BCP - Proper 12 C - 29 Jul 2007

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Mrs. Suzette L. Cayless, AHC
BCP – Proper 12 C – Sunday, July 29, 2007

Genesis 18:20-33
Colossians 2:6-15
Luke 11:1-13


A verse from the first lesson today:
“... but Abraham still stood before the Lord.” Genesis 18:22b
Let us look at the context of that verse.

At the beginning of Genesis chapter 17, the Lord appears to Abram and calls him into a covenant relationship. The writer notes in verse 3 “Then Abram fell on his face;”. Was this because of Abram’s awareness of God and his holiness? Was it his realization of the importance of the call? In chapter 18 the Lord appears to Abraham “as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day.” Was this appearance of the Lord to Abraham in the course of meditation? of reflection on his call? Abraham welcomes three strangers, offers hospitality, and hears the prediction of a child to be born to Sarah. Then follows the visit of the three men to Sodom and Gomorrah to carry out the destruction of the cities. And God shares with Abraham his intention as Abraham “still stood before the Lord.”

Abram “fell on his face;” “sat at the door of his tent;” “stood before the Lord.”
Movements in the life of prayer:

• fell on his face - a recognition of God, submission of the will to him.
• sat at the door of his tent - learning, sitting at God’s feet to reflect and grow in faith.
• stood before the Lord - interceding on behalf of others, standing and talking with God without fear and with perseverance.

When I was about nine or ten years old I learned to knit! An aunt, who was my godmother, taught me to do this. We did very simple things at first but went on to quite complicated items. I recall the day when I started to knit a pair of gloves. My father came home and I told him what I was doing. His comment was, “You are always starting something new but you never seem to finish anything.” That dampened my enthusiasm quite a bit! I don’t remember whether I ever finished that pair of gloves. Sir Francis Drake, the English sea captain who led the Armada in the defeat of Spain for Elizabeth I, is attributed with saying: “There must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory.”

Perseverance is a theme in today’s readings. Abraham stands before God and pleads for the righteous people who, he thinks, must be present amongst the wicked in those cities of the plains. “Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city ...” He argues his case and God agrees that if he finds fifty righteous in the city he will spare the whole place. Abraham does not give up. He continues pleading. “What if the number lacks five people?” And so it goes on ... suppose forty righteous are found? thirty? twenty? ten? At that point the Lord went his way and Abraham returned to his place. The perseverance of Abraham is the important thing here. He does not give up. His awareness of God, of the holiness, justice of God, his own trust in God, compel him to intercede for others.

In the Colossians reading, Paul urges his readers to live in Christ, reminding them that the old covenant has been superceded; that the legal demands of the law have been nailed to the cross. Through baptism they, and we, have been raised to new life and we are expected to live out all that this implies. Part of this new life is faithfulness in prayer and it is spelled out in the Gospel reading. Ask, seek, knock - never give up; always persist knowing that God is faithful and loves us.

Sometimes even righteous people can be mistaken where perseverance is concerned as we see in this story found in “Leaving Home” by Garrison Keillor:

‘In the Sanctified Brethren church, a tiny fundamentalist bunch who we were in, ... they were given to disputing small points of doctrine that to them seemed the very fulcrum of the faith. We were cursed with a surplus of scholars and a deficit of peacemakers, and so we tended to be divisive and split into factions. One dispute when I was a boy had to do with the question of hospitality toward those in error, whether kindness shown to one who holds false doctrine implicates you in his wrongdoing.

Uncle Al had family and friends on both sides of the so-called Cup of Cold Water debate, and it broke his heart. The dispute was really between two men, Brother Wm. Miller and Brother Jas. Johnson, who had dragged others into it, and so, one fine August day, Uncle Al tried to make peace between those two marbleheads and prevent a great deal of unhappiness for the rest of us. He arranged for them to meet at his and Aunt Flo’s one Sunday, a few Millerites and a few Johnsonians, not to discuss the hospitality-to-error doctrine but simply to enjoy a dinner of Aunt Flo’s famous fried chicken.

It took weeks to arrange. Uncle Al worked through an intermediary, Brother Fields, who had never shown hospitality to anyone, whether in error or not, and who therefore was neutral on the question. Finally, one Sunday, they arrived, in two cars, both Fords, the Brethren being united on the General Motors question. Out climbed, slowly, some gaunt flinty-eyed thin-lipped men in dark floppy suits and their plump obedient wives, and they came in the house and sat in awesome silence in the living room until the call to dinner, and they trooped in around the long dining-room table, extended with two leaves so they wouldn’t have to sit close, and the Millerites and Johnsonians bowed their heads in prayer.

Prayer was a delicate matter. Brethren were known to use even prayer before a meal as a platform, and so Al the peacemaker, concerned lest one brother take prayer and beat the others over the head with it, said, “Let us bow our heads in silent prayer, giving thanks for the meal,” and they bowed their heads and closed their eyes and - a long time passed; the old clock ticked on the bureau; a cat walked in and meowed and left; a child snickered and was stifled; cars went by; there were dry sniffs and throat-clearings; and soon it was clear that neither side wanted to stop before the other; they were seeing who could pray the longest.

Brother Miller peeked through his fingers at Brother Johnson, who was earnestly engaged in silent communion with the Lord, who agreed with him on so many things. His forehead almost touched the plate. So Brother Miller dove back into prayer and the other Brethren stayed under too, sneaking glances around the table to see if anyone else noticed how long it was. Minutes drifted by. Heads stayed bowed, nobody would come up. To stop praying might imply a weakness of faith.

Al said “Amen,” to offer them a way out of the deadlock, and said it again: “Amen.” Brother Miller looked up and saw Johnson still bowed, so he went back down just as Johnson put his periscope up and saw Brother Miller submerged, so down he went. It was becoming the longest table grace in history, it ground on and on and on, and then Aunt Flo slid her chair back, rose, went to the kitchen, and brought out the food that they were competing to see who could be more thankful for. She set the hay down where the goats could get it. Tears ran down Brother Johnson’s face. His eyes were clamped shut, and tears streamed down, and so was Brother Miller weeping.

It’s true what they say, that smell is the key that unlocks our deepest memories, and with their eyes closed, the smell of fried chicken and gravy made those men into boys again. It was years ago, they were fighting, and a mother’s voice from on high said, “You two stop it and get in here and have your dinners. Now. I mean it.” The blessed cornmeal crust and rapturous gravy brought the memory to mind, and the stony hearts of the two giants slowly melted; they raised their heads and filled their plates and slowly peace was made over that glorious chicken.’

Our intention in praying is as important as perseverance. We do not pray to demonstrate our own holiness or piety or endurance. Those three movements in prayer illustrated in the Abraham story are worth pondering. He “fell on his face,” - growing in awareness of God never ends, as long as we retain an attitude of humility and the desire to worship. He “sat at the door of his tent,” - learning more of the nature of God is open to us as we reflect and ponder on what we know and have experienced and keep seeking further truth. He “stood before the Lord,” - entering more faithfully into the action of interceding for the world and the needs of others is a call to all of us, perseverance being the key to doing it. God is faithful, but often he waits for our cooperation and for our perceptions as to what is required even if these are mistaken. God wants our participation, even while we are sinful human beings. A little further on in Genesis we read of Abraham pretending that Sarah is his sister to avoid a problem in Gerar but he continued to persevere on the journey to which he had been called. God desires our transformation so that we may live in Christ and ASK, SEEK, and KNOCK for ourselves, for others, and for the world.

Amen.

BCP - Proper 11 C - 22 Jul 2007

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park
Br. Robert James Magliula, n/OHC
BCP - Proper 11 C - Sunday 22 July 2007

Genesis 18:1-14
Colossians 1:21-29
Luke 10:38-42

Our readings today focus on relationships, primarily our relationship with God, and how that defines our relationships with ourselves and each other. Through the stories of Abraham & Sarah, Paul, and Martha & Mary, we get some surprising glimpses into ourselves.


(Christus in het huis van Martha en Maria) - Johannes Vermeer - c. 1654-1656 - oil on canvas - National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

Life in these last months has brought me to a deeper realization of just how poor we are in grasping the mutuality, the give and take of our relationship with God and how that impacts on our relationships to ourselves and to each other. The revelation of God in Christ is God-with-us. It's easy to loose sight of the “with”. The revelation of God in Christ is not God-above- us, nor God-instead-of –us, nor God-without-us. It is certainly not about us without God or us instead of God.

Scripture is full of clues that describe a creative partnership between divine and human, a mutual partnership between human response and divine indwelling. Paul in his letters describes us as “collaborators with God”, “fellow workers”, working together.

Most of us are more familiar with traditions that avoid the mystery of divine/human co-creative partnership. We tend to stress one side or the other. I don’t know why we have this tendency to think in terms of either/or instead of both/and. It may seem simpler on the surface, but its implications become much more compex in our psyches and in our lives.

There are two dominant theological traditions and spiritualities that flow from this either/or mentality into which many people try to squeeze themselves. The first is a Calvinistic approach that dwells on the majesty, the totality of God’s will and power. All that is good in life comes from God. All that is flawed comes from humanity. God plans and we accommodate ourselves to the pre-ordained will of God, which is worked out to the smallest detail. The spirituality is one of submission and obedience.

The other tradition is a kind of humanism that says that God has created us to live autonomously in the world. God is content to be an onlooker as we struggle through life. God is seen as the guardian of abstract values, which we are expected to make concrete in our lives.

So God either controls or abandons us. Is it a wonder that people shrink from approaching God. So many are conditioned to believe that the closer to God they come, the more God will take over their life, absorb their freedom, and overwhelm their individuality.

The Christian mystery says something very different. I find scholastic and academic theologians of little help in breaking this bind. The mystics come closer to pointing the way. Their language is one of passion. They are able to name desire. Their lives underline the profound truth that we are the desire of God’s heart and that God is the deepest desire of ours. We need to leave behind images of control, submission, and abandonment. We would do better to consider the creative God who delights in our co-creativity, a spontaneous God who delights in our spontaneity, a free God who intends us to be free and yet also intends us to be in intimacy.

We have all had experiences in life, which leave us grasping for meaning. A key to the spirituality of our co- creativity with God is that we work with God to find or make meaning in whatever situation or circumstance we face. Think of prayer as us turning to God and God to us and asking each other what we will make of the specifics we find ourselves confronted by. Prayer is an exploring together of the meaning to be fashioned. We make meaning in our lives together with God. God will not decide for us and tell us in advance. We all want the answer, the key, but Christ did not take on our flesh in order to tell us what to do. His incarnation is our invitation to become more fully human and to participate more deeply in this divine/human mystery that is revealed in him. Meaning is made not by God and handed to us, nor is it made by us and offered to God, but rather by us and God together in a wonderful, unique, and intimate process.

Our lessons today remind us of God’s ability to surprise us by colloborating with us in making new meaning. In the case of Abraham and Sarah, to find new life where they thought there was none. For Paul it was the realization born of his own struggles and limitations, that we can only work with what we have----and that includes our imperfections. That is the only road toward wholeness. Martha and Mary remind us that meaning is to be found in our daily lives and routines-----very Benedictine! Our need is to stay focused on Christ as we do what needs to be done. Martha was not being criticized for being responsible and active---but for being distracted---the Greek means literally, “to be pulled in many directions.” If Christ is our center, then we can venture out focused and nourished to do whatever is set before us.

God meets us exactly where we are, invites us to use our unique gifts to become more focused on the transforming power of love, and challenges us to grow deeper, stronger, and more faithful in love with God and each other.
+Amen.

BCP - Proper 10 C - 15 Jul 2007

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
BCP - Proper 10 C – Sunday 15 July 2007

Deuteronomy 30: 9-14
Colossians 1: 1-14
Luke 10: 25-37

Picture: "The Good Samaritan" by Luca Giordano,Neapolitan painter, 1634-1705, active in Italy and Spain. Musee des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, France.

*****

May your good news, O Jesus,
Impel our hearts to flow with love,
For you, and for our neighbor. Amen.

*****

The Evangelist Luke gives us one of the richest and most beautiful passages of the Gospel here. It encompasses (a) the Golden Commandment, (b) one of the most memorable parables of the Gospel and (c) a fireworks display of challenge and riposte debating.

Let me put Jesus’ encounter with the lawyer and the so-called “Good Samaritan” parable into context as we re-visit what Jesus is teaching us today.

Once more, Jesus is surrounded by a crowd. The Seventy have just returned with amazing accounts of successful preaching, healing and lots of baptizing throughout the region. Not everyone in the crowd is rejoicing with Jesus and his friends, though.

Jesus is teaching things that don’t please too many of his fellow Pharisees. Yes, he was probably a Pharisee himself; Jesus was born and bred in that tradition, he demonstrates the skills of that caste and he is reported to wear some of their signature vestments (the fringed robe, for instance).

Many Pharisees feel they have to stop the ascent of this unorthodox teacher. So, many of them engage him into a well-honed exercise of gauging whose honor trumps the other’s. The one who wins the challenge and riposte match has gained honor; the one who loses sees his honor diminished. If Jesus’ honor is publicly diminished often enough, the offended Pharisees think his teaching will go away or at least will become less and less attractive to the populace.

One Pharisee lawyer (or scribe) decides this public moment is a good one to try to shame Jesus; and he issues a challenge. The challenge takes the form of a question. “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

In Jesus’ time, a direct question in public like this one is recognized by all present as a challenge. Rather than answering the lawyer’s question, Jesus retorts with another question. He appeals to the lawyer’s knowledge of the law and his ability to read. This reference to the ability to read may be an extra pique in the style of “If you can read, you should know this one”.

Jesus’ retort is strong enough that the lawyer feels complied to answer directly in order to re-establish his credibility. He combines quotes from Deuteronomy (6:5) and from Leviticus (19:18) into a single statement of the two highest commandments of the Law.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”
In doing this, he shows that he knows his stuff. Jesus congratulates him as a satisfied teacher: “You answered correctly. Do this and you will live.” Do I discern some ironic condescension in our Lord’s comment here?

I want to point out that, in his conclusion, Jesus does not say “…and you will live eternally”. That was the lawyer’s question, wasn’t it? It rather seems to me that Jesus’ answer elicits the vision of fullness of life. “Do this and you will live fully.”

Our lawyer is discomfited but he doesn’t give up yet. After all, his honor is at stake. He has one last card to play. Rabbinical discourse has since the time of Leviticus tried to determine who is on the “in” and who is on the “out” of this “neighbor” designation.
Many traditional interpretations of the time would support a restrictive understanding of “neighbor”. It would cover one’s kindred and the kindred of fellow Israelites. Some would even include sojourners, or resident aliens – that’s great for a green card holder like me: maybe I would have made it into the neighbor category.

So our Pharisee lawyer thinks he can re-establish his street cred by making Jesus stump on the delimitation of who’s our neighbor. By now, Jesus could ignore his thwarted challenger and move on. But he chooses to take this up and turns it into another teaching opportunity.

*****

And Jesus continues to turn the heat on his listeners by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is difficult for us to re-discover how shocking this parable must have been to its hearers. The whole parable plays on the concept of purity; who is clean and unclean, who is pure and impure. No one wanted to live and interact with people considered impure. Doing so made one impure and required difficult and onerous ritual cleansing to regain one’s status.

In Jesus’ time, Jews considered Samaritans unclean and would not deal with them. Blood and dead bodies were also one of the many, many things deemed unclean.

But let’s get back to the road from Jerusalem to Jericho; it dropped over 3400 feet over about 15 miles of hilly terrain. It winded through narrow passages much beloved of highway bandits (usually disenfranchised farmers and farmhands). These highway bandits ambushed travelers without escort or travelers who might still be on the road as the daylight dwindled. One tactic for ambushing travelers was to put a decoy injured person on the road.

The unfortunate traveler is ambushed, stripped, robbed, beaten and left unconscious on the road. Such as he is, he has become untouchable to most Jews: he is naked and therefore his social status cannot be determined (whether a Jew or not, of what rank); he is bloody and unconscious on the ground (his exposed blood makes him unclean and his being unconscious makes him appear dead - yet another source of impurity).

The priest and the Levite both make the decision that this unfortunate soul is more trouble than is worth expending. Both may be wary of the potential ambush. The priest particularly may be concerned that touching the man would make him unclean and would either make him unsuitable for the temple service he is going to Jerusalem for or would rob him of the sanctity of coming back from such holy service. In his mind, the liturgical service of God takes precedence over charity. In either case, the priest and the Levite steer clear of getting close enough to the man to ascertain his health and social status.

Our Samaritan traveler on the other hand throws caution to the wind and approaches the injured man close enough to have compassion (the word used in Greek denotes a gut-instinct to help and care).

Coming close is essential; he “came near him” says the text. It reminds me of Moses being addressed by God only when he has turned his attention to the burning bush. It seems that getting closer and paying attention is paramount in our being able to relating to God. And remember, that’s what’s going on here; loving our neighbor is loving God. Coming close is important; it is also what we do in meditation and prayer; we come closer and pay attention to God.

It is in this initial movement of attention that the Samaritan finds all the necessary humanity to deal with the injured man. He draws from his own resources to clean, bandage, transport and put up the man at the inn.
The fact that he’s good for credit at the inn may indicate a trader who travels the road regularly; trading is yet another despised occupation in the purity laws. Also, Jews in good standing would not stay at public inns but stay with kindred.
So our Samaritan is marginal to Jewish society in nearly all manners of looking at it. It is not impossible, that the injured traveler coming to his senses might partly resent the impurity that befell him in being cared for by a Samaritan.
Yet that’s only one more risk the Samaritan took to help his neighbor.

And this is where Jesus delivers the sting of this parable: “Which one of these three (that is the priest, the Levite and the Samaritan) – Which one of these three turned out to be a neighbor to the one who fell among bandits?”

If your life depended on their help, who would you consider the neighbor worthy of your love? Anyone? Everyone? Well, there’s our program as Christians; that is whom we are to be open to love, otherwise our love of God risks weighing as much as the words that describe that love.

*****

Paraphrasing some of the scripture we heard today, let us pray:

O God, you love us irrepressibly, regardless of what we say or do. May your love impel us to lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as we bear fruit in every good work and as we grow in the knowledge of You, our Beloved.

Help us to recognize that our hope is in the love of our neighbor; the love we receive and the love we give. You taught us to recognize our neighbor in every one who might help us in our time of dire need. The Samaritan traveler, silenced objections to good work, went to his fellow man, had compassion on him and helped him.

May we go and do likewise. Amen.

BCP - Proper 9 C - 08 Jul 2007

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve, n/OHC
BCP - Proper 9 C - Sunday 08 July 2007

Isaiah 66:10-16
Galatians 6:(1-10)14-18
Luke 10:1-12,16-20

I am a self-confessed heavy packer; going on a trip is an opportunity to channel my inner Boy Scout and be prepared for all contingencies. If in any scenario I could possibly use something, odds are I’ll toss it in the suitcase. During years of youth retreats, camping trips, mission trips, and pilgrimages, I honed the fine art of packing. Preparing to go to Africa last January threw me into an existential crisis: two bags for five months! What should I take? What would I need? What was important? What had to be left?

What is this compulsion about? At one level, if for some reason I need 8 batteries or 50 Kleenex tissues or 5 pens, I’m ready. At a deeper level, it is about the desire to be safe and self-sufficient, in control and attached to a part of my material world to assure me in the illusion that I can be protected from the inevitable and unavoidable hazards and crises of life. It is stuff as the weapon in the battle against discomfort and dependence. For the Lord to say to his idealistic and eager missionaries “carry no purse, no bag, no sandals…” strikes me as highly impractical. Just what do you think you’re going to do if you get hungry or thirsty or if the sandals you’re wearing get a hole in them or the camera’s batteries start to die? Jesus would make a lousy Boy Scout!

This Gospel is about packing, however; packing for the journey of life in community, in the kingdom, as sent out ones. These seventy are getting ready for a mission into the unknown and unknowable - into acceptance and rejection, hope and danger, community and enmity, fields ripe and not so ripe. Opposition, struggle, and hardship live alongside healing, joy, peace, and the overpowering of evil with good. Our Lord calls his charges laborers and sheep; an invitation to become the lowest of the low in the social structure. Whether they felt adequate or not, prepared or not, confident or not, they put themselves out there in the raw and sometimes blind trust of faith, remembering they were not alone. How did they pack for a journey like that? They didn’t. They were to leave the stuff at home; the purse, the bag, the sandals - all of it.

In the first century part of how you communicated who you were, part of how you revealed and reinforced your place in the strict hierarchy of the culture was by what you wore and what you carried; purses, bags, and sandals were signs and symbols of status, position, and power. They are singled out here because to leave them was more than not having supplies, it was to refuse to participate in a game of labeling who’s important and who’s insignificant and to divest oneself of the message the stuff conveyed. Jesus does not allow them to travel in the safety and self-sufficiency of their material resources. He asks them to take each step in the promise and assurance of the kingdom and its new life.

Luggage couldn’t be less important. In fact, not packing is the preparation. They were not to command attention and respect, not to show off their status or power - mainly because they didn’t have any by the culture’s standards. These missionaries had to learn that no position, no tool, no skill of their own by itself was bringing the kingdom. It was only God working through them and providing their needs, and only as they became open to it, that God’s rule would become real.

This is a different kind of evangelism. Instead of a system, a list, a method, a technique, a program, these seventy are to offer their vulnerable and dependent selves to whoever will receive them. Jesus in effect says to them: your empty hands are your witness. Your growling stomach and parched lips and dusty feet and sleepless eyes are your message. Their need, humility, healing, community and willingness to accept the care given to them by the other as they care in return is the proclamation. This is real evangelism - presence, hospitality, peace, and an openness to listen and respond to the new and unexpected.

What about us? How would this commission speak to us here this morning? In preparing for our journey, our work is to make hard decisions about what we have, what we take, what we leave behind, and what we bring back home. We are called to let go and become empty, open, and defenseless. In responding we must face the inner, hidden baggage that each of us carries in our hearts. God works through our innate poverty, continuously filling the emptiness we give as the offering of ourselves. Poverty of spirit breaks through our masks of pretense and gets to transparency and reality. Brennan Manning has said “I am convinced that without a gut-level experience of our profound spiritual emptiness, it is not possible to encounter the living God.”

We’ve understood formation backwards. We’ve made it about what we do rather than about what God does in and through us. It is what feels the least spiritual - our longing, our hunger, our darkness, our inadequacy, our desperation that God wants and uses. Whatever inhibits or blocks us from connecting with each other, whatever that bag or purse is in our lives, has to be left behind in order to experience our emptiness and in that emptiness to offer ourselves to each other. We’re conditioned to believe that we are what we do and we are what we have. And that if we want to be someone else we simply do different things and buy different stuff. So to leave our bags - the masks we hide behind and the fantasies we live in to protect us is the radical and difficult journey of a lifetime.

Once we’ve begun to be prepared, we can see the harvest. It’s hard to gather crops if our bags are already full. If we are grasping our security and loaded down with bags of our own egos and agendas, we will not have room for gathering the new growth into the kingdom. And gather is what we are commissioned to do. Gathering is often the last thing we want to do. We have meetings about the harvest, committees designed to study and examine the harvest, retreats about how to harvest, we’ve written books and preached sermons about the importance of laboring in the fields, we can argue about whose method of gathering is better and how we can improve efficiency and effectiveness, but are we willing to get dirty in the fields doing the work of gathering connection, trust, peace, and compassion? Do we not at least sometimes believe that we’re excused, that getting in the dirt is somehow beneath us, that we could be more effective as harvest analyzers rather than laborers in the hot sun? What is in your bag? The invitation is to march empty-handed into the fields of a needy and ready world - offering no agenda but to be present and serve, no prejudice but that God’s peace is offered to all, no security but what is granted in the power of promise.

It is fortuitous that this Gospel comes as associates of the monastery have gathered this weekend to explore ways they can shape and renew their commitments to us and us to them. This Gospel reminds us of the urgency of the harvest and the importance of our willingness to look at new possibilities beyond what has been, beyond the routine, beyond the status quo. We must not keep quiet. We cannot stand still. We must not keep clinging to what does not give us real life. The world is ready, even desperate for our good news - that there is an alternative to being merely what we do and what we own, that it is possible in our media-saturated individualistic culture to hold up the power of community, of silence, of listening to God and each other, of being still long enough to hear the voice of welcome and healing and joy. We must challenge ourselves and then the church to live out our covenant with each other. We can reap a harvest beyond our imagining if we pray, drop our bags, roll up our sleeves, and get to work. The road ahead is clearly seen as we gather at the Lord’s Table and by receiving his Body and Blood publicly say that we throw in our lot with freedom, with being for others, with a hope and a future. It’s time to pack. What do you have, what will you take, what will you leave behind, what will you bring back home?

BCP - Proper 8 C - 01 Jul 2007

Mount Calvary Monastery, Santa Barbara, CA
Br. Roy Parker, OHC
Proper 8 Year C, Sunday 01 July 2007

1 Kings 19:15-16, 19-21
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Luke 9: 51-62

The gospel passage begins with an incident of a Samaritan village which refuses to receive Jesus because they saw that his intention was to proceed to Jerusalem. One could call this an early incident of Middle Eastern sectarian rivalry. James’ and John’s proposal of fire from heaven alludes to a similar incident in the life of Elijah: The king sent to Elijah a captain of fifty with his fifty men. He went up to Elijah, who was sitting on the top of a hill, and said to him, “O man of God, the king says, ‘Come down.’” But Elijah answered the captain of fifty, “If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty.” Then fire came down from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty. This is repeated with another detachment of fifty soldiers, just to drive the point home. Jesus makes it clear that he’s playing by different rules when he rebukes the disciples in an alternate reading of the text, “You do not know what spirit you are of, for the Son of Man has not come to destroy the lives of human beings but to save them.”

The rebuke is a correction of the disciples who do not yet comprehend what his mission is about. He refuses to be identified with Elijah as the fiery reformer. He refuses to have anything to do with this sort of reaction of human beings, even when they are hostile to him. In effect, he is exemplifying a teaching of the sermon on the plain. “Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, offer the other as well. If someone would take your cloak from you, do not hinder the taking of your tunic as well.” Rather than understanding his mission as that of a fiery reformer of the last days, Jesus sees his role as the embodiment of the divine blessings promised to be shed on the unfortunate of human society by Isaiah. John the Baptizer initially regarded Jesus as one who would further what he had begun, “someone more powerful than I,” the “One who is to come.” Jesus now makes it clear that he carries no axe or winnowing fan, cleans no eschatological threshing-floor, and burns no chaff. Instead, he cures, frees, resuscitates; he cares for the blind, cripples, lepers, deaf, and even the dead; and he preaches God’s good news to the poor.

The gospel passage continues with some instructional vignettes for would-be followers of Jesus, pretty much to the effect that adherence and devotion to him is not at all a good retirement plan. “Foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” My teachers have interpreted this to mean that the holiness and character of Jesus were such as to cause him to be, inevitably, extruded from society. Then there are the, frankly, impossible sayings which state that a follower’s service to the Kingdom of God overrules such works of mercy as the paying of due respect to one’s ancestor, burial of one’s father, and the bidding of farewell to one’s kin and friends. I am inclined to place these latter two in the category of the so-called Semitisms uttered by Jesus which make the point by their extreme way of putting it. Elsewhere in this gospel Jesus says of the cost of discipleship,”Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” I am given to understand that this Semitic style of language rather has to do with preference than despite, which would be consonant with the character of Jesus already described. In other words, Whoever comes to me and does not prefer me to father and mother, does not prefer me to wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and does not prefer me even to life itself, cannot be my disciple. One might be reminded of the devotion of Rumi to his teacher whose eventual going away from him produced the body of love poetry flowing from Rumi’s grief of the loss.

Our story is in part about the conversion of heart and expectation in the disciple, about entering the school of discipleship with a certain set of expectations, obviously, and discovering that somewhere along the line our heart and expectations, perforce, become other than when we began, and probably detected rather by others than ourselves who may tell us that we seem much happier than we used to be.

It’s sort of like how one acquires a black belt in martial arts. You may think that a black belt is a badge of master rank in martial arts, bestowed at the conclusion of years of practice with a teacher. Well, yes and no. Originally the black belt was the condition gained by a student’s fabric belt which became black through years of hanging around the practice hall with what that entailed of learning the moves, cleaning the premises and waiting on the teacher. This is not a bad analogy of Christian discipleship, a lifetime of learning the moves, cleaning the premises and waiting on the teacher. In this case we discover unimagined shades of blackness in our belt which has gone from off-white to gray, to blue-black, to midnight black, to, my heavens, who knows what. In the process it may seem that our heart is being plunged into something like darkness, being wrapped around with a kind of black belt, but so long as it’s God’s darkness, God’s blackness, it’s a band of love and healing, In the process our heart is going from, relatively speaking, stone to something else, thank God, whose destiny is not for us to fathom. It is enough for you and I to continue hanging around the practice hall, perfecting the moves, cleaning the premises and waiting on the teacher.