18 Jun Sermon for the 2nd Sunday after Trinity, Year A
The Community here at Mucknell is, as with any group, made up of diverse individuals with varying opinions on just about everything! As such, sermons posted on our website represent the ideas of the preachers who wrote and delivered them, not necessarily those of the entire Community.
Sunday 14th June 2026
“As you go, proclaim, “The Kingdom of Heaven has come near you.”
74 years ago today, 14th June 1952, there was great excitement in our Community. The first of our Sisters were to make their Solemn Vows as Benedictine nuns and the Community would formally become a Benedictine community – as enclosed community of nuns: no going out except for medical appointments or to vote, no going away for holidays or to see family, no going out as Jesus had sent his disciples to proclaim that ‘the Kingdom of Heaven has come near you’. Their mission was to be prayer; prayer for the coming of the Kingdom, prayer for the unity of the Church, and their task was TO LIVE their prayer; to live the life of the Kingdom FOR REAL within the enclosure of the monastery; “to be a beating heart within the Body of Christ” – as someone described it. To make the Kingdom a lived reality rather than simply a concept – moment by moment, beginning again and again as they failed as they surely would. I’m sure they were familiar with the story of the old monk who was asked what he did all day. “I fall down and I get up. I fall down and I get up. I fall down and I get up.”
This is the mission and the task that we have inherited, well summarised in our Diocesan strapline: ‘To be a Kingdom People’.
The world has changed a lot since 1952. Society and the Church have changed a lot since 1952…and so has our understanding of monastic life and the ways it might be lived in the 21st Century.
At the beginning of every new ministry in the Church of England the Bishop reminds the minister to be licensed and the people that ‘we are part of the One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, professing the faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the Catholic Creeds, WHICH FAITH THE CHURCH IS CALLED UPON TO PROCLAIM AFRESH IN EACH GENERATION.
The essence of the Faith – and of the monastic life – doesn’t change, but the ways in which we understand and live it does.
The essence is the Gospel – that complete giving over of our life to Christ. As Dag Hammarskjöld said: “It costs not less than everything”, but as Jesus promised, ‘the reward is the 100-fold’.
For many Christians, particularly in the early centuries, and even now for some, it means literally dying for their faith – martyrdom! – and because their blood is spilt, they have become known as the “red martyrs”. As the official persecutions of Christians in the Roman Empire ceased and Christianity became the State Religion, so the fervour of many who professed the Christian faith cooled, and in reaction the move to the deserts and wilderness areas began – the Christian monastic movement began, often harsh, rigorous, celibate and prizing asceticism highly as they sacrificed the comforts of home and family life rather than their blood…and so the term “white martyrs” was coined to refer to the monastics.
As my mind has wandered to next 14th June when we will celebrate 75 years as a Benedictine community, I have pondered my own responses to the challenges of ‘white martyrdom’…and I can’t say that I have scored very highly at all, and certainly not in the ‘harsh, rigorous asceticism’ departments!
But that has led me back to ponder the concept of the Kingdom and how the message might be communicated today to an increasingly secular society facing massive problems.
YES, both the Gospel and Benedict require the complete giving of one’s life to Christ – “not even your body is your own” Benedict says to the professed monastic…but both he and Jesus are also realistic about the fact that it is a life-time’s struggle to live the ideal. We fall and have to get up many times a day, but Chapter 72 of the Rule Benedict sets out the ‘good zeal’ of fostering ‘fervent love’, and as St John insists, ‘God is love’. Benedict goes on, “They (the monastics) should each try to show respect for the other, supporting with the greatest patience one another’s weaknesses of body or character, and earnestly competing in obedience to one another. None are to pursue what they judge best for themselves, but, instead, what they judge best for someone else.” — and, of course, when we set out to do that, the chances are that we will fall flat on our faces. The sub-conscious is so often strongly averse to anything that questions or threatens us. We fear that we might lose our identity, but we need to hear and to remember that we are known and loved enormously by God and, though sometimes it may not feel like it, by the rest of the Community or family.
When one lives 24/7 with a small group of people who have a high ideal such as Benedict sets out in Chapter 72, that’s a pretty constant challenge, and when one sets beside it Jesus’s saying, “Whatever you do to the least of these, you do it to me,” – and you are currently feeling like murdering the particular ‘least of these’ you’re having to deal with, it’s very easy to lose focus on what we are here to do: TO LIVE THE KINGDOM. Mercifully, we have the next moment in which we have the chance to start all over again…though it can be a huge struggle to let go of the situation, pick ourselves up and ask for the grace to begin again.
I must confess, there have been many times when I have been grateful for the short passage in Michael Casey’s book, ‘Strangers to the City’ where he reminds us why God gives us the neighbours we have.
I have quoted it many times in sermons, but not nearly as many times as I have had to turn to it to remind myself of why God has called me to be here, and it’s all about the task we are being asked to undertake: making REAL the Kingdom for our generation by living it in practice.
Casey talks of a “cloistral paradise”, a “reflection of heaven on earth.” He goes on to explain that the ‘cloistral paradise’ is still in the stage of becoming. “It is conformity to the image of heaven that is the goal of the Community’s corporate journey. He says “The primary characteristic both of the ultimate expression of the ideal and its imperfect realization on earth is mercy. An earthly community approaches perfection in so far as it is a living expression of mercy, forgiveness, toleration, compassion, reconciliation.”
Then comes the part which helps me re-focus and reminds me of the task: “To implement these qualities there must be those who NEED TO BE endured, tolerated, forgiven and reconciled. By the grace of God our communities abound in such persons. Without them we would have no hope of becoming more heaven-like!”
I struggle – I suspect we all struggle – to be grateful for the irritations and challenges our neighbours present us with; to be grateful rather than resent them. As Casey says, without them, we wouldn’t grow; the Kingdom wouldn’t be made real in practical terms…we wouldn’t BE the ‘Kingdom People’ we are called to be ‘becoming’ for our generation when reverence and care for ‘the other’, and particularly the needy other, is so often lacking. This is our mission: to BE the Kingdom people.
I’m afraid that this is rather a long way of saying that my ponderings about how best to prepare for our celebration of 75 years as a Benedictine community could well be to try to focus, both personally and corporately (and this includes all you who journey with us) on trying to make real our faith by growing in love for each other – not sentimental love but in mercy, forgiveness, toleration, compassion, reconciliation.
An encouragement to apply myself to the task is Jesus’ chilling question: “How can you say you love God whom you cannot see if you don’t love the neighbour whom you can see?”
What do you do all day? – I fall down and I get up. I fall down and I get up…..
My resolution for this week – week 1 of the 52 weeks preparing for our 75th anniversary – is to begin each day by praying this week’s collect with the day ahead in mind.
Lord, you have taught us that all our doings without love are nothing worth: send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love, the true bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whoever lives is counted dead before you. Grant this for your Son Jesus Christ’s sake, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Br. Stuart
Image: Miller, Mary Jane. The Holy Trinity, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=59672 [retrieved June 18, 2026]. Original source: Mary Jane Miller, https://www.millericons.com/.