Tonight, we start a Lenten small group at Shady Grove based on Mike Slaughter’s new Renegade Gospel study. Before you say anything, I know Lent hasn’t officially started. Our schedule had to be altered a little to allow us to be part of the Ash Wednesday service. I think this is actually a pretty risky study for us in many ways. In offering to lead, I challenged myself to go where I have been longing – to a nontraditional, potentially disruptive opportunity to sit with friends for holy conversation. As of this morning, I have 28 friends who will be joining me.
In preparing for the study and pondering a variety of things that have happened in the last few days, I’ve been thinking about how we as Christians are called to demonstrate who we truly are: God touched witnesses of the power of Christ. God’s touch, or “radiance,” as shown in our lives tells people a lot about us. Yet too often, it’s our lack of Christ-like radiance that says the most about us.
Francis Dorff, a priest in the Norbertine order and author, tells a wonderful story called “The Rabbi’s Gift” in his book, The Art of Passingover: An Invitation To Live Creatively (© 1988, Paulist Press). The story illustrates how our treatment of others can be changed as we look for Jesus, the Messiah. The story goes like this.
There was a famous monastery which once had been full of monks and visitors seeking spiritual guidance. But the monastery had fallen on dry years when their spirituality was very low. Few pilgrims came to seek guidance, and few young people gave themselves to become monks. At last, there was only a handful of elderly monks going about their work, their prayer, and their study with heavy hearts. The only time their spirit seemed to lift was when the word went out that the rabbi was walking in the woods. You see, in the woods near the monastery, there was a small hut that this rabbi had constructed as a place of retreat. He came from time to time to fast and pray. When the monks knew he was fasting and praying, they felt supported by his prayer.
One day, the abbot of the monastery, hearing that the rabbi was walking in the woods, decided to go see him. When he reached the little hut, there was the rabbi standing in the doorway with his arms outstretched, as if he had been standing there for sometime to welcome the abbot. They greeted one another, and then went in the simple hut where there was a table with an opened book of scripture. They sat there, silently prayed, and then the abbot began to weep. He poured out his concern for the monastery and for the spiritual health of the monks. Finally, the rabbi said, "You seek a teaching from me, and I have one for you. It is a teaching which I will say to you and then I will never repeat. When you share this teaching with the monks, you are to say it once and then never to repeat it. The teaching is this. Listen carefully. The Messiah is among you."
Well, when the abbot heard that teaching, he thanked the rabbi. He went back to the monastery to gather the monks. He told him, as he was instructed, that he would say the teaching once, and then they were to talk about it no more. "Listen carefully," he said. "The teaching is this: One of us is the Messiah." It wasn't exactly what the rabbi had said, but they began to look at one another in a whole new light. Is Brother John the Messiah? Or Father James? Am I the Messiah?
In the days to come, as they went about their prayer, work, and study, they began to treat one another in a whole new light. Each one of them might be the Messiah. This new treatment of one another, this new sense of expectation, was noted by the few pilgrims who came. And soon the word spread. What a spirit of concern and compassion and expectation could be felt at the monastery! Young people began to offer themselves in service. Pilgrims began to come in great number, all because they looked at each other as people of highest worth.
May God's glory, radiating in the Risen Jesus, be so reflected in me and in you that people everywhere see Jesus in us.
