Listen to the podcast.
A sermon by the Rev. Canon Todd D. Smelser
The 8th
Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 11B
Last
week the General Convention of the Episcopal Church finished its nine
day session, doing the routine business of the Church and not making
much head-line news. One notable exception was passage of legislation
to create liturgies for same-sex blessings to take place in the Church,
with the permission of the Diocesan Bishop. On the local level,
Convention also consented to the Ordination of the Reverend Rob Wright
as the new Bishop of Atlanta, to take place in October. In last
Saturday's New York Times, there was a much quieter
article, which seemed to mirror the theme of today's
Gospel.
Fifteen years ago, when he was 35, Lucas
Fleming was building a career as a criminal lawyer in the Tampa Bay
area. He had recently divorced, was raising his three-year daughter
alone, and feeling a failure as at about everything. So, arranging for
his parents to take care of his daughter, he told his friends that he
was going to Boston and spend 48 hours in a monastery. His friends were
fearful that he was going off to be a monk. That didn't happen. But
what did was the beginning of a personal tradition of annual visits to
the Episcopal monastery run by the brothers of the Society of St. John
the Evangelist, one of the oldest monastic communities in our
Church.
Saint John the Evangelist is not in some
remote and isolated place, like the Episcopal Benedictine monastery that
I used to visit in Three Rivers, Michigan. Instead it was established
in the heart of Cambridge, Massachusetts, home to both Harvard
University and MIT. The monastery's austere complex of guesthouse,
monk's residence, refectory and chapel, sits down the street from
Harvard's prestigious Kennedy School of Government. Perhaps because of
its geography, the monastery has fallen into a kind of specialty that of
tending to the souls of people like Mr. Fleming"” ambitious, inquisitive
and intellectual people, enmeshed in the material world yet craving
some way of detaching long enough to hear again the whisper of
God.
"I feel a real sense of calm, a real sense of
distance from my life," Mr. Fleming said of his retreats there. "It
slows me down and makes me mindful. What I've learned from the brothers
is how to be present." Brother Geoffrey Tristram, the Superior of the
order said this in the same article. "People are drowning in words and
drowning in information. Words are bombarding us from every side"”to buy
things, to believe things, to subscribe to things. We are trying to
build a place to be still and silent. So many voices around us are
shouting. God tends not to shout."
Today's Gospel
passage concludes Mark's story of the mission of the Twelve, when Jesus
gave the disciples authority and sent them out two by two. Bracketing
the familiar accounts in Mark's lengthy story of the feeding of the five
thousand and his walking on water to dispel the fears of the disciples,
are the three brief accounts that we just heard. These are the
disciples first "homecoming" with Jesus after their initial efforts in
ministry; a journey with Jesus that does not turn out as expected; and
their unanticipated arrival with Jesus in the region of Gennesaret,
where much healing is needed and received.
Two
fundamental questions emerge from the text and may help us in our own
frenetic lives. How does God view the world? And, how does God ask us
to view the world? For me, this passage of scripture gives us some
pretty clear guidelines. "He saw a great crowd, and he had compassion
for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd." The term
compassion is explicitly used in describing Jesus' attitude toward human
beings in at least eight Gospel references. It is implicit in the
entire witness of his life, especially his healing ministry which is so
prominent in today's text.
The German word for
compassion is MITLEID"”which means quite literally, "with suffering."
When Jesus had compassion for the crowd, sheep without a shepherd, it is
a mark of his identification with humanity, and with the suffering of
his fellow human beings. Jesus identifies with our lot not only in
birth and life, but also in death. For Christians this is not just a
statement about a good, generous and loving human being, Jesus of
Nazareth. It is also a statement about God, the source of our lives and
of all life. This understanding also remind us that we are accountable
to that God, and that our behavior, our ethics, flows from our belief,
our theology.
Most of us suffer from something. For
some it's a serious disease or chronic health situation. For others
it's the burden of sleepless nights, or guilty thoughts, or unfulfilled
dreams. For many of us, however, we suffer from the effects of our
culture: too busy lives, and too much noise. Jesus' disciples seemed to
suffer from that problem as well. "For many were coming and going, and
they had no leisure even to eat." Our own busyness prevents us often
from gathering for meals with family or friends. But what happens if we
become too busy to come away and break bread together? This text
suggests to us contemporary Christians that gathering as a faith
community to rest from our labors and partake of a common meal is still
an important part of life together. We need times to re-form ourselves
as the Church, the Body of Christ.
The reflections of
an 18th-century spiritual director might be helpful as we wrestle with
this question. Jean-Pierre de Caussade wanted to understand how
Christians might know what God would have them to do in each moment of
every day. He taught that God reveals Godself in each moment, but that
Christians must learn to pay attention to God's presence and surrender
themselves continually to God's will. De Caussade wrote, "Everything
turns to bread to nourish me, soap to wash me, fire to purify me, and a
chisel to fashion me in the image of God. Grace supplies all my
needs."
The Pastoral Care ministry of the Church is
about compassion"”about being with those who suffer. This can take place
at a hospital bedside, or in a clergy office, or in the ministry of our
Eucharistic Visitors who bring communion to those who can no longer
attend church. It can also happen with a therapist at our Counseling
Center, in a conversation in the Book Store, in a Bible study or at a
youth event. But it is not a ministry of our own making, but is
directly related to the healing ministry that was at the very center of
Jesus' ministry. For the church to live out what it professes, it must
itself always be a place of healing, of mending broken hearts and souls,
giving hope to those without hope, and bread to those without bread,
and holy purpose to those who have lost sight of their Good
Shepherd.
Over the years, Mr. Fleming from Tampa Bay
has invited over twenty friends to join him at that Episcopal monastery
in Cambridge, into that safe place. He even worked with the monks to
develop a workshop for lawyers on listening skills. More personally he
runs his law office on the principle of limits. It opens at 8:30 and
closes promptly at 5. The time before and after belongs to his family,
and his daughter, now in college, still lives with her dad. He
meditates twenty minutes each day, attends church every Sunday, and
spends several days every few months at some monastic community. His
law practice, far from suffering, is growing and thriving. Mr. Fleming
has learned that God does not shout.
If your
spiritual life has become overwhelmed by all the noise and confusion
which seem to surround so many of us, perhaps you too might consider
finding a place where might hear again the whisper of
God.
"Come to me, all ye that travail and are heavy
laden, and I will refresh you."
