The Feast of Saint Benedict: a sermon

Sermon by Jamie Howison on Acts 2:42-47 and John 15:9-17

Every year at this time we depart from the usual lectionary in order to observe the Feast of St Benedict. It is not an unimportant thing to take a pause like this to reflect a bit on the life and vision of the person whose name this community bears. Otherwise, the name just begins to sound sort of “saintly” in a vague kind of way.

The very short version is that Benedict of Nursia was the founding figure in the development of Western monasticism, largely through his authorship of his famous Rule. It is a rather brief little book—this edition runs all of eighty-one pages—and one which Benedict himself called simply “a little rule for beginners.” “Listen carefully, my child,” the rule begins. “Listen carefully to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart. This is advice from a father who loves you; welcome it, and faithfully put it into practice.” And as he proceeds to set out his guidelines for life in community, Benedict cites one hundred and twenty-six Bible verses, including seventy-one from the Psalms. It is shot through with scripture, in other words, which is part of why it has had such a deep impact on Christian communities.

I really appreciate how Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove summarizes the impact of Benedict’s Rule:

It has guided communities that have produced a disproportionate number of saints and created the seedbeds for democracy and abolition, public education and hospitals. Throughout the Middle Ages, Benedictine communities gave birth to the schools where people learned to imagine a new society within the shell of the old. They were training centers for clergy and scholars; centers for the preservation of ancient manuscripts; havens for the arts; sources for spiritual direction; and houses of hospitality for those in need. These communities became literal schools for the world-to-come. But for Benedict in the sixth century, the Rule could only have been an honest attempt to say in the present what a tradition of radical commitment to the gospel offered people who wanted to shape a life together. (Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, The Rule of St Benedict: a contemporary paraphrase)

But, you might say, that all sounds like it is in the past, and very much limited to communities of monks and nuns. Sure, we can journey down to St John’s Abbey in Collegeville and get a taste of how that monastic vision continues to have an impact in the world, but St John’s is 600 kilometres away. It makes for a fascinating visit, but what difference does it actually make in our world?

Well for one thing, I believe that anytime a Christian community catches the vision that is set out in the book of Acts, it will make an imprint not only on that community, but on the world in which it lives. There is, for instance, a powerful commitment at St John’s Abbey to what Acts calls “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers,” and anyone who enters into the church with that monastic community is more than welcome to share with them in that way of being Christian.

The same should be true of any community that dares to call itself “Christian,” whether or not it also bears the name of St Benedict as part of its identity. Our wrestling with the teachings of the apostles—Gospels and epistles both—our fellowship or community life together, our sharing in communion and offering up our prayers is what is meant to shape and form us.

But there’s something else, I think, that these readings today bring which is also of the highest importance. It comes at this point in the Gospel according to John, on the night of his arrest, that Jesus reframes the shape of his relationship to his followers. Listen again:

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.

“I have called you friends,” which is a powerful thing on the part of someone who up to this point in the gospel narratives has been revered as the rabbi, teacher, and master. No longer my servants, he says, but instead now my friends.

We in our world tend to lean toward a somewhat thin appreciation of the concept of friendship. Are you on Facebook? I am… and sometimes not altogether happily so, particularly not when it feels as if Facebook is trying to track my interests and spending habits, and then supplying all manner of advertisements its algorithm has determined will be of interest to me. And according to Facebook, I now have 884 friends… which is quite literally impossible, or at least it is if we turn to the words of Jesus or to the teachings of a more ancient world on the topic of friendship. Friends are precious; they’re the ones, in Jesus terms, who have been shown everything he has heard from God. They’re the ones for whom one would choose to lay down one’s life, which is no small measure.

The great Christian classic treatise on friendship comes from Aelred of Rievaulx in the 12th Century, who was himself immersed in a life shaped by the Benedictine vision. In little book Spiritual Friendship, Aelred writes,

Without friends absolutely no life can be happy. Let us imagine that the whole human race has been taken out of the world leaving you as the sole survivor. Now behold before you all the delights and riches of the world—gold, silver, precious stones, walled cities, turreted camps, spacious buildings, sculptures, and paintings. And consider yourself as transformed to that ancient state, having all creatures under your dominion, ‘all sheep and oxen; moreover the beasts of the fields, the birds of the air, and the fishes of the sea that pass through the paths of the sea.’ Tell me, now, whether without a companion you could enjoy all these possessions? No, not at all.

The enjoyment of the things of life and of life itself, Aelred maintained, comes from the sharing of things with friends. You are elevated beyond being mere acquaintances or in some master/servant role into something entirely shared. And in the sharing both joy and growth result. And so he wrote,

There are four qualities which characterize a friend: loyalty, right intention, discretion and patience. Right intention seeks for nothing other than God and natural good. Discretion brings understanding of what is done on a friend’s behalf and the ability to know when to correct faults. Patience enables one to be justly rebuked when needed, or to bear adversity on another’s behalf. Loyalty guards and protects friendship in good or bitter times.

Friendship is about companionship through thick and thin, in good times and in bad, whether one is lagging behind and stumbling or in a place of flourishing. And it is, in Aelred’s view and in Jesus’ own teachings from the Gospel according to John, quite central to being a gospel people.

So in a world where people might say something like, “oh we’re not really serious about one another; we’re just friends,” maybe it is time to lay hold again to the idea of deeper friendships, in which we learn and grow and find ourselves both nurtured and challenged. And perhaps it is such friendships framed in the context of “the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers” that should lie at the heart of this odd, beautiful, broken, and lovely community called the church.

St Benedict, I believe, would agree!