Pentecost B - May 27, 2012

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Andrew Colquhoun, OHC
Pentecost B - Sunday, May 29, 2012



Acts 2:1-21
Romans 8:22-27
John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Flower buds on Pentecost's Eve
like flames of the Holy Spirit hovering in Creation
Picture by Marie-Noelle Del Alamo
For more of her recent Holy Cross Monastery shots, visit her slideshow

Back in 1970 I was minister in North Carolina.  The congregation had a good number of families with children and we had a great time in Sunday School. Particularly with the K through 3 group – ages that still delight and surprise me. One night at a Church supper we lost the kids!  I led the hunt and we found them hiding in a room, giggling and terrified at the same time as only children can pull off.  Finally we got the story – they were afraid of the Holy Ghost!!

A little teaching and a lot of ice cream soon sorted that out.
But I’ve never really forgotten that.  I can still see the delightful fear and sense the delicious tremors.  And I’m sorry to realize that I got them over it.  Now I’m sure it’s humdrum for them as it has become for most of us.

The Holy Spirit is a conundrum for most of God’s people.  The Father we can picture; the Son we can imagine.  But the Spirit is elusive – an enigma.  And so we either ignore her or go overboard and claim that the manifestations of the Spirit are the sole proof of faith as though the Spirit were the magician of the Trinity  – you know, unless you speak in tongues you’re not quite there yet. We’ve distorted the Spirit, I fear, as we try to understand.  We have boxed in the Spirit to suit ourselves.

But remember Paul.  I love his description of the Spirit as the sighing prayer of God within us – uttering the longings and mystery of love until it permeates the whole longing creation.   No prescription or proposition can capture that wonder and mystery.

How many images of the Spirit capture that terror that awe brings!   Wind, fire, movement in the darkness, sounds and voices, the never quiet dove cooing, cooing; and in the Celtic tradition – the Wild Goose – never tamed, driving on and on through storm over huge distances, on and on.  Never settling forever but driving on and on again.

Fascination and the glamour of mystery – never controlled, never controlling but always offering change and challenge – leading mysteriously into darkness to find light. That’s the Holy Spirit.

Suzanne Guthrie quotes in her meditations for this Sunday from Eliot’s Little Gidding:

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
    Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
    To be redeemed from fire by fire.

From Suzanne's blog At the Edge of the Enclosure

In our anxiety we work hard to tame the Spirit – reduce the Spirit to a warm feeling; a benevolent guide that will help us decide what job to take, what decision to make.  When we get along well, it’s that Sweet, sweet Spirit at work.  When we’re discomfited we wonder why God has left us in confusion or distress… never understanding that often confusion and anxiety are the way to truth.

We want the Spirit to pull us back into our dream of what used to be – for my generation, it’s back to the fifties.   Some of you want the sixties and seventies – never today – always back to Eden, the pristine garden.

And yet, I don’t believe in Scripture that the Spirit ever moves that way. It seems to me that always God is pointing us further and deeper into a new way.

Eliot continues:

Who then devised the torment?  Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
    We only live, only suspire
    Consumed by either fire or fire.

I do believe my little friends of so many years ago were more perceptive than we jaded adults are.

Pray for the Holy Spirit to be among us, within us – and then stand back.  All these gifts of the Spirit will lead us not to tranquility or comfort but into love.  And,

Love must act, as light must shine and fire must burn.

From the Rule of James Otis Sargent Huntington,  founder of the Order of the Holy Cross

Easter 7 B - May 20, 2012

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br.  James Michael Dowd , OHC
Easter 7 B - Sunday, May 22, 2012



Acts 1:15-17, 21-26
1 John 5:9-13
John 17: 6-19

Ascensiontide

In his Rule, St. Benedict tells us that the “life of a monk ought to be a continuous Lent.”  I think we can all agree that for those of us who are Anglican Benedictines, that's just a wee bit dreary.  While I take the Rule of Benedict quite seriously, and have found much in it to edify, teach, and guide me – this particular passage simply does not. Now, in the very next verse, Benedict goes on to say, referring to that continuous Lent, that “few, however, have the strength for this” and I am willing to accept the fact that I may be one of those very monks Benedict was talking about.

But I have another reason for not wanting the spirituality of Lent to be the sole focus of my life, because I think the very essence of a monk's life is best appreciated in two other liturgical seasons of the year: those of Advent, and that which we are in the midst of, Ascensiontide.  Both seasons are about learning to “wait for the Lord,” in the case of Advent, waiting for the Lord's coming, and in the case of Ascensiontide, waiting for the Holy Spirit.  I think that very stance of “waiting for the Lord” is the stance a monk must take as he lives, day by day, more deeply into his vocation.

The community has a good friend, Suzanne Guthrie, and she and I were exchanging emails this week regarding Ascensiontide, and she wrote that she thinks the “practice” of Ascensiontide is the most important “practice” we can engage in as Christians.  That resonated with me a great deal – and as I study more and more of the monastic tradition, I find that idea to have resonated with much of the tradition as well.

The Liturgical Calendar always gives us a strong indication as to those feasts, concepts, and religious ideas, we should take especially seriously.  The Advent/Christmas cycle is an obvious one, as is the Lent/Easter cycle.  This period of Ascensiontide often gets lumped into Eastertide, but it really is a separate season – one that is unique and has a great deal to teach us.

So, first of all, the question might be asked, what is Ascensiontide?  On its simplest level, it is a ten day period between Ascension Thursday and the Feast of Pentecost.  It is that period that we observe liturgically as the time from when Jesus was taken to heaven and before the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples.  It is also, Bernard of Clairvaux tells us, the “consummation and the fulfillment of the other liturgical feasts” and the perfect ending of the Son of God's entire journey.”  That is a very strong statement for a liturgical feast and season that we often barely notice.

So, why was Bernard so caught up in the celebration of Ascensiontide?  In another sermon on the subject, Bernard asks: “Would anyone have presumed even to yearn for an ascension to heaven if [Christ] who had descended does not ascend before us?  He goes on to say that “surely we are all eager for ascent, we all crave exaltation.  We are noble creatures and [have] greatness of soul; for that reason, we have a natural urge to long for the heights.”  He says that “to ascend to heaven, you must first lift yourself above yourself.”

So if Ascensiontide is to lift ourselves above ourselves, then how do we practice that, how do we do that?  It seems to me that we have a fine example in the Acts of the Apostles in both the reading we heard this morning and that which immediately precedes it.  After the Ascension the eleven remaining apostles return to Jerusalem and head to the Upper Room, where the Last Supper had taken place and were joined by the women who accompanied them, the Virgin Mary and the rest of Jesus' family and there, they waited, devoting themselves to “constant prayer.”

Now, what Luke gives us, both at the end of his Gospel, and here at the beginning of Acts, is what a model community of faithful disciples will do.  They will proceed, he says in the Gospel, with “great joy” and will “constantly pray.”  And that is what “waiting for the Lord” is all about.

Now the idea of “waiting” can be excruciatingly painful for people in our contemporary era.  We are a people who want what we think we want instantly.  In fact, if we could have had it a minute ago – that would have been even better.  But that is not what “waiting for the Lord” is about.  “Waiting for the Lord” is a way to be in constant prayer.  It is a particular stance that is simultaneously confident and humble.  The confidence is where the joy comes from.  There is hope, there is love, there is eternity - and the Ascension is the fulfillment of the path that Jesus shows us over the course of his lifetime to that hope, to that love and to that eternity.  The humility is the prayer piece and that prayer is to help us learn to be present to that hope, that love, that eternity.  And we are humble about this, because we know we cannot get there on our own.

The point of the Ascension is not that maybe one day we will achieve that hope, love and eternity.  No, the point is that we already have achieved it. Hope is present right here, right now.  Love is all about us. Eternity has already begun.  Waiting for the Lord is growing in our understanding of this idea.

At the Ascension, Jesus is lifted up to his throne in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Think back on where Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven resides.  It is near, it is within you.  At the fulfillment of his kenosis, his complete and utter emptying – with his Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection, Jesus Ascends to his throne in heaven – located at the center of your being – your heart.

And that leads me back to an even more ancient monastic authority than Bernard, and directly to St. Isaac of Syria who urged each of us to:

Enter eagerly into the treasure house
that is within you.
And you will see the things that are in heaven,
for there is but one single entry to them both.
The ladder that leads to the Kingdom
is hidden within your soul.
Dive into yourself and in your soul
and you will discover the stairs
by which to ascend.

But here is the trick: entering into the treasure house within in and diving into your soul can, misunderstood, lead to a very narcissistic existence, a particular problem in our current culture.  The diving into oneself that Issac of Syria is talking about is a diving in that is a complete  kenosis, a complete emptying of ourselves, as Jesus emptied himself.  So if there is someone to forgive, forgive them.  If there is something to repent, ask forgiveness.  If there is someone to be fed, feed them.  If there is someone who mourns, comfort them.  That, done throughout every day of your life, is the process of kenosis, the process of emptying.  A process of being completely God-centered.

And that gets me to our Gospel reading today.  Jesus, praying to his Father, says:

All mine are yours, and yours are mine;
and I have been glorified in them.
And now I am no longer in the world
but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.
Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me,
so that they may be one, as we are one.

This is what Isaac of Syria was talking about I think.  The unity and oneness of God has been extended to humanity by the Son of God's complete emptying of himself and by his glorification in the Kingdom of Heaven, residing right here in each of our hearts.  His making us a part of the Body of Christ, extends that unity of God to include each one of us.  Within and among us, we are already living in the Kingdom of Heaven. Eternity, as I have said, has already begun.

And if you accept that the Kingdom of Heaven is as near as your breath, as integral to your being as the beating of your heart, then you must accept that this is true of each of your brothers and sisters as well.

And if that is true, it calls to us to replace a life of violence with a life of nonviolence, a life of greed with a life of feeding the hungry and housing the homeless, a life of isolation with a life of integration into community.

Ascension is not something to be achieved, it is something to lived.  Ascensiontide is that period of reflection that helps us to dive deeper into our souls and to ascend to the oneness of God that Jesus prayed for in the Holy Spirit.  This Ascensiontide is our time, a time to become more fully aware of the greatness of our souls,  a time of eternity,  a time for ascension.

AMEN.

Easter 5 B - May 6, 2012

Saint Andrew's, New Paltz, NY
Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
Easter 5 B – Sunday, May 6, 2012


Acts 8:26-40
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8

Today’s Good News is that God’s salvation is on offer to all.  God’s redemption and love is radically inclusive.  It is  inclusive to a point that can still shock even weathered Christians.

Let us seize the offer God makes to us and let’s share it as broadly as possible.  In God, there is more than enough liberation and love for everybody.

I have chosen to talk to you about our reading from the Acts of the Apostles, today.  The one that describes the encounter between the deacon Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch.

In this passage, Philip finds himself riding the promptings of the Holy Spirit to offer God’s salvation well beyond the boundaries of what judaic propriety would have advised.

And the Ethiopian eunuch seizes the offer; without dithering, and with joy.

*****

Today’s Philip is not be mistaken with Philip the Apostle, found in the Gospels.  The Philip we are reading about today is one of Seven Deacons appointed by the early church to take care of hellenists who were increasingly joining the Jesus movement. 

Hellenist widows were apparently too often bypassed in the distribution of food amongst the community.  Seven deacons were chosen to ensure everyone in the community was fairly served.  So from the beginning, Philip’s mission seems to have been to help those who were getting a raw deal. 

*****

Philip was a great choice for deacon.  He is keenly attuned to the Holy Spirit and readily responds to it when prompted.  Even today, church hierarchies can find people like Philip cumbersome to deal with... but lucky congregations cherish them.

In my vocation as a Benedictine monk, we call Philip’s readiness “obedience.”  We, Benedictines, understand obedience as the ability:
- to listen with the ear of our heart for what God is conveying in the texture of our life,
- and to respond to God by the being and the doing of our everyday life.

Philip is responsive to the action of the Spirit in him and in others.  He is responsive to the point that he is transported by the Spirit.  He is moved both literally and emotionally it seems.  That movement of the spirit in each of our lives can be very real even if we can’t capture it on camera.

*****

Our other protagonist today is an Ethiopian eunuch of great eagerness.  This man really is an outlier in terms of whom the Jews would have wanted to see join judaism.  To sum it up: he is a black - foreign - servant - wannabe jew with a questionable sexual identity. 

There also is a great deal we can project on that man and each of those projections are fine, as long as we allow ourselves to question our projections and stay open to hearing others’ projections too.

Is this eunuch an image of African-Americans’ rich and complicated relationship with Christianity?  Does he represent non-dominant sexual identity groups (women, LGBT people, transgender folk)?  Does he identify as a victim of physical and sexual abuse?

Whatever our projections may be, we can’t oversimplify either. 

This eunuch is also a highly educated official.  He can read the prophet Isaiah in the greek text and is one of the precious few who possess a private copy for their devotion.

This eunuch is also relatively powerful.  He is traveling back home in a chariot and attended by several other servants.  He has been allowed to make his own religious inquiry, and to make the journey to Jerusalem.

*****

What devotions would have been open to him is in question.  According to the purity code elaborated in the book of Deuteronomy, a gentile would not have had access to the inner courtyard of the temple.  And as a dark skinned African our eunuch could not have slipped under the radar as a home-grown Israelite.

And according to that same purity code, a "sexually incomplete" person would not have been allowed to enter the temple at all.  The pre-puberty castration would have had substantial hormonal, emotional and identity impacts on this man and his sexual status would have been
unlikely to go unnoticed.

*****

So here he is, on the road to Gaza, reading aloud.  Reading aloud would have been the normal way of most readers until the tenth century of our era.  Reading was mostly a public, communal exercise and a great favor to the majority who did not own texts nor could read one themselves.

*****

And so it is that the Holy Spirit sends Philip to this pariah of official religion.  Philip does not stop to think of all the righteous objections a self-respecting Jew could have to this suggestion.  Instead, he runs to join the chariot right away.

For a modern equivalent, imagine a street preacher in Washington, DC, running to the open window of a diplomat’s limo to offer to interpret the bible that she has open in her lap.

The first exchange between the eunuch and Philip reinforces that studying scripture is best done with a community.  The eunuch readily recognizes our inability to make proper sense of scripture on our own.  "How can I, unless someone guides me?"

Today, despite our near universal ability to read silently, privately, and despite our access to a dizzying amount of knowledge, it is still true that scripture is best engaged in community.  Beyond hearing scripture in our liturgies, how often do we get to share the bible in highly interactive manner?

*****

It is also worth noting what text the eunuch was engaged in reading when he met with Philip.  He is reading from the prophet Isaiah.  And the particular text he is reading is one of the four songs of the suffering servant.  Traditional Jewish interpretation of those four poems would have identified the suffering servant as the Jewish people as a whole.

But, even before Philip joined him, I cannot help but think that the eunuch must have identified with the suffering servant himself.  Listen for echoes of his life experience in the poem he was reading:

"Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,
    and like a lamb silent before its shearer,
    so he does not open his mouth.
In his humiliation justice was denied him.
    Who can describe his generation?
    For his life is taken away from the earth."

Although, the eunuch is the treasurer of an Ethiopian queen he is also first and foremost a human being of flesh and soul.  How would the image of the sheep led to slaughter and the lamb led to shearing have resonated with the slave, who before his puberty, under coercion, met the knife of his castrators?  There would have been deep resonance in this eunuch's heart with the plight of the suffering servant.

And then, Philip will open the eunuch’s eyes and heart to how Jesus is the suffering servant.  Our own life always makes our connectedness to Jesus’ experience all the more poignant.  He experienced the fullness of humanity.  We have a God who is fully human and no less divine.

*****

If I have unpeeled the context of how incongruous the encounter of Philip and the eunuch would have been to their contemporaries, it is to challenge us to consider  a couple of things.

First, consider how far God desires to go to meet you and engage you, no matter how conventionally unpalatable you may be to the mainstream.

Second, consider how far you are willing to run to be an agent of God’s miraculous change in the world?  Who would be the out-of-the-way person you could reach out to?  And how creative can you be to do that?

May the Spirit transport you exactly where you need to be for God’s Kingdom to break through.

Amen.

Easter 5 B - May 6, 2012

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Julian Mizelle, OHC
Easter 5 B - Sunday, May 6, 2012


Acts 8:26-40
1 John 4:7-21
John 15:1-8

Warning... God Is Love

Several weeks ago I peeked ahead to see what the Lectionary readings would be for today. And to my joy I saw readings that joined together beautifully about the Love of God. I thought “what wonderful readings to be given as sermon texts.” Then this week actually arrived and I began my process of Lectio Divina and praying with the text to discover where I would go with a sermon. Quickly a “sinking feeling” started to churn within me and with each passing day the idea of preaching on the love of God became more and more overwhelming. At one point, in a moment of desperation I turned to the “App Store” on my iPod. Steve Jobs legacy was that Apple would give you an “App” for absolutely everything so certainly there must be an app for God’s love, or abiding in Christ, or even the spiritual disciplines that develop God’s love within us. Well, guess what...there isn’t an app for that! Next I thought about Google. Google, the company that has gone from noun to verb, promises an answer to absolutely every question. So I googled the phrase “God is love” from 1 John 4:8. In less than a second I had over 99 million responses. But guess what...absolutely none of them even tried to speak to the subject about God defining himself as love.  Finally I turned to my trustworthy commentaries knowing they would directly deal with the scriptures at hand and the overwhelming topic that “God is Love.” The commentary begins (and I quote) “Caution: Handle with Care! Warning to readers, especially preachers. This text warrants that warning be stamped all over it.”

I really didn’t need confirmation that my queasiness over the text was justified but now I have it. The idea that “God is Love” is so big, so massive, so fraught with emotion, filled with our pre-conceived ideas about love, our concepts of love, how we love and how we long to be loved, how we were loved (or not loved) in the past, all make this dangerous territory to tread. But the text gives us an additional danger as well. John gives us in both his gospel and in this epistle a soaring testimony to the primacy of God’s love. In fact most would agree that the text of 1 John crafts one of the most powerful texts in all of scripture about the initiative of God’s love. But we live in a culture and time that has trivialized love, even trivialized God’s love, to the point when you proclaim God is Love it falls flat. Literally it becomes saccharine and overly simplistic. We hear it as a glib statement in a long list of glib soundbites: like “Jesus is the answer” or “WWJD”. God is Love...We’ve stopped believing it--or more accurately we’ve become unable to believe it. So the warning is justified at every turn of the text...Caution! Handle with Care!

With stunning brevity John tells us what God is and what God is not. We could have more easily heard that God is power or order or goodness. And if we had heard that God is judgement that would have been easier to accept. After all isn’t it God’s job to control the world and protect us from all harm. And if that is God’s job then doesn’t that mean God will lay down the law, hold everyone accountable, stop the cheaters, and reward the faithful—us. There are plenty in the church that stand ready to tell you about God’s judgment, God’s power, God’s moral authority, and how he plans to use it against those who are not aligned with his principles. But John avoided all of this in his description of God in favor of the simple word “agape” — self-sacrificing love that goes to the very core of God’s being and nature. In short, John shows us who God is, how God choose to manifest God’s self, and how we are strengthened and empowered to do God’s work, and what God’s work is for us. One word answers all of this—that word is LOVE!

Greek scholars will tell you John’s text is written in very simple greek. But its words are tightly woven, even complex. The passage must be taken in its entirety. But for us to better understand it, it needs to be broken down into its parts. And here is how I would do that:

    The passage begins by telling us that love has its very origin in God himself. It is from God, who is love, that all love has its source. What we know as human love is simply a reflection of the divine nature itself. This means that when we love is when we are the closest to God. In a startling phrase by Clement of Alexandria he says that “Christians practice being God.” How? By loving and by being love.
    Love has a double, or twofold relationship to God. It is only by knowing God that we learn to love, and it is only by loving that we learn to know God. On the surface this sounds like a chicken-or-the-egg predicament. It isn’t. The truth being revealed about love and knowing God is that they feed each other. They are inseparable. Love comes from God and love leads to God. Just yesterday I heard Br. Robert share a quote from Alan Jones, former Dean of Grace Cathedral. Alan found that meditating on the phrase “you are my souls delight” gave him the deepest since of knowing God. This is a phrase that beautifully represents the double or two-fold relationship of love. As he prayed “you are my souls delight” he not only experienced God as the delight of his soul but he experienced God saying to him that he is the delight of God.
    When love comes fear vanishes. Fear cannot exist in the presence of love. If you are expecting to be punished, rejected, or shamed the characteristic response is fear. There is a very powerful reason that everyone of us here this morning knows the human emotion of fear. We know fear because we have known the absence of love. The presence of fear becomes the acid test, or the testing of the spirits if you will, to know if what you are hearing or experiencing is from God or not. Fear permeates our culture and is the driving force in our daily news. Look no further than the political dialogue going on in our country if you would like to test what I am saying. If fear is present love has vanished. If love is present fear has vanished.
    To know the love of God, to know that God is love, to know that perfect love that cast out all fear requires something. This kind of love requires Community. Loving God and loving others are inseparable. They are indissolubly connected. In order for the energy of love to freely flow it requires 3 things: God, self and others. Loving our neighbor, loving our enemies, loving our brothers and sisters, loving the other, no matter who the other is, is all part and parcel to loving God. John claims, with crude bluntness, that if you claim to love God but fail to love your brother or sister you’re lying. You’re lying to yourself and you’re lying to God. But John’s analogy goes further than this. It also means if you are not loving the “other” you are not loving yourself. Thomas Merton put it this way: “We cannot be at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we cannot be at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.” God, ourselves and others...3 inseparable relationships all wrapped up in knowing the truth that “God is Love.” No wonder this subject comes with a warning label.

Each of these four points about love that I have drawn from John’s text is telling us basically the same thing: Love is relational. Love is about relationship. Love is about relationship with God, relationship with ourselves, and relationship with others. Some see this as a triangle: God, ourselves, and others. Some see this as a tripod. If one leg is removed the other two collapse. However you picture the relationship of love, this is what is important. Our ability to understand, to comprehend, and grasp the truth that God is love is the quintessential quantum leap on the spiritual journey. When the truth that God is love becomes reality in your own life this is the moment when everything changes. This is the true meaning of atonement, which would be better pronounced as at-one-ment. This is the power of transfiguration...coming face to face with divine love. Look at all of the parables, look at all of the discourses of Christ recorded throughout the gospels. Their core, irreducible message is God is Love. This is the promise of the gospel because love is the gospel. It is not just the promise of the texts before us but it is the over-arching message of all scripture when it is understood in its entirety. No love, no gospel. Love is our starting place and love is our ending place. Love is why Jesus went to the cross and love is what brought about resurrection and new life.
The meaning of the empty tomb is love. Our doctrines, our beliefs, our theology and creeds, our moral codes can only support and sustain us when they recognize the primacy of God’s love. Under any other context they fail us. Which is exactly why we have such struggles in our churches today. To those who want to begin with a “correct theology” (which is always about their theology) or an adherence to a moral code are terribly upset by the truth “God is Love.” Theology, doctrine, moral codes, do’s and don’ts, none of these answer our human need for purpose and belonging. This is not the good news or the gospel answer to our anxiety, our mortality, or our communal felt meaninglessness. John is telling us, both in his gospel account and in his epistles, that God’s love is primary. Everything else is a distant second. The gospels answer is Love, God’s love.

The truth and reality that God is Love is way too big for Apple to put into an App. Not even Google can handle it. And it is a passage in scripture that rightly warrants warnings and cautions. But the real warning is this: that we not miss out on knowing the love of God.

He Is Risen...Amen!