Meetings

A sermon preached during a meeting of Interim Bodies of the Episcopal Church at the Maritime Conference Center in Linthicum Heights, Maryland on the Feast of Hugh of Lincoln.

I wonder. Did you expect that your spiritual journey; your committed life of faith, would lead you here?

To a conference center near the Baltimore airport? Did you expect it would lead you to spreadsheets and documents with tracked changes and minutes and canons and filing and research and legislation and accounting and Roberts Rules and slide decks and email management … and [shudder] Microsoft Teams? Did you expect your life in Christ would lead you to meetings? So many meetings?

I didn’t. In my tender youthful years, when I thought of Christian vocation, I thought about prayer. And worship. Writing and contemplating. Service to the community. Action for justice.

But I didn’t expect all the meetings.

And I have a feeling young Hugh of Lincoln didn’t either. In fact, I imagine the older, wiser Bishop Hugh on some atypically quiet evening to himself, looking back on his life; turning to his famously devoted pet swan and saying,

I didn’t expect all the meetings.

Because, Hugh was a monastic at heart; a person drawn first and foremost as a very young man to the quiet, prayerful and highly structured contemplative life of the Carthusian order.

The problem for Hugh was that his prayerful monastic heart encompassed an extraordinarily skilled practical mind. And so it was that by the time he reached his 30s, Hugh found himself responsible for managing all the temporal affairs for the famous Grande Chartreuse Monastery.

And he was good at it. So good in fact, that by the 1170s, word of his talent crossed the Channel and reached King Henry II, who was currently engaged in a PR campaign of penance for either directly or indirectly calling for the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The king thought he could improve the optics by establishing some new monasteries, including England’s first Carthusian charterhouse. But unfortunately for Henry, the first Abbott of the house was not up to the task. And the second Abbot took office and promptly died.

And so, when Henry got word of a fellow in France with that most holy combination of skills pious and practical, he did everything in his power to recruit him. Hugh reluctantly (after visits from two bishops sent to convince him) became the new Abbott of Witham Charterhouse.

And the place was a mess. Hugh threw himself into the work. Raising money, negotiating with the king, overseeing the major building project, tracking and ensuring recompense for families displaced by the new construction. And Whitham became a thriving and holy community.

And then, in 1186, Hugh was perhaps horrified to learn he had been elected bishop of Lincoln, the largest diocese in England at the time. He in fact asked for a second vote to take place in his own charterhouse, just to ensure everything was above-board. Sorry, Hugh — as it would be reported today, it was “an election on the first ballot.”

And so, once again, the reluctant monk threw himself into the work. He improved and organized structures, finances and operations. He negotiated with famous tact and good humor with Henry, and the two kings that succeeded him. He oversaw repairs to earthquake damage to the cathedral and began the construction project that would make Lincoln the gothic icon you can go visit today. 

He had so many meetings.

And the thing is, I don’t think the greatest earthly legacy of Hugh of Lincoln is that beautiful cathedral. Not by a longshot. I think it’s the Gospel work of the church in that time and that place made possible and encouraged by all that policy, and accounting, and negotiating, and debating and fundraising and editing and organizing and legislating and … meeting.

Because of that work, the church had the leadership in place, stability, structure, education and capacity to stay awake and alert.

Because of that work, the church was able to see those others ignored; to care for the sick and feed the hungry; to stand up against persecution of the local Jewish population[i]; to quell the oppressive, violent and warring impulses of princes[ii].

Keeping awake, as Jesus insists we must do today, won’t always look dramatic or exciting. And for most of us, it also won’t always be quiet and contemplative, or particularly beautiful.  Mostly, I think keeping awake will look like the daily grind —faithful tending to the to-do list.

It seems unlikely the young man who first fell in love with the silence of the Carthusian way of being imagined that God would call him to a life of budgets and building plans, policies and presentations. And so many meetings.

But if blessed Hugh were here with us today – and let’s be real, he would totally be with us today (the only question is what committee); first, and most importantly: I very much hope the pet swan would be with him.

And, I imagine he would feel the familiar weariness of an imperfect world, heavy with cruelty and violence toward the least of these; a world still aching for signs of God’s justice and love. A world still yearning for the hope of all things made new.

And I imagine he might look around at all of us — with our backpacks and laptops and coffee mugs and binders and folders and notebooks and print-outs and agendas.

And I imagine he might say,

“I didn’t expect all the meetings either ….

But friends, this is Gospel work — this is wakeful work.”

Preached with gratitude (and much surprise) to President Julia Ayala Harris for this invitation.

[i] “Hugh was also prominent in trying to protect the Jews, great numbers of whom lived in Lincoln, in the persecution they suffered at the beginning of Richard's reign, and he put down popular violence against them in several places.” (Catholic Encyclopedia among many other sources)

[ii] Hugh resisted King Richard’s demand for 300 knights for a year's service in his French wars, as well as to raise money for those wars. (Wikipedia, Lesser Feasts & Fasts, among many other sources).