Christmas Day-December 25, 2016

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Josép R. Martínez-Cubero,OHC
Christmas Day - Sunday,  December 25, 2016
 

Br. Josép R. Martínez-Cubero, OHC

Sweet little Jesus Boy — We [They] made you be born in a manger. Sweet little Holy Child — Didn't know who you was. Didn't know you'd come to save us, Lord; To take our sins away. Our eyes was blind, we couldn't see, We didn't know who you was. Long time ago, you was born, Born in a manger low, Sweet little Jesus Boy. The world treat you mean, Lord, We [They] treat each other mean too, But that's how things is down here — We don't know who you is. You done told us how, we is a tryin'! Master, you done show'd us how, even when you was dyin'. Just seem like we can't do right, Look how we treated you. But please, sir, forgive us, Lord — We didn't know 'twas you. Sweet little Jesus Boy, we made you be born in a manger. Sweet little Holy Child, And we didn't know who you was.

 
And that manger was not the romanticized little box of hay we want to think of. It was surely gross, and smelled bad. And it was probably not silent, even though I love the carol. And that young teenager must have been terrified at the event of giving birth, which was nothing at all like what giving birth is today. Christmas has changed for me. I don’t seem to be able to have Christmas without that little bit of realism. It is what keeps me reminded that Incarnation means full involvement in human history, in its process, its challenges, its successes, its disasters.
 
No, I’m not trying to ruin Christmas. Really. I will have a great time today. I will sing the carols loud and clear, and will eat the food, and I will rejoice in the assurance that the Light still shines in this present darkness, and it cannot be overcome. I have to live in that hope. And if Jesus were here, he would be joining us in the celebrations. He liked I good time; I know he did. They called him a glutton and a drunkard. He said that! You see, through the Incarnation, the glory of God in Jesus has become the human person fully alive. Saint Irenaeus of Lyons got it right!
 
In my experience, the events surrounding the presidential election season in this country, the sad realization of the ingrained, systemic racism in our culture, and all the horrific events around the world, made for an Advent Season that felt as if the Light had completely left us. I found myself often retreating to a quiet (interior and exterior) space to try to figure out who I am supposed to be in this broken world. A friend recently put this into words for me. It has something to do with liminality, and being in that space in time between things. For me, it has been a time of intense prayer, reflection and waiting for the guidance that will lead me, and by extension my community, into appropriate action. Contemplation must lead to action, and action must lead to contemplation. That’s the serious implication for anyone who calls herself or himself a Christian.  The mystery of the Incarnation reveals that divinity is one with us, and one of us. Our humanity, personal and corporate, divinized in Christ, is the instrument of God’s work in this world.
 
Jesus would be celebrating with us, and when we are done with all our merrymaking he calls us to get off our asses and take one step at a time into concrete action. This is when contemplation is absolutely crucial- the coming to stillness and paying careful attention to the prompting of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. We don’t have to travel to the Middle East, or Africa, or South America. We don’t have to singlehandedly create huge charitable organizations. Jesus helped the person in front of him. All we are called to do is to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, minister to the sick, and visit the imprisoned.  We don’t have to travel far to find them. But we can only achieve this by allowing ourselves to be transformed by love that came down at Christmas, and shall be our token; love to God and neighbor, love for plea and gift and sign. Merry Christmas!
 
 
References:

1. Robert MacGimsey, Seet Little Jesus Boy (1934).
2. Sandra M. Schneiders, I.H.M., Buying the Field: Catholic Religious Life in Mission to the World (Paulist Press, 2013).
3. Richard Rohr, Contemplation in Action (Crossroad Publishing Company, 2006 ).
4. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Divine Milieu, (1960) (Harper Perennial, 2001).

 

Forth Sunday of Advent-Year A - Sunday, December 18, 2016

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Borden, OHC
Forth Sunday of Advent-Year A - Sunday, December  18, 2016

Christmas is getting very close – our period of waiting... of anticipation is almost over. We are called, in Advent, to prepare ourselves for the coming of Jesus, for God with us in mortal flesh in our world, our nation, our churches, our homes, our bedrooms... this incarnational event is both massive and extremely intimate. If we don't think about it too much, it is all very happy... so... I’m proposing to think about it a little too much this morning.


This might be easier if our culture had not so thoroughly glommed on to Christmas. Its hard to see where the sacred ends and the secular begins. Christmas trees and wreaths, sleigh bells and stockings, holly and mistletoe... What, if anything, might they have to do with Immanuel? I hear Marley's ghost in Charles Dickens "Christmas Carol" answering "little and much."

From these items we can proceed to Santa and Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman, and dreams of white Christmases spent rustic inns somewhere in Vermont... What might these things have to do with Immanuel? Now I think Marley's ghost just says "little."

Yet much of our understanding of Christmas is as driven by our retail tradition as by our religious tradition. Santa wears red because Coca Cola wears red... not because of any tradition involving St Nicholas... We see red and green together and automatically think Christmas. The liturgical color is white so perhaps White Christmas has a subtle, liturgical reference... But I doubt it. For better and worse, our capitalist culture has appropriated much by way of Christmas symbology – and perhaps part of our work of Advent should be to unwind that a bit.

I think the secular observance of Christmas is not bad. Just as secular notions invade the religious observance, so sacred values invade the secular observance. The most cynical, secular marketer can not help but have their heart touched at least a little when they are using Christmas to sell their stuff.

But secular Christmas alters our expectations of this incarnational event. Secular Christmas thrives on making people feel warm and fuzzy. It is as though all we have to do to achieve peace on Earth is warmly fuzz. The sentimentality of greeting cards replaces the difficult challenges of living with God in our world, our homes, our bedrooms.

So now, on the fourth Sunday of Advent, when our secular Christmas machine is at full froth, I want to look a bit at how this sacred story may touch our lives.

Lets start with the reading from the letter to the Romans. It is, on the face of it, a kind of odd reading since its really just the greeting at the head of the letter – and a mostly standard greeting at that... Scott Hoezee of Calvin Seminary suggests that it’s a bit like spending time reading the return address on a modern letter... And he further suggests that the most important detail in the reading is the very last thing – to God's beloved in Rome who are called to be saints. This does not jar us because Rome has been for centuries one of the great centers of the Christian Church.

But at the time this letter was written, it was not a great time in Rome, especially for Christians. Rome is in a downward spiral and collapse is not far in the future. This is a letter written to people in a very troubled place. Perhaps if the letter was addressed to God's beloved in Aleppo who are called to be saints, it would be closer in feeling. This is the first pushback we can apply to secular Christmas. Jesus does not come to bring joy to happy people in a comfortable place. Jesus comes to a broken and troubled world to bring healing and justice. If we are to follow Jesus, then we have to engage in the healing of a broken and troubled world – and that world is very much our world.

The reading from Isaiah is marvelously complex. Too often Isaiah's prophesy is reduced merely to heavy handed foreshadowing. The statement that a young woman, a virgin, shall conceive puts us instantly in the story of Jesus' birth. But lets stay out of that for a moment.

This is a crabby encounter between Ahaz and Isaiah. Isaiah is more or less goading Ahaz when he says ask for a sign – a really great big undeniable sign. And Ahaz says I won't. So Isaiah says – OK... then I'll give you a sign...

We need a little back story. Ahaz was a mighty leader with a mighty army. And Isaiah is bringing him a message from God that he does not want to hear. This protestation from Ahaz that he will not put God to the test is hollow – he is already putting God to the test.

In the Jewish tradition, prophets were expected to speak in two ways – they had to deliver a message, usually a warning, for the future (but the near future, not the future a thousand years hence) and at the same time they had to reveal something verifiable but unknown; a token or sign to prove their prophetic bona fides. In this passage from Isaiah we are hearing the sign without the warning.

When Isaiah says see, a young woman will conceive and is already with child, it is very likely that Ahaz knows exactly who that woman is – she could even be a wife of his and the child could be his child. This is Isaiah's way of saying to Ahaz, you better listen to me.

We hear this as a message to us about Jesus, rather than a personal communication between God and Ahaz by way of Isaiah. And the thought that crosses my mind is if we are accepting the token of Isaiah's prophesy, that a young woman will conceive, then perhaps we better listen to the warning that comes with the sign. Isaiah's warnings have to do with two things: Justice and mercy.

In this Christmas season, where Jesus is entering our world, questions of justice should be very much on our minds. Martin Luther King defines justice as God's love in calculation. To practice injustice is nothing less than to defile God's love. When Jesus comes into our world, to our nation, can we point to our justice system and feel good? Can we point to the hungry and be proud of how they are fed? How the sick are being cared for? How peace is being made? If we are satisfied and smug then we are ignoring Isaiah and defiling God's love.

Those of us who have grown up in a bubble of white privilege are mercifully sheltered from the injustice of our society. But for those who have grown up outside that bubble, the injustice is all too plain. When Jesus calls us to visit prisoners, I believe the call is to see what is being done in our names by way of injustice – to look at what is otherwise hidden from view – and then to calculate what God's love calls us to do.

The voices of Isaiah and St Paul are vital voices in this late moment in Advent. Secular Christmas tells us that we should feel very good and warm inside – and there is nothing wrong with that. But the call from John the Baptist is to prepare the way for the coming of God in the form of Jesus. It is not warm and comfortable work. It calls us to be attentive to those whose world is coming apart – Roman Christians in the time of Paul... perhaps Syrian refugees in our day... or out-of-work coal miners in MacDowell County, West Virginia... or the more than 50 thousand people who are locked away in New York's prisons.

The truth is we can do both. We can celebrate the warmth and love that is an essential part of the Christmas season and we can turn our hearts and minds more fully to making a society where we can happily welcome Jesus.

But look closely at Matthew. Joseph is on the edge of bolting because his very young wife is somehow pregnant. I suspect Mary is mightily confused and frightened – comforting angels notwithstanding. Herod, who is a crazy and unstable despot is in charge of the area – and he is about to slaughter every child he can find. These are not good times. And Jesus is about to take on human flesh in the middle of this mess.

That is the good news – the Gospel. Jesus doesn't come because we've got everything just perfect. Jesus comes into our broken world because we need help. In our shame and sorrow Jesus loves us. In our bondage to wealth, privilege, power, and greed, Jesus comes to set us free. In our violence and injustice Jesus comes to teach us ways of peace. And so Lord Jesus, quickly come.

Third Sunday of Advent-Year A

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC
Third Sunday of Advent-Year A - Sunday, December  11, 2016

In dark and difficult times, it can become easy to doubt God. Is God there? Does God care? Why does God let painful things happen to good people? Will the reign of God remove all these hardships from us? Where is this reign of God? And when do we get it?

Even great prophets can doubt God at times. John the Baptist seems to doubt Jesus when he ends up under Herod’s thumb.
 


John has been the messenger ahead of Jesus. He has had a tremendously successful ministry in his own right. He has seen the lamb of God and recognized him. As a matter of fact, even decades after the death of Jesus, Christians will still encounter disciples of John who haven’t yet heard of Jesus.

But for now, John the Baptist has fallen on hard times. His speaking truth to power has landed him in Herod’s prison. Prison in those times was a transitional space between exoneration, exile or execution. During the incarceration, friends and family could visit and were even expected to support the basic needs of the prisoner. It is likely that John’s disciples had repeated access to him during his time in prison. And John wonders. Is execution how it is supposed to end for him? Has he not seen the Messiah? Isn’t the Messiah supposed to bring an end to all the people’s sufferings at the hands of the domination system that rules in Palestine? Couldn’t the Messiah save him from his predicament?
 
So John sends word to Jesus to find out if he, John, made a mistake in considering Jesus the Messiah? Is Jesus simply another prophet setting the stage for the Messiah? And what is a Messiah anyway? There were as many understandings of what a Messiah was to be as there were forms of Judaism at the time. And Judaism in the first-century Mediterranean world was as diverse as Christianity is today.

Some saw the Messiah as a political, military ruler that would deliver the Jews from the Roman occupation and restore the kingdom of Israel to its supposed glory under the reign of David. In that perspective, John should not have perished in the gaols of a Roman vassal king. He should have been mightily delivered and called to great feats of glory in the company of the victorious Messiah.
 
It is not clear that John envisioned the Messiah that way but it must have been an appealing fantasy while being imprisoned and awaiting Herod’s good or bad will. Others saw the Messiah as an eschatological character that would bring an end to the status quo of the universe and usher in another transformed reality as the reign of God.

But Jesus chooses not to answer John’s messianic question directly. But he states what he is achieving instead, couching his deeds in language redolent of earlier prophets. “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”
 
Isn’t that the Messiah that John longs for in his heart? A Messiah that heals, restores human dignity and integrity, restores fullness of life? His ministry to humanity runs deeper that political structures. He is transforming humanity, soul by soul. That is a Messiahship that is still ongoing today as the resurrected Jesus became Christ for all eternity. In the gospel according to Matthew, he started his public ministry saying ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’
 
And indeed, it has come near. We are the instrument of that reign of God here and now. We need not worry about the fulfillment of that reign at the end of times. It could be tempting to cross our arms and say, we’ll wait for the end of times to take care of all of creation’s difficulties. We need to witness to the Christ today, in these places where we live, study or work. Even when things get hard and we wonder if God has left us in the lurch.
 
Christ himself did not choose the easy path of using God’s almighty power to remove our agency in the world and fix everything according to God’s best judgment. Or rather, in God’s best judgment, we have our agency in the world to learn the way of love and transform the world accordingly. With God’s help, we are to bring about the reign of God through our loving rather than our winning. Jesus did not win the race to power and riches in this world. But Christ won for all of us for all times.
 
Mind you, there are days I’d rather have the quick fix but in the end, I know God loves us too much to treat us as objects of his mercy. God would rather that we be the subjects of our lives and decide for ourselves how to bring about God’s reign on earth. Advent is not just four weeks before Christmas. Advent is the destiny of our lives. For and by the Love of God. Rejoice and have a Happy Advent.

Second Sunday of Advent- Year A

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. John  Forbis, OHC
Second Sunday of Advent- Year A - Sunday, December 4, 2016

Whenever I read this Gospel aloud, I like to put some real umph into John’s tirade against some of the Pharisees and Sadduccees.  I often picture myself standing behind him, (hiding behind him), and saying things such as, “That’s right.  You tell ‘em, John.  Give ‘em hell.”  However, John could turn around and fix me with that same menacing look. One rather visceral description of John the Baptist is put forth by the New Hampshire, Congretional Church minister, Nancy Rockwell:

“Wildman John leaps into Advent’s second Sunday, taking my breath away with his matted black dreadlocks, that camel skin he wraps around his bony body, gnarled bare feet sticking out below.  His eyes seize me the way his rough hands seize the locusts he eats, the honey he snatches from wild bees.   He roars warnings: dire times, dereliction of duty, the brink of doom.  Advent seems too small a stage to hold him.”

If I am too quick to take the moral high ground, I might find such a “wildman” from below pointing a rough finger at me, “seizing me with his eyes” while calling me a viper.  I am not to take for granted that I have Abraham for my ancestor.  John throws the kind of assumption, that I am somehow above the fate of any other human being because of some inherited privilege, right back in my face and compels me as he does all of us to repent.  And we can’t repent unless we know we need repentance.  To do so would mean climbing down from our moral high ground and joining the rest of the Children of Abraham in the same wilderness where that voice cries out from.

John tells us that he baptizes with water, but Jesus baptizes with Spirit and fire.  They penetrate and burn through our defenses to the very core of our being.  It causes such a dramatic conversion of heart raising our stoney selves up to be the Children of Abraham.

This process is not just a one-time event in our childhood.  It is the constant great equalizer that unifies us all into one being with God through Christ.  The Incarnation allows us the full freedom to be vulnerable as Christ is.  The more I resist and deny that truth the more isolation and fear lingers within me, which is binding.  I soon believe that I have no more worth than the chaff that is burned in that Incarnational fire that is always here and always to come.

Yet at the same time, as simply and unobtrusively as a branch growing out of a tree stump, we see that God does not hold us in that same unworthiness, but draws us into life.  Into this quiet scene, dramatic changes occur all because of a child receiving “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of the Lord and righteousness and faithfulness.”  Predator and prey play, lie down, graze together. God will do anything to make this happen even if it means a rod from the child’s mouth will strike the earth, with his breath will kill the wicked and will baptize with fire and Spirit.  He makes a difference on this earth no matter what it takes, even if it means God empties himself for us to become this boy.

John may seem terrifying to us, but as Paul says in the passage from the Letter to the Romans, God is steadfast and offers encouragement which extends all the way back to the prophets if not before.  God is present and vibrant in history itself.  He is the very source of life that we answer to, where we are all in it together.  How do we know this?  Through the steadfastness and encouragement of scripture and prophets such as Isaiah and John now embodied in the Word himself.

Christ enlivens all these words, making them to be spoken and offered to all people, even Gentiles and a voice crying out in the wilderness pointing his finger not only at them but all of us as well.  As we welcome Christ into our midst, there is no them or us, only us who are just as capable of being a brood of vipers as Sadduccees and Pharisees.  We can’t escape that truth.  But we are just as capable of being forgiven and offered God’s grace also.  And so we await the coming of Christ with great expectation and hope as one brood of vipers, one voice, one people welcomed and in harmony with one another.

We don’t have to run.  We don’t have to claim entitlement over anyone else for God’s gift of salvation.  We have no more claim upon it than anyone else.  We can cry with one voice with the Psalmist in Psalm 72, “May all the earth be filled with God’s glory.”  The promise and reality of the Incarnation is summed up in this one exclamation.  AMEN.  

First Sunday of Advent -Year A

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Roy Parker, OHC
First Sunday of Advent-Year A - Sunday, November  27, 2016

"But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father..." That day and hour refers to the suffering of the days in which the sun and moon are darkened, the stars fall from heaven, the powers of heaven are shaken, the sign of the Son of Man appears in heaven, all the tribes of the earth mourn and see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.., and so forth. For our purposes it will be useful to describe the wider Biblical background of that imagery. That is, the cosmic disruption, the darkening of the sun and moon, the falling of the stars, and so forth, occurs three times in the Hebrew Bible in association with oracles of doom against Egypt, Edom, and Babylon, kingdoms which have subjugated Israel, and each of those three Doom Oracles is accompanied by an Oracle of Promise for the restoration of an entirely devastated Israel, an Israel reduced to the point of nothingness.

This background scenario of the Gospel passage suggests that such a point of nothingness would be essential to understanding the return of Jesus in glory. It will dawn upon us that whatever may constitute the Great Advent of Jesus in divine glory attended by angels, there are plenty of dress rehearsals in terms of that point of nothingness about which I owe you a larger description. I should say that my words on this are indebted to the work of Walter Brueggemann, a leading scholar of the Hebrew Bible.

When I speak of Israel here, be mindful that God's intention for Israel, expressed in intervention on behalf of an abused and suffering people, carries over to what is considered to be the new Israel, the Church of God, described and celebrated in the proclamations of the Easter Vigil. In what is said about Israel of old, be mindful of its potential in the life of the Christian Church.

The great theological reality of the Hebrew Scriptures is the failure of Jerusalem, the end of its hegemony, the deportation of Israel, and the reality of exile, a dismal ending that was the termination of all old faith claims. It is impossible to overstate the cruciality of this fissure in Israel's self-understanding. This was for Israel a genuine and profound ending. Judah came to an end. 

The public, institutional life of But beyond that Israel made the theological judgement that God had abandoned Israel and had nullified all the old promises. The political-military experience of an ending is transposed into a deep theological crisis.

It is this moment of failure that is called the point zero. It is the moment when Israel has two tasks that belong definitively to its faith. The first -- long practiced in the Psalms of lamentation and complaint -- is to relinquish what is gone, to resist every denial and every act of nostalgia, to acknowledge and embrace the ending God has given. Jerusalem is gone! Israel will not soon have done with its sense of loss, variously expressed as grief and as rage. Israel's second task is to receive what is inexplicably and inscrutably given by God, to resist every measure of despair, to await and affirm what God, beyond every quid pro quo, now gives. This is an important point: the faith of Israel envisions no automatic move from relinquishment to reception; one does not follow necessarily from or after the other. Israel's poets, singers, and speakers of oracles, heard as the very assurance of God's own voice, arise precisely in the point zero. Amos Wilder had it right: "Accept no mitigation, but be instructed at the null point; the zero breeds new algebra."

We are here at the center of the mystery of Jewish faith that receives, in Christian perspective, its dramatic enactment in Easter. There is a "breeding," a hidden generativity of newness, just at the zero. The "breeding" at zero is not simply necessity. The "breeding" at zero is not only Israel's act of will for newness or wishful thinking. The "breeding" at zero is not simply buoyant poets in their extreme imagination. Perhaps it is all of these; but beyond these is the wounded but undefeated, affronted but not alienated, shamed but not negated resolve of God to have a people as God's own people in the world. And therefore, it is clear in the canonical text of Jews and Christians, there will be a new Israel, reloved, healed, ransomed, blessed, brought home rejoicing -- by no claim of its own but by the nonnegotiable resolve of God to have a people.

The rhetoric of hope whereby Israel, in its hopelessness, must receive its new gift from God is given in many voices. Indeed, Israel requires endless generativity in order to speak the unspeakable newness from God that is beyond explanation. One such voice is that of the Latina Junot Diaz who talks to her sister about radical hope in the wake of the recent election.

"What now? you asked. And that was my students' question too. What now?l answered them as poorly as I answered you, I fear. And so I sit here in the middle of the night, in an attempt to try again.

So what now? Well, first and foremost, we need to feel. We need to connect courageously with the rejection, the fear, the vulnerability that Trump's victory has inflicted on us, without turning away or numbing ourselves or lapsing into cynicism. We need to bear witness to what we have lost: our safety, our sense of belonging, our vision of our country. We need to mourn all these injuries fully, so that they do not drag us into despair, so repair will be possible.

And while we're doing the hard, necessary work of mourning, we should avail ourselves of the old formations that have seen us through darkness. We organize. We form solidarities. And, yes: we fight. To be heard. To be safe. To be free.

For those of us who have been in the fight, the prospect of more fighting, after so cruel a setback, will seem impossible. At moments like these, it is easy to feel that one can't go on. But I believe that, once the shock  settles, faith and energy will return. But let's be real: we always knew this wasn't going to be easy. Colonial power, patriarchal power, capitalist power must always and everywhere be battled, because they never, ever quit. We have to keep fighting, because otherwise there will be no future -- all will be consumed. Those of us whose ancestors were owned and bred like animals know that future all too well, because it is, in part, our past. And we know that by fighting against all odds, we who had nothing, not even our real names, transformed the universe. Our ancestors did this with very little, and we who have more must do the same. This is the joyous destiny of our people -- to bury the arc of the moral universe so deep in justice that it will never be undone.

But all the fighting in the world will not help us if we do not also hope. What I'm trying to cultivate is not blind optimism but what the philosopher Jonathan Lear calls radical hope. "What makes this hope radical ," Lear writes,"is that it is directed toward a future goodness that  transcends the current ability to understand what it is." Radical hope is not so much something you have but something you practice; it demands flexibility, openness, and what Lear describes as "imaginative excellence," Radical hope is our best weapon against despair, even when despair seems justifiable; it makes the survival of the end of your world possible. Only radical hope could have imagined people like us into existence. And I believe that it will help us create a better, more loving future... Time to face this hard new world, to return to the great shining work of our people. Darkness, after all, is breaking, a new day has come.