Sermon Library
“The Chapel and the Monestary”
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
June 03, 2007
Service Theme: Trinity Sunday - 2007
Source: Corinthians 5: 16-21
Trinity Sunday June 3, 2007
The Chapel and the Monastery
2 Corinthians 5: 16 – 21
Gregg Anderson
Little Picture – Big Picture
There are times in all of our lives in which we need to be very focused, even myopic, on a specific endeavor in order to accomplish a needed task. We need to wear fine blinders on both sides of our eyes to thread a needle or find a needle in a haystack. In seminary, one learns what is called inductive exegesis which is the process of finely tuned interpretation of a particular slice of scripture. One has to know all the different interpretations and innuendos of each Hebrew or Greek word in order to gain the best understanding of a passage. Then it is also necessary to place that minute text within the much larger historical and cultural context to also gain the best understanding of the scriptural message. Likewise, it is often good for any of us to place our own lives in a big picture and purpose of life. It is often helpful to look at ourselves from a high birds-eye view of life. Sometimes we get so caught up in the details of daily living that we forget what the most important things really are in life. Looking at religion in the details is necessary, but I would dare say that looking at religion in the really big picture of life is even more necessary. I say that standing at this pulpit of an interfaith chapel. I like looking at the big picture of things than the narrower myopic, semi-blind-sighted view, especially when it comes to religion. God must have the best view. It is just that too many people keep making God too small.
Two weeks ago I took a big picture in a sermon entitled Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Benedict, Luther and Michael Sattler. It is only when one looks at the big picture of the world and religion that one can see the amazing commonalities and interconnections. Here is one snapshot taken from an eye of an eagle: a Benedictine monastery and an Amish Community have a great deal in common. We can rather easily draw some of our own comparisons. Both are simple and very intentional communities of faith, modesty and humility are core values, work and worship is part of every day life, helping one another at all times and sharing of all possessions, and of course following the example of the life of Jesus is foremost.
Benedictines and Anabaptists
When one does take a closer look at the two communities’ one can discover that the similarity between Benedictines and Amish is not at all a coincidence. What is quite remarkable is that one of the primary founders of the reformed Anabaptist movement in which the Amish belong was a Benedictine Abbot. His name was Michael Sattler. That was the name whom you did not recognize among all the other known spiritual giants.
Michael Sattler was once the Abbot of St. Peter’s Benedictine monastery in the Black Forest of southwest Germany from 1521 to 1525. In 1525 there was a war called The Peasants War which was motivated by excessive and oppressive taxation and tithing. The two were synonymous at the time and some monasteries were ordered to collect such taxes and tithes. Michael Sattler was against this as he was also learning much more about the theology and purpose of the Protestants and reformers such as Erasmus, Luther and Zwingli. Sattler left the monastery and became a protestant reformer and married a peasant woman named Margaretha.
Many historians refer to the Reformation as one of the largest transformations within Western history over the past millennium. The Reformation was multi-faceted and affected the way of life beyond the major religious differences. One of the evolutions of the Reformation was the Anabaptist Movement. Anabaptist means to be “re” baptized or baptized as an adult versus an infant. It sounds like a minor difference in the big picture today, but the theology epitomizes a significant difference of religious emphasis, especially in the beginning of the sixteenth century. One of the founding documents of the Anabaptist movement was called the Schleitheim Articles because they were written and first presented in Schleitheim, Switzerland. Michael Sattler who had lived his adult life in a Benedictine monastery was the primary author of the Articles and the Benedictine influence coupled with reformation theology is quite apparent and explains the roots and commonality between the Benedictines and the Amish.
Schleitheim Articles of Confession
There are seven articles in the Schleitheim Confession and I am just going to give you the titles of each section. The preface states, “This is the brotherly union of a number of children of God concerning seven articles.” The first is about Baptism and an affirmation of adult baptism. The second is about how to deal with conflict based on Matthew 18 which describes how to approach a conflict with another person and if all efforts fail the person shall be banned from the community. The third is a more open approach to the right of communion which is based in community and baptism versus the priest consecrating the bread and wine to become the transubstantiated body and blood of Jesus. Fourth is a desire to be separate from the destructive and evil forces of the world. Fifth is the call of clergy from the congregation versus the dictatorial appointment from the Pope. Sixth is the commitment of not taking up the sword and living life as a pacifist. The seventh is about taking oath and swearing-in which is about doing all in the name of God as truthfulness. I think this essentially means to tell the truth.
Hidden in Plain Sight: Mennonite Benedictine Spirituality
Rev. Weldon Nisly, minister of the Seattle Mennonite Church, who wrote an article entitled Hidden in Plain Sight: Mennonite Benedictine Spirituality has specifically compared the Schleitheim Articles with the Rule of St. Benedict in an address he gave at a Benedictine monastery in Collegeville, Minnesota, a place in which Cynthia Bourgeault has visited and lectured often. The specific parallels can be summarized this way: Voluntary entry into the community and a public act of profession; through that profession a person is subject to a common way of life; discipline takes the form of exclusion from community activities; the community is separated from the world; the spiritual leader is to be elected by the community, and is responsible for the spiritual growth and discipline of the community. These parallels in Schleitheim and the Benedictine Rule can be examined further along two important tracks of the church: baptism and profession, obedience and discipline.
Michael Sattler was shaped in life and faith as a Benedictine, steeped in obedience and discipline in the community. As an Anabaptist leader formulating the first “rule” for communal life, Sattler can be seen to draw heavily on his monastic life and the Rule to establish the centrality of obedience and discipline in the Anabaptist community which led to the Amish and Mennonite communities. This is not speculation, but quite detailed facts in the minute and big picture of religion.
Michael Sattler accomplished a great deal in his Schleitheim confession of faith especially when one acknowledges that he was only allowed to live two years as a reformed Anabaptist before he was sentenced by the state and church as a heretic and was brutally crucified. The next day his wife, Margaretha, because of her allegiance to adult baptism was drowned.
Weldon Nisly concludes, “We can see that Michael Sattler brought a Benedictine sensibility – more than an obvious spirituality – with him into the Anabaptist (Amish/Mennonite) movement. We can even see in Michael Sattler a Benedictine in Anabaptist clothing. There are strong roots and parallels. It surely was an attempt to live a devout and holy life wholly rooted in scripture in a separated community of faith.”
The reason I am talking about this history and perspective is the fact that I find it quite serendipitous that we decided to talk about the Benedictine Rule at this Chapel which was founded as an interfaith chapel by a few people who happened to have strong Mennonite backgrounds without initially knowing of this incredible and profound link with the Benedictine rule and the Mennonite rule. Furthermore, the fact that we exist as a close neighbor to St. Benedicts Monastery in Old Snowmass is even more amazing, especially when one considers the fact that there are only 1200 such monasteries still existing in this world.
A Personal Twist
Weldon Nisly concludes his lecture on their Mennonite founder at this Benedictine monastery in Minnesota with this personal response which is a bit of a twist and even more appropriate to reiterate at this interfaith chapel established by a few Mennonites. It is also a good example of the benefit to a bigger picture. He states:
“I must confess that I am uneasy with Sattler’s tone as a reformer. His closest critics had some justification not only to disagree with Sattler but in their criticism of his apparent rigidity and dogmatism and polemical stance. With all his gift and vision to follow his passion for Christ, he also was blinded to his own shadow side or false self. Sattler lived his life in what we now would call a “bounded set” worldview. Such a “bounded” world is one where the primary energy of the group goes into maintaining the boundaries with sharp definitions of who is in and who is out and how you get in and how you are cast out. Boundaries are essential but it is this attitude that has been the impulse for building endless walls of division and enmity in the Church and the Body of Christ.”
Nisly continues, “We live in a new millennium – a kairos time of new opportunity and new vision. In this new millennium, if we are to survive and be alive – to see with our hearts—we must dip deeply into the wellspring of our own tradition, it is true. Yes, we must go deep into the streams of our own traditions to understand them more fully and to live them more authentically. We also go deep into our streams for the refreshing water that nourishes our thirsty souls in order to flow out into new refreshing streams of living water. When we do this with faithfulness and integrity, we find three life-giving energies drawing us on toward God.”
“First, we find that there are common waters in the wellsprings of other church
traditions that we thought were mutually excusive from our own. Thus we are
enriched with knowing our own tradition more fully and living it more faithfully.
Second, we find that we must cross these boundaries because we are given this
“ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5) with Jesus Christ to tear down the
walls that divide us. Third, a further practical and very real reason is because we find ourselves worshipping in communities of faith made up of people from streams as diverse as the church. Especially from a pastoral perspective, it is impossible to lead a
congregation as if all members lived within one tradition generation after generation. We must live honorably within a tradition, but we dare not be bound or blinded by that tradition.”
Trinity Split
Today is called Trinity Sunday in the calendar and liturgy of the Christian church. The trinity has always been controversial because of very specific and narrower interpretations. Because of such differences for example we have two major Christian religions who both claim to be the one and true and original Christian Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Western Roman Catholic Church. The Orthodox’s believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. The Catholics believe that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. There were other issues, of course, but this was a predominant issue in the first millennium. It seems trite to us as I have stated it, but 1500 years ago, lives were lost over the issue. We might say that progress is being made over the Trinity today because people are no longer killing each other over it. In fact, in 1964 Patriarch Athenagoras and Pope Paul VI met in Jerusalem, the first time such a meeting took place in a thousand years. During that meeting they decided to remove the excommunications that each had placed on the other for the past thousand years. Ah, progress. As strange as it may seem, it was progress.
God and the Really Big Picture
Our perspective of religion and faith means everything. It is important to dig into the details, but it is even more important to see the whole picture or as much of an over-view as we can comprehend. When we do take such time and patience to look deeper and higher, we can discover a spiritual world which is genuinely interconnected. I am not saying that all is the same, but I am suggesting that all is connected. We are all human beings living on this planet called earth. There are a million religious differences, but we are all still earthlings. We are all spiritual in one way or another. Atheism can even be considered a spiritual perspective. We are spiritual earthlings. Today, we have merely linked Benedictines and the Amish and Mennonites. But if we can keep doing this in the little pictures and the big pictures, who knows what the future of faith might become. Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Benedict, Luther, Michael Sattler, and all of us may have a lot more in common than we could have ever projected. I think its all about looking at a really, really, big picture of life. In that big picture, I suspect, there is only one God - waiting for us to become one people. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Gregg R. Anderson
Aspen Chapel
0077 Meadowood Drive
Aspen, Colorado 81611
970 925 7184