ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

A Sermon Preached by Fr Gerald Beauchamp at Evensong & Benediction on the Third Sunday before Lent, 5 February 2012

Readings: Numbers 13. 1-2 &27-33; Philippians 2. 12-28

Reading Paul's letter to the church in Philippi 2000 years after it was written and in a different language its easy to understand it in a way that Paul didn't intend. 'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling' we're told. 'Do all things without murmuring or arguing'. Sensible advice. But in writing to the Philippian church Paul was concerned first and foremost with the church as a body, as a group. He was writing to a community. The imperatives are in the plural not the singular. And Paul is doing this because his priority, apparent when we read Philippians as a whole is to do with the unity of the church. That's not to say that he was unconcerned about what individuals do - far from it - but Paul in his absence from Philippi wants to ensure the church's survival. A divided church, a fractious church will not last long. Only in unity can there be strength and a future.

Five hundred years after Paul with the fall of the empire in which Paul had lived, a young student in Rome depressed by the state of the world, left his studies, shunned society and became a monk. This was Benedict, the founder of the Benedictines. For Benedict, murmuring (as mentioned by Paul) is a great fault. In his monastic rule Benedict sets murmuring in the context of one of the core vows of the religious life: obedience. Obedience never gets a good press even in the best of times. We value freedom: to want to do as we like; to do our own thing. Obedience sounds limiting - curtailing our freedom.

But a moment's reflection shows us that our initial response is wrong. Think of the traffic. If we could all drive in any way we liked - aiming rather than steering - we'd soon have chaos. If we didn't need a highway code we wouldn't have invented one. But as anyone who has ever learned to drive knows, before we're allowed behind the wheel we have to wade through a book that tells us about speed limits, road signs and all the rest. Obedience to the rules of the road means freedom from accidents and the ability to get to where we are going with every other road-user.

Freedom is collective. Paul and Benedict weren't driving school instructors but they understood the principles very well. As Benedict said: 'In the monastery, no one is to follow his own heart's desire' (RB 3.8). For freedom to flourish it must be about giving, not taking. Its the sort of freedom that we experience when we lose ourselves in something - like singing or painting or playing a game. We become absorbed. Its like falling in love.

So obedience is not the opposite of freedom, but its beginning. Its not about being tied down or held back. Obedience is part of the foundation for all human flourishing. Obedience creates the conditions for awareness, listening, being open to what is greater than we are: the people around us, the world around us, the God who surrounds us. Quite simply: obedience exposes us to the endless possibilities of loving and being loved.

We see all this in the bible: not as a set of abstract ideas or wise proverbs but in the experience of the people of Israel. Wandering in the wilderness, liberated from slavery in Egypt, free at last, on their way to the Promised Land, glory bound - what did the Israelites do? They grumbled. They murmured. They complained. Its this same unattractive trait that can take root is all communities be they on the march like the Israelites or gathered in enclosures like monks.

For 'murmuring' Paul uses the Greek word 'gogguzo'. It crops up poisonously in the gospels. Remember the parable in which all the workers hired throughout a day were taken on for and given the same wage? Those who had worked all day grumbled about the master's generosity in paying those who had worked only one hour the same as those who had worked all day (Matthew 20. 1-16 [v11]). When Levi gave a great feast he invited tax collectors and sinners as well as Jesus and the disciples. The scribes and the Pharisees grumbled. Jesus rejoined that that those who are well have no need of a physician but he chooses to keep company with the sick (Luke 5. 29-32). In an echo of Israel in the wilderness in John's gospel there is much complaining when Jesus calls himself 'the bread come down from heaven' both from the Pharisees and his disciples (John 6. 41-71). John comments ominously that because of this some of the disciples went about with him no more (v 66).

Benedict writing in Latin uses the word 'murmuratio': something barely audible, part of the background noise, the hissing of the snake in the low-level cacophony of the jungle. In Benedict's Rule murmuring becomes a technical term. Its the kind of bickering, endemic negativity that interferes with two-way communication. At several points in the Rule, Benedict explicitly condemns murmuring. He says: 'If a disciple obeys grudgingly and murmurs, not only aloud but also in his heart, then even though he carries out the order, his action will not be accepted with favour by God, who sees that he is murmuring in his heart. He will have no reward for service of this kind; on the contrary, he will incur punishment for murmuring, unless he changes for the better and makes amends" (RB 5.17-18).

As one contemporary Benedictine says: 'According to Benedict, obedience is nothing to do with slavish adherence to rules and regulations, or being compelled to do things we don't want to do - that's the whole point - obedience is an act of will, freely chosen, not grudgingly given. Obedience freely given is love; and love, under obedience, is freedom. Obedience is listening, and what prevents listening is murmuring. ... It is gossiping, backstabbing, and snide remarks.' (Nicholas Buxton, Sermon Trinity Hall Cambridge 12/02/2006). Tragically, its a fact of life whether its two or three, or twenty or thirty or two or thee hundred who are gathered together. Indeed, the larger number the greater the problem. Far from murmuring being a minor matter its symptomatic of the Fall. Its all about separation from God.

If we are going to overcome or undo this separation; if we're going to be reunited with God; if we are once again to enjoy that sweet communion for which God longs then we have to work pretty hard at it. This labour is not an atonement but it is clearing the ground so that Christ's atonement can do its work in us: the outworking of our salvation. And because this is a collective and not a purely individual exercise the church marks it with a particular season: Lent.

Easter is early this year. Today is the Third Sunday before Lent (Septuagesima in old money). Ash Wednesday will soon be upon us. What to give up? What Lenten discipline to follow? How about this year, we take a long run up to Easter and start now? How about we give up murmuring? How about as we leave this church and enter the courtyard, the bar, the vestry; as we journey home texting; as we slump in front of our computers emailing and twittering and face-booking we just stop murmuring. Its hard. Its harder than giving up smoking or alcohol or caffeine. But murmuring is so corrosive of healthy living, so inimical to life-giving churches that we need to do a lot more about it. So we've got not forty days but seventy. And I suspect that even seventy might not be long enough.