The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16 Luke 14:1, 7-14
My constant companion on the sabbatical train journey that I took around the continent this spring and summer was Joan Chittister’s annotated translation of the Rule of Benedict. The rule was written in the 6th century by Benedict of Nursia, borrowing from earlier rules as well as his experience in founding monastic communities. From the 7th century onward the Rule has formed the basis for all Christian monastic living, and it has gained a following in recent years among even non-cenobitic readers, that is those of us who don’t live in monastic communities, as a rule of life that has its origins in the earliest centuries of Christian experience, before there were mutual condemnations and exclusions, before the division of East versus West, before the wrenching divisions of the early modern era and the reformation.
Benedict’s rule looks a lot like the sort of household rules we see listed here at the end of Hebrews – that long text that might be a sermon, or a letter, or, in the author’s own words, “a word of encouragement.” The list we hear today reads like a summary of the sort of principles that hold a community of believers together: mutual love; hospitality; solidarity with the imprisoned and the tortured; faithfulness in relationships of intimacy; letting go our grasp on material well-being and trusting in God to provide what we need; imitating the saints who have showed us the way to God; centering our hope on God, and through Christ offering worship and the sacrifice of thanksgiving; doing good and sharing what we have. Print those ten steps out on a card, and you have a year’s worth of sermons, a lifetime of spiritual grounding, the life and meaning of Jesus of Nazareth, the son of God. Our Christian rule of life.
Benedict’s rule is presented in 73 chapters, which Chittister breaks into easily digestible portions, writing an expanding commentary on each portion. The design of her book is that the rule is read three times through in a year – in accordance with the instructions contained in the rule itself. So if you read the rule every day, you get to see yourself coming and going at different times of the year when you read the same passages over and over – what was I doing when I read this the first time? In mid-April, when I set out by train from Salt Lake City to Martinez, California, her commentary on chapter 61 began with a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveler.” That passage returned two weeks ago, when I journeyed to Moses Lake with a team of trainers to spend a weekend with a group of clergy and laity from around the diocese, including Roy Johnson, to talk about race, about dismantling racism. Later on my train journey, and again ten days ago, she tells a story from the Zen masters, of wealthy donors inviting Master Ikyyu to a banquet. “The master arrived there dressed in beggar’s robes. His host, not recognizing him in this garb, hustled him away: ‘We cannot have you here at the doorstep. We are expecting the famous Master Ikkyu any moment.’” Well – we know where this story is going. The master returns dressed in his resplendent robe, where he is ushered to a seat of great importance. And he steps out of his ornate stiffened robe, and leaves it sitting upright at the dinner table and says “I presume that it is my robe you have invited since when I first arrived without it a little while ago, you showed me away.” [Chittister:Rule – August 15, August 19]
Journey and hospitality. Two themes of the spiritual life, whether they are written by Zen masters or desert fathers, by the author of Hebrews, or acted out by Jesus of Nazareth.
“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” Or, as some of us older types like to remember the line, “some have entertained angels unawares.” The line reminds us of Abraham and Sarah and the divine guests who visit them at the Oaks of Mamre; or the parents of Samson who similarly learn of a miraculous conception in response to their gracious hospitality. And in Jerusalem the leading Pharisee has invited God incarnate to his table.
Jesus, the host of every banquet, arrives at the banquet of the well-to-do and talks about being the guest. Not the disguised angel at the door or the sage in beggar’s clothing, but rather the person holding the invitation, the person entitled to be escorted up to a seat of honor. Perhaps this is why Episcopalians always crowd the back rows – we’ve heard these lines too literally: “When you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place” In a society that lives on honor and appearance and face – a little like the red carpet system at a Hollywood opening perhaps – the wealthy people in Jesus’ hearing are challenged to give up their status so that they may be rewarded. And then an even greater challenge – to extend their own social invitations to people who can never reciprocate, so that their reward will be at the resurrection of the righteous. Extend our welcome to those we don’t want to bring inside, whose presence is offensive or disruptive or whose need is so great even our own resource cannot provide. To see angels in disguise in the face of all we encounter – that takes a faithful grounding in the Lord who took his people across the trackless wastes and fed them sweet honey from the rock. That takes the promise that the Lord is with us always. That Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.
This week one of the final chapters in the Rule, after the discussions about the sort of person who makes the right abbot or prioress, after talking about the ordination process and disciplining unruly clergy, after describing the proper sort of person to be in charge of the monastery’s wine cellar, the rule moves to the Porter, the person at the door. “At the door of the monastery, place a sensible person who knows how to take a message and deliver a reply….This porter will need a room near the entrance so that visitors will always find someone there to answer them. As soon as anyone knocks or a poor person calls out, the porter will reply, “Thanks be to God,” or “You blessing, please,” then, with all the gentleness that comes from reverence of God, provide a prompt answer with the warmth of love. Let the porter be given one of the younger members if help is needed.” [Chapter 66]
It is great good fortune that the person who sits in the office by our front door is named Porter – Carol, that is — and I think that people will agree that she does a wonderful job about taking messages and delivering replies – and, while her response may be a little different from “Thanks be to God,” it is clear she does provide a prompt answer with the warmth of love. On Sunday mornings we have a team of volunteers who stand at the door so that visitors will always find someone there to answer them – and quite often those volunteers include some younger members who stand eagerly at the door asking for and receiving the blessing of all who enter. But our church door is only one piece of the whole community that gathers here for worship. Because we are not monks, because we journey each week out into the world before returning here for our refreshment and restoration, we each of us take the church with us everywhere we go. In the language of the catechism, we “re-present” the Church. We are the Porter at the door.
This week in our journeying forth let us each imagine ourselves as a porter at the gate of whatever community we are in: our home, our work, our professional group or cadre of scholars, our circle of friends our classroom. When a new face appears on our horizon, do we model that same hospitality, that welcome of those who come to our door? Is our response to ask “Your blessing, please” before we learn what they want? Can we think of that the next time we’re plagued by a telemarketer? And likewise, can we, on our journeys into grocery stories or places of business, into Dean’s offices or banks or libraries, confer that blessing, asked or not, on the porter who sits at the door?
Imagine that you are the angels who have been disguised, who have been sent on a journey whose meaning you don’t yet understand. You are, at the very least, the image of God, the Body of Christ. Where you go into the world, you bring blessing. Thanks be to God.
