Epiphany 7 A - Feb 23, 2014

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bob Pierson, OSB
Year A - Epiphany 7 - Sunday, February 16, 2014


Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18
1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23
Matthew 5:38-48

“You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

The last time that I preached on this Scripture passage, which was three years ago, I received an official reprimand for my homily from the board of directors of the retreat program I was serving at the time. I was told that I had upset people and that I should not do that in the future.

What did I say? Well, I started by remarking that Christians have always had a difficult time with Jesus telling us to love our enemies. He couldn't possibly have really meant that, could he? As Christianity became more aligned with the civil authority of the day, a just war theory was developed to help Christians determine when it was morally OK to fight with their enemies.

With the just war theory in hand, Christians have been going to war, feeling completely justified in killing their enemies. But it wasn't always that way. In the early church, soldiers could not be Christian. They had to leave their military service before they could be admitted to baptism. And in our present age, the just war theory has been called into question for a number of reasons, the chief one being that modern technology has made it impossible to contain war to killing only other combatants. Too many innocent people get killed.

But even if we accepted the traditional rationale for the just war theory, we would still have to question the morality of some conflicts, like the war in Iraq, for example. The just war theory says it is never OK to be the first to attack, and clearly the United States attacked Iraq first. Religious leaders around the world, including Pope John Paul, condemned the US for starting the war with Iraq. I concluded that homily by saying that we, as Christians, need to question our leaders' judgment when they decide to go to war because they are not always morally justified in doing so.

And that's what got me in trouble. How dare anyone question the decisions of our government and its leaders? Well, the reprimand didn't convince me that I was wrong, and now, three years later I would say essentially the same thing. In fact, I just did. The one thing that has changed for me over the past three years, though, is the fact that I am much more aware of some personal enemies in my life. Now I am faced with Jesus' teaching in a much more immediate way: “God, do you really want me to pray for these enemies, after what they did to me?”

Feeling anger and resentment is completely natural and normal when we have been injured by others, especially when we know that the injury was intended. It's quite natural to want to fight back, to inflict a similar injury on those who have injured us. But it's NOT helpful to act on those feelings.

If we have learned anything from centuries of conflict and killing, it should be that violence only begets more violence, even on the personal level. And sooner or later, someone needs to choose to stop the cycle of violence, and to seek to forgive the other party, even if the other party does not want to reconcile. That's why Jesus calls us to love our enemies and to pray for our persecutors.

As Christians, we are called to go beyond the conventional standards of our day to a higher standard of conduct, to be holy as the Lord our God is holy. And loving our enemies makes sense if we have learned the lesson of the Cross—that the only way to real life, to eternal life, is to accept the suffering we cannot avoid, and to let God transform it into resurrection.

Now, I am not saying that we need to allow others to hurt us. We need to take care of ourselves, and set boundaries where possible, to prevent others from walking all over us. But it does no good to try to return injury for injury. “An eye for an eye” only makes for two blind people.

Paul's words to the Corinthians that we heard a few minutes ago come to mind as I ponder how it is possible to really live Jesus' teaching: “You are God's temple and God's Spirit dwells in you....God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.” Yes, I am God's temple because God dwells in me. But you know, my enemy can also be God's temple because God can dwell in them, too. Their injury of me cannot justify my injury of them. I need to recognize that they are God's beloved children just as much as I am, and that there has to be a better way of settling our differences than blowing each other to smithereens. “Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.”

I want to conclude my homily today with a quotation from "In the Eye of the Storm" by Bishop Gene Robinson:

“In refusing to demonize and hate his enemies, forgiving them and loving them to the very end, Jesus shows us the way to reconciliation. If we keep our eyes set on him, and upon his self-giving, self-sacrificing love, then we will know the way forward. Whatever difficulty may come, no matter how hard it gets, we will know how it eventually will end. We need not be afraid. God's fatherly saving grace will not be foiled, God's Son's sacrifice on the cross will not be in vain, and God's Holy Spirit will continue to lead us into reconciliation.” (page 160)

Epiphany 6 A - Feb 16, 2014

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
Year A - Epiphany 6 - Sunday, February 16, 2014

Deuteronomy 30:15-20
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Matthew 5:21-37

“Whoever has looked at a woman with lust in his heart has already committed adultery...” I can never hear this phrase without thinking of Jimmy Carter – perhaps the most sincere president the United States has ever had. When some interviewer asked him how he had sinned, he responded, sincerely, that he had look at women with lust in his heart... It was an answer that the general public was not entirely ready to hear.

And in some ways that is the nature of this Gospel passage – its a bunch of stuff that we're not necessarily ready to hear – at least I'm not ready to hear... If I experience lust, I'm a rapist... If I experience anger, I'm a murderer... I should be tearing out my eyes and cutting off my hands... all this in something we call “Gospel” - that is “good news...”

But if we spend a little time with Matthew and with the context of this particular passage, it is perhaps better news than at first glance.

There was great concern at Matthew's time and in his community with how to relate to the law – meaning the Torah. Jesus uses the compound phrase of the law and the prophets. It our language we would use the word scripture.

The heart of this concern was that faithful people were abandoning the law, or perhaps even worse, changing it... In today's parlance, they were revisionists... they were unfaithful... unlawful... not to be trusted.

Keep in mind is that knowing and studying the law, meditating upon the law day and night as the psalms put it, was the way that faithful people could know God. The law was the only way to know God. So faithful people who truly loved God loved the law.

If we were alive in Matthew's time, given who we are and our earnest and real desire to know God, I think many of us would have been great lovers of the law. So Matthew is really talking to us.

The reading this morning starts in mid-thought. Matthew is in the process of preparing faithful people for the time between the Crucifixion (which by the time Mathew is writing has in fact has already happened, but in the narrative which Matthew is writing is yet to come) and the second coming.

Matthew begins with Jesus asserting that he has not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. The law will still be the law, but the relationship will be changed. Those who love God by loving the law will be changed.

The nature of that change is gathered up in one seemingly harmless word: righteousness. Our righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees, or we are doomed. When it comes to loving the law, the scribes and Pharisees really were the most accomplished. This is a very high bar. These are very righteous people. Greater righteousness is not an easy thing.

But the real question is what does greater righteousness even mean? And, conveniently for us, that is the question we are hearing answered in this morning's reading.

Rather than abolishing the law, Jesus is radicalizing the law. The question of greater righteousness is answered in a radicalized response to the law... radical righteousness.

“You have heard it said... it was also said... it was said to those of ancient times...” Jesus gives us this phrase in variation several times. “But I say...” Each time Jesus takes a well known piece of law and radicalizes it.

It is not enough to refrain from murder. Jesus radicalizes this into a way of life that does not even tolerate anger... doesn't tolerate abuse... name calling... insults... The boundary is moved from not murdering to not having any ill will.

The discourse on adultery and divorce is challenging. But we have to remember that, at the time, adultery was a property crime and marriage was a legal contract. This is not a discussion of sexual morality. But the radicalization that Jesus undertakes makes marriage something much more than just a legal contract which can be made and terminated. Adultery becomes more than violation of property rights. Its not a legal issue – its a spiritual issue. And its an issue of how I relate to other people.

Jesus manages, in a discussion which begins with his assertion that nothing changes, to change just about everything. For while the law may stay the same, our relationship with the law is entirely new. Jesus shifts the focus from keeping the letter of the law in outward and visible ways, to living in the spirit of the law.

Jesus gives us a great insight into what living in that spirit might mean. For notice that each of the illustrations has to do with an issues of justice – of how we live in relationship to other people. None of these illustrations have to do with issues of religious ritual, of purity – of how we live in relationship to God.

“You have heard that it was said that you shall not swear falsely... but I say don't swear at all. Let your yes be yes and your no be no.” This might be the greatest radicalization of all. For Jesus calls us to unconditional truthfulness. We can't stand behind some form of defense. We can't shield our selves. We can't shade our meaning. Yes or no. I have a vary hard time in a world where the word “maybe” is not in use...

I heard Br Don Bisson, our favorite Marist Brother, speak recently about the nature of change. He believes that change can have one of two primary characteristics. Change can be translational. Or change can be transformational. And of course change is essential for our lives as followers of Jesus – we must be made new, be changed.

Translational change is like when the bones of St John Chrysostom were moved to Constantinople. Those bones were translated. And transformational change is like when Ezekiel prophesied to the valley of dry bones and they took on sinew and flesh and became living beings. Those bones were transformed.

Jesus' teaching in this passage of the Gospel is transformational. Jesus is turning to the body of dry bones that is the law and saying take on sinew and flesh and become a living being. Its no longer about refraining from murder, its about living in love with other people. Its not about refraining from adultery, its about loving people. Its not about divorce, its about commitment to another person.

Before this transformation we could follow God's commandments, decrees, and ordinances as a way of loving God. Now we must love our neighbors as we love ourselves – it is the only way that we can love God. And however we love scripture, the law and the prophets, that love can only be as rich as our love our love of our brothers and sisters. Jesus has radicalized our way of loving God.

This is not something unique in the passage of scripture. It is the message Jesus keeps giving us time and again. And it is a message that starts in the prophets. A troubled and contrite heart – a heart that is ready to love – is the sacrifice God wants from us. Jesus' radicalization of the understanding of the law is simply another way of hearing the good news.

So what about that part in this morning's reading where Jesus talks the leaving your gifts at the altar while you go and reconcile with your brother. Or plucking out your wandering eye. Or the severed right hands... What might Jesus be up to?

It is interesting that sometimes we, as Christians, are interested in taking things literally and sometimes not. When Jesus says we are to feed the hungry and cure the sick – there I think he is being quite literal, though lots of Christians want to understand that as a call to bring the “food” of the Gospel to the “spiritually hungry.”

But here, with these very draconian suggestions, I think Jesus is making it clear that he is not being literal. We will look with lust, we will covet, we will fail to tell the truth and we may even swear a false oath. And the way-over-the-top notion of cutting off our hands and plucking out our eyes is not a call to do something outrageous.

Jesus is telling us that these sins are no greater and no less than any other. They merit the most extreme punishment – we're no better than the worst of sinners. Our salvation rests not on our merit but on God's grace. And that is true for everyone. I think this is just Jesus' way of saying “get over yourselves...”

Because when we get over ourselves, then we can abandon ourselves to this radical plan of greater righteousness.

Presentation of Jesus in the Temple - Feb 2, 2014

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
Year A - Presentation of Jesus in the Temple - Sunday, February 2, 2014

Malachi 3:1-4 
Hebrews 2:14-18 
Luke 2:22-40 

Simeon and holding his Savior

Today's feast marks the 40th day since Christmas. Today we celebrate the visit of the Holy Family to the Jerusalem temple to restore Mary into ritual purity and community after giving birth and to offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving and redemption for her first-born son. An otherwise ordinary act for the ordinary families of the time. But this is no ordinary trip to the temple because this is no ordinary son. This son is also the Savior of the world. Even as an infant Jesus is recognized and celebrated and worshiped. His birth is already changing things, already bringing hope. Perhaps Mary and Joseph believed they could quietly slip into the temple, make their offering, and blend into the crowd and back to their home. But with this baby good news has come for all people - there will be no blending in anywhere. Everyone will know - everyone must know - who this child is. Jesus' conception, birth, and now presentation is the inspiration of heavenly and earthly praise that only gets louder and grows farther as Jesus grows in wisdom and favor.

What moves me about this text is the way Luke uses language to evoke a moment in time, a person, the fulfillment of hope, and how that imagery draws us into the story. In the temple we meet the old man Simeon. Having waited for so long for this day, he does what Zechariah and Mary and the angels have done before him in Luke’s gospel - he bursts into song - or at least poetry - which may well have been taken up and sung by the early church even in Luke’s time in the 80s or 90s of the first century. I saw a post on Facebook by the theologian Miroslav Volf in which he recounted an exchange with a Cistercian monk: he asked the old monk “what is the secret to long life?”. The monk replied, “Well, we sing alot.”. Which raises the question "How do we respond to the wonder and mystery of the mighty acts of God?". Or to ask it another way, "Is there a better method than singing?"

It is impossible for me to read the Nunc Dimittis, Simeon’s hymn of praise to the baby Christ, outside its place in the Church’s liturgical life. The Church has used his words, along with the Benedictus of Zechariah and the Magnificat of Mary, as pillars of the daily office from the earliest preserved liturgies. We are inheritors of this tradition as we use these songs in our own Monastic Breviary to this day. In repeating these three canticles daily, we are grounding ourselves in the story of salvation: promise fulfilled, hope arrived, incarnation fully Divine and fully human, a kingdom coming and now here that upsets and topples even mighty and eternal Rome and whatever force or system in our own day that sets itself up as the solution. 

Luke is not interested in exploring the “how” of these mighty acts. He is not giving us scholarly treatises on the incarnation. He is more interested in inviting us to praise God in the “now” of them. Luke wants us to marvel and wonder and celebrate and employ all our creativity into joining the choir, in adding
our voices to the beautiful poetry of it all. And that is precisely what liturgy is designed to do, why the Church elevates these great hymns to a place of prominent repetition and meditation.

And consider the surprising irony of it all: Zechariah, struck dumb because of his lack of faith, proclaims the Benedictus as soon as his tongue is loosed. Mary, the young girl from nowhere saying “yes” to God and a life she can barely imagine, but trusting that God is present even through scandal and confusion, death and resurrection - her “yes” remains true. And today Simeon, nearing the grave, knowing that his time is short, trusting that the promise must be near, lives long enough to hold salvation in his arms and to look into the eyes of the one who will save not only Israel, but Gentiles as well - the whole world. These are the people - struggling, striving, waiting just as we are - who are teaching us how to praise, how to sing. Through their lives and help the liturgical day unfolds over and over again in this pattern of promise fulfilled, redemption recognized, and salvation seen and shared.

From time to time I am asked if I get bored repeating the same words day after day, week after week. I can honestly say that my answer is an emphatic “no”! The truth here is inexhaustible, the tender humanness and power of these words is the antithesis of boredom. If anything, they get richer and deeper with time, sharing their mystery slowly, challenging and calling forth ever more of my presence and participation. There will never come a time in this life when I totally “get it” and so I am excited to get up every day and hope to understand just a bit more, to participate in the divine story just a bit more.

Let's consider the words of the Nunc Dimittis itself. At Compline, when we sing it and come to the line “for these eyes of mine have seen the Savior”, I often ask myself “where, how, in who have I seen salvation today?”. The same Christ whom Simeon held is alive among and within us today. He is always, just as at his annunciation, birth, and presentation, making himself known, wanting to be seen
by us. My vagueness at times in answering my own question is not because Christ is hidden, but because I am not seeing, not looking at what is before my eyes with an expectancy and awareness of the offering of salvation.

Instead my eyes see what I can control, possess, use for pleasure or power or distraction - and Christ, salvation, is not seen that way. Sometimes I know the gift of a sacred moment, an encounter which clearly has the sense of the presence of Christ to it and so I can say at Compline “there was Christ, in that person, in that moment”. Other times I can reflect on the effects of an encounter that may not be known consciously. Then I can look at my character and my spiritual health and see the quiet and steady unfolding of salvation in life and relationships: By God’s grace openness to seeing and experiencing Christ moves us from:
- argument to praise,
- from competition to humility,
- from possession to generosity,
- from fear to trust,
- from despair to hope.

But this cannot happen without liturgy. Liturgy gives us the container and space to reconnect to the salvation story. When we pray faithfully and sincerely we remember again how to be in the wonder, gratitude, and openness of the Christian revelation. The purpose of gathering in this chapel as we do day by day and as you have this weekend is not to reenact some quaint cultural tradition based on myths from the distant past. It is to listen to and echo the songs of our forebears and friends - Zechariah and Mary and Simeon and Anna and all the saints - who point us to Christ among us and within us.

In the ordinariness of parents bringing their baby son to the temple for an offering, Simeon saw something greater - indeed the greatest gift of all. He is teaching us to wait and watch and see and praise. So let us use our spiritual practices wisely and faithfully and be watching and praising with Simeon - in our liturgies of hymns of the good news, in our own private prayer, in our acts of mercy in the world - all in the assurance that Christ comes and reveals himself to us - in ways we expect and ways that surprise, in the convenient and the inconvenient, in the knowable and in ways beyond knowing - yet Christ is through all and in all and with all.
Amen.