Arkiv, Høytlesning
Desert Fathers 13
Below is the text of the thirteenth episode in the series Desert Fathers in a Year. You can find it in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
Another day when a council was being held in Scetis, the Fathers treated Moses with contempt in order to test him, saying, ‘Why does this black man come among us?’ When he heard this he kept silence. When the council was dismissed, they said to him, ‘Abba, did that not grieve you at all?’ He said to them, ‘I was grieved, but I kept silence.’
Abba Moses’s black skin is often referred to in the stories told about him. Of course, racial prejudice has a long history. It conditioned relationships in the fourth century as it does in ours. We must be wary, though, of reading ancient narratives with modern spectacles. This little story probes beyond questions of ethnicity. It speaks of negotiating hurt, of living with vulnerability. Therefore it has relevance for all of us.
The setting is a council in Scetis, something like a republic of monastic desert dwellers in Northern Egypt. The assembled Fathers resolve to treat Abba Moses with contempt ‘in order to test him.’ In the Gospels we find people ‘testing’ Jesus to trip him up.
In Biblical terms, a test is not always a trap, however.
Think of what Moses tells Israel in Deuteronomy, as the people are about to take possession of the Promised Land: ‘You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not.’ God’s testing has pedagogical intent. Its purpose is not primarily to manifest man’s heart to God, who knows what is in man; it is to reveal man to himself.
We are all more or less prone to self-delusion. We may have grand ideas of our idealism, spirituality, and selflessness. The chances are, though, that at some metaphorical level we are plagued by an ingrown toenail: something about our history, character, or looks that makes us feel insecure, so anxious, so disposed to self-protecting anger.
We discover what is in our heart when, notwithstanding the manicured elegance we like to project, someone steps on that toenail, whether by accident or design. Such discovery is pretty unpleasant, but useful. For it is ill to ride some high horse of principle if, in fact, my chief concern is to hide some intimate complex; my outward position, then, will be shaped to some extent by inward fear, and fear, being an insidious impulse, will be likely to sway my judgement. My integrity is, as a result, compromised. I may find myself subtly, unwittingly undermining the common good.
Abba Moses was a highly respected, much loved monk in Scetis. His ethnic background was evident to all. It does not seem to have been a problem to anyone. The Fathers seem to have wished to establish whether it was an issue to Moses himself. Gathered in council, they doubtless had important business to discuss. Will Moses’s judgement be objective? Or conditioned by a chip on his shoulder? This they set out to discover, testing the abba’s humility, probing his peace.
Moses responds with silence — and silence in the face of insult is indeed a response. It speaks of non-violence and firm integrity. Note the exchange that took place when the council was over. The Fathers ask, ‘Abba, did that not grieve you at all?’ It is a touching detail, revealing a trait that marks the best of the desert dwellers: their great gentleness.
The counsellors’ intent had been to test, not to injure. Before they part from their brother, they want to make sure he does not harbour a grievance. Moses’s reply is revealing, too. He does not pretend to be made of steel. He admits: ‘In fact, what you said did sting’. But he did not feel the need to strike back, to meet insult with insult. He stands before them as one who has stepped outside the spiral of violence that often conditions relationships. Having owned his vulnerability, he does not need to keep it secret. That leaves him free in the face of provocation. What might seem to others a possible weakness is to him an accepted part of his being. It is not to be denied; but neither is it to be made into a label defining his identity.
That Moses’s sense of self was rooted at a much deeper level is apparent from another story told about him. Again the setting is that of a council:
A brother at Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to say to him, ‘Come, for everyone is waiting for you.’ So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water and carried it with him. The others came out to meet him and said to him, ‘What is this, Father?’ The old man said to them, ‘My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.’ When they heard that they said no more to the brother but forgave him.
Abba Moses, free with regard to others’ prejudice and his own secret wounds, interacted with the world, not on the basis of calculable schemes of retribution, but from keen awareness of the utter disproportion between God’s gracious holiness and human misery. Thus he became a vehicle of mercy, a vessel of peace.
We are called to step outside our own shadow, into the bright light of mercy. It may burn at first, but then it liberates, delivering us from imprisonment in the dank dungeon of self.
Sunrise in Tromsø.