The Second Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bruno Santana, OHC

The Second Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2025

• Acts 5:27-32
• Revelation 1:4-8
• John 20:19-31

Click here for an audio of the sermon

My Lord and My God !

“My Lord and my God” we are abide in You in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen 

Most of you know by memory, some parables of Jesus, biblical verses, sayings from a prophet or disciple. 

 

If you think of Saint Peter you will immediately remember his great confession: “You are the Christ,  the son of the living God (Mt 16:16). 

Saint Thomas also had a great confession: “My Lord and my God”,  but you'll notice that Thomas's confession has never been spoken with great adulation in the church. In fact, I often think that poor Thomas has been maligned by every Preacher in the pulpit for his one moment of weakness of unbelief or disbelief.

We’ve called him “doubting Thomas” and I relegated him to the back of all the Saints.

The reality is that Thomas is very much like you and me. Someone that always is seeking, questioning and we as Church also seek and question. 

He had a thousand questions. If we Look through the gospels, we will see that all the time he asked Jesus something. Look at the gospel of John 14:5 , Jesus said I'm going to the Father and Thomas asked  "Lord, we do not know where you are going. So how can we know the way?  So , He's always questioning, he's always seeking. 

Let’s be fair to him and he is not the daunting Thomas, he is a great Apostle.

I will give you some examples through the gospels comparing with other biblical characters.

Look at Peter. He denied Jesus three times but we don't call him Peter, the great Denier.

In (John 1:46) Nathanael says, refer to Jesus: “Can anything good come from Nazareth? but we don't call Nathaniel the great scoffer. 

Look at James and John (Matthew 20:20-23 and Mark 10:35-45). They asked Jesus to sit one on the right and the other one on the  left in his glory and we don’t call James and John as the great opportunists in the gospel.

What about the rest of the disciples? They abandoned Jesus at gethsemane and we don't call them the great cowards. 

And poor Thomas unfortunately, we labeled him as doubting Thomas.

Doubt wasn’t unique to Thomas and we will see in today’s gospel that we have 2 parts. 

The first part, when Jesus comes, it is still Easter Sunday and the 10 disciples were there but Thomas wasn't.

The second part, 1 week later, is the second Sunday of Easter. Thomas was there. Is important to see that difference.

Today's gospel starts on verse 19. but before that, verse 18, Mary of Magdala goes to the disciples and says : "I have seen the Lord”. but they didn't believe her and Jesus said that he was going to rise. 

In the first part of the gospel , the doors were locked for fear of the Jews. Jesus appears, says, “Peace be with you.” and show them his hands and his side. Why does he do this? Because Jesus knew they doubted. 

The second part is 1 week later, the second Sunday of Easter. Thomas was there (from verse 25). The disciples said to him “We have seen the Lord. 

So, it is fair, if Mary of Magdala saw the Lord. If the disciples saw the Lord. So Thomas needed to see the Lord too. And if we were there, we would want to see the Lord too and It's absolutely fine.

The verse 27 says:  “Then he (Jesus) said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it on my side. Do not doubt but believe.”

I want to explain this phrase (Do not doubt but believe). If we look the original text in Greek (καὶ μὴ γίνου ἄπιστος ἀλλὰ πιστός) we will find the word  ἄπιστος (apistos) and  πιστός (pistos). Apistos means unbelieving , Pistos means believe. The best translation from the original text (from koine Greek) is “ Do not be unbelieving any more but believe). Doubt in Greek is διστάζω (distázō) that also appears in the Gospel in other biblical passages.

The meaning of the word believe (Pistos) in the gospel of Saint John it means abiding with Jesus, having a relationship with Jesus. We will find through the Gospel of Saint John when Jesus says these words: “you must abide in me.”  

So when Jesus says to Thomas: “Do not be unbelieving any more but believe”  What Jesus was really saying to Thomas is:  believe in the relationship that we have, which has not died and not ended at the cross. Jesus was encouraging Thomas in his moments of weakness. This is love.

So this relationship between Jesus and Thomas now gets repaired. In other words, Jesus reminds him: I love you Thomas, I want to encourage you. Thomas feels the need to respond and opens his heart to Jesus and he says to him in faith (pistos), in belief, in love, in relationship:  “My Lord and my God”. This is a great confession of faith. Thomas now is renewing that relationship with Jesus.

These are such loaded words.  “ My lord and my God”. “MY” (he says) indicates a relationship, abiding. The response of Thomas in other words is: “Jesus, I love you”. 

My brothers and My sisters. There is a Thomas in all of us and I know that you, me, we all have moments of weakness, lack of faith, sins and I understand all of that. 

Today Jesus says to you, to me, to us: don't judge yourself by that one moment of weakness that you have. Judge yourself by my great love for you.  Mary, John, Peter, Joseph, Joshua,  Sean, whatever your name is, Judge yourself by my great love for you. That even in our moments of weakness, I encourage you. I love you.

When we receive the love of Jesus, like Thomas, we also respond: my Lord and my God. It's a confession of a relationship. 

These words give us strength in moments of unbelief and God is always stretching out his hand of love to us.  

To conclude , let's have a minute of silence and think about those moments of your own feelings, your own doubts,  your own sinfulness and in your heart join me prayerfully silently saying “my Lord and my God”.  Amen. 

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

• Acts 4:32-35
• 1 John 1:1-2:2
• John 20:19-31

 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.

Easter 2 A - April 16, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve OHC

The Second Sunday of Easter, Year A - Sunday, April 16, 2023

 

Acts 2:14a,22-32

1 Peter 1:3-9

John 20:19-31

Click here for an audio of the sermon

In the name of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

This may come as a shock to some of you, but when we say “the Lord is risen indeed, alleluia”, we do not all necessarily mean the same thing.  Get two Episcopalians in a room and there you will have at least three firm positions on any subject.  And to widen the lens to Christians across the country, the diversity is even greater.  For conservative evangelicals, the physical resurrection of Jesus’ body on Easter morning is the irreducible essence of the good news.  For some in mainline or progressive spaces, the physical body of Jesus may have been raised from the dead, but the emphasis is on the inner experience of the continuing spirit and presence of Jesus in and among the individual disciple and the community.  The body may have remained dead and yet in a real way Jesus is risen in their hearts.  The post-resurrection appearance stories are, for one group, historically rooted eyewitness memories of events passed on by the apostles and remembered perhaps by John himself.  For another group they are metaphorical interpretations of the experience of Jesus in the midst of the surviving apostles as his words were shared among them. 

These two distinct perspectives will read this Gospel differently:  the conservative will say, “See, Jesus proved to Thomas that he was alive and dispelled his doubt.  If we believe in Jesus’ resurrection, and convince others to believe in it, our doubt and theirs will be dispelled as well.”  The progressive will just as quickly say, “Thomas came to experience and know in his heart that the life of Jesus as they had known him continued within the community and within himself and could be carried and lived despite his death.”
          My purpose this morning is not to take a side or to make an argument, but to note that there is a great deal of energy in the wider Christian world about what these appearance stories mean and how they inform our lives as disciples in the present.  Even the resurrection becomes a battleground in the wider culture wars about the meaning of the Bible relative to science and modern biblical criticism, the role of reason in faith, and the deepening attitudes of suspicion and fear towards the other whose thinking seems strange.  Each interpretation is a meaning-making exercise.  As you heard the gospel read just now, you were engaged in this process within your own heart and mind.  The text was poured through what you have been taught to believe, how you have changed, your questions and conclusions, the ways meaning and miracle, revelation and reason interact and swirl through your individual experience.  There is no such thing as a plain, objective reading because we are always subjects shaped by our interpretive formation.  The gospels are written at all and written the way they are to the universal human hunger for connection to and identity in the risen Christ.  But we must hear and contemplate them humbly and thoughtfully.  The stories, especially the resurrection appearances, call forth our deepest hopes and our understandable doubts about their reality and relevance to us. And John especially asks of us both a passionately committed and a robustly thoughtful commitment to Christ.

So with that in mind, I approach the story with two points of interpretive context before the gospel proper;

First, the gospel of John is particularly interested in the question of access to and encounter with God.  Torah and the temple, the ways of obedience and the residing place of God’s glory are pointers toward a future fulfillment, which John believes is the Son of God.  Jesus proclaims himself to be the temple when he says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”, speaking of his body.   To believe in him is to share in his identity as a dwelling place for God.  In the incarnation I access and encounter God by the Holy Spirit living within me and am not dependent upon any external place or ritual for that life. The gospeler is eager to remind us that the revolution announced in Christ is the movement from temples of stone to human persons becoming living temples of the spirit of Jesus.

Second, the theme of “believing” is prominent in the gospel of John.  We tend to hear the word “believe” turn it into an intellectual exercise.  We rightly “believe” when we agree with and conform to particular truth claims.  But in the gospel of John, believing is about becoming, about identity. Believing involves the question of truth, but it goes deeper than nailing down theological absolutes as an end in itself.  It is much more akin to something that happens to me than something is grasp and comprehend as my project.  To believe something is to have one’s very being defined by the truth, for the reality of God’s grace to bestow life.  So running in the background of the reading is something larger than the question of whether we believe in resurrection or not.  The more interesting questions concern how God comes to us, what God in Christ says about what it means to be human.  Believing is bigger than the faith claims themselves, but the reality toward which they point and ourselves as creatures with dignity and vocation within that reality - in Christ as temples of his presence.  The question Jesus wanted Thomas to begin to unpack is, “Who am I now?”  If this is true, if Jesus has been raised from the dead, then the very nature of how we have understood how to approach and meet God has utterly changed.  N.T. Wright says:

“...when Jesus rose again God’s whole new creation emerged from the tomb, introducing a world full of new potential and possibility. Indeed, precisely because part of that new possibility is for human beings themselves to be revived and renewed, the resurrection of Jesus doesn’t leave us passive, helpless spectators. We find ourselves lifted up, set on our feet, given new breath in our lungs, and commissioned to go and make new creation happen in the world.”

          So how does the appearance to the disciples reveal this new creation?

The lesson for us in the doubt of Thomas is then not principally his refusal to acknowledge the resurrection, but the resistance to his own full humanity as one who finds in the risen Christ his temple-bearing identity.  Jesus’ risen flesh is not one more fact to be added to his belief system, it is an entry into a new creation which now lives in his flesh.  “Stop doubting, but believe” is not Jesus scolding him for unbelief, but inviting him to be gathered in and embraced by a new creation for the sake of joy and hope that sets the mystery of death and resurrection into his flesh.  “Get up, Thomas, take a deep breath, absorb this moment, because the rest of your life begins now. Heaven has come to earth, they are now joined. Now it begins. Now it all begins.”

Knowing that successive generations of readers will wonder about our own access to the risen Christ, ascended to heaven, Christ looks in the narrative camera, gazes through the eons of time yet to come, and addresses us.  We, too, are blessed, though our seeing is not with physical eyes.  Favored and gifted with the invitation to be embraced by the same Lord who appeared to Thomas and the other apostles.  God’s new creation has come and sought a home in me, in my own flesh which will one day be raised and see Christ’s risen body as they saw it.

I conclude with this beautiful quote from Brennan Manning from The Furious Longing of God:

“The gospel is absurd and the life of Jesus is meaningless unless we believe that He lived, died, and rose again with but one purpose in mind: to make brand-new creation. Not to make people with better morals but to create a community of prophets and professional lovers, men and women who would surrender to the mystery of the fire of the Spirit that burns within, who would live in ever greater fidelity to the omnipresent Word of God, who would enter into the center of it all, the very heart and mystery of Christ, into the center of the flame that consumes, purifies, and sets everything aglow with peace, joy, boldness, and extravagant, furious love. This, my friend, is what it really means to be a Christian.”

Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Easter 2 C - April 24, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC

Easter 2 C - April 24, 2022

Acts 5:27-32

Revelation 1:4-8

John 20:19-31

One week ago, God rolled away the stone from the tomb and Mary Magdalene saw Jesus alive. That night, despite her good news, the disciples were still hiding behind locked doors. Not much has changed. They had traded a tomb for a room and a stone for locked doors. This time Thomas was with them. Jesus came and stood among them, saying "Peace be with you." Then he turned to Thomas and offered himself. "Reach your finger here", he said, "see my hands. Put your hand in my side. Be unbelieving no longer but believe." 

Try to forget, for a moment, everything you thought you knew about Thomas. Forget that somewhere along the way you came to believe that Thomas’ primary attribute was doubt. Forget that you still think of him as a slightly inferior disciple who Jesus rebukes him for his lack of faith. Forget it all because the opposite is true. Nowhere in the Gospels is he described as a doubter. What Thomas asked for was exactly what all the other disciples got. When Jesus appeared to them, he showed them his hands and his side and only then, did they rejoice “because they saw the Lord” (20:20). We tend to forget that it was not only Judas who betrayed Jesus. Every one of the disciples abandoned him, apart from the women and John. Thomas was no worse than any of the others in that room behind locked doors. Jesus never accused Thomas of doubting. That’s how we have translated and interpreted the Greek. Rather, Jesus, says, “Do not be unbelieving, but believing.” He could just have easily said that to the others. All of them were guilty. All went into hiding, afraid that they would also be accused and arrested. Traumatized, paralyzed by fear, grief, guilt, remorse, and despair, their brokenness had buried them alive. The locked room was their tomb. 

Christ is risen, the tomb is empty, but the doors are locked. Resurrected life does not come easily. It’s not just the first disciples, however. I suspect we all know about locked doors. God opens the tomb, and sometimes we follow behind locking the door. God declares forgiveness and we continue to live behind the locked door of 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. 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 lock on the door of our life is always locked from the inside.

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 over time. 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 invites us to unlock our doors and sends us into the world.

One week after Easter, is our life different? Where are we living--- In the freedom and joy of resurrection or behind a locked door? What do we believe about Jesus’ resurrection? What door 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. Belief in Jesus’ resurrection is not a question of intellectual assent or agreement. It’s not about evidence or proof or getting the right answer. Belief is more about how we live than what we think. It encourages us to be real---to find as Thomas did---that when we admit our need, Christ will meet us where we are. The opposite of faith is not doubt but fear. Doubt is an essential ingredient of faith which can serve us, but fear imprisons us. We’re called to look squarely at our fear, and then step out knowing that Jesus walks beside us. 

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, forgiving, or loving. They trust that what God believes about them is more important than what they believe about God. They unlock the door even when they don’t know what’s 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. None of us crosses over this gap from death to new life by our own effort or perfection. Each of us is carried by grace. Death cannot win when we recognize that the thing which could destroy us is the very thing that could enlighten us.

Speaking over Thomas’ shoulder to the rest of us, Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Jesus isn’t rebuking Thomas but blessing us. In fact, Thomas emerges as the model of how one becomes a disciple. Once he has encountered himself and Jesus, he makes the ultimate confession in John’s Gospel, acclaiming Jesus not only as “my Lord” --- but also “my God,” Like Thomas we all need to see and touch the mark of the nails. That sight frees us to see our own wounds and those of others compassionately, not fearfully. God transforms the human soul by using the very thing that would normally destroy us—the tragic, the sorrowful, the painful, the unjust deaths that lead us all to the bottom of our lives. Jesus’ death and resurrection is a statement of how reality works all the time and everywhere. He teaches us that there’s a different way to live with our pain, our sadness, and our suffering. We can feel sorry for ourselves, or we can say, as he did on Good Friday, “God is even in this.” God is the one who always turns death into life.

What happened to Thomas is exactly what John hopes will happen to each of us when we hear his story every year on this Sunday after Easter. After this scene John writes, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (20:30-31).

+ Amen.

Easter 2 B - April 11, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Richard Vaggione, OHC

Easter 2 B - Sunday, April 4, 2021

Acts 4:32-35

1 John 1:1-2:2

John 20:19-31

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

Br. Richard preached extemporaneously. You can listen to the recording at the link above.

The Second Sunday of Easter - April 19, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
The Second Sunday of Easter - April 19, 2020

Acts 2:14a,22-32
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

Day by day, dear Lord,
of thee three things I pray:
to see thee more clearly,
love thee more dearly,
follow thee more nearly, day by day. Amen.

If you have been following the readings for the daily Eucharist and daily Offices appointed for this past Easter Week, that week that the Eastern Orthodox tradition calls Bright Week, you will have heard or read no less than thirteen Gospel accounts of various appearances of Jesus after his Resurrection.  And this is in addition to the passage from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians that we read on Monday, one the earliest text we have attesting to the Resurrection, where Paul tells us:

“…I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas [Peter], then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.”

Paul adds that sometime later, perhaps several years later, Jesus also appeared to him on the road to Damascus, an event which Paul understands to be of the same nature and magnitude of those Gospel stories and making him an apostle in his own right.

These thirteen accounts overlap and, as you know, the details do not always agree. Through the ages there have been numerous attempts to construct a ‘harmony” of these accounts, to make them orderly, to assign a time and place for each, and to mold them into a coherent whole. But in truth, this is virtually impossible. And to say this is to say no more or no less than that these Gospel narratives of the appearances of the Risen One are exactly what we might expect in ordinary human experience.

I am thinking here of reports of accidents or crimes or other sudden, dramatic events. Those directly involved or even more distant observers often have strikingly divergent accounts of what occurred. It is now generally accepted that people see and remember things differently or fail to see certain things at all or forget or embellish or even create important details.

If you, for example, have taken an introductory psychology course in the past 20 years or so, you have probably been introduced to the Invisible Gorilla. This is a fascinating video test of perception, of its power and its limitations. The subjects are asked to watch a video of two teams of three people each pass around a basketball. They are instructed to be attentive to how many times the team in white shirts did a pass. It lasts for about a minute. And about halfway through, a woman dressed as a gorilla walks into the middle of the group, faces the camera, beats her chest, and then exits. The amazing thing is that, when shown in a classroom setting, about 50 percent of the classroom subjects do not notice the gorilla. They were too busy counting the number of passes. If you’ve never seen this video, you can watch it on YouTube. Just enter “Invisible Gorilla.” You will find yourself asking, as did I: how did they ever not see that?

Another equally famous experiment involves a journalism professor delivering a lecture. In the midst of it, an accomplice enters the classroom, a mildly charged verbal exchange ensues between the professor and the accomplice, who then pulls out a banana, “shoots” the professor and exits. The class is then immediately asked to write down what they saw. And not surprisingly, perhaps, many saw not a banana but a gun. Now admittedly the banana was painted black, but still. What do we really see and how trustworthy are our perceptions? And what do we miss? And when and how often?

And then of course there is the recognized fact that memories can be and are modified and change over time and under certain conditions, often tailored to what we would have liked to have happened or what we think the inquirer might want to hear.  Certainly, the older I get, the more dramatic this appears. I am now often surprised at what my sister remembers of our childhood and at how different it is from my own memories. Hers are often more textured or nuanced and certainly different.

There is an extensive literature in the social, psychological, and medical sciences surrounding this that touches on all areas of our life, from the reliability of eyewitnesses in criminal or civil investigations to community relations to, yes, even biblical truth.

Should it surprise us, then, that the various stories of the Resurrection diverge in details both small and great, and that individual and communal memory over time has shaped and reshaped the narratives of these biblical authors and their sources?  I think not.

In today’s gospel, Jesus tells Thomas and us: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  Nevertheless, we prioritize seeing. We still say, “Seeing is believing.”  Though again we must ask: what is seeing? Just what kind of seeing are we and Jesus talking about? Are we like those subjects who observe an event and miss the gorilla right in their midst? Or like those who see a gun where there is only a banana? Are there deeper, more adequate ways of understanding seeing and sensing Truth that go beyond crude experiments?

In his weekly column posted on Good Friday, New York Times opinion writer Frank Bruni profiled Cyrus Habib, the young lieutenant governor of Washington state. And in a follow-up newsletter, Bruni reminds us that Habib, who is not yet forty:

“…went blind at age 8, graduated from Columbia University, won a Rhodes scholarship, got a Yale law degree and made a big splash in politics, then decided that ambition was consuming him. He recently announced that he would leave office later this year to begin the roughly 10-year process to become a…Jesuit priest.”

Bruni continues:

“Because of space constraints, there was much about Habib that I didn’t get to share in the column. For instance, I mentioned his trek last year to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro but not his revelatory, gorgeous explanation of what a blind climber experiences in lieu of a conventionally defined view.

“You feel it,” Habib told me. “You feel the whole world dropping away. I have a sense of spatiality, based on acoustics and maybe even other types of senses that I can’t scientifically describe. I can feel when I’m in a huge cathedral. I can feel when I’m in a small bedroom.” At the top of Kilimanjaro, he said, “It felt to me like I was on the moon, because of the thinness of the air. You’re kind of high — lightheaded — and you feel this sense of vastness that’s not just around you but also below you. You can feel it in your body.”

Bruni's title comment for this is: “We see with more than our eyes.”

Cyrus Habib certainly sees with more than his eyes. Mary Magdalene saw with more than her eyes. And so did Peter and Thomas and the other Apostles. And the women at the tomb and maybe even those 500 disciples that St. Paul refers to. And so, my brothers and sisters, do we. Our seeing, our faith is never perfect. We sometimes see guns where there are only bananas and we miss the gorillas. But we do see Jesus, somehow, with more than our eyes, though we may not be able to describe it scientifically. And that seeing is for me, at least, at the very root of faith. That is why I am here today. And probably why you are as well. And that may be enough for us to know now, today in this very strange season.

What then do I say of the Resurrection of Christ? I say: Yes! But what exactly that Yes entails is often quite unclear or downright opaque.  Some days I’m ready to affirm the words of the 39 Articles of Religion that:  “Christ did truly rise again from the dead, and took again his body, with flesh, bones and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man’s nature.”  And on other days, all I can manage is simply to confess that “Christ is risen” and trust that he will, in his tender mercy and at the right time, fill in the details. In either case, however, and in any case, I need to be prepared to see with more than my eyes. And so must we all.  We need to sense with our whole being and, as Cyrus Habib says, feel in our body the advent of the Risen One who comes to us in our upper rooms or on our road to our Emmaus or who meets us in Galilee, wherever that might be. We must keep our eyes open, all of them. We must, to paraphrase the Prologue to Rule of St. Benedict, gaze with the eye of the heart.

Once again I find myself challenged and comforted by the words of Archbishop Rowan Williams who said, “No matter how early you go to the tomb, God has already been there first.”

It’s not about getting up early enough or getting there fast enough, is it?  It’s about opening our eyes to the One who, no matter how early or late we arrive at the tombs or graveyards or dead places in our lives, is there ahead of us preparing a place, longing to greet us, to feed us, to heal us, and embrace us and who is content to abide with us forever.

If only we could see this. If only we could see him. If only we could learn to see with more than our eyes.

Day by day, dear Lord,
of thee three things I pray:
to see thee more clearly,
love thee more dearly,
follow thee more nearly, day by day. Amen.

Second Sunday of Easter, Year B: Sunday, April 8, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br.  Bernard Delcourt, OHC
Second Sunday of Easter Year B- Sunday, April 8, 2018 


Sorry, no audio recording of this sermon is available .

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

And now what? Now, let us live up to the Kingdom of God which Christ announces here and now. The Acts of the Apostles describes a Jesus movement which strives to live into the Kingdom of God as it spreads abroad. Now that the Risen Christ is with us, around us and in us, let us build the in-breaking Kingdom of God with renewed vigor here and now.

Here is what our reading from the Acts of the Apostles has to say about the budding Kingdom of God. Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.

With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.

There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

After Jesus’ resurrection the community of his followers blossomed despite the challenges of opposition from the religious authorities and diffidence from the Roman overlords.

Our first text today was from the Acts of the Apostles. Its author, Luke, tells us of a community numbering in the thousands and animated by the dynamism and charism of the apostles. This community was fired up to live up to Jesus’ teachings. Jesus’ teachings are summarized in the golden commandment.

Luke’s version of that commandment is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself.”

How do I love my neighbour as myself if I am richly blessed with worldly possessions? These early Jesus followers did their utmost to put loving their neighbour into practice.

“...the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul” Luke tells us.  This indicates a departure from the dualism of “I and Them” to move towards the non-dual engagement of “I and Us.” They recognized that their truest selves required including the other, the neighbour, in their self-love. I am loving you as your being a part of who I am, not as a separate, independent and somewhat remote reality.

In order to love their neighbor as themselves, they committed to leave no one in need. This is just as the Jewish law had commanded in Deuteronomy 15: “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbour in your land (Deuteronomy 15:11b).” But that passage of Deuteronomy suggested being liberal in lending to the poor and needy, not in outright giving. But it also asked of Israelites to be willing to forgive debts not yet repaid by the sabbath year (every seventh year). It is unclear whether the sabbath of debt was ever actually enacted on a large scale.

But the early Jesus community goes beyond lending to the needy. They move towards common property of resources.  A radical move in any period of time. It is likely that they took heed of Jesus’ admonition that “Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God (Luke 18:25).” Instead of lending to the poor among them what they needed to get by, those with real estate willingly chose to sell it and offer the proceeds to the apostles for distribution as needed.

The verses following our passage tell us of Barnabas who gladly sold a field that belonged to him and brought the proceeds to the apostles. A few verses later, we hear the unhappy story of donors who pretend to give the full proceeds of their sale while holding back a fraction for themselves. They are accused by Peter and struck dead. Much emphasis then is put on being a willing, cheerful and generous giver; on not holding back for future contingencies. This is a hard act to follow for us.

The Jesus movement probably thought of Jesus’ return as a short to medium-term occurrence. They wanted to set their lives in order sooner rather than later. They modeled their lives on the life of Jesus, going beyond what the Jewish law commanded them to achieve. How can we emulate that primitive 

Christian emphasis on common good in order to ensure the personal wellbeing of all?
Our culture ever more emphasizes how we should rely on ourselves to accumulate what is needed to live more than comfortably. We live in a society that nurtures the myth of total individual autonomy. We live in a society that creates and cultivates our wants well above what our actual needs are.

How do we live as Christians so that there be enough for absolutely everyone? Enough shelter, enough food, enough education, enough healthcare, enough peace for absolutely everyone. Remember that in Christ no one is excluded as not being my neighbor (Christian or not).

I think our text from Acts challenges us at two levels: in our communal lives and in our larger commonwealth. By our communal lives, I mean the closest level of our belonging: your family for most of us, or our religious community for the monks amongst us. By larger commonwealth, I mean the various levels of political organizations leading up to the whole planet.

There is a lot we can undertake in our communal lives to be more interdependent of one another. For example, how many cars do we need to ensure proper transportation of the members of our community? What kind of transportation meets our needs and preserves the environment? What kinds of foods enhance our health and the health of the Earth?

Of course, you know we monks have foregone private property to put all resources in common. We also undertake to live simply so that all may live well. It is a model that has proven itself over the centuries. It is a model that lots of new communities of intention try to follow at different levels of intensity.

But even if we don’t become monks or quasi-monks in our families or immediate communities, we can all work towards greater reliance on one another at the level of our commonwealth. At the level of the commonwealth, my earlier examples translate into systemic examples. What transportation system is needed to ensure that all, even the poorest and disabled, get to go where they need to without undue stress? What kind of food system maximizes sustainability of our regions while furthering the health of our population?

At this level, any proposal that reduces inequality and enhances a fairer distribution of resources is worth our Christian support. At all levels of life and in all areas of our common living, we can look out for the greater common good. One doesn’t need to become a monk and forego private property entirely, although that is good for those who choose it.

Look at your life and see where you can further the wellbeing of your spouse, your brother or your municipality. Many small changes can show great love.

Let us be of “one heart and soul” in loving both our neighbour and ourself and recognizing that our neighbour is an essential part of who we are.
 Amen.