Morning Prayer Reflection

Proper 26,  Daily Office Year 1

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Chapel of the Apostles, Sewanee

Nehemiah 12:27-31a, 42b-47

Revelation 11:1-19

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Thomas Merton once wrote that perhaps the best view of the world is experienced from standing on its fringes, on the margins outside of the city. The readings in the Office this morning, I think, help restore the tension found in the midst of the Kingdom of God.  On one side we have the restoration or rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem in Nehemiah, with great fanfare and processions.  In the Revelation to John, we have the utter destruction of the city with dead bodies laying waste in the streets, earthquakes, peals of thunder, and so forth.   If we take Brother Merton’s perspective, then, what do we see in the city?  Celebration?  Devastation?

            

In the midst of the paradox, I believe that we can see the need for recovering Kingdom theology.  The Kingdom is like…it’s like…well, we struggle in the pulpit to articulate exactly what the Kingdom of God is.  It goes by many names:  God’s Divine Commonwealth, the Kingdom of Christ, the Reign of God.  Our wise Lord used parables to not only stretch our minds but prevent the Kingdom from being limited to mere human vocabulary.  The Kingdom of God can only be seen from the margins, here Merton’s view is that of Our Lord’s who spent his earthly ministry deep in the heart of the edges and corners of the world. 

            

The good news of the Kingdom of God is indeed revolutionary news.  That the Kingdom of God stands in contrast to and in conflict with the powers and principalities of this world is proof that it’s origins are not of this world—the Kingdom of God stands as judgment upon it.  Kingdom theologian Kenneth Leech writes, “the Kingdom is otherworldly…a constant symbol of the other world, a sign of transcendence.  It is a source of change and transformation for this world, a vision and impulse for a new world.”[1]  Moreover, Leech warns us that for too long the Church has evacuated the good, revolutionary news of the Kingdom, loosing the essence of conflictual and world-transforming dimension.

            

So did the great processions and fanfare in Nehemiah appear utterly ridiculous to the hungry, the orphaned, and the widowed?  Does the utter ruin of the city that John reveals in his writing fill the poor with a sense of doom and gloom? Where do you choose to stand and see?

            

Make no mistake, you cannot help build the Kingdom of God.  Nay, if you’re looking for it, you may be well served to look at a tiny mustard seed.  It’s already come.  Embrace it.  Taste it.  Live it and further it’s mission in the world in your own ministry, today.  Join the revolution.  Amen.

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[1] Kenneth Leech, We Preach Christ Crucified. (New York: Church Publishing, 2005), 43.

House of All Souls: One Monk’s Heart for Building a Home

Brother Ron Fender BSG, a brother in the Brotherhood of Saint Gregory the Great (a religious order in the Episcopal Church), has been tending and washing the feet of the homeless in Chattanooga for the past seven years as his ministry.  He is a case manager at the Community Kitchen, a Chattanooga refuge for the hungry and homeless.

Inspired by such projects as the Brother Bernard Fessenden House in Yonkers and Common Ground in New York City, Brother Ron sought to build an intentional community to house homeless men in the form of a monastic community.  He discovered that many who completed recovery programs and were eventually placed into apartments as a way to rebuild their lives, quickly fell back to street life.  Fender notes that, “putting a homeless person in an isolated room or apartment without supportive services, or even furniture or household goods makes no sense whatsoever… the most successful model for ending homelessness is to create community for the homeless.”  Brother Ron is seeking to do just that.

With a grant from The Rosewood Foundation, a new house has been constructed and nearly completed in Chattanooga.  Named the ‘House of All Souls,’ this home will bring together eight homeless men along with Brother Ron, who have been screened and agree to live in this intentional community.  The men will continue in their recovery programs while offering mutual support in the form of their own community. 

At the heart of the House of All Souls is a chapel where the men will worship God and keep Christ at the center of their lives.  The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) has donated copies of The Book of Common Prayer, Hymnals, and various books on spirituality to help further this new community.  Gifts of money, liturgical goods and resources (especially an altar) are greatly needed.  Ron hopes that the Bishop of East Tennessee will be able to come and bless the new chapel.      

Brother Ron was recently featured on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition which is chronicling stories from Main Street America.  You can listen to the archived story at http://tinyurl.com/fendernpr2009.  

In Clouds Above and on Earth Below: Feasting with the Saints

"Cloud of Witnesses iii" by Ugandan artist Eria "Sane" Nsubuga, 

Mixed Media, 2007.

"For all the saints..." began the service this morning marking the Feast of All Saints' on the Kalendar.  We named the faithful departed in 2009 during the Mass and we gave thanks for the on-going witness of all the "little S-s" saints in our daily lives.  We even had a baptism today, shocking only that this parish would opt to actually follow a rubric on this topic!  Anyways, I digress.

Feasting with the Saints.  I can just imagine that now.  My grandparents, cousins, and other friends whom have died and risen in glory with Christ above, eating their fill, celebrating the goodness of God and God's creation.  I wonder, especially today, what they are saying to themselves about me.  "Oh Lord, there goes Chad again..."

One thing that I miss with newer parish churches is the lack of a parish cemetery.  In most parish churches in England, you cannot take one step without coming in contact with a memorial stone or engraving of some kind.  There's even something commemorating whenever the Sovereign comes inside!  You cannot help but notice the great cloud of witnesses in those bastions of stone and glass.  And yet in the States, we tend to want to keep our dead as far away from us as possible.  "Why would you want to clutter up a nice church yard with grave stones?"  Now to be fair, there are plenty of churches here that have cemeteries--most tend to be historic though.  Many have adopted columbaria as a method of depositing the ashes of loved ones into hermetically sealed containers in a church wall somewhere.  But I wonder why we fear the dead so much?  We don't even like to say the word "death" or "dying."  Instead, many opt for the politeness found in "passing away," and the like.  Our culture fears death, the one certain thing that we can count on that never requires its software to be updated.

For me, I've decided, I want to be cremated and scattered.  No need for a marker or stone anywhere.  "Why clutter up the earth with something that has passed away?" I had to get that one in there.  But seriously, I'm a firm believer in being "green" on this issue.  I just see it as a waste to go through the expense and hassle of it all.  Death is certain, and yet death is not the end.  Resurrection in Christ is our hope and it is what I look forward to follow.  Nothing will be left behind, all of creation is moving towards its fulfillment in the Trinity.  You can count on that.  

From Merton

I recently came across this excerpt from Thomas Merton and I wanted to share it.  As someone who continues to grow in my own monastic calling and in contemplative prayer, I deeply appreciate silence. Peace to you this day.

O my brother[s and sisters], the contemplative is [not] the [person] who has fiery visions of the cherubim carrying God on their imagined chariot, but simply [those] who have risked their mind in the desert beyond language and beyond ideas where God is encountered in the nakedness of pure trust, that is to say, in the surrender of our poverty and incompleteness in order no longer to clench our minds in a cramp upon themselves, as if thinking made us exist.

The message of hope the contemplative offers you, then, is not that you need to find your way through the jungle of language and problems that today surround God: but that whether you understand or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, [abides with] you, calls you, saves you, and offers you an understanding and light which are like nothing ever found in books or heard in sermons.

The contemplative has nothing to tell you except to reassure you and say that, if you dare to penetrate your own silence and risk the sharing of that solitude with the lonely other who seeks God through you, then you will truly recover the light and the capacity to understand what is beyond words and beyond explanations because it is too close to be explained: it is the intimate union, in the depths of your own heart, of God’s spirit and your own secret inmost self, so that you and [God] are in all truth One Spirit. I love you, in Christ.

 Merton, The Hidden Ground of Love, 157-158