Sunday, November 8, 2020:
Wisdom 6:12-16
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Matthew 25:1-13
I recently read a reminiscence by an elderly English Roman Catholic monk. He was thinking back to an incident 50 years ago. His community was fairly forward-thinking, and they were already serving communion in both kinds to the entire congregation, which was certainly a rarity at that time, in the Roman Church. The Archbishop heard about this and sent a message: stop this at once. The prior, the head of the community, sent a message back to the Archbishop: come, let’s meet, sit down, and talk about this, so we can understand each other. The Archbishop shot back: “doesn’t your order understand obedience?! Stop serving the people wine.” The prior took a breath and wrote back: “Might we meet. Sit down, and talk about this, and come to a solution.” The Archbishop wrote back again: never mind; they could do whatever they wanted. “Anything rather than discussion!”* Anything rather than getting to know your neighbour. Anything rather than listening to another. And so, this monk insists, they were obedient to the Archbishop. They were obedient in how they yearned for relationship with their authority, and yearned for him to be in deeper, more meaningful relationship with them. This, the monk suggests, is what obedience is like to God or the Bible. Not unthinking reactions, but a life deepened by engagement with something that takes us beyond ourselves. This is obedience, he says. And today, I’ll suggest that this is a mark of a life lived in pursuit of wisdom.
Today we heard what’s probably the most famous and memorable of the Anglican collects, the prayer at the outset of the service. The one with that wonderful expression “inwardly digest.” It’s an original one from the Prayer Book’s architect, Thomas Cranmer, written way back in the mid 1500s. “Eternal God, who caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning, grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life.”
Timothy Radcliffe, the monk who told that story I started with, writes that God’s wisdom, God’s revelation, God’s self-disclosure that comes to us in, among other things, our scriptures, isn’t necessarily “spooky voices in the night.” It’s more like “[a]ttending to the invitation of a work of art, a painting, a poem, a piece of music… [it requires] an inner silence…. It is patient conversation with a text that sometimes feels like a friend, but which is often a stranger.” Like the patient conversation that the monks wanted to have with their Archbishop. Like the ten bridesmaids in the middle of the night, we are called to wait, faithfully. Like the early Christian community in Thessalonica, nervous when their friends started dying, we are called to wait, with hope. This call, from our ‘Conversation-Partner’ is to move out of our inner whirlpool of narcissism — where we keep turning in toward ourself — and out into the deep and mysterious waters of of openness with others (God, and our scriptures — which point to God, included).
But think of how we are wired to resist this, like the Archbishop who wanted anything other than travelling to the monastery to actually sit and meet with the monks. Think of the interior monologue when we’re impatiently in line at a coffee shop, or store. “When’s my turn. Why’s this guy in front of me so slow.” Think of the exterior monologue of so much of public discourse: about my wishes, my generation, my cause, my indignation. We’re especially at risk right now, as we tend to hermit in our homes, and avoid others.
Very rarely do we hear the selflessness of a wisdom that wants to create the space for the surprising things that happen in collaboration and mutual openness. The place where we do see this — ideally — is in marriage. When two often very different people see in the other a whole world that will take a lifetime to discover.
The Eastern Christian tradition has an ancient practice for encouraging people to move out of the spiral of egotism: the Jesus Prayer. Whether sitting in meditation, going to sleep, walking somewhere, or waiting impatiently in line, slowly we repeat, over and over and over, the words “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” A simple prayer, and a remedy for our pride.
The collect today similarly points us beyond ourselves, and to a deeper life; a life much riskier than the sense of control that strict rationalism and fundamentalism provide. An obedience deeper than just saying yes or no, or doing one thing over another. It’s something more like sitting for hours in front of a piece of art, or listening to a piece of music, or crocheting, or kneading dough. Patient conversation with a friend, or maybe a stranger.
In our world of quick fixes, cynicism, and increasing polarization, our tradition calls us to go deeper. To pursue wisdom. And this is a task that we can only take responsibility ourselves — though in communion with others — as the bridesmaids in the parable learned. “ Eternal God, who caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning, grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life. Amen.”
© 2020 The Rev’d Matthew Kieswetter
* This, as I’ve cribbed from recently, is from Timothy Radcliffe’s Alive in God: A Christian Imagination (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2019), 26.