Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Brother Bernard Delcourt, OHC
BCP – Advent 3 C - Sunday 17 December 2006
Zephaniah 3:14-20
Philippians 4:4-7(8-9)
Luke 3:7-18
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Eternal One.
(adaptation from Ps 19: 14)
*****
Rejoice, rejoice; for the Kingdom of God is at hand! The justice and peace of God, the truth and love of God are within our reach. They are within us. With God’s grace, we can make the choices that bring them about.
That is the light of Advent in the darkness of this oncoming winter. No matter how short the days get and how dark the newscasts become, a shining light pierces through it all; beckoning us to make our way towards an authentic, a righteous, a peaceful and a loving world.
John the Baptizer’s voice rings through the darkness. Repent, change your heart and mind, change your ways and bear “fruits worthy of repentance”. Now this latter statement is quite the agenda. John the Baptist calls us to walk the talk.
Yes, we’ve been saved. We are children of God; now let’s show it!
Let’s not fall asleep on the fact that we were baptized in water and the Holy Spirit. Although we were made “Christ’s own” in baptism, we haven’t been issued a visa to the Kingdom of God with nothing more to be or to do.
Bearing the name of Christian is not enough. To paraphrase John: “God is able from these floorboards to raise Christians!”
Just because we made our most important appointment at baptism, it does not mean that we are invited to sit down in the waiting room of life and relax with a magazine before courteously being led into heaven.
Our baptism was a visible sign of God’s grace in enabling us to start a life of ongoing conversion, of ongoing repentance whenever we backtrack. When we repent, we turn ourselves towards the light. And the light cast our shadow behind us.
Conversion leads us into co-creating the world that God wants us all to live into. That is: “The World According to God’s Love”. As we do that, the time that separates us from the Second Advent whittles away. As more of us incarnate God’s love more often, I believe the Second Advent comes closer.
Not because of our self-will or intrinsic power, but because of the will of God being worked through God’s children, at this very moment, in history, and in the future.
So I invite you and I to recognize the shower of graces that drench our lives like fertile furrows. Deep down, we know God’s love. Deep down, we feel impelled to answer this love in our lives. We can turn from “The World According to our Shadow’s Greed”.
We are loved and we can love God and each other. Yes, it’s here. It’s within us. We can find it when we turn to the light and make our way in its direction. And that’s an invitation that even John the Baptist had a hard time discerning.
He saw repentance as a way to escape a wrathful God’s vengeance at the end of times. John eventually had to have messengers ask Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Luke, chapter 7)
God’s love for all of creation, in Jesus, is revealed to be radical beyond words.
So let’s keep turning our hearts and minds towards the light and bear fruit worthy of repentance, worthy of our conversion.
The writer of the Gospel, the Gentile physician known as Luke suggests some medicine for this turnaround as he reports John’s preaching:
- Share what you have,
- Be fair and honest with everyone,
- Don’t abuse power.
Just in case you think you are doing all of this already; and in case you think this is addressed to whomever happens to be more wealthy and more powerful than you deem yourself to be; think again.
If we should think that way, let’s remind ourselves of the rich young man who asked Jesus “teacher what else must I do to inherit the Kingdom of God?” We often think we have done enough already.
On a global scale, all of us here are wealthy and powerful. Our everyday decisions and choices (conscious or less so), our decisions as citizens of the wealthy and powerful nations of the world all bear on the Global community.
Of the 6 Billion humans currently alive, 3 Billion live on less that $2 a day. That comes down to less than $800 a year. Of those, 1 Billion people live on less than $1 a day.
In the meantime, we uphold a global society where the wealthiest and the poorest are growing further apart from each other in the life they experience.
“Earth provides enough to satisfy everyone's need,” said Mahatma Ghandi, “but not everyone's greed.” How do we participate of this greed and injustice?
Would love mandate that we find out what we can do to change such a situation? God loves the three poorest billion humans; just as much as the others. How can we emulate that love? How can we be the instruments of God’s love in the world?
I know; we’ll need to chew on that one… And let’s remember to pray about it. Eventually, we’ll know what things we can and must do. Let us bear the fruits worthy of conversion.
The distractions and hurriedness of our lives can separate us from our true vocation and the wisdom that cradles deep within us. While shopping Christmas away and indulging in all our favorite foods, it’s easy to loose the focus of the incredible good news: God is coming to tarry amongst us.
In amazing love for the creation, God will judge all of us. He will hold the mirror of our judgment to ourselves and we will have to face whatever truth we see.
That - in itself - could be sufficiently hellish to many. When the already-present Kingdom will be made universally and unavoidably tangible, all of the world will heal its past wounds.
As the prophet Zephaniah told us this morning: “God is in our midst… The Most High will rejoice over us with gladness, he will renew us in his love. The Eternal will exult over us with loud singing as on a day of festival.”
I can’t wait to hear God sing, to hear Jesus laugh! It sounds like Christmas, wouldn’t you know it.
*****
Come Lord Jesus, come. Amen.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
BCP - Advent 2 C - 10 Dec 2006
Holy Cross Monastery,
West Park, NY
Robert Magliula, p/OHC
BCP – Advent 2 C - Sunday 03 December 2006
Baruch 5:1-9
Philippians 1:1-11
Luke 3:1-6
There is one kind of person society cannot figure out---and certainly cannot control. And that is an ascetic. Think about it. The wheel of culture is turned by business, education, family, government, and organized religion. These hold little or no interest for the ascetic. In all these areas that make up society, the ascetic is like a fish out of water.
He or she is not on a salary, and doesn’t need one. An ascetic is not much interested in marketing things or selling services for a profit or crunching numbers to reach a bottom line. Ascetics don’t care about living in a upscale community, driving a fancy car, or building a 401K account.
An ascetic might be educated, but generally could care less about being validated by an institution of higher learning. An ascetic has little need to be degreed. And when capital campaigns are launched by these educational institutions, ascetics aren’t among the hot prospects. An ascetic is not likely to be a cornerstone member of organized religion either. Not many have been interested throughout history in climbing an ecclesiastical ladder---Or supporting the ladder once they have climbed it.
Things like maintaining buildings and making budgets don’t appeal to them. They have little desire to win friends and influence people, so they are not apt to be in politics. They are not good at raising money. They could care less about taking polls, or making decisions around what they say. They don’t pay taxes because they have no money, and they are not big flag-wavers. Other matters claim their interest.
The gospel of Jesus begins with John the Baptist, and John was an ascetic. He wasn’t on a salary. He didn’t live in a comfortable house. He wasn’t a member of a family of four. He had no 401K plan or educational degrees. He did not belong to the temple religion. In fact he had some harsh things to say about it and its leaders. John was as apolitical as you can get. He drew crowds but had no capacity to tell people what they wanted to hear. Finally, his detachment from political concern led him to confront King Herod about his sex life---a decision which cost John his head.
How strange of God to begin the way of Christianity with this untamed and uncivilized man. How peculiar to begin our preparations for this coming season---this time in which commerce and education and politics and religion all cozy up together---with a focus on an ascetic from the Judean wilderness.
And yet, why not begin the cycle of preparation- incarnation-manifestation with John, whose only concern in life was to give voice to what God told him to say. To announce to the people what God was doing in the world, and to wake up the people and call them to respond to what God was doing.
Because John had cleared a wide pathway for God in his own life, the people could recognize the voice of God behind John’s own voice. He offered them the opportunity to get clean with God through his baptism of repentance. Through it, they would be prepared to receive the one more powerful than John.
Ascetics can’t be bought off, so they constitute living reminders that idolatry is not the way. They remind us that the world of commerce and government and education and family and religion---all the things that have such impact on our lives---are not ends in themselves. They exist to serve us; we are not to serve them. That place belongs only to God. John by his words and life make it clear that no human being or institution can take the place of God.
During Advent we are invited to let go, to open up---not to forsake the things we love and want for our lives, but to forsake them as idols. That means learning to hold them lightly, and to be willing to give them up when it becomes clear that they are taking up too much room. John stands before us, bold and loud, demanding that we check our spiritual compass. His witness and prodding certainly challenge me in this new chapter of my spiritual journey.
As my brothers can attest, in the last six months, I've cleared out a lot of stuff, physically ---by moving from two houses to one small cell and emotionally---by letting go of a life I've loved and all that entails---yet John prompts me to keep asking myself---"What is taking up too much room in me?" "What might new life look like for me, if I allow it to take root and flourish?" What might new life look like for you? What is taking up too much room in you?
If we're heading in the wrong direction, now is the time to turn around and change direction. John assures us that it is not too late to change so that we will not miss the new life that God is promising to birth in us. If we want God to come humanly, simply, into our lives, then we need to get ready. We need to prepare, to repent, to change.
John speaks uncomfortable words to us as we approach a season when we yearn to be comfortable. But only by following his example---by clearing a pathway out of the many things that dominate us—can we begin to prepare our hearts to receive the One who is to come.
+Amen.
West Park, NY
Robert Magliula, p/OHC
BCP – Advent 2 C - Sunday 03 December 2006
Baruch 5:1-9
Philippians 1:1-11
Luke 3:1-6
There is one kind of person society cannot figure out---and certainly cannot control. And that is an ascetic. Think about it. The wheel of culture is turned by business, education, family, government, and organized religion. These hold little or no interest for the ascetic. In all these areas that make up society, the ascetic is like a fish out of water.
He or she is not on a salary, and doesn’t need one. An ascetic is not much interested in marketing things or selling services for a profit or crunching numbers to reach a bottom line. Ascetics don’t care about living in a upscale community, driving a fancy car, or building a 401K account.
An ascetic might be educated, but generally could care less about being validated by an institution of higher learning. An ascetic has little need to be degreed. And when capital campaigns are launched by these educational institutions, ascetics aren’t among the hot prospects. An ascetic is not likely to be a cornerstone member of organized religion either. Not many have been interested throughout history in climbing an ecclesiastical ladder---Or supporting the ladder once they have climbed it.
Things like maintaining buildings and making budgets don’t appeal to them. They have little desire to win friends and influence people, so they are not apt to be in politics. They are not good at raising money. They could care less about taking polls, or making decisions around what they say. They don’t pay taxes because they have no money, and they are not big flag-wavers. Other matters claim their interest.
The gospel of Jesus begins with John the Baptist, and John was an ascetic. He wasn’t on a salary. He didn’t live in a comfortable house. He wasn’t a member of a family of four. He had no 401K plan or educational degrees. He did not belong to the temple religion. In fact he had some harsh things to say about it and its leaders. John was as apolitical as you can get. He drew crowds but had no capacity to tell people what they wanted to hear. Finally, his detachment from political concern led him to confront King Herod about his sex life---a decision which cost John his head.
How strange of God to begin the way of Christianity with this untamed and uncivilized man. How peculiar to begin our preparations for this coming season---this time in which commerce and education and politics and religion all cozy up together---with a focus on an ascetic from the Judean wilderness.
And yet, why not begin the cycle of preparation- incarnation-manifestation with John, whose only concern in life was to give voice to what God told him to say. To announce to the people what God was doing in the world, and to wake up the people and call them to respond to what God was doing.
Because John had cleared a wide pathway for God in his own life, the people could recognize the voice of God behind John’s own voice. He offered them the opportunity to get clean with God through his baptism of repentance. Through it, they would be prepared to receive the one more powerful than John.
Ascetics can’t be bought off, so they constitute living reminders that idolatry is not the way. They remind us that the world of commerce and government and education and family and religion---all the things that have such impact on our lives---are not ends in themselves. They exist to serve us; we are not to serve them. That place belongs only to God. John by his words and life make it clear that no human being or institution can take the place of God.
During Advent we are invited to let go, to open up---not to forsake the things we love and want for our lives, but to forsake them as idols. That means learning to hold them lightly, and to be willing to give them up when it becomes clear that they are taking up too much room. John stands before us, bold and loud, demanding that we check our spiritual compass. His witness and prodding certainly challenge me in this new chapter of my spiritual journey.
As my brothers can attest, in the last six months, I've cleared out a lot of stuff, physically ---by moving from two houses to one small cell and emotionally---by letting go of a life I've loved and all that entails---yet John prompts me to keep asking myself---"What is taking up too much room in me?" "What might new life look like for me, if I allow it to take root and flourish?" What might new life look like for you? What is taking up too much room in you?
If we're heading in the wrong direction, now is the time to turn around and change direction. John assures us that it is not too late to change so that we will not miss the new life that God is promising to birth in us. If we want God to come humanly, simply, into our lives, then we need to get ready. We need to prepare, to repent, to change.
John speaks uncomfortable words to us as we approach a season when we yearn to be comfortable. But only by following his example---by clearing a pathway out of the many things that dominate us—can we begin to prepare our hearts to receive the One who is to come.
+Amen.
BCP - Advent 1 C - 03 Dec 2006
Holy Cross Monastery,
West Park, NY
Brother Joseph Brown, n/OHC
BCP – Advent 1 C - Sunday 03 December 2006
Jeremiah 33: 14-16
1 Thessalonians 3: 9-13
Luke 21: 25-36
I was perusing the Internet for some insight into today’s readings and discovered that there are 1,753,566 hits for “Day of Judgment”. And since this is the start of the Holiday shopping season, I thought I would let you know that the Apocalypse is available at Wal-Mart for $19.95.
Today we mark the beginning of the liturgical year with the season of Advent-meaning "arrival."
This is a good time, then, to take stock of one's challenges and accomplishments, as well as how one has responded to the life of faith during the past year. It is a time to reflect on how one's faith was lived. Where did I fall short and what can I do about it? These are particularly challenging questions in light of the many events occurring in the world.
The apocalyptic language of today's readings seems to take on a heightened sense of prophecy given the frightening uncertainty stirred up by recent events. Terrorism, war, corporate corruption, the abandonment of peace as an option, and, for many, events of a more personal nature lead to the feeling that life today is neither safe nor secure. Yet, no matter where one finds oneself, one thing is certain: our hope is in the coming of the Word Made Flesh, Jesus the Christ. The readings for today speak of a future when, in the words of Luke, "you know that the kingdom of God is near." Here is /good news/ in a time of despondency.
Our first reading today is from the book of the prophet Zechariah. He was speaking to the people of Israel who had recently returned to their land. Zachariah believed that Israel stood at the eve of the messianic age and he encouraged the completion of the temple in preparation for the arrival of the Messiah. Zechariah delivered a message of hope to a group of dispirited people who felt they were about to face more difficult times. It is at bleak times like these that hope-filled prophesies of salvation are proclaimed by God's messengers. And so it was with Zechariah.
In his Gospel, Luke writes of a time when nations are perplexed at the signs in nature. When men faint "with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken." The reading ends with the sprouting of the fig leaf as a sign of an upcoming summer-the season of growth and life and is in stark contrast to the dead of winter. In those times when life leaves us feeling hopeless, there can spring forth, like a fig leaf at the end of winter, new life.
In my own life, I experience times that are so devastating that it feels as if the sun and the moon, the very things we count on to be constant from day to day, and year to year begin to crumble and become dark. Fear and distress become my constant companions. I am tossed about by the waves of emotion. I feel as if all the powers of heaven were shaken, and that life has become so hopeless that only direct intervention from God could save it. The most devastating blow is that all I could “do” during these times was to trust in the faithfulness of God. But God, being God, would act in God’s time and in God’s place. All I could do was wait for the advent. Despair and hope go hand in hand, as do death and resurrection. Luke's gospel is one that includes the full despair of reality and the unflinching hope of faith. To quote John Colone “Faith is not a vaccine that prevents the disease of despair. Faith is the seed of new life, from which hope can grow out of a winter of anguish and desolation.”
Destruction-redemption, death-resurrection. Over time, I have learned to see the signs of an impending judgment day more clearly. When I am rocked by emotions, when I see the familiar supports no longer are working, when the rigidity of old ritual becomes brittle and is no longer capable of holding me up, I know (most of the time only in hindsight) that /_a_/ day of judgment is coming. I know my redemption is near. And I know that it will happen again and again and again.
But probably not in the way I expect. Israel was awaiting the warrior king, who would ascend to the throne of David and conquer the nations. He would be great in deeds of battle, ruling the nations with a rod of iron. The psalms we chant everyday are full of references to this great and terrible messiah who’s strength would break bars of iron and crush doors of bronze. Peoples would do him honor and service, and on the great day of his reign, blood would flow to avenge the righteous and destroy the wicked. This was what they expected and what they waited for it. They waited through the time of destruction. They waited through a second kingdom, and through exile to Babylon. And they waited. And God did act.
But the great warrior king was born in a cave amid animals, straw and filth. His kingdom was a backwaters patch of land called the Galilee. His mighty army was a band of uneducated, stubborn and uncouth day-laborers and tax-collectors. The people of his kingdom were the crippled, the blind, the hopeless and taboo. The only rod of iron he knew was the one used to strike him, the only bronze doors, those of Pilate’s palace when they closed behind him as he was led out to die. And somehow, in the bloody murder of a young man in Jerusalem, all was made right. God’s judgment came, but not is way that anyone would have expected. It came as vulnerability and compassion, perfect mercy and justice. Could God have acted more contrary to their expectation, to *_my_* expectation?
God’s intervention in my own life is never what I expect. My handbook of appropriate actions is too small. I can not see how the loss, grief and pain of a moment or of a season could be the in-breaking of God’s dominion. I feel only the darkness. But my faith, that sometimes tiny cinder of light, is there, waiting for the breathe of God to give it life. And all of this not for my own personal happiness, my own personal comfort, but to bring me to that most terrifying Kingdom of God’s love in my own heart.
A love that appreciates beauty, but does not have to own it. A love that cares more for the health and well-being of the other than the cost in time or effort. A kingdom love that showers the broken, the blind and even my enemies with a mercy that has no need of revenge or an evening up of accounts. A kingdom love that really believes that God’s love is so total and so expansive that there is enough for you and for me. A kingdom love that flows like living waters to the east and to the west, over all the earth. That knows no summer of uncontrolled passions or a winter of cold indifference. And on that day the Lord will be One, and we will be one with God.
This I believe is the message of the advent of God. This is God's call to us this Advent season. To hope against the darkness. To see in the chaos of the world and in the darkness of our own souls, that God is present and active. Dawn follows the night, summer follows winter and the smallest and dimmest of sparks can set the world ablaze.
In the name of Jesus Christ, who was and is and is yet to be. Amen.
West Park, NY
Brother Joseph Brown, n/OHC
BCP – Advent 1 C - Sunday 03 December 2006
Jeremiah 33: 14-16
1 Thessalonians 3: 9-13
Luke 21: 25-36
I was perusing the Internet for some insight into today’s readings and discovered that there are 1,753,566 hits for “Day of Judgment”. And since this is the start of the Holiday shopping season, I thought I would let you know that the Apocalypse is available at Wal-Mart for $19.95.
Today we mark the beginning of the liturgical year with the season of Advent-meaning "arrival."
This is a good time, then, to take stock of one's challenges and accomplishments, as well as how one has responded to the life of faith during the past year. It is a time to reflect on how one's faith was lived. Where did I fall short and what can I do about it? These are particularly challenging questions in light of the many events occurring in the world.
The apocalyptic language of today's readings seems to take on a heightened sense of prophecy given the frightening uncertainty stirred up by recent events. Terrorism, war, corporate corruption, the abandonment of peace as an option, and, for many, events of a more personal nature lead to the feeling that life today is neither safe nor secure. Yet, no matter where one finds oneself, one thing is certain: our hope is in the coming of the Word Made Flesh, Jesus the Christ. The readings for today speak of a future when, in the words of Luke, "you know that the kingdom of God is near." Here is /good news/ in a time of despondency.
Our first reading today is from the book of the prophet Zechariah. He was speaking to the people of Israel who had recently returned to their land. Zachariah believed that Israel stood at the eve of the messianic age and he encouraged the completion of the temple in preparation for the arrival of the Messiah. Zechariah delivered a message of hope to a group of dispirited people who felt they were about to face more difficult times. It is at bleak times like these that hope-filled prophesies of salvation are proclaimed by God's messengers. And so it was with Zechariah.
In his Gospel, Luke writes of a time when nations are perplexed at the signs in nature. When men faint "with fear and with foreboding of what is coming on the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken." The reading ends with the sprouting of the fig leaf as a sign of an upcoming summer-the season of growth and life and is in stark contrast to the dead of winter. In those times when life leaves us feeling hopeless, there can spring forth, like a fig leaf at the end of winter, new life.
In my own life, I experience times that are so devastating that it feels as if the sun and the moon, the very things we count on to be constant from day to day, and year to year begin to crumble and become dark. Fear and distress become my constant companions. I am tossed about by the waves of emotion. I feel as if all the powers of heaven were shaken, and that life has become so hopeless that only direct intervention from God could save it. The most devastating blow is that all I could “do” during these times was to trust in the faithfulness of God. But God, being God, would act in God’s time and in God’s place. All I could do was wait for the advent. Despair and hope go hand in hand, as do death and resurrection. Luke's gospel is one that includes the full despair of reality and the unflinching hope of faith. To quote John Colone “Faith is not a vaccine that prevents the disease of despair. Faith is the seed of new life, from which hope can grow out of a winter of anguish and desolation.”
Destruction-redemption, death-resurrection. Over time, I have learned to see the signs of an impending judgment day more clearly. When I am rocked by emotions, when I see the familiar supports no longer are working, when the rigidity of old ritual becomes brittle and is no longer capable of holding me up, I know (most of the time only in hindsight) that /_a_/ day of judgment is coming. I know my redemption is near. And I know that it will happen again and again and again.
But probably not in the way I expect. Israel was awaiting the warrior king, who would ascend to the throne of David and conquer the nations. He would be great in deeds of battle, ruling the nations with a rod of iron. The psalms we chant everyday are full of references to this great and terrible messiah who’s strength would break bars of iron and crush doors of bronze. Peoples would do him honor and service, and on the great day of his reign, blood would flow to avenge the righteous and destroy the wicked. This was what they expected and what they waited for it. They waited through the time of destruction. They waited through a second kingdom, and through exile to Babylon. And they waited. And God did act.
But the great warrior king was born in a cave amid animals, straw and filth. His kingdom was a backwaters patch of land called the Galilee. His mighty army was a band of uneducated, stubborn and uncouth day-laborers and tax-collectors. The people of his kingdom were the crippled, the blind, the hopeless and taboo. The only rod of iron he knew was the one used to strike him, the only bronze doors, those of Pilate’s palace when they closed behind him as he was led out to die. And somehow, in the bloody murder of a young man in Jerusalem, all was made right. God’s judgment came, but not is way that anyone would have expected. It came as vulnerability and compassion, perfect mercy and justice. Could God have acted more contrary to their expectation, to *_my_* expectation?
God’s intervention in my own life is never what I expect. My handbook of appropriate actions is too small. I can not see how the loss, grief and pain of a moment or of a season could be the in-breaking of God’s dominion. I feel only the darkness. But my faith, that sometimes tiny cinder of light, is there, waiting for the breathe of God to give it life. And all of this not for my own personal happiness, my own personal comfort, but to bring me to that most terrifying Kingdom of God’s love in my own heart.
A love that appreciates beauty, but does not have to own it. A love that cares more for the health and well-being of the other than the cost in time or effort. A kingdom love that showers the broken, the blind and even my enemies with a mercy that has no need of revenge or an evening up of accounts. A kingdom love that really believes that God’s love is so total and so expansive that there is enough for you and for me. A kingdom love that flows like living waters to the east and to the west, over all the earth. That knows no summer of uncontrolled passions or a winter of cold indifference. And on that day the Lord will be One, and we will be one with God.
This I believe is the message of the advent of God. This is God's call to us this Advent season. To hope against the darkness. To see in the chaos of the world and in the darkness of our own souls, that God is present and active. Dawn follows the night, summer follows winter and the smallest and dimmest of sparks can set the world ablaze.
In the name of Jesus Christ, who was and is and is yet to be. Amen.
Monday, December 11, 2006
RCL – Advent 1 C - 03 Dec 2006
Christ Episcopal Church, King and Queen Parish, Chaptico, MD
Sermon by Brother Joseph Brown, n/OHC
RCL – Advent 1 C - Sunday 03 December 2006
Jeremiah 33: 14-16
Psalm 25: 1-9
1 Thessalonians 3: 9-13
Luke 21: 25-36
*****
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Eternal One.
(adaptation from Ps 19: 14)
*****
Let us pray:
Christ was born. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
Amen.
I added the first term to this well known memorial prayer. The liturgical period of Advent (which we start today) focuses on the beginning and on the end of this short memorial prayer; Christ was born, on the one hand, and Christ will come again, on the other.
The birth of Jesus is what we celebrate at Christmas. Yes, yes, despite all the hoopla around us; that still is what Christmas is about! The future return of Jesus is a hope we hold as Christians for all of humanity. It is often referred to as the Parousia, or the Second Coming. And both of these occurences, the birth of Christ and the Parousia, are transformative events.
Through the incarnation of God, we were made whole; we were healed; we were saved. The incarnation made us children of God by adoption.
Through the Parousia, we hope to further be redeemed. Let me tell you more about these two words I just used here: “Parousia” and “to be redeemed” or “Redemption”.
Parousia comes from the Greek language. In the antiquity, it referred to the appearance of a king or a queen and to their subsequent presence with the people on an official visit. So the hope of Parousia is for Jesus and all of humanity to be together again, in a very tangible way. Christ the King will visit and tarry with his people.
And in this being together again, we hope to receive our redemption from God. The words used in the original gospel for “redemption” are the ones that were used to indicate the change in status of a slave made into a free person.
We have to remember how much of a transformation this was at the time of the gospel being written. Slaves were seen as belongings rather than persons. In many ways, they were considered like cattle. In redeeming a slave, a person buying the slave’s freedom was turning the slave into a person, a free person.
So, despite all the awe-inspiring signs (dare I say, the distracting signs?), the important message in today’s apocalyptic passage is that God is coming back to dwell with us, with all of us.
And this novel reality will transform us beyond what we know and understand now; we will be redeemed into something new. It will be so new that it will feel like the end of the reality we know now.
What is promised in this Gospel is nothing less than an end to our current nature and a profound transformation.
Call that an end of the world if you want to, but don’t ask me what, when or how, I don’t know… Jesus himself cautions us that no one knows the time but our heavenly Father. All I can do about knowing the Parousia is marvel at how incredibly marvelous it will be!
So Advent opens our liturgical year with a period of four weeks of preparation for the celebration of the Incarnation; God once already came to live among us; as one of us.
But beyond Christmas, Advent aims at reminding us that our whole lives are a preparation for the return of Jesus amongst us.
The gospel text of today tries to convey this message in apocalyptic style. Remember that apocalypse means “unveiling, revelation of a truth”. The apocalyptic literary genre, used in many books throughout the bible, makes use of tremendous and frightening images to convey its message.
Often this language is used to help the current underdog. It depicts the come-uppance of the wicked at the hand of an unsurpassable power. That is a rhetorical temptation that many bible scribes were unable to resist in order to boost morale amongst the marginal, exploited and hurt audience they were writing for.
Our passage from the Gospel according to Luke is no different and it probably rang a tone of truth to Luke’s contemporaries while taking a jibe at roman power. Many of Jesus’ followers had experienced worldview-crushing events. Many of them still saw themselves as belonging to the Jewish tradition. And while hoping for Jesus’ return in their lifetime, they had witnessed the crushing defeat of a Jewish rebellion against the Roman empire, the dissemination of the Jews away from Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem. The world in many ways may have felt like it was ending for them. They needed to hear that, in the midst of all this havoc, there was still hope.
And that’s what the apocalyptic genre delivers. It describes a world in the throes of terrible happenings while telling of an ultimately hopeful resolution. An apocalypse is the unveiling of a thrilling truth: a truth that leaves you quivering with excitement and anticipation.
Now excitement is something all of our media try to boost in us around what is called “the Holidays Season” but not in a hopeful sense. Christmas and the Parousia are events that have been highly stylized by our popular culture. It has become difficult for us Christians to disentangle ourselves from the media soundtrack on these two events. The Christmas soundtrack runs something like this; good, warm, happy, ho-ho-ho! The Second Coming soundtrack is more like that; awe-inspiring, bone-crushing and dangerous.
Now there is plenty in scripture to support such visions on Christmas and Parousia. In a couple of weeks or so, our lectionary will start to have the tone of a celebration in commemoration of Jesus’ birth.
For a couple of weeks now, we have had readings that refer to the Parousia or to the Second Coming. A casual listening to these readings can yield an alarmist and catastrophic sensation. And taken literally, parts of these readings may work on that level. But now you know to look deeper than just the signs, no matter how ominous they may be.
Jesus exhorts us in today’s Gospel to be watchful, to be vigilant in order to be ready for the transformation of Parousia. We are not told to rest on our laurels of self-righteous Christians. Yes we are saved; we are made whole by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
And yet, that does not exempt us from the work of co-creating the Kingdom of God, here and now. God is here, God is with us. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus keeps telling us so throughout his ministry.
The hope of Parousia is that God’s presence will become universally evident and inescapable. That’s very good news indeed.
And as Saint Paul prayed for the Thessalonians, let us pray for ourselves and for the world:
“…may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.”
Amen.
*****
Come Lord Jesus, come. Amen.
Sermon by Brother Joseph Brown, n/OHC
RCL – Advent 1 C - Sunday 03 December 2006
Jeremiah 33: 14-16
Psalm 25: 1-9
1 Thessalonians 3: 9-13
Luke 21: 25-36
*****
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Eternal One.
(adaptation from Ps 19: 14)
*****
Let us pray:
Christ was born. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.
Amen.
I added the first term to this well known memorial prayer. The liturgical period of Advent (which we start today) focuses on the beginning and on the end of this short memorial prayer; Christ was born, on the one hand, and Christ will come again, on the other.
The birth of Jesus is what we celebrate at Christmas. Yes, yes, despite all the hoopla around us; that still is what Christmas is about! The future return of Jesus is a hope we hold as Christians for all of humanity. It is often referred to as the Parousia, or the Second Coming. And both of these occurences, the birth of Christ and the Parousia, are transformative events.
Through the incarnation of God, we were made whole; we were healed; we were saved. The incarnation made us children of God by adoption.
Through the Parousia, we hope to further be redeemed. Let me tell you more about these two words I just used here: “Parousia” and “to be redeemed” or “Redemption”.
Parousia comes from the Greek language. In the antiquity, it referred to the appearance of a king or a queen and to their subsequent presence with the people on an official visit. So the hope of Parousia is for Jesus and all of humanity to be together again, in a very tangible way. Christ the King will visit and tarry with his people.
And in this being together again, we hope to receive our redemption from God. The words used in the original gospel for “redemption” are the ones that were used to indicate the change in status of a slave made into a free person.
We have to remember how much of a transformation this was at the time of the gospel being written. Slaves were seen as belongings rather than persons. In many ways, they were considered like cattle. In redeeming a slave, a person buying the slave’s freedom was turning the slave into a person, a free person.
So, despite all the awe-inspiring signs (dare I say, the distracting signs?), the important message in today’s apocalyptic passage is that God is coming back to dwell with us, with all of us.
And this novel reality will transform us beyond what we know and understand now; we will be redeemed into something new. It will be so new that it will feel like the end of the reality we know now.
What is promised in this Gospel is nothing less than an end to our current nature and a profound transformation.
Call that an end of the world if you want to, but don’t ask me what, when or how, I don’t know… Jesus himself cautions us that no one knows the time but our heavenly Father. All I can do about knowing the Parousia is marvel at how incredibly marvelous it will be!
So Advent opens our liturgical year with a period of four weeks of preparation for the celebration of the Incarnation; God once already came to live among us; as one of us.
But beyond Christmas, Advent aims at reminding us that our whole lives are a preparation for the return of Jesus amongst us.
The gospel text of today tries to convey this message in apocalyptic style. Remember that apocalypse means “unveiling, revelation of a truth”. The apocalyptic literary genre, used in many books throughout the bible, makes use of tremendous and frightening images to convey its message.
Often this language is used to help the current underdog. It depicts the come-uppance of the wicked at the hand of an unsurpassable power. That is a rhetorical temptation that many bible scribes were unable to resist in order to boost morale amongst the marginal, exploited and hurt audience they were writing for.
Our passage from the Gospel according to Luke is no different and it probably rang a tone of truth to Luke’s contemporaries while taking a jibe at roman power. Many of Jesus’ followers had experienced worldview-crushing events. Many of them still saw themselves as belonging to the Jewish tradition. And while hoping for Jesus’ return in their lifetime, they had witnessed the crushing defeat of a Jewish rebellion against the Roman empire, the dissemination of the Jews away from Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem. The world in many ways may have felt like it was ending for them. They needed to hear that, in the midst of all this havoc, there was still hope.
And that’s what the apocalyptic genre delivers. It describes a world in the throes of terrible happenings while telling of an ultimately hopeful resolution. An apocalypse is the unveiling of a thrilling truth: a truth that leaves you quivering with excitement and anticipation.
Now excitement is something all of our media try to boost in us around what is called “the Holidays Season” but not in a hopeful sense. Christmas and the Parousia are events that have been highly stylized by our popular culture. It has become difficult for us Christians to disentangle ourselves from the media soundtrack on these two events. The Christmas soundtrack runs something like this; good, warm, happy, ho-ho-ho! The Second Coming soundtrack is more like that; awe-inspiring, bone-crushing and dangerous.
Now there is plenty in scripture to support such visions on Christmas and Parousia. In a couple of weeks or so, our lectionary will start to have the tone of a celebration in commemoration of Jesus’ birth.
For a couple of weeks now, we have had readings that refer to the Parousia or to the Second Coming. A casual listening to these readings can yield an alarmist and catastrophic sensation. And taken literally, parts of these readings may work on that level. But now you know to look deeper than just the signs, no matter how ominous they may be.
Jesus exhorts us in today’s Gospel to be watchful, to be vigilant in order to be ready for the transformation of Parousia. We are not told to rest on our laurels of self-righteous Christians. Yes we are saved; we are made whole by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
And yet, that does not exempt us from the work of co-creating the Kingdom of God, here and now. God is here, God is with us. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus keeps telling us so throughout his ministry.
The hope of Parousia is that God’s presence will become universally evident and inescapable. That’s very good news indeed.
And as Saint Paul prayed for the Thessalonians, let us pray for ourselves and for the world:
“…may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.”
Amen.
*****
Come Lord Jesus, come. Amen.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
BCP - Proper 29 B - 26 Nov 2006 - Christ the King
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Brother Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
BCP – Proper 29 B - Sunday 26 November 2006
Christ the King
Daniel 7:9-14
Revelation 1:1-8
John 18:33-37
I bid you a joyful feast of Christ the King... though to be honest, I have never been too keen on this feast. Christ as King is not the image of Jesus I relate to.
That’s where I start. I also want to confess that I thought perhaps I’d coast a bit this Sunday. I thought maybe I could just “borrow” a bit from someone who is more comfortable with the feast... So I Googled up some examples of how other people approach this day...
One reflection caught my eye. The writer, I’ll call him “the other guy”, noted that while Americans may place a very high value on democracy, God does not. God has no need of democracy. Christ is King... period... end of story.
The other guy goes on that in God’s kingdom - the place where Christ the King is king - we will need to know everything about obedience and nothing about thinking. Moreover, the other guy concludes that the time to start getting ready for the kingdom is now... stop thinking and start obeying!
I can’t say that the other guy’s reflection really opens up this particular feast for me... But it does help me focus my discomfort.
And as I look at Jesus interaction with Pilate reported in this morning’s Gospel, I can’t help but think Jesus is also a bit uncomfortable with the assumptions we make about kingship and power.
“So you are king?” Pilate asks. “You say that I am king” Jesus answers. I hear Jesus saying: “That’s your language... That’s your projection...”
Jesus has already told us his Kingdom is not from this world - not an earthly kingdom. The rules of our world don’t apply. All our wonderful metaphors based on crowns and diadems, thrones, orbs, and scepters, all our glorious pomp and circumstance are not going to tell us much about the Kingdom of where Christ is King.
And yet we try to understand by amplifying our world. Jesus, and by extension God, is the most extreme... We might have powerful leaders here on earth - but Christ the King is mighty in the extreme. We might have loving parents here on earth, but God is the most extremely loving father. We might have great riches here on earth, but heaven is extremely rich, rich beyond imagining - its very streets are paved with gold. But why do we think heaven’s streets need to be paved at all? Or that gold makes better pavement than concrete or asphalt. Or that heaven even has anything that resembles streets?
Sigmund Freud said “God is the human father, writ large, and projected against the sky.” Of course Dr. Freud is not telling us anything about God, but he is telling us a great deal about the way we think about God. We take our human ideals, blow them out of proportion and look to find them in the heavens.
This is where my discomfort with the Feast of Christ the King has its toes. This Sunday, at its worst, gives us permission to project away. Whatever we know or imagine about earthly kings, we can blow it up really big and project it against the sky. When God starts to resemble a very big, very powerful version of us, we are in trouble.
Curiously - I don’t think this is a problem. Not for me, not for you, not even for the other guy who wants Christ the King to be the most absolute dictator that could ever possibly be.
Its not a problem if I’m self aware enough to understand that I (and everyone) always have and always will project my stuff on God. It is a problem when I kid myself into believing that I don’t project my stuff on God - or that someone else has a vision of God free of their own projections.
As long as I can hold in mind that my image of God always contains a substantial dose of my own projection, that image can help me grow in knowledge of God and self. But I have to be ready to encounter my own projections and face them.
All this projection on God is also not a problem in that God is truly not affected by my projections, or, for that matter, by the other guy’s projections. God is God. There is a Buddhist saying that it doesn’t matter what we think about Nirvana, because Nirvana will be what Nirvana is. Likewise, God will be what God is - whether I choose to think about Christ the most glorious kingly figure, or the most meekly suffering servant.
Its not that what I think doesn’t matter - it matters a great deal in how I live my life. But God will be what God is, regardless of my thoughts. That gives me cause to be very humble, and, as the other guy demands, obedient.
I think the other guy is on to something when he says that in the kingdom where Christ is King, democracy has no place. But I think he needs to go further. In the kingdom where Christ is King, earthly monarchs are also out of place.
The other guy is right that obedience will be of great importance in the kingdom where Christ is King, but I think he is stuck with an earthly notion of obedience as the mindless carrying out of orders with relentless precision. Jesus leads the way in terms of obedience, and it is not mindless, not thoughtless.
Where I agree fully with the other guy is in the idea that now is when we start getting ready for the kingdom where Christ is King. We start by looking to the life of Jesus.
Based on the way Jesus lived his life on this earth, we can be certain that economic injustice, for example, has no place in the kingdom. Getting ready for the kingdom where Christ is King means coming to terms with our tolerance of economic injustice - our society celebrates the extremely rich while paying little mind to the extremely poor.
Based on the way Jesus lived his life on this earth, we can know that in the kingdom where Christ is King the homeless mentally ill will be of greater importance than Sam Walton, or Bill Gates, or you, or me... Can we honestly defend our present way of serving our homeless, or mentally ill, or other vulnerable brothers and sisters.
In the kingdom where Christ is King swords are beaten into plow shares and justice flows like a mighty river watering all the earth. What are we doing with our swords? And isn’t our river of justice leaving a few spots high and dry?
In the kingdom where Christ is King the meek inherit everything, the sorrowful are comforted, those who’s spirits are broken are made whole, those who hunger for justice are satisfied, and those who make peace are closest to the King. The Gospels never stop telling us about the kingdom where Christ is King.
On this feast of Christ the King we are invited to journey away from earthly concepts of power and might and open our hearts to the Kingdom of Jesus.
We see glimpses of this kingdom breaking into our world. ...not in the rich and powerful, but in the homeless person we are able to help... in the shut-in we are able to visit... in the child we are able to nurture... in the purring of a cat or the wagging tail of a dog... in the simple joy we will share as we hug each other and exchange the peace just a few moments from now.
I started out highly suspicious of this feast of Christ the King and I find that I have fallen in love...
For we all see the kingdom where Christ is King - not fully in focus... not completely in view... not in vibrant technicolor... but we see it nonetheless.
These glimpses of the Kingdom are a gift and a challenge - a call. What better way to celebrate this feast of Christ the King than by focusing on these glimpses and growing in the direction of the Kingdom.
Brother Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
BCP – Proper 29 B - Sunday 26 November 2006
Christ the King
Daniel 7:9-14
Revelation 1:1-8
John 18:33-37
I bid you a joyful feast of Christ the King... though to be honest, I have never been too keen on this feast. Christ as King is not the image of Jesus I relate to.
That’s where I start. I also want to confess that I thought perhaps I’d coast a bit this Sunday. I thought maybe I could just “borrow” a bit from someone who is more comfortable with the feast... So I Googled up some examples of how other people approach this day...
One reflection caught my eye. The writer, I’ll call him “the other guy”, noted that while Americans may place a very high value on democracy, God does not. God has no need of democracy. Christ is King... period... end of story.
The other guy goes on that in God’s kingdom - the place where Christ the King is king - we will need to know everything about obedience and nothing about thinking. Moreover, the other guy concludes that the time to start getting ready for the kingdom is now... stop thinking and start obeying!
I can’t say that the other guy’s reflection really opens up this particular feast for me... But it does help me focus my discomfort.
And as I look at Jesus interaction with Pilate reported in this morning’s Gospel, I can’t help but think Jesus is also a bit uncomfortable with the assumptions we make about kingship and power.
“So you are king?” Pilate asks. “You say that I am king” Jesus answers. I hear Jesus saying: “That’s your language... That’s your projection...”
Jesus has already told us his Kingdom is not from this world - not an earthly kingdom. The rules of our world don’t apply. All our wonderful metaphors based on crowns and diadems, thrones, orbs, and scepters, all our glorious pomp and circumstance are not going to tell us much about the Kingdom of where Christ is King.
And yet we try to understand by amplifying our world. Jesus, and by extension God, is the most extreme... We might have powerful leaders here on earth - but Christ the King is mighty in the extreme. We might have loving parents here on earth, but God is the most extremely loving father. We might have great riches here on earth, but heaven is extremely rich, rich beyond imagining - its very streets are paved with gold. But why do we think heaven’s streets need to be paved at all? Or that gold makes better pavement than concrete or asphalt. Or that heaven even has anything that resembles streets?
Sigmund Freud said “God is the human father, writ large, and projected against the sky.” Of course Dr. Freud is not telling us anything about God, but he is telling us a great deal about the way we think about God. We take our human ideals, blow them out of proportion and look to find them in the heavens.
This is where my discomfort with the Feast of Christ the King has its toes. This Sunday, at its worst, gives us permission to project away. Whatever we know or imagine about earthly kings, we can blow it up really big and project it against the sky. When God starts to resemble a very big, very powerful version of us, we are in trouble.
Curiously - I don’t think this is a problem. Not for me, not for you, not even for the other guy who wants Christ the King to be the most absolute dictator that could ever possibly be.
Its not a problem if I’m self aware enough to understand that I (and everyone) always have and always will project my stuff on God. It is a problem when I kid myself into believing that I don’t project my stuff on God - or that someone else has a vision of God free of their own projections.
As long as I can hold in mind that my image of God always contains a substantial dose of my own projection, that image can help me grow in knowledge of God and self. But I have to be ready to encounter my own projections and face them.
All this projection on God is also not a problem in that God is truly not affected by my projections, or, for that matter, by the other guy’s projections. God is God. There is a Buddhist saying that it doesn’t matter what we think about Nirvana, because Nirvana will be what Nirvana is. Likewise, God will be what God is - whether I choose to think about Christ the most glorious kingly figure, or the most meekly suffering servant.
Its not that what I think doesn’t matter - it matters a great deal in how I live my life. But God will be what God is, regardless of my thoughts. That gives me cause to be very humble, and, as the other guy demands, obedient.
I think the other guy is on to something when he says that in the kingdom where Christ is King, democracy has no place. But I think he needs to go further. In the kingdom where Christ is King, earthly monarchs are also out of place.
The other guy is right that obedience will be of great importance in the kingdom where Christ is King, but I think he is stuck with an earthly notion of obedience as the mindless carrying out of orders with relentless precision. Jesus leads the way in terms of obedience, and it is not mindless, not thoughtless.
Where I agree fully with the other guy is in the idea that now is when we start getting ready for the kingdom where Christ is King. We start by looking to the life of Jesus.
Based on the way Jesus lived his life on this earth, we can be certain that economic injustice, for example, has no place in the kingdom. Getting ready for the kingdom where Christ is King means coming to terms with our tolerance of economic injustice - our society celebrates the extremely rich while paying little mind to the extremely poor.
Based on the way Jesus lived his life on this earth, we can know that in the kingdom where Christ is King the homeless mentally ill will be of greater importance than Sam Walton, or Bill Gates, or you, or me... Can we honestly defend our present way of serving our homeless, or mentally ill, or other vulnerable brothers and sisters.
In the kingdom where Christ is King swords are beaten into plow shares and justice flows like a mighty river watering all the earth. What are we doing with our swords? And isn’t our river of justice leaving a few spots high and dry?
In the kingdom where Christ is King the meek inherit everything, the sorrowful are comforted, those who’s spirits are broken are made whole, those who hunger for justice are satisfied, and those who make peace are closest to the King. The Gospels never stop telling us about the kingdom where Christ is King.
On this feast of Christ the King we are invited to journey away from earthly concepts of power and might and open our hearts to the Kingdom of Jesus.
We see glimpses of this kingdom breaking into our world. ...not in the rich and powerful, but in the homeless person we are able to help... in the shut-in we are able to visit... in the child we are able to nurture... in the purring of a cat or the wagging tail of a dog... in the simple joy we will share as we hug each other and exchange the peace just a few moments from now.
I started out highly suspicious of this feast of Christ the King and I find that I have fallen in love...
For we all see the kingdom where Christ is King - not fully in focus... not completely in view... not in vibrant technicolor... but we see it nonetheless.
These glimpses of the Kingdom are a gift and a challenge - a call. What better way to celebrate this feast of Christ the King than by focusing on these glimpses and growing in the direction of the Kingdom.
Friday, November 3, 2006
Initial Profession - Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, - 03 November 2006
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
Sermon preached at the Initial Profession of the Monastic Vow by
the Brother Bernard Jean Delcourt - Friday 03 November 2006
Not long ago I had the great privilege to be present in South Africa as a new building was dedicated at our monastery there. It was an occasion of great celebration and an expression of great optimism. It was a day in which God's love flowed over all who were there.
As great as that day was, in a deep sense it pales next to this day. Buildings are lovely... But people are more than lovely. People are Godly. The only point in a monastic building, however modest or magnificent, is that it a place where a community lives. Today is not about a place to live, it is about life itself.
Normally this is the time for reflection on how the scripture readings we heard help us encounter the good news of Jesus. But I want to reflect on the living word rather than the written word. How might we encounter the good news of Jesus through this profession?
In a few moments Bernard will sign his vow, a commitment for one year. That vow calls for stability, obedience, and conversion of his life to the monastic way of life. The vow is not about arriving in "monk-dom" - wherever that may be... Its about traveling. Bernard will be vowing to keep growing. At some future date, if and when Bernard takes the life vow, it will be just the same - a vow of conversion, a vow to keep growing, a vow never to arrive.
This creates a mixed message. Today is of great symbolic importance, but in a practical sense very little unusual happens today. It is a day when Bernard, and all of us, will take some steps forward (and perhaps some steps backward) in our conversion of life. Not just monastics, but all of us. It is a day, in other words, like any other.
For years now Bernard has been exploring a call to life in the Order of the Holy Cross. He has been coming to the realization that God calls forth from him gifts that mean this vow will give him life.
For Bernard there will be glorious days ahead... there will be painful days ahead... some boring days ahead... average days... The monastic life is not an insulated, sheltered, easy life. St Benedict uses the term "battle" to refer to this life. I don't find the term battle very helpful. Modern weaponry has turned the nature of battles into something far more horrible and perverse than Benedict could have imagined. There is truly nothing horrible about the monastic way of life. Though some days it can be a bit perverse...
But it is a struggle - a struggle that does not end. Jesus may describe that struggle best when he says "Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence." That's a big enough struggle... but there's more... "Love others as well as you love yourself." Obviously this is not a unique monastic struggle. Jesus addresses it to everyone. All faithful people struggle to answer this call. In slightly different terms we might describe it as the struggle to become whole - whole with God and whole with God's creation.
In the popular romantic imagination, monasticism is a path that involves giving up many things. It is a path of stony silence, hard beds, grim food, and general deprivation. But as is always the case, romantic notions and reality have little in common. As you look around Holy Cross Monastery, its hard to find too many signs of deprivation.
Monastic life is not about giving things up. Monastic life, believe it or not, is about falling in love - falling in love with God and falling in love with God's creation, especially God's children. In order to make space to do this we do give some things up. Falling in love always means some sacrifice, some giving up. When Bernard takes the vow he will be saying that yesterday he fell in love, today he is falling in love, and tomorrow, with God's help, he will fall in love even further. You see what a joyful vow this is.
There are two other key words in the vow: Stability and obedience. Without them the vow is empty.
Without stability love has no meaning. It is just a superficial and occasional illness from which you can easily recover (OK - sometimes the recovery is not so easy...). Unstable love is also known by names such as infatuation, obsession, romance, lust. It can be a great deal of fun, but it is shallow and cheap. It lasts while the weather is fine, but evaporates when the weather turns foul. Stability allows love to endure through sickness and health, through sorrow and joy, through good times and bad. Only with stability can love become whole. This is true for all of us.
Without obedience Bernard would not be here at all this day. God calls and Bernard is obedient in answering. Saint Irenaeus says "the glory of God is the human person fully alive." I think this is God's call to Bernard and to all of us: "find a way to become fully alive."
In faithful obedience Bernard is finding a way, a vowed way within a monastic community, to become fully alive. Its not the best way, or the most holy way, or the deepest way to wholeness. Its just the way some of us are called. The witness of the vow is to call all of us in the direction of God's boundless, gracious love.
With deepest gratitude we give humble thanks that we can be part of the way and share the struggle with Bernard. And we bless him on his journey.
Amen.
Br. Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
Sermon preached at the Initial Profession of the Monastic Vow by
the Brother Bernard Jean Delcourt - Friday 03 November 2006
Not long ago I had the great privilege to be present in South Africa as a new building was dedicated at our monastery there. It was an occasion of great celebration and an expression of great optimism. It was a day in which God's love flowed over all who were there.
As great as that day was, in a deep sense it pales next to this day. Buildings are lovely... But people are more than lovely. People are Godly. The only point in a monastic building, however modest or magnificent, is that it a place where a community lives. Today is not about a place to live, it is about life itself.
Normally this is the time for reflection on how the scripture readings we heard help us encounter the good news of Jesus. But I want to reflect on the living word rather than the written word. How might we encounter the good news of Jesus through this profession?
In a few moments Bernard will sign his vow, a commitment for one year. That vow calls for stability, obedience, and conversion of his life to the monastic way of life. The vow is not about arriving in "monk-dom" - wherever that may be... Its about traveling. Bernard will be vowing to keep growing. At some future date, if and when Bernard takes the life vow, it will be just the same - a vow of conversion, a vow to keep growing, a vow never to arrive.
This creates a mixed message. Today is of great symbolic importance, but in a practical sense very little unusual happens today. It is a day when Bernard, and all of us, will take some steps forward (and perhaps some steps backward) in our conversion of life. Not just monastics, but all of us. It is a day, in other words, like any other.
For years now Bernard has been exploring a call to life in the Order of the Holy Cross. He has been coming to the realization that God calls forth from him gifts that mean this vow will give him life.
For Bernard there will be glorious days ahead... there will be painful days ahead... some boring days ahead... average days... The monastic life is not an insulated, sheltered, easy life. St Benedict uses the term "battle" to refer to this life. I don't find the term battle very helpful. Modern weaponry has turned the nature of battles into something far more horrible and perverse than Benedict could have imagined. There is truly nothing horrible about the monastic way of life. Though some days it can be a bit perverse...
But it is a struggle - a struggle that does not end. Jesus may describe that struggle best when he says "Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence." That's a big enough struggle... but there's more... "Love others as well as you love yourself." Obviously this is not a unique monastic struggle. Jesus addresses it to everyone. All faithful people struggle to answer this call. In slightly different terms we might describe it as the struggle to become whole - whole with God and whole with God's creation.
In the popular romantic imagination, monasticism is a path that involves giving up many things. It is a path of stony silence, hard beds, grim food, and general deprivation. But as is always the case, romantic notions and reality have little in common. As you look around Holy Cross Monastery, its hard to find too many signs of deprivation.
Monastic life is not about giving things up. Monastic life, believe it or not, is about falling in love - falling in love with God and falling in love with God's creation, especially God's children. In order to make space to do this we do give some things up. Falling in love always means some sacrifice, some giving up. When Bernard takes the vow he will be saying that yesterday he fell in love, today he is falling in love, and tomorrow, with God's help, he will fall in love even further. You see what a joyful vow this is.
There are two other key words in the vow: Stability and obedience. Without them the vow is empty.
Without stability love has no meaning. It is just a superficial and occasional illness from which you can easily recover (OK - sometimes the recovery is not so easy...). Unstable love is also known by names such as infatuation, obsession, romance, lust. It can be a great deal of fun, but it is shallow and cheap. It lasts while the weather is fine, but evaporates when the weather turns foul. Stability allows love to endure through sickness and health, through sorrow and joy, through good times and bad. Only with stability can love become whole. This is true for all of us.
Without obedience Bernard would not be here at all this day. God calls and Bernard is obedient in answering. Saint Irenaeus says "the glory of God is the human person fully alive." I think this is God's call to Bernard and to all of us: "find a way to become fully alive."
In faithful obedience Bernard is finding a way, a vowed way within a monastic community, to become fully alive. Its not the best way, or the most holy way, or the deepest way to wholeness. Its just the way some of us are called. The witness of the vow is to call all of us in the direction of God's boundless, gracious love.
With deepest gratitude we give humble thanks that we can be part of the way and share the struggle with Bernard. And we bless him on his journey.
Amen.
Monday, October 30, 2006
BCP - Proper 21 B - 29 Oct 2006
Holy Cross Monastery,
West Park, NY
Brother Randy Greve, n/OHC
BCP - Proper 21 B - Sunday 29 October 2006
Isaiah 59:(1-4)9-19
Hebrews 5:12-6:1,9-12
Mark 10:46-52
The main fall ritual in Texas for my family when I was growing up was a trip to the Renaissance Festival in Magnolia. I would eat a roasted turkey leg while browsing the shops, taking in the shows (especially jousting), and generally people-watching. Part of the atmosphere of the Renaissance Festival is a roaming band of actors in character who take the whole Renaissance theme maybe a little too far and interact with the patrons as a variety of colorful period personalities. Beggars were to be avoided because they would revel in humiliating some poor, unsuspecting soul and then pepper them with Renaissance-themed insults if they didn’t get a dollar or two - all in good-natured fun of course. One beggar I remember hearing from a distance had bandages over his eyes and was calling out in a loud British accent: “I’m blind. I’m blind! I’m so blind I cannot see that I cannot see.” That’s pretty blind.
Because I find this story so challenging and inspiring, I’d like to touch very briefly on several truths that come out at me rather than focus on just one.
The blind were, like the very young and very sick, among the social cast-offs of the New Testament culture. Poor Bartimaeus was perceived to have no value, no place, nothing to add to the social system. Many would have believed that he was a sinner and is in his sorry state paying for some evil deed by being made blind by God. He is told to be quiet by the crowds because he, an unimportant person, is bothering the Lord, an important person. And so he is doing the only thing he can do and survive - sit and beg for a few coins to eek out a subsistence life. What appears on the surface to be a simple healing story is, on a deeper level, full of mystery and symbolism. Again Mark presents us with the ironic contrast between this blind man who perceives Jesus as Messiah by calling him Son of David, and the disciples who can often be inwardly, spiritually blind. It is the blind man, the one perceived to be worthless and excluded who rightly addresses Jesus, eagerly runs to him in his blindness, and has faith to be healed and become a follower on the way. Jesus does not go to Bartimaeus, Jesus calls him to himself. Bartimaeus must, in his physical blindness, come out of his cloak and make his way groping through the crowd to our Lord’s presence. Jesus invites him to trust him that he’ll be there, he’ll wait for him. During moments in my life when I seemed to be groping in darkness, I believed the only way to move was with the light of purpose and confidence. Bartimaeus tells us that we can cast off what hinders us and make our way to Jesus before we see fully or at all. It is first and foremost our readiness and confidence that guide us toward our opened eyes.
This story immediately follows the request of James and John to have the places of highest honor next to Jesus in his glory. Contrasted with the desire for prestige and power among some of the disciples is this startling encounter with a poor blind beggar. Though blind, he sees more than the disciples. Though a beggar, he is rich in faith. Though a social outcast, he takes his place along the way with the wealthy and educated. Indeed the kingdom is breaking in if the disciples would just see it.
Bartimaeus teaches us who often believe we see all we need to see just what passionate longing for sight is all about. Surely there were other blind folks in Jesus’ path. Bartimaeus was unsatisfied with his state. He wanted something more. He wanted to find meaning and community and let in the beauty and ugliness the pleasure and pain of life. He wanted to see so much that he yells at the Son of God even when people are telling him to be quiet. He shouts at the incarnate deity in such a way that Jesus stops what he’s doing and pays attention to him. This story reminds us that while we may be blessed with physical sight, we may still be blind to the whole truth of our world and our own life and the needs of those around us. We can become like the Renaissance Festival beggar so blind that we cannot see that we cannot see. In the spiritual life, to gain sight I have to confess that I’m blind in some way. And then I have to want to see. Bartimaeus’ physical blindness and healing becomes a model for us in how to give ourselves fully to asking for help with our need to be illumined and enlightened to the gift of truth. The lectionary picks up the theme of sight in that both the Isaiah reading we heard earlier and the Psalm appointed for today use sight as a symbol for a clearer relationship with God which is lived out in community. Isaiah illustrates the effects of sin and injustice on the people when he says “We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in twilight, among the vigorous as though we were dead.” Psalm 13, a cry of lament, says in the third verse “Look upon me and answer me, O LORD my God; give light to my eyes, lest I sleep in death.”
Do we really want to see? Our first reflex would be to answer “of course. I’m blind and I want to see.” But to be given sight carries the responsibility of responding to what we see within us and around us. When healed we don’t have the luxury of an excuse or the convenience of turning away - we’re called to really look at reality. I’ve known people and I suspect you have too who would rather stay in their known and comfortable blindness than undergo the stretching of asking for and being given sight. To open ourselves to the healing of those attitudes, habits, or thought patterns that block our growth in relationship with God and each other is rarely easy. Often we would rather do anything than name the reality of our blindnesses. Do I really want to see?
Bartimaeus is an example of spiritual passion, hunger, and focus in seeking out Jesus despite the barriers. When in our prayers we ask for mercy as Bartimaeus did, we are not imploring God for something we must earn by our goodness or that God is slow to give, but reminding ourselves of the attitude of Bartimaeus who was bold and humble, persistent and needy. Mercy is God’s favor even though we deserve punishment. While God would be justified in treating us as our sins deserve, God would rather offer forgiveness and favor and the embrace of relationship. Mercy describes God’s desire to restore us which is often blocked only by our unwillingness to ask and then be open to receiving. May the cry “Lord, have mercy” be our deep and sincere cry which stops our Lord in his tracks as he hears us. When we are blind and cannot see that we cannot see, may God’s light shine through to us and awaken us to our value and place. May our desire for mercy be a reminder to us of the gift of asking for and then accepting with gratitude new sight to live in holiness and justice and to see the way we are called to walk.
West Park, NY
Brother Randy Greve, n/OHC
BCP - Proper 21 B - Sunday 29 October 2006
Isaiah 59:(1-4)9-19
Hebrews 5:12-6:1,9-12
Mark 10:46-52
The main fall ritual in Texas for my family when I was growing up was a trip to the Renaissance Festival in Magnolia. I would eat a roasted turkey leg while browsing the shops, taking in the shows (especially jousting), and generally people-watching. Part of the atmosphere of the Renaissance Festival is a roaming band of actors in character who take the whole Renaissance theme maybe a little too far and interact with the patrons as a variety of colorful period personalities. Beggars were to be avoided because they would revel in humiliating some poor, unsuspecting soul and then pepper them with Renaissance-themed insults if they didn’t get a dollar or two - all in good-natured fun of course. One beggar I remember hearing from a distance had bandages over his eyes and was calling out in a loud British accent: “I’m blind. I’m blind! I’m so blind I cannot see that I cannot see.” That’s pretty blind.
Because I find this story so challenging and inspiring, I’d like to touch very briefly on several truths that come out at me rather than focus on just one.
The blind were, like the very young and very sick, among the social cast-offs of the New Testament culture. Poor Bartimaeus was perceived to have no value, no place, nothing to add to the social system. Many would have believed that he was a sinner and is in his sorry state paying for some evil deed by being made blind by God. He is told to be quiet by the crowds because he, an unimportant person, is bothering the Lord, an important person. And so he is doing the only thing he can do and survive - sit and beg for a few coins to eek out a subsistence life. What appears on the surface to be a simple healing story is, on a deeper level, full of mystery and symbolism. Again Mark presents us with the ironic contrast between this blind man who perceives Jesus as Messiah by calling him Son of David, and the disciples who can often be inwardly, spiritually blind. It is the blind man, the one perceived to be worthless and excluded who rightly addresses Jesus, eagerly runs to him in his blindness, and has faith to be healed and become a follower on the way. Jesus does not go to Bartimaeus, Jesus calls him to himself. Bartimaeus must, in his physical blindness, come out of his cloak and make his way groping through the crowd to our Lord’s presence. Jesus invites him to trust him that he’ll be there, he’ll wait for him. During moments in my life when I seemed to be groping in darkness, I believed the only way to move was with the light of purpose and confidence. Bartimaeus tells us that we can cast off what hinders us and make our way to Jesus before we see fully or at all. It is first and foremost our readiness and confidence that guide us toward our opened eyes.
This story immediately follows the request of James and John to have the places of highest honor next to Jesus in his glory. Contrasted with the desire for prestige and power among some of the disciples is this startling encounter with a poor blind beggar. Though blind, he sees more than the disciples. Though a beggar, he is rich in faith. Though a social outcast, he takes his place along the way with the wealthy and educated. Indeed the kingdom is breaking in if the disciples would just see it.
Bartimaeus teaches us who often believe we see all we need to see just what passionate longing for sight is all about. Surely there were other blind folks in Jesus’ path. Bartimaeus was unsatisfied with his state. He wanted something more. He wanted to find meaning and community and let in the beauty and ugliness the pleasure and pain of life. He wanted to see so much that he yells at the Son of God even when people are telling him to be quiet. He shouts at the incarnate deity in such a way that Jesus stops what he’s doing and pays attention to him. This story reminds us that while we may be blessed with physical sight, we may still be blind to the whole truth of our world and our own life and the needs of those around us. We can become like the Renaissance Festival beggar so blind that we cannot see that we cannot see. In the spiritual life, to gain sight I have to confess that I’m blind in some way. And then I have to want to see. Bartimaeus’ physical blindness and healing becomes a model for us in how to give ourselves fully to asking for help with our need to be illumined and enlightened to the gift of truth. The lectionary picks up the theme of sight in that both the Isaiah reading we heard earlier and the Psalm appointed for today use sight as a symbol for a clearer relationship with God which is lived out in community. Isaiah illustrates the effects of sin and injustice on the people when he says “We grope like the blind along a wall, groping like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in twilight, among the vigorous as though we were dead.” Psalm 13, a cry of lament, says in the third verse “Look upon me and answer me, O LORD my God; give light to my eyes, lest I sleep in death.”
Do we really want to see? Our first reflex would be to answer “of course. I’m blind and I want to see.” But to be given sight carries the responsibility of responding to what we see within us and around us. When healed we don’t have the luxury of an excuse or the convenience of turning away - we’re called to really look at reality. I’ve known people and I suspect you have too who would rather stay in their known and comfortable blindness than undergo the stretching of asking for and being given sight. To open ourselves to the healing of those attitudes, habits, or thought patterns that block our growth in relationship with God and each other is rarely easy. Often we would rather do anything than name the reality of our blindnesses. Do I really want to see?
Bartimaeus is an example of spiritual passion, hunger, and focus in seeking out Jesus despite the barriers. When in our prayers we ask for mercy as Bartimaeus did, we are not imploring God for something we must earn by our goodness or that God is slow to give, but reminding ourselves of the attitude of Bartimaeus who was bold and humble, persistent and needy. Mercy is God’s favor even though we deserve punishment. While God would be justified in treating us as our sins deserve, God would rather offer forgiveness and favor and the embrace of relationship. Mercy describes God’s desire to restore us which is often blocked only by our unwillingness to ask and then be open to receiving. May the cry “Lord, have mercy” be our deep and sincere cry which stops our Lord in his tracks as he hears us. When we are blind and cannot see that we cannot see, may God’s light shine through to us and awaken us to our value and place. May our desire for mercy be a reminder to us of the gift of asking for and then accepting with gratitude new sight to live in holiness and justice and to see the way we are called to walk.
Sunday, July 16, 2006
BCP - Proper 10 B - 16 Jul 2006
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park
Brother Randy Greve, n/OHC
BCP - Proper 10 - Sunday 16 July 2006
Amos 7:7-15
Ephesians 1:1-14
Mark 6: 7-13
Imagine that you are one of the Twelve disciples. At the call of Jesus you have left your family, your livelihood, your familiar and safe world to follow a man who somehow captured your imagination and who performs miracles and preaches and teaches with authority about the Kingdom of God. Clearly God is with him but who or what is he? Could this be the Messiah? You’re not entirely sure. He has told you that this talk of the kingdom is no mere show that begins and ends with Him - this is the beginning of the end of the old era of sin and evil and the ushering in of a world reigned by God. Not only that but he says you will share in his works and participate with him in bringing new life. This eclectic mix of men and women - who would surely not be hanging around each other except for Jesus - suddenly finds itself entrusted and empowered with the authority of the kingdom. Jesus has begun to transform you and give you a vision of what life with God can be like. After time observing and beginning to understand what Jesus is talking about and what his actions mean, you’re sent out to preach repentance, cast out demons, and cure the sick. You’re partner is Philip or Andrew or Peter or Judas… Where do you go? What do you do? What would this power in action look like? You immediately encounter a world of danger, opposition, and mystery. Not everyone is warm and welcoming. Yet as much to your surprise as to the amazement of those you encounter - Diseases are cured, demons cast out, and new life is embraced. And despite being chased away from an unfriendly house or village, some trust you and listen, some are open to the possibility of hope and a future.
Bringing us back into the present, I would like to stop on the idea of unclean spirits; how the disciples might have engaged such spirits and how we might know and respond to them ourselves. To the ancient, pre-scientific understanding of things, the world was a battlefield where good and evil forces and influences were locked in combat within and between peoples, cultures, religions, and beliefs. Suffering, disease, and other demonically-inspired pain was the outward evidence of what was unseen but no less real. The ancient world understandably attributed spiritual origins to what they did not have the knowledge to explain by any other means. Diseases like depression and epilepsy, for example, which have biological origins, were assumed in their world to be the relentless attack of these unseen forces. So does the technology to diagnose and treat mental and physical illness solve the problem of unclean spirits? Because we can scientifically explain a condition previously attributed to unclean spirits, does that totally negate their existence? Not completely, because uncleanness and evil are still spiritual realities.
St. Ignatius of Loyola, writing in the Spiritual Exercises, sheds some helpful light on a more modern way of understanding the inner nature of what is going on here. For St Ignatius a spirit may be called an inclination, an attraction, a motivation which is either God-centered or self-centered. God-centered inclinations can lead us to our best, most authentic self in the love of God and neighbor which is new life in the kingdom. Self-centered inclinations, if followed, can lead to the bottomless pit of self-protection and self-gratification, making us numb to our real self and unable to love God and others fully. St. Ignatius then asks us first to examine our own inclinations in the light of our best self, moving us toward the God of love. To recognize evil means paying attention to what is going on inside us and around us with great sensitivity and care. We recognize the evil or unclean spirit by listening for the lie or truth in the words and actions, the inclination toward reality or unreality. In the face of evil within us or around us, we ask how the kingdom of God break into this moment, change my closed heart to one of openness, my hardness to receptivity to light and truth. As Brian McLaren says in The Secret Message of Jesus “Jesus must draw out, expose, name, reject, and banish this systemic, transpersonal evil…”
Discernment, which is the process of examining where our inclinations are coming from and where they intend to take us, is only possible by living a holy life. Discernment is not the acquiring of skills to detect good from evil spirits; it is living in Gospel humility, faith, purity, obedience, and patience so that we will see with clarity the nature of the inclinations within us and around us.
For the disciples to have had the insight and wisdom to distinguish good spirits from evil, they had to have been willing to listen and test at a deep level. Jesus himself is the model discerner who is described in the Gospel of John especially as knowing the thoughts and inner inclination or spirit of those around him. Jesus often responds to what he sees of the inner, real self rather than only to outer words and actions. He recognizes great faith in those who display simple trust, humility, readiness, and receptivity and is able to strike at the heart of the hypocrisy of religious leaders who claim to be models of faithfulness but inside are smug, arrogant, hard, and dead.
Nowhere in the New Testament do we find the “how-to’s” of discernment, but it does tell us the conditions for discernment to happen. Living in the truth and obedience of the whole Gospel, especially where that truth is not popular, easy, or pleasant, is the starting place. As we are sent out into the world, into our lives - how will we use the authority given to us? Are we attentive and awake enough to expose and reject the evil that opposes God’s best? Every day we are sent out to confront the reality of evil and suffering and, using the authority we have, to bring healing, goodness, and wholeness. We may not be sent out far. Perhaps the person most in need of our empathy and kindness is in our own house, our own family or church. The sending out is more about our breaking out of the inclinations of self-protection and self-gratification than a physical distance. The longest mission trip is often from one heart to another.
To accept the offer of healing given by another is also important. I am grateful for those times when I have been the one with the unclean spirit and been met by friends who exposed and banished the uncleanness that lurked in me. As the disciples came face to face with the fallen, broken nature of the world, I can’t help but imagine it turned them inward. Perhaps it was in their reflection on the reality of the coming Kingdom that Peter learned lessons about grace and forgiveness that Judas did not.
The authority given to the Twelve was not just a weapon used to zap demons and cure illness; it was the gift of seeing the world as Christ saw it beginning with their own transformation. To be given the authority of Christ is to share in the interests, attitudes, and affections of Christ himself, to be motivated in everything by his loving compassion. We are invited to live in such a way that we become more aware and awake to the uncleanness that besets us and to name, expose, and repel it. We are invited to embrace the deepest good for the building of God’s reign by offering hope and healing to those who need it - which is all of us.
I close with this reflection by St. Theresa of Avila:
Christ has no body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which He looks
compassion on this world
Christ has no body now on earth but yours
Brother Randy Greve, n/OHC
BCP - Proper 10 - Sunday 16 July 2006
Amos 7:7-15
Ephesians 1:1-14
Mark 6: 7-13
Imagine that you are one of the Twelve disciples. At the call of Jesus you have left your family, your livelihood, your familiar and safe world to follow a man who somehow captured your imagination and who performs miracles and preaches and teaches with authority about the Kingdom of God. Clearly God is with him but who or what is he? Could this be the Messiah? You’re not entirely sure. He has told you that this talk of the kingdom is no mere show that begins and ends with Him - this is the beginning of the end of the old era of sin and evil and the ushering in of a world reigned by God. Not only that but he says you will share in his works and participate with him in bringing new life. This eclectic mix of men and women - who would surely not be hanging around each other except for Jesus - suddenly finds itself entrusted and empowered with the authority of the kingdom. Jesus has begun to transform you and give you a vision of what life with God can be like. After time observing and beginning to understand what Jesus is talking about and what his actions mean, you’re sent out to preach repentance, cast out demons, and cure the sick. You’re partner is Philip or Andrew or Peter or Judas… Where do you go? What do you do? What would this power in action look like? You immediately encounter a world of danger, opposition, and mystery. Not everyone is warm and welcoming. Yet as much to your surprise as to the amazement of those you encounter - Diseases are cured, demons cast out, and new life is embraced. And despite being chased away from an unfriendly house or village, some trust you and listen, some are open to the possibility of hope and a future.
Bringing us back into the present, I would like to stop on the idea of unclean spirits; how the disciples might have engaged such spirits and how we might know and respond to them ourselves. To the ancient, pre-scientific understanding of things, the world was a battlefield where good and evil forces and influences were locked in combat within and between peoples, cultures, religions, and beliefs. Suffering, disease, and other demonically-inspired pain was the outward evidence of what was unseen but no less real. The ancient world understandably attributed spiritual origins to what they did not have the knowledge to explain by any other means. Diseases like depression and epilepsy, for example, which have biological origins, were assumed in their world to be the relentless attack of these unseen forces. So does the technology to diagnose and treat mental and physical illness solve the problem of unclean spirits? Because we can scientifically explain a condition previously attributed to unclean spirits, does that totally negate their existence? Not completely, because uncleanness and evil are still spiritual realities.
St. Ignatius of Loyola, writing in the Spiritual Exercises, sheds some helpful light on a more modern way of understanding the inner nature of what is going on here. For St Ignatius a spirit may be called an inclination, an attraction, a motivation which is either God-centered or self-centered. God-centered inclinations can lead us to our best, most authentic self in the love of God and neighbor which is new life in the kingdom. Self-centered inclinations, if followed, can lead to the bottomless pit of self-protection and self-gratification, making us numb to our real self and unable to love God and others fully. St. Ignatius then asks us first to examine our own inclinations in the light of our best self, moving us toward the God of love. To recognize evil means paying attention to what is going on inside us and around us with great sensitivity and care. We recognize the evil or unclean spirit by listening for the lie or truth in the words and actions, the inclination toward reality or unreality. In the face of evil within us or around us, we ask how the kingdom of God break into this moment, change my closed heart to one of openness, my hardness to receptivity to light and truth. As Brian McLaren says in The Secret Message of Jesus “Jesus must draw out, expose, name, reject, and banish this systemic, transpersonal evil…”
Discernment, which is the process of examining where our inclinations are coming from and where they intend to take us, is only possible by living a holy life. Discernment is not the acquiring of skills to detect good from evil spirits; it is living in Gospel humility, faith, purity, obedience, and patience so that we will see with clarity the nature of the inclinations within us and around us.
For the disciples to have had the insight and wisdom to distinguish good spirits from evil, they had to have been willing to listen and test at a deep level. Jesus himself is the model discerner who is described in the Gospel of John especially as knowing the thoughts and inner inclination or spirit of those around him. Jesus often responds to what he sees of the inner, real self rather than only to outer words and actions. He recognizes great faith in those who display simple trust, humility, readiness, and receptivity and is able to strike at the heart of the hypocrisy of religious leaders who claim to be models of faithfulness but inside are smug, arrogant, hard, and dead.
Nowhere in the New Testament do we find the “how-to’s” of discernment, but it does tell us the conditions for discernment to happen. Living in the truth and obedience of the whole Gospel, especially where that truth is not popular, easy, or pleasant, is the starting place. As we are sent out into the world, into our lives - how will we use the authority given to us? Are we attentive and awake enough to expose and reject the evil that opposes God’s best? Every day we are sent out to confront the reality of evil and suffering and, using the authority we have, to bring healing, goodness, and wholeness. We may not be sent out far. Perhaps the person most in need of our empathy and kindness is in our own house, our own family or church. The sending out is more about our breaking out of the inclinations of self-protection and self-gratification than a physical distance. The longest mission trip is often from one heart to another.
To accept the offer of healing given by another is also important. I am grateful for those times when I have been the one with the unclean spirit and been met by friends who exposed and banished the uncleanness that lurked in me. As the disciples came face to face with the fallen, broken nature of the world, I can’t help but imagine it turned them inward. Perhaps it was in their reflection on the reality of the coming Kingdom that Peter learned lessons about grace and forgiveness that Judas did not.
The authority given to the Twelve was not just a weapon used to zap demons and cure illness; it was the gift of seeing the world as Christ saw it beginning with their own transformation. To be given the authority of Christ is to share in the interests, attitudes, and affections of Christ himself, to be motivated in everything by his loving compassion. We are invited to live in such a way that we become more aware and awake to the uncleanness that besets us and to name, expose, and repel it. We are invited to embrace the deepest good for the building of God’s reign by offering hope and healing to those who need it - which is all of us.
I close with this reflection by St. Theresa of Avila:
Christ has no body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which He looks
compassion on this world
Christ has no body now on earth but yours
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Funeral - Br. Douglas Brown - 10 May 2006
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Adam McCoy, OHC
Sermon preached at the Requiem for Brother Douglas Brown, OHC
Wednesday 10 May 2006
A Resurrection Life
The essential message of the Easter proclamation has always been: Christ has won the victory. Death has been trampled down by death, and Christ now gloriously risen invites us to join Him in faith, and when we do, His victory will be ours as well. And so it will. The victory of Christ on the Cross has opened to all the world the possibility of resurrection, and our hope as committed Christians is that all will come within the reach of that saving embrace. On Easter morn we sing, "Jesus Christ is risen today, Alleluia. Our triumphant holy day, Alleluia." His rising makes our day holy.
That's our proclamation. But how do we get there? How can we be transformed by the resurrection?
There are so many Easter symbols of new life: The new fire, the flowering cross for the children, the festive food, the Easter eggs and chocolate in baskets, the bunnies and chicks and other soft and fragile offspring which remind us of the newness of spring and the renewal of life. When I was a boy, we used to get new shoes for Easter. The week or so before the great day, the stores would be full of parents and children trying on shoes, which we children would eagerly compare on the great day. The Black Church has an image for heaven: it's the place where all God's children got shoes. All God's children are loved and gifted and privileged. A child's Easter is a festival of sweet and tender newness: The victory of the Resurrection is given as a free gift, from adults to the children, from God to us, new life and love unbounded, uncomplicated, rejoicing love.
But gradually, the complications, the failures, the compromises, the shadows, of adult life gather round and penetrate our souls, till many believe that the Christian proclamation of the Resurrection victory is, in one of St. Paul's favorite words, foolishness: foolishness to Gentiles, to the thinking secular world, and worse, offensive to Jews, to serious religious people. So one righteous man died and was justified, the criticism goes. That gets you off the hook? Absurd. Where's the responsibility for the individual to engage in the struggle? Where's the need to build up social structures, to share with others in human solidarity?
An adult Easter needs to take into account the darkness of our lives. In the words of the great hymn which I heard for the first time on Good Friday, 1976, in St. James' Cathedral in Toronto, so beloved of Douglas, "My song is love unknown, my savior's love to me: Love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be." We become lovely by being loved, and in turn loving others into loveliness.
The victory may have been won, but appropriating the fruits of victory is no easy task. Douglas Brown was a man who lived into these questions with deep sincerity, and whose life is a paradigm of the answer to the world's criticisms of the Christian faith. He placed himself in the path of the Resurrection, and that path took him to strange and wonderful places. This Chapel, the worship in it and the community which lives its life around it, became Douglas' life, and the strange and wonderful place where he struggled to appropriate the victory of the Resurrection.
Douglas was profoundly liturgical. He loved the ancient liturgies of the Church, the monastic offices, the chanting, the community's times of simple shared prayer, the psalms and canticles and antiphons, the public reading of scripture, the hymns of Anglican worship in all its glorious variety, the shared physical movement of the community in the daily dance of praise, the Peace at the Eucharist which he would share in a great bearlike embrace, the bread and the wine and the fellowship around the Table of the Lord. He found here his heart's center, and in the stability of the forms of monastic prayer I believe he found the strength to take up his cross and follow Jesus. Because the cross is the answer to the criticism of cheap grace: We are offered the Resurrection victory won by Jesus Christ if - "if" - we follow his life and death and make it ours.
Douglas embraced his cross. He allowed himself to die to parts of his life that could not give him life: shyness, insecurity, drinking. His life was a work in progress on all these fronts. I believe that the great gifts he shared with us were made possible by the Resurrection victories won on the crosses of his struggles.
When our Founder, Father Huntington, wrote about the houses of our Order, his first thought was about the spiritual struggle they make possible: "The ladder of the cross is planted firmly within the walls of a religious house and angels pass up and down that stairway. Our house is a house of God; let us strive to make it for ourselves the gate of heaven." Jacob's ladder is the ancient Jewish and Christian symbol of mystical contemplation, and at a deep level, the union with God symbolized by that ladder is the goal of every monk. I think the genius of the image is not so much in the ladder, however, as in the picture of the angels ascending and descending. Up and down, up and down, an interplay of the interior life, which is never simple, always dynamic.
This ladder has an ancient pedigree in monastic tradition. St. Benedict gives it 12 steps, and each one of them is an act of humility. The fear of God; leaving behind your own desires; submission to a human superior; obedience under difficult circumstances; the vulnerability to share your inner life with those who have power over you; contentment with whatever comes your way, especially abuse and deprivation; willingness to live by the community's norms; keeping silence when what you want to do is chatter; restraining the laughter of hysteria and self-preoccupation; when you do speak, speaking modestly, gently and briefly; and finally, realizing that we speak not only with our words, but in our actions. They too must be characterized by humility.
This is a big order. It is a sixth century 12 step program of formidable challenges. Ascending this dynamic ladder of humility requires more than one act of faith. It requires first of all that we are willing to give ourselves to God unreservedly, not looking to our own strengths and gifts but allowing God to use us as we are. "Just as I am, without one plea" says the old hymn, and that is the monk's daily song as we struggle up a rung or two of the great ladder. This first act of faith requires us to trust that we, our own essential being, and not what we can say or do or produce on our own, is worth God's trouble. A tall order for a shy, insecure alcoholic. But Douglas took it on.
A second act of faith climbing this ladder requires is that the community will be a faithful partner in the struggle. Submission, obedience, vulnerability, joining in the no doubt flawed life of people no better than you are; all this presupposes a community and leadership whose first focus is on the Cross and its victory, and not on its own power and gain. This is a struggle for all of us in monastic community. But what joy when we all honestly share its tasks: "How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity." It is like the fine oil anointing Aaron, running down in seeming waste all the way from head to foot, signifying not the usefulness of the oil but the overflowing abundance of God's Spirit, not the daily tasks of earning a living and running things and being productive, but the hope of a superabundant overflow of generous, mutual love. A tall order for a man who could so easily analyze the realities of personal dynamics in himself and others, and whose call to leadership was complicated by his understanding of the inner dynamics of the exercise of power. But Douglas took it on.
A third act of faith that climbing the ladder of humility requires is that you only reach the top when you have hit the bottom. St. Benedict famously does not recommend humor to his monks, and if there were one thing I would like to change in the Rule, that's it. I think a joyful approach to life is always welcome, but then, we don't live in the sixth century, with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire a living memory, with the collapse of the successor state of the great and wise Theodoric the Ostrogoth on the horizon and chaos drawing closer and closer, surrounding them like the darkness of an enveloping night. But there is a delicious irony in the thought of a ladder of humility. If the Cross is a paradox, so is the ladder. Imagine: climbing higher and higher to become more and more humble. When you reach the top you are really at the bottom, so to speak. I cannot help but think that this is a parable about leadership as well as a profound observation of the course of a truly redeemed life. Perhaps that could be the monastic message to our leadership shortly to assemble in Columbus (editor's note: the triennal General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the USA). Here is where I think Douglas found his Resurrection victory. He hit bottom. He embraced another 12 step program, one I think not unrelated to Benedict's. He understood that when you reach the top of that program, you're still no better than the day you started. I think he made this his life's work: To see in himself and in others the daily work of grace, grace that picks you up after you've been thrown down, and keeps picking you up, day after day after day. Not an easy way to live your life, but Douglas took it on.
I loved Douglas' ways of being humble. The schlumpfy clothes, the sandals (didn't the man have a single pair of shoes?), the only-occasionally trimmed hair and beard, the muffled voice, which you had to strain to understand sometimes, low like an organ pipe. He didn't much like spending money. I would try to take him out to a nice restaurant near the seminary in Chelsea, and more often than not we would end up in a Chinese place just north of 23rd Street where it was a challenge to bring the bill above $20.00 a person. He loved being a monk, even perhaps playing a little in his ironic way with the outward symbols of humility.
Douglas was a holy person. Not a saint, I think, but holy. He let himself be transformed by grace and the Spirit. When his life hit bottom, he saw it as Christ's cross for himself. He saw the ladder of humility planted firmly in the midst of the monastery and embraced it. He trusted the Lord and he trusted the community, not without struggle, but with an admirable constancy.
And as a result, his life became a blessing. He was a rock of integrity to us in the monastic life. His preaching and retreats were beacons of reason and generosity and insight to thousands. His spiritual direction reached deep into the souls of hundreds and hundreds of earnest Christians. His wide sympathies, born of his own sufferings, opened channels of grace which are still flowing with the waters of life. His love of justice and compassion in public life led him to become a voice in the struggles of our day.
In my church we sing a song after the sermon, a song born in the Black Church:
Thank you Lord, for saving my soul.
Thank you Lord, for making me whole.
Thank you Lord, for giving to me
Thy great salvation so rich and free.
.
Thank you, Lord, for saving Douglas. Thank you for making him whole. Thank you for giving to him your great salvation so rich and free. Thank you, Lord, for giving Douglas to us all, for the great gifts his salvation has brought us. Thank you for the Easter life, for the free gifts of childhood, for the Ladder of the humility of the Cross, for the humility which lifts us up, and brings us, finally, to You.
Amen.
Br. Adam McCoy, OHC
Sermon preached at the Requiem for Brother Douglas Brown, OHC
Wednesday 10 May 2006
A Resurrection Life
The essential message of the Easter proclamation has always been: Christ has won the victory. Death has been trampled down by death, and Christ now gloriously risen invites us to join Him in faith, and when we do, His victory will be ours as well. And so it will. The victory of Christ on the Cross has opened to all the world the possibility of resurrection, and our hope as committed Christians is that all will come within the reach of that saving embrace. On Easter morn we sing, "Jesus Christ is risen today, Alleluia. Our triumphant holy day, Alleluia." His rising makes our day holy.
That's our proclamation. But how do we get there? How can we be transformed by the resurrection?
There are so many Easter symbols of new life: The new fire, the flowering cross for the children, the festive food, the Easter eggs and chocolate in baskets, the bunnies and chicks and other soft and fragile offspring which remind us of the newness of spring and the renewal of life. When I was a boy, we used to get new shoes for Easter. The week or so before the great day, the stores would be full of parents and children trying on shoes, which we children would eagerly compare on the great day. The Black Church has an image for heaven: it's the place where all God's children got shoes. All God's children are loved and gifted and privileged. A child's Easter is a festival of sweet and tender newness: The victory of the Resurrection is given as a free gift, from adults to the children, from God to us, new life and love unbounded, uncomplicated, rejoicing love.
But gradually, the complications, the failures, the compromises, the shadows, of adult life gather round and penetrate our souls, till many believe that the Christian proclamation of the Resurrection victory is, in one of St. Paul's favorite words, foolishness: foolishness to Gentiles, to the thinking secular world, and worse, offensive to Jews, to serious religious people. So one righteous man died and was justified, the criticism goes. That gets you off the hook? Absurd. Where's the responsibility for the individual to engage in the struggle? Where's the need to build up social structures, to share with others in human solidarity?
An adult Easter needs to take into account the darkness of our lives. In the words of the great hymn which I heard for the first time on Good Friday, 1976, in St. James' Cathedral in Toronto, so beloved of Douglas, "My song is love unknown, my savior's love to me: Love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be." We become lovely by being loved, and in turn loving others into loveliness.
The victory may have been won, but appropriating the fruits of victory is no easy task. Douglas Brown was a man who lived into these questions with deep sincerity, and whose life is a paradigm of the answer to the world's criticisms of the Christian faith. He placed himself in the path of the Resurrection, and that path took him to strange and wonderful places. This Chapel, the worship in it and the community which lives its life around it, became Douglas' life, and the strange and wonderful place where he struggled to appropriate the victory of the Resurrection.
Douglas was profoundly liturgical. He loved the ancient liturgies of the Church, the monastic offices, the chanting, the community's times of simple shared prayer, the psalms and canticles and antiphons, the public reading of scripture, the hymns of Anglican worship in all its glorious variety, the shared physical movement of the community in the daily dance of praise, the Peace at the Eucharist which he would share in a great bearlike embrace, the bread and the wine and the fellowship around the Table of the Lord. He found here his heart's center, and in the stability of the forms of monastic prayer I believe he found the strength to take up his cross and follow Jesus. Because the cross is the answer to the criticism of cheap grace: We are offered the Resurrection victory won by Jesus Christ if - "if" - we follow his life and death and make it ours.
Douglas embraced his cross. He allowed himself to die to parts of his life that could not give him life: shyness, insecurity, drinking. His life was a work in progress on all these fronts. I believe that the great gifts he shared with us were made possible by the Resurrection victories won on the crosses of his struggles.
When our Founder, Father Huntington, wrote about the houses of our Order, his first thought was about the spiritual struggle they make possible: "The ladder of the cross is planted firmly within the walls of a religious house and angels pass up and down that stairway. Our house is a house of God; let us strive to make it for ourselves the gate of heaven." Jacob's ladder is the ancient Jewish and Christian symbol of mystical contemplation, and at a deep level, the union with God symbolized by that ladder is the goal of every monk. I think the genius of the image is not so much in the ladder, however, as in the picture of the angels ascending and descending. Up and down, up and down, an interplay of the interior life, which is never simple, always dynamic.
This ladder has an ancient pedigree in monastic tradition. St. Benedict gives it 12 steps, and each one of them is an act of humility. The fear of God; leaving behind your own desires; submission to a human superior; obedience under difficult circumstances; the vulnerability to share your inner life with those who have power over you; contentment with whatever comes your way, especially abuse and deprivation; willingness to live by the community's norms; keeping silence when what you want to do is chatter; restraining the laughter of hysteria and self-preoccupation; when you do speak, speaking modestly, gently and briefly; and finally, realizing that we speak not only with our words, but in our actions. They too must be characterized by humility.
This is a big order. It is a sixth century 12 step program of formidable challenges. Ascending this dynamic ladder of humility requires more than one act of faith. It requires first of all that we are willing to give ourselves to God unreservedly, not looking to our own strengths and gifts but allowing God to use us as we are. "Just as I am, without one plea" says the old hymn, and that is the monk's daily song as we struggle up a rung or two of the great ladder. This first act of faith requires us to trust that we, our own essential being, and not what we can say or do or produce on our own, is worth God's trouble. A tall order for a shy, insecure alcoholic. But Douglas took it on.
A second act of faith climbing this ladder requires is that the community will be a faithful partner in the struggle. Submission, obedience, vulnerability, joining in the no doubt flawed life of people no better than you are; all this presupposes a community and leadership whose first focus is on the Cross and its victory, and not on its own power and gain. This is a struggle for all of us in monastic community. But what joy when we all honestly share its tasks: "How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity." It is like the fine oil anointing Aaron, running down in seeming waste all the way from head to foot, signifying not the usefulness of the oil but the overflowing abundance of God's Spirit, not the daily tasks of earning a living and running things and being productive, but the hope of a superabundant overflow of generous, mutual love. A tall order for a man who could so easily analyze the realities of personal dynamics in himself and others, and whose call to leadership was complicated by his understanding of the inner dynamics of the exercise of power. But Douglas took it on.
A third act of faith that climbing the ladder of humility requires is that you only reach the top when you have hit the bottom. St. Benedict famously does not recommend humor to his monks, and if there were one thing I would like to change in the Rule, that's it. I think a joyful approach to life is always welcome, but then, we don't live in the sixth century, with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire a living memory, with the collapse of the successor state of the great and wise Theodoric the Ostrogoth on the horizon and chaos drawing closer and closer, surrounding them like the darkness of an enveloping night. But there is a delicious irony in the thought of a ladder of humility. If the Cross is a paradox, so is the ladder. Imagine: climbing higher and higher to become more and more humble. When you reach the top you are really at the bottom, so to speak. I cannot help but think that this is a parable about leadership as well as a profound observation of the course of a truly redeemed life. Perhaps that could be the monastic message to our leadership shortly to assemble in Columbus (editor's note: the triennal General Convention of the Episcopal Church in the USA). Here is where I think Douglas found his Resurrection victory. He hit bottom. He embraced another 12 step program, one I think not unrelated to Benedict's. He understood that when you reach the top of that program, you're still no better than the day you started. I think he made this his life's work: To see in himself and in others the daily work of grace, grace that picks you up after you've been thrown down, and keeps picking you up, day after day after day. Not an easy way to live your life, but Douglas took it on.
I loved Douglas' ways of being humble. The schlumpfy clothes, the sandals (didn't the man have a single pair of shoes?), the only-occasionally trimmed hair and beard, the muffled voice, which you had to strain to understand sometimes, low like an organ pipe. He didn't much like spending money. I would try to take him out to a nice restaurant near the seminary in Chelsea, and more often than not we would end up in a Chinese place just north of 23rd Street where it was a challenge to bring the bill above $20.00 a person. He loved being a monk, even perhaps playing a little in his ironic way with the outward symbols of humility.
Douglas was a holy person. Not a saint, I think, but holy. He let himself be transformed by grace and the Spirit. When his life hit bottom, he saw it as Christ's cross for himself. He saw the ladder of humility planted firmly in the midst of the monastery and embraced it. He trusted the Lord and he trusted the community, not without struggle, but with an admirable constancy.
And as a result, his life became a blessing. He was a rock of integrity to us in the monastic life. His preaching and retreats were beacons of reason and generosity and insight to thousands. His spiritual direction reached deep into the souls of hundreds and hundreds of earnest Christians. His wide sympathies, born of his own sufferings, opened channels of grace which are still flowing with the waters of life. His love of justice and compassion in public life led him to become a voice in the struggles of our day.
In my church we sing a song after the sermon, a song born in the Black Church:
Thank you Lord, for saving my soul.
Thank you Lord, for making me whole.
Thank you Lord, for giving to me
Thy great salvation so rich and free.
.
Thank you, Lord, for saving Douglas. Thank you for making him whole. Thank you for giving to him your great salvation so rich and free. Thank you, Lord, for giving Douglas to us all, for the great gifts his salvation has brought us. Thank you for the Easter life, for the free gifts of childhood, for the Ladder of the humility of the Cross, for the humility which lifts us up, and brings us, finally, to You.
Amen.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
BCP - Easter 2 B - 23 Apr 2006
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Brother Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
BCP – Easter 2 B - Sunday 23 April 2006
I’m not sure Thomas gets a particularly fair deal in history. For two millennia he has been, more or less, the poster child for doubt: Doubting Thomas - an archetype that has entered the mainstream psyche. All generations will call Mary blessed... and apparently all generations will call Thomas doubting... I’m thinking Thomas needed a better public relations plan...
This is one of those stories that we’ve heard so many times we almost don’t hear it at all anymore. We just hear the echo of it. The echo in my mind is of a belligerent Thomas confronting Jesus - show me the wounds or I won’t believe its you. And of a gentle Jesus showing him the wounds and then almost taunting him - you see and believe, more blessed are those who believe without seeing...
That, of course, isn’t really the story. When Jesus arrives at the home where the disciples are huddled the first thing he does is show everyone his hands and his feet. But Thomas is not there. So when Thomas says he needs to see the wounds, he’s just saying he needs to see what everyone else has already seen. But he doesn’t say this to Jesus. He says it to the other disciples.
When Thomas next meets Jesus, Jesus invites him to look at, to touch, the wounds. Jesus knows Thomas’s heart and knows that Thomas is dying to get a peek. And it seems as though Jesus is as interested in showing the wounds as Thomas is in seeing them.
What strikes me is that maybe doubt is not the point of the story. Maybe this is not a story about overcoming doubt or about having faith. I’m beginning to understand it as being a story about the wounds. The story of Wounded Jesus rather than of Doubting Thomas...
Doubt is no big deal. I have doubts. We all have doubts. It would be a bigger story if Thomas had no doubts. After all, he knew for a fact that Jesus was dead. He should have had a hard time believing Jesus was walking among them again in the flesh. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want some proof.
But what strange proof Thomas seems to want. Show me the puncture wounds, the stab wounds. Its strangely intimate and pretty gory all at the same time. Surely there are other more beautiful and appealing ways that Thomas could have had his doubts allayed.
Jesus does nothing to provide any alternatives to coming face to face, finger to gash, with the wounds. Surely Jesus could have given another sign, or just talked to them, or changed some water into wine... Instead he seems to be saying here I am, look at my wounds, look at my hands and my side.
But as I say, I’m beginning to understand that the wounds may be the central part of this story.
What if Thomas had not been so honest? What if he had said “I have no doubts... I don’t need proof. I have faith.” What if he lied?
Those doubts would still have been there and they would have worked on Thomas. One way or the other he would have been looking for proof. What type of proof might he have sought?
What are some of the ways we seek to prove that we know God?
Some people see proof of God in disasters. A hurricane strikes the Gulf Coast and the City of New Orleans is devastated. Some see this as proof of the hand of God. Not any old God, but a really angry God; and isn’t it convenient that this God is angry at the same folks we’re angry at...
But this is not what Thomas sought. The hand of this angry God has no nail holes in it. This God knows no crucifixion. This angry and punishing God causes suffering. Jesus, with his wounds takes on the world’s suffering.
I’d love to be smug and say I don’t look for this proof - I don’t worship this angry God... but when bad things happen to people I don’t like, somewhere in the back of my mind I want to see the hand of God... How much more healthy to be like Thomas...
Some people see proof of God in unexpected rewards. I suspect many who have won the lottery have felt that they won not by chance alone, but by divine intervention. I know if I ever win the lottery I will thank God... and at some level I might suspect that God stuck a hand in that machine that picks the winning numbers... that the divine fix was in...
But again, this is not the God that Thomas was seeking to know. This God’s hands have no nail holes either. This is the hand of a God who rewards a few and forgets about the rest, rather than a God who died so that all might have abundant life.
Thomas is refreshingly direct about his doubts. He doesn’t require God to destroy his enemies or make him rich. He just needs to see the wounds. He needs to see the loving, sacrificing God who died for all... who wants to punish nobody... who extends grace to everybody.
Jesus does not seem too bothered by Thomas’s doubts. There is no condemnation is the way he talks to Thomas. He is very willing to show the wounds, to even have Thomas touch them. Everybody gets to look at the wounds. Do not doubt but believe. That’s what Jesus says.
Two things happen when Jesus does this. He relieves the disciples doubts and he fixes the wounds permanently in their memories. They can never remember Jesus without remembering that he was crucified... that he was wounded. Those nail holes and gashes will never be separated in their minds from Jesus.
That’s why I think this story is more about the wounds than the doubts. I think this story is Jesus way of saying to us, two millennia later, “remember I was crucified.” We can’t know Jesus without knowing the wounds. Jesus has managed to fix those nail holes and gashes in our minds as well.
The point in remembering the wounds is not sentimental. We are not meant to feel sorry for Jesus or for ourselves. There is not a trace of self-pity in Jesus in this story - or in any story for that matter.
The point in remembering the wounds in not to place blame; though clearly we Christians have been tempted, and have sometimes given into that temptation with horrible consequences, to blame somebody for wounding Jesus. The truth is we are all responsible for wounding Jesus. More importantly, Jesus’ wounds are for all of us. There is no guilt or blame in this story.
Remembering the wounds changes our entire relationship with God. Saint Paul said we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to some and foolishness to others. Our relationship to a crucified God can’t be rational and intellectual, because it doesn’t make sense. Our relationship to a crucified God can’t be based on demonstrations of great might, because a mighty God would not have been crucified.
When we want a God who will smite our enemies we only have to remember the nail holes in the hands. When we want a God who will make us rich, we only have bring the wounds to mind. When we think we know who God likes and who God hates, we have to consider the scourging. When we are indifferent to those who are starving, we have to call to mind the vinegar that was given to Jesus.
Jesus does not show the wounds to Thomas as an accusation. He makes no suggestion that Thomas or anyone else should feel bad because of his wounds.
The wounds remind us that Jesus is Lord and savior of the poor, the injured, the wounded, the sorrowful, the powerless, as well as everyone else. This is the God we worship. The wounds help us get on with living our baptized life. We can not know Jesus without knowing his wounds.
Brother Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
BCP – Easter 2 B - Sunday 23 April 2006
I’m not sure Thomas gets a particularly fair deal in history. For two millennia he has been, more or less, the poster child for doubt: Doubting Thomas - an archetype that has entered the mainstream psyche. All generations will call Mary blessed... and apparently all generations will call Thomas doubting... I’m thinking Thomas needed a better public relations plan...
This is one of those stories that we’ve heard so many times we almost don’t hear it at all anymore. We just hear the echo of it. The echo in my mind is of a belligerent Thomas confronting Jesus - show me the wounds or I won’t believe its you. And of a gentle Jesus showing him the wounds and then almost taunting him - you see and believe, more blessed are those who believe without seeing...
That, of course, isn’t really the story. When Jesus arrives at the home where the disciples are huddled the first thing he does is show everyone his hands and his feet. But Thomas is not there. So when Thomas says he needs to see the wounds, he’s just saying he needs to see what everyone else has already seen. But he doesn’t say this to Jesus. He says it to the other disciples.
When Thomas next meets Jesus, Jesus invites him to look at, to touch, the wounds. Jesus knows Thomas’s heart and knows that Thomas is dying to get a peek. And it seems as though Jesus is as interested in showing the wounds as Thomas is in seeing them.
What strikes me is that maybe doubt is not the point of the story. Maybe this is not a story about overcoming doubt or about having faith. I’m beginning to understand it as being a story about the wounds. The story of Wounded Jesus rather than of Doubting Thomas...
Doubt is no big deal. I have doubts. We all have doubts. It would be a bigger story if Thomas had no doubts. After all, he knew for a fact that Jesus was dead. He should have had a hard time believing Jesus was walking among them again in the flesh. Who in their right mind wouldn’t want some proof.
But what strange proof Thomas seems to want. Show me the puncture wounds, the stab wounds. Its strangely intimate and pretty gory all at the same time. Surely there are other more beautiful and appealing ways that Thomas could have had his doubts allayed.
Jesus does nothing to provide any alternatives to coming face to face, finger to gash, with the wounds. Surely Jesus could have given another sign, or just talked to them, or changed some water into wine... Instead he seems to be saying here I am, look at my wounds, look at my hands and my side.
But as I say, I’m beginning to understand that the wounds may be the central part of this story.
What if Thomas had not been so honest? What if he had said “I have no doubts... I don’t need proof. I have faith.” What if he lied?
Those doubts would still have been there and they would have worked on Thomas. One way or the other he would have been looking for proof. What type of proof might he have sought?
What are some of the ways we seek to prove that we know God?
Some people see proof of God in disasters. A hurricane strikes the Gulf Coast and the City of New Orleans is devastated. Some see this as proof of the hand of God. Not any old God, but a really angry God; and isn’t it convenient that this God is angry at the same folks we’re angry at...
But this is not what Thomas sought. The hand of this angry God has no nail holes in it. This God knows no crucifixion. This angry and punishing God causes suffering. Jesus, with his wounds takes on the world’s suffering.
I’d love to be smug and say I don’t look for this proof - I don’t worship this angry God... but when bad things happen to people I don’t like, somewhere in the back of my mind I want to see the hand of God... How much more healthy to be like Thomas...
Some people see proof of God in unexpected rewards. I suspect many who have won the lottery have felt that they won not by chance alone, but by divine intervention. I know if I ever win the lottery I will thank God... and at some level I might suspect that God stuck a hand in that machine that picks the winning numbers... that the divine fix was in...
But again, this is not the God that Thomas was seeking to know. This God’s hands have no nail holes either. This is the hand of a God who rewards a few and forgets about the rest, rather than a God who died so that all might have abundant life.
Thomas is refreshingly direct about his doubts. He doesn’t require God to destroy his enemies or make him rich. He just needs to see the wounds. He needs to see the loving, sacrificing God who died for all... who wants to punish nobody... who extends grace to everybody.
Jesus does not seem too bothered by Thomas’s doubts. There is no condemnation is the way he talks to Thomas. He is very willing to show the wounds, to even have Thomas touch them. Everybody gets to look at the wounds. Do not doubt but believe. That’s what Jesus says.
Two things happen when Jesus does this. He relieves the disciples doubts and he fixes the wounds permanently in their memories. They can never remember Jesus without remembering that he was crucified... that he was wounded. Those nail holes and gashes will never be separated in their minds from Jesus.
That’s why I think this story is more about the wounds than the doubts. I think this story is Jesus way of saying to us, two millennia later, “remember I was crucified.” We can’t know Jesus without knowing the wounds. Jesus has managed to fix those nail holes and gashes in our minds as well.
The point in remembering the wounds is not sentimental. We are not meant to feel sorry for Jesus or for ourselves. There is not a trace of self-pity in Jesus in this story - or in any story for that matter.
The point in remembering the wounds in not to place blame; though clearly we Christians have been tempted, and have sometimes given into that temptation with horrible consequences, to blame somebody for wounding Jesus. The truth is we are all responsible for wounding Jesus. More importantly, Jesus’ wounds are for all of us. There is no guilt or blame in this story.
Remembering the wounds changes our entire relationship with God. Saint Paul said we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to some and foolishness to others. Our relationship to a crucified God can’t be rational and intellectual, because it doesn’t make sense. Our relationship to a crucified God can’t be based on demonstrations of great might, because a mighty God would not have been crucified.
When we want a God who will smite our enemies we only have to remember the nail holes in the hands. When we want a God who will make us rich, we only have bring the wounds to mind. When we think we know who God likes and who God hates, we have to consider the scourging. When we are indifferent to those who are starving, we have to call to mind the vinegar that was given to Jesus.
Jesus does not show the wounds to Thomas as an accusation. He makes no suggestion that Thomas or anyone else should feel bad because of his wounds.
The wounds remind us that Jesus is Lord and savior of the poor, the injured, the wounded, the sorrowful, the powerless, as well as everyone else. This is the God we worship. The wounds help us get on with living our baptized life. We can not know Jesus without knowing his wounds.
Sunday, April 9, 2006
BCP - Good Friday C - 09 Apr 2006
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Brother Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
BCP – Good Friday C - Friday 09 April 2006
The week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday is quite a roller coaster of experience. Last Sunday things were going pretty well. Jesus makes the triumphant trip into Jerusalem - he doesn't even have to walk, he gets a Donkey to ride on.
And Easter Sunday causes the joy of Palm Sunday to pale in comparison. For there simply is no greater wonder, no greater joy, no greater promise of hope, than the promise of Easter. We are the resurrection people. This coming Sunday is at the very core of our lives as followers of Christ.
But here we are somewhere between the two. And for Jesus and his followers things have gone terribly wrong. Between the pinnacles, here we are in the very deepest of valleys.
Of course we know something about today that the followers at the actual event didn't know. We know that this is not the end of the story. We know about Easter - about the resurrection. They might have suspected - Jesus dropped a few hints along the way. But they didn't know what was coming next.
All they could have known is that just when things were going really well, just when Jesus was starting to receive the kind of royal recognition he deserved, just when they were making this triumphant ride into Jerusalem, their world was shattered. Their dream was destroyed. Their vision was obliterated. What despair, what inconceivable sorrow they must have known. We can't really know that feeling because we know the story does not end.
And so we are pulled in two directions - either glossing over the events of today as something we have to get through in order to get to Easter; or delving into the utter horror of the events - the cruelty, the gore, the inhumanity, the ugliness.
I have to confess I'm far more drawn to the former - I'm far more interested in getting on to Easter; getting on with life. And I think Mel Gibson in his current film "The Passion" is far more drawn to the latter; the violence and the gore. And much as I would love to congratulate myself and criticize Mr. Gibson, I have come to believe that the Gospel message is not complete without both intentions.
Without a realization of the shocking horror, the abject inhumanity, the depravity of which we are capable, the Gospel is just a bit bland. If I'm not all that bad then my salvation is not all that big a deal. But the reality is that there is no evil in the world, no darkness, no horror, that also doesn't have at least a little place in my heart. When we, as the crowd shout "crucify" it is utterly appropriate for me. I have to face full on the fact that I could have been part of that crowd. Worse still, like Peter, I could have denied my Lord. It is even possible that I could, like Judas, have been the betrayer. And to be really honest, I have to admit that there are times in my life when I have - and will - deny Christ, betray Christ, do my part to crucify Christ. That darkness - the whipping, the blood, the treachery - is part of the Gospel story and it is part of me. But thank God it is not the whole story.
The part of the story that most appeals to me - the forgiveness of sin, the building of God's kingdom, the just and brilliant Jerusalem where the gates are open in every direction, where there is no night, where all is good - the Gospel hope, is all the more dazzling given the darkness where we start.
So what do we do to avoid being drawn to the pure prurience of dwelling too much on the horror of the crucifixion while at the same time not denying the wanton ugliness.
For me, the powerful way to experience the events of today's Gospel is to try to put myself in the position of the disciples. What if all I knew today is that Jesus is crucified, dead, and buried? What if Christ died today, April 9, 2004? What if I didn't yet know about the resurrection that we will celebrate on April 11, 2004? What would happen in my life? What would I be afraid of losing? What might I think I had gained?
If Christ died today and didn't rise, my comfortable life here in a Christian Monastery, would be in doubt. Our grand Episcopal liturgical celebrations with great choirs, thundering pipe organs, beautiful vestments, sweet smelling incense, would all be rather pointless. Some of the finest pieces of architecture, of music, of art, would be stripped of meaning and future artists would not be inspired - in the true sense of that word.
You may be noticing a problem with my list (and perhaps the list you have been making in your own mind along with me...)... These are all nice things, but they are not of the essence of living out my baptismal covenant. They are not essential to being a Christian.
Who would I pray to? And what would I pray for if Christ died today and did not rise? This is a more essential set of questions - but honestly I already struggle with these questions. In fact if Christ died today and did not rise, I might find it a bit of a relief to no longer have to struggle with this pair of questions.
Would my life have purpose, meaning, and direction? Well I know people who have no particular belief in God who's lives have purpose, meaning, and direction. So I suppose my life could go on and be quite fulfilling if Christ died today and did not rise again. And I suppose this is some of what the disciples were pondering in the aftermath of the crucifixion - how to get on with their lives.
But what could not survive, at least for me, is the vision of the Gospel, of God's kingdom - in this world or the next - of salvation. I don't know what kingdom I would be building if Christ died today and did not rise. For me this is the question that is almost too hard to ask. What vision would I have for this world if Christ died today and did not rise?
Christ doesn't die and stay dead. The gospel can not be killed - by us or by anyone.
Today in the midst of horror and hope, sadness and joy, despair and elation... today might be a good day to take stock of what it means to be loved by Jesus and to love and to follow Jesus - the essential qualities, not the nice qualities.
Perhaps in that reflection we will find parts of our vision of Christ and our vision of our relationship with Christ that need to die and not resurrect so that we are more fully alive for the resurrected Christ.
And we will find visions of Christ and our relationship with Christ that are so essential, so powerful, so life-giving, that we really can't think what we would do if Christ were not alive in our lives. It is in the facing of death that we become most aware of life.
Lord Jesus, you are so present with us that we can sometimes take that presence for granted. In these next few days help us to be more keenly aware of you and of what you are calling forth in our lives so that we may be your resurrection people and the builders of your kingdom. Amen.
Brother Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
BCP – Good Friday C - Friday 09 April 2006
The week between Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday is quite a roller coaster of experience. Last Sunday things were going pretty well. Jesus makes the triumphant trip into Jerusalem - he doesn't even have to walk, he gets a Donkey to ride on.
And Easter Sunday causes the joy of Palm Sunday to pale in comparison. For there simply is no greater wonder, no greater joy, no greater promise of hope, than the promise of Easter. We are the resurrection people. This coming Sunday is at the very core of our lives as followers of Christ.
But here we are somewhere between the two. And for Jesus and his followers things have gone terribly wrong. Between the pinnacles, here we are in the very deepest of valleys.
Of course we know something about today that the followers at the actual event didn't know. We know that this is not the end of the story. We know about Easter - about the resurrection. They might have suspected - Jesus dropped a few hints along the way. But they didn't know what was coming next.
All they could have known is that just when things were going really well, just when Jesus was starting to receive the kind of royal recognition he deserved, just when they were making this triumphant ride into Jerusalem, their world was shattered. Their dream was destroyed. Their vision was obliterated. What despair, what inconceivable sorrow they must have known. We can't really know that feeling because we know the story does not end.
And so we are pulled in two directions - either glossing over the events of today as something we have to get through in order to get to Easter; or delving into the utter horror of the events - the cruelty, the gore, the inhumanity, the ugliness.
I have to confess I'm far more drawn to the former - I'm far more interested in getting on to Easter; getting on with life. And I think Mel Gibson in his current film "The Passion" is far more drawn to the latter; the violence and the gore. And much as I would love to congratulate myself and criticize Mr. Gibson, I have come to believe that the Gospel message is not complete without both intentions.
Without a realization of the shocking horror, the abject inhumanity, the depravity of which we are capable, the Gospel is just a bit bland. If I'm not all that bad then my salvation is not all that big a deal. But the reality is that there is no evil in the world, no darkness, no horror, that also doesn't have at least a little place in my heart. When we, as the crowd shout "crucify" it is utterly appropriate for me. I have to face full on the fact that I could have been part of that crowd. Worse still, like Peter, I could have denied my Lord. It is even possible that I could, like Judas, have been the betrayer. And to be really honest, I have to admit that there are times in my life when I have - and will - deny Christ, betray Christ, do my part to crucify Christ. That darkness - the whipping, the blood, the treachery - is part of the Gospel story and it is part of me. But thank God it is not the whole story.
The part of the story that most appeals to me - the forgiveness of sin, the building of God's kingdom, the just and brilliant Jerusalem where the gates are open in every direction, where there is no night, where all is good - the Gospel hope, is all the more dazzling given the darkness where we start.
So what do we do to avoid being drawn to the pure prurience of dwelling too much on the horror of the crucifixion while at the same time not denying the wanton ugliness.
For me, the powerful way to experience the events of today's Gospel is to try to put myself in the position of the disciples. What if all I knew today is that Jesus is crucified, dead, and buried? What if Christ died today, April 9, 2004? What if I didn't yet know about the resurrection that we will celebrate on April 11, 2004? What would happen in my life? What would I be afraid of losing? What might I think I had gained?
If Christ died today and didn't rise, my comfortable life here in a Christian Monastery, would be in doubt. Our grand Episcopal liturgical celebrations with great choirs, thundering pipe organs, beautiful vestments, sweet smelling incense, would all be rather pointless. Some of the finest pieces of architecture, of music, of art, would be stripped of meaning and future artists would not be inspired - in the true sense of that word.
You may be noticing a problem with my list (and perhaps the list you have been making in your own mind along with me...)... These are all nice things, but they are not of the essence of living out my baptismal covenant. They are not essential to being a Christian.
Who would I pray to? And what would I pray for if Christ died today and did not rise? This is a more essential set of questions - but honestly I already struggle with these questions. In fact if Christ died today and did not rise, I might find it a bit of a relief to no longer have to struggle with this pair of questions.
Would my life have purpose, meaning, and direction? Well I know people who have no particular belief in God who's lives have purpose, meaning, and direction. So I suppose my life could go on and be quite fulfilling if Christ died today and did not rise again. And I suppose this is some of what the disciples were pondering in the aftermath of the crucifixion - how to get on with their lives.
But what could not survive, at least for me, is the vision of the Gospel, of God's kingdom - in this world or the next - of salvation. I don't know what kingdom I would be building if Christ died today and did not rise. For me this is the question that is almost too hard to ask. What vision would I have for this world if Christ died today and did not rise?
Christ doesn't die and stay dead. The gospel can not be killed - by us or by anyone.
Today in the midst of horror and hope, sadness and joy, despair and elation... today might be a good day to take stock of what it means to be loved by Jesus and to love and to follow Jesus - the essential qualities, not the nice qualities.
Perhaps in that reflection we will find parts of our vision of Christ and our vision of our relationship with Christ that need to die and not resurrect so that we are more fully alive for the resurrected Christ.
And we will find visions of Christ and our relationship with Christ that are so essential, so powerful, so life-giving, that we really can't think what we would do if Christ were not alive in our lives. It is in the facing of death that we become most aware of life.
Lord Jesus, you are so present with us that we can sometimes take that presence for granted. In these next few days help us to be more keenly aware of you and of what you are calling forth in our lives so that we may be your resurrection people and the builders of your kingdom. Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)