Preferring Nothing to Christ

Zephaniah 3:1-2, 9-13

The third week of Advent continues to offer us texts that can challenge us. Today we hear from the prophet Zephaniah. Zephaniah is called, as all prophets are, to see the world as God sees it. There is a crisis looming for the people in Jerusalem as Babylon gains power and threatens to destroy all that is held sacred. God takes Jerusalem to task for her lack of faithfulness.

Trouble is coming to the rebellious,
the defiled, the tyrannical city!
She would never listen to the call,
would never learn the lesson;
she has never trusted in the Lord,
never drawn near to her God.

I am put in mind of my school days when some incident had occurred, the teacher got angry and then the whole class was punished. It was a heavy feeling that certainly coloured the rest of the day and possibly the rest of the week too. There was no such thing as negotiating with the trouble makers and letting them know that they had spoilt things for everyone. You just had to hope that they didn’t do it again.

Zephaniah offers and image of hope:

‘In your midst I will leave
a humble and lowly people,
and those who are left in Israel
will seek refuge in the Lord.’

So God knows that at least a few have lived in faithfulness. This is a theme taken up by several of the prophets: God sees and honours the faithful remnant. Perhaps we would all hope to be considered part of that remnant? There is a similar theme at work in the New Testament where the lowly find a special place in the heart and mind of God.

Holding on to what we know to be true and right isn’t always easy. Our desire to follow the right path can be strengthened each day by our small choices. Choices that may seem too tiny to matter can build a solid foundation for that day when God asks us to make a leap of faith and say ‘Yes’.

How can you be faithful this Advent?

Numbers 24:2-7, 15-17
Matthew 21:23-27

Today’s first reading is a rather unfamiliar text from the Book of Numbers. We hear one of the oracles of the prophet Balaam.

How fair are your tents, O Jacob!
How fair your dwelling, Israel!
Like valleys that stretch afar,
like gardens by the banks of a river,
like aloes planted by the Lord,
like cedars beside the waters.

The poetic language has resonances with the Psalms. It’s likely that the Book of Numbers was edited during the period of exile in Babylon. Balaam’s oracle reassures Israel that deliverance is at hand:

‘A hero rises from their stock, he reigns over countless peoples.‘

This text finds a place in our Advent liturgy as Christian writers interpret this as a reference to Christ. This idea is further reinforced a few verses later:

I see him-but not in the present,
I behold him- but not close at hand:
a star from Jacob takes the leadership,
a sceptre arises from Israel.

What’s special about Balaam is that he is a Gentile. He is held up for us here as an example of one who interprets the signs and acknowledges the coming of the Messiah.

You might be starting to feel a sense of urgency with your Christmas preparations. I always imagine that I have slightly more time than I actually do. The challenge each year is to be open to those glimpses of the Messiah in the ordinariness of our lives.

Where can you see God’s love made incarnate?

Isaiah 35:1-6, 10
Matthew 11:2-11

Today Isaiah offers us poetic vision of all that God promises for the people of Judah: everybody and everything will be restored in a land governed by God. Judah has experienced a period of barrenness and dryness in her relationship with God. All of this God will turn into fertile land where everything can flourish. It is a very exuberant text. The glory of God is seen in a land where everything is restored and blossoms. What was once arid will now become fertile. The power of God to heal and save will be felt by everyone:

‘Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, the ears of the death unsealed, then the lame will leap like a deer and the tongues of the dumb sing for joy for those the Lord has ransomed shall return.‘

In the Gospel text from Matthew, John the Baptist sends a disciple to ask Jesus if he is ‘the One’. John the Baptist was expecting a particular type of Messiah. His reading of the Scriptures led him to believe the Messiah would be cutting down rotten trees and using a winnowing fan. Instead, in his reply, Jesus is saying that the Kingdom has begun. In his very being the reign of God is inaugurated:

‘Go back and tell John what you hear and see; the blind see again, and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised to life and the Good News is proclaimed to the poor; and happy is the man who does not lose faith in me.’

In the Rule of St Benedict the Kingdom breaks through in more subtle ways. Philip Sheldrake in his book, Spaces for the Sacred, sees a kingdom dimension in monastic living:

‘Monastic spirituality invites us to live as if the inner harmony, the interpersonal reconciliation, the social conversion of the Kingdom of God were actually the case. It is anticipatory, but in the sense that practising the ‘as if’ is, in God’s providence, an irreducible aspect of the Kingdom coming to be.’

The practice of hospitality is one dimension of monastic living which makes the Kingdom tangible. Everything is to be done as if you were welcoming Christ himself. Every tiny detail of setting a table, cooking a meal or answering correspondence honours Christ and builds for the Kingdom. Once the guest arrives St Benedict is very clear that prayer is to form part of the welcome.

Many guests comment on experience of being welcomed to the Liturgy in a our monastery. It is truly humbling to hear this.

How can you build for the Kingdom during Advent?
How can you welcome Christ?

Isaiah 48:17-19
Matthew 11:16-19

Our reading from Isaiah is short today. It’s just three verses. But those verses contain so much. Here God speaks with a tone that is tender and deliberate:

‘This says the Lord, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I, the Lord, your God, teach you what is good for you. I lead you in the way you must go.’

There are resonances of the Exodus and the wandering in the wilderness. In those wilderness years the Israelites needed to rely wholeheartedly on being led by God. Every step they took was a step towards freedom. In the next few lines God’s tone becomes wistful:

‘If only you had been alert to my commandments, your happiness would have been like a river, your integrity like the waves of the sea.’

Israel now lives in exile in Babylon and can’t avoid looking back and taking stock of the missed opportunities and times when they fell short of the demands of the covenant. But help is at hand because God has promised to redeem them. They’ll leave Babylon with the promise of restoration and new life. Regret at how things may have turned out in our lives is a real burden of our human condition. There’s a kind of dull ache when you realise that you missed an opportunity that may have changed some aspect of your life.

In the Gospel today there’s a similar theme of not listening and missing an opportunity. This time it’s about failure to recognize the Kingdom. This text pulls me up short. It’s so easy to see only the difficulties and hurdles that need to be navigated in any given day and to miss the small moments of love and grace. Advent gives me the opportunity to step back and to notice.

How can you be open to God’s Kingdom today?

Isaiah 41:13-20
Matthew 11:11-15

‘For I the Lord, your God,
am holding you by the right hand;
I tell you, ‘Do not be afraid,
I will help you.’

From the very beginning of the history of salvation we see the part that fear can play in how we relate to God and each other. The primitive ‘fight or flight’ response is hard-wired in our nervous system. Fear is natural and our ability to overcome it will vary according to many more factors than we realise.

Israel’s experience of exile meant that they lived with a heightened sense of alert. If you have witnessed the devastation of your homeland and the destruction of the one building that guaranteed God’s presence, the Temple, then fear is the natural response to anything that might threaten your fragile sense of self and community. This fragile sense of self is voiced by Isaiah as he refers to Jacob as ‘poor worm’ and Israel as ‘puny mite’. Isaiah uses more reversal imagery to assure the people that God can take their weakness and make them strong.

See, I turn you into a threshing sled,
new, with doubled teeth;
you shall thresh and crush the mountains,
and turn the hills to chaff.’

The newly empowered Israel will be able to make her way to freedom. And water, the thing that is most essential in the desert, will be provided in abundance. Not only that, but terrain that once yielded nothing will be planted with cedar, acacias, myrtle, olives, juniper, plane and cypress.

In a world that prioritises strength and makes fun of weakness it’s not always easy to acknowledge our weaknesses, let alone see how God could use them. When a situation seems hopeless it can be impossible to see how new life might come.  In Advent we await Christ’s coming in weakness to meet us in our own weakness.

Are there situations in your own life where God is inviting you not to be afraid? When God tells you that he will hold you by your right hand, what is your response?

Isaiah 40:25-31
Matthew 11:28-30

Today’s text from Isaiah continues the themes of God’s promise of rescue and re-assurance. The words of prophesy re-assure Judah that God is more than able to subdue the power of Babylon. God is the original creative agent in the world and cannot be confined by anyone. His power is cosmic and even the most powerful of the world’s nations pose no threat. Isaiah makes appeal to the beauty and power of the whole created order:

‘Lift up your eyes and look.
Who made these stars
if not he who drills them like an army,
calling each one by name?‘

Before I entered the monastery, I took a month-long trip to Kenya. I spent one week on a ‘People and Places’ safari, travelling to the desert region of Turkana in an open truck. As we travelled between camps I spent many hours looking at the night sky. I was mesmorised by the clusters of stars that felt close enough to touch. I joked to myself that with my entry into the monastery just weeks away, I was busy filling my inner landscape with the night sky of Turkana. In that joking there was more than a grain of truth.

Take some time to look at the night sky this week. Read the text from Isaiah. Let God speak to you.

SECOND WEEEK OF ADVENT
TUESDAY

Isaiah 40:1-11
Matthew 18:12-14

Today Isaiah paints the scene of a triumphant homecoming for Judah, their time of exile ended. Isaiah uses the familiar biblical theme of reversal, and we are invited to picture a landscape where valleys, hills, ridges and mountains are transformed. It’s likely that the image of ‘a straight highway’ will have reminded the hearers of this prophecy of the triumphal journey of the Israelites through the Red Sea and of the entry into the Promised Land. The language of triumph continues as a messenger shouts the joyful news: Here is your God! This God shows all the solicitude of a shepherd:

He is like a shepherd feeding his flock, gathering the lambs in his arms, holding them against his breast and leading to their rest the mother ewes.

The link is made easily with our Gospel story from Matthew of the man who leaves his ninety-nine sheep in search of one that has strayed. Dom Henry Wansbrough comments that while Matthew’s story lacks some of the affection of Luke’s, what is significant is that this story is told in the middle of Ch 18, which is all about living together in community. Going in search of the lost is intrinsic to Christian community.

The Rule of St Benedict is only seventy-three chapters long. It fits easily in a pocket. Yet within these seventy-three chapters there is wisdom which has stood the test of time. The more familiar I become with the Rule, the more I notice the nuances, and most especially the humanity of the text.

Ch 27 of the Rule deals with ‘The Abbot’s Concern for the Excommunicated’. It is part of a series of chapters which are often referred to as St Benedict’s ‘Penal Code’. They largely don’t make for easy reading. Even if we take into account St Benedict’s historical context, we are still left with practices and some attitudes which we wouldn’t and couldn’t countenance today. There’s is, however, a thread which runs through each chapter: actions done by one member of the community affect the whole. What motivates St Benedict is the good of the whole community in its search for God.

‘…he ought to use every skill of a wise physician and send in senpectae, that is, mature and wise brothers, who, under the cloak of secrecy, may support the wavering brother.’

I am always struck by the humanity of the words quoted above from Ch 27. The abbot deputises ‘mature and wise brothers’ to seek out the wayward brother. The fact that this is to be done in secret speaks volumes. The last thing you would want to do is make public the struggles of another. I get the impression that these ‘senpectae’ would have seen it all before and be unshockable. It is noticeable too that St Benedict doesn’t suggest that the abbot himself seek out the brother. As a wise physician he knows when to call upon the particular skills of others in the community. The abbot is to act with ‘speed, discernment and diligence’. St Benedict knows that timing is everything when difficulties arise.

Is Christ calling you this Advent to be a wise physician and to reach out to someone who is struggling?

IMMACULATE CONCEPTION

Genesis 3:9-15, 20
Ephesians 1:3-6, 11-12
Luke 1:26-38

In her book Born Contemplative, Madeleine Simon writes about the spiritual development of young children and explores her thesis that we are all born with an innate capacity for God. She says that a child’s faith journey begins the moment the mother knows that she is pregnant. As we celebrate today’s Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception the church invites us to stand back and to imagine that moment when Mary was conceived, the beginning of her faith journey. All that we know of her parents comes from pious legend and so we are left to imagine the upright, God-fearing couple, Joachim and Anne, who have followed the path of Torah all their lives.

In our liturgy today we are engaged in a collective looking back over the story of our salvation. The story of the Fall in Genesis Ch 2 looms large and lays before us the human dynamic of sin and shame. It’s always important to hold Genesis Ch 1 alongside Ch 2, as here we find a theology of blessing: ‘And God saw that it was good.’ Our relationship with God is ruptured, but it is not beyond repair. God never loses sight of our innate capacity to live with Him in love.

The whole of Biblical revelation charts the path of God’s relationship with his people. We see in each page God’s desire to restore harmony. God will use the lowly and the weak to fulfill his plan. Mary enters the story of our salvation as one who is poor and lowly. She has been nurtured in a tradition of God’s Word (Torah), God’s Service (Prayer) and God’s Work (Kindness). She had learnt the ways of faithfulness and love.

In today’s Gospel story of the Annunciation we see the flowering of God’s plan, as Mary is told that she has ‘won God’s favour’. Every small choice from the very moment of her conception has led to this day. It’s easy to feel inadequate when Mary is held up as ‘the one without sin’. But perhaps we could see today’s feast as an invitation to make each of our own small choices count?

‘As we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love.’ Rule of St Benedict, Prologue

The day to day life of a monastic is made up of many little things. At the beginning of my novitiate my novice mistress said to me: ‘Never underestimate the energy it takes to turn up at the right place, at the right time, with the appropriate expression on your face.’ These were wise words indeed and I revisit them frequently. Saying my ‘Yes’ to God opened up a world where faithfulness is needed for the big things and the little. You largely don’t go in search of the big things, they come to you. But the small things are there around every corner in the monastery. When life seems overwhelming and there are many calls on your heart and your mind, I have learnt the wisdom of just doing the next right thing.

How is God calling you to say ‘Yes’ this Advent?

SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT

Isaiah 11:1-10
Matthew 3:1-12

While last week’s Gospel text invited us to ‘Stay Awake!’, the message this week is no less urgent: ‘Repent, for the kingdom of God is close at hand.’ John the Baptist walks into our Advent landscape with a message that is uncompromising. His cry of ‘Repent’ is for deep and radical change where hearts are to be turned away from all that would hinder their love for God. John’s message echoes that of the Old Testament prophets who proclaimed the great day of reckoning, the Day of the Lord. With imagery of warfare and cataclysm the Old Testament prophets warn of a time when God will come to right all wrongs.

As Advent unfolds for us, we may find ourselves trying to hold together this radical call to conversion on the one hand, and on the other an atmosphere of expectant joy and glitz created in all our high streets and on our tv screens. I’ve been struck by the popularity of Dr Michael Mosley’s book and series ‘Just One Thing’ and wonder if this might hold the key for us. Mosley suggests that in the bewildering array of material available on health and well-being, changing just one thing can provide great benefits. Perhaps Advent might be the time when you could make a small change.

When St Benedict writes the Prologue to his Rule he is clear that conversion lies at the heart of his monastic vision:

Therefore, we intend to establish a school for the Lord’s service. In drawing up its regulations, we hope to set down nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love. Do not be daunted immediately by fear and run away from the road that leads to salvation. It is bound to be narrow at the outset. But as we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love.

Amending faults and safeguarding love are the very stuff of monastic life. There is something about the regularity of the life which makes it relatively easy to see one’s own patterns of behaviour. Where the real hard work begins is learning how to amend faults. St Benedict doesn’t expect this to happen overnight. In Chapter Four of his Rule, The Tools of Good Works, he provides the monastic with a spiritual toolkit. There are seventy-four tools which will aid the monastic in their craft. I take great heart in the fact that the last tool of all is this: never lose heart in God’s mercy. The monastic way may be narrow and at times hard, but the promise is there that if you are faithful your heart will expand and overflow with love.

Is there one thing you would like to change this Advent?

Isaiah 30:19-21.23-26

I’ve often been asked how I knew I wanted to be a nun. I think people know when they ask me that me that I didn’t have a Damascus road experience. I usually answer by talking about my growing conviction that I wanted to follow Christ and put my whole trust in his promises. Their next question is usually, ‘And are you happy?’. This is actually more complicated to answer because the life of faith is a long journey with many twists and turns in the road. I have a sense that I am on the path that God wants me to be on. In this sense I am happy.

Isaiah’s words to the people of Judah are to assure them that they are on the right path. He promises an end to their weeping and God’s attentiveness to their cries: ‘He will be gracious to you when he hears your cry; when he hears he will answer.’ They must put their full trust in God and not be swayed by political alliances with other nations. In fact, they must acknowledge their need for God. The invitation is to walk in God’s ways: “Whether you turn to right or left, your ears will hear these words behind you, ‘This is the way, follow it.’” There is something very re-assuring about these words. Once they are firmly on the path a wonderful vision is promised. There will be an abundance of water, their every need will be provided for and their healing promised.

Look up the passage in Isaiah and notice the poetry of abundance. How do you see this promise in your own life?