The Quiet and the Hidden
Saint Michael and All
Angels
30 September 2013
The Society of
Catholic Priests
St. James’ Episcopal
Church
San Francisco,
California
Genesis 28:10-17
Psalm 103
Revelation 12:7-12
St. John 1:47-51
The Quiet Place
My office looks out onto the Labyrinth at Saint Anne’s
Church. This afternoon as I am writing
this a woman has placed herself on a bench at the periphery of the path, and
she just sits in the relative quiet of Fremont.
Last week it was a young man of about 20 who parked his car in the lot
and took up the same position at the edge of the path. He sat in quiet for over an hour.
Judith, a member at another church that I served, would take
her place in the quiet church during the weekday, seated in front of the icon
of the Theotokos. She would sit and move
to the rhythm of her own prayer. I would
see her active in her prayer, much like my mother, Ruth, who would trace her
hands in silence over the raised letters of my father’s name, at his gravesite
– soon to be her own. Silence was what
mattered at that moment. I can recall,
as I recently mentioned at another gallery, walking through the halls of the
Philadelphia Museum of Art, noticing a quiet and dark room. I entered, attracted by the quiet, and was
quickly taken up by a standing Buddha, the sole object in the room, place in
front of a violet cloth. This was it, I
decided, this is what my faith needed to look and feel like – quiet and simple.
Jacob comes to his own quiet place, and having just wrested
the birthright from his brother, relaxes in the silence of a protective rock
and sleeps, and dreams.
The Hidden Place
So why have we come here this evening? What has drawn us here? Is it the quietness that follows a busy day
that we seek, or is it to rest and reflect in this place that is hidden from
the world. We come together as
Anglo-Catholics. It is important, I
think, that we begin to understand what that means. It is important that we acknowledge the
tradition in which we serve. In the beginnings
the fathers of the Oxford Movement were not so much concerned with the gestures
and vestures of the mass so much as the hidden service to which they felt
called. In the Hanoverian and later
Victorian period there was a hidden neediness in British Society – and it was
this ministry that first attracted the tractarians. We can resonate. The needs in our society are hidden by our
habit of not seeing them or dealing with them.
I recall fondly an evening with James Tramel. We had dinner in Berkeley, and then walked
down Shattuck Avenue. Each person with a
hand out was greeted by James, and given at least $1. Finally he looked at me, handed me $5 in
single bills and said, “Now it’s your turn.”
Even though I had accompanied his ministry, and observed it, I was not
seeing. It was essentially hidden from
me – or more correctly, I was hiding its nature and its call to me as a
Christian.
Jacob goes to a hidden place – the Yahwist indicates that it
is an arbitrary place, with no essential importance or meaning. Soon it will be revealed as something other
than quiet and hidden. Its history may
have been crowded with the ancients who had gathered there in times past to honor
the gods and nature. The memories of
that shatter Jacob’s presence, as he dreams what was quiet and hidden is
suddenly revealed.
The Place of Commerce
“He dreamed, and,
look, a ramp was set against the ground with its top reaching the heavens, and,
look, messenger of G-d were going up and coming down it.”
As I reviewed this text, in my mind I saw Albrecht Dürer’s The Mass of Saint Gregory. As
the saint is offering the canon of the mass, surrounded by liturgical ministers
and believers the accouterments of the mass are completed by an image – no a
vision – of the resurrected Jesus’ hovering over the altar. It is reminiscent of the text in Genesis as
Jacob observes, “Adonai was poised” over Jacob.
In addition surrounding Gregory and Jacob are evidences of the commerce
of heaven. “and look messengers of G-d were going up and coming down it.”
Had I looked deeper at the lady and young man sitting at the
Labyrinth, I might have discerned the same heavenly commerce for them. Or had I been sensitive I might have observed
the realities of Judith’s prayer, and the answers that were sent back. What was my mother praying as she touched the
stone of memory of my father – what angels attended to her? And what angel brought me to the quiet room
of the Buddha, so that I could welcome my own Redeemer’s power in life? It was the commerce of this world that urged
Jacob to depart from his brother, and it will be the commerce of heaven that
will urge him to come back.
We are in the business of the commerce of heaven and
earth. G-d observes. Angels abet the commerce, the conversation, and
the interaction of the two spheres. And
what is our purpose as priests – of this society – in this society? What do we observe and what answers and
meaning do we provide. Jacob assigns a
name to his arbitrary resting place – Beth-El – House of G-d. Is that the intersection that we occupy as
well? How is G-d present in what we do?
For now, I think, it is we who ascend and descend the
ramp. It is we who are the
messengers. Where in our world does the
ramp come down to connect our world with the heavenly world? That is our duty to determine and to share
with others in our calling. We must
provide a way that reveals its quietness and hiddenness as a sign of its true
nature – a way to Emmaus, a path with Abraham and Sarah, a way in the
wilderness. It is ours to share with
others. It is ours to set up a stone of
awareness, and anointing with oil to make real its purpose. Our rock, our hands, our oil, our hearts,
G-d’s message, our priestly ministry.
SDG
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