St Benedict
Sermon preached by the Reverend Anna Matthews.
There was a famous monastery which had fallen on very hard times. Formerly its many buildings were filled with young monks and its big church resounded with the singing of chant. But now it was deserted. People no longer came there to be nourished by prayer. A handful of old monks shuffled through the cloisters and praised God with heavy hearts.
On the edge of the monastery woods, an old rabbi had built a little hut. He would come there from time to time to fast and pray. One day the abbot decided to visit the rabbi and to open his heart to him. They read the scriptures together, spoke together of God and of deep matters of faith. The abbot asked in desperation if there was any advice the rabbi could give that might save his community. ‘I have only one thing to say,’ replied the rabbi. ‘The Messiah is among you.’
After this the abbot left and went back to the monastery. He told the other monks what the rabbi had said. They were puzzled and bewildered by it, but each of them started to ponder what it could mean. Did he mean that one of the monks was the Messiah? That sounded unlikely: look at us! Brother Eldred is too crotchety to be the Messiah. But he is often right. Brother Philip is too passive to be the Messiah. You barely notice him. But he does always seem to turn up just when you need him. It couldn’t be Brother Thomas: he’s always late for mass. But he has a real gift for encouraging people… At least, each monk thought, I know it’s not me!
As time went by, the monks began to treat one another with a real reverence. There was a gentle, wholehearted, human quality about them now which was hard to describe but easy to notice. They lived with one another as people who had finally found something. But they prayed the Scriptures together as people who were always looking for something. Occasional visitors found themselves deeply moved by the life of these monks. Before long, people were coming from far and wide to be nourished by the prayer life of the monks and people were asking, once again, to join the community and live there for a lifetime.
That story is called The Rabbi’s Gift. What the rabbi gives the community isn’t something you can buy. It’s not a shiny strategy you can take down from the bookshelf or pick up at the latest church growth conference. It’s wisdom: a gift without price which transforms their life.
‘Search for wisdom as for hidden treasure’, says our Old Testament reading, ‘and you will find the knowledge of God.’ All along, treasure was hidden in that community, but they had stopped looking for it, or being able to recognise it.
In the Old Testament, wisdom is one of the ways the writers describe the principle that orders creation, and the action of God in continuing to care for creation and draw it into relationship with him. It’s personified, as coming forth from the mouth of the Most High, delighting God in creation; delighting God in acting among his people to bring forth righteousness, justice and truth, to draw his people into his life.
This figure of Wisdom provided a ready background for New Testament writers to talk about the Word of God, who was with God in the beginning and through whom all things were made. To search for wisdom is not to hunt for abstract knowledge or information. It is to seek the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, and there to find knowledge of God, knowledge not simply to fill our heads, but to transform our lives.
Search for wisdom as for hidden treasure. Search for Jesus as for hidden treasure. And both the treasure and the hiddenness are important here – treasure, because what we are instructed to search for is of surpassing value, the pearl without price: it is life in and with God. And hidden, because this life of God is often found in unexpected places and people.
This much we know from the reactions Jesus got to his ministry. If he was the Son of God he wouldn’t be found at parties with sinners, inviting himself round for dinner with tax collectors, touching the unclean, or hanging on a cross. All this Jesus does very openly – but it’s hidden, obscured, from many of those who think they know God.
For Benedict, our patron, Jesus goes on being hidden, in the person of the stranger. Chapter 53 of his Rule begins, ‘All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me.’
All guests are to be welcomed as Christ. Anyone who bangs on the monastery door. And this isn’t just idealistic posturing. Benedict wrote his Rule at the time when the Roman Empire was collapsing. Social order and stability were breaking down. The roads were not safe, and while the stranger knocking at the door might be a pilgrim, they might very well not be. Yet still they are to be welcomed as Christ.
And so, Benedict goes on, this means they are to be met ‘with all the courtesy of love’. They are to be welcomed with prayer – the community that exists to live a life rooted in Christ does not detach itself from that rootedness – and with a bow or even a complete prostration as a reverencing of Christ who is present in them. Not with a glance that tries to size them up, decide whether they’re one of ‘us’ or not, not with suspicion or hostility or defensiveness. But with reverence – adoration, even – as those in whom Christ is present. The guest is to be treated with ‘every kindness’, and the community serves them by washing their feet, just as Christ told his disciples to do.
This goes far beyond putting a sign on the door, on the railings, or on the website saying ‘all are welcome’. This sort of hospitality transforms people. It transforms the community because it learns better to recognise and love and serve Jesus in the people who come to it – the community is enriched as it unearths and receives hidden treasure, and as it grows in the graces of love and service and kindness and generosity. And the guests are transformed because in the very act of being received as Christ, they learn that treasure is hidden within them: that they are made for love. That they have dignity and worth. That their lives are holy ground because Christ has made them so.
‘The Messiah is among you’: that was the rabbi’s gift in the story, the wisdom that made the monks realise that they had stopped looking for the treasure which was hidden among them all that time, treasure which emerged as they recognised and loved and reverenced and served Christ in one another. And from Benedict we get the wisdom that Jesus comes disguised in the person of the stranger, whom we are to welcome as Christ.
There is treasure hidden in every single one of you, and in every person who comes through these doors. You might not always feel like much of a treasure; you might not always feel like some of these other people are much of a treasure. But God knows you all are, and God never stops looking for the treasure he knows is hidden within each of us.
Jesus is among us, waiting to be recognised, inviting us to love him, serve him, reverence him. Inviting us to do that in one another, which means inviting us to live lives which are open towards one another, where we can know and be known, love and be loved, where strangers become friends, and where hidden treasure is revealed, and lives transformed because we look at one another, and see Jesus.