Patronal Festival The Feast of St Benedict

Sermon

14 July 2024

The Reverend Dr James Gardom

Proverbs 2.1-6; Psalm 119.57-64; I Corinthians 3.10-11; Luke 18.18-22.

I want to talk today about the importance of belonging to a religious community. In today’s Gospel we have the story of the rich ruler, who comes to Jesus to ask what you must do to inherit eternal life. The parallel stories tell us a little more than Matthew.

In Mark we are told that he ran up to Jesus just as he was going away. This is the last moment, and he has delayed almost too long.  We are told that he is young. We are also told Jesus looked at him with love.  Perhaps because Jesus loves him, Jesus’ response is hard. ‘There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ This is not just to do with money. It is about community.

This man is a Ruler, an Archon – someone with a role in his community. Part of that role is to be an example – both ritual purity and tithing are expensive. Part of it, probably, is to be a judge. Part of it is careful and well-judged alms giving. All of these things together make him a Ruler, an Archon. The Archon is being asked to give up his identity. (It is worth noting that his identity is not working well for him). Actually, he is being asked to exchange it for a new identity. ‘Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor …; then come, follow me.’ means “Come and join the disciples, be a new person, sustained in a new identity, by a new community.” We do not know what he decided. When I think about it, I really hope that he was able to do this.

Benedict of Nursia, was a rich young Archon, from central Italy, born around the year 480. As a young man he was sent to study in Rome but was soon appalled by the corruption in society and withdrew to live as a hermit at Subiaco. He quickly attracted disciples and began to establish small monasteries in the neighbourhood. St Benedict is remembered not primarily as a rich young man who chose to give up all his wealth (although he was that). He is remembered as someone who wrote a rule of life to enable monks to live in community. Like the rich ruler, he heard a challenge to give up his former identity. He responded to this challenge by leaving behind the network, the reality, the prospects, - in this case, those of an ambitious young nobleman receiving an education in Rome. Like the disciples, his new identity became a reality within a community which made it possible and sustainable. He could not be a new person on his own – he needed a group of people to work together, and that meant a pattern of life – a Rule.

The Rule which he wrote was not intended to found an Order. No such thing had existed at the time. It was intended to make a new identity possible for everyone within a community focused on Christ. More and more people were drawn to the practical, gentle, complete seriousness of his rule, and his commitment to finding ways to enable people to live together as a community in Christ.

This parish is called after Benedict. This is our religious community. Not many of us, at least in the older generation, have had to give up aspects large of our social identity in order to belong to this community. I think it is an open question whether, if we were being more faithful in following Christ, we would find it more of a challenge to our generally fairly comfortable social identities. It may already be more difficult in the future and for our younger members, since Christian identity is strongly associated in people’s minds with bigotry, psychological and moral cowardice, and a kind of willed dim-wittedness. But, old and young, we are, challenged to exchange our normal social identities for a new identity in Christ.

This was never going to be easy – Jesus is not a tidy middle-class person living a tidy and predictable life, and our religious identity is always going to be in tension with crucial aspects of our lives.  Socially, being a follower of Christ is not, and probably never has been a form of normality. And so we need a community to sustain this within this identity. Without such a community we have only the power of our own spiritual perceptions, and it is beyond the power of almost anyone to sustain, single-handedly, an identity significantly in tension with a surrounding society. And so we have been drawn to St Bene't's, to St Benedict’s.

We have been drawn to the practical, gentle, complete seriousness of this community’s commitment to finding ways to live together as a community of Christians. It is not entirely easy, and it is by no means perfect, but it is a real and distinct effort, and in one way or another we have come to depend on it to sustain our Christian identities. The Benedictine order carried the seeds of Christian rebirth through the long centuries of late antiquity – what we used to call the Dark Ages.

When I joined St Bene’t’s, a priest friend came up to me and asked what it was like to be responsible for the most prayed for congregation in England. I do not know whether St Bene't's is the most prayed for congregation in England, and it is perhaps a distinction we should be glad to give up. I do know that up and down the country there are communities of all sorts and traditions seeking, like St Bene't's, to find ways to sustain their shared life, and to sustain religious identities which are in tension with the surrounding society. That, I think, is our primary vocation, at this time, as a church.

At least at this time our vocation is to be faithful, to live together practically, gently, and with complete seriousness in a way that enables each of us to sustain our Christian identity in a hostile, and increasingly demented environment. With other communities of all sorts, we need to sustain what is valuable and distinctive. We need to be faithful, patient and confident.

In the fullness of time, and in God’s good time, there will be rebirth.