On (not) keeping the rules
A mother was teaching her 12 year old daughter to cook roast
lamb. She carefully showed her how she cut off the end of the joint and put it
in the pan next to the rest. “Mom, why do you do that?” the daughter asked and
the mother had to admit that she really didn’t know, it was how her own mother
had always done it. A little later her brother phoned so she asked him, “When
Mom taught you to roast lamb, did she tell you to cut off the end? Do you know
why?” He didn’t know either, so that evening the 12 year old called her
grandmother. “When you taught my Mom to roast lamb, why do you teach her to cut
off the end?” “Oh,” said her grandmother, “that was just because my pan was too
small.”
The religious establishment of Jesus’ time had expanded the
already complex laws from the Scriptures with a ton of rules about how and when
and where things were to be done. As I mentioned when we were talking about the
feeding of the 5000 a few weeks ago, there were so many rules about eating that
it was almost impossible to eat away from home with strangers without severe
danger of becoming ritually unclean. So in this morning’s gospel the issue is
not simply the hygiene one that our mothers taught us – wash your hands before
a meal – especially if you’re going to be eating with your fingers – but that Jesus’
disciples were not even trying to keep all the rules.
And so Jesus uses this as a teaching moment. And what he
teaches is quite revolutionary. We aren’t reconciled to God and we don’t live a
holy life by keeping to a whole series of rules, because they’re just on the
outside. We are called to live a holy life that comes from our hearts. We are
called to be transformed from within. Then it is from that inner change that
our behavior comes.
I read an interesting article about Pope Francis this week.
It was in the Atlantic.[1]
The title was “Where Pope Francis Learned Humility” and the subheading said “For
the pontiff, being humble is less a character trait than a calculated choice.”
Apparently Pope Francis did not grow up as a humble person but in fact was
known for his arrogance until he was stripped of all his titles and responsibilities
and spent two years in exile and spiritual retreat. After this, his leadership
style changed. The journalist, Paul Vallely said, for him “humility was more
like an intellectual stance than a personal temperament – a tool he developed
in his struggles against what he had learned were the weaknesses in his own
personality, with its rigid, authoritarian and egotistical streaks.”
So the journalist suggests that since the Pope is not
naturally humble, his humility is a calculated choice. I would see it as being
a transformation of his heart. Very few of us grow up naturally humble. None of
us grow up without selfishness, pride, envy… these are natural parts of being
humans caught in the sin matrix. But these are the very things we are called to
change. Not by keeping a lot of external rules but by allowing the Holy Spirit
to work in our lives and our hearts and transform us into the people that God
made us to be; people made in God’s image. But this is not a passive process.
It is a very active process. In order for the Holy Spirit to be able to work
this way we have to have both intention and commitment. Our intention must be
to become Christ-like because the Holy Spirit isn’t going to impose anything on
us. Without the intention at a deep level of our being nothing much is going to
happen. And we have to have the commitment to review our own internal
conversation and to change it.
This is what James is talking about in the second reading
when he says, “be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive
themselves.” We can see the fruits of our inner transformation in the way we
act differently. But we can also change our inner selves by acting differently.
You can fake it till you make it… and to some extent we’re all doing that and
we have to. If you wait until you’re
completely peaceful, loving, non-judgmental and joyful before you feed the poor
they’re going to get very hungry!
The shadow side of spiritual growth and development is that
we can focus on it to the exclusion of those in need. That is subtly
self-centered. Some people are called to lives of cloistered prayer where their
self-giving is to give themselves up to silence and prayer on our behalf. But
that’s just a very few people. The rest of us are called to live our lives in
the regular world and find ways to be loving and be Christ-like and have a
spiritual practice while we’re making a living, dealing with health issues,
looking after our homes and all the zillion other things there are to do.
Rules can be helpful in doing that. Rules can help us to
care for others. Rules can help us to care for ourselves. For example, we have
a rule that dogs don’t come into the church sanctuary. There are several
reasons for that. Many of us are dog lovers and if we all brought our dogs it would
be mayhem; not everyone loves dogs like we do and in fact some people are
scared of them or allergic to them. In order for us to be truly welcoming we
choose to limit dog attendance to the outdoors. Similarly, many of us enjoy
alcohol, but there are those among us who cannot drink and for whom the
presence of alcohol can be disturbing. In order to be truly welcoming, we need
to make sure that when we offer wine at a meal or gathering we always offer enjoyable
alternatives.
The Rule of St. Benedict was written to provide a framework
for monks living together and worshipping and serving God together. It provides
guidelines for living which take into account that we are all different and
what is easy for one person may not be for another. Most religious orders have
some kind of agreed rule of life that they share together which helps them all
to stay on the same page. These can be very simple or quite complex. From time
to time it has been suggested that we, here at St Ben’s, might develop a rule of
life which individuals could decide to adopt if they wanted to move deeper into
spiritual community together.
When I went to a clergy wellness conference earlier this
year we were challenged to write a personal rule of life. First we considered our
core values and what was deeply important to us. We were encouraged to thing
not just about our spiritual practice but about health, money and vocation. It was fascinating to see how different each
person’s rule was. None of them were all encompassing, each one hit on areas
which were important issues in their life at the time. Some of them included
things like “see my children more often,” or “go to the gym regularly” others
were more “spiritual”. It was clear that these were probably not life-long
rules but ones which would change as our lives changed.
Here is mine:
Eat plants, not too much
Drink water, plenty
Read, slowly
Center in prayer, daily
Be grateful, beloved
I certainly
can’t claim to be living up to it but it is a gentle reminder, a standard
against which to compare my actual life and to reflect on how to move from here
to there.
The
spiritual life is not about keeping complex rules but about surrendering
ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit transforming us from within even as we
do everything we can to cooperate and to transform ourselves into the people
who love. Always remembering that love is not what makes a Subaru, love is
blessing all those around us, humans, plants and the environment.
Always blessing,
every day.
posted by Caroline Hall at
7:08 AM
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