February 15, 2019
I
Today I
had opportunity to pray with the monks at Belmont Abbey. Alleluia. Amen.
I am too sporadic in my attendance at
the Abbey to call such prayer one of my spiritual disciplines; but I do make
the pilgrimage when time and opportunity allow.
Praying with the monks is always
balm to my soul. It was especially so today. And why?
I leave Thursday for St. Louis, for
the special, called General Conference of the United Methodist Church related
to human sexuality and, specifically, our denomination’s polity and practices
related to the marriage and ordination of gay persons. I will observe
first-hand the debate and actions of delegates who have been elected from all
over the world and who represent widely divergent theological convictions,
growing-out of conflicting interpretations of scripture, which are accompanied
by fervently-held hopes and fears.
II
In a previous post (“Pre-Amblings,”
February 5) I offered an overview of the four options before us: the Modified Traditional Plan, the One-Church Plan, the Connectional Conference Plan, and the Simple Plan. In a second post (“What
Are the Collaterals,” February 12), I included a link to a chart that tries to
anticipate the organizational/structural changes that would result from the
passage of any one of the plans: “If this, then this.”
Today, though, as I headed south on
I-85, I was not thinking in such administrative or objective terms. I was
grieved in spirit: wondering what is to become of us United Methodists. I knew
I needed the solace that prayer alone can offer, and not just “prayer,” but the
specific kind of praying the monks do at Belmont Abbey. I needed not just solace, either, but the wisdom
and guidance that my soul desperately seeks.
Which is
to say, anticipating, dreading, hoping, despairing, most of all seeking, I made a special effort to go pray
with the monks—and also to “conference” with a few UM pastor-friends who I knew
would be there.
III
We never know who will show up: our
little group is in constant flux due to personal and even pastoral circumstance.
Geography, too, plays a part, as when a pastor is moved. We may be more or less
inconsistent, but the college is constant in its generous hospitality: we are regularly
granted space in the Gallagher Building to meet and talk. Specifically, to
discuss common, agreed-upon reading.
Before us today was a book with,
for most of us, an unpromising title: On
God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius. In
truth it was pretty dense stuff—essays by a Church Father named Gregory
Nazianzus—but we noted a spectacular line in the introductory notes by Lionel Wickham
which seemed to have special relevance for us this week.
Regarding a heretical group St. Gregory
opposed, Wickham writes, “Their church,
though, had, like all one-issue groups, only a (weak) hold on (continuing)
existence. Founded on doctrinal purity it perished on it.” (p. 17).
I sat there thinking, if our church, strives for doctrinal
purity, on one side or the other—if that is our only issue at this point—either
“side” may well perish on it. And at this point we have only a “infirm hold
on a perduring existence” (his actual verbage).
It seems to me that those who can
hold the middle (not simply for the sake of unity, but for the sake of love and
charity) have a better chance, by God’s grace and enduring hospitality, to endure.
IV
As usual, we started at 10:30. At 11:40,
we abruptly adjourned to make our way over to the “Mary, Help of Christians” basilica
(https://belmontabbeycollege.edu/about/belmont-abbey-monastery/basilica-mary-help-of-christians/)—which
is the big church-like building you have probably seen from I-85. We walked
down the long center aisle, climbed granite steps and passed the high altar, took
places prepared for us in the split choir loft.
As is always the case, monks sat in
seats on both sides of the loft. We were directed to the right. We entered
quietly, took our seats quietly, sat quietly till prayer begins. All the monks,
and some of the visitors, waited closed-eyed. I, though, pondered the great painted-glass
windows that rise above the loft: portraits of St. Patrick, St. Boniface, St.
Gregory and others, each with a hand raised in blessing.
The saints keep serene vigil over
those who come to the basilica to pray.
A monk,
opposite us, stood to sing the first line of the greeting: “O God, come to our
aid.”
The rest of us stood and sang, “O
Lord, make haste to help us.”
The monk sang, “Glory be to Father,
and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.”
We sang, “As it was in the
beginning, is now and forever amen. Alleluia.”
We remained standing as the monk
started singing an acapella hymn. Then
we sat. Then we prayed. There was a reading from Isaiah. There was a
benediction. We were out.
The service had lasted fifteen
minutes.
V
Every part of the morning—the book
study, the whole service, every part of the service—spoke to me today: spoke both
the comfort and truth I needed to hear.
The Greeting: it is indeed my prayer for St. Louis. I do pray that God
comes to our aid, that God will make haste to help us. That God will be
glorified as we seek the divine will. That the “now and forever, Amen” will be
sounded again among our delegates and observers. I also believe that however
our group or situation changes and for whatever reason, the grace of the Lord
Jesus Christ, the Love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit will be with
us all.
The Hymn: words I had never sang, set to a tune I didn’t know: but
even that a comfort in its own way: that the praise continues, can carry me along,
even when I am ill-equipped to help. I will not be able to lend my voice this
next week, either, but I believe there are those who can, and will, and God
will be praised.
The Prayers of the monks are quite unlike the praying that many of
us who grew up Protestant may even recognize as prayer. The monks’ prayers are not spontaneous—monks on either side take turns reading, slowly, the
verses from three pre-selected Psalms. They are not personal: at least they are not private. Benedictines all over the world
were praying the very same Psalms as we in Belmont, NC.
The monks prayers are not emotional, as if emotion demonstrates
authenticity. There is almost no rise or fall in voice or emotion, beginning to
end.
Now, there are long gaps of silence
here and there—where the intent is for us to quieten our souls completely. But today
I found myself inserting “personal” prayers into the silences: prayers for the delegates,
the churches, the bishops, the pastors, the General Conference itself.
The words and the silences:
whatever our concerns, spoken or unspoken, whatever we insert into the silences—the
silences and intercessions are themselves bracketed by verses of scripture that
are both ancient and powerfully immediate.
The Reading: today from Isaiah: the famous passage that Jesus uses
as he begins his own ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he
has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind-up the
broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom to the captives, recovery of sight to the
blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed… and to announce the year of
the Lord’s favor.”
May it be so! For today, there are
so many in our church who feel broken-hearted and blind. So many who are captive
and oppressed (and not just delegates!). What a comfort to hear, to believe,
that soon and very soon there will be freedom
on account of God’s anointing! That God will help us see and be healed! That
we will know God’s favor!
How that will appear or be
experienced, we do not know. But that very same word and hope and experience has
sustained Jews and Christians for well over 2000 years. It will sustain us
still.
+
The Basilica itself was a blessing.
Mary, Help of All Christians. As a United Methodist, I do not
attribute it to Mary, but I do trust in the promise that there is help for all Christians on either side of
conflict and even division. Remember: almost six hundred years ago, in Europe, the
Roman Church split into Catholic and Protestant pieces. Five hundred years
before that, the Church had split East and West. What we now call Orthodoxy,
Catholicism and Protestantism are the living and vibrant offspring of cataclysmic
schisms that not only did not kill the work of Jesus in the world, but, it
could be argued, expanded Jesus’ work and ministry, and advanced the cause of
the Gospel.
(Full disclosure: I grew up
Baptist. We were famous for church splits. And for the kind of growth that
almost always resulted on the other side of it. Phyllis Tickle has noted the
phenomena, too, in her The Great
Emergence, that when churches move to jettison what is unnecessary, that
makes them retain what is necessary, and that what emerges is more energetic
and able to witness and grow.)
And Belmont Abbey’s Gallagher Room, too. As I sat there, with an Icon
on one wall and a crucifix on another; I, a UM pastor and heir to the English
Reformation, engaged in “holy conferencing” with other Ums, and knowing
something of the violent history that has attended the Church’s (and churches’)
history, I thrilled to anticipate and pray for the time when “today’s acrimony,”
vitriolic as it may be, gives way to produce tomorrow’s repentance and
forgiveness, to deeper cooperation and more generous hospitality. May God haste
the day.
VI
At lunch, I ate with a delegate
from our Conference, who is in favor of the Modified Traditional Plan (and one
of the best guys I know). His father died on Tuesday, and he too felt the need to
make the trip to pray at the Abbey: to be with his UM friends, and with the
monks, at a place where constancy and serenity can indeed calm a frenzied,
fractious spirits. Where buildings, and windows, and the long-unchanged
patterns of prayer remind us that, Yes, things change.
There is life and death.
There are gatherings and partings.
And there is one God—the same yesterday, today and forever.
My friend
said he expects it to get ugly. He thinks there will be protests and
demonstrations, shouting and yelling—that security will have to be called and often,
perhaps, as some of the observers and protesters will, he believes (and has
seen) want to get arrested. As a sign
of their “prophetic faithfulness,” I guess, their willingness to “suffer” for the
cause.
I shook
my head, thinking of what a poor witness to the unity and grace Jesus died to
provide.
But I also found myself thinking about
Father Abraham, and what he said to his nephew Lot when the “land” was not able
to sustain them both: “If you go the right, I will go to the left. If you go to
the left, I will go to the right.” They were kin, even though they no longer
got along. And even after they parted company, they remained so—Father Abraham rescued
his nephew in fact, from marauders.
Likewise, my hope—and this phrasing
is not original with me, though I cannot remember who said it—that God will
grant to all of us a way to remain kin: “close enough to remember and recognize
that we are on the same journey, but with enough administrative distance that
we not vex each other’s spirit.”
Perhaps the way we take leave says
as much to the world as the way we come together. As my friend said, “If your
marriage is broken and there is no way to make it a Christian marriage, the
best you can do is fashion a Christian divorce.”
Pray
for our General Conference.
