Practicing the Presence of Jesus

A Sermon delivered to the Company of Jesus at the September 15, 2007 Profession Service, Chattanooga Vineyard, Chattanooga, TN. It is based on
John 20:19-31

v. 19: And Jesus came and stood in their midst.

In 1977, I was going to school at Marshall University and played the electric bass in the jazz orchestra. That year, Stan Kenton brought his band to Marshall to do a master class for us and to play a concert. We were rehearsing for our own part of the concert when suddenly; the side door opened and in came the Stan Kenton band into our rehearsal. Each band member walked over and took his place by his counterpart in our band. The band came and stood in our midst!

It was an unnerving sense of a Presence flowing into the room. The band members didn’t say “Peace” when they walked in. We were somewhat rattled at first, but then we relaxed as the band members chatted with us. The Presence of the Band entered our rehearsal and super-charged the atmosphere.

So too, the Presence of Jesus coming into the room with the disciples was the Eternal (Kairos) of God breaking into the temporal Chronos of the disciples. The scripture tells us that they were afraid of the Jews and were huddled together behind closed doors. But can you imagine the disciples attitudes when Jesus came and stood in their midst? They must have jumped out of their skins!

So Jesus Greets them with “Peace be with you.”, comforting them and immediately commissioning them to their task of going out into the world in the power of the Holy Spirit and Making Christ Known to the world.Truly this is the task of every disciple of Christ…

That being so, what is this strange activity that we’re involved in today? Why has this motley group of people come here to dress up in odd clothes and profess to a way of life that is so…anachronistic, so medieval?

David Stendal-Rast OSB, in his book “Music of Silence”, says, “The monastic venture is commonly misunderstood as an effort to be super-pious, to be more holy than other people. But the rationale for monasticism could be most succinctly described as an effort to live in the NOW”

“To live in the NOW” sounds like such a truism, so good and …innocuous. But as humans we are terrified of NOW. As a counselor, I am constantly working with people who are either preoccupied with the wounds, grief and regrets of the past – or the fear of terrible imagined events in the future, things that have not happened yet. A sense of foreboding grips us when we are not Somewhere Else mentally.

Because of this, cloistered monasteries are places where everything is arranged in such a way as to make it easy to be present in the NOW – to be available to the One who lives in the NOW. Sometimes this is referred to as the Contemplative Life. But this doesn’t mean that one spends the entire time in meditation. According to Stendal-Rast, contemplation literally means a ‘continuous putting together according to some measure.”

What is being put together? The two realms of Chronos and Kairos. We are ‘continuously measuring what we are doing in Time against the Now that doesn’t’ pass away,” says Stendal-Rast. Contemplative Life is putting together of Vision and Action. Vision alone is not true Contemplation. We must put Vision into Action. Not just cloistered monks, but all of us as Christians are called to contemplation in this sense.

So this is another aspect of the Third Order life that attracts those of us called to it – the desire to bring together Vison and Action, the Sacred into the Secular; the desire to find a Sacred way of living daily life. This means being intentional about the way we order our days – spending time in focused prayer – both the offices of the day, and our own private reading and study, or “Lectio”, all of which helps us to progress toward the goal of being Christ like.

St. Benedict’s desire was to create a ‘School for God’s service”. This was not to be a school in the usual sense we know it, but one of gathering together a group of people for a specific work or purpose. So the Company of Jesus is a ‘school’ in much the same way we could speak of the “Hudson River” school of American artists for instance – a group of like-minded people, kindred spirits who associate for the purpose of encouraging and stimulating one another to love and good works; in a word, to be Christlike.

Monasticism usually entails leaving or renouncing the world in its classical sense. But those in the COJ are not called to leave, but to stay in the world, living out the ideals of our patrons Francis and Benedict in the context of family and everyday work.

Joan Chittister refers to what she calls “A barefooted soul” – awake, alert, aware and only partially at home. This is a poetic way of understanding the Third Order profession – a magnetic, irresistible tug in our hearts to live life in a more intentional and conscious fashion; a pull to bring together the Sacred and the Secular; a desire to practice the Presence of Jesus at all times.

Of course, there is also the draw of personality in which the personal style of our patron appeals deeply to us – Benedict with his ordered, disciplined, balanced approach to life; Francis in his abandonment to God’s moment-by-moment provision and immanent Lordship in all things,, most famously summed up in his relationship with the animals and in becoming a living Icon of the suffering Christ.

In each case there is a beauty that draws us up and out of our American mainstream pursuit of the ‘good life’ and challenges us to live life in a more deeply human fashion, one in which the Presence of Christ in our midst is tangible, almost palpable.

Being an order with two patron saints, I suppose we could call ourselves BENEFRISCANS or FRANCIDICTINES to reflect the influence of both charisms. Whatever we call ourselves, we are called to live in the NOW, to realize that there really is no separation between Sacred and Secular, but that all of life is OPUS DEI, or ‘work of God”. We are called to practice the Presence of Jesus standing in our midst and then to go into the world and serve as he did, sacrificially and whole-heartedly.

To quote Francis, “Wherever you go, preach the Gospel, if necessary use words.” Jesus sends us into the world, just as He Himself was sent – to love and serve the world. May God bless you on the way, brothers and sisters. And may people wherever you go recognize that Jesus is standing in their midst. AMEN.