Epiphany 3 B - Jan 25, 2015

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Mr. Will Owen, Postulant

Epiphany 3 B, Sunday, January 25, 2015

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
1 Corinthians 7: 29-31
Mark 1:14-20

The calling of  Peter and Andrew

It’s a little cruel, and some might even say providential, that we postulants have been given these Epiphany texts on Jesus’ calling of his first disciples to preach on. And try as I might to escape it, I cannot avoid the questions and assertions about vocation that our Gospel reading today raises. Our readings today are all about vocation, about how we respond to the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ. And yet, when we really look closely at them, they’re not about vocation in any of the ways we typically think of it.

Our Gospel begins with Jesus’ call to the people of Galilee to repent. He comes telling them that the time is fulfilled, the Kingdom of God is near, repent, turn back to God, leave behind all that stands between you and your salvation. And then the text continues with an account of a specific call Jesus gives to Andrew and Simon and then to James and John: follow me. Follow me and I will make you fish for people. It would be so easy to read these texts and hear Jesus telling the general crowd to ask forgiveness for their sins and these specific people to become disciples, or, read through our ecclesiastical lens, to become the first bishops of the church that we are now a part of. Everything within me screams out WRONG. Or, if not wrong, then at least woefully incomplete. Much, much too simple. Much, much too easy. And much, much too small.

You see, Jesus’ call to Andrew and Simon, to James and John, to the people of Galilee, and to us here today is nothing less than the call to new, abundant, and transformative life in God. It is nothing less than the call to salvation, to wholeness in Christ.

Take that in for a moment. Wholeness. Transformation. Full and total healing and renewal. New and abundant life. Life itself. Life. That’s a pretty radical statement, that God wants nothing less for us than total and complete healing.

This vision of vocation is completely unreasonable. To talk of healing, salvation, and vocation in this way is to come dangerously close to becoming that person walking down the streets of New York crying out “Alleluia! There is good news in Jesus Christ!” As Brother Roy so astutely pointed out in his sermon on radical hope during Advent, what most offends us reasonable folk in these evangelists and evangelicals is their utter and unreasonable certainty that God will make them and all things new again, indeed, that God is already doing that.

My first semester of seminary, I had to take introductory theology. At the end of the lecture on Christology—the theology of Christ—one of the students asked our professor about the Resurrection, something he hadn’t even mentioned. The professor got a large smile on his face, started chuckling, and said, “You’re in seminary now, people. You’ve got to leave all that resurrection stuff behind. You can’t let your faith turn you into a stupid person.” Although this professor’s response was deliberately provocative, in essence he only described what most of us do every single day: we resist, nay even deny, that which is unreasonable and, in this age of scientific progress and inquiry and secular humanism and atheism, that which is utterly indefensible. If we cannot give a reasonable accounting of the faith that is in us, then we don’t even try.

And yet, what good is a salvation that is reasonable? The evil that fills our world is anything but reasonable. Child sexual abuse is not reasonable. A third of all black men in America in prison is not reasonable. Abandonment, addiction, miscarriages, marriages falling apart, the loneliness, self-doubt, and shame that so often fill our lives—none of it is reasonable! And if we settle for a vision of salvation that is reasonable, then we have lost, and evil has won.

Sometimes, I think, we’re so afraid that evil actually has won that we can’t bear to hope for new life. Because to hope for new life and not to get it might devastate us even more than we have already been devastated. It’s as if we’ve been locked in a dark basement for years and years, so long that we have forgotten what light looks like, so long that even the faintest ray of sunshine is painful to our eyes. We become afraid that the daybreak from on high that is God’s flooding into our lives will annihilate us. And so we tame the Gospel, and we make it small.

The truth is that this inbreaking of God is painful. It cracks open our hearts, splits them right in two. And that breaking of our hearts is a good thing, a necessary thing. For only with our hearts broken open do we have enough room for the love that God wants to bring into our lives and for the love that God wants to call forth from us. Only with broken hearts can we begin to heal this hurt and hurting world we have been given to be a part of.

The good news is that the Kingdom of God is near at hand, the time is fulfilled. We are continually given the opportunity to respond in a new way, to turn back from our fear and to embrace the Gospel of New Life in Jesus Christ. As many times as we say no, God continues to say yes. Saying yes to new life is our true vocation as Christian people. I don’t believe God ultimately cares whether we’re doctors or monks or fishermen, whether we’re married or have kids or live single or celibate lives. It’s not that none of this matters—of course our relationships and our jobs can contribute or distract from the fullness of our lives—but God’s call to us is so much bigger than we could ever imagine in our reasonable minds. God’s call to us to hope for wholeness in Christ Jesus. May we walk this path together in freedom and in love.

Epiphany 2 B - Jan 18, 2015

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Mr. Reinaldo Martinez-Cubero, Postulant

Epiphany 2 B, Sunday, January 18, 2015

1 Samuel 3:1-10 (11-20)
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
John 1:43-51

Eli and little Samuel

“Samuel! Samuel!” I have an old dog that lives with me in my cell. We take several walks around the monastery every day. The first of those walks is early in the morning before the sun comes up. Everything is very quiet, and usually my walk is done in prayer. But recently, since I’ve been preparing for this sermon, the thought has come to my head: “If God calls me right now like in the Samuel story, I’ll freak out.” “Reinaldo! Reinaldo!” Fortunately and unfortunately, God has called on me at very clear points in my life, but not that way. It hasn’t sounded that clear.

In our readings today there is a lot of calling going on. God calls to Samuel, Eli calls to Samuel, Jesus calls to Philip, Philip calls to Nathanael. Calling- to summon loudly (according to the dictionary app in my computer), a strong urge toward a particular way of life or career. A career is an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person’s life, and with opportunities for progress, or also, what happens as a person undertakes a series of jobs in the same field over time. Career carries with it a sense of increasing experience, responsibility, and reward. We can have a career, or we may not. But we always have a calling. A calling links what we do to a larger community in which we contribute to the common good. People follow a calling because they believe it is right for them to do so. The work may be hard, but they find it rich with meaning and significance.

The celebrated sociologist Robert Nelly Bellah wrote: "The notion of calling is an effort to make real the reign of God in the realm of work." That realization involves the recognition "that we all need each other, and that our real reward is our sense of contribution to the common good." [Robert N. Bellah, "Economics and the theology of work," UME Connexion, Spring 1985, p. 11.]

A calling is there when you've never had a career, or after you've retired from work. It is a calling because we are being called. And we are called in many different ways, sometimes over and over again. The phone in our hearts keeps ringing, and that phone has no voicemail or answering service. We can choose to answer or not. But I’m sure many of us still remember what it feels like to hear a phone’s relentless ring when it is not answered. It is God who calls us to do what we do as partners with the creator in rehabbing a big or even a little chunk of this world so that it more closely resembles the divine intention. The divine voice is a powerful voice, but often speaks softly, and can certainly surprise us. We might hope to know for sure what we are meant to do, or who we are meant to be, or where we are supposed to go, but the reality is that, more often than not, a calling might be confusing and/or scary.

In our first lesson, Samuel, is a boy who lives and works in the temple during a period when the religion of Israel had become dry. One night God calls to Samuel. He thinks it's the old priest Eli. This happens three times. Eli thinks the kid's having bad dreams. Finally the priest wakes up to the realization that God, who hasn't spoken much to his people lately, is speaking to this boy. He tells Samuel to listen and obey when the voice speaks again. When Samuel finally responds to God instead of Eli, God tells him of plans to punish Eli’s family because of the iniquity of his sons. There is no task given, and no clarity. The next day he will get up and open the doors to the house of God just as he usually does, only this time he knows God’s plan. Samuel grows up to become an important figure in the tumultuous history of Israel.

Now, I have to admit that the passage from John’s Gospel leaves me wanting more information. Something makes me think that many days must have gone by during which Philip listened to Jesus’ teaching, and perhaps had conversations with him. Nathanael too, must have known at least a little bit about what Jesus was doing, and what things he was talking about. Mind you, I do believe that meeting Jesus must have been something of an extraordinary experience, and not like anything we could easily imagine today. What those Apostles really experienced must have been something difficult to comprehend today.

That team, the Apostles, chosen by Jesus to spread the mysteries of the Reign of God, and to continue God’s ministries, were uneducated, and came from relatively low social classes of Judaism. They were simple people, fishermen and tax collectors, but with faith in the God of Israel. These were the eyewitnesses, and founding members of our faith. They changed the world. Was it an easy ride? We know it was not. Was it confusing, unclear, scary? Did they know where they were going? Was their future uncertain? One of life’s biggest challenges is coping with uncertainty. Circumstances are always changing around us. Change is certainly one of life’s few guarantees. No matter how much we plan for the future there is actually little that we can know for sure about what will happen. Learning how to accept not knowing is a key to spiritual health. I’m still working on that one!

The first words we heard from Nathanael were a mocking remark: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” But his encounter with Jesus pushes him in the right direction. Jesus invites him to follow, and that is what he does. He was surprised, and so was Samuel. Not without difficulty, they recognize their callings. Like them, we too, can start to perceive our calling. If we have begun, we can continue to recognize it. Almost certainly, it involves surprise. The reason for this is that God has more important things in store for us than we can ask or imagine. More important things than our society says to us. More important things than we say to ourselves. God calls us to where we can do something significant for this humanity, and experience a fulfillment deeper than we think we deserve. That’s a calling.

We can look at how others were called, and learn from their example. We can learn from the stories of Samuel, Philip, and Nathanael. We can be inspired by the stories of those who fought for greater freedom and justice. People like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who will be remembered tomorrow, and his leadership in the struggle for basic human rights. We can listen intently when God speaks to us, perhaps through a still, small voice, perhaps through the challenges of daily life. But to hear that call in our hearts, where God dwells in us is always an instance of grace.

Dear God of all things, keep us reminded to stay alert and attentive to your call, and grant us faith and courage to respond and to follow, even when in our limited nature we don’t fully comprehend your purpose for us or know where you are taking us.

Amen.

Holy Name - Jan 01, 2015

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Magliula, OHC

Holy Name, Thursday, January 01, 2015

Numbers 6:22-27 
Galatians 4:4-7 
Luke 2:15-21 

The creche in the monastery church

We have been observing the feast of the Holy Name since the middle of the 6th century, and for good reason. What’s in a name? Ancient people had a great respect for names. They believed that a portion of the personality of the individual resided in the name; the more powerful the person, the more powerful the name. In South Africa, when an American brother joins the community there, the Xhosa observe his personality and behavior before giving him a Xhosa name that describes him. 

There is power in a name. We have the name of Jesus set before us as we begin this New Year. What does it tell us about God, about ourselves? We were named and sealed as God’s Beloved in our baptism. As the Epistle reminds us, we were claimed, adopted, forgiven, and made members of the Body of Christ. We are born from Love in order to love. Love is where we came from and Love is where we’re going. God sees us for who we are; nothing more and nothing less.

That this feast is celebrated within the Octave of Christmas is no accident. God truly became Emmanuel, “God with us.” In Jesus the divine and human are forever one. In the Incarnation God took on all human nature. We flow into God: God flows into us. It is the nature of love to flow. Our true identity and our deepest freedom comes from God’s infinite love for us. No barrier of majesty or distance divides us from God. God has drawn near to us unabashedly as an infant. In this infant, the defenselessness of God is apparent. God comes without weapons, because God does not wish to conquer from the outside, but desires to win and transform us from within. God assumed this vulnerability in order to lead us to union with the self and with God. 

The Gospel today has two distinct parts: the visit of the shepherds, and the circumcision and naming of Jesus. The shepherds, in response to the angels, risked leaving their flocks to seek Jesus. After finding Mary, Joseph, and the child, they are convinced of the arrival of the long awaited Messiah, and go again, to proclaim it. 

In accord with Jewish custom, eight days after his birth, Jesus was circumcised. This ritual initiated males into the community of Israel. It was a sign of the covenant. The name given Jesus is both common and extraordinary. It is an Aramaic form of Joshua---a common Jewish name meaning “God saves”. In the original Aramaic there was no word for “salvation.” Salvation was understood as a bestowal of life. To be saved was to be made alive. Jesus is the Life Giver. 

We’ve spent the weeks of Advent trying to be present to the present, to wake up to a deeper encounter with ourselves and our God made flesh. We live most of our lives in the past or future. It’s how our minds work. If we are to experience the ever present Christ, it must be here and now. We have two examples in the Gospel today. The shepherds respond immediately to the angels’ invitation to go and see. Joseph and Mary respond in the present to what is expected of them as good Jews. The saying is true that “God comes disguised as our life.” Everything in life is to be welcomed, as somehow the expression of God’s will. Christ is always coming. God is always present. It’s we who aren’t.

Jean-Pierre de Caussade, a 17th century French Jesuit wrote a spiritual classic called Abandonment to Divine Providence. He writes “every moment we live through is like an ambassador that declares the will of God to us.” There is no more better way to seek the will of God than moment to moment, to see what this moment offers me is the grace of God. If we did nothing more than that, he says, we will attain the highest levels of transformation. Things won’t change, we will. 

God uses everything, even our mistakes. De Caussade writes, “We must accept what we very often cannot avoid, and endure with love and resignation things which could cause us weariness and disgust. This is what it means to be holy.” This is what it means to be awake: to be constantly willing to say that God could even be coming to me in this. Even this! Just this! 

I think we all shrink from this challenge because we know we can’t do it on our own. We only succeed by God’s grace now and then. We often don’t want God as God is; we want God as we imagine or would like God to be. But God always works with what is. That is why there can be no real obstacle to union with God except our own resistance. God can and will use everything, absolutely everything, even the worst things.  Augustine wrote: “In my deepest wound I found you, Lord, and it dazzled me.” People who are present will experience the Presence. It’s largely a matter of letting go of our resistance to what the moment offers us. To be here, now, is what de Caussade calls “the sacrament of the present moment.” 

Pondering the name of God and learning again what it means is an excellent beginning for a new year. Through the name of Jesus, the power of God is at work to reshape all personal and social circumstances that distort God’s purpose. We make our new beginning today with the assurance that God is present. As we gather around the altar, in the Name of Jesus, may we, with the Bread and Wine, be transformed and be strengthened to live now as the Beloved.  +Amen.