Clergy Notes — Eighth Sunday After Pentecost, July 14, 2024

Last week, the Anglican Church celebrated the feast of St. Benedict; the Gospel reading for that day is John 15:12-17, which occurs just after Jesus proclaims, “I am the vine and you are the branches.”

In this metaphor, the branches have one goal in common: to stay rooted in Jesus and bear fruit. And Jesus makes it quite clear in this passage what that is: to love one another. The branches can neither live without the vine, nor can they function independently. Their/our only goal is a common one: to bear the fruit which is God’s love. No one branch can do this on its own; no one branch is better than another, nor more favoured.

This description of the community is particularly apt for the feast of St. Benedict because it very accurately describes the kind of community he envisions. When any member decides to join the community, they voluntarily give up any rank or title or distinguishing feature that their secular life affords them, and – literally and figuratively – put on a new identity in the shared community of the monastic life. The tasks and work required by the community to function are shared out equally, and even artisans and craftspeople are only allowed to exercise their gifts for the collective good.

Quite starkly in contrast to our secular way of living, in a Jesus-believing community described by the vine metaphor, the goal of the individual isn’t personal gain, or accolades, or success, or esteem. Our goal is collective: to bear fruit; fruit that will last. And Jesus is clear about what that is; so clear that in these five short verses he repeats it twice:

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

“I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”

We have one job and one alone: to love one another. It is simple but not easy. It means that in a world that celebrates individual accomplishment and individuality we must give up our ‘right’ to personal accolades. In a world that tempts us to gauge our worth by what we do and how much we can achieve, or how close to the top we can rise, Jesus tells us that our worth resides in abiding in God. In a world that teaches us we must compete with one other for everything, Jesus tells us we belong to one another.

As always, Jesus’ teaching is simple but not easy. It is as counter-cultural now as it was 2000 years ago. Maybe more so. It will perhaps always be a struggle, even for the best of us.

Yet, as the continuation of the Church and the many Benedictine communities worldwide can attest to, this vision of a communal life rooted in Christ, and the love of God it proclaims is more than worth the struggle.

Mother Amanda

Download the Liturgy at Home booklet for Sunday, July 14, 2024.

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Clergy Notes — Seventh Sunday After Pentecost, July 7, 2024

In last Sunday’s Gospel, we read of a woman in a state of constant impurity from which she is unable to escape. Transgressing boundaries of law, custom, and personal safety, she chooses to reach out to touch Jesus’ clothes, in assurance that by doing so, she will be healed. Her act of desperation and hope is a final bid for readmittance into community; even as her scandalous acts mark her as an outsider from it.

Of course, the unnamed woman’s gamble pays off. Jesus does heal her – well, sort of. It is Jesus himself who makes clear that the healing was kind of her idea; indeed, he couldn’t have done it without her partnership of faith. “Go,” he tells her, “Your faith has made you well.”

Perhaps the most succinct definition of a miracle is that is a suspension of the ordinary laws of nature. Since this is something only God can do, performing miracles would have been seen by witnesses as verification of the claims Jesus makes about himself. We see him cast out demons, walk on water, and raise the dead. Throughout all these miracles, there’s never any question that he’ll struggle to make it happen, much less that he might fail.

But it’s different when Jesus comes to work miracles on living human beings. Uniquely with Jesus’ healing miracles, he requires the cooperation (or at least acquiescence) of the subject in order for it take effect. He was, in a sense, the original “faith healer,” insofar as he required an affirmation of faith in order to heal.

In today’s Gospel, we find Jesus in his hometown. In Nazareth, Jesus is disappointed – “amazed at their unbelief” – and so is unable to perform the same works of power as he did with the woman who had touched the hem of his tunic. The vital ingredient for personal transformation – faith – is missing. The locals know their former neighbour for who he was, not who he is as the one commissioned by his Father at baptism in the River Jordan.

What these readings show to me is that the real miracle at work is the miracle of faith: a sense of open acceptance to the actions of God in transforming lives in unimaginable ways. Through that miracle, a world of wonders is unlocked.

Fr Neil Fernyhough

Download the Liturgy at Home booklet for Sunday, July 7, 2024.

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