2 Advent, 2008

 Tonight, Brother Maurus greeted me at the door of the guest house and helped me carry my bags to the room nearest the Oblate Chapel. How is it that he always seems to know what I need? If I am here to write or study, he leads me to a room near the library upstairs. If I am here for a silent retreat, he assigns a room away from visitors or groups of retreatants. And tonight, when I need to pray and lay my broken heart before God, he brings me here to a room just across the hall from the font and the chapel I have come to love so much. It’s so much more than I would expect or ask of him. And the mystery and grace of it all is that I never tell him why I’m coming. When I call to make arrangements, I simply ask if there’s a room available. We never talk about the reason behind my private retreats, or the spiritual task or work of the heart I need to do while I am here. And yet he always seems to know.

Coming here, especially in December, always feels like coming home. Abbot Justin tells us (the oblates) that this is our home. “Saint Meinrad is your spiritual home. You are a part of this house. And you are always, always welcome here.”

They always do that. The monks of this house always find a way to make us feel that we are more important than we really are.  For more than fifteen centuries Benedictines have been known for their hospitality and kindness. It is so much a part of who they are. And yet, no matter how many times I experience it, the grace and warmth of Father Meinrad (the oblate master) and Brother Maurus (the guest master) always come as a gift. A lovely gift. The kind that leaves you speechless and amazed, feeling honored and deeply cared for by these humble “servants of the servants of God.” It is like coming home to a house filled with understanding, acceptance and love.

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Later in the evening, when I dip my hand into the cold, clear water of the baptismal font and enter the chapel, the tears begin to flow. There are no words or images in my mind. It is simply the Spirit speaking to my spirit, reminding me again that God is my Father. God reaches out to me as a loving parent ready to take the wounded child in his arms to comfort and hold and reassure. That is why the tears flow so freely, I think. It is embarrassing to say, but I am like a little child, hurt and wounded, running into his Parent’s arms.

All is silent. All is silent…

Be still and know that I am God…

I sit in the chapel before the crucifix, the image of Christ on the cross, and remember that Jesus was beaten and broken, nailed and pierced and  wounded for me.  And this is why he was born. The Word became flesh, God became one of us and one with us that we might be healed.

He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

This is how much God loves you. This is how much… on the cross he stretched out his arms and died. God loves you this much. God so loved you…. that he gave his only begotten son. His Little One. The Beloved. His very Self. And this, says Paul, is how we know God loves us — that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. And that means, it has to mean, that God loves me.  

Oh, but that is so very hard for me to say, because I am so unworthy.  Paul said we have the treasure in earthen vessels, in old clay pots that are fragile and imperfect and easily broken. But somehow my imperfections seem so great as to render me a useless vessel. Think about it… Why would God choose someone like me? I am too quiet, too bashful, too big, too broken. I feel so inferior to others, at times. I make mistakes, so many mistakes. I am too sensitive at times, while at other times I am wholly insensitive. I have very few (if any) real social skills. No grace. But worst of all (to me), I was told once that I am not companionable. My personality is not unlike a tree stump, at times! And the rest of the time? Rather like an irritable old bear! But truthfully, all kidding aside, why would God want someone so flawed and fragile as me? It’s so hard for me to imagine that I am loved by God or anyone? So why me?

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I realize that all of these feelings came to me before I even knew how to say the words that describe them. They came when I was a very small child. And in a child’s way of understanding and interpreting his world, everything bad – all that was dreadful and hideous and wrong — was my fault, I thought. It was all because of something I did. “This happens to me because I am bad. There’s something wrong with me,” I thought. “Something about me causes this.” How hard it is to change this distorted way of reasoning. Even when I know that it is wrong.

Sometimes my unworthiness even explained what I perceived as God’s absence and inaction. “Why doesn’t God know where I am? Why doesn’t God rescue me?” Or “I’m so bad God can’t even love me,” (as if my own sinfulness was somehow greater than God’s love).

This is the arrogance of self-loathing and shame. It’s the “flip side” of believing you cannot be loved. It is saying, in effect, that God cannot love you. God’s heart isn’t big enough. God’s love is limited. Conditional. Less than perfect. But that is nowhere near the truth. For God’s love knows no bounds. No one is beyond the reach of God’s love. For God so loved… not just me, but the world. All of us. Every one.

That’s what disturbs me so much when I offend someone, or let them down, or say or do something that hurts them. They are God’s children. In hurting them I have hurt one of God’s little ones. And in hurting them, I have hurt God. It’s what happens to parents when someone breaks their child’s heart. Or rejects her. Or treats him badly. It nearly tears your heart out to know that the child you love so much is hurting. And this is what I do to God when I hurt somebody else. Psalm 51 says it this way: Against you, you alone, have I sinned….

The first General Rule for “the people called Methodist” is “do no harm.” The second is “do all the good you can.” And the third can be summed up by the words, stay in love with God. Bishop Grove asked me to reflect on the three General Rules and write something about them. But for the life of me, I couldn’t get past the first one. I couldn’t get past the feeling that I am doing harm to others. So often I feel that I am hurting the church, holding it back.

Sometimes I honestly feel like I am killing this church. But oh, how I love it. I become impatient with the church, at times, because I am convinced that God wants to help us be the best church we can be. I wish there was something I could say or do to let the congregation know just how much God loves and delights in them. I wish I could show them that Jesus lives in and among them. Not the spirit of Jesus, as in the spirit of Gandhi, or Lincoln, or Dr. King, or even Santa Claus. But Jesus himself. The real Jesus. I wish I could help them know — I mean really know — that God can be trusted. That God is real. That God is for them. That church isn’t just one among the vast number of things vying for our attention these days. But it is the main thing, God’s own way of being with us together as one body. (It’s so important for Christians to know that Jesus didn’t just come to save us as individuals or to connect to us solely one-on-one. But he came to form this community, this living thing called church.

I wish I could help people hear God calling them to love and serve and give.  And I wish there were some way I could stir up their desire to live for him — to “prefer nothing whatever to Christ, that he may lead us all together to everlasting life” (St. Benedict). But I don’t know how to say it. I simply don’t have the words.

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Saint Meinrad is in one of those strange parts of Indiana where the time zones gap and overlap. The town of St. Meinrad is now in the central time zone, but Ferdinand (just a few miles to the west) is on Eastern Standard Time. And to complicate things St. Meinrad does not observe Daylight Savings Time, but Ferdinand does. (Some folks say their cell phones start behaving like the instrument panels of airplanes flying over the Bermuda triangle when they get to Birdseye, Indiana!) It changes things. In November and December, as the days become shorter and shorter, darkness falls just after four o’clock. And the vesper bell rings out in the dark of night at a quarter to five.

This evening I went early to the abbey church to wait for vespers. I sat alone in the great stone church listening to the gentle trickling of the “living water” of the baptismal font. A few of the older monks come and quietly take their places in the choir stalls. The younger monks begin to ring the enormous bells in the church tower, ringing out the call to end their work and gather again in the presence of God. The monks who are here (more than half are away this week visiting in local parishes and sister houses or distributing gifts of gratitude to Saint Meinrad’s benefactors around the country) take their places in the choir. And the bells continue to ring out in the darkness. They will not stop ringing until the monks start to pray. “O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.”

Tonight, in this second week of watching and waiting, we sing softly the first of the three psalms appointed for this night. It is the De Profundis, Psalm 13o:

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord,
   Lord, hear my voice!
O let your ears be attentive
   to the voice of my pleading.
If you, O Lord, should mark our guilt,
   Lord, who would survive?
But with you is found forgiveness:
   for this we revere you.
My soul is waiting for the Lord.
I count on his word.
My soul is longing for the Lord
   more than watchman for daybreak.
(Let the watchman count on daybreak
    and Israel on the Lord.)
Because with the Lord there is mercy
   and fullness of redemption,
 Israel indeed he will redeem
   from all its iniquity.

My soul is longing for the Lord. In this season of Advent I’m watching and waiting. And I know God hears my prayers and the longings of my heart. I want to follow Jesus. I want to be a good pastor, a better pastor. I will ask God to help me. My longing is to be more and more the person God created and continually calls me to be. I am flawed, an earthen vessel with many weaknesses and rough edges. That’s why I must continually put my hope and trust in God. For God is God. Nothing is ever impossible with God. As Mary, who was at once both the mother and disciple of Jesus our Lord, said to the angel Gabriel, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”

 O Lord God, Holy Father, you have called us through Christ to be partakers in this gracious covenant: We take upon ourselves with joy the yoke of obedience, and engage ourselves for love of thee, to seek and do thy perfect will. We are no longer our own, but thine.

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt;
   put me to doing, put me to suffering;
   let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
   exalted for thee or brought low for thee;
   let me be full, let me be empty;
   let me have all things, let me have nothing;
   I freely and heartily yield all things
   to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
   thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
   let it be ratified in heaven. Amen. 
(from Wesley’s Covenant Service)

Let it be… Let it be.