Harvey H. Guthrie, Jr.'s sermon at the Installation of Gary Hall as Dean and President
April 21,2005.
Romans 5:11-11, Matthew 11:25-30,
The Feast of Anselm of Canterbury
Anselm's Song of Christ's Goodness
What Matthew hears Jesus speaking are words of Wisdom: not in the usual sense of that phrase, but the words of Wisdom with a capital W—personified, feminine Wisdom. Jesus is speaking as Lady Wisdom, Dame Wisdom, Mother Wisdom, to her children. She, Jesus, is speaking in opposition to understandings of Torah, of God's will—I daresay male understandings—that emphasize achievement and power, even accountability. Mother Wisdom, Jesus, is insisting that the things that matter are hidden from the wise and learned and revealed to infants. Jesus is feminine Wisdom, Mother. Her Torah, her teaching, her salvific presence, is not about oppressive yokes and heavy burdens, but gentleness and humility. Jesus is feminine Wisdom, Mother, who offers rest and peace.
And Anselm, whose day it is today, sings this wonderful song of Christ's goodness
Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you.
You are gentle with us as a mother with her children...
You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds,
in sickness you nurse us,
and with pure milk you feed us.
Here is Anselm—known for his ontological argument for the existence of God and his juridical/substitionary doctrine of the atonement—big, heavy stuff. Here is Anselm whose we-are-guilty-sinners-and-retributive-justice-must-be-satisfied interpretation of Christ's death, my colleague John Snow used to say, laid on western culture a neurotic guilt trip. Here is Anselm addressing Christ as gentle, patient, tender, inclusive, loving, feminine mother. I had been totally unaware of that until briefed on this service. To employ a phrase well known to those who serve as deans, they didn't prepare me for this in seminary! Anselm, wise and learned pastor and theologian that he was, was also, a child who knew Jesus as feminine Wisdom, as Mother. Anselm knew something largely hidden from—or certainly missed by—the wise and learned of our ecclesiastical and cultural traditions until well into my time as priest and would be scholar.
So, Matthew and Anselm's understandings of Jesus along these lines are given us to ponder this evening. To them I add a third thing I came across as I was preparing this sermon. It is from the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes whose work I greatly admire.
The singularity of Jesus is that the permanence, fame, or value of his work arises from obscurity and anonymity... [N]othing—not the Gospels, not St. Paul, not even the Christian Church itself—can divest Jesus of his condition as a humble man, stripped of all power, unadorned by luxury, a man whose humility and poverty transform him into the most powerful symbol of salvation... The Church may administer and take advantage of the Christ figure, but it has not managed to appropriate Jesus.
So, there are the texts. I suggest three things they may be saying to Gary Hall and the Seabury Western community as they begin a new life together in the service of the Episcopal Church.
First, it is the case that true and essential things—like Jesus' and God's femininity—get swept under rugs woven of the assumptions and prejudices of those in power. It is not too difficult to affirm that in theory. It is controversial and painful to accept that when it is pointed out with regard to specifics—especially when pointed out by secular abolitionists and non-ecclesiastical civil liberties unions with regard to slavery and racial discrimination, by secular feminists with regard to male oppressiveness and glass ceilings—and yes, by secular gay rights activists with regard to inhumane homophobia.
But it happens, even where consciousness is suffused with the best of good will, where intention at the conscious level is pure. And both the prophetic tradition of which a seminary of the Church is heir and the academic tradition of which a seminary is also heir require attentiveness to voices which ecclesiastical establishments tend to write off as secular or heretical, and which academic establishments tend to write off as intellectually limited or lacking in qualifying prerequisites. The faithfulness of a Moabite Ruth can make her the mother of a messianic line. The persistence of a Syro-phoenician mother can teach God's messiah a thing or two about how faith is not limited to a self-styled chosen people. To use Carlos Fuentes' imagery, to be faithful, both as Church and as academy is to allow Jesus, with regard to specifics of time and place, to deconstruct the ways in which Jesus has been appropriated as Christ figure.
Whatever shape this new chapter in the life of Seabury Western and its ninth dean takes, the traditions of which it is heir demand such faithfulness. That is the first thing.
The second is that both discipleship of Christ and devotion to scholarship require childlikeness. The really deep things, the things that really matter, are hidden from the wise and learned, and revealed to children. That contrast drawn by Jesus/Wisdom is a contrast between accomplishing something and just accepting something, between controlling something and respecting something's givenness, between achieving something and receiving something. Once, when I inquired of a world class scholar how someone was doing as graduate student, the answer was, "He is a really sweet guy, a really nice person, but he's not mean enough to be a world class scholar." Now I've known plenty of mean scholars in my time, scholars mean in self-centered, presumptuous ways. But they were not the really great scholars. There is a difference between childishness and childlikeness. There is a meanness that is self-serving, and there is a meanness is single-mindedly childlike, that speaks out when the wise and learned are either not seeing or denying that the emperor is without clothes.
My colleague's charge that Anselm, in his doctrine of the atonement, was responsible for the neurosis of western society was maybe not entirely fair. But to use the contrast so aptly drawn by Walter Brueggemann, Anselm's juridical/substitionary doctrine of the atonement is grounded in the concept of retributive justice, which is indeed capable of spawning neurosis. Sins, violations of God's law, have to receive retribution—punishment fitting the crime—if justice is to be served. And the enormity of human sin is such that the retribution required is beyond human ability, leaves humanity doomed. But Anselm does not leave it there, and, now that I know his wonderful song of Christ's goodness , I think understand why. Knowing Jesus as mother, Anselm knows himself as child, as recipient of a mother's boundless love. So, to pursue Brueggemann's contrast, Anselm has discovered, better had revealed to him, that God's justice is finally not retributive but distributive. It is mother justice. What was impossible to Anselm as wise and learned was possible to Anselm as childlike—not childish but childlike—to see how God in Christ "weep[s] over our sins and our pride/tenderly... draw[s] us from hatred and judgment."
What we in this country combine in theological seminaries is, in some places, kept separate. You study the history of the Church and theology in the university and then prepare for service in the Church in a school where you learn to pray, to do pastoral work, to administer the Word and Sacraments. Some may do one without doing the other. That separation of theory from practice may exist even where it is not institutionalized. It may exist in the minds of students and teachers who either elevate the "academic" over the "practical," or think of the academic requirements as arbitrary hurdles on the way to the real thing. But the very existence of the theological seminary testifies that theology and ministry, theory and service, reflection and practice should go together. The formation of reflective practitioners is the business of a theological seminary—not just reflectors or not just practitioners, but reflective practitioners. Knowing Jesus as Mother Wisdom results in a childlikeness in which true discipleship and true scholarship are at one. That childlikeness was Anselm's. May it, Gary and Seabury Western community, be yours in your new life together as Church and as academy. That is the second thing.
The third is also about two things that go together, the pastoral and the prophetic. Wisdom's words from Jesus are, "Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest... My yoke is easy and my burden is light." They are "comfortable words," pastoral words, but they are not words of denial that ignore oppression and injustice and inhumanity. It is not as some smooth voice croons that everything is all right, but as a childlike voice puts it out there that the emperor is without clothes that we are freed of the burden of denial, of the yoke imposed by false prophets who cry "Peace! Peace!" when there is no peace. That is what this passage is saying, as feminine Wisdom—not masculine Law and Order—speaks through Jesus to challenge wise and learned appropriations of God's Torah that turn a divine, gracious gift into a yoke and a burden. Truth-telling confrontation is a pastoral ministry leading to rest and peace. The pastoral is grounded in the prophetic, and vice versa.
Back in the sixties I was much affected by Philip Rieff's book, The Triumph of the Therapeutic It analyzed how "being well" had become a prime value of our culture, particularly of our religious culture. I read it as many of us were involved in the civil rights movement. It illuminated what happened as those of us for whom ministry had been defined largely in individual and corporate therapeutic terms found ourselves in a situation where trying to do what was right in terms of the gospel seemed to subvert the therapeutic values espoused by our middle class, white church. And we found a yoke that was easy and a burden that was light in the prophetic gospel preached by a Martin Luther King, as they had also been found in the prophetic gospel of a Dietrich Bonhoeffer earlier in Nazi Germany.
What I'm talking about is articulated in a wonderful phrase I learned from my friend, Reggie Blaxton. He knew oppression as an African American and a gay man, and he was eloquent and active in opposition to oppression. His highest compliment for a sermon, for a sermon that spoke prophetically, was, "You lifted my load." Well, that is exactly what happens when rugs are pulled back to expose what has been swept under them, when Jesus' steps in to deconstruct the ways he has been appropriated by those in power. Loads are lifted and yokes removed, and gentle, humble, Mother Jesus gives rest and peace. Pastoral ministry is letting that happen, letting prophetic truth telling burst denial's bonds. That's the third thing I hear tonight's readings saying to those of you beginning a new life together as seminary.
The sermon with its three points is ended. But sermons are not ends in themselves. They should lead to the Table, to the Eucharist. That is where we will go this evening, after prayers and Gary's installation. When we do get there, we will not have left Jesus as feminine behind. Jesus will be there as the one who takes bread, blesses, breaks, gives.
John Dominic Crossan points out that, in the hierarchy of meals in the society in which the Eucharist originated, presiding—taking and blessing the bread—was the role of someone in power, "the head of the house," a male. Preparing and serving—breaking and giving the bread—was the role of those without power, slaves and women. But the accounts all agree on this subtle thing: just as Jesus' practice with regard to who sat at table was open, so Jesus' approach to who served and who was served was open, egalitarian. In action as well as word, in assuming the role of the powerless, Jesus redefines the meaning of power. In his "how," as well as his "with whom," with regard to meals, Jesus is initiating a society with a new character, is challenging the societal character expressed in hierarchical dinner behaviors as he not only takes and blesses, but breaks and gives the bread. Crossan's conclusion is that not only servile but female hosting is symbolized by these four verbs, that long before he was appropriated as host, Mother Jesus was hostess.
Let us allow Matthew and Anselm and Fuentes—and Jesus in the Eucharist—to confront and judge our particular appropriations of Jesus. Thus may we know the gentle and humble Mother Jesus, whose yoke is easy and whose burden light. And may it be as disciples of this Jesus that Gary Hall and the Seabury Western community live out their life together.