2 Corinthians 8:1-9
Presented May 24, 2009, by J.D. Kline
The Seventh Sunday after Easter
Scott Peck begins his book The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace with a version of an old story entitled “The Rabbi’s Gift,” a story I’ve encountered in a number of different forms. The gist of the story focuses on a once-famous monastery that had fallen on difficult times. At one time, its many buildings were filled with young monks, the church building resounding with rich chanting of the Psalms. But now the monastery was dying. Only five monks remained: the abbot and four others, all over seventy years of age.
In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage. Through their many years of prayer and contemplation the old monks had become a bit psychic, so they could always sense when the rabbi was in the hermitage. And so they would whisper to one another, “The rabbi is in the woods, the rabbi is in the woods again.” At just such a time, while the abbot was agonizing over the imminent death of the order, it occurred to him that he might visit and ask the rabbi if he had any advice that could save the monastery.
The rabbi warmly welcomed the abbot to his hut, but when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. “I know how it is,” he lamented. “The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore.” And so the seasoned rabbi and abbot wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things. When the time came for the abbot to leave, the two embraced. Said the abbot, “It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years, but I have still failed in my purpose for coming. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you might offer that would help me save my dying order?” Sadly, the rabbi responded, “No, I am sorry. I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is among you; the Messiah is one of you.”
When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him and asked, “Well, what did the rabbi say?” “He couldn’t help,” the abbot answered. “We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving—it was something cryptic—was that the Messiah is among us. I don’t know what he meant.”
In the days and weeks that followed, the old monks pondered over the significance of the rabbi’s words. Could the rabbi possibly have meant that one of us monks here at the monastery is the Messiah? If that’s the case, which one? The abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, surely it would be Father Abbot. He’s been our leader for more than a generation. But what about Brother Thomas—a holy man, a man of light. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred, who gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in the side, Brother Elred is virtually always right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Elred. Surely it could not be Brother Philip. He’s so passive, a real nobody. But wait, almost mysteriously, at the very time when you most need him, Brother Philip has a habit of appearing by your side. Maybe Philip is the Messiah. Of course the rabbi didn’t mean me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? What could this mean?
As they considered the rabbi’s words, the old monks began treating each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off, off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.
Because the forest in which the monastery was situated was beautiful, people would still occasionally come to the grounds, picnicking on the monastery’s lawn, wandering along some of the pathways, even now and then going into the dilapidated chapel to meditate and pray. As they did so, they sensed this aura of extraordinary respect now surrounding the five old monks, an aura that seemed to radiate out from monks and the buildings and permeate the grounds. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. Hardly knowing why, they came back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, to pray. Soon they began to show this special place to their friends. And those friends brought even more friends.
Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while one asked if he could join them. Then another. And another. And within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order, and thanks to the rabbi’s gift, a vibrant center of light and peace in the land.
The story serves as a vital reminder that at the heart of the Christian life stands the high calling to reflect the very character of Jesus and to hold each person as a beloved daughter or son of God, created in God’s very image. This morning’s scripture lesson from 2 Corinthians, chapter eight, includes the challenge to model our own way of living on the generous example of Jesus, the One who, “though he was rich, yet for [our] sakes became poor, so that by his poverty [we] might become rich” (8:9).
It’s an intriguing passage to consider on this day when we are preparing to install Audrey deCoursey officially as one of our pastors, for it is taken from the apostle Paul’s writings to the Corinthians, a church with which the apostle had a somewhat volatile relationship. Repeatedly throughout the Corinthian correspondence Paul seeks to remind the frequently bickering and argumentative Christians in Corinth that the challenge of the Christian life is to let go of self-centered concern, focusing instead on unity in the faith, on building up the body of Christ. The apostle contrasts behavior that centers merely on self-aggrandizement, “puffing” oneself up, with behavior attentive instead upon encouraging, strengthening, enlivening, and unifying the entire church community.
Paul is reminding the Corinthians of a bold project he has in mind, inviting the outlying Gentiles churches to share in a collection for the impoverished mother church at Jerusalem. The collection not only will provide material support, but even more, will serve as a visible sign that Gentile and Jewish Christians now form one body. Paul points to the example of the Macedonian churches who have already caught the vision, giving, the apostle affirms, “according to their means, and even beyond their means,” offering “themselves first to the Lord and, by the will of God, to us” (2 Corinthians 8:3, 5). The collection, says Paul, creates opportunity to embrace fully God’s grace, compassion and generosity. Indeed, this is the Corinthians’ calling—and ours as well: to embody a spirit of gratitude, mirroring the generous and gracious love of Jesus, in our relationships with one another and with the world around us.
Celtic Christianity, which flourished in Ireland and parts of Scotland, Wales, and northern England beginning in the fifth century, used the term thin places to refer to those times and places where we become especially aware of the presence of God in whom we live and move and have our being, times and places where the veil momentarily lifts and we experience the presence of God in a remarkably deep way. Paul hopes that the sharing of their gift for the church of Jerusalem will create for the Corinthians a thin place, and yet today, those called to ministry share a similar passion, that others might become increasingly aware of God’s gracious love. Whether through times of worship, acts of spiritual discipline, or deeds of service, might we not discover thin places where an aura of compassion, grace, respect and peace is born anew, much as the monks in The Rabbi’s Gift experienced a new openness to God and to one another, as they considered whether the Messiah might reside in their midst.
One of the tragedies of life is the number of persons who find themselves engaged in work and in life pursuits that are far less than satisfying. In his book The Hungering Dark Frederick Buechner puts it this way:
The world is full of people who seemed to have listened to the wrong voice and are now engaged in life-work in which they find no pleasure or purpose and who run the risk of suddenly realizing some day that they have spent the only years they are ever going to get in this world doing something which could not matter less to themselves or to anyone else…work that seems simply irrelevant not only to the great human needs and issues of our time but also to their own need to grow and develop as humans.
Among the benefits afforded to those who embrace church or service vocations is the opportunity to touch lives and help people experience thin places where they might open their hearts in gratitude to the God who loves us with a love that will not let us go. There’s something of a paradox here. On the one hand, we celebrate life as we now know it and receive it as gift, while on the other hand we are always yearning for something more. The Benedictine sister Joan Chittister observes in her book Called to Question that it is very often our times of gnawing dissatisfaction that provide the most significant spiritual guidance and direction for our souls. It is our yearning for something more, something deeper, that calls us to discover thin places, that prods us to open our hearts to all that God has in store for us. Is this not what religious educator Maria Harris has in mind when asserting, “Every act of gratitude is incomplete unless it issues in a sending forth to do works that will make for justice.” And Episcopal priest Carter Heyward reminds us, “Where there is no effort to create justice, there is no love.”
The challenge before us as followers of Jesus is to so open our hearts that we live in gratitude, celebrating God’s good gifts. At the same time, we are always envisioning something more, yearning for the coming of that day when justice prevails, when nations no longer teach the ways of war, when an aura of compassion and respect surrounds our communities, when the reign of God comes fully among us. Is this not the power of the church’s ministry—the combining of generosity and gratitude, of open hearts and open spirits, with the call to pray and work and thirst for that time when God’s kingdom comes on earth, even as it is in heaven? Thanks be to God, who calls us to live lives of gratitude and generosity, to work for justice and peace, to embrace those thin places in life where we sense God’s grace more fully alive, ever seeking to create an aura of compassion, respect, and self-giving love. Amen.