The First Sunday after Christmas Day, December 28, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bruno Santana, OHC

The First Sunday after Christmas, December 28, 2025

• Isaiah 61:10-62:3
• Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7
• John 1:1-18

Click here for an audio of the sermon

The Word became flesh and lived among us.

When I speak, when you speak. Our words tell us something about ourselves. What we think, what we know, what we want to do or how I feel about something.  But in a very limited way because, as a human being I can only express a little bit of myself in my words. 

Now, think about God. Who is the perfect reality, the source of all creation. God can speak perfectly about himself, utterly. God can speak a word that totally carries the truth of who he is. 

In the creed we pray: God from God, light from light, true God from true God (this is our baby Jesus that we celebrate in this Christmas season) and today in gospel Saint John says: “The word was God” the logos, this is Jesus. The son is not just an aspect of the father, not just a little bit of the father's truth. He's the fullness of the father's truth

Today, First Sunday of Christmas, our liturgy calls to reflect this prologue to the gospel of John that is one of the great theological masterpieces in our tradition that does sum up whole Christianity and certainly what this Christmas is about. 

Let’s walk through some verses and bring to our heart God’s word. 

John begins: “in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God”. It's how the whole Bible commences. Genesis 1 says: In the beginning, when God made the heavens and the earth.  The Intention of John here is to tell a story of new creation. God is starting over with something fresh and new. He is completing his creation. This is something unique and specific to Christianity.

V2 “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” 

The Father, God, as great artist was looking at his son and discerning in the son, the logos, all of the possible patterns of rationality and order and made the world according to the Son , logos. the son, logos, all things are made.

Now John the Baptist enters the stage. Was sent from God as witness to testify the light.

 In the past, God has sent spokespersons, prophets, and patriarchs who speak his word. We can also think of every great philosopher, every great scientist, every great poet, every great artist. Anyone that speaks what is love, true, faith, beauty, indeed speaks the word of God to some degree. They're human bearers of his word.  

The Evangelist John is telling us: This Jesus who was born on Christmas night that I'm talking about, this logos, is not like John the Baptist, not like one of the prophets, not just another philosopher, teacher. He is something qualitatively different, not just a bearer of the word. And I think that's a message which needs to be heard today.

V10. He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.

The church fathers said, "God became human, that humans might become God." 

That's how they summed up Christian faith. God condescended to take our nature to himself that that nature might be elevated and raised up.

Fulton Sheen, was an American bishop, talks about the hierarchy of being. He says: Something lower on the scale can be brought up higher but only through an act of condescension on the part of that which is above it. This natural law of the "descent of the higher to lift the lower" serves as an analogy for the Incarnation of Christ.

How do human beings become something higher? 

In that silent night (that we sing every year) Christ came and is not just one human being among many. He is God from God, light from light, true God from true God and now he can raise us up and share his own life. By condescending to us, he allows us to ascend into him.

Everything, especially the human beings, we are made through and for the logos (Jesus) in a very special way. We're meant for union with God. This is our own deepest identity. Union with God It's the deepest hunger of every human heart.

The centerpiece, it's verse 14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us. 

And that little detail now.  In the English translation, sometimes we miss the very important meaning of the word that we have in the original text, in this case in Greek. for example: the word became flesh and lived among us. In Greek literally says: He tabernacled among us; He made his tent among us. 

For biblical Jew though, when you say tent or tabernacle, they are thinking about the Book of Exodus when Israel is escaping from Egypt and God tells them to build a great tabernacle, a tent of meeting, a tent where he would commune with them. That's the prototype of the temple in Jerusalem many centuries later. The temple was the meeting place of heaven and earth. When earth and heaven meet, God comes down to meet his creation. 

Now, because of the holy night, because of Christmas, because of the incarnation, we have the full tabernacling of God among his people. The true temple now is Christ, the word made flesh. We now have a new and definitive place to go to meet God. Heaven and earth coming together in Christ.

 As the versus 14 says: “and we have seen his glory, the glory of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” That little juxtaposition is fascinating. Grace and truth. 

The incarnation It's the full expression of grace, Free gift. We can't deserve this. We can't merit it. God freely gives of himself becoming one of us grace upon grace. It's full of truth because Jesus is the incarnation of God that came among us.  because the grace of God's come among us we see what we ought to be.

The demand of Christianity is higher than any religion or philosophy because God's become one of us full of grace. and therefore, we are called to this fullness of truth to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.  

That's the good news of Christmas. That's the meaning of Christmas.  It's about God in grace condescending to come down to us that we might become participants in his own nature and that we might realize the fullness of the truth that he is, the truth of what we can become.

That's what Christmas is about.

The First Sunday after Christmas Day, December 29, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Adam McCoy

The First Sunday after Christmas Day, December 29, 2024

 

• Isaiah 61:10-62:3
• Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7
• John 1:1-18

Click here for an audio of the sermon

 

I seem to remember years ago how daring it was in a Christmas sermon to point out the revolution promised by the nativity story. Instead of painting a picture of conventionally comforting images, our brave preacher would try to shock us all:  The Angel promising that the holy child will by social standards seem  illegitimate; a very young but by no means unaware Mary saying Yes to all that may imply for her future; and her Magnificat: This is how the world will be set right, by turning everything upside down.  

The royal heir of David, born in David’s city, but excluded from even the most elementary human hospitality. The poverty of Mary and Joseph - their seeming lack of relatives and resources landing them away in the manger, no crib for a bed.  What a counter-intuitive way for the King of Kings to make his entrance!  And yet this is the narrative form in Matthew and Luke of God’s chosen entrance into his world. Every Christmas we take heart that God’s transforming work will start to be done in a small, obscure place by people of seemingly no account.  The real transformation is a revolution, replacing the rich with the poor, the powerful with the weak, the noble with the humble.

John doesn’t even hint at a nativity scene.  No angel, no shepherds, no magi, no meeting with Elizabeth, no Bethlehem, no manger, in fact, no Mary and no Joseph.  John starts his story at the top: Echoing Genesis he writes: In the beginning.... Beresit.... En arche....  The term John uses here, arche, means not simply the beginning of something in time, but also that which gives each thing its essential being: its structure, its innate properties.  The Word, the Logos, is not just a particular vocabulary item but is its underlying discoverable, communicable, rational pattern.

John seems to say, This is really how things have been, are, and always will be.  This is where the world really came from.  This is what it really is.  This is where it really is going, Because the Logos is its origin, its structure.  The Incarnation brings the Word itself into our lives, into our world, and in that process, changes everything.

This story, John implies, is going to tell us about reality.  Not the beginning of a social revolution, but a revolution in how reality itself is perceived.  In a world whose pagan culture, whose religious ideology, is fixed on beings, natural, animal and human qualities writ large and sculpted into believable images, this story will dethrone and remove every idol.  John sends us to what seems to be an empty room, to a holy of holies, where the One who is above all and through all and in all is found in quiet silence and in waiting.  And there we wait for the Word.  And we find that Word in a human person, the Word made flesh.  Jesus.

In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

In learning this, in knowing this, in believing this, something entirely new is brought into our world.  No longer is the world complete in itself, self-explanatory.  Nothing in the world has its being in itself.  Nothing has power in its own essence.  Because everything is made by and through the Word, everything is contingent on the Word.  The strange thing is that this contingency sets human knowledge free: We need no longer be captive to things, or captive to our own images of truth as though they themselves are complete and eternal, but we are free to change our understandings of them as our minds lead us, as we stand secure in the knowledge that the Word alone is all truth.  The rest can change, will change, will always change, but our firm foundation is in holding fast to the Word who has created and sustains all that is, not holding fast to our already existing understandings.

Every act of greater understanding brings us closer to the Word.  The search for knowledge is a search for the Word, and that search is holy.  And that search is never, can never be, finished.  Just when we think we “know” all there is to know about something, something new appears.  The world brought into being by the Word is alive with the creating act of God and we are continually invited by the creative Word into a process of discovery.  

And like the up-from-the-bottom birth of the savior, this too is a revolution.  The Incarnation of the Word opens our eyes, opens our minds to understand that the material reality we live in is not itself ultimate, that there is another referent, a different stance which allows us to step aside and become observers, analysts, theorizers, communicators with each other, of a material reality whose essential nature we are always in the process of discovering.  Not that it itself changes, but that our understanding, always striving to come closer to the Logos in its arche, its beginning, is never complete for us.  Our journey is alive to the Word as long as we choose to be open to it. To the person who follows the Word, the world is alive.

When we think we have a grip on something, we discover it is actually something else.  For thousands of years the experts were sure that the heavens were a shell surrounding us and the stars were holes where the light came in; they were sure that human personality is determined by the four humors; they thought diseases were caused by nonphysical entities, sometimes demonic. They were wrong.  What are our present day confident but actually contingent certainties?

This happens in history.  For millennia we have depended on written sources, and when they are lacking, on narrative supposition, for knowledge of our past. These sources give us stories but rarely cooperate in giving us truth.  But something strange has begun to happen.   Careful archaeology, carbon 14,plant pollen, tree rings, long-buried disease bacilli, pandemic eruption tracings, DNA and its every-increasing and fascinating applications, have moved many historical narratives out of the realm of fable and attached them to knowledge.  Who knew that DNA would show that a human population could be stable, rooted in one place for 10,000 years, when DNA proved that Adrian Targett, a teacher in Somerset, England, was a direct descendant of the so-called “Cheddar Man”, a local skeleton which survived for ten millennia?  The imagined story becomes a fact: Their people came and stayed.

What has changed and is changing our perceptions of reality?  The growing understanding that John is right: that the Word is at the beginning of all things and defines their essential structures, that the Word is the essence of what is knowable and rational, and that we are invited to enter into its light, to follow its sacred and holy path to knowledge, to uncover it and theorize about it and test it and communicate it, as best we can.  

Knowledge is holy.  The pursuit of knowledge is holy.  Study is holy.  Libraries are holy.   Every act of the increase of knowledge brings us nearer to the Word who created the world and for that reason is holy.  The entrance into the world of this Word is the other revolution of the Incarnation.

But of course, for John, the Word, the creative, sustaining, pattern-giving Logos, is not an idea, but a person.  Jesus of Nazareth is the Word incarnate.  It is he who brings light into a dark  world.  It is he, and all he embodies, who makes possible our choice to follow these  revolutionary paths to greater and greater understandings of what is real, bringing us into the truth of our own lives and into the truth of the world itself.  Or not.

So it might be interesting to pay attention to what Jesus says.  It would seem that when Jesus speaks, the Logos itself is speaking, opening the mind of God to us.  

And so I find the very first words Jesus speaks in the Gospel of John interesting.  In the first thing he says in John’s gospel, Jesus asks two of John’s disciples who are following after him, “What are you seeking?”  A question which had a specific setting at the time, but which echoes again and again, and will open infinite worlds to us if we hear it asking us:  What are we seeking?

First Sunday of Christmas - December 26, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

Christmastide 1 - Sunday, December 26, 2021

Isaiah 61:10-62:3

Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7

John 1:1-18

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

Long ago, when prayer and Bible reading were still common in public schools in America, my third-grade teacher, Miss Catherine Ruddy, a stout Irish-American spinster of a certain age, began class every morning with a reading from the New Testament. Invariably it was either the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount or the first five verses of Saint John's gospel which we heard this morning. Though I’m certain that she was a devout Catholic, Miss Ruddy read to us from the King James Version of the Bible, and those words are imprinted on my memory:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”

I’m pretty sure that I had no idea what she was talking about, but I fell in love with the very words themselves.  I loved the sound of the sentence which said, “…the same was in the beginning with God.” What did that mean?  And I marveled at what seemed to be the logical conundrum of saying, “...and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

I'm tempted to say that I still have no idea what Miss Ruddy was talking about when she read us that passage, though that's not quite true. I studied philosophy after all. I have some knowledge of the Greek term logos, the word, the organizing principle and creative rational structure of reality. And now I know that ‘the Word’ was no mere word. It was in fact the inner logic of God for a hurting world. I know now that the Word of which Miss Ruddy, or rather of which St. John spoke and which Miss Ruddy read to us, is none other than the eternal Christ whose birth among us in Jesus we celebrate during these festive days. But having said that, I realize I am merely skimming the surface of a mystery that dives deep into the heart of the Christian proclamation and into our own lives and that of all creation.

There is something tremendously mysterious and almost contradictory in the claims of Christmas. And theologians and poets and hymn writers have delighted in exploring and expressing those paradoxes. This is especially, though not exclusively, true of those ancient voices from the Christian East that have emphasized the self-emptying of God, the Almighty, the infinite one into the vulnerable and tender figure of a human child born into our very human and often inhospitable world.

The language of the Byzantine liturgy is redolent with paradoxes that strain to give expression to the wonder of Christ’s gentle coming among us:

“Today, He who holds the whole creation in His hands is born of a virgin, He whose essence none can touch is bound in swaddling-clothes as a mortal man.  God who in the beginning fashioned the heavens lies in a manger. He who rained manna on His people in the wilderness is fed on milk from His mother’s breast.  The bridegroom of the Church summons the wise men.  The Son of the Virgin accepts their gifts. We worship Thy Nativity, O Christ!” 

The 20th century Anglican theologian Austin Farrer echoes this theme when he writes:

“…Mary holds her finger out, and a divine hand closes on it.  The maker of the world is born a begging child; he begs for milk and does not know that it is milk for which he begs.  We will not lift our hands to pull the love of God down to us, but he lifts his hands to pull human compassion down upon his cradle. … and this is how he brings his love to bear on human pride: by weakness not by strength, by need and not by bounty.” 

But perhaps no one delighted more in the paradox of the Incarnation, of the mystery of God becoming human, than did the 4th century Syriac poet Ephrem of Edessa. In his eleventh Hymn on the Nativity, Ephrem writes:

“Your mother is a cause for wonder: the Lord entered her and became a servant; He who is the Word entered and became silent within her; thunder entered her and made no sound; there entered the Shepherd of all, and in her he became the Lamb, bleating as he came forth.”

“Your mother’s womb has reversed the roles: the Establisher of all entered in His richness, but came forth poor; the Exalted One entered her, but came forth meek; the Splendrous One entered her, but came forth having put on a lowly hue.”

“The Mighty One entered, and put on insecurity from her womb; the Provisioner of all entered and experienced hunger; He who gives drink to all entered and experienced thirst: naked and stripped there came forth from her He who clothes all.”

This is heady stuff indeed, isn’t it?  And worthy of our time and study and reflection. And I love it. 

But, but…I also find, particularly this year, that in addition to this theological and poetic reflection, I also need something at once both more tender and simple. I find myself searching for a more childlike, even childish, approach to this great mystery. 

This year, more than most, I find myself desiring to ponder the mystery of God's love through gazing at a Nativity scene or creche, whether it be a fine Neapolitan extravaganza worthy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the roughhewn Neo-Byzantine figures that are before our altar or even a mass-produced nativity set like the one I bought at Woolworth’s when I was perhaps 10 years old while the other boys were trading baseball cards. 

I find myself longing for the familiarity of Christmas carols, even of the sappiest sort. Living in a monastery, I am shielded from the onslaught of this kind of popular Christmas music that invades our culture sometime in mid-October and disappears magically on December 26. This past week as I was driving home from Kingston, I heard for the first time this year the Little Drummer Boy. I almost had to pull off the road because of the tears.  Tears of nostalgia, yes. And perhaps of grief as well for holidays past that shall never be again.  But also, and most powerfully, a spontaneous response to the tender vision of the Word Incarnate, the child Jesus, smiling at the little drummer boy…and at me. Such Christmas imagery, as unsophisticated as it is, has power to cut through the most intellectual or rational of minds and open the stony heart. 

Many years ago, in this Chapel, I heard our Father Bonnell Spencer preach on Christmas. Bonnie was a man of powerful and provocative intellect, an active and restless man even in his old age, always exploring and developing the theological and practical implications of faith, not to mention Democratic party politics. He wrote many books, led countless retreats, and preached sermon upon sermon in his lifetime. But this particular Christmas Bonnie, speaking as he always did from a messy collection of notes, read—thank God, he didn't sing but read—two verses of his favorite Christmas carol, “O little town of Bethlehem”:

“How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given! So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven. No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin, where meek hearts will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.”

“Where children pure and happy pray to the blessed Child, where misery cries out to thee, Son of the mother mild; where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door, the dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.”

Bonnie and the Chapel fell silent for a good long while. Because when the heart is touched by the loving paradox of God dwelling among us, or as Eugene Peterson puts it in his paraphrase, when God becomes flesh and blood and moves into the neighborhood; when the Infinite One becomes vulnerable and we vulnerable ones are caught up in the infinite and astonishing love and mercy that is the Word made Flesh, the Logos of the universe, the fundamental principle of all being…then the only appropriate, the only available, the only adequate response is silence.  

At Christmas Matins we sing this lovely antiphon on the Benedictus: “When all things were in quiet silence, and that night was in the midst of her swift course, your almighty Word, O Lord, leapt down out of your royal throne.  Alleluia.”

I long to share in that silence this Christmastide.  Many of us do.  And in that silence, may the Eternal Word leap down once again from the royal throne into the throne of your heart and mine.  And we will know joy and wonder once again, you and me and Miss Ruddy (God rest her soul!) and all the Miss Ruddy’s and Bonnie Spencer’s and little drummer boys who have touched our lives.  May we be surprised into silence. For out of silence, the Word is born. 

As Philips Brooks so gently reminds us:  How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given!  Isn’t it, just.

First Sunday of Christmas - December 27, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

Christmas 1 B  - Sunday, December 27, 2020

Isaiah 61:10-62:3

Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7

John 1:1-18

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

In the Name of God, the Lover, the Beloved and the Love. Amen.

*****

Merry Christmas! May you know deeply of Immanuel, the God that is at the core of all things. Today, with the prologue to the Gospel according to John, we receive Good News indeed. And we receive it in the form of a beautiful poem. It may have been a hymn sung by Christians even before John wrote his gospel. 

As it is, I am mighty grateful that John passed it on to us. It gives us an entirely different nativity than the synoptic gospels; a nativity that goes back to the creation of the universe.

*****

John assures us that in the very human person of Jesus of Nazareth, we came to know the Word of God, Godself. And this anointed one, this Christ, is everywhere and always present from beyond time and space and through and through all of time and space. There wasn’t, there isn’t and there won’t ever be a time when God is not intrinsically present to all creation. 

God was revealed in creation from the beginning of time and space, from the eruption of the universe 13.7 billion years ago. The Logos of God, the Sofia of God was already there when the concept of “there” started existing. The Trinity of God actually was existent even before that, when there was no “there” and no “then” to speak of.

The Universe is an outpouring of God’s Love. And in God’s universe “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). God is being, beingness, isness. God is the essence of existence. We get befuddled with language here.

And in time and space and the universe, God brought about a canvass for us to have an experience of enfleshed existence. And on that canvass came to exist elementary particles, atoms, molecules, cells, plants and animals, sentient life, humanity. And God is not finished with painting.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. 

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Christian theologians use the expression the Scandal of the Particular. It evokes for me how the God who is the source and principle of all existence came to be known to humanity in incredibly underprivileged particular circumstances.

In a Galilean crafts people village family, in a colonised, militarily occupied backwater of the Roman empire, was born a little boy, whom in time, we came to know as the Christ, the anointed one, the Son of God.

The life of that man of Nazareth seems to point out how it mattered to God to have an enfleshed experience of human existence, joy and suffering. And it was thanks to that existence that we more fully embraced the wonder of incarnation. 

The incarnation of God in the stuff of the universe and in the person of Jesus Christ shows that the spirit nature of reality (the spiritual, the immaterial, the formless) and the material nature of reality (the physical, that which we can see and touch) are one. God is not separate and remote, what I referred to in another sermon as an absent landlord. God is intrinsically involved in all of reality up to and including the human experience.

*****

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

Immanuel, God with us is what we are celebrating this Christmastide. We are participating in the God experience. We are God-infused in a God-soaked universe and we are building God’s kingdom with Jesus’ solidarity and engagement.

When we recognize how God-drenched reality is, we cannot but engage with God, believe in the universal Christ and participate in God’s adventure of an ever-evolving universe. 

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin talked about the Omega Point. In the book of Revelation, God is referred to as the Alpha and the Omega; the beginning and the end. 

We are participating in the increasing unification of creation in the Body of Christ. We may not notice it every morning with our first cup of coffee but we are.

*****

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.

Thanks to Jesus, whose human birth, we just celebrated, we have come to know the Creator of the Universe more intimately than was imaginable before Him. We are on the receiving end of an everflowing source of truth and grace. 

Thanks to Jesus, we have come to know that we are heirs of the Reign of God in the Body of Christ. We are deeply known, acknowledged and loved in the particulars of our humanity. And that humanity is part of what it is to be God. We, and all of Creation with us, are at the Sacred Heart of God.

*****

As the Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Galatians: 

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God.”

(Galatians 4:4-7)

*****

Immanuel, God with us. And us with God. Merry Christmas!

The First Sunday after Christmas - Sunday, December 29, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Josép Martinez-Cubero, OHC
The First Sunday after Christmas Day - December 29, 2019

Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7
John 1:1-18

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

Today's gospel lesson is John's nativity story; it is not with shepherds and angels or a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. In this nativity story, John echoes the words from the book of Genesis: In the beginning when God created… God said, "Let there be light." In John's gospel, from the very beginning was the Word. This notion is a very important event in the evolution of how the early Christians thought of Jesus as the glorified Christ, the Son of God.

Paul, the earliest of New Testament writers, in his earlier writings, speaks of Jesus as becoming the Son of God in his resurrection. For Mark, writing about twenty years after Paul, Jesus is revealed as the Son of God at his baptism. Matthew and Luke, writing about ten to fifteen years after Mark, describe Jesus as the Son of God at his birth. Just after Matthew and Luke, Paul’s thinking about Christ has evolved and writing to the Colossians, speaks of Christ as the "first-born of all creation." But in the fourth gospel Christ is not born at all. The Word was always with God even before creation began.

John’s Prologue is one of the most beautiful scripture passages. It’s poetic form, however, can sound somewhat cryptic. And, so, my preparation for this sermon led me to the original Greek language of the text and to checking the accuracy of the translation. It is one of my favorite exercises when studying scripture, thanks to our Brother Roy, who, when I was a novice, would always come to our Bible Studies with his Greek New Testament and Greek Lexicon.

"In the beginning was the Word." The Greek word is Logos and varies in meaning depending on what period in history it is being used. By the time of John’s writing, logos had come to mean the creative power of God and the kingship of God over all things. Philo, a first century philosopher, saw logos as flowing from God, and as the mechanism through which God created the universe. Logos combines the concepts of thought, deed, and power. For the author of the fourth gospel, logos is an expression of God's innermost nature which is present in the world.

John’s threefold claim, “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” reveals the origin of Jesus, his relationship with God, and his identity as God. These truths about Jesus are essential to John’s portrait of Jesus, the meaning of the incarnation, and also signify that which describes our own humanity. We make sense of our humanity through these categories of origin, relationship, and identity, and now God has chosen to live these truths.

The God who spoke and said, "let there be light," became flesh and lived among us. The Greek phrase translated as “lived among us” has really to do with indwelling. That is a significant difference. For John, the Word became flesh and indwells us. It was not a temporary event that happened in the first century. If we recognize it, the Word indwells us today, and every day.

John says, "What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.” The light and life is intended for all people. The author has chosen words and symbols that not only the Jewish community can understand, but with which the Greek community would also resonate. Jews would be reminded of the Creation of world in Genesis and the Wisdom of God active in Creation in Proverbs. Greeks would understand the creative principle of order in the universe understood as the Logos. The Word made flesh is a gift intended for everyone, not just for some.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." Darkness in the gospel of John is depicted as light's adversary. Since light manifests the power and presence of God, the darkness refers to the powers that oppose God: sin and evil. In John's Gospel, sin is human rebellion against God. Sin and evil are formidable foes to be sure, but ultimately cannot overcome the light of God's Word. Light, you see, can warm the bones, yes, but can also burn like a laser. Light shines into our relationships and communities when we welcome it into our lives to heal, yes, but also to expose; to warm, yes, but also to burn away evil.

“[T]o all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God". The word translated as “believe,” really means "radical trust," an orientation of one's entire self, and not just the intellect as the word "believe" would imply. The status of "children of God" has completely to do with trust, and is certainly "not of blood." The Greek word is actually a Hebrew idiom for "bloodshed" or violence. Children of God do not attain their status through violence or war. Nor are children of God born out of "the will of the flesh," in other words, through the established ways of the world- superficial satisfaction, and greed. Nor are children of God formed "out of the will of man." In a gospel that, amazingly, repeatedly uses the inclusive word anthropos to refer to human beings in general, here, the author uses a word that specifically relates to men, andros. I can’t help but to conclude that the gospel makes it clear that children of God are not formed by male headship but by God alone.

The incarnation shows us a different way of seeing life and living in the world. We are called to let the light of the incarnate Word, enkindled in our hearts, shine forth in our lives. We are called to be blessings. We are called to follow the way of Love. We are called to be fully alive. We are called to be holy, not as an achievement on our own but as a gift of God. Through faith we have been given the power to become children of God.

A Jewish friend once told me that she knew a rabbi who told a story about each person having a procession of angels going before them and crying out, “Make way for the image of God.” Can you imagine living with this as our reality and the truth that guides our lives? The implications are profound. It changes how we see one another and ourselves. Perhaps that is the truth for this first Sunday after Christmas Day for us. And the Word became flesh and indwells us. Are you recognizing the Word become flesh in your own life and in the lives of others? Do you see the procession of angels and hear their voices? And the Word became flesh and indwells us today, this very present moment. So make way for the image of God, and may the light of the incarnate Word, enkindled in our hearts, shine forth in our lives. ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+

First Sunday after Christmas: December 31, 2017

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. John Forbis , OHC
First Sunday after Christmas - Sunday, December 31, 2017


To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. John Forbis

This is how it began for me,

By John Forbis, OHC 

God spewed me
out of his mouth
and commanded me
to howl a cosmos.
 
All I knew was one sound,
not even a word.
But then I found
my voice.
 
Or was it God’s?
for neither God nor I
had ever
spoken before.
 



Then I spoke again
and could not stop speaking.
The darkness began
to roll, swirl and swell.
 
Then waters
gathered,
boundaries
fixed.
 
Circles in the deep
layers of crust
were shaved,
contours smoothed.
 
I hummed and purred
while matter was
caressing itself
awake.
 
What came next
God called gift.
 
He molded
and branded himself
into a creation
with outlines and limits.
 
God wanted identity.
Or was it identification?
 
So he asked this of me.
And it was too much to ask.
I had no experience of rejection, suffering,
death or birth.
 
The closest
I had ever
come to life
was wind and mist.
 
Yet, I knew who was asking.
 
The rhythm
of his heartbeat
still lingers
in my ears. 
 
So I conformed
to the womb in which
he placed me,
returned to the darkness.
 
Once born,
I knew
I would have to
go there again.
 
But bellowing
as I do with
all of those
who need the
 
plain grace and truth
of a single vowel,
my death which is life
will not be overcome.

Christmas 1 B - Dec 28, 2014

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Scott Borden, OHC

Christmas 1 B, Sunday, December 28, 2014

Isaiah 61:10-62:3 
Galatians 3:23-25;4:4-7 
John 1:1-18 

Mouse, Br. Scott's cat

I had a pretty clear idea what I wanted to say in a sermon this Sunday – until just a few days ago... And then something else presented itself to me causing me to think – now there is a good idea for a sermon... but I already knew what I wanted to say... So I've decided to do the thing you are never supposed to do... I will preach both sermons. I'm sure that is a good idea... Don't worry – both sermons will be short.

The idea that presented itself to me just a few days ago was in the form of a cat. A cat named Mouse to be specific. Mouse has been a monastery cat for several months now. She spent the first several years of her life as a Rectory cat, so this is a new job for her. And she takes her work very seriously.

She is a social sort of kitty and feels a need to keep an eye on the comings and goings of the second floor of the enclosure. She tends to lurk outside the bathrooms, which would be creepy if she were not a cat... and she likes to lead folks on walks and hold rather loud conversations. But for all of that friendliness, she has not really been very affectionate.

Then on the morning of Christmas eve, she decided it was time to sit in my lap. This was really a first. And she sat quite happily for more than 20 minutes... I was, to say the least, please and honored. Cat affection, when offered, is always sincere, because a cat really can't be bothered to try to butter you up.

So as Mouse sat in my lap, letting me rub her face and purring quietly, I thought to myself – what a lovely Christmas gift... And that is the sermon that threw itself at me... It is a lovely gift. And all she had to do was simply show up and be present. It made me extremely happy and joyful.

I am quite convinced that cats (and I suppose I have to admit other animals as well) teach us a great deal about God. Cats, for example, teach us about unconditional love, not because they offer it, but because they accept it. What I realized, as Mouse sat quietly in my lap for those wonderful 20 minutes, is that the joy I felt is, perhaps, a reflection of what God feels when we show up and are present.

I think of those shepherds who showed up and were present at the manger... and I think of those disciples the garden at Gethsemane who couldn't stay awake – couldn't be present. Showing up and being present – a gift we dare not underestimate. That is the first sermon...

Now the second sermon... the one I first wanted to preach... started with with something else that caught my attention. I saw a posting from a religious organization of some sort or other that boldly proclaimed that “Jesus is the very best present of all...” illustrated with a picture of a lovely bright red box wrapped with ribbon and bow... and my reaction was different than my reaction to mouse...

This message just seems wrong in so many ways... It reduces Jesus to some sort of gift-wrapped notion stuck under the tree by God's little helper – Santa... It reduces the Word that becomes flesh and dwells among us to something that fits in a box – albeit a very nice box. That is a small Jesus indeed. Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords... but Present of presents... not so much.

I have become increasing fascinated by the dual nature of Christmas... there is Sacred Christmas, built around the mystery of Jesus. And then there is secular Christmas – built around an orgy of shopping. Secular Christmas needs to blur the lines between the two – so that it can rub some of the beauty and wonder of the Sacred on itself.

Christmas trees and manger scenes intermingle with candy canes and mistletoe and reindeer and gingerbread houses and toy soldiers... Figuring out what, if anything, these might have to do with the Word made flesh is, shall we say, difficult...

Perhaps it is a good that secular Christmas seeks to rub against the sacred. Secular Christmas is not an evil thing – its just shallow. Even the most secular of people can be touched by Christmas – they can, even if they hardly know it, be touched by the Word.

But I'm not done disparaging the Jesus as present concept. I've saved the worst for last... Secular Christmas teaches us absolutely that we are entitled to presents that we want and that make us happy.

Some presents will fall into that politely named category of “unfortunate.” Many retailers assure us that we can give the perfect gift, because the recipient can return the “unfortunate” gift, no questions asked, for something they actually want... Secular Christmas has succeeded when I get just exactly what I want...

Jesus is many things, but Jesus, to be honest, is not just exactly what I, or any of us, really want. Jesus challenges us, questions us, makes us uncomfortable.
The disappointment with Jesus is quite clear in his lifetime. It leads to crucifixion...

Many of the faithful of Jesus' time wanted a powerful savior, a super hero if you will, who would come and crush the Romans. They didn't get what they wanted. According to the rules of Secular Christmas, they will have to get in line to see customer service for an exchange...

Many of us have ideas about who or what we would like Jesus to be. There is the blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus who is sweet and nice all the time – gift exchange... There is Jesus who loves me so very much that he wants me to be extremely rich – gift exchange... The Jesus who causes my favorite sports team to win... The Jesus who tramples my enemies under his feet... The Jesus who cures cancer... The Jesus who feeds the hungry so I don't have to... When it comes to Jesus as present, I'm afraid we all have something to take to the customer service window... We're all in line for the gift exchange.

The Word does not become flesh to make us happy. Jesus doesn't seek to make us over into better versions of ourselves – Jesus comes to make us new... Encountering the Word made flesh transforms us, and not necessarily in the ways we want.

But if Jesus in just the greatest present of all, than we don't have the Word made flesh – we have flesh made into word. We are making God over into what we want, rather than being transformed by our encounter with God.

So that is the second sermon – the one I first wanted to preach... and Mouse gracing my lap with her presence you may recall was the first, which threw itself in front of me second...

But they aren't, really, two separate sermons... I hope you don't feel suddenly cheated.

All creatures on earth – and above the earth and in the oceans and beneath the earth – all creatures are part of creation and, undeniably an expression of their creator. I think Luke, in his telling of Jesus birth, underscores this by the presence of the animals. This is their creator. This is their manger. The Word is made flesh and dwells among them too. All things come into being through the Word of God.

Mouse can teach me about God because she is an expression of God's holy Word. Don't tell her that... she already believes she is queen of her universe.
Secular Christmas is part of Christmas – it may be the part that is most in need of redemption – but that is why Word becomes flesh. God doesn't come to visit because we are just irresistible and always fun to be around... God dwells among us because we need to be touched by God... because we need redemption.

Emanuel, God with us, the Word made flesh makes us whole. Secular Christmas has only happiness to offer – which is simpler and can fit under the tree...

But the real gift is that we show up and are present just as Mouse did a few mornings ago... We show up with those who are hungry, with those who are being treated unjustly, with those who are sorrowful, or unpleasant, or powerless... in this way we encounter Jesus, the Word made flesh. And so we are transformed.

Christmas 1 A - Dec 29, 2013

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC

Christmas 1 A – Sunday 29 December 2013

Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Galatians 3:23-25;4:4-7
John 1:1-18

“In the beginning was the Word” says John,
and “without him not one thing came into being.”

In sweeping poetry, the disciple whom Jesus loved tells us what we need to know to approach and know God.  If we believe in Jesus, God saves us by adopting us as God’s very children.

We cannot know God directly, but Jesus knows God.  Jesus is the fullness of God. And we can know Jesus if we choose to believe in him.  And in knowing Jesus, we know God.

*****

John’s gospel does not start with a Nativity of Jesus but instead it puts Jesus squarely at the Nativity of the known universe.  “In the beginning was the Word” says John, and “without him not one thing came into being.”

We are left in no doubt that before there was anything, there was the Word. And some of those things that were not before the Word are time, space and matter.  

Try imagining existence without time, space and matter. We have a hard time imagining existence without those realities.  And indeed, the very fact of “being” did not exist before the Word.  The state of Being itself is part of Creation.

*****

In his prologue, John powerfully introduces us to a God who is intimately involved with matter as its Creator, and yet is essentially beyond matter and any of its prerequisites, such as time and space.

And John also lets us glimpse that God is a community of relationship; the Word was not separate from God, was indeed God, and yet was also with God.

*****

This foreword to the Gospel according to John is a masterpiece of simple but powerful poetry.  And yet in its simplicity and power, this poetry conveys all the fundamentals of theology.

Before all else there is God and from the beginning, God is loving relationship. For starters, within God’s own nature, God is relationship and love.  The Creator and the Word are one, and yet, at the same time, they also are with one another, without stopping to be one.

If it feels like a mind twister it’s because our minds are of this Creation and not from beyond Creation. Our minds are a grace from God and not on a par with the nature and existence of God.

*****

And the God that John introduces us to in the prologue chooses to simplify everything, chooses to simplify our entering in relationship with him by choosing to enter into Creation on the same footing as his very Creatures.  The maker of all matter, chooses flesh, a very special matter, to reveal himself to his Creation.

“He was in the world” and “He came to what was his own” and “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”

Suddenly, adoption by God becomes possible by receiving the Word, by believing in his name, which in Hebrew literally means “God saves” (Yehoshua, Yeshua, Jesus).

Suddenly we no longer need to understand God as God beyond ourselves.  But we are invited to relate to God as amongst ourselves, as one of us, Emmanuel. We are told “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.” But God has now been made known to us as our Father and we can cry “Abba, Father” at the prompting of the Spirit of Jesus our Brother, sent by God in our very hearts now and forever.

*****

The flesh of Jesus is powerfully manifest to us here today through the sacrament of the Eucharist. This is one way in which we can today meet God that Saves in the flesh.

Another way is that the spirit of Jesus, the Word, is present through the Holy Spirit of God awakening us to his words in our existence.  The Word, the Wisdom, the Holy Spirit of God can touch us anytime, whether through the words of holy scripture, or the words of God’s creation writ large all around us.

Any human flesh, any human face, any created thing has the power to shine God’s light and life on you. Make sure to notice that more often.

And these means of relationship, the very threads of this existence; time, space, matter, being are all pure gifts by the will of God.  And it is those gifts which enable us to relationship with the Divine by the sheer grace of God.

If God were to will to put an end to time, space or matter, none of our rich relationship with God, within God would be possible anymore.  But if we are learning one thing about God, it’s that God never tires of relationship.  God keeps trying with us.  Thanks be to God.

*****

In the week to come, see if you can sidle up to these 18 verses of the prologue again. Read them aloud a couple of times and see what those words conjure up in you. It is poetry, after all; it deserves to be read aloud and heard to work its charm on our hearts. God is very near to you.

*****

Jesus, you are very near to us.  Beloved Word of God, our Lord, our Redeemer and our God, give us to believe in your Light and your Life through your grace and truth. Amen.