RCL - Easter 7 A - 04 May 2008

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Mrs. Suzette Cayless, AHC
RCL - Easter 7 A - Sunday 04 May 2008

Acts 1:6-14
1 Peter 4:12-14, 5:6-11
John 17:1-11

The period between Ascension and Pentecost is a time of waiting - and today’s lesson from Acts finds the apostles in the upper room in Jerusalem, together with Mary Jesus’ mother and other women, and Jesus’ brothers. They are waiting, as they had been told to do, for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Waiting is never easy and I suspect that there must have been many questions asked and much debate in that upper room. It is interesting that this group gathered together for the waiting time. This is something that humans tend to do when situations are confusing and uncertain; being in a group offers support and encouragement.

Waiting is a common experience: waiting for examination grades, for the results of medical tests, for a telephone call, for a relative to come home; waiting for a vacation to start, for a pay raise, for a jury verdict, for the birth of a child, for the death of a sick friend - the list could go on and on.

As I was reflecting on the business of waiting two instances in my own life came to mind. I grew up in Coventry, England during World War II. It struck me the other day that my older granddaughter is now just a year younger than I was when that war started. I remember how, each night, for many months, we waited for the air-raid sirens to begin sounding the alarm that would send us to the air-raid shelter. To sleep in our own beds for a whole night was a rarity. Usually we were hustled by our parents down to the bottom of the garden and into the air-raid shelter that had been constructed there. We were joined by neighbors from adjoining houses and as we tried to rest we listened for the planes to come over and for the explosions that signified the landing of bombs. I don’t recall being particularly frightened - I think I was probably more angry than anything at the disruption of my life. Looking back I am amazed at how we all functioned! The grown-ups in my life went to work each day; we children went to school and managed to receive a good education. The sense of community was strong; we gathered together during those air-raids and looked out for each other, all the time looking forward to the day when the war would be over.

The other recollection of waiting is more recent. My second granddaughter was due to arrive in mid-March this year. A couple of weeks before the due date, she turned herself round into the wrong position and so the obstetrician decided that a Cesarian section was necessary. The date was fixed. My husband and I drove to North Carolina to take care of the older child and to be there to help out while the mother recovered. On the set day preliminary tests were done only to discover that the baby had turned again making the Cesarian unnecessary. This meant a further period of waiting and uncertainty. We returned home to West Park and waited. A couple of weeks went by. Then a sudden phone call at lunch on a Saturday that our daughter-in-law was having labor pains sent us hurriedly into the car for another drive south. We arrived - and we all waited. Nothing further seemed to be happening. Frustration was growing on all sides. A time was set to induce labor but on that day as our son was just about to drive his wife to the hospital there was a call to say that due to many admissions during the night there was no bed available. So we waited some more. Finally our daughter-in-law was admitted and the baby duly arrived. But the waiting was difficult to cope with.

I want to read a short story that illustrates a fundamental reason for the difficulty of so many waiting situations. It is one of Arnold Lobel’s tales called “The Garden” from the book “Frog and Toad Together” and it goes like this:

Frog was in his garden. Toad came walking by. “What a fine garden you have, Frog,” he said. “Yes,” said Frog. “It is very nice, but it was hard work.” “I wish I had a garden,” said Toad. “Here are some flower seeds. Plant them in the ground,” said Frog, “and soon you will have a garden.” “How soon?” asked Toad. “Quite soon,” said Frog.

Toad ran home. He planted the flower seeds. “Now seeds,” said Toad, “start growing.” Toad walked up and down a few times. The seeds did not start to grow. Toad put his head close to the ground and said loudly, “Now seeds, start growing!” Toad looked at the ground again. The seeds did not start to grow. Toad put his head very close to the ground and shouted, “NOW SEEDS, START GROWING!”

Frog came running up the path. “What is all this noise?” he asked. “My seeds will not grow,” said Toad. “You are shouting too much,” said Frog. “These poor seeds are afraid to grow.” “My seeds are afraid to grow?” asked Toad. “Of course,” said Frog. “Leave them alone for a few days. Let the sun shine on them, let the rain fall on them. Soon your seeds will start to grow.”

That night Toad looked out of his window. “Drat!” said Toad. “My seeds have not started to grow. They must be afraid of the dark.” Toad went out to his garden with some candles. “I will read the seeds a story,” said Toad. “Then they will not be afraid.” Toad read a long story to his seeds. All the next day Toad sang songs to his seeds. And all the next day Toad read poems to his seeds. And all the next day Toad played music to his seeds. Toad looked at the ground. The seeds still did not start to grow. “What shall I do?” cried Toad. “These must be the most frightened seeds in the whole world!”

Then Toad felt very tired, and he fell asleep.
“Toad, Toad, wake up,” said Frog. “Look at your garden!” Toad looked at his garden. Little green plants were coming up out of the ground. “At last,” shouted Toad, “my seeds have stopped being afraid to grow!” “And now you will have a nice garden too,” said Frog. “Yes,” said Toad, “but you were right, Frog. It was very hard work.”

What makes waiting so difficult? I think that basically it is the fact that so often we are not in control of a situation. For Toad, the growing process of the seeds was quite beyond his power to direct. As a child I could not control those bombs. As a grandmother I could not control the timing of my grandchild’s arrival. I wonder how the apostles coped as they waited? Were they impatient, like Toad? Were some of them angry? Were they frustrated because they were not in charge? We do not know the questions raised and the exchanges in that upper room.

In his commentary on “Acts,” William H. Willimon says that the apostles “... wait as those who are still dependent upon the Father’s faithfulness, those who have no control over the timetable of a beneficent God who graciously allows enough time to accomplish the work begun in Jesus.” The apostles could not imagine what or who the Holy Spirit was and when he, she, it, would arrive. One thing we do know is that they devoted themselves to prayer. This was not a time of idleness. They remained faithful and did what they were able to do, while not understanding what the outcome might be. “All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer.”

This is the kind of community support that we can always engage in and generate regardless of impatience, anger, frustration, or a feeling of helplessness. Prayer is a mark of the Christian life - both individual and corporate prayer. As we proceed through this year’s liturgical period of waiting before the Feast of Pentecost let us determine to use the time for renewed and deepened prayer - for ourselves, for each other, and for the world around us. Let us look anew for the promise of the Father and open our hearts for the coming afresh of the Holy Spirit to equip us for the call to witness in God’s world. Let us always remember that God is the God of the unexpected. We cannot control God’s moves - as Jesus said to Nicodemus (John 3:8), “The wind blows where it will, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.” We can only be patient, pray, and wait for God to surprise us - as He always does.

Amen.

RCL - Ascension A - 01 May 2008

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Tony Cayless, AHC
RCL - Ascension Day A - Thursday 01 May 2008

Acts 1:1-11
Ephesians 1:15-23
Luke 24:44-53


In the Acts of the Apostles - our first reading - Luke refers to Jesus' last Resurrection appearance. It was in the Upper Room of John Mark's mother's house. There were about 120 persons gathered there and we read: when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" He replied, "It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.

The period between Ascension and Pentecost is a period of waiting. Those men and women who had been attracted to Jesus, become followers of Jesus, been taught by Jesus, been eye witnesses of the Resurrection, were told to go into Jerusalem and wait, wait for the promise of the Father. The promise was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. They returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

This Feast reminds us that we still live between the times. The Ascension Event when the physical presence of Jesus the Christ was withdrawn is in the past. The parousia when the Lord will become present in power and with great glory is in the future. This between the times is the age of the Church.

When the Word became human the Word accepted all the limitations of human nature. The human Jesus was born, lived, ministered, died and rose again in a particular place and at a particular time in the history of this world. The Word made Flesh, the Incarnate Lord, like us was capable of being be in one place at one time only. The ascended Jesus can be present at all times and in all places.

After the Ascension Jesus in his resurrection body made no more appearances. The Incarnate Word of God had ended that phase of the mission. The reconciliation between God and humanity is accomplished by God putting God's self in our environment at the Incarnation, and by humanity being put in God's environment at the Ascension.

The Ascension is the taking of our human nature into that territory where never before were we allowed to go.

The kind of people that we human beings are is illustrated in the ancient and true myth of Adam and Eve. Because of their wrong choices they were cast out of paradise. Then we are told: God placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life. For Adam and Eve there was no going back to Eden.

For the rest of humankind there is no going back anywhere. We can never go back, but we can go forward and look forward to the time when St. John the Divine says the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever.

Our human nature is in heaven in the person of Jesus Christ. St. Augustine said "this festival confirms the grace of all the festivals of the church together, for without the Ascension, the reality of every festival would perish. Unless the savior had ascended into heaven, his nativity would have come to nothing and his passion would have born no fruit for us, and his most holy resurrection would have been worthless".

There is a story that when Jesus arrived back in Heaven the Archangel Gabriel asked him what plans he had made to ensure that God's mission would continue on earth. Jesus replied, "I have left my Church, The apostles Peter and James and John, Andrew, and seven others whom I appointed, and my Mother Mary, my friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus of Bethany, Cleopas, Mark, Bartimaeus, Johanna, Susanna, and about a 100 others. They have been commissioned to go out into all the world and make more disciples. They will carry out my mission". "But" said the Archangel, "But what if they should fail?" Jesus answered firmly: "I have made no other arrangements."

No other arrangements. Just the Church as it was then and just the Church as it is now. . . . . Including us! AMEN

COME LORD JESUS! Be known to us in the Breaking of the Bread.

RCL - Easter 6 A - 27 Apr 2008

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Brother Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
RCL - Easter 6 A - Sunday 27 April 2008

Acts 17:22-31
1 Peter 3:13-22
John 14:15-21

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” In my mind this is one of the most sublimely beautiful passages in all scripture.

The reason I love this text so much has less to do with the text and more to do with the way Thomas Tallis created a musical setting of this text.

A little history - Thomas Tallis is one of the greatest composers England has given to the world - and that is saying a lot. But Tallis also had the wonderful and terrible timing to be born in the reign of Henry the VII. He was an exact contemporary of Thomas Cranmer and Henry VIII. In other words, he was the finest living composer of his day, and his day was the English Reformation.

Tallis was a scholar and musician who worked in powerful monastic houses. He had it made. He had the time and resources to perfect his craft. He never had to worry about where his next meal would come from. He could just compose and make music.
And then things changed. Henry VIII, King of England, began the process of remaking the church in England into the Church of England. It was a complicated and frequently bloody process that, among other things, included the dissolving of the monasteries. Sorry Mr. Tallis - you need a new job and a new home.

Henry gave way to Edward, a radical protestant. Edward gave way to Mary, a devout Roman Catholic. And Mary gave way to Elizabeth who some would argue was the first actual Anglican monarch to head the Church of England.

And through this, Thomas Tallis kept composing. That he survived at all and died a natural death is an achievement. As the monarch changed, so did the relationship between head and body for many in Church.

Tallis didn’t survive by staying at the fringes with his head down, or by keeping near the middle of the road with no particular conviction. Partly he survived because he was willing compromise - Edward wants this... I’ll can do this... Mary wants that... I can do that. But mostly he survived, I believe, because he was truly an inspired genius. Keep the word “inspired” in the back of your mind because I’m going to come back to it. It is the entire point of this sermon.

Among Tallis’s works are some of the finest examples of late Renaissance polyphony that can be found. His music is as lavishly rich and wonderfully florid as any being written in Rome. He stands up well next to Gabrieli and Palestrina - also his contemporaries.

But the English reformation placed an unusual demand on composers. Thomas Cranmer had a strong conviction that the highly florid, melismatic writing popular in the Church was un-Godly. For Cranmer, understanding the words was essential. Worship in a language “understanded of the people” was, after all, an article of religion.

Those utterly beautiful, other-worldly stretches late Renaissance polyphony where one syllable of one word can stretch on for a page or two, may have pleased the ear, but the text was utterly lost in a wash of sound; Unacceptable to Thomas Cranmer, so he devised a standard which Henry issued in a proclamation - in church music there would be, so near as possible, one note for every syllable and one syllable for every note.

Goodbye florid polyphony.

Thomas Tallis not only needed a new job and a new home, he had to master an entirely new style. He could only compose as many notes as there were syllables in his text... This, I suppose, is like restricting a poet to only the vocabulary found in the daily papers; or restricting a painter to only primary colors. Congratulations Mr Da Vinci - here is your new studio. And here is the box of Crayola crayons that you will be allowed to use - please stay within the lines and don’t let any of the colors run together... create masterpieces... any questions?

“If you love me you will keep my commandments. I will pray the Father and he will give you another Counselor, even the spirit of truth.”

Thomas Tallis was inspired - that is to say filled with the Spirit. His music testifies to that. It is this Spirit that allowed Thomas Tallis not only to survive, but to create exquisite works of beauty, works that reflect in their own way the beauty of God.

When Thomas Tallis set this Gospel text to music he created what has often been described as the most perfect English anthem - simple almost to the point of being stark, yet transcendent. Moreover, he followed the King’s proclamation - there is, so much as possible, only one note per syllable, one syllable per note. When you hear the anthem, you hear the Gospel. Nothing standing in front or beside or behind.

So why, other than the fact that I really love the music of Thomas Tallis, am I going on about this...

Mircea Elliade in his book The Sacred and the Profane argues that manifestations of the sacred are the basis of meaning in our world. When we see the gentle rain watering the earth, we see it as a manifestation of God, as God’s sacred involvement in creation. The profane world lacks this meaning. It just sees rain... just a natural process.

The secular person cannot see the sacred. The secular person might find a flower quite beautiful, but the spiritual person, the poet Christopher Smart for example, sees flowers as the peculiar poetry of Christ. The secular person sees the profane and the Godly person sees the sacred - though they are looking at the same thing.

“Even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot see or know...” The sacred is not visible to the secular.

We are not secular people. We are children of God. We abide with the Spirit of Truth.

Our challenge, our calling is to take that vision of the Spirit with us into daily life - to bring transcendence to the mundane, the earthbound. For we can have no doubt about God’s commands - We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart and body and mind and spirit; and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Its not enough to see the peculiar poetry of Christ - we have to live it.

For some of us, as I have talked about Tallis’s anthem, it has been ringing in our ears. But others will be unfamiliar with it. So I want to conclude today by letting it speak for itself.

RCL - Easter 5 A - 20 Apr 2008

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Brother James Randall Greve, OHC
RCL - Easter 5 A - Sunday 20 April 2008

Acts 2:42-47
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10: 1-10

“Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied.”

Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?”

Thomas Ward, an Episcopal priest who contributed to a new anthology on centering prayer titled Spirituality, Contemplation, and Transformation, tells this anecdote about a moment when he was startled at the profound reality of Christian truth and our identity in it:

Once in a question-and-answer session at a centering prayer retreat held at St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, Thomas Keating said, “The whole of the holy and blessed Trinity dwells within us.” I found that statement more than I could digest, and so I asked Father Keating to say more about it. He looked at me and said, “The whole of the holy and blessed Trinity dwells within us.”

It was almost too outrageous to accept, Ward goes on to say.

The whole, in me? Our reactions to such a statement can cover the spectrum: Some of you are thinking “of course”. Others of you are thinking “there must be a catch”, or “divine truth is completely ethereal, mysterious, inexpressible, and unattainable, we can only guess.” Or “How could Father Keating make such a statement? It is just his opinion, after all. Who does he think he is?”

We live in an age when the proclamation and defense of revealed truth which transcends our opinions and feelings is viewed with caution, even within parts of the Church. Some within the Church emphasize the complex, the gray, the unknowable at the expense of the simple and black and white and known. While there is of course mystery and complexity within Christian theology, our faithful reaction is to be more a bowing of the knee than a scratching of the head.

The Gospel of John is addressed to those who would rather be bystanders and critics than actually give their lives to believing and living truth. The Evangelist is constantly challenging us to stop and pay attention, look and listen again, knowing that what we think is real, what we believe is right, may be an illusion. The assumption is that Truth has revealed itself and St. John is making a legal argument for the authenticity of the claims of the Son of God.

For St. John, anything short of believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who gives eternal life is not merely a different point of view or an expression of diversity, it is ignorance and blindness and despair. John does not want us merely to concede the point, but to have the power of the truth of Christ break into us and revolutionize us. We are upside-downed by a Christ who declares that only when we are stood on our heads do we see the world as God sees it - as it really is - only then can we perceive the spiritual reality that we look at but don’t see. Seeing and knowing and believing are one and the same.

Paradox is the norm in this upside-down world of the Fourth Gospel: the beginning is the end, water makes you thirsty, blindness is sight, sight is blindness, being born again is growing up, death is glory, Good Friday is Easter. John is realistic about how hard this is to swallow. As Jesus begins to proclaim news of this upside-down world, we meet skeptical disciples, a skeptical Nicodemus, a skeptical woman at the well and crowds who just want their bellies filled. The encounters with Christ are intimate, personal, messy and unresolved, full of conflict, leaving us hanging - just like ours.

Above all no one - no one - is neutral. Everyone thinks they know what salvation will mean when it comes - no one at first is looking for the Jesus who shows up. Those who have too great a stake in preserving the right side up status quo will have none of this and have Jesus crucified. What appears as Messiah is so far beyond anyone’s expectations as to be incomprehensible and outrageous. The conversion that takes place in the disciples and others is a conversion from ignorance to knowing, from blindness to sight, from adequate to overwhelming as they are willing to be known and respond with faith that Jesus is the Son of God.

As we come to today’s reading, we peer into the Upper Room as Jesus goes down to wash the disciples’ feet on the last night of his life and listen in on his farewell discourse to his disciples. It is Maundy Thursday but it is already Easter. Christ is present in that room but beyond the walls of that room - already speaking to a young, struggling church. Surely these disciples, after hearing the words and seeing the miraculous signs since way back in chapter one would finally understand what’s going on, would have come to know who this person Jesus is, right? No!

Hours away from the crucifixion Thomas and Philip are still talking like they have yet to believe very much at all - and all except the beloved disciple will flee as Jesus is arrested before the night is over. Jesus reminds them all that observation does not magically produce faith. Philip’s request to “show us the Father and then we will be satisfied” reveals an exasperating ignorance of who Jesus is. Philip has merely looked but not seen.

The Lord’s question in response is perhaps the saddest in all of Holy Scripture: “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me?” Here is the startling reality repeated throughout the Gospel: the irreconcilable conflict between the drive to have meaning on our own terms and in our own way and the way of Life which is the giving over of our own terms and our own way for the better way of the Gospel.

Philip’s request is the primary trap in the spiritual life. It is the original and most powerful temptation for all of us; to believe the lie that something beyond what we have, beyond what lives within us, beyond the whole of the blessed and holy Trinity will satisfy. Philip has succumbed to the elusive dream of satisfaction - the religion of one-moreness that holds out, like a carrot on a stick, the promise of lasting pleasure, escape from our human struggle and therefore escape from God.

Our selfish nature lusts after the mirage of satisfaction. As fallen creatures we are on the lookout for a quick fix and an easy out. We become conditioned to the instant catering of every whim, the filling of every hunger. Philip is like so much of our culture that keeps asking for just a little more show, a little more excitement, a little less faith and wonder and waiting. We want a God who gives feel-good meaning, who responds to what we believe we need, not one to whom we owe all being and life, one who gives life through sacrifice, surrender, and death to self.

At the redeemed, divine center of his being Philip’s real self wants what we all want - to know and experience our deep thirst quenched with living water, to be ravished by a God who can absorb and embrace our pain and mystery and wandering, for a quest bigger than ourselves, for truth that grips us with such power we would die before we compromised our faith. All of that is ours. All of that in Christ is sufficient. We can choose to live in the world of Philip, the right-side up world of more and more and the futile chase for satisfaction.

But as Flannery O’Connor says in The Violent Bear It Away, we would have to call that the church without Christ, where, as she says “the lame don’t walk, the blind don’t see, and what’s dead stays that way.”

Life in Christ, on the other hand, is the invitation to give our lives and wills over to God without conditions on what that giving will cost us or where it will lead us or what it will look like. We are commanded to convert the desire for satisfaction into the acceptance of sufficiency in the faithful nurturing of the relationship with Christ through the ups and downs of emotions and consolations, times of peace and fear, dryness and refreshment, dark nights and bright days. Sufficiency is the gift of seeing that we must pitch the plastic and false imitation of life and see and know Christ dwelling within us in grace, mercy, and abiding love. The whole of the holy and blessed Trinity dwells within us.

Amen.

A double First Profession of the Monastic Vow - Joseph & Randy - 17 Apr 2008

Here we are gathered for a most wonderful event - not just a profession, but a double profession. It is truly a day in which joy overflows.

Joseph and Randy's professions - Randy vested with the cowl

The sermon is normally a time to reflect on our encounter with God through scripture. But I’m more interested today in reflecting on our encounter with God through community.

In fact, I was so certain that I wasn’t going to talk about today’s scripture readings that I was hardly interested in knowing what they were. But I thought - maybe I just better at least read them over once before today... and I’m rather glad I did...

When monastic life and scripture are talked about together, one story, the story of the rich young man who must sell everything and then follow Jesus, is generally at the center of the discussion. But today’s Gospel reading gives an even more fundamental description of the call to life in a monastic community.

You may have missed it since it went by rather quickly, so let me review... “My sheep hear my voice; I know them and they follow me.” There you have it.

This particular chapter in John’s telling of the Gospel is full of references to sheep and the care of sheep. Just before this particular passage, Jesus has given a discussion on sheep and gatekeepers. The gatekeeper opens the gate - the sheep hear his voice. The gatekeeper calls the sheep by name and leads them. They follow because they recognize the voice.

This, in a nutshell, is what a vocation is all about. God calls. We recognize the voice and we respond to that call. That is vocation pure and simple.

There are infinite ways in which God may call us; the monastic life is just one peculiar way. But it appears to be the way in which Randy and Joseph are called. And so we are here today to celebrate.

The monastic life has its idiosyncrasies. Brothers within the Order of the Holy Cross have their own idiosyncrasies... some might even suggest that I have one or two idiosyncrasies... but this passage from John hints at that as well. The shepherd knows each sheep. Each sheep is called by its own name. Each sheep has its own identity; its own personality.

The way that God calls Randy and the way that God calls Joseph is unique, because they are unique. They are addressed specifically - not generically... all of us are - not just monks and nuns. Each of us is called as an individual. If you want something that marks a hard line between a Godly vocation and a cult - there it is.

We are not generically called to some homogenized life. Jesus brings to us unending life - abundant life. St Iranaeus tells us that the glory of God is the human person fully alive. The full flowering of our individual personhood is an essential part of our faithful response to God’s call. The rich and abundant diversity in that call is a reflection of the abundance of life that Jesus talks about - that Jesus calls us to.

This is important today because in just a few moments Randy and Joseph will vow stability, obedience, and conversion of their ways to the monastic way of life - the Benedictine vow. And at various times that vow has been understood to mean uniformity, conformity, inflexibility, and the giving up of individual identity.

But Jesus doesn’t know us by our species, or by our race, or even by our community or family... Jesus knows us by our own name. Even as we are called into community, we are called to honor the gifts that define us as individuals. We are called to a life that is abundant and whole.

The Orthodox have a wonderfully annoying way of always talking about God in terms of contradiction. It’s a way of reminding us that our knowledge of God is always incomplete, inadequate, and partial. God is always beyond human language and understanding. Some contradictions are Godly.

It is a Godly contradiction that joining a community is a way of becoming a whole individual. Just as losing our lives is key to having life through Jesus.

And what do we do with that life - monastic or otherwise? What does God call us to do?

The words of Jesus as he washes the disciples feet are still fresh in our ears from Holy Week. “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you are to love one another.” The monastic life is just another way of living our baptized life. The monastery is, in its way, a school of love. As is parish life, as is all Christian life.

Another Godly contradiction - God calls us each by name and in a unique way to do exactly the same thing: Love one another as God loves us.

I said at the outset that I wanted to focus on our encounter with the Gospel in the lives of Randy and Joseph, but I do so with at least a little caution. For if there is one person in this room who would like to be the center of attention even less than me, its Joseph. And if there is one person in this room who would like to be the center of attention even less than Joseph, its Randy. Its would be astoundingly easy to traumatize them both - and therefore it is a great temptation... but I don’t suppose that is a Godly temptation...

Nonetheless, we are not a community of hermits. We are called to love and be loved in a public way. Our light is not meant to be hidden.

It would be much more comfortable if it were the case that we always got everything right and were always good models and examples. But we are human and all the weaknesses, prejudices, ill tempers and misdemeanors that are part of us follow us into the monastery just as all our strengths and gifts do.

Moreover, in a profound way, struggling with our shortcomings is a more helpful example for others than doing well at things that come easily.

As I have grown to know and love both Randy and Joseph over these past several years I have watched them struggle in difficult and inspiring ways. The willingness to struggle is one of the gifts they bring to community.

One lesson stands out in particular - because it is my struggle too. In this school of love we learn to love God, to love our neighbors, to love ourselves, and here comes the problem: to let ourselves be loved.

It seems counter-intuitive. Being loved - letting ourselves be loved - should be the easiest of things. What, after all, could be bad about being loved?

And yet as I have watched these two men and seen my own struggle reflected, I am aware that accepting love is not easy. Loving God is easy. Loving others is easy - at least some of the time. Loving ourselves - well at least I understand the challenge. Letting myself be loved...

To let myself be loved is to let myself be known... For those of us who don’t welcome the attention, that is a problem.

So Randy and Joseph - fellow sheep... you have heard God’s voice and recognized it and now you are ready to follow another step; to move to the graduate program in this school of love.

I hope you will experience it as a warm and loving step further into the embrace of this community and, ultimately, into the embrace of God.

But keep in mind the fact that as much as you are embracing, you are also being embraced. It is nothing less than faithful obedience to God through your vow to accept that embrace, to let yourselves be loved.

Amen.

Randy's Monastic Vow in his own hand

RCL - Easter 4 A - 13 Apr 2008

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Brother James Michael Dowd, n/OHC
RCL - Easter 4 A - Sunday 13 April 2008

Acts 2:42-47
1 Peter 2:19-25
John 10: 1-10


In the name of the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit

A somewhat young - depending, of course, on your definition - and rather idealistic monk, such as the one speaking to you today - cannot help but notice this mornings’ first reading from the Acts of the Apostles. The first Christian communities, St. Luke tells us, devoted themselves to four things: to the apostles’ teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers. Sounds like a few monastic communities I’m familiar with. Seems like an ideal, perhaps even an idealized description, of what the early Christians were all about.

And, it turns out, at least according to several commentaries I have read, this was, in fact, St. Luke’s idealization of what those first Christians were all about. Not that it was all untrue, just that, well, our ideals sometimes have a way of not quite living up to reality. Not unlike a few monastic communities I’m familiar with.

But it is the beginning of verse 43 that has caught my attention and, being too new at this to give up on all my ideals, I’d like to explore with you for just a few minutes, this particular verse. Verse 43 of the second chapter of Acts states that, “Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.”

How did these somewhat clueless disciples of Jesus evolve into men who could produce such wonders and signs? It probably wasn’t until Jesus was raised from the dead that the apostles began to understand some of the very profound things that Jesus had said about himself. It probably wasn’t until after the resurrection that these very ordinary people, people like you and me, began to understand Jesus as the gateway to life. The gateway to an eternal life that was beyond anything they could have imagined up until that point. And so, listening to Jesus describe himself as the Gate, seems especially appropriate for Eastertide.

Originally uploaded by Randy OHC

That concept of Jesus as the gateway - as the gate himself - is really interesting to me. I have always been fascinated by borders of any type: international borders, state boundaries, county lines, even fences around someone’s little plot of land have always made me think. As I am contemplating a particular border, I think about why this particular border was placed exactly in this particular spot. Or I think about why this gate is locked, but that one next to it is not. And on it goes. Borders of all types have fascinated me because I wonder what, if anything, makes the people, or the land, or the culture, different on the other side of any given border.

Many years ago, as I was coming up in the entertainment industry, I had the opportunity, for one day, to work with Buffy Sainte-Marie, the folk singer, artist, and activist. Now, as my brothers could probably guess, I was extremely excited about this job because I love folk music - and Buffy Sainte-Marie is among the best and one of my very favorites. But the most memorable thing about that day was a conversation she and I had about borders. I knew that she was of the Cree Nation and had lived in both Canada and the Unites States as a child, but I could not remember her nationality.

So I asked her if she was Canadian. As soon as the question was formed on my lips I was trying to take it back, but the extrovert in me just kept right on talking. She answered me that she was Cree and that the First Nation and Native American peoples of North America did not recognize the Canadian-U.S. border. Given my longstanding fascination with borders, I had to inquire further. Her response was memorable, if somewhat pointed, when she said: “how would you like it if a foreign government put a gate right through your property which kept you from the people you know and love?”

I have been thinking a lot about that conversation from many years ago in this past week as I have been meditating on our Gospel passage this morning. Borders, gates, are meant to keep people out. Whoever puts up the gate, gets to decide who is let in and who is kept out. There seems to be no other purpose for a gate, that is, until we listen to Jesus describe himself as the Gate. He does not refer to himself at the gatekeeper - no, he describes himself as the Gate itself.
And, at first, I was not connecting to this image. Jesus as an inanimate object just wasn’t ringing true, until I thought about that conversation with Buffy Sainte-Marie. Gates are meant to keep people out, but Jesus the Gate, that might be another story.

Imagine with me for a moment if all the borders, and all the gates, were eliminated from our world. Imagine for just a moment, that the only gate was Jesus the Gate. That entering the Gate, entering Jesus, would, bring us to that heavenly country where, with all [God’s] saints, each of us would enter the everlasting heritage of [God’s] sons and daughters.

We pray for this regularly in our Eucharistic Prayer. But what does it mean to enter Jesus? Well, to me the liturgy itself is entering Jesus. And the way our monastic church is laid out, speaks volumes to me about this concept of entering Jesus. Francis J. Moloney writes about this particular passage and makes the point that the gate of the sheepfold opens in both directions. It allows the sheep to enter the fold when safety is required, and it allows the sheep to enter the pasture to be nourished and fed. And I think our church here illustrates a similar point.

When I look at this church, I see an ambo that holds upon it the Word of God. The Word, of course, is another way that St. John refers to Our Lord. And so when we enter the Word, we enter Jesus. When we cling to God’s Word, when we study it with clarity of mind and purity of heart, when we cherish that holy Word in our very beings, we are safe. There may be trouble, there may be pain, there may be a storm raging outside. But we are safe for we have entered Jesus.

When I look at this church, I also see an altar, which we will all gather around in a few minutes and I see a pasture. We will enter Jesus by feeding on his body and blood. Jesus the Gate will have led us from the safety of his Word, to the nourishment of his very presence in what appears to be bread and wine. When we humbly present ourselves to the Lord, when we approach the altar with all due reverence, when we ask our Lord to satisfy our insatiable appetites with his love, we are fed. There may be hunger, there may be thirst, the land may be ravaged by famine, but we will have found nourishment, for we have entered Jesus.

So, look around this church and see your country. A country with no borders and only Jesus as the Gate of Entry. Look around at your brothers and sisters, and see your fellow citizens. Citizens who, like yourself, are full members of the Body of Christ. In this, our country, we have listened to Jesus call each of us by name as he reveals himself in the Word. In this our country, we will make peace with one another in the pasture, around the altar. In this our country, we live into the liturgy and know that we have come home once again. In this our country, neither race, nor ethnicity, nor gender, nor class, nor sexual orientation, either includes or excludes anyone.
For here, in our country, Jesus prefers to simply call each of us by our own names, claims us as his own, and welcomes us all to his sheepfold and pasture.

So how is it that we have arrived in this our country without papers or passports or port fees? And how is it that we will add to the numbers that are being saved at the Gate named Jesus? Well, we can devote ourselves to the Apostles’ teaching, we can walk with one another in fellowship, we can break bread together, and we can say our prayers. Live this, and just watch the many wonders and signs we will be doing. Live this, and witness to the awe that will come upon each and everyone of us. Live this, and know that we will have life, and have it abundantly.

AMEN.

1. Eucharistic Prayer B, Book of Common Prayer, p. 369
2. Moloney, Francis J., S.D.B. Sacra Pagina, The Gospel of John. The Liturgical Press, 1998,
p. 303-304.

RCL - Easter 3 A - 06 Apr 2008

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Lary Pearce, OHC
RCL - Easter 3 A - Sunday 06 April 2008

Acts 2:14a,36-41
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35

When I was in Santa Barbara last week, I went to the Art Museum and saw a 4,000 years old portrait bust of the Chief Magistrate of a league of Sumerian city states. I believe that this portrait bust reflects the longing of the oldest civilization for a world of justice and peace. The Sumerian civilization was located in what is now southern Iraq where our army is waging war. So much for a world of justice and peace!

Head of Gudea - Sumerian - 21st c. BC - Basalt/diorite/dolerite - Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA

Today’s Gospel recounts the experience of two the disciples as they were leaving Jerusalem to go to Emmaeus. The text gives the name of one of them, Cleopas; the other is not named. We can call him Fred. Cleopas and Fred were ordinary disciples, not part of the inner circle of twelve, or as the text for today says, “eleven. They had witnessed the trial and execution of Jesus and knew that he had died. They were clearly in a gloomy, mournful state of mind. For a while the Prophet Jesus of Nazareth had given them hope the world was about to change for the better and had lifted them out their ordinary, pointless existence. Then Jesus, just at the point of fulfilling their hopes, had been arrested, tried for and convicted of blasphemy and handed over to the secular authority which was the Roman Empire for execution.

The bright new world of justice and freedom which Jesus had promised vanished like an idle dream. Cleopas and Fred had heard vague rumors that Jesus had somehow survived, but they apparently did not believe. It was time to get out of Jerusalem and go back to whatever was left of their ordinary lives. Their age of hope seemed to be over.

So Cleopas and Fred were trudging along the road to Emmaeus when this stranger appeared and asked what they were talking about. As you know, the stranger was the risen and glorified Jesus whom they could not recognize because his risen and glorified form was different from the pre-crucifixion Jesus they had known. The gospel says their eyes were kept from recognizing him. They liked how he explained that Jesus really was the fulfillment of Moses of and the Prophets, and they invited him to dinner when they reached Emmaeus. They went in to eat and Jesus changed from being guest to being host. He took charge. He took the bread, blessed it and broke it. Then their eyes were opened and they received grace to recognize the risen and glorified Jesus. And Jesus vanished from their sight.

The Supper at Emmaus – 1601 – Michelangelo Caravaggio 1571 - 1610 – The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London

The result of their encounter with their resurrected Lord was that their despair was dispelled and they were filled with joy and hope. Their hope for a new world was restored and they returned to Jerusalem to discover that all remarkable things were happening. The apostles were doing all sorts of wonders and signs and the believers had established a commune in which they shared everything in common and had everybody’s goodwill. It sounds like the Haight Asbury neighborhood during the Summer of Love in 1968. I was living in Charlottesville, VA then, and we were still wearing jackets and ties, but we did hear about the Haight Ashbury event and I wished I could be part of it, but I didn’t have the courage to take off my tie and go to San Francisco.

When Cleopas and Fred encountered the risen and glorified Savior and their eyes were opened they were filled with hope and their lives were transformed. They returned to Jerusalem to be part of the transformation of the world that was beginning.

I believe that the risen and glorified Jesus is present to each of us today, but our eyes are closed, and we cannot recognize him except by the grace of God. However, I know that there are times when I catch glimpses of the risen and glorified Jesus in ordinary people. A few days ago I shared a conversation with a lady I first met twenty years ago at Mt. Calvary in Santa Barbara. She has Alzheimer’s disease and could not quite remember me, but she could remember coming up to Mt. Calvary to sew and to polish with Pat Jones, a deceased Companion of the Order. This lady, even though she is old and ill and losing her memory, continues to travel 250 miles to come up to the Monastery which she still associates with her friend Pat Jones. In her faithfulness I catch a glimpse of the risen and glorified Savior.

I often catch the glimpses of the risen Lord who is at the core of being of each of us. Thursday night when I was catching the shuttle bus at LaGuardia airport to go to Grand Central Station, I encountered a ticket taker whose charm and courtesy shone with the glory of Our Risen Lord. I believe that when by God’s grace my eyes are open, I can sometimes see the risen and glorified Jesus, and I see him in quite ordinary people. When my eyes are opened and I can see the goodness of ordinary people, people like Cleopas and Fred. Then I know that the thing to do is to turn away from despair and return to Jerusalem to be part of the transformation of the world. As I trudge my daily road to Emmaeus, sometimes my eyes are opened and I catch glimpses of the risen and glorified Jesus and I am filled with hope.