THOUGHTS OF A MONK

“Gathering”

August 13, 2005

There’s no doubt about it its summer time. This is when we try to make time to enjoy some of the simple pleasures of the season. We head out to the pool, the river, the lake, or the ocean shore to go swimming, canoeing, kayaking, walking along the shore, or just laying on the beach taking in the sun or reading a good book.  Sometimes, however, even the simplest things can be accompanied by some tense moments.  Take canoeing for example. If you have ever paired up with a friend and gone canoeing you learned very quickly how important it is for the two of you to coordinate your paddling: If you do not you will most likely be in for an unpleasant surprise. You can end up going in the wrong direction, or in a circle, or even worse, heading straight for danger even while desperately trying to avoid it. Once, many years ago several brothers borrowed the nuns’ canoe for a trip down the Battenkill. The river was high and running fast and at one point we were trying to avoid a downed tree trunk in the river and we tried to steer clear of it, failing that we thought we might slow down the canoe by grabbing onto a low hanging tree. No luck. One brother was pulled out of the canoe and before we could recover from that the canoe overturned. We watched our lunch float down the river and our spare clothes were soaked, and so were we. So, our lack of coordination had us working against each other, even though we did not intend to do so. 

This problem can appear in other areas of life, as we all know. If you have ever sung in a choir, you may have realized that the most difficult kind of singing is unison. Why, you ask? How hard is it when you are all singing the same note! But, even if just one person is off pitch, you can hear it and it will destroy the sound. If you are singing harmony, even if you are not singing the note designated for your part, you may still be singing a note that fits into the chord and therefore your error may not be noticeable. In unison singing, there is no place to hide! If you miss the pitch, you’re not missed, you’re noticed!

I played in the USC Marching Band. Precision marching requires attention to the agreed formation plan. You can’t just head off on your own just because you feel like it, unless you play in the Stanford Marching Band, where the rule is no rule at all!  Here, another problem can occur.  If you are marching along and make a wrong turn, not only will you go wrong, but so will all those others who are following you. I can remember that one of our band member’s mother was an expert seamstress and he was a prankster. So they teamed up. She would make a uniform for her son in the style of the opposing team’s band. And during half-time he would don this bogus uniform and sneak into their band and march in the wrong direction leading whole lines of their band astray.  And that is precisely what Jesus is talking about in today’s gospel lesson: If you go marching off on your own tangent, then you are not gathering in, but scattering.

We fall into this trap on a personal behavior level as well. It is that 10 year old in us, that sees the world only as a playground where personal wants are satisfied to the exclusion of all other considerations. Seeing beyond the self to the other, much less seeing the need for mutuality in relationships with the other is not part of one’s consciousness. Then not getting what one wants leads to passive-aggressive behavior, which is simply a new strategy for getting what one wants.

Even if our gospel lesson can apply to many areas of life, it is fundamentally a lesson about faith and church. Unfortunately, this gospel lesson can be used to produce unhealthy outcomes. Some church fathers used this gospel lesson as an excuse for Anti-Semitism, arguing that the Jews were fighting against Jesus Christ and thus instead of gathering in people to acknowledge the true Messiah they were scattering them, leading them astray. And the Jews had to be stopped by any means available. Pogroms and holocausts were often the favored instruments. The Inquisition was among the most infamous example of killing people in the name of Christ.

On another level, if one is looking to the institutional church for security, church dogma may be the pillar one hangs onto. When diversities arise, so does the itch to resort to a call for “blind obedience” to maintain good order in the church. But in the 21st century no imperial authority exists to force people into line, so they leave the church. Christ’s message of loving relationship between humanity and deity and its lived reality as expressed between human beings, all within the communion of the church, is lost to the failed discipline of “blind obedience.” The very imposition of blind obedience then becomes the instrument to scatter rather than to gather the people into the church. On the other hand, at times we might also be too quick to say no to some matter of faith before examining what yes might mean.  This too can lead to divisions – that is scattering – rather gathering in. It might also reflect one’s simple desire to want one’s own way, regardless of what anyone else, and particularly the church, might think or feel.  And here is where our tradition gives us a valuable clue as to how to approach this seeming dilemma. It is the Holy Trinity.

The Holy Trinity is the opposite of the image of scattering. Think of Rublev’s beautiful icon of that image. The beauty of it is that three distinct persons work together to make something whole.  And to make something whole is what Jesus Christ’s mission to this world is all about. How do we make our lives whole? How do we come to understand what wholeness is? Not in isolation but in relationship with others.  Such relationships do not destroy our distinctiveness, but rather enhance it. The trinity image shows us how working together in harmony and unity brings health and wholeness. It reminds us that our calling is to something beyond ourselves and yet very much within ourselves. In the church’s terms, it is what we do liturgically at every Eucharist when we are called on before chanting the creed, to “love one another so that in one accord we may profess Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”  And we confess that Trinity because it is life giving in its example to us of healthy relationships, based on mutual love and respect. It is showing us how to gather rather than to scatter: Which we do together in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.