Epiphany 3 C - Sunday, January 27, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve, OHC
Epiphany 3 C - Sunday, January 27, 2019

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Luke 4:14-21

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

I have heard hundreds of sermons in my life, and preached by a rough counting about two hundred.  Some were short, and some not so short.  Some left me wanting more, others rejoicing that they were finally, mercifully, over (including one or two of my own).  A few have been life-changing, so memorable that phrases and images continue to live in my memory years, even decades later.  What made those few memorable was the unique meeting of a message and a messenger and a hearer that had conviction in proclamation and experience.  In some mysterious yet real way the Spirit was present in the preacher and in me to turn the words on a page into an event that was and continues to be alive.

The last sentence in the Gospel reading this morning is, in terms of length, possibly the shortest sermon in the world.  Only nine words, but nine words that changed the direction of Israel’s hope, declared salvation present, and initiated the movement of forgiveness, love, and mercy that is the reason for our celebration of the resurrection this morning.  Not bad for a nine-word sermon.  And these are nine words the listeners to Jesus were least expecting.  The synagogue community was used to the routine, repeated every sabbath.  Messiah will come – some day.  We will know and receive the liberation from our oppressor – some day.  The injustices and inequalities of the society will be addressed and rectified – some day.  In the meantime, we wait and long.  They had been waiting and longing for a long time, for centuries.  So long, that their expectation had grown cool, their belief that God would come faded into a resigned acceptance of the status quo.  Perhaps some had come to believe that Israel would be occupied – oppressed and enslaved forever, that the poor had no prospects of security, that God had even abandoned them.

Jesus enters the synagogue on what begins as an ordinary sabbath and sees familiar faces, some people he had likely known his whole life or younger ones he had seen born and grow.  He knows the promises of the prophets as well.  And as he inaugurates his public ministry recalls words from Isaiah that provide a kind of mission statement, a vision of what is to be taught and done in the next three years.  He quotes words familiar to his hearers, of a hope given by God so many centuries ago that point to a future that seems so far away.  Then comes the nine word sermon:  “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  The Roman Empire is still in power, there are still slaves and blind persons and captives, so the meaning is obviously rhetorical and metaphorical.  We automatically translate the “today” into something other than this day.  Yet what if Jesus meant what he said, meant “today”?  From God’s point of view, the fulfillment of the kingdom is present, everything good is offered, if we would but receive it and live it.  The whole salvation of God is on its way today.

We look through the dark glass for signs of the fulfillment of God’s promise, but Jesus sees with perfect clarity.  He will go forth from the synagogue and do exactly these things: good news to the poor, sight to the blind, freedom and release to slaves and captives.  His acts of teaching and compassion and healing are not his way of bringing the fulfillment of the prophecy into the world, they are the acts of one who already sees the world as it can be, as it is becoming, and indeed will be, and goes about as if it is true and happening.  This is not inserting good into a hopelessly evil world, it is unveiling the hope beneath all the ways humans have distorted and misused it.  He does not overlook or disregard the evil that he has surely come to rectify, but he will strike at the very heart of the human longing for peace and justice.  The fulfillment he brings is to disarm the power of evil, undermine its categories, refuse to participate in the attitudes and structures that perpetuate and preserve injustice.  He will call us to wake up from our collective agreements about the boundaries of insiders and outsiders, worthy and unworthy, respectable and dispensable.  The fulfillment is not firstly the instant elimination of all the sin and evil that harms, but the entering into a world that will not capitulate to their ongoing power, and thus can proclaim that there is no longer any such thing as us and them, but just us – all made in the image and likeness of God.  The poor are not a label, but our brothers and sisters in need, the blind and oppressed and enslaved are those in need like us and recipients of grace like us. His movement becomes ours as we see what he saw and act the way he acted.  Jesus does not ask us to change the world into the fulfillment of God’s promise of peace and justice.  Jesus asks us to live as if that world is already and truly breaking into ours and cooperate in its arrival and unveiling and joy.  Because Christ is here the peace and justice that is promised and given break out of us because Christ lives in us.  That is the “today” of Jesus – that Jesus himself is God’s “today”.

We preacher/theologian types are fond of the phrase “already, but not yet” to refer to the reign or kingdom of God, which is Jesus’ favorite way of talking about the good news.  The phrase seeks to acknowledge both the reality of Christ’s work of reconciliation active in the world and the ongoing presence of evil and suffering.  We live in a world that has been visited by salvation and wait in hope for the completion of that salvation. But the phrase “already, but not yet” can become a trap.  “But not yet” can mean, “we will know and receive true human equality in our world – some day.  The injustices of our world today – of bigotry, poverty, prejudice will be addressed and rectified – some day. In the meantime, we wait and long.  What we really mean by “not yet” is really just a plain, old-fashioned, “no”.  The “not yet”, if expressed honestly, is “it would be great if there was change, but the problems are too deep, the resistances too strong, our strength too poor”.  The “not yet” of the good news is not God’s unwillingness to show us the way and empower us to live it, but our resistance to embracing the “today” of change, of living in the reality of what Jesus declares has come.  God says “already”, humans say “not yet”.  We cannot use waiting and hope, as real and important as they are, as excuses to avoid acting as we can, doing today what God has entrusted us to do while we wait and hope. We have received an invitation to act now, to put our whole lives on the line, there is no more time, we cannot afford to wait any longer.  If the scripture is fulfilled today in our hearing, then our lives change today.

Now the fulfillment does not come as lightning, all at once, until the end, but like a mustard seed, in the small gifts of abundant generosity, freedom, joy, and seeing.  Sometimes imperceptibly small, but coming nonetheless.  Coming because I do the small, faithful, selfless thing, because I choose to consent to the potential of today, that whatever seed I can plant today will grow, but there must be an act of planting, a decision that reflects my belief that the fulfillment is here now. Believing in Jesus’ today means we live in the presence of the future.  Jesus is never saying “later”, but always saying “now”.

The Spirit is opening new doors today.

The Spirit is changing evil to good today.

The Spirit is making the impossible possible today.  Amen.

Interment of Tony Cayless - Friday, January 25, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
Interment of Tony Cayless - Friday, January 25, 2019
Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul

Acts 26:9-21
Galatians 1:11-24
Matthew 10:16-22

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

The Rev. Frank Anthony (Tony) Cayless,
Companion of the Order of the Holy Cross,
circa 2012

Today, we receive the ashes of the Rev. Tony Cayless for their immurement in the crypt, under our church, also known as St Michael’s chapel. It is an honor to receive Tony back where he served this Order and this community so well. Welcome home, Tony!

I got to know Tony and Suzette Cayless in my first years as a monk here at Holy Cross Monastery between 2004 when I entered the monastery, and 2008 when they moved to Chapel Hill, in North Carolina.

I remember those days fondly. Tony and Suzette were a great help to our community. Besides great service to the Order and neighboring parishes, they also warmly entertained the community and family members at Huntington House where they lived. Going up the hill on a Sunday night to spend a good evening at Tony and Suzette’s was a great way to start a weekly Sabbath.

Of course, this four-year stint at West Park, was but a grace note in a long career of eminent and loving service to the church in the UK, in Barbados and in the US.

I thought of Tony as the quintessential gentlemanly English parson. His diction was perfectly clipped. His words properly weighted and adapted to his audience. He was always kind and cheerful; which didn’t stop a glint in his eye to accompany his deft handling of humor. 

One often met him walking the dog Bruno on the grounds of the monastery. He would always stop for a bit of caring conversation unless of course, we were in the middle of greater silence or Bruno had to chase a gaggle of wild turkeys without further ado.

He was an example of benevolent and beneficent pastoral presence.

*****

Tony died of complications of Alzheimer’s disease. My mother died of complications of Alzheimer’s disease too in 2013. Benign early signs of the disease were discernible by the time Tony and Suzette moved to Chapel Hill to be nearer their beloved son and his family. From my then ongoing experience, I knew what this family was in for in the years to come.

Losing a loved one to Alzheimer’s has been described as the long, long, long goodbye. The life of the caretakers has also been described as made of 36-hour days, as eventually, constant attention and care is required. Taking care of an Alzheimer’s-afflicted loved one is a course of endurance. Fortitude is needed whether one feels one has it or not. Eventually, we learn that our strength to care is greater than we know, if at great costs to our heart, mind and soul.

As the illness progresses, few indignities are spared the sufferer and his caretakers. One of the hardest parts is progressively losing the personality of our beloved. Another is the fraying of old and deep connections as memory gives way to oblivion.

*****

This illness is so cruel to both sufferer and caretakers that eventually theological doubts arise. Does God care about our loved one, or about us, the caretakers? Is anyone punished here? Who is our beloved in the resurrection? The man in his prime who knew us and loved us or the man who no longer knew who he or anyone else was?

It is often difficult to remember that the true self, the soul of our beloved is unaffected by the illness. That very soul is held in love all along by God. And death is a liberation into the new birth of resurrection. It is but a new stage in the ongoing becoming of the soul. 

It may be of comfort to imagine our loved one in the resurrection; unshackled from the impediments of Alzheimer’s, in full bloom of what their true self is in closer union with God.

***** 

But that comes only progressively to soothe our grief, after the passing of our beloved.

Long before that, Alzheimer’s initiates the process of grieving precociously. While our beloved is still alive, we get to grieve every stage of cognitive and behavioral impairment. We learn to grieve the loss of what relationships were before the slide into oblivion. We progressively lose the one we knew so well even before their natural death. 

And after that death, we find it hard not to let the painful last years of decline overwhelm sweeter memories of earlier stages of his life and our relationship with him. Eventually, the better memories will reclaim their due place in our remembrance too.

*****

There may also be unearned guilt in the caretakers for the times when we lost hope, we lost patience, we lost our temper. The unremitting nature of this illness means that it is nigh impossible to be the perfect caretaker at all times. And in remembering those times, we need to turn to God’s love for us in our frailty. God is fully reconciled to us, no matter how flagging our care may ever have been. We are not superheroes at all times, we are human and that is amazing enough.

Whatever our pain and grief is or may have been, we need to remember that “Instead of explaining our suffering, God shares it.” (Nicholas Wolterstorff)

God is with Tony now. At no moment was God ever away from Tony; not in his moments of utter joy, nor in his moments of pain and sorrow, nor in his moments of withering consciousness, nor at the time of his death. God was always with him at all those moments.

In the Kingdom of God, in which we - maybe unwittingly - already live, death is not a private, but a communal affair. Tony died surrounded by a loving family and a caring hospice team, supported by the prayers of loving friends.

Tony died like an infant is baptized. He was carried, supported and loved by a praying, caring community. We are all part of the body of Christ, mortals living and dead, saints and sinners. We are still united in the communion of saints. And Tony was and is always remembered by the body of Christ and by God himself. And when we pray for the dead, we are part of God’s remembrance of those God loves, whether alive in this mortal life or alive in the resurrection.

Amen.

Epiphany 2 C - Sunday, January 20, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Josép Martinez-Cubero, OHC
Epiphany 2 C - Sunday, January 20, 2019

Isaiah 62:1-5      1 Corinthians 12:1-11      John 2:1-11

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

A wedding in the ancient world was an exceptional feast. Celebrations went on for days. For many, a wedding meant a break from what may have often been experienced as endless labor. It was a chance to eat and drink abundant food and wine, in contrast to the meager rations that made up a typical daily fare. 

Cana of Galilee was known for its thieves, rebels, and Gentiles. It was in Gentile territory that Jesus made his adult home and performed his first miracle in the Gospel of John. From the very beginning Jesus’ life and work go beyond the boundaries of race and nation.

The gospel reading begins with the words "on the third day." Early Christians would have heard the expression and would have understood it to relate to the resurrection. That Jesus was raised "on the third day" was a common understanding in the earliest resurrection traditions.  Therefore, we are to consider what follows in the story in light of the resurrection.

"On the third day, a marriage happened..." Marriage is an image relating to the fullness of time. In the reading from Isaiah, the prophet declares that the land of Judah will no longer be called "desolate," but will instead be called "married". With Jesus’ resurrection, the reconciliation, that is, the "marriage" between God and humanity is complete, and the people revel in joy and bountiful life, which is symbolized by the abundance of wine.  

Jesus' gift of wine at the wedding at Cana is directly connected to the sacrifice of his life on the cross. The glory revealed by the wine is directly connected to the glorification manifested in his death and resurrection. Jewish and Greek readers in the late first century would have recognized these associations. Prophetic writings and late-first-century Jewish tradition associated a lavish outpouring of wine with the advent of the Messiah. Greek legends associated with the god Dionysus saw miraculous gifts of wine as revealing of the presence of a deity. 

The stone jars, each of which could contain fifteen to twenty-five gallons, signify the abundance of the gifts introduced by Jesus. Jesus' mysterious reference to "my hour" refers to his future passion, death, and resurrection. The impact of the sign at Cana is that "Jesus revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” 

Though never explicitly named, Mary is introduced for the first time in the fourth gospel. She makes known her concern to her son: “They have no wine.” To which he replies: “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” Really Jesus?? Wrong! You better listen to your mother. Let’s picture this scene. The gospel, does not tell us what her response is, but judging from what follows we can get a pretty good idea. Or perhaps she didn’t have to say anything else to him. Despite his objection, Mary knows that Jesus will listen to her voice and perform the sign that will reveal his glory. Even Jesus needed a little push from mom. Perhaps she listened to her son’s reply, turned to the servants, said: “Do whatever he tells you”, looked back at Jesus, and then walked away. Done! Her role in the story is to articulate our human need for Christ. She appears only twice in John’s Gospel: in this passage about the wedding at Cana, and later on when she stands by the cross. These two brief appearances by Mary connect Jesus' first sign and his last breath. 

Faith is the purpose of the sign, as it is in all the miracles in John's Gospel. Faith is the reason why and the purpose for which the Gospel of John was written:

“But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” (20:31).

Faith is why we proclaim the gospel. In the Christian context, good works are the by-products of faith. Faith is not a matter of coercion but of wonder at the miracle of Christ. Miracles happen. Signs of Christ at work appear all around us whether or not we acknowledge them. They benefit us whether or not we notice them. But to see these signs for what they are and believe in the one to whom they point is to live in the joy of the Glory of God, that is, to be fully alive.

About this gospel lesson, St. Augustine wrote:

“He who made the wine that day at the marriage feast does this every year in vines. But we do not wonder at the latter because it happens every year; it has lost its marvel by its constant occurrence.”

In my experience, to live a life faith has to do with the constant surrender to the understanding that all is grace, not because we are entitled or even because we deserve it, but because it has been freely given. Everything in life is a miracle, a sign pointing to Christ. Wrapping my head around that understanding will surely take me the rest of my life. ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+

Epiphany 1 C - Sunday, January 13, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. John Forbis, OHC
Epiphany 1 C - Sunday, January 13, 2019
The Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

I wonder if God ever gets tired of people speaking for him or pronouncing to their hearers what he’s going to do.  Of course, the enemy is always going to get the worst of his wrath.  We know that He really has it out for them, because our enemies are his enemies after all.  We are his children.

However, what if we’re on the other side?  What if we were Egyptians, Ethiopians, people from Seba and any other nation that is just an exchange for the Israelites?  With the injustice and cruelty going on in our nation now, maybe we deserve to be given away in exchange for those who live for God’s glory.  Oops!  Now there I go, speaking for God!

Even John is telling people what God’s going to do.  However, John may have been more correct about God’s Son than he realized.  Fire contains light, heat and in Scripture often symbolizes God’s presence.

Out of curiosity, I was interested in what threshing looked like.  What I witnessed on YouTube were farmers who laboriously went through various processes to thresh and winnow out wheat from chaff.  This included one focused and determined farmer who insisted travelling the whole journey with wheat from the field to the plate.  It was a messy and imperfect project taking him all day to complete.  However, he approached the effort as a true labor of love, ending with his childlike wonder cooking and eating the pancake, which came from this adventure.

In this Gospel passage, everybody’s expectant of something.  Is John the Messiah?  No, he nips that rumor in the bud immediately and abruptly.  I doubt the innocence and humility of the farmer was what John had in mind, either, when he painted the picture of Jesus with his winnowing fork.  Who knows what Jesus expected?      

Finally, God actually speaks.  Psalm 29 describes this voice as a voice of splendor, upon mighty waters, cracking cedar trees in half, stripping forests bare and making mountains skip like calves and young wild oxes.  

Yet his primary word to one man of thousands who come out to be baptized by John is one of love.  And that love is as passionate as fire, and as gentle as the attention and care of bringing forth wheat from the chaff that shelters and protects it.  Then the relationship between him and his beloved son is sealed and consummated with the Spirit descending on Jesus as the bodily affirmation of Jesus’ identity and the Trinity is seen together as one.

Then, God’s voice unleashes an unquenchable fire of love so fierce and hot that it ignites the passion and fury of Jesus to become the winnowing fork, the threshing floor, the wheat and even the chaff for our own fires of violence and victimization.  By the cross, Jesus exposes to us the evil and lie that we are singled out, separated or excluded and the Other is our enemy and scapegoat.

But God’s voice is also a voice that can split flames of fire, Psalm 29 again says.  It can penetrate through any of our fires that burn themselves out very quickly, and I would also like to think that would include John’s unquenchable fire.  In earth, water and fire, the Spirit tells us who we are, whose we are and who we can be if we only give in to Christ’s passionate fire and careful and intimate attention.  

Imagine experiencing this same acceptance, love and passion at our own Baptism.  Yes, most of us probably were baptized when we were children, but we renew that covenant not only yearly but every time we have a consciousness of God calling us by name, all of us.  

Baptism is not an instant ticket to innocence and faultlessness and therefore exclusion.  It is only a beginning, an initiation into a messy, imperfect, laborious process of being scattered all over a threshing floor and having our heart brought out of the hulls and dirt of defenses, self-righteousness and coldness.  This takes many steps, picking, sifting and more picking and sifting.  Still the chaff is not completely removed nor is it all burned.  However, as the farmer, I witnessed said, he would do it again.  And so does Christ again and again so that we can enter into a new covenant with God and are immersed into God’s fiery desire for his New Creation.  Amen.    

Epiphany - Sunday, January 6, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Elizabeth Broyles, The Companions of Mary the Apostle
Epiphany - Sunday, January 6, 2019

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

Feast of the Holy Name - Tuesday, January 1, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery , West Park, NY

Br. Bob Pierson, OHC
Holy Name - Tuesday, January 1, 2019

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

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

At the beginning of a New Year, many people are thinking about their New Year's resolutions, wondering what aspect of their lives they want to focus on and try to improve.  I have learned over the years to avoid making such resolutions because I know that I will eventually let them go.  Change does not happen in my life by guilting myself into self-improvement.

What works better for me is the realization that any real change in my life comes from focussing not on me, but on God.  As I grow closer to God, things in my life begin to change.  So rather than trying to lay on the guilt, I think we all need to remember who we are, and that realization can help provide the grace we need to grow and become who God calls us to be.

Paul reminds the Galatians that “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”  So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.”  As I have said before, we are members of the GOD family, and our status as children of God is something that we would do well to ponder over and over again in our hearts, just as Mary pondered the words and events of the birth of her child.

What a tremendous privilege we have to be adopted members of God's family.  St. Athanasius,
bishop of Alexandria, put it this way:  “God became a human being so that human beings could become like God.”  That is our call, and pondering that call can create in us the desire to be who we already are.  Pondering can help us to be grateful for the gift of God's life, and that gratitude can move us, just like the shepherds, to glorify and praise God for the tremendous gift of God's life in us.

Last night at Vespers, we heard St. Basil the Great say it this way:  “Let us give glory to God with the shepherds, let us dance in choir with the angels, for 'this day a Savior has been born to us, the Messiah and Lord.'  He is the Lord who has appeared to us, not in his divine form, in order not to terrify us in our weakness, but in the form of a servant, that he might set free what had been reduced to servitude.”

And that's why we gather here on this first day of a New Year, to hear God's word and to give thanks and praise to God for the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, our brother, and our God.  As we receive his Body and Blood, we become what we eat, The Body of Christ, given for the world.