Sermon Library
“Benedict’s Gift to the World”
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
December 02, 2007
Service Theme: Advent I - 2007
Advent I – 2007 December 2, 2007
Benedict’s Gift to the World
Our worship theme this past year has been Living Spirituality – The Way of Benedict. Part of the motivation for this theme was from an article in Harper’s Magazine I read a number of years ago which made a significant impression upon me. It was by Fenton Johnson and the article was entitled Beyond Belief: A Skeptic Searches for an American Faith. Fenton Johnson grew up a Christian, but he lost his faith. He looked everywhere for it and finally found it in two monasteries, one Buddhist and one Benedictine.
He writes, “Monasteries have offered both West and East a model of a simple, contemplative life to inspire the larger secular world. They are communities where property is shared and time freed by collective labor given to contemplation and prayer; exemplars of a life lived not for the future but in the here and now, a life built on and lived by faith.” The life style is simply listening to the Apostle Paul’s description of what it means to be a church, but they are committed to living the life.
Implied in Johnson’s title, he makes a distinction between belief and faith which I presented last January. “Faith is not at all the same as belief. Zen philosopher Alan Watts explains the difference: Belief is the insistence that the truth is what one would “lief” or wish it to be. Faith is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge unto the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. Faith is the essential virtue of science and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception. My travels among American monasteries have brought me to write not about belief but about faith; not about doctrine (the Virgin birth, the infallible pope, reincarnation) but about the subsuming of self to the greater order.”
Over the past several years we have been discussing this difference between belief and faith. We have used the terms “belief system versus living spirituality.” We have been talking about just an assertion of believing in creeds and dogma and Christ versus living out and practicing a life of faith and not just believing in Jesus, but actually following Jesus. This difference is significant. We are not saying that belief is not important; but our faith should not end with just belief. It is not a new subject. It is one which has been a major and primary and essential debate within all religious discussions. The dynamics of what we believe and how we live have been in tension for all of known history.
The essential gift of the Rule of Benedict to the world has been to provide further guidance on how to bridge the gap between what we preach and what we practice; what we speak and how we serve. The way of Benedictine’s Rule is a very practical and human and real way in which we can begin to truly follow the teachings of Christ. In fact, the Way and Rule of Benedict is historically and often been introduced as a “way for beginners.” When any of us approach the subject of religion and faith and spirituality, we should all admit to being beginners. Anytime anyone professes to be a professor or expert in religion, one should be suspect. Listen more attentively to anyone who understands and explains the wide variations and humbly admits uncertainty. So, according to Benedictine spirituality we are all beginners and can only approach religion humbly and as a matter of unknown faith versus dogmatic belief.
This quality of Benedictine spirituality is most attractive to me. Personally, I honor humility the most. I love the phrase from Rumi who said, “Those who believe they know, don’t know. It is only those who know that they do not know, know.” Along with this poignant statement, I typically add that “I am dogmatically opposed to dogmatism.” Only by the grace of God, any of us go. Benedictine spirituality is a down to earth faith that puts flesh on the divine. In fact, Benedict sees the sacred in all people and in all things.
These are his first words in his prologue. “Listen, child of God, to the guidance of your teacher. Attend to the message you hear and make sure that it pierces to your heart, so that you may accept with willing freedom, and fulfill by the way you live, the directions that come from your loving Father. It is not easy to accept and persevere in obedience, but it is the way to return to Christ.”
Joan Chittister, in her book, Wisdom Distilled From the Daily: Living the Rule of Benedict Today. writes, “When Benedict of Nursia wrote his ancient Rule in the sixth century, he did not write a manual of spiritual exercises or a codex of canon laws. The rule of Benedict was a document designed simply to make people conscious of the God-life in which they are already immersed. The Rule of Benedict set out to make the normal and the natural the stepping stones of the Holy. The Rule was written by a lay prophet in the church who understood humanity and lived it without apology.”
Then she refers to this ancient story that explains the gift of Benedictine life to the modern world. “Once upon a time,” the story begins, “some seekers from the city asked the local monastic a question: ‘How does one seek union with God?’ And the Wise One said, ‘The harder you seek, the more distance you create between God and you.’ ‘So what does one do about the distance?’ the seekers asked. And the elder said simply, ‘Just understand that it isn’t there.’ ‘Does that mean that God and I are one?’ the disciples said. And the monastic said, ‘Not one. Not two.’ ‘But how is that possible?’ the seekers insisted. And the monastic answered, ‘Just like the sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and the song. Not one. But not two.’”
The way of Benedict is a way of natural and healthy integration with all of life. Cosmologists generally speak of the universe as random or determined or a little bit of both, actually. There is always the chance that our universe and all of humanity is a complete random fluke, but most people of this planet believe there is a pattern, wisdom and even intelligence to the universe. In other words there is a creator, and if there is then all of life is part of this creator. We call the creator supreme, divine, omniscient, sacred, God and many other names. If this creator exists then the creation is connected, and for that matter, is sacred. All of life is sacred. Every person is sacred. Every thing is sacred. Every action is sacred. This is Benedict’s affirmation. When we affirm this truth – it should make a difference in how we live every moment of the day.
Now the Rule is divided into 73 brief chapters. Each one is a treasure on how we shall live with Christ as our example. There are several ways in which these rules are categorized and characterized. Over this past year, we have talked about several of them, but certainly not all of them. Joan Chittister summarizes some of them in her concluding chapter which is entitled The Monastic Vision: Gift for a Needy World. She writes, “Benedictine spirituality, then, rests on elements that have meaning in our own time: prayer, scripture, community, balance, humility, mindfulness, listening, stewardship and respect of the earth.’
“To a nonstop world, the Rule of Benedict brings balance and simplicity. In the face of a complex world with its twenty-four hour workdays and constant motion, the rule asks for a life that deals with a little bit of everything in proper measure: work, prayer, solitude, relationships. The Rule is an antidote to excess and to human dwarfism. A proverb says, ‘Wherever there is excess, something is lacking.’” The rule offers a measured life.”
The Way of Benedict was born within Imperial Rome and a patriarchal culture that fostered domination, status and power for the few who believed it was their birthright. The Rule gave new ideals such as humility, equality, community and service. Joan Chittister states the Rule may even be more necessary in the twenty-first century than even the sixth century. “We need stability in relationships, creation rather than destruction in the works we do, a spiritual attitude toward life and a commitment to balance that slows the frenetic pace of our personal lives, our family lives and our national lives.” Just paying attention more closely to the rule in our lives today can change our lives, our communities and even our world. It is about taking our faith as sincerely and seriously as Jesus has asked of us. The rule is a practical way to live the good news of the gospel today.
The Way of Benedict asks us to live in the present, in the here and now. Not only is all of life sacred, but the present moment in which we live is the most sacred. We are not necessarily waiting for Jesus to come again, but living today for the sake of Jesus. Here is another ancient monastic tale. “Where shall I look for enlightenment?” the disciple asked. “Here,” the elder said. “When will it happen?” the disciple wanted to know. “It is happening right now,” the elder said. “Then why don’t I experience it?” the disciple asked. And the elder answered, “Because you do not look.” “But what should I look for?” the disciple wanted to know. And the elder smiled and answered, “Nothing, Just look.” “But at what?” the disciple insisted. “Anything your eyes alight upon,” the elder continued. “Well, then, must I look in a special kind of way?” the disciple said. “No,” the elder said. “Why ever not?” the disciple persisted. And the elder said quietly, “Because to look you must be here. The problem is that you are mostly somewhere else.”
Benedictine spirituality says that God is in the very fabric of our worn lives: not in incense and purple so much, it seems, as in people and places that make the Word of God alive by touching our worlds in immediate ways. God acts through others, a communal spirituality declares. God acts in the now. God is here.
“When God has become a business, though, it is very hard for people to get the confidence to realize that God is really a personal God, a God who touches us as individuals, a God who is as close to us as we choose to see. We have learned well the remoteness of a God who lived for so long behind communion rails and altar steps and seminary doors and chancery desks that the experience of God, however strong, has always been more a private secret than public expectation.”
The how-does-one-become-holy question is as old as the Exodus and the answers are just as varied: keep the laws; go up the mountain; walk with God; do not worship idols, follow the cloud by day and the fire by night. But not everybody did all those things. And not everyone did any of them the same way. They were a motley – but a chosen – people. For centuries we have been following the lights of others. The Rule of Benedict says that we must learn to follow our own call, our own lives, to find what is sanctifying for us. Real spiritual wisdom knows that God is unique to every unique being. Real spiritual wisdom knows that spirituality is not packaged and not processed and not produced for the mass market. Real spirituality is something that brings us now in touch with God here. It does not take formulas or imprimaturs. It takes consciousness.
The easy way out of course is to take the package deal: To let religious formulas substitute for spirituality; to allow others to digest our God for us. The valiant thing, the committed thing, the graced thing, is to believe that we ourselves are good enough to contain God for ourselves. But we have all been taught differently from that. We have all been taught, whoever we are, that God is just a notch beyond and above and unlike ourselves. It is time to find out where God really is for us.
Chittister concludes her book with another story. “Once upon a time, the story goes, a preacher ran through the streets of the city shouting, “We must put God into our lives. We must put God into our lives.” And hearing him, an old monastic rose up in the city plaza to say, “No, sir, you are wrong. You see, God is already in our lives. Our task is simply to recognize that.” It is to the recognition of God in our own lives that the Rule of Benedict calls us. This is Benedict’s gift to the world. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
Aspen Chapel
0077 Meadowood Drive
Aspen, Colorado 81611
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http://www.aspenchapel.org