Obedience

Brother Scott Benhase, OA

On May 3, 2021 at the retreat of the Order of the Ascension

The first degree of humility is obedience without delay. - Rule of St. Benedict

The Bible story begins with disobedience, not obedience. God instructs Adam & Eve to eat anything they want in Eden with one exception: the fruit of one tree. Genesis doesn’t specify how long it was between God’s command and Adam & Eve’s disobedience. My hunch it was at best a few hours. How long was Moses on the mountain top before the Israelites were fashioning a golden calf? Did David delay long once he spied Bathsheba on her roof? Disobedience, it seems, comes naturally.

Benedict knew that if a community gathered around the truth of God in Christ were to be faithful, then they needed to learn obedience. But he didn’t advocate a blind obedience to capricious orders. He understood obedience as a response to God’s grace. In Chapter 3 of the Rule, Benedict says the whole community should be called together to discern a course of action. He insists everyone should be heard, even the youngest, “for the Lord often reveals to the younger what is best.” After hearing from all, the abbot discerns what reflects “prudence and justice.” But even this isn’t arbitrary. The abbot, after all, is also subject to the Rule.

Benedict understood how central obedience was to Christian community. As our own Rule tells us: It is our communion with one another that creates the context for holy obedience. In communion, listening, and discernment, we seek God’s will. In communion, hope, and decision we seek to obey and act. We need an obedience that is not grudgingly given, that does not foster, as Benedict wrote, “a grumbling in our hearts,” but rather an obedience that intentionally places us vulnerably open to the communion of saints. This is how we bear the seal of Him who died.

We who exercise church leadership are called to such obedience. Benedict didn’t expect perfection. He was clear-eyed about human frailty. Yet, he stated no one would be a leader who didn’t first demonstrate a commitment toward obedience in their own life. One can’t expect obedience from others without first exemplifying it in one’s life.

When parishioners see us giving ourselves to obedience then they’re invited to do likewise. The opposite is also true: when they see us leading in ways where obedience is held loosely or ignored, then they’ll probably follow suit. Yet, when we practice obedience, trust grows in our leadership and that’s our strongest currency in the parish. Trust takes years to develop, but in a few moments, it can be done in through our disobedience. Our modeling obedience builds trust in the people we lead. They might disagree with us, they might even be angered by a sermon we preach, or position we take on an issue, but they will trust us if we model the practice of listening to God's word, to the Church's prayers, and to our neighbor's voices.

When I was first ordained, I thought obedience to God would come through grand, spiritual things. But in riffing on Keble’s phrase the “trivial round,” I learned the mundane things of parish life can have a profound effect on faithfulness. In Jesus’ words: “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much (Luke 10:16).”

Parish life can be hectic. The urgent can distort the important. The problem in front of us at one moment can mask the larger vision to which God may be calling. Obedience then serves as a great gift to us. It slows us down because it requires listening on so many levels: to Scripture, to our prayerful cries, and to our neighbors’ longings. We will often have to insist upon such obedience in the community, because the church like so much in our culture desires the quick, tweet-like answers.

Human nature hasn’t changed since Benedict’s time. Today, however, we know more about the complexities of the human brain. Research shows that people who believe they’re experts on a particular topic tend to become rigidly unwilling to listen to alternative points of view, even if they aren’t the experts they believe they are. This is called “Belief Perseverance,” the tendency to stay with a particular belief even when evidence suggests otherwise. These insights frame for us just how hard it is to be obedient. Our frames of reference are distorted by what Francis Spuffurd calls the “human propensity to f**k things up (hptftu). I engage regularly in hptftu. I’d like to think because I’ve worked so hard on my emotional intelligence; because I’m so tuned into my implicit bias and belief perseverance, that I’d be above all this. Since I know what’s happening inside of me, then none of this would apply to me. Nope. I know my own tendency when other people challenge some belief I hold. Rather than exercising Benedictine obedience, listening deeply, I often ignore them and begin to form a rebuttal to their position. It’s a lifetime spiritual practice to do otherwise.

Jon Katz in his book, Running to the Mountain, tells of his midlife crisis. He didn’t belong to any faith tradition, but he was experiencing a spiritual longing to discern a greater purpose in life. So, he decided to buy a cabin on a remote mountain in upstate New York, live there, and listen to his life. To do this, he left his spouse, teenaged daughter, and his home in suburban New Jersey. He ran to the mountain with the collected works of Thomas Merton and his two Labrador Retrievers, Julius & Stanley. Life on the mountain was more challenging than he had expected with a bitterly cold winter, a mice infestation in his cabin, and his personal isolation. He also discovered a truth about his dogs. He’d always seen Stanley & Julius as well trained. In suburbia they were models of obedience. He could take them walking off-leash on the hiking trails near his home and they’d always stay by his side. But on the mountain, he discovered they’d run after anything that held the promise of being food. He’d call them, but they wouldn’t come. This was a great shock to Katz. His dogs had become different animals once they were removed from their disciplined context.

Humans, to be sure, aren’t Labrador Retrievers. The Bible does call us sheep, but we have enough in common with both for this story to resonate. We know when we to stop listening to God in the Scriptures, in the prayers of the Church, and in the voice of our neighbor, we often stumble into disobedience and begin to lose touch with our identity and purpose in Christ. We hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest, as Simon & Garfunkel sang in The Boxer.

Clergy are just as susceptible to disobedience as anyone else. The voices bombarding us daily aren’t often the voice of grace. More often, they’re the voices of envy, shame, or of workaholic self-justification. When the voices we listen to are not the voice of the God who declares unmerited grace, then we tend to create God in our own image. We’d all like a god who looks and acts like us, who shares our prejudices, proclivities, and politics. Thankfully, God won’t cooperate with us.

The most powerful prophylactic against disobedience is a listening soul open to the thrust of grace in their lives, who have the gift of people around them who love them enough to tell them the truth. Benedict knew that to be true. And, in our hearts, we know it’s true as well. It just seems like we need to relearn it each day.

The Promise: 2021 Three reflections on the Benedictine Promise offered at the 2021 retreat of the Order of the Ascension. Includes an introduction by Sister Michelle Heyne, OA the Presiding Sister.