The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 25 C, October 26, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bruno Santana, OHC

The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, October 26, 2025

• Joel 2:23-32
• 2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18
• Luke 18:9-14

Click here for an audio of the sermon

Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like yours!

I want to start this reflection with a question: What kind of heart do you have? do you have the heart of a pharisee or the heart of a tax collector?

There is an Austrian American writer called Peter Drucker that made this distinction between being busy and being productive by saying that being busy is simply being active doing things right, while being productive is about getting the right things done.

He also made the distinction between being efficient and being effective by saying that efficiency is \"doing things right, \" while effectiveness is \"doing the right things\"

It's very easy for us to be busy but not always to be productive. We really might strive to be efficient but not always effective. I mean we are doing things right but not doing the right things.

We just heard the second letter of Paul to Timothy. This is a personal letter Paul, was imprisoned in Rome, likely shortly before his death, and is considered to be his final known letter. We all know that St Paul was a busy man, he worked so hard his entire life and in fact the words we heard today were the last words he wrote.

He said: I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.

Saint Paul brought the gospel to various nations, especially in the eastern Mediterranean, throughout his four major missionary journeys. His ministry extended throughout much of Asia Minor, Greece, and finally Rome. So, brought the gospel to more people than anyone ever.

Paul was not one of the Twelve Apostles, but he was directly called and sent by the risen Christ, therefore, he is rightly called “Apostle Paul” or “The Apostle to the Gentiles.”

At the end of his life he could have said, "Look God, everything I've done, I'm a great apostle. I've made these journeys in your name, I've evangelized the Gentiles, I've been a prisoner and “I’m so good Christian." But no. He said but the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, to him be the glory forever and ever!

Saint Paul has been so Busy, Productive, Efficient and ever better, he has been effective. He did the right things. Because he has run the right race.

Today’s gospel has another 2 busy men. A Pharisee and a Tax collector went up to the temple to pray.

In the time of Jesus, The Pharisees were hard workers, they were very busy, In fact they were dedicated to the law, they strove to keep all 613 commandments of the old covenant as the oral commandments. This pharisee here, even says what he does. He said: I fast twice a week (the law was just once a week), ”I give a tenth of all my income”. Looks  like he was doing things right ( went to temple to pray) but didn't do the right thing. Because he didn't actually pray to God. He Prayed to himself about himself. Said God, I thank you that I am not like other people: God, I thank you that I am not like other people: in other words it is like: “I'm already a good person, God I thank you that I don't need you”. He's completely blind to his need and to what God has done for him. He was busy, but not productive. He didn't do the right thing.

What about the tax collector? The Tax collector knows he's not a good person, he knows he can't rely upon himself. That's why he shows up and declares the truth. He knew himself and his sin, but he didn't focus on himself or his sin. He prayed to God for mercy. He had nothing to boast about and avoided self-condemnation by relying on humility, relying on his need for God. He did the right thing.

What about us? We do things right but sometimes we are not doing the right things. We have the temptation to focus on ourselves, in our successes (like the Pharisee) or on our mistakes, failures, sins. Sometimes in our brokenness, we get so busy trying to fix ourselves on our own. Instead of saying: God, come into my brokenness, Jesus, I invite you in.

To conclude, I have some questions for you to think about.  What kind of heart do you have? Do you have the heart of a Pharisee or the heart of a tax collector? How do I know if I'm not  just busy and but productive? Not just efficient but effective and if I'm actually doing not just things right but the right thing.

I have left in your seats, this prayer, this litany that we call the litany of humility. is so powerful.

If you want to know if you have the heart of a Pharisee or the heart of a tax collector you need to pray this Litany. That will be your homework, pray at least once a day for a week.

The opening of the prayer is: O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me. And then: From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me, Jesus. From the desire of being loved, Deliver me, Jesus . And also have some prayers related to fear, like From the fear of being humiliated, Lord  deliver me. And then it goes on to these other prayers like: That others may be loved more than I , Jesus grant me the grace to desire it , That others may be esteemed more than I, Jesus grant me the grace to desire it, That in the opinion of the world others may increase and I decrease, Jesus grant me the grace to desire it.

As you see, this prayer will reveal very quickly if we have the heart of a Pharisee or we have the heart of the tax collector. If you pay attention it will be difficult, if you mean it this will be tough. This will be a challenge, but I think it can be a good prayer that will help you not only do things right, but also do the right thing, not only be busy but productive, not only efficient but effective.

If we take this prayer to heart, there is no better guarantee than that every time you and I show up here to pray and say yes, no matter how familiar, no matter how common, no matter how like ordinary it is what we do here, we will be doing the right thing.

The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 24 C, October 19, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Scott Wesley Borden

The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, October 19, 2025

• Jeremiah 31:27-34
• 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
• Luke 18:1-8

Click here for an audio of the sermon

I was just a bit surprised when I looked at the duty list for today and discovered I was preaching... I could have known long ago, but for some reason I didn’t notice. The first thing I did was look for what I might have said on this Sunday in previous years... Who doesn’t love a rerun or is that “Greatest Hits.” But alas, I have never preached on this particular Sunday. So, I looked at the assigned reading, and my heart sank a little further. This is one of my least favorite Gospel passages – this story of a corrupt magistrate. I thought for a few moments that I would begin by saying I have nothing to say about this Gospel passage and then sitting back down. Perhaps in a few minutes you will wish that I did...

But the more I sat with this Gospel reading, the clearer it became that this is a very relevant passage for our times. It is urgently needed... So here we go.

The author of Luke begins by telling us that this story is about the need to pray always and not to lose heart. But then we’re on to this terrible judge. The judge has no respect for the God or for people. Presumably the judgments of this judge are not particularly just. He seems mostly interested in himself and in his own comfort. Perhaps he is a bit of a narcissist. Why, I wonder, is such a judge tolerated? Why is he able to keep his position? And what has this got to do with the need to pray always... Unless, I suppose, we pray we never come before a judge like this one...

What of the plaintiff – the widow? We know that she has a complaint and that she is being denied satisfaction. She must be quite persistent. Does she spend her days screaming at the judge? She gets his attention somehow... And that pays off in the end. The judge gives her what she wants so that he will not have to put up with her. The judge, of course, couldn't care less about justice. He just wants her to go away. We assume, though the Gospel doesn’t say, that her claim was just. But perhaps she was an early practitioner of “lawfare” - where you use the legal system as weapon; a practice that some of our modern politicians seem to happily embrace...

It's possible that she is no more interested in justice than the magistrate. Clearly Jesus is not trying to get us to think about the goodness or badness of the legal system or of this widow and this judge.

Justice, in our legal system, is often seen as between opposing forces – between winners and losers, good and evil. That is an extremely limited view of justice. But before we even consider who is right and who is wrong, who wins and who loses, we have to consider what form of justice we want.

The two big flavors of justice are punitive and restorative. Punitive justice is first and foremost about punishing the bad person for their bad act. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is punitive justice in its most basic form. Restorative justice is far more complicated. We have to consider what was done, and what can be done to undo it as best we can. It gets very complicated very quickly because some things can’t be restored. How do you undo a genocide? In restorative justice, this does not let you off the hook. It means you have to be creative in your way of making justice.

The Hebrew Scriptures are full of stories of punitive justice. If somebody was blind or lame, it was assumed that this was punishment for some sin. A woman who was childless had surely earned this punishment through sin. In the New Testament when someone is sick or injured, the question comes up who sinned? And Jesus does not respond to such questions. Jesus is not interested in punitive justice. Jesus nudges us in the direction of restorative justice, of being made whole through the power of love.

Jack Miles, in his book “Christ: A crisis in the life of God” argues that Jesus represents a turning point, a crisis, in God’s relationship with us just as much as Jesus represents a turning point in our relationship with God. The God of Vengeance is replaced by the God of Love. And yet, many still hold on to the God of Vengeance – and by many, I mean most of us some of the time.

If I’m being honest, I have to admit that I would be happy for God to smite my enemies. I’d probably be OK with God smiting your enemies, unless I’m one of them... Then I might have an issue...

There is a very long tradition that teaches us that we should love our friends but hate our enemies. Jesus rejects that tradition. Jesus tells us to love our enemies and to pray for them. Remember the start of the passage from Luke... Jesus tells the disciples about the need to pray always.

At least some of that prayer has to be for folks we don’t like, for folks we don’t respect. I love the example from Fidler on the Roof of Tevya’s prayer for the Tzar: “Dear God, please protect and keep the Tzar – far away from us.” It's OK for prayer to start in that place, but that can’t be the destination.

So, let's go back to our widow who is seeking justice (that's an assumption, but let's assume it). What is justice?

Let's turn to a great profit of the twentieth century – The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr King called Justice the calculation of God’s love. This is another way of thinking about restorative justice, and it leaves no space for punitive justice.

What does God’s love look like for an abused child... What does God’s love look like for the children of undocumented immigrants... What does God’s love look like for someone going blind because they can’t afford the medication for their diabetes... If our justice does not look like God’s love, then it's not justice in the Christian sense. We need to recalculate. We need to honor Jesus.

There are a number of commentators on YouTube who are young and very secular. There are also a number who are young and very religious – at least they claim to be. My sample is far from complete or thorough, but all the “secular” folks care deeply about affordable health care, about childhood nutrition, about affordable housing, about quality education in schools where gun violence is not a threat, about protecting the vulnerable, and so on. And secular though they may claim to be, they all seem to adore James Talarico, who is a devout Presbyterian pastor as well as an elected representative in Texas, among other things. The Religious YouTubers seem to be primarily concerned with following a moral code, a holiness code.

I heard Ronald Rolheiser, a Roman Catholic Missionary Religious and Theologian, speaking at a book promotion event – he has published a number of books... He was asked how the church should respond to the threat of secularity. His answer was that secularity is no threat, but rather that secularity is the child of the Church.

He pointed out that if you examine the most secular societies of Western Europe, you will find that the hungry are fed, the sick are provided medical care, all are given access to education. Immigrants are, generally, welcomed. There is surely room for improvement, but the things that Jesus seems most focused on in the Gospels are accounted for. This he argued is because European Secular Societies learned these values from their religious parents.

The threat he felt was not from secular society, but from fundamentalism. Rolheiser noted that we generally fear Islamic Fundamentalism which we often equate with terrorism. To the extent that we know anything about it, we fear Hindu Fundamentalism (and if we knew more, we would fear it more...). We’re still flooded with guilt over the Holocaust, the Shoa, but we’re starting to acknowledge that we fear Jewish Fundamentalism. But Rolheiser believes that we tend to think of Christian Fundamentalism as our crazy uncle: Amusing, embarrassing, but not dangerous. Rolheiser asserts that the different fundamentalist movements have more in common with each other than we care to think. According to Rolheiser, we should be just as afraid of Christian Fundamentalism as we are of Islamic Fundamentalism.

Jesus in the passage we heard from Luke wants us to be in constant prayer – which includes all forms of prayer. That prayer could look like a retreat with a monastic community. That prayer could also look like the No Kings Protests of yesterday. God wants us to pray constantly, not monotonously.

Jesus also does not want us to lose heart. As Martin Luther King said, the arc of history is long, but it tends toward justice. We are about the business of building the Kingdom of God – a long process, extremely long, but it tends toward love... towards justice.

Building God’s Kingdom is not same as finishing God’s Kingdom. Moses did not get to enter the promised land, and we may not see the kingdom we are building be finished. Our joy is in the building, not in moving in.

The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 23 C, October 12, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero

The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, October 12, 2025

2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Luke 17:11-19

Click here for an audio of the sermon

“I little dose of ‘get over yourself’ with a good measure of gratitude will take you a long way.” I used to that to my students in NYC all the time when the whined about something they didn’t get or when something didn’t go in the way they wanted. It’s not a very sweet statement, but I don’t think I’m remembered for being a sweet teacher. And I still believe that. I may have even said that to a novice or two here. On the surface, the themes of today’s lectionary readings seem clear: gratitude, the importance of humility, and the enduring power of faith. But I think there is a deeper and more important message that is incredibly relevant for all of us today!

In the reading from 2 Kings, Naaman is an Aramean military commander who suffers from leprosy. A young Israelite serving his wife tells her that a prophet in Samaria could heal him. Naaman is directed to the Israelite prophet Elisha. But instead of receiving Naaman, Elisha sends a messenger to tell him to wash in the Jordan River seven times. Well, Naaman is offended by this and becomes angry. He was expecting a little more respect and individualized attention from Elisha. He says that the rivers in his homeland Damascus are better than any of Israel’s waters. But his servants carefully and gently persuade Naaman to follow the prophet’s instructions, which he does, and his skin is restored. This leads to his conversion. The message seems clear: to receive God’s blessings, we must get over ourselves, let go of our sense of entitlement and our pride and exercise a little humility. But there is another very important message in this story. God’s grace and mercy are not limited to the Israelites but are available to all people, even a foreign soldier whose wife’s servant is an Israelite taken captive by his troops!
Now, in the Gospel lesson from Luke, Jesus is on his journey to Jerusalem and comes upon ten lepers who beg for his mercy. He tells them to go show themselves to the priests. As they follow his instructions, they are cleansed. One returns to express his gratitude to Jesus. His enormous show of gratitude and Jesus’ response to it tell us that we are created to recognize life as divine gift, and to find our salvation at the feet of the Giver.
Now confession… I am an instructions follower. When there are instructions given, I listen carefully and follow them to the very best of my ability. If they are written, I will read them… and will follow them… step by step! I have a gig every summer housesitting for dear friends of mine. Every summer I make sure they are going to leave me a document with instructions. I’ve been housesitting for them every year for the past eight years. Still, the very first thing I do when I get to the house, after greeting all the crazy dogs, that is, is to sit with a highlighter and read that document carefully and highlight anything that is important and I do not want to forget, or I may not already have memorized. So, when I read in today’s Gospel passage that Jesus asks, “‘Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?’” I can picture myself in this scene saying: “What do you mean where are they?? You just told them to go and show themselves to the priests. They are following your instructions, thank you very much!” 
But the statement that follows is even more triggering, especially given the reality in which we are currently living in this country: “Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" It strikes a chord because Jesus is all of a sudden not talking to the healed man in front of him, but about him, calling him “this foreigner” in a loud voice. I read that and think: Who in their right mind says that, especially while traveling through a border region that was surely full of these foreigners?! But of course, all we have to do is read the news and see yet another awful statement by one of our political leaders about foreigners and their situation as immigrants in this country. 
Since I love Jesus and want to give him the benefit of the doubt, I have to wonder what is the intention of the Gospel writer by having Jesus ask such a preposterous question and in such a way? The Gospel writer has been building on this theme since Chapter 9. Jesus is now on the last leg of his journey to Jerusalem. At the beginning of his journey, Jesus and his disciples are refused hospitality in a Samaritan village. His enraged disciples ask him if they should “command fire to come down from heaven and consume them,” which is itself a reference to a Hebrew Scriptures story about Elijah having fire come down from heaven and consuming a captain and his whole army. Jesus, of course, rebukes his disciples for their violent reaction. Then, in the very next chapter, tells the famous “Good Samaritan” parable in which he casts the Samaritan as the hero of the story. This is, of course, something that would have been incredibly provocative to Jesus’ contemporary Jewish audiences.
Why this tension with Samaritans? Samaritans were the descendants of generations of intermarriage between Jews left behind during the Babylonian exile and Gentiles settled in Israel along with the conquering Assyrians. So, Samaritans shared a common heritage with Jews but were also quite different. They disagreed on how to honor God, how to interpret scripture and where to worship. They did not socialize, mistrusted each other and expected the worst of each other. By the first century, the hatred between Jews and the Samaritans was old and entrenched. 
Now, in order to get to Jerusalem, Jesus has to cross the region between Galilee and Samaria- the borderland that marks the boundary between the land where he was raised and the land he was raised never to go. It is the borderland that marks “us” and “them”. So, this story is about more than gratitude. It is about the gratitude of a foreigner who receives welcome. It is about exclusion and inclusion. It is a story about the reign of God- about who is invited, and who belongs in the realm where God dwells. As we are flooded with headlines about the horrendous human rights violations on immigrants in this country, including family separation, medical neglect, physical and sexual abuse in detention centers, racial profiling, and their experience of total trauma, isolation, and utter and complete non-belonging, what does this Gospel lesson have to say about our ongoing responsibility to the stranger, the alien, the other?
In ancient Israel, leprosy was a dreaded disease considered the picture of sin. It rendered a person ceremonially defiled. Once healed, the person still had to go to the priest and carry out an extensive ritual of cleansing before being accepted back into the religious community and worship. While the physical disease was horrible, the terrible social consequences in ancient Israel only added to the misery. The Mosaic Law prescribed that lepers be cut off from society, including their family. They had to wear torn clothing, have their head uncovered, cover their lips and shout “Unclean! Unclean!” wherever they went, to warn others to keep their distance.
When Jesus heals the ten lepers, he doesn’t merely cure their bodies; he restores their identities. They can now return to all that makes us fully human: community, companionship, and intimacy. They can feel again, embrace and be embraced, worship in community. So the response of the tenth leper to Jesus is not only an expression of gratitude for the healing, but also the expression of deep thankfulness for being seen, accepted, welcome because that tenth leper is a Samaritan, a “double other” marginalized by both illness and being “this foreigner”. It is the only time that expression is used in the New Testament, but stories about foreigners are everywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures: Naaman the Aramean, Ruth the Moabite, Hagar, Jethro, Rahab, all of them had been “this foreigner” and challenge our ideas about the lines between “us” and “them” and  who gets included when we talk about the people of God. The center of gravity of today’s Gospel story is the surprising fact that the exemplar, the one who returns and gives thanks, is an outsider, a detested foreigner. 
May we examine the places in our lives where we feel most comfortable, most complacent, most privileged. May we journey to the borderlands of our lives where we encounter those who are excluded, forgotten, alone and afraid and remember what God requires of us: to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly. And may we all come to understand that God’s salvation is available to all whose vulnerable souls are in desperate need for Christ to welcome them and say: “Your faith has made you well. Yes, your faith, whatever faith and whatever path led you to meet God. Come in. You, the one I just called foreigner.” ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+ 

The Feast of the Anniversary of the Dedication of the Monastic Church of Saint Augustine, October 5, 2025

 Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve
The Feast of the Anniversary of the Dedication of the Monastic Church of Saint Augustine, October 5, 2025

Click here for an audio of the sermon

A holy place consecrated for prayer and praise is a place of signification - a place in and of and for the world but set apart from it.  This church welcomes and sends, comforts and disorients, offers solace and action.  It is a place of liberation and a sign of disruption.

For St. Benedict, the oratory as the place of prayer and only prayer and is the heart of what I call his cosmology.  In the Rule, the oratory discloses what the world is, namely the nucleus of a created glory given as a gift to enflesh our quest toward God - a God who is present everywhere and at all times.  The oratory is not a different kind of creation, but its purpose and function is as the lens through which the world is interpreted.  In his vision of an integrated life in God, St. Benedict sees the oratory as a kind of ancient Roman gymnasium - building muscle and stamina that is used in the “ordinary” moments of temptation and humility outside the oratory.  Prayer in the place of prayer is practicing what is real so that monks might live at all times from that reality and none other.  Remember Brother Lawrence centuries later who writes in The Practice of the Presence of God that for him there was no difference between the church and the kitchen where he worked.

This church is a place of liberation because what we do in it contains the power to free us from our illusions by our encounter with the reality that is God.  We enter through these doors often in a jumble of inner voices and motivations, patterns and programming: earn acceptance, find safety, be better, do more, find peace, be worthy.  Illusions take energy to maintain, they are heavy burdens.  In the invitation to be present, honest, and vulnerable with God and by practicing that way of being here, our burdens are lifted and we find rest.  And by practicing that liberation, we remember that it is available anytime and anywhere.  So this sacred place is for us and our growth.  We need places built and set aside and preserved for explicitly religious activities in order to reveal to us that our whole lives and all we do is set aside for explicitly religious activity.  Of course we are beset by external illusions as well.  As life in the 21st century is more and more saturated with information and noise and distraction, we are invited to be unburdened by the cacophony of voices to preserve an inner stillness and quiet.  We remember God’s presence and care amidst the swirling chaos.  The first call is to enter the rest and open to God’s compassionate mercy.  

We are invited into a grander vision of the world, not merely a pause from our old world.  Liberation is allergic to nostalgia; it is averse to passivity.  Our business is awakening to the present moment, not enshrining the past or numbing the world, however tempting those are.  This is a deeper reality, not an alternate one.  In the psalms, sometimes the psalmist is caught up in the glory and beauty of God and lets us share in that ecstasy.  Sometimes the psalmist asserts faith in God and tells God about the Philistines that are coming down the road. They’re big and there are more of them than there are of us and we need help.  Both are prayer because both are awakened to the reality of the present.  This is the place to start to name the world that is in all its glory and horror and offer it up to God in gratitude and intercession in sighs and tears.  We abide in the truth which is where God lives with us.  

This church is a place of disruption.  The Gospel account of the Lord’s cleansing or purification of the temple is a cautionary tale that we be vigilant against the creeping corruption of religiosity in form but not meaning - habit without presence, routine without growth, proclamation without encounter.  It is good to care about our liturgy and the solemnity and beauty of our worship, but the moral test is in whether we are growing in love toward one another.  The purpose of the form is to awaken our hearts to God.  The liturgy is a means to express our devotion, not a replacement for it.  For Christ, the temple is a womb in which love for God is continually birthed in love for neighbor.  The sacrifice of praise and care for the other go hand in hand.  Christ disrupts our hearts of stone to give us hearts of flesh.  He comes with the unblinking gaze of fiery love into our hearts to seek out our motives and devotion and to expose the inner moneychanger and overturn his table.  This church is a dangerous place.  Here I discover a God who is unwilling to accommodate my desire to avoid or hide who I am or get by with a mere performance that is not sincere.  No program of self-defense is safe here.

Just as we are not made for the sabbath, but the sabbath for us, in a like manner we are not made for the church, but the church is made for us.  In the temporal stuff of stone and wood it points to the true and lasting temples of the Holy Spirit which are our own bodies.  The building will return to the dust, but we will be raised.  So, these walls are the womb of resurrection life.  We see the art - icons, crucifix, statues, windows as through a glass darkly.  We look at them, but they point to us and beyond us to the mystery of the new heaven and new earth always just about to burst forth.  We enter this holy place, but we do not really exit.  We will only really exit at death.  In the meantime, we continually pass through, continually born out into the wonder of God’s cosmic sanctuary, the altar that is the universe.

Being in this holy place never gets old.  It is at times joyful, disturbing, boring - but never old.  I am continually thankful and express how beautiful and good it is for me to be in you.  And the church replies. Yes, it talks back.  It says, “yes, but even more beautiful and even better than you being in me is that I am in you.” Amen.

The Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, September 29, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Aidan Owen, OHC

The Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, September 29, 2025

• Genesis 28:10-17
• Revelation 12:7-12
• John 1:47-51

Click here for an audio of the sermon

When I was a little boy, my mother used to read me stories of King Arthur, Merlin, and the Knights of the Round Table. Ever since, I’ve been a fan of epic fantasy. As our ancestors clearly did, I find stories that set the human person in the cosmic struggle of good and evil compelling and encouraging. The framing story for today’s celebration of Michael and All the Angels contains the same elements as all great fantasy: the soaring—quite literally in this case—clash between the forces of good and evil in a cosmic struggle for the fate of the universe. And there’s a dragon! Like all such stories, although the narrative is about the angels in the eternal realms, it’s really about us humans right here and now.  

We hear in the Revelation to John about war breaking out in heaven. Michael and his angels fight against Satan and his angels. Michael and the forces of light prevail. “The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” It really gets the blood up, doesn’t it? 

 

This story is also disturbingly resonant with the times in which we live. It’s not so hard to see ourselves caught up in a cosmic struggle of good and evil. The deceiver of the world—the one we call variously Lucifer, Satan, the Devil, and the Father of Lies—is actively at work among us. We see the evidence of his presence in the division, violence, and chaos that threaten to undo us. 

 

We live a world that increasingly prizes dishonesty for the sake of selfish gain. I’m sure I don’t have to provide you with examples. Orwell’s concept of double-speak, which once seemed a twisted fantasy, has become shockingly, violently real. There are malevolent forces in our world that twist language in order to erode any shared reality we might still possess. This erosion is intentional and calculated to sow hatred and fear among us so that we will remain divided. 

 

I’m put in mind of the First Letter of John, by the same author as the Revelation, “As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come.” We are surrounded by a chorus of antichrists, peddling their lies and claiming to speak in the name of God. When the dragon was thrown down to the earth, he multiplied and remains among us. But the hated, division, and venom they sow is not of God—it is a child of the Father of Lies. 

 

There is a scene in The Lord of the Rings, the epic fantasy novel J.R.R. Tolkien wrote after, and in some ways as a response to, the horrors of the Second World War. Frodo, who has been charged with carrying the One Ring to destroy it, and thereby defeat the evil tyrant Sauron, says “I wish it need not have happened in my time.” Gandalf, the wisdom figure in the story, says “So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” 

 

We may well wish to run from this time of lies, or, if we are privileged, as I know many of us are, to busy ourselves with other things until this moment, too, has passed us by. But we Christians have a responsibility to live in the truth. After all, Jesus told us that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is the Word of God made flesh among us, a word sharper than any two-edged sword dividing soul and spirit. We are to live in the light of his Truth, which dispels the darkness of the lies that threaten and surround us. 

 

More than that, we are called to embody the Truth of Jesus Christ, which is that God loves every single person on this earth. We are all connected both to God and to one another through that love. There is no such thing as us and them. There is only we. United in the love of Christ, we need not let fear or hatred take root within us. If we cling to the Truth, the Truth will make us free. 

 

Holding tight to Jesus, we must become living examples of the truth that God’s answer is always more life and that Love always wins. 

 

I don’t mean to suggest that this path is an easy one. Far from it. If we cling to the Truth, it will cost us everything. This morning’s story from Revelation tells us that “[the saints] have conquered [Satan] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death.” That phrase “the word of their testimony” can also be translated as “the logic of their martyrdom.” For they did not cling to life, even in the face of death. 

 

In a sermon in January 2017, just after another fateful presidential inauguration, Br. Roy Parker preached on this verse from Revelation. He said, “Jesus’ death and resurrection reveal a logic inextricably woven into the fabric of the universe. In that divine logic unjust and uncompassionate powers have reached their limits when crosses and shotguns have done their worst. They can go no further than death. But the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection is that God can.” 
 
He continues, “When a servant of God does not cling to life in the face of a cross or a shotgun, the logic of oppressive empires and racist cultures has run its course; their power and its weapons have done all they can do. But God’s logic persists; God’s powerless weakness—whose weapons are justice and compassionate solidarity and love—continues its patient, persistent, non-violent subversion of oppressive empires and racist cultures. Jesus does not conquer Rome, but Jesus outlasts Rome.” 

 

Michael and his angels, like all the saints who have gone before us, show us the way to imitate Jesus in his life, but also in his death. The Truth of Jesus that we are to embody—to make flesh here and now—is not only that Love is the final answer, but that the oppressive logic of today’s antichrists can never stand up against the logic of self-sacrificing love. When we cling to Jesus, we bear witness—even with our bodies—that though the tyrants of this world may kill the body, they cannot touch the soul. That is how Love wins—by spoiling the spoiler of his prey. 

 

There is, too, a deeper message for us in today’s feast. We celebrate St. Michael and All Angels. All of them, which is to say we also celebrate Satan and his angels, too. How can that be, when we have been talking about the great cosmic battle of good and evil? 

 

As much as I love epic fantasy, if Love is God’s final answer, then at some point, we have to stop telling stories of battles and conquering and start weaving tales of healing and reconciliation. As cathartic as it may be to imagine Michael throwing Satan down, ultimately, it is not for us to defeat or vanquish evil. Such violent impulses are a part of evil’s grip on us. In bearing witness to the Truth of Jesus, we bear witness to the one who can heal and integrate evil, who can transform and convert evil into good, so that, at the end, even Lucifer will bear God’s light again. 

 

As James Stephens puts in his poem “The Fullness of Time,” 

 

On a rusty iron throne  

Past the furthest star of space  

I saw Satan sit alone,  

Old and haggard was his face;  

For his work was done and he 

Rested in eternity.  

  

And to him from out the sun  

Came his father and his friend  

Saying, now the work is done  

Enmity is at an end:  

And he guided Satan to  

Paradises that he knew.  

  

Gabriel without a frown,  

Uriel without a spear,  

Raphael came singing down         

Welcoming their ancient peer,  

And they seated him beside  

One who had been crucified. 

 

There is nothing and no one who does not, ultimately, belong to God. There is no part of us, individually or collectively, that is beyond the reach of God’s healing and reconciling love. And if we are in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, we are called all the more to shine like stars in the night sky, pointing the way home to the wayward and the lost. We are called to cling solely to the one who is Truth itself and whose truth and love and merciful justice will outlast the lies that threaten and surround us. In the end, Love will win. Even better than that—Love will put an end to winning and losing, and we will all be reconciled one to another, held tight in the arms of the one who has been crucified.