inerrancy", which is not precisely sola scriptura, let alone one of the other modes of interpretation. This holds that each word of scripture is literally true. This is a radically new form of interpretation, and is increasingly influential in the Christian world today. But it is not the Anglican way.

So when an important question arises, on which scripture speaks, Anglicans begin with careful reading of the text, paying attention to every aspect of meaning in the original language and culture, and dealing with nuances and differences in different parts of scripture on the same question. Then we go on and ask, how have others in the faith understood this question in their time? How does their understanding illuminate us? Then finally, trusting in the Spirit's guidance, we ask, What do our experience, reason, and conscience tell us, illuminated by scripture and guided by the consensus of the faithful in the past?

This is a complicated process. It is by no means as simple as opening up the Bible and finding a verse which speaks to our concern. We accept the great Councils of the Church as the Spirit’s revelatory work, authoritative for doctrine. But we are unlikely to accept as ultimately authoritative a contemporary interpretation by a particular Bishop, theologian, conference or synod of the Church on a question of the day. Interpretation always involves our best intellectual efforts. It is always a communal process, in dialogue with other Christians past and present. And it always involves an honest acceptance that our question is framed in our present life and understanding and by our own best efforts of reason and conscience.

Easy answers are not often Anglican answers. Final answers are hard to find in our tradition precisely because we believe that scripture is the Word of God constantly meeting people in their present situations. And as a result, sometimes what seems to be the secure Biblical answer to a question in one age will change in another. The Holy Spirit has led us to see that slavery is unacceptable, though scripture clearly accepts it. It has led to the acceptance of leading ministries of women in the liturgy, although scripture seems to reject them. It has led to an acceptance of some kinds of money lending, the basis of capitalist economics, though money lending at interest is clearly contrary to scripture. It has led to a more pastoral understanding of divorce and remarriage in many places, though scripture plainly condemns divorce.

Anglicans believe in the Holy Spirit’s guidance of the Church for the problems of every age. and in the Word of God which is as alive and dynamic today as the day it was first encountered. The answers we receive are usually provisional, subject to better scholarship, more complete dialogue with the faithful, and to a more complete use of reason and experience. The fixed point for us is not simply the text of scripture, but also the presence of the Spirit in the Church and in the hearts of sincere and believing Christians of every conceivable sort and calling.