Holy Cross Monastery Sermons : 2024

Sunday, April 21, 2024

Easter 4 B - April 21, 2024

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky

The Fourth Sunday of Easter B, April 21, 2024

Click here for an audio of the sermon

There are four Scriptural readings or texts appointed to be read on this, as on every Sunday, in our eucharistic lectionary. But we have heard only three. The fourth is almost always a selection from the Book of Psalms and is traditionally said or sung between the first and second readings. I'm not sure why we no longer observe this practice. We did for some years, but that was decades ago. Perhaps we felt that our worship had become just a bit too wordy. And since as monastics we are committed to the recitation of the entire Book of Psalms, all 150 of them, over a two-week cycle, it may have been obvious that this is the place to cut back. And maybe we simply felt that we were overdosing on psalms. It's not hard to do. It strikes me as odd though that in my almost 40 years in the monastery I don't remember ever hearing a sermon on the psalms. Normally the focus has been the gospel passage or on occasion one of the other readings. But today I do want to speak about the appointed psalm. And that, of course, is Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd.”

After the Lord's Prayer, Psalm 23 is arguably the most familiar text in the Christian tradition. Many people grew up memorizing it, as did I. It was read regularly in the public schools that I attended, and always in the translation given in the King James Version of the Bible.

If you know it by heart, please feel welcome to say it with me:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

This text is so familiar that it risks becoming a cliché…except of course when it isn't. Said in the middle of the night when sleep eludes us and we are gripped by anxiety or fear. Said at the bedside of a dying friend or parishioner. Or said at the grave side. It has the power to lift us beyond ourselves into a space that's wider than our fears and brighter than the darkness of our minds and hearts.

The psalms, as most of you know, are a mixed bag of ancient Hebrew poetry, often achingly tender and beautiful but also at times deeply troubling. Some are easy to pray or sing. I think of psalms that give praise to God, those that offer thanksgiving for creation and for God’s deliverance, those of offer consolation, and even those laments which give voice to our sorrows when we have no words to say, no other way to express them. These are all welcome parts of our psalm repertoire. Other psalms are a bit odd: royal enthronement or coronation anthems, wedding songs, psalms filled with obscure geographical or historical references. Still others are not so easy to engage. I think of those psalms that are violent and vengeful, those that are militaristic or chauvinistic, those that are celebrations of a complex and sometimes imagined history which are ripe for contemporary misuse. In fact, here at Holy Cross Monastery there are several psalms or verses of psalms—the so-called imprecatory or cursing passages—that we never use publicly.

The Christian tradition has from its inception developed creative ways of reading and praying the psalms, what I sometimes term “intellectual acrobatics,” to make them more in tune with our understanding of the Christian revelation and of our own developing ethical standards. For example, the bride in a wedding psalm becomes for me the Church or my own soul being united to the Holy One. And the king in an enthronement psalm may be understood to be a prophetic or symbolic reference to Jesus Christ. And the enemies, a term which appears repeatedly in the psalms, may be understood as the evil forces in our world or our own sins which need to be overcome by a power greater than ourselves. Whatever the literal or original meaning of the psalm—and we cannot ignore that—we all must do this kind of translation at some level if we're going to pray with them with any integrity, if they're going to give voice to our deepest aspirations even when the text appears strange and even repugnant.

But Psalm 23 doesn't require quite the acrobatic agility of so many of the psalms. For us, the 23rd Psalm is primarily about God’s power to console, to comfort and to provide for us, to guide and lead us in right ways and to our right end and to keep us safe along the way. And the psalm does this personally. It speaks to God directly in the first-person singular and offers us the image of a shepherd who is neither distant nor absent but lovingly present as a fellow traveler who both understands and protects. There is much to be said about this psalm. Let me simply draw our attention to two sections.

The first revolves around the phrase: “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” This is a phrase dear to us all because, as the old spiritual reminds us, “You’ve got to walk down that lonesome valley.” The critical word here is the word ‘walk’. Our temptation when faced with death, either literal or metaphorical, is to run…to run in the other direction or if we're brave or foolish, to run headlong into the death-dealing situation. The psalm, however, counsels us to walk, to take our time, to move step by step into and through the difficult places. Why? Perhaps because when we walk, we're less likely to stumble. And as we walk, our eyes have time to adjust to the dark; we begin to see more clearly where we really are. Perhaps we will see a pathway that we did not know was there. Perhaps we will catch a glimpse of a light ahead, faint but calling us onward. And as we give our eyes time to adjust, perhaps we'll see that there are other travelers on this road and that we are not in fact alone and that there is indeed one Traveler who has walked it before and will walk it with us and show us the way.

The second area I would draw our attention to is the conclusion of this psalm where it says that we sheep will dwell in the house of the Lord forever, or for length of days as some translations have it. That sounds fine and good until you realize that the ‘house of the Lord’ refers to the temple in Jerusalem. And if you know anything about the temple, you'll recognize that it was not exactly a safe place for sheep. The principal act of worship there was the sacrifice of sheep and other animals followed by a banquet to consume the sacrifice. The 23rd Psalm suddenly but strongly subverts that image. Instead of being on the menu, we sheep, the flock of this shepherd, will sit at table and feast in the house of the Lord: “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” That's consoling…especially for the sheep among us.

We may be tempted to read or pray this psalm with an attitude of naïve religious optimism. But we must rather hear this psalm within the framework of the history of God's people. We know that there is always trouble and tragedy, sadness as well as joy, defeat as well as victory. The psalmist knows this as well. I believe it is no accident that Psalm 23 immediately follows that psalm that begins with the words: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Perhaps these psalms ought never be recited or prayed apart from each other.

Psalm 23 does promise that there is One who journeys with us, a good shepherd. And in today's gospel passage Jesus identifies himself as this Good Shepherd, that is, the true shepherd whose power finds its strength in weakness and in emptying himself out for his sheep. Three times Jesus says that the Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. This was not something expected of either shepherds or rulers in the ancient world. But this is what Jesus did. He laid down his life so that you and I may take up our lives again more freely in through him. In that sense, Psalm 23 is the perfect Easter psalm.

Have you ever picked up one of those Gideon bibles when you were staying in a hotel? They sit hidden in the nightstand next to your bed. And they almost always offer upfront some advice or guidance. Feeling weary? Read Matthew 11: 28-29. Feeling fearful? Read Hebrews 13: 5-6. Feeling lonely? Read Psalm 23. This is good advice, but my advice is, I think, better. Don't wait till you're lonely. Read it now. Read it tonight. Memorize it.

“The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.” May those words be on our lips and in our hearts always.

Amen.

Sunday, April 14, 2024

Easter 3 B - April 14, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Francis Beckham

The Third Sunday in Easter B, April 14, 2024

Acts 3:12-19

1 John 3:1-7

Luke 24:36b-48

Click here for an audio of the sermon

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you, O God, my sustainer and my comforter. Amen.

In his 2002 novel Kafka on the Shore, Japanese author Haruki Murakami writes,

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same
person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”

Murakami is writing in the context of a fantasy novel, but to my mind, he might just as well be writing about the experience – the storm – of the Easter journey.

And what an experience it is! Such a rich mystery with so many layers. It’s a lot to take in, and one hardly knows where to begin in processing and understanding all the pieces, let alone the fuller picture – including its meaning for us, and what we’re supposed to do with it.

There was Lent, for a start, where we saw Jesus preparing the disciples and himself for the great work of Holy Week, where his earthly ministry reached its culmination, the words of the prophets were fulfilled, and the hopes of Israel were (temporarily) seemingly dashed.

Then Easter morning dawned, with those holy sisters coming out to the tomb from Jerusalem, prepared to perform what they thought was going to be the final task of a failed, finished saga, only to discover that what had seemed to be the death of a dream was, in fact, merely the opening scene of its second, even more thrilling, act. Through all of it, we experienced a whirlwind of characters and events including
fasting; ominous warnings of betrayal (and the acts of the betrayers themselves); triumphant donkey rides; a night of fellowship and feasting followed by unbearable loneliness and anguish; mocking and abuse at the hands of soldiers; perversions of justice and the cowardice of religious and government leaders; state-sponsored murder and the silence of the tomb; and just when all seemed lost, the surprise and
disbelief of the Resurrection.

Little wonder, then, that over the following weeks the disciples – and we – might struggle to make sense of it all. Our hearts know one thing, our minds perceive another, while all around us rages a storm of events unprecedented in all of history, filling us with awe, sorrow, wonderment, and confusion.

And so it is that we find the disciples this morning, still uprooted, disheveled, and reeling from the experiences of such an emotional – and, indeed, traumatic – storm, back inside the Cenacle as they struggle to understand “all of the things that have taken place … in these days.” They aren’t holed up there because they don’t want to carry on proclaiming the Reign of God; rather, they’re simply unsure now
of how to do it.

Before, they had Jesus with them. They were active partners-in-ministry, boots-on-the-ground, drawn to the movement by their shared love of God and desire to serve. But now, things are different. The disciples are different. Like the speaker in Murakami’s book, they aren’t sure what has even happened, if it’s really over, or what they’re supposed to do about it. So, they gather and wait for a sign.

I suspect it’s what most of us would’ve done. In fact, it’s exactly what I have done during seasons of uncertainty and unsettledness. When we know that what has worked in the past – be it a job, a city, a relationship, an identity, even a religion – will no longer be useful to us on our journey because of some shift in the lived reality of our lives (but long before a vision of how to move forward becomes
clear) we often find ourselves returning to our own Cenacles – our places of previous divine encounter and nourishment – to shelter, reflect, contemplate, integrate, and await answers.

So then, it’s no surprise that Jesus, working out of his own experience of earthly Life, Death, and Resurrection, decides to pay the frightened and discouraged disciples a few visits, first with two of them on the road to Emmaus, and then with everyone gathered in the Cenacle – the place of their last happy supper together before everything (and everyone) was going to change forever – to offer comfort,
assurance, and understanding:
“Peace be with you,” he begins. He has come to replace their disquietude with calmness.“Why are you troubled? Look at me and see for yourselves. You know ghosts don’t have flesh and bones. It really is I, myself. You know me.” He has come to replace their fear and doubt with confidence and certainty.

“Have you anything to eat?” He has come to replace their feelings of loss with a sense of familiarity and communion through memories of the meals they shared. Then finally, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you. I’d already told you that all these things were going to happen – it just all seemed abstract until now.” He has come to replace their confusion with the knowledge that God is still in charge, and has been this whole time, even if it hasn’t felt like it.

These reassurances are important because, for the disciples, the real work was just about to begin, though not quite yet. In the verse immediately following today’s Gospel reading, Jesus promises them they won’t have to take the next step until they’re ready – and that God will make them ready through the power and
presence of the Holy Spirit: “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” Having visited and reassured them, Jesus knows they’ll still need a bit more time to process everything if they’re going to be his ‘body, hands, and feet on earth’ as so beautifully imagined by Saint Theresa of Avila.

There was a time (not very long ago) when I thought that fifty days of Easter was a little much. “Okay, I get it,” I thought. “Easter’s a big deal, but all these extra ‘alleluias’ in the Daily Office are starting to get really old.” Now I’m beginning to understand that, just as Jesus couldn’t expect the disciples to be ready to charge headlong out of Easter Sunday into Pentecost, neither are we able to fully recognize, appreciate, and integrate the Resurrection into our own lives without taking time to rest in it, have it remembered and re-explained to us over six more Sundays, and begin to form a vision of how we’re being invited to use our newfound insight and wisdom in proclaiming the Reign of God when the Holy Spirit draws us from our Cenacles at Pentecost.

We, like the disciples, have journeyed through the tempest of Holy Week and Easter – and, no doubt, many other storms as well – and are now gathered, discovering how we’ve been transformed and made new, and waiting for a sign of what to do next. It is now that Jesus reminds us of the mission we were born to undertake: “Repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all.” And we’re just the people to do it, because we’re all “witnesses of these things.”

May peace and all that is good remain with us during this Eastertide, and always.
Amen.

Tuesday, April 9, 2024

Annunciation - April 9, 202

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Ephrem Arcement

The feast of the Annunciation (transferred), April 9, 2024

Isaiah 7:10-14

Hebrews 10:4-10

Luke 1:26-38

Click here for an audio of the sermon

She was not young, nor was she a virgin. She was married with children. She was not poor but wealthy. She was not of the first century but of the

thirteenth. She was widowed, and she buried all of her children. Then, at the age of 40, in the small Umbrian town of Foligno not far from Assisi, just before the turn of the fourteenth century, her Annunciation occurred. Little is known about

the circumstances of the events. What is known is that this Franciscan tertiary named Angela began to receive revelations from God whose content draws a direct line to the original Annunciation of the maiden of Nazareth.

If the Feasts that we Christians celebrate are not just commemorations to be remembered but mysteries to be lived, then St. Angela of Foligno may be called the patron saint of the Annunciation. Through her divine revelations she received

what I would estimate as the heart of this particular sacred mystery we celebrate today. She recounts once such revelation thus:

Afterward [God] added: "I want to show you something of my power." And
immediately the eyes of my soul were opened, and in a vision I beheld the
fullness of God in which I beheld and comprehended the whole of creation,
that is, what is on this side and what is beyond the sea, the abyss, the sea
itself, and everything else. And in everything that I saw, I could perceive
nothing except the presence of the power of God, and in a manner totally
indescribable. And my soul in an excess of wonder cried out: "The world is
pregnant with God!" Wherefore I understood how small is the whole of
creation — that is, what is on this side and what is beyond the sea, the abyss,
the sea itself, and everything else — but the power of God fills it to
overflowing.

A few nights ago, as I was drifting off to sleep, my phone roused me with the vibrating sound of an incoming DM. It was a good friend of mine who was asking if I had ever experienced an existential crisis. I assured him that I had…but that it had been a while. He was, and likely still is, going through his own. What confounds him is the question of why we exist when we were not first consulted

about it, which would seem to deny our freedom. Does God have a right to create me without my permission? The implications of this question are immense, and I did my best to try to provide an adequate response based on the goodness and giftedness of being created at all; that to be is better than not to be; that to be is to be desired by the Infinite Love of the Creator; and that to know that we are God’s beloved gives our lives meaning and purpose and direction and assuages the dread of all the unanswered questions that may still remain.

But what my friend is experiencing is the experience that we all, at least on some level, have known: to be is to be entrapped, to be caught in circumstances where there seems to be no way out—where our lives seem…and dreadfully feel… determined toward an outcome that we would not have freely chosen for ourselves.

I think of Israel caught in an existential desert for forty years. I think of Moses and Jeremiah caught in roles they didn’t ask for and out of which they did everything they could to escape. I think of all the psalms of lamentation…and the Book of Lamentation itself…that express emotions of dread, despondency, and doom. Why exist if life is like this?

And I think of the young maiden, Mary, who found herself caught in her own existential crisis…coming face to face with the inexplicable and alldetermining will of God.

Life is full of existential crises we wish we could bypass and circumvent and of which we feel the Holy Spirit driving us right into. The mystery of the Annunciation is not just a mystery about the birth of a new born child and the joy that this child will bring. It’s also about the sword that will pierce the heart of the one who bears this child and about the scandal that this child will cause to many.

We do not know why a good God would allow such pain to happen to someone so innocent, whether that is Mary or Jesus…you or me. And we will likely never come up with an adequate answer. But God does not remain silent in the face of such existential crises. The good news is that God is not aloof to our crises, our suffering, or our feelings of powerlessness and dread. Our God is Immanuel, right here with us in the middle of our entrapment.

The grand narrative of the Hebrew Bible is this story of entrapment and freedom and the creative life that is generated from the tension between the two. Whether it was from Egypt of from Babylon, the people of God staked their lives on a promise of freedom but all too often only experienced entrapment. In the midst of one of these crises, the Syro-Ephraimite War, the context of today’s passage from Isaiah, God is begging the King of Judah to ask for a sign to reassure him that freedom is guaranteed—that there is no reason to fear the allied Israel and Syria from conquering them. The sign given is the son of a young woman whose name will be Immanuel.

In light of the cosmic events of Jesus Christ, Luke widens the scope of this Isaian prophecy and sees Mary, and the child in her womb, as its ultimate fulfillment. Jesus is God with us in a new, definitive way to assure freedom and hope and to cast out fear and dread once and for all. Of course, Luke knows how the story will end and here, already in his Infancy Narrative, we hear intimations of the story’s climax.

Ultimately, the Annunciation is a Feast of the Lord and is about God’s saving work accomplished in Christ. In fact, the Annunciation is the very beginning of God’s final saving work. Mary’s existential crisis is a type of programmatic prophecy pointing to its fulfillment at the end of the Gospel where Jesus will undergo his own existential crisis on the cross—where he will know first hand the pain of being in this world…the pain of being Immanuel…the pain of feeling the dread of abandonment, even by God, and the utter hell that life can sometimes unleash. Yet, even then, his faith remains to his dying breath as he releases his spirit to the one he feels abandoned him.

His “fiat,” his “Yes” to God, in the midst of such pain and doubt, like Mary’s foreshadowed over thirty years before, is the very act which leads to the breaking open of the new creation. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is God’s ultimate answer to the Son of God’s existential crisis on the cross and becomes the answer to our own.

What does it mean, then, to not just celebrate the Annunciation but to live it? It means that we are like Mary, the archetype of all who are chosen to bear God into this world. We can balk at God and explain to God how unfair this choice may be. We know that bringing anything to birth demands great sacrifice and much suffering. Indeed, Mary’s name literally means “bitterness.” But her name can also mean “beloved.” And our lives contain both of these realities: bitterness and belovedness. The pain of life does not mean that God has forsaken us but that God is more intensely present to us. The pressure weighing down upon our shoulders that may seem to crush us is the very pressure fashioning our lives into the sparkling diamonds that nothing in this world will be able to obscure.

Brothers, our common call to the monastic way of life may, like Mary and so many others, feel at times like a summons to the impossible. In the face of the vocation and its demands, we may see only our very limited resources and ask, “how can this be?” But the genius of this vocation is found exactly there…where we come face to face with our own inner poverty and discover God’s all-sufficient

grace…that place where all things become possible.

Like Mary of Nazareth…and like Angela of Foligno…we are pregnant with God…and are called to birth God through gift of our lives to one another. And we’re also called to serve as midwives of this birthing in each other. It won’t always be fun and exciting and will at times be dreadfully burdensome. This is to be expected. But what God is doing in this place is using us to birth a quality of life…a way of being…which only our common struggle an birth: an irrevocable peace and joy that proclaims, “Alleluia, Christ is risen indeed! Behold him standing in our midst!”

Sunday, April 7, 2024

Easter 2 B - April 7, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert James Magliula

The Second Sunday in Easter B, April 7, 2024

Click here for an audio of the sermon

One week ago, the seal of death was broken, and Mary Magdalene saw Jesus alive. That night, despite her good news, the disciples were hiding behind locked doors. Today, the disciples are again in the same room behind the same locked doors. The house has become their tomb. They have locked out Mary Magdalene’s message of resurrection. They left the empty tomb of Jesus and entered their own tombs of fear, doubt, and blindness. They separated themselves and their lives from the reality of Jesus’ resurrection.

Christ is risen, the tomb is empty, but the doors are locked. Resurrected life, it seems, did not come easily to them, nor does it to us.

I suspect we all know about locked doors. Sometimes it seems that God rolls back the stone and we follow behind locking the door. God declares forgiveness and we continue to live in condemnation of self or others. God defeats death but we still live as if it is the final word. God offers new life, but we live in the past. God declares we are loved, and we lock ourselves out of that love. Maybe our wounds are so deep it does not seem worth the risk to step outside. The locked doors of our lives are not so much about what is going on around us, but what is happening within us: fear, anger, guilt, hurt, grief, the refusal to change. The locks on the doors of our life are always locked from the inside. Every time we shut the doors of our life, our mind, or our heart we imprison ourselves. For every person, event, or idea we lock out, regardless of the reason, we lock ourselves in.

I believe, that’s what Thomas was struggling with when he said, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” Jesus never accuses Thomas of doubting. That’s how we ‘ve translated and interpreted the Greek. Rather, Jesus, says, “Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” He could just have easily said that to the other disciples as well. One week after seeing Jesus’ hands and side they are still in the house behind locked doors.

Belief in Jesus’ resurrection is not a question of intellectual assent or agreement. It’s not about evidence or proof. Belief is more about how we live than what we think. Resurrection is not just an event or an idea. It is a way of being and living. It is the lens through which we see the world, each other, and ourselves.
Resurrection is the gift of God’s life and love. Living resurrection, however, is difficult. It is neither quick nor magical. For most of us it is a process, something we grow into. Resurrection does not undo our past, fix our problems, or change the circumstances of our lives. It changes us, offers a way through our problems, and creates a future. Christ’s resurrected life inspires us with his spirit, invites us to unlock the doors, and sends us into the world. One week after Easter, is our life any different? Are we living in the freedom and joy of resurrection or behind locked doors? What doors have we locked? If you want to know what you believe, look at your life and how you live. Our beliefs guide our life, and our life reveals our beliefs.

The resurrection is not Jesus’ private miracle; it’s the new shape of reality. It’s the new shape of the world filled with grace, with possibility, with newness. Resurrected people know that faith and life are messy. They ask hard questions rather than settling for easy answers. They don’t have to figure it all out before praying, feeding the hungry, forgiving another, or loving their neighbor. They trust that what God believes about them is more important than what they believe about God. They are willing to unlock doors even when they do not know what is on the other side. They believe even if they don’t understand. They may never see or touch Jesus, but they live trusting that they have been seen and touched by him.

Jesus says to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Then Jesus turns to us and says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Jesus is always entering the locked places of our lives. Unexpected, uninvited, and sometimes even unwanted, he steps into our closed lives, closed hearts, closed minds. Standing among us he offers peace and breathes new life into us. He doesn’t open the door for us, but he gives us all we need so that we might open our doors to a new life, a new creation, a new way of being. This is offered all the time.

Regardless of the circumstances, Jesus shows up embodying and offering peace and life. Life and peace are the resurrection reality that sets us free to unlock the doors of our lives and step outside into his life.

+Amen.

Sunday, March 31, 2024

Easter Sunday - March 31, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve

Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024

From St. Bonaventure:

“God is an intelligible space whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere.
God is within all things but not enclosed.
Outside all things but not excluded.
Above all things but not aloof.
Below all things but not debased.
God is supremely one and all-inclusive.
God is therefore ‘All in All’”.

The word “liturgy” means “the work of the people”. Liturgy is the witness to and embodiment of the transcendence of the categories of past, present, and future into a “now”. When were God’s mighty acts? Yes. Liturgy exists within my participation, but is not contained by it; desires my presence but is not dependent on it. The Holy Spirit is the source and inspiration for our aliveness to Christ in our midst. We begin when we decide to look at what is. That is faithfulness. Mere nostalgia for the past is not faithful, nor is our work added to lives which we own and possess. In God’s sight, all of life is liturgy - we remember and live from the source and end of human life itself.

The Easter Vigil is the liturgy of all liturgies - nothing less than the very drama of creation being made alive in its proclamation in and among us. Darkness is its opening act as earth and sky and heavenly bodies join in. The joke among sacristans is that the six most complicated words in the Prayer Book are, “In the darkness, fire is kindled”. For those of us for whom this is an annual event, a part of our identities, we cannot imagine being anywhere else doing anything else this morning. But we can think of family members or friends who would be perplexed by this work.

In our increasingly secular culture, liturgy is odd work - weird, inconvenient, impractical, awkward, certainly uncomfortable at times. We do not claim to produce anything tangible, to be guaranteed to be entertained or even sufficiently distracted - we promise none of the markers of attractive ways to spend time and attention in our culture. We do believe that something unseen and mysterious is happening. We believe that we are touching the very source of God’ covenant faithfulness to us and for us. We began in darkness so that we might put our bodies into the dark night that precedes dawning, set ourselves first and fully in the embrace of the blackness of death and the grave and the womb of the world, unable to see, to move, set groping for a glimmer, a flicker of light. We gather to begin at the time before time when the universe has not yet, but is about to be, big-banged into existence. And as humans, we are most human, most aligned with our image-bearing vocation as creatures, when through our senses and hearts, imaginations and doubts, enter the great drama of our existence.

So the work is to be “remembered” into the story when we forget, when distractions lead us into detachment and isolation, by acting it out from darkness into light, from despondency into terror, and then to greet hope and joy.

The gospels are the first liturgies, written to instruct and train catechumens and form the faithful within their unique perspective and community. We would think that part of that instruction would be a firm grounding in the resurrection of Jesus by preserving appearances and sayings that assure the faithful that Christ is alive and in the midst of them. But Mark, who is already a bit odd and doing his own thing in his Gospel, gives us a different Easter morning than Matthew, Luke, and John.

The earliest and likely first ending of the gospel of Mark is 16:8:So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. The lectionary includes the shorter ending of verse 9: And all that had been commanded them they told briefly to those around Peter. And afterwards Jesus himself sent out through them, from east to west, the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation. Likely some later scribe was copying along and got to verse 8, “... for they were afraid”, and thought, “well, that’s not a very Jesus-y way to end the gospel, now is it? I’ll fix that right up.” And thus an extra verse. There is an even longer ending of Mark that I will not get into - read it yourself if you dare and if you decide to follow it literally do it far away from me.

So after Jesus has cast out demons, healed, taught, multiplied loaves and fishes, calmed the storm, been crucified and buried - now, on Easter morning, when it is finally time to pour on the celebration and unleash the fireworks and glory and find some relief from the unrelenting conflict and struggle - Christ has conquered death and the grave! What do we get? So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Resist the temptation to say, “yes, but.” Before we get there (and there are six more Sundays yet to come), we enter an awful emptiness, the yawning chasm and chaos of the absence of a dead body that every expectation, every way of seeing reality assured these women would be present in this tomb as surely as the sun will rise. A dead body lying there on that slab just as they had left it on Friday afternoon. It is not there. An angel announces what has happened, what to do now, and they leave. The gospel ends there, ends with the fear hanging in the air. No appearance, no word of peace - just the ultimate cliffhanger.

This is classic Mark. He loves to leave teaching and parables unresolved, leaving questions unanswered/ He writes the gospel as a “fill in the blank” quiz as if to say, “and now what happens?” Write your response here in the margin. We are all part of the story, processing in real time. For this persecuted community, many exiled from home and family, excluded from the synagogues, hunted by Romans, the fireworks of glory and triumph are not where they are. And so for us as well. We may believe in resurrection - believe it to be the greatest news in the greatest story ever told - but that news does not, is not intended to, wipe away our grief and sorrow or make us forget our pain. We can have both. We can know that both are true. Even at the empty tomb there is fear and pain and grief yet to live. Sometimes we can’t get to the joy and celebration just yet. Some years, some periods of our lives, we are stopped cold in the awful dark emptiness, the terror and amazement, caught between the presence of death we expected and the presence of absence which bewilders us further.

Rather than hasten to words of peace and assurance, hasten to touch Jesus’ feet or gaze at his wounds, might there be liturgy in the space between death and glory, the nothingness, the absence, the darkness where dwells our deepest fears and trembling hopes? Those other moments will come. But these women, the disciples, and all of us, must receive them in our own time. If we rush past the dark emotions we may smile and act as if it is the dawning of new creation, but our hearts will still be in the tomb. Liturgy is language and sign and movement. It is also silence, absence, and stillness. We may not live in the tomb, but we must enter it. It is a necessary place, but it is not home. When we enter the tomb, enter the emptiness, we are in that place of coming undone and thus becoming the ones in whom the risen Christ dwells. The risen Christ can and will dwell even in our terror and darkness, he does not wait for our joyful assurance, our personal inner fireworks. Because he has conquered death by death, he can be present to my terror and take me with him through it.

Mark knows that we will want a more comforting ending, which is why he does not include one. He knows we will want him to finish the liturgy; tell us what it means, what to do. He does not. He leaves that up to us. He lets us proceed with what is next when we are ready. The impulse to fix the ending of Mark is understandable, but I’m glad it ends the way it does. Leave it as it is - at the end of verse 8. It may take a while, we may flee far in terror and amazement, too afraid to say anything to anyone. At the other end of our fleeing is home; the far country of fear becomes peace - Christ will not abandon us - we cannot outrun him. The center of life in the risen Christ is everywhere; his circumference is nowhere. This is just the end of the gospel, not the end of the story. The story continues until all things are made new. It has a perfect ending. We are the ending. Amen.

Friday, March 29, 2024

Maundy Thursday - March 28, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero

Maundy Thursday, March 28, 2024

Click here for an audio of the sermon

The three readings tonight have three common themes: gathering, a common meal and remembrance. In the reading from the Book of Exodus, we hear instructions about gathering for the Passover meal. It ends with the injunction: “This day shall be a day of remembrance for you.” In the second reading from the First Letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians we hear how, on the night he was betrayed, Jesus gathered his disciples for a meal, offered his body and blood and said, “Do this in remembrance of me.” The reading from Saint Luke’s Gospel offers us one of the versions of what happened on that night when Jesus was betrayed. There was gathering and a common meal, and Jesus asking his disciples to continue to do so in remembrance of him.

In this sense remembrance is not simply about recalling or returning or recreating the past. Remembrance is an active process of bringing an event from the past into the present moment, that it may have a continuing effect and impact on our lives. There is something about the human condition that hungers for remembrance because remembrance feeds and nourishes life.

So here we are, at the beginning of these most holy days of remembrance in the Christian tradition. In many ways the stories of these holy days tell themselves. It had felt almost superfluous to say anymore. That is until something caught my attention this last Palm Sunday of the Passion during the Liturgy of the Palms, which here we do in Pilgrim Hall. It was the collect. You know how you can hear something a hundred times, and still, on one occasion, hear something in it you feel you have never heard before. That was my experience this last Sunday. The collect prays: “Assist us mercifully with your help, O Lord God of our salvation, that we may enter with joy upon the contemplation of those mighty acts, whereby you have given us life and immortality: through Jesus Christ our Lord.” “That we may enter with joy.” Now, I have often wished people a blessed or a meaningful Holy Week. But it has never occurred to me to wish anyone a joyous Holy Week. So, I’ve been reflecting on that quite a bit ever since. Why are we to enter with joy into a week of fear, betrayal, darkness, emptiness, pain, and violence? The answer is, of course, because the story does not end there.

Judas will betray him. The other disciples will not keep awake and wait with him as he asks them to do. Peter, despite his promises, will deny him. So, Jesus will die because he will be betrayed, deserted, and denied by his followers.

But Jesus will also die because of the scheming of his enemies. His ever-escalating conflict with the powerful will reach its final stage. The chief priests and the scribes have been looking for an opportunity to kill him. His encounter with Pilate will prove that empire is more interested in keeping peace and order, than pursuing justice. So, Jesus will die because his message and his way of being has provoked his powerful enemies.

But Jesus will also die because of his self-giving love. The same Jesus who at the beginning of the gospel account performs remarkable healings, feedings, exorcisms, and authoritative teachings will now be placed under arrest, mocked, beaten and crucified. But Jesus’ life will not be taken from him. Oh no, it will be given by him. That’s the meaning of tonight’s Gospel lesson from Saint Luke. His offering of bread and wine signifies the offering of his own body and blood, and it is firmly stated when he says he came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life in obedience to the one he called “Abba”. So, Jesus died because he chose to give his life for others.

And, so, on these most holy days we are invited to experience the interplay that takes us from celebration to desolation, from joy to sorrow, from affirmation to betrayal. It is the interplay that reminds us of our inability to commit ourselves fully to the will of God, especially when our self-interest is at stake. It is the interplay that reminds us that those who claim to follow Jesus are capable of betrayal. It is the interplay that warns us against the paranoid violence of empire, the greed of corrupt governments, and the dangers of self-interest among the religious elite.

The same crowd who shouted “Hosanna” last Sunday will shout “crucify him” tomorrow, and we are that crowd. We cannot distance ourselves from the shouts of praise or the shouts of insults and rage. And the unfathomable thing is that we, who through our actions shout “Hosanna, and then “Crucify him”, can still come to the table time and time again and in the breaking of bread meet Jesus, who suffered, so that when we are suffering we know God is with us through our suffering. We, who through our actions shout “Hosanna, and then “Crucify him”, can still come to the table time and time again and in the breaking of bread meet Jesus, who was utterly alone toward the end of the story, so that when we feel alone we know God is with us in our aloneness. We, who through our actions shout “Hosanna, and then “Crucify him”, can still come to the table time and time again and in the breaking of bread meet Jesus, who cried out in despair, so that when we feel ready to give up, we know that God holds onto us. We, who through our actions shout “Hosanna, and then “Crucify him”, can still come to the table time and time again and in the breaking of bread meet Jesus, who died, so that we know God understands death, and the fear of death, and reminds us that death does not have the last word. We, who through our actions shout “Hosanna, and then “Crucify him”, can still come to the table time and time again and in the breaking of bread meet Jesus, who meets us exactly where we are, just the way we are, with open arms.

And why? Because we are known by God, whose love is the only unconditional love we will ever have; a love that surpasses all understanding. We are known by God, who came into humanity in the form of Jesus and humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, so that we might live in hope and courage, and love. Can we comprehend it? We don’t have to. All we need to do is enter with joy into the mystery, ponder it, bear witness to it, proclaim it, and submit ourselves to it.

So let us joyfully gather in remembrance and be fed by the stories of those mighty acts of divine love so that they wash over us, break our hearts open, and become our own, because we are people of the resurrection. We know that these coming days will take us into darkness and despair, but on Sunday that Easter fire will be kindled, and we will hear the Exsultet. ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

The Feast of Saint Joseph - March 19, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt

The Feast of Saint Joseph, March 19, 2024

Click here for an audio of the sermon

Hail, Joseph, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed
are you among men. Pray for us sinners, now and at the
hour of our death. Amen.

I would be remiss if I didn’t wish a blessed name day and
a happy birthday to our Brother Josép, named after
today’s celebrated Saint!

I too have an old fondness for Saint Joseph. His name was that of my maternal grandfather. Grandad Joseph died two days after my birth. I only came to know him through my family’s stories about him. In my childhood, he was a quasi-mythical figure in my conscience. He was deeply beloved by my elders. I had dreams about him.
And Saint Joseph is the patron saint of my native Belgium. Because of these connections, his name always
carried the notion of loving, provident responsibility for
me.

In my imagination, Joseph of Nazareth is a young, warm, caring, and cheerful man with a make do attitude. He is not the stern and ancient man so often portrayed. He is a man with full agency who listens to God in his life. He is a man who diligently complies with God’s wishes. And he wonderfully brings that to fruition in raising God’s Son as his own. We have a lot to be grateful to St Joseph for. Joseph of Nazareth is not unlike his namesake in the Hebrew bible, Joseph, son of Jacob. The Joseph of the
Hebrew scriptures was also a dreamer and a discerner of God’s will. And he too, was an instrument of salvation for God’s people. Joseph of Nazareth listens to God’s will in no less than four dreams. And each time, he doesn’t dawdle wondering about the validity or the meaning of the message. He promptly puts God’s stated will into action. Joseph is obedient to God. He is a good model for us monks, who vow to put
obedience in practice in our lives.

I also love the idea that, as a foster father, Joseph did not need to genetically resemble Jesus and Mary. They could be very different and yet be a family bonded to God and to one another. In the TV series “The Chosen,” Joseph is portrayed as an Eastern African black man who is devoted to Mary and to their son-to-be. He acts as a midwife to Mary and helps her to bring Jesus into the world. I imagine Joseph and Mary as nurturing the intimacy of fellow accomplices in God’s grand design of Incarnation. They have risked so much together. They are witnessing such awesome signs and mysteries together. They probably pondered the many wonders of their son, of God’s Son, with one another. They must have been puzzled more than once. But they raised Jesus as best they could. How much of Jesus’ wisdom, caring and wit was transmitted to Him by his earthly parents? Not a little, is my guess.

Without Joseph’s humility and devotion to his family, how would have God’s desire for his Son unfolded? We need to emulate this great saint in dedicating ourselves entirely to the love and service of God. And just like Joseph, this may come to the price of self- effacement and near-cancellation in the eyes of those who choose to assess our worth. In this too, Saint Joseph is a good model for monks. He is a model of faithful humility. In all of Joseph and Mary’s story, God is present all along. God has been there, from generation to generation. And God is now revealing Godself through the dedication of Joseph and Mary to their growing boy. Mary was given a choice by an angel and said: “be it to me according to your word.”
Joseph was given a choice by an angel in a dream. He woke up and went to work to make it as the angel had instructed; without a question or objection. Joseph was true and just before the Lord. He too was
chosen for an immense duty, and he fulfilled it beautifully. He protected his family and ensured that the
Savior of the world would grow and become who he was destined to be. So, we can be sure that Joseph taught Jesus more than how to smooth a plank with a plane. There was more to his foster parenthood than carpentry, no matter what idyllic images it conjures up.

Saint Joseph, pray for us, that we may love your foster son Yeshua with dedication and humility. Keep us attentive to how God wants us too to be instruments of His Love.

Amen.

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Lent 5 B - March 17, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Aidan Owen

The Fifth Sunday in Lent B, March 17, 2024

Click here for an audio of the sermon

In my prayer and preaching this Lent, I’ve been following the throughline of covenant. Our readings have told the story of God’s continual refinement of her covenant, which begins with Noah as the representative of the whole creation (very important that we recover that ecological understanding) and follows through God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah, and then in the giving of the law through Moses on Mt. Sinai. At each point along the way, the people violate this sacred covenantal relationship with God. But rather than abandon them (us), God rejigs the covenant.

This reworking on God’s part is itself a revelation of divine love. God’s promise becomes more and more specific as it moves from the whole creation, symbolized by a beautiful sign in the sky, into the stone tablets of the law. That specificity is meant, not as a prison for human agency, but as a grace that can lead to our freedom.

Infected as we are with a radical protestant reading of Paul, we have often come to view the law, and therefore the covenant, as a dead thing in opposition to the living spirit. But, of course, our Jewish ancestors in the faith knew, just as our Jewish siblings still know, that the law and the covenant that it represents was and is a means of grace, a beautiful and life-giving doorway into the full flowering of the life of God. If they and we know the law more in its violation than in its keeping, that has everything to do with human frailty—and yet even our failure to keep the law opens us more and more to God’s abundant mercy.

This morning we hear God’s promise, given through Jeremiah, to refine the covenant yet once more: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me.” Where once God made her covenant with one person on behalf of the whole creation, now God promises to write that covenant on every single heart. Where once God mediated the covenant through law written on stone tablets, now God promises to write that law on the tablets of our hearts. Where once the elders conveyed knowledge of God to their people, now God promises to be so close to her people that everyone will know God in the innermost part of their being. God will be closer to us than our own breath, and every heartbeat will whisper her name.

Of course, we know how well that worked out. We have only to look around us at the world we have created to see that even God’s indwelling presence cannot guarantee our virtue. Even written on the tablet of our heart, the law cannot corral this restless human nature of ours. But God’s mercy is such that God chooses to leave us free to choose whether and how to respond to God’s love. So that, whether we conform to God’s way or violate it, we are steeped in mercy.

In her new book Reading Genesis, Marilynne Robinson writes “The old Christian theologies spoke of felix culpa, the fortunate fall. This is in effect another name for human agency, responsibility, even freedom. If we could do only what God wills, we would not be truly free, though to discern the will of God and act on it is freedom. Our human nature as fallen and our human nature as divine have a dynamic […] relation with each other, meeting at infinity, perhaps.”

Our total freedom to choose either good or evil, life or death, is perhaps God’s greatest mercy to us. Our lives and our choices are not predetermined. Yes, we know that we are all driven by instinctual forces, manipulated by past traumas and the unmet needs of our child selves, shaped by beliefs so deeply held as to be shadows on the wall of our consciousness. And yet, we are not now, nor have we ever been, predetermined or predestined. We are radically, frighteningly, and miraculously free.

I can say with certainty that it is a miracle some of us are here today worshipping and loving and laughing and singing and not dead or in prison or drugged into oblivion. Because yes, we may be assaulted daily by the shadows of the past and the urges of our unmet longings and the compulsions the advertisers stir up in us, and yet still there remains that quiet tapping on the inner chamber of our hearts, that whisper of a voice that calls our name if get quiet enough to hear it.

Jesus himself offers us this example in this morning’s complex and rich passage from John. It’s one of the few times we hear something of Jesus’ inner thoughts. He knows that he is nearing his death and, in that death, the fulfilling of God’s purpose for him. Human as he is, he shows some reticence to accept death. But then he chooses actively to surrender himself to God’s will. That choice is not incidental. It is everything! Jesus has a choice. Like us, he has total freedom to walk away. Without that freedom, his obedience to God would be a puppet show, and his death and resurrection would mean nothing at all. His radical freedom—and ours—are the fountain from which the living waters of God’s love flow into our hearts.

We might wonder how Jesus comes to be able to surrender himself to God’s purpose. The clue is in the voice from heaven. Each time that voice has echoes in the scriptures, it proclaims God’s love for Jesus, calling him the beloved child—first at his baptism and then at his transfiguration. By now it would see the mere echo of God’s voice in the thunder above him reminds Jesus of who and whose he is. And like the voice of a loving parent, God’s voice settles Jesus enough to choose once more the path of self-giving love.

This is the kind of obedience to which God calls us—not slavish or begrudging or tepid—but born from the sure knowledge that God loves us and wills for us our salvation and our healing. God desires nothing less than to drive the ruler of this world from our hearts and our lives, so that, like Jesus, we can lay down our lives for the world in radical and miraculous freedom. We can think of obedience as a chore, some kind of boring or difficult task that we know we need to do but would rather not. But the very fact that we can obey is itself God’s grace to us, the freedom of the children of God written on the flesh of our hearts.

I know that our lives are challenging. Often they’re boring, too. Sometimes they’re painful. And sometimes, hopefully more and more as we grow in Christ, our lives shine out with the radiance of God’s love and we hear in the thunder above us the reassurance that yes, we, too, are God’s beloved children. Our lives, in all their complexity, are God’s grace to us, and we can choose to see and celebrate and cultivate that grace, a freedom that is itself grace and opens the way to more grace. Because the more we learn to recognize God’s mercy to us, the more we come to see that everything, absolutely everything is grace. It is a miracle to be alive, my brothers and sisters. You are God’s miracle and God’s promise.

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Lent 4 B - March 10, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Samuel Kennedy

The Fourth Sunday in Lent B, March 10, 2024

Click here for an audio of the sermon

I found today’s Gospel passage to be a challenging one to work with. It contains some of Jesus’ most well-known words — words that are beautiful, gentle, and hopeful. But, if you are like me, it’s hard to hear them afresh and anew, given how they’ve made a near ubiquitous appearance at every major sporting event in this country for at least as long as I’ve been alive, and are so often coopted by troubled and challenging theologies of salvation. While I don’t think one homily, especially one I’ve written, is going to be able to free this passage from its complicated cultural reception history, I hope we can even momentarily experience it for the breath of fresh, life-giving air it was intended to be.

Jesus begins this portion of his discourse with Nicodemus in a bit of a strange place — with a reference to the first lesson we heard read this morning — a relatively obscure story from the book of Numbers. In our Gospel lesson, we heard Jesus say, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

The passage from Numbers places us in the middle of the wilderness after the children of Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt. The people were exhausted, tired, and not shy about expressing their discontent. “Why have you brought us out of Egypt to die in this wilderness, without fresh food or water, and the food we’ve got to eat is just miserable.” In the story as told in Numbers, God gets irritated with the people's complaining and grumbling and sends a plague of venomous serpents among them. The serpents bite, injure, and kill many of the people. As their suffering mounts, the people begin to beg Moses for forgiveness, and what God tells Moses to do, to free the people from their suffering — is fascinating. God tells Moses to create a serpent of bronze an image of the agent of their suffering, and if the people would but look upon the image, they would find healing and relief.
Now the concept we see playing out in this text seems to be based upon a principle commonly held in many ancient systems of medicine where a small amount of a poisonous or virulent substance would be used to counteract a larger dose of the poison or virulent substance itself. It’s not entirely dissimilar from the concept of vaccines where, we take a a tiny subset of that which would harm us — perhaps a few unique surface proteins from a virus, if you will, to provide us with protection from overwhelming infection.

Fine and dandy you say, but why is Jesus referencing this principle when he is explaining the way of salvation to Nicodemus, a leader among the Pharisees?
Chapter 3 of the Gospel of John opens with Jesus describing the path of conversion as a process of rebirth. This metaphor was understandably confusing to Nicodemus, so Jesus tried again here, to describe how the way of salvation he was proclaiming worked.

“Just as Moses lifted the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. For God loved the world in this way, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him, will not perish, but have everlasting life.”

It’s a condensed soteriology to be sure. But before we can discuss the nature of the cure, it would be good to remind ourselves of the malady — the fiery serpents — we are being delivered from.

A crisis of belonging has “ailed” us since the dawn of our human story — this sense of estrangement that is coupled with a longing to belong —to belong within our community, with our God, and with ourselves. We see these tensions echoed in our sacred texts as early as the story of Adam and Eve. A fundamental challenge that we have is that we seem to be nearly hard-wired to conceive of belonging as a limited resource, and we tend to turn our efforts to obtain that limited resource into a zero-sum competition with those around us.
One of philosopher René Girard’s key insights was that we humans tend to build social cohesion — our sense of belonging — on the back of exclusion. And these dynamics work themselves out no matter how large or how small the community is — be it as large as a nation state or as small as a family, or a group of friends. As rivalry and competition grow within the community (along with their attendant social tensions and, in some cases, violence) human societies will often select a scapegoat —a person or group who is blamed for the turmoil and conflicts within the community. The scapegoat becomes the target for all of that collective blame and hostility, and is often subjected to violence or expulsion as a means of purging the community of its tensions and conflicts.

This often happens subconsciously, but the striking thing is that this process works — at least temporarily. For a season, social cohesion and sense of safety in belonging are restored, but in the long run, this mechanism only perpetuates cycles of violence, as the social order, the “sense of safe belonging,” is maintained via cycles of ritual expulsion and violence. The irony of building community by this mechanism is that one is never actually ever safe — subconsciously we all know that we might find ourselves selected for expulsion at the next round of sacrifice— and this leads to deep, subconscious anxiety at both the group and individual levels.

And we participate, I participate, in these patterns of scapegoating and sacrifice all the time.

“The Gospels show us that Jesus understands this mechanism,” of inclusion via exclusion; (Allison, 152-153) of maintaining social cohesion and order through expulsion, and Jesus understands that the religious and political structures of this world depend on this mechanism and therefore often unconsciously shore up these sacrificial cycles. Through his life and ministry, Jesus lures the mechanism and these institutions into behaving according to their usual patterns, and that, predictably, gets him killed. He dies a death of shame and suffering on the edges of the City —lifted high on the beams of a cross.
Jesus dies, as countless others have and will continue to die — alone, expelled, and rejected. In fact, even at his death he’s surrounded by two others suffering a fate the same as his— a death on the fringes of society, having been sacrificed to the idols of shaky social cohesion and fragile political peace.
But Jesus endures this precisely in order to reveal that the whole exercise is unnecessary — to reveal to us that there exists the possibility of another way of being together. With Jesus’ reference to the story of the fiery serpents, it’s as if he is saying, “My death is going to look like the very thing that plagues you — it is going to look like one more ritual expulsion, one more sacrifice,” but, this time, because the Victim is the very wellspring of life himself, his death strips the sacrificial system of its imagined divine imprimatur allowing it to begin to wither from the roots up.

“For God loved the world in this way, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him, will not perish, but have everlasting [overflowing, abundant] life.”

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

The only One who very rightly could judge us and condemn us via exclusion has done precisely the opposite. Instead of excluding us, he has instead welcomed us into a state of beloved belonging that is grounded securely in the unending flow of the life and love of the Trinity.
We are welcomed into the light of beloved belonging.

As verse 21 reminds us, it is a bright, revealing light — a light where we are seen for who we are, faults and all, the good, the bad, and the ugly. But what this light most clearly reveals is just how deeply we are loved. And because it is the light of beloved belonging, we can stand in that light with hope and rest and freedom from fear. And now that we are set free from the need to cast others out to secure our own place in this community, we can instead, stand like Jesus did with outstretched arms inviting others off of the sacrificial altars of our own making and into this marvelous light of beloved belonging. If that isn’t a life that pulsates with the rhythms of eternity, I don’t know what is.
So the next time we see John 3:16 emblazoned on a placard behind home plate, may we remember that we, the real us, the us with all our faults and imperfections stand in that eternal light of beloved belonging and what it reveals most clearly is just how deeply we are loved.

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Lent 3 B - March 3, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky

The Third Sunday in Lent B, March 3, 2024

Click here for an audio of the sermon

Growing up in a Catholic tradition which expected regular confession, generally monthly, starting at about the age of eight, I was introduced to the Ten Commandments not only in what were called catechism classes on Saturday mornings, but also through the practice of the so-called ‘examination of conscience’ which was to precede confession. The main tool in this practice of examining your life to see ways in which you might have fallen short or fallen into sin was usually through a list of questions based on the Ten Commandments. The list was extensive and at times rather creative. Under one or another of the commandments, all sorts of sins or peccadillos were listed. For example, under the commandment which directed that we do not take the name of the Lord in vain were questions such as: have I cursed or used the name of Jesus in anger or frustration? Or have I made fun of holy things, whether it be a passage of scripture or a liturgical peculiarity. There was a certain usefulness to this exercise, but I came to realize that perhaps these many questions are not the point of the Ten Commandments, and that my anguished personal scrutiny was perhaps like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, focusing as it did on the personal and interpersonal world and pretty much ignoring totally the social, political, economic, or cultural landscape. And really, how much unnecessary worry did I, at age eight, expend over whether I had indeed committed adultery?

But if the Ten Commandments are not primarily a guide to personal behavior—and I emphasize the word ‘primarily’—then what is their point? Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann offers one possibility. In a podcast posted[i] earlier this past week online and titled “Strategies for Staying Emancipated” Professor Brueggemann connects the Ten Commandments to the liberation of the Hebrews from generations of slavery in Egypt. God gives the commandments to the Hebrew people through Moses towards the end of their years of wandering in the wilderness after leaving Egypt and they mark the covenant and the beginning their life as a self-defining community. If I may quote:

“… the Ten Commandments are strategies for staying emancipated once you get away from Pharaoh. This new strategy, first of all, says you have to honor God—that’s the first three commandments—to the exclusion of every idol, every “ism” such as racism, or sexism, or nationalism, or the worship of stuff that is rare or precious or attractive or beautiful or empowering.

“The new strategy means in the Ten Commandments to take the neighbor with utmost seriousness. So, the last five commandments are all about the neighbor and treating neighbors with legitimacy and dignity and viability and especially disadvantaged neighbors--not to violate the neighbor for the sake of greed.

“And between these two commandments of honoring God and taking the neighbor seriously, at the center of the Ten Commandments, is Sabbath day. Keep Sabbath: take a break from the rat race of busyness and exhaustion and do not let Pharaoh define your life.”

In short, for Brueggemann the Ten Commandments are a survival plan for a recently liberated people. And long before serving for an individual’s examination of conscience, they are a social and communal document, a clarion call away from a mentality of enslavement toward survival and flourishing as a people, as a nation, as a human family, as God's children.

We could easily spend hours—or a lifetime—examining the way this plays out concretely in our shared existence. The demand to have no other God, no idol, but solely the God who liberates is a reminder that we are tempted to seek our security in what will never make for safety or for human thriving in the long run. As Brueggemann says, we are tempted to all sorts of isms. But only in understanding ourselves as journeying under the hand and eye of a liberating God will we find the security we yearn for. And by “we” I mean everyone. And the demand to treat our neighbor with integrity, to honor and preserve life and that which makes life sustainable, the demand to honor relationships and commitments, and the demand to not be enslaved by our desires are the very stuff that makes a healthy human society possible. As is the establishment of Sabbath rest that is not so much about worship as it is about refusing to be enslaved to the ethic of Pharaoh who demanded work 24/7 of his Hebrew conscripts.

All three elements, all three kinds of commandments, are necessary if this is to work. We need to be rooted and grounded in a liberating and loving God, in a transcendent vision and reality, if we're not to ignore our responsibilities to our neighbors and to ourselves. And to do this, we need time—Sabbath time—time to step back and see how this working out, time to catch our breath, and remembering that everyone else is a free person deserving of that same rest. Again, to quote Brueggemann: “These commands might be taken not as a series of rules, but as a proclamation in God's own mouth of who God is and how God shall be ‘practiced’ by this community of liberated slaves."[ii] And we are all liberated slaves.

Yet another commentator notes that these very terse, very pointed commandments, these directives, need to be fleshed out. They're more like social policy statements than detailed action plans. Our task as human beings and as people of faith is to determine how we apply them to form societies or cultures where people can grow and flourish and where we can shape our own life within that container. There is a long history of case law or casuistry based on the Commandments. You have only to skim the next few chapters of Exodus to see example after example. And if we are awake, we are faced with its challenges daily. How do we apply the commandments in our own day? What, for example, does bearing false witness mean in a society such as ours where “truthiness” has become a substitute for truth and where fake news inundates us. What does stealing or killing or adultery mean in a society and a world where people are denied dignity, and the material means to live a dignified life, and respect for the integrity of commitments and relationships which are its foundation? And just what is coveting anyway? It has taken me a few decades to wrap my mind around that. I now understand it not as simply being attracted to someone or something but becoming fixated on it and obsessed by it, wanting it so bad that you’re willing to do almost anything to obtain it. Our commandment doesn’t resolve this dynamic for us, of course, but it may serve to warn us: “Watch out! You’re on shaky ground. This is not the path that leads to life, but to death.” And not only us but our culture with its emphasis on having, using, possessing no matter what the cost and no matter what the consequences. And just so with all the commandments.

We began this morning's Eucharist with a penitential order where we heard what is often called the Summary of the Law. They are the words of Jesus as reported in Saint Mark’s gospel, though they are not original with him: “The first commandment is this: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is the only Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” How true it is that in the end all the commandments, all the advice, all the ethical guidelines, all the rules and goodwill come down to this: You shall love. You shall love God. You shall love your neighbor. As the rabbis would say, the rest is commentary and application.

And our work is cut out for us.

Amen.

[i] https://day1.org/weekly-broadcast/5d9b820ef71918cdf2004215/walter_brueggemann_strategies_for_staying_emancipated?fbclid=IwAR15SUSjvUPndG8baHs3pHwSwYXvpPSl7jthFQxUuLZ4T8Dy-5lsPjKyCJI

[ii] The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. 1 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1964), p. 841