Sunday, December 22, 2024

The Fourth Sunday of Advent C - December 22, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Robert James Magliula

The Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 22, 2024

Meister Eckhart, the 14th century German Dominican wrote: 

We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I also do not give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time. When the Son of God is begotten in us. 

This morning, Meister Eckhart challenges us to answer his questions. How will we give birth to the Son of God in our time and in our culture? Perhaps, the first and better question is, Will we? Will we give our consent? Will we say, like Mary, “Let it be? “ 

The Annunciation to the Theotokos, the God-Bearer, is an annunciation to the entire human race that the Son and Word of God has become incarnate. What happened physically in Mary is meant to happen spiritually in us. Eckhart’s questions invite us to see humanity, and not Bethlehem, as the true birthplace of God. How amazing is that?! God has chosen humanity to give birth, to give life, to make real, God in this world. That says a lot about what God thinks of us. So often we diminish ourselves when we say, “I’m only human.” But God looks at us and says, “Humanity, created in my image and likeness! They shall be the ones through whom, by whom, and in whom my Son will be born.” 

I suggest that Mary’s experience has some pointers to open us up this morning to being God-Bearers. Once in a sermon, I heard a caution given, that I have never forgotten. The preacher said that in our rush to make the men and women of the biblical drama special, we miss the power of God’s actions---that God acts through ordinary human beings like you and me. Connecting our small stories with the larger stories of God can only be done through the flesh and blood realities of our lives. We must be prepared to hear its sacredness through its humanness---not despite it.   

Mary was a normal teenager who lived in an obscure village, in a nearly forgotten part of the Roman Empire.  She was engaged to a man, Joseph. Nowhere does it describe her as possessing qualities of leadership or intelligence or faith or beauty that would have set her apart for the unique call that Gabriel offered.  In all respects, Mary was a girl living her life, day by day, as best she could, in a community of ordinary people.   

Consider the moment of the Annunciation when the intrusion of the angel into Mary’s life utterly changed it. When Gabriel made his invitation, Mary doesn’t ask about the future or the consequences on her life. Her only question was a simple and logical one. She knew how babies were made. She wanted to know how her part would work. She assumes that God knows God’s job and will do it. Unlike many of us, she is concerned about what is hers to deal with. She doesn’t get lost in the past or future, which belong to God. Because she did not clutter herself up with second guessing God, she could be open to cooperating with God’s plan. Her yes to God was a blanket acceptance in faith of whatever would come in her life. Our own faith and trust in God need to be more like that since we will never in this life come to understand the reason for all that happens to us. God’s way of dealing with us is through collaboration, not dictatorship. Knowing our hesitations, doubts, and fears, God waits in both the crucial and the trivial moments of our lives for us to say yes.  

Mary most certainly had plans for her life. Marriage was on the horizon for her. We all make plans. Most nights when I go to bed, I already know what I will do the next day. I get up at the same time each morning and follow the same routine. My calendar tells me where I will be, when, and what I will do for at least the next nine months. I’ve planned my life. I suspect that to some degree your life might be like that too.  

During our time of Contemplative days a few weeks ago, which were filled with several unplanned events, I was struck by an insight I remembered a directee sharing with me. She said that on most days, we humans have the tendency to not live by faith, but by our plans. We can get through most days without faith. We plan our life, and we live our plan. Faith doesn’t really enter it until our plans get interrupted and the impossible happens. I suspect that’s often what’s going on when we ask someone to pray for us or another asks us to pray for them. Our plans have been interrupted. What Mary never expected or planned happened. We hear that in her question to the angel, “How can this be?” Haven’t there been times when we’ve also asked: “How can this be?”  

It might be the last thing you ever wanted to happen, or it might be something you had hoped and dreamed for all your life. Regardless, the impossible showed up and interrupted our plans. That interruption asks us to make an offering and that’s very different from a plan. Plans are about the future. An offering is about the present moment. Plans are made with expectations of an outcome. We plan to get what we want. An offering is made without expectations and without the need to control the outcome. Plans set limitations. Offerings hold unknown possibilities.  

When Gabriel, the messenger of the impossible, shows up Mary doesn’t try to understand or rationalize what’s happening. That’s just more planning. Instead, she makes an offering. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Every time we say “Let it be with me according to your word” we relinquish control, we surrender to the Mystery, we entrust ourselves to the Unknowing, and we open the womb of our heart to God’s presence. 

I don’t want us to be naïve about the offering Mary made. I can easily imagine that even as she makes her offering, she’s asking herself, “What will happen to me now? Will Joseph believe any of this? What will the neighbors say?” Her offering is very risky. Remember, in her time and culture, pregnancy for a betrothed woman was considered adultery punishable by death. It put her in a vulnerable place without any guarantee of the outcome.  That’s true for any offering you or I might make. Her “Yes” was just her first step. Mary’s offering is followed by another offering when she goes to her cousin Elizabeth as we heard in our gospel today. Mary sets out in haste to visit her cousin, who is bearing an equally unexpected child. At the sound of Mary’s greeting John, the unborn Forerunner, leaps for joy in Elizabeth’s womb –greeting the unborn Messiah.  

Luke offers no information about the three months Mary’s spends with Elizabeth. His sole focus is on the greetings that take place, between these two women and their unborn sons. Sacred iconography portrays this greeting as one of an embrace. Elizabeth recognizes and embraces the divinity carried inside Mary. Elizabeth greets salvation.  

In many ways our own lives are a series of unplanned circumstances and greetings. Every day we greet one another – family, friends, colleagues, strangers. Every day we greet the circumstances of our lives – joys, sorrows, successes, disappointments, losses, the mundane and the exciting. Every one of those greetings and circumstances are pregnant with new life and the possibilities of making an offering of love, compassion, forgiveness, reconciliation, healing, joy, beauty, wholeness. The greetings and unplanned events of our lives are pregnant with the divine, with salvation. How will we greet the next person we see? How will we receive the most recent unplanned circumstance of our lives? Will we recognize,  greet, and embrace the divine, our salvation? 

 When God accepts our surrender to the divine will, we are apt to feel not honored but abandoned. Mary was able to recognize God’s favor and delight in her, even as God reached down and interrupted her plans. She blesses God for the amazing thing that is happening in and through her. She places her blessedness into the context of God’s will. She is not concerned with the joy or the sorrow that her motherhood will bring. She sees from God’s perspective what looks to the world as revolution. In this disruption to her plans, she sees and sings of God’s faithfulness and mercy. 

In her Song of Praise, another offering is made. When she gives birth to Jesus and treasures and ponders all the shepherds tell her, another offering is made. When she places her newborn son in the hands of the old priest, Simeon, another offering is made. When she stands at the foot of the cross, another offering is made. Mary offered. Offering after offering after offering. What if we lived more like that? 

I’m not suggesting that you should completely give up planning, but what if we held our plans a bit more loosely? What if we met each person and circumstance of our life asking ourselves, “What’s the offering I can make in this place at this time?” Faith is about making an offering and letting go of the outcome. What might that look like in your life today? What’s the offering being asked of you? Whatever that offering is, like Mary, we will bear and give birth to the divine within us.  +Amen.

Sunday, December 15, 2024

The Third Sunday of Advent C - December 15, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt
The Third Sunday of Advent, December 15, 2024

 Click here for an audio of the sermon

In the name of the Lover, the Beloved and Love ever flowing. Amen.

John the Baptist is proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He has three messages for the crowds. First, the final judgement is at hand and sanctions will be meted out. Second, you need to turn to God by leading ethical lives. And third, one who is more powerful than I is coming.

John the Baptist was a powerful preacher. He attracted crowds even amid the wilderness. Those crowds were varied. He attracted peasants and merchants, as well as religious elites. 

Incredibly, even Roman soldiers came to hear what this wild preacher had to say. His reputation moved crowds to him even though his message could fall harshly on unprepared ears.

In today’s gospel, John emphatically urges the crowd to repent. His exhortation is to turn away from evil ways and turn to God while there is still time. Exhortation is rarely a subtle rhetorical style. And John also isn’t shy to use hyperbole and irony. 

For instance, he calls his audience a “brood of vipers.” This amounts to shaming both his listeners and their forebears. He destabilizes their honor status. He even denies them the status they would accrue from being descendants of Abraham. He says God is able to raise up children to Abraham from the surrounding wilderness stones.

No one should feel immune to the need for repentance, no matter their status. It’s as if we would retort: “we are good church-going Episcopalians, what is this talk about repentance?” 

To insist on repentance, John makes statements both about the ultimate things and about how to live in the meantime. This dynamic between eschatology and ethics keeps his listeners on their toes. The status quo is threatened by John’s preaching. The judgement is at hand he says and you folks better shape up.

The Baptist uses vivid images to summon the coming judgement. The axe is lying at the bottom of the tree. Will the tree bear the good fruit of repentance or manifest the sterility of corrupt ways?

Failure to repent will lead to being reduced to ashes in the fire.

John knows fear is a powerful motivator. The fear of punishment for not repenting is making the crowds ask what they should do. And here, rather than focusing on religious practices or beliefs, John turns the crowds to the very stuff of their daily life. This must have seemed odd, if not scandalous to those Pharisees who came to listen to him. The Pharisees insisted on specious adherence to the precepts of the law and religious practice.

John tells us that we should use whatever wealth, privilege or power we have not to our sole benefit but also to the benefit of others. 

He tells those who are rich to dispose of their superfluous wealth to the benefit of the poor. He tells professionals not to exploit their position to extort what is not theirs to have. He tells those with a political position not to abuse those whose interests you are supposed to protect.

The crowd is mesmerized by John’s preaching and many come forward for a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of their sins. In the spirit of the Jewish people’s messianic hopes, the people ask John if he might be the Messiah they are expecting.

And John prophetically evokes the coming of Jesus. "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

In all humility, John knows he is only preparing the way for the anointed One. Does he even know at that moment exactly who that is? Or is it only revealed to him at Jesus’ baptism? John’s vision of the Messiah contains elements of judgement. The chaff will be burned in an unquenchable fire. More fear is sowed into the crowd.

But it is worthwhile to remember that the post-resurrection Jesus, the Christ will assuage that fear. Most of his post Easter encounters start with him saying “Do not be afraid.” The baptism of fire and the Holy Spirit is fiery indeed, but it is a fire of cleansing and purification not of punishment.

Of course, Jesus in his ministry also made predictions of the judgement to come. But is this judgement really between the good guys and the bad guys? 

Or is it rather a deep discernment aided by God in what is good and what is short of good, or even evil in our life? Is it a look back on all our life and a scalpel-sharp distinction of what was good and what was not? And is it not our not-so-good parts that will be thrown in the unquenchable fire? 

Will the good parts of us be redeemed from the judgement and enjoy the limitless mercifulness of a loving God?

Psalm 136 begins with word on God’s unrelenting mercy:

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,

   for his steadfast love endures for ever.

Maybe it was early days for John the Baptist to divine in the coming Messiah an unrelenting love and mercy. That’s what he was preparing the way for without knowing exactly where it led.

But let’s not forget the ethical lesson of the Baptist.

We are like rich people - who never have enough for ourselves and ours. We are as the tax collectors – dependent upon unjust structures for our livelihood. We are as the occupying army – caught in a culture of exploitation and violence.

“What should we do?”

Share, keep no more than you need.

Be fair, treat others with care, and be honest. 

Bear fruit. 

Make unselfish choices. 

Live within your means. 

Do what is just. 

Turn around and return to God. 

Bear the fruit worthy of repentance.

Make is so that anyone observing our lives, can discern that we bear the mark of Christ and are living as his faithful disciples.

Come, Lord Jesus and be our Advocate in the judgement to come.

Amen.


Tuesday, December 10, 2024

The Funeral of Br. Laurence Harms - December 10, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky
The Funeral of Br. Laurence Harms OHC, December 10, 2024

Click here for an audio of the sermon


Our brother Laurence Arthur Eugene Harms had a rich and productive life but not, I think, an easy one. He was born into a loving family in Rock Island IL but at age 8 developed a neurological disorder for which he had no name. It was of course narcolepsy, a condition which both limited him and shaped him for the rest of his life. It wasn't until he was 20 years old that the condition was diagnosed and given a name.  Medications were made available to help keep him awake during the day, though he never enjoyed a full night’s sleep. But despite this he was a man who was intensely interested in the natural world and it how it worked. He loved the sciences--chemistry, physics, biology and later, as we all know, astronomy--and studied at Augustana, a small Lutheran college not far from home. He had to leave college after two years to work in a factory for a year to raise funds to pay for his education. He returned to school with enough money and the new medicine which allowed him to attain his bachelor’s degree and to begin a seven-year period of teaching sciences throughout Illinois. He loved the teaching, though he often had difficulties with managing the students. So when he turned 30, he and a friend set out for California for a summer job which turned into much more than a summer job. He first went door to door selling Watkins spices and then began working with the International American Tuna Commission where a great adventure took shape: he spent three months at sea on a tuna ship during which time they caught 200 tons of tuna.

Always a devout High-Church Episcopalian, Laurence--or Gene as he was then known--heard that a monk would be in the San Diego area speaking about missionary work in Liberia. That monk was Brother Raymond Gill, OHC, who explained to the gathered crowd that they desperately needed a science teacher in West Africa. At the end of the presentation, Eugene went up to Father Gill and said: “Father you have your science teacher.”  And off he went to Liberia teaching for two years at the Holy Cross school there. During that time, he became a Companion of the Order and took the name Laurence. Laurence was an amazingly effective teacher under somewhat primitive circumstances. Perhaps because he was himself a bit slow and knew what it was to struggle, he paced himself and his students to the point that many of them excelled in the sciences and in knowledge generally.  Among his students was the future vice president of Liberia along with many who became doctors, nurses, government officials or successful entrepreneurs.

It was also at this time Laurence felt increasingly called to explore religious life as a vowed member of the Order of the Holy Cross.  He entered the community in 1962 as one of only two laymen and made his life profession in 1966.  He had struggled with the question of whether he wanted to be a monk or a teacher, and when he was sent back to Liberia as a teacher and a monk shortly after his life profession, he discovered he could be both. He stayed there seven years and ultimately spent 13 years teaching in Liberia.

Laurence loved the life there and the Liberian peoples and spoke often of the excitement of going out on trek, that is on journey through the jungle to spread the gospel while always, always respecting the variety of both indigenous and Islamic faiths that they encountered. And--those of us who know Laurence will understand this--he often got in trouble. Once while teaching in Ghana, he was expelled from the country as a CIA spy! Laurence also suffered from various tropical illnesses, including amoebic dysentery and malaria, and yet bounced back to continue his teaching, loving his students and being loved by them in return. He was to teach in the Bahamas in the mid-1970s and then again in Ghana in the mid-1980s where he was the novice master, which is hard for me to wrap my mind around except when I remember that Laurence was a man who loved people and who saw Jesus in them and walked with them along the way toward new and larger life.

Laurence loved to travel when he could. He traveled through the Middle East. He traveled to the Holy Land. And when his astronomical interests developed, he travelled around the world to experience several eclipses of the sun. Alas, when he went to the South Pacific on one such journey he totally missed the solar eclipse because he was involved in trying to set up his camera. That, too, was our Laurence.

During these decades Laurence struggled with the burdens that narcolepsy put on him. People often made fun of him when he nodded off or collapsed in a cataplexy. He was embarrassed by this and was often beset by a sense of inferiority. But his transparent welcome and simple acceptance of others helped him overcome this time and again. And he did have his resurrection of sorts. When I lived with him in Santa Barbara, he was offered medication which for the first time in his life since age 8, allowed him to sleep through the night. He said it was like becoming a new person and indeed it was.

Laurence had other challenges and setbacks. Like the other brothers living in Santa Barbara at the time, Laurence lost all his possessions in the tragic fire which burned down the monastery in 2008.  But he persevered, continuing with his astronomical interests. Many were the guests, myself included, who for the first time saw the rings of Saturn through his telescope or the near approach of the Hale-Bopp comet. He was part of the Astronomical Unit at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and took delight in its presentations and his work in the observatory. And he had a touch with fame. Once a friend of ours arranged a dinner party for him at Cal Tech and across the dining room was none other than the world renown theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking who was, as many of you know, paralyzed and rendered unable to speak by a progressive motor neuron disease. .That didn't stop Laurence who shot across the room to Professor Hawking, told him how much he admired him, then laid his hands on his head and gave him a blessing.  It was the greatest affirmation that Laurence could offer anyone, and I think Hawking, though an atheist, realized that. At least, I hope he did.

Laurence could tell wonderful, often very funny, stories about himself, and our community has its own rich store of sayings and malapropisms that came from Laurence, things like the famous liver-shaped swimming pool or the local tribe  that slaughtered half a cow for a feast. Laurence could also be forgetful. He tells the story of offering  a school of prayer in Bolgatanga, in the northern part of Ghana:

“I remember one time, I had a wonderful village there. I had a number of people, about 20 people gathered together.  I was teaching the Jesus prayer and centering prayer. So I got them all started on that and they were all centering. So then I had to go someplace, go to the bathroom, and I left and I forgot them. Here I was an hour later, and I remembered: ‘Oh my God those people are still there praying’ and I came back over an hour later and the people were still there praying. I hadn't intended more than 15 or 20 minutes, but they were so faithful that they stayed there and prayed. I learned a lesson from that all right.”

 I'm sure they did as well.

It's tempting to reduce Laurence's life to narcolepsy, or teaching, or astronomy or even origami. All of those were important touchstones for him. But behind it all and suffusing it all, transparently so, was a deep love of Jesus. Repeatedly Laurence expressed his certainty that Jesus was with him and indeed protecting him and guiding him. And given some of the places and journeys that he was on and situations he found himself in, the fact that he came through them safely makes me think he was quite right. At the end of the oral history that he shared with his family and his dear friends Karla Marie and Remy, Laurence says the following:

“God was always with me. I never doubted it that even at times when I was not happy, not on the ball, or not employed or something. God was still my friend. Some people have three: the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Some of them find God in…the Father, the Almighty. Others find God in the Holy Spirit; God is closer to them through the Holy Spirit. With me God is friend, Jesus Christ is my friend. I mean the others are as well, but the emphasis is on: he loves me and he cares for me and looks out for me as a friend would. So, you might consider that wherever you may be.”

For Laurence it was always Jesus and all for Jesus. Laurence was not a theologian by any means, but he was a man touched by God’s love who touched others with that same love. He was a man of prayer and compassion and patience and persevering hope…just like his Lord.  And we shall miss him.

Brother Laurence Arthur Eugene Harms, may you rest soundly in peace. And may you rise in glory with Jesus, your friend and guide, your protector and Savior...to Whom be glory and honor, now and forever.  Amen.