The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 8, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve
The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 8, 2026

• Isaiah 58:1-9a, [9b-12]
• 1 Corinthians 2:1-12, [13-16]
• Matthew 5:13-20

Click here for an audio of the sermon

We are salt.  We are light.  Our human gift is to enhance flavor, to burn brightly.  Jesus does not say, “you have salt and light”.  He does not say, “you are salt ‘if’”.  He does not say, “you are light ‘if’”.  He lists no condition, no cost, no possible revocation.  This is a proclamation from the one who created us.  Dare we believe the announcement Jesus makes that inherent in every human is the divine zest that awakens taste, the holy fire that warms and reveals?  The implications are staggering.  

What follows this announcement are warnings. You are salt - but don’t lose your saltiness.  You are light - but don’t hide the light you are. The immediate truth to be spoken after proclaiming who we are is the danger of polluting or hiding who we are.

God creates us out of love to reflect divine life.  Christ warns us out of love so that we would preserve and live what we are.  Notice the nature of the relationship.  The Christian life is a dance between delight and danger, gift and warning, grace and responsibility.  Only God can create, and God has.  And in that very creation God risks giving us to use as we decide a glory and honor, we have neither earned nor deserved in ourselves.  In return, we are invited to reflect back the dignity of being human, to make every moment the sacrifice of gratitude and self-offering.

We are salt and light purely by God’s grace. Acting like it is on us.  Christ can give us our essence, make us salt and light.  He cannot force our will.  He cannot make us live who we are.  He can invite, admonish, even warn us about our choice, but he cannot make it for us.  He points to the dangers of choosing pollution and hiding so that we might be alert to what is at stake and take our responsibility as seriously as he does.  

What if we say yes to who we really are?  We actualize salt and light by prophetic words and deeds.  God has made us live in a generous, respectful community with one another as brothers and sisters.  And as a new humanity the barriers and dividing walls have come down and we are one.  Yet enmity and violence persist.  We encounter within us and around us systems and patterns that normalize harm, prejudice, and bigotry.  Salt and light make us aware of the harm we do and the harm done in our names.  Salt and light in us enlighten us to recognize evil and injustice and the temptation to compliantly conform to their ways.  And by being salt and light, we can say, “no, I will not comply”.   Being salt is waking up, looking around, paying attention to reality - not the party line, not propaganda, but what is actually true.  Light is exposing, illuminating, and revealing what is hidden and unnamed.

Now we see the importance of the warnings.  This proclamation of Jesus about who we are sets us in this cosmic wrestling against evil.  This identity will cost us something.  No wonder we rationalize a little sand in our salt, just a small basket over our light.  But our salt is made salty, our lights meant to shine bright, exposed.   Bland darkness is lifeless.  Zesty light is laying down my life.  Those are the choices - I offer myself to Christ as I decide to wake up and tell the truth or I play it safe, exist but not really live.  

The warnings are for us because the pressure of our internal fear and external danger are powerful enough to get us to reject our identity.  Around us what scripture calls principalities and powers, spiritual evil, systemic injustice, violence and prejudice, are the manifestations of the rejection of salt and light.  After a group, an ideology, a movement has polluted its salt and hidden its light, the very notion of what it means to be human gets gnarled into an ugly thing.  Evil fills the vacuum where the salt and light were meant to be.  And this vacuum recoils from the thing it once was and rejected.  The evil powers of this world cannot stand the presence of salt and light.  These powers make friends with blandness and worship darkness and call it holy.  It rules with the fear that lives in it.  It says, “conform, and we’ll let you live.”

Abbot Anthony, who lived from 251-356 said, ‘A time is coming when people will go mad, and when they meet someone who is not mad, they will turn to him and say, “You are out of your mind,” just because he is not like them.’

Jesus calls those who follow him to receive the identity and capacity to resist and subvert the powers of evil so that the life of the kingdom of heaven will be lived in us and known in all the world.  Salt and light are dangerous.  They are noncompliant, unyielding, and unbowed in the face of the flat darkness that would deaden our souls.  So do not comply.  Do not complacently adjust to anything inhuman.  Be intolerable to injustice.  Be unavailable for lies.  Be uninterested in the call to conform to the ways of this world at the expense of your soul.  Some around you may choose to be bland.  You are seasoning.  Be seasoning instead.  Some around you may choose to stay in the darkness.  You are light.  Shine your light.   This is scary.  Fear means we are alive; we want to keep living, but fear does not get to decide what makes us human.  We are salt.  We are light.  Go and season life.  Go and shine fire. Amen.

The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany C, February 9, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Aidan Owen

The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 9, 2025

• Isaiah 6:1-8, [9-13]
• 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
• Luke 5:1-11

This morning’s readings are full of sinful men. And so, I would imagine, is this church. Maybe even some sinful women and nonbinary people, too. In the lectionary we have Isaiah, the man of unclean lips; Paul, the last of the apostles and one untimely born; and, of course, Peter, who begs the Lord to go away from him. 

This latter is such a human reaction and one I bet we can all relate to. Grace and mercy tend to overwhelm us. An encounter with the full wattage of God’s love for us is, simultaneously, an encounter with our own abject poverty. In such circumstances, we may easily find ourselves, like Peter, begging that God would leave us alone. Sometimes our own smallness can be too much to bear. 

There are times when this reaction arises from compunction, which the early monastics called “the wound that leads to life.” Compunction is the understanding that all our striving will avail us nothing. That, hard as we have worked to save ourselves, we have utterly failed. But that God’s mercy has never left us, that what Peter asks is impossible—God can never go away from us, loving us as he does. Compunction sometimes appears as repentance for sin, sometimes as the sudden awareness of our own smallness in the face of beauty or love. It usually hits suddenly, the face of God unveiling itself in an apocalypse of love. 

But sometimes our diffidence in the face of God’s mercy is not compunction at all, but shame and its constant companion, fear. Shame is the conviction that who we are is wrong and that, because of our fundamental brokenness, we are beyond the reach of God’s loving mercy. Shame carries with it the fear that God will do just what Peter asks, so why not push God away first? If compunction is the wound that leads to life, then shame is the seed of despair, and ultimately it can and will kill us. 

Although it can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference between these two experiences, we know them by their fruits. Compunction always leads to greater freedom to love and to act without self-reference or clinging. It is what leads us to lose our lives for the sake of the Gospel of Love. Shame only leads us deeper into the dark spiral of isolation and self-fixation. 

If we are ever to surrender to God’s mercy and to the freedom God intends for us, we must, like Peter, encounter our absolute poverty and, through that encounter, entrust ourselves to God’s prodigal love for us. This self-abnegation is the death that leads to life. Paradoxically, it is only in fully experiencing our own powerlessness that we can enter into true freedom. Therein lies hope, even in the darkest times. 

Our world so desperately needs this example of freedom through poverty. I’ve been struggling to find words to describe my inner experience over the last two weeks. I’ve finally settled on the word “bereaved.” The word “bereave” comes from the Old English bereafian, meaning “to take away by violence; to seize or rob.” That seems fitting. I feel utterly bereaved—as if the world I knew and loved has been torn away from me—from us—by a violent and malevolent force. 

The truth, of course, is more complicated. Part of what has been torn away is the illusion of control and the comfort that illusion makes possible. I don’t mean there aren’t very real losses, and a seemingly endless parade of them on the horizon. I don’t have to name them—you know too well what they are. But this moment is also an apocalypse—a revelation of our poverty and powerlessness in the face of a violent malevolence that is determined to dominate and destroy. We are, collectively, faced with the reality of our total dependence upon God’s mercy. And we are challenged in our stated conviction that God brings life out of death. 

In a strange and painful way, this revelation can be the beginning of our freedom and the seed of our hope. 

On the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany in 2017 (that’s Year A for you liturgy geeks), Br. Roy Parker preached one of the most powerful sermons I have ever heard. I quote him here: 

“Jesus’ death and resurrection reveal a logic inextricably woven into the fabric of the universe. In that divine logic unjust and uncompassionate powers have reached their limits when crosses and shotguns have done their worst. They can go no further than death. But the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection is that God can. 

 

When a servant of God does not cling to life in the face of a cross or a shotgun, the logic of oppressive empires and racist cultures has run its course; their power and its weapons have done all they can do. But God’s logic persists; God’s powerless weakness—whose weapons are justice and compassionate solidarity and love—continues its patient, persistent, non-violent subversion of oppressive empires and racist cultures. Jesus does not conquer Rome, but Jesus outlasts Rome.” 

When Peter chose, in the face of his own powerlessness, to surrender to God’s mercy and to follow Jesus, he did not know where that choice would lead him. He certainly stumbled along the way. Who of us hasn’t? But having surrendered himself into God’s loving care, he did not cling to a comfortable life in the face of a cross. Instead, he chose God’s powerless weakness, which is the very heart of love. 

What does this choice look like today? When praying with this morning’s gospel passage, an answer began to emerge. When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, and the US Government failed to respond in any meaningful way, thousands and thousands of ordinary people took to their boats. In canoes, and trawlers, and yachts they navigated that drowned city searching for survivors. They literally fished for people. And as they did so, they did not ask who anyone voted for, or how much money they made, or what they thought of various religious or social issues. In the face of devastation, their own basic humanity took over, and they worked to preserve and save whatever lives they could.

My brothers and sisters, we are called to do the same today and in the coming days and years and, let’s be honest, perhaps decades. The only way the violent and malevolent forces of this world can win, is by implanting violence and hatred in our hearts. We must resist the urge to hate our brothers and sisters, no matter how harmful their choices. Hatred may make us feel powerful for a moment, but it only shields us from the powerless freedom God invites us to: the freedom to love. We must choose love, especially when it is hardest to do so. That is the self-giving way of Jesus. That is God’s powerless weakness. That is how God saves the world. 

Take to your boats. Leave everything behind. Leave your certainties. Leave your fear. Leave the clenched fist of grief and rage clogging up your throat. Set out into the wreckage of this world to search for the lost and drowning and the dead. And when you find them, pull them up by their arms like that net of fish. Give them water to drink and a blanket to warm them. And sing them songs of God’s powerless weakness—whose weapons are mercy and love—and whose patient, persistent, non-violent mercy will outlast this violent malevolence that bereaves us. And held tight to Jesus, who will never leave us, we will, too. 

Epiphany 5 B - February 4, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve

The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 4, 2024

• Isaiah 40:21-31
• 1 Corinthians 9:16-23
• Mark 1:29-39

Click here for an audio of the sermon

 

The richness of the gospels is how the same story of the same Savior is told in these four distinct ways. If in Matthew the Lord is Teacher, in Luke the bringer
of universal joy to all people, in John the eternal Logos made flesh and glorified eternally in the death/resurrection event, then in Mark Jesus is the Vanquisher, the Rebuker of evil in the form of the suffering servant. Mark is loaded with conflict
and confrontation. The evil unleashed on and ravaging the world in the form of spirits, disease, violence, rivalry, and oppression is faced head-on by Jesus. Indeed, he is the only one who can, the only hope to break cycles began in the garden of Eden and the one to open the way to love and peace. The work is urgent, the need for focus and clarity are serious, the time is short, the stakes are eternal. Mark’s community is in crisis and looking for meaning in their persecution - why won’t Jesus save us from our suffering? The gospel sets them on the journey of the mystery that in their suffering is Christ alongside them, suffering in them and with them. The gospel shows them and us how to follow and to lay down our
lives, how to put down the sword and take up the cross.
    All four gospels have so-called “reversal” sayings, but Mark really loves paradox: the first are last and the last first, the poor are rich, the blind see, the seeing are blind, the servant is the greatest. Humans in Mark are mostly hard-hearted, slow, and seeking to save our own skin first before laying down our lives
for others. We are a confused and hapless lot who provoke Jesus to ask “Have you still no faith? Do you still not understand? Are your minds closed?” Jesus is looking at us from the page, across the millennia, when he asks these questions. We can barely perceive a world of goodness and justice and so need prophetic awakenings - mighty acts - to rouse our hunger and open our hearts. Jesus sets about doing the impossible - undoing the physical, spiritual, social powers of isolation, exclusion, and dehumanization. The healing and making right which is the foretaste of the coming reign is joyful and healing but also disorienting and unsettling. We readers are being undone and refitted to think and act as fellow signs of courage and boldness alongside our crucified leader.
    New Testament scholar Werner Kelber writes this of the gospel of Mark:
“Jesus announces the Kingdom but opts for the cross; he is King of the Jews but
condemned by the Jewish establishment; he asks for followers but speaks in
riddles; he is identified as Nazarene but rejected in Nazareth; he makes public
pronouncements but also hides behind a screen of secrecy; he saves others but not
himself; he promises return but has not returned; he performs miracles but suffers a
non-miraculous death; he is a successful exorciser but dies overcome by demonic
forces; he is appointed by God in power but dies abandoned in powerlessness; he
dies but rises from death.”
So keep all of that in mind as we look at the reading for today. We are not yet out of the first chapter and already Jesus is the successful healer and exorciser. He is doing all the rebuking and meeting the needs of the people for health and connection, for wholeness of body and mind and spirit. The elements for a
growing and influential ministry are there. Bigger crowds, more to share the message of the kingdom, more hope and joy are at his fingertips. All he has to do is stay and keep doing what he did last night. Just show up and give the people what they want. The potential for popularity and fame is limitless. Jesus goes to a deserted place. He prays. The disciples hunt for him. (And the Greek is quite explicit - not casually looking around, but stalking him like an animal). The disciples’ words on finding Jesus alone hang ominously in the air, loaded with assumptions and expectations.
“Everyone is searching for you...”
It’s nice to know that being passive/aggressive did not start with us…
So much hangs on the next words Jesus says! What kind of movement is this going to be? Will Jesus join the ranks of doomsday prophets, zealots, insurrectionists, rebels? Will he use his power to create yet another system of domination with attention and control centered in him? Are miraculous acts a way
to create throngs of people dependent on his physical presence for their identity?      

    If our Lord - loving and merciful and forgiving as he is - is also at times, perhaps most of the time, surprising, offensive, scandalous, outside the worn paths of any thought we might have of, “Well, if I were in that situation, here is the obvious right thing to do”, that is not because he intends to be inscrutable or
confusing, it is because he is the only fully and perfectly present, aware, free, and perceptive person who has ever lived. Jesus simply had no category of motivation toward being famous or followed for his powers. We imperfect creatures are the ones prone to create and worship a safe, manageable, and laid back image of Jesus who is cool with whatever or, at the opposite extreme, a vindictive, violent, and hell-obsessed Jesus who will slay the wicked who happen to be the people we don’t like. The journey is not caging our image and nailing down all knowable facts about Jesus so we have a clear and predictable definition (although that is a popular aim, it is misguided). It is closer to the capacity to continuously have my illusions shattered, my lack of imagination exposed to his unblinking gaze, to be surprised, shocked even, by the deeper reality of the one who continuously chooses the narrow path, the counterintuitive decision, the way that rejects every mark of success we idealize and worship. 

    “When they found him, they said to him, ‘Everyone is searching for you.’ He answered, ‘Let us go on…’” Whatever Jesus perceives it is that they are searching for must remain as search. Jesus calls disciples, he does not accumulate admirers. Jesus loves the people in Capernaum in two ways: he heals them and he goes on. Compassion compels both. The kingdom must include both. Our growth in union with Christ must reckon with how we receive both gifts. Jesus comes to us as perfect presence and perfect ache. He hides nothing of himself, gives himself fully, yet at the same time will evade and escape every
attempt to possess him as our pet savior, our mascot, our magic wand. I am thrown back onto the nature of my desiring so that I may encounter the presence of Jesus within me in the very desiring of the one I believe I do not possess. When the ache is a gift that teaches me what it is to a creature who desires, who yearns, who sighs and groans, then the paradox of the kingdom is doing its work in me to make me
human.
    When I am healed of the fantasy of the unreal Jesus I can never possess - who brings clarity, who resolves crises, who evacuates mystery - then I can encounter the Christ who has packed up and moved on to the next village. What the folks in Capernaum will come to learn, as we ourselves are on the path of
conversion, is that while it seems as if he is absent, he is not truly absent. His absence is his presence. The searching for him is already the encounter.
“Everyone is searching for you.”
“Good”, Jesus says. Exactly what I wanted.”
Amen.

Epiphany 5 A - February 5, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero, OHC

Epiphany 5 A - Sunday, February 5, 2023

 

Isaiah 58:1-9a, [9b-12] 

1 Corinthians 2:1-12, [13-16] 

Matthew 5:13-20

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

 

During the past two months we heard a lot about light. So today I’m going to stick to salt. And I’ll begin by telling you that one of my favorite things to do at the end of our working week here, which for us is Sunday, is to make popcorn. On Sundays we have our Movie Night. There are usually four to eight of us at Movie Night. Usually those of us watching the movie are the ones eating popcorn. One or two may request a bowl of popcorn even though they are not coming to the movie. We may also have one or two “thieves;” those who are not watching the movie, but sneak in quietly to get a bowl of popcorn. So my self-imposed task is to make sure we have enough popcorn for everyone, including the thieves.

And what makes a really great bowl of popcorn is the right amount of salt. Now, I will tell you my secret, but following my mother’s cooking tradition, I will not give you exact proportions. You have to taste and see. You have to check for salt. What I do is to mix salt with nutritional yeast in a coffee grinder, making the mix really fine so that it really sticks to the popcorn. Putting just the right amount of this salty mix can make popcorn delicious and a delight to eat. But too much of it can make it stingy, bitter, overwhelming to eat, and an unpleasant experience.

Last week, we heard the soaring overture of the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes. In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus begins his sermon by saying, “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?  It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.” Now, first of all, what is this business about salt losing its taste? Is that actually possible (you might ask, as did I)? Yes, it turns out! The chemical impurities of salt from the Dead Sea, which was the likely source for most salt in Galilee, could cause it to decompose and, indeed, "lose its taste". “You are the salt of the earth.” Being part of our twenty-first century American culture of plenty where a household good such as salt is taken for granted, it can be difficult to grasp what Jesus is really getting at with such a statement.

Salt has been used since at least 6000 BC, and until just about one hundred years ago, it was one of the most sought-after commodities in human history. Before refrigeration was invented, salt was essential for food preservation. In the ancient world it was believed that salt could ward off evil spirits. Salt was used for medicinal purposes- to disinfect wounds, check bleeding, and treat skin diseases. Our word “salary” is derived from the fact that Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt. And did you know that Romans salted their vegetables just as we do in modern times?

And salt is still used today for all sorts of purposes. In cooking salt can help bring out all the flavors. We use salt to melt icy roads, to soften water, or to make it boil faster. As a singer, I can tell you that one of the best remedies to soothe a sore throat is hot water with lemon, honey, and salt. Salt can be used to rinse sinuses, or ease swelling. But salt can also sting, or burn, or irritate.  

So, when Jesus calls his listeners “the salt of the earth,” he is saying something quite profound. Imagine what Jesus’s first followers would have heard when he called them “the salt of the earth.”  Remember who he is addressing in his famous Sermon on the Mount- the poor, the mournful, the meek, the persecuted, the hungry, the sick, the crippled. “You,” he told the outcast, the misfit, the disreputable, “you are the salt of the earth.” You who have been rejected, wounded, unloved, and forgotten. And he says it to all of us here in this church today.

It’s not a question of striving to become what we are not. It’s a question of living into the precious fullness of who we truly are. Jesus doesn’t tell us that we are supposed to be the salt of the earth. He doesn’t encourage us to become the salt of the earth. He doesn’t promise that, if we become the salt of the earth, God will love us more. No, no! Jesus’ language is fully descriptive of our identity. You are the salt of the earth. You are essential. You are treasured.  And I am commissioning you, to bring forth, to promote, to live the Reign on God here and now.

How is this to be done? With our whole heart and the totality of our life in Christ. The call is for us to surrender everything. So why would anyone say yes? Well, because Jesus knows the cure for our anxiety that is born of self-preservation, self-reliance and self-service. Jesus knows our deep desire for a life of purpose, a life of meaning, a life we can pour out in love. Jesus knows our hearts cry out for transformation, renewal, and resurrection. This transformation, renewal, and resurrection rests “not on human wisdom but on the power of God” (1 Cor 2:5). True purpose, meaning and perfect freedom can only be achieved by surrendering our will to God’s will.

Living for Christ means living for one another. It demands that we place the good of others before our own to the point of giving our life completely in love- “to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke. To share your bread with the hungry, to bring the homeless poor into our house, and to clothe the naked.”
. It requires humility, obedience, surrender, the cross. As Jesus did, we die, but are also raised to new life. At the end of his poem “Oda a la Sal” (Ode to Salt), the great twentieth century Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, declared:

la minúscula
ola del salero
nos enseña
no sólo su doméstica blancura,
sino el sabor central del infinito.

the smallest
wave from the saltshaker
reveals to us
not just its domestic whiteness
but also the central taste of the infinite.

Each of us is as small in the universe as a grain of salt is to us, and yet, are meant to bring forth the central taste of the infinite. To do so, like salt, we must be poured out and scattered. Like salt, we must dissolve into what is around us. Like salt, we are meant to share our flavor to bring out the best in all that surrounds us. Like salt, we exist, not to preserve ourselves, but to preserve what is not ourselves. Jesus calls us to die to self so that we may live. Salt at its best sustains and enriches life. It pours itself out so that God’s reign can be known on the earth. We are that which will enhance or embitter, soothe or irritate, melt or sting. We are the salt of the earth, for better or for worse. May it be for better. May our pouring out be for the life of the world. ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+

Epiphany 5 B - February 7, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Luc Thuku, OHC

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany  - Sunday, January 31, 2021

Isaiah 40:21-31

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

Mark 1:29-39

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

 

Today we gather to celebrate God’s love and mercy shown to us in His son Jesus who was born, lived and suffered like us and for us, to set us free from the dominion of sin and evil. Sin and evil are most of the time made manifest by various illnesses and death. Our readings this morning are showing us that when we believe in God; and in the presence of Jesus, they are all powerless! The readings also point us to the fact that God will always meet us at our point of need. 

The Gospel passage today is a continuation of the first chapter of Mark which is describing to us the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee. He has already called disciples. He has also performed his first sign in the synagogue at Capernaum by healing a man with an unclean spirit by rebuking the spirit and calling it out of him!  The people are amazed and talk about the new teacher who is teaching and acting with authority, unlike their leaders the pharisees and the scribes. 

After the healing in the synagogue, Jesus enters the home of Simon Peter. A home is more that a roof on four walls. We humans have to mark out our personal lives from the public square, separating family and friends from the general crowd. An ideal home therefore offers a secure, comfortable place to drop off the many impersonal masks, both literal and spiritual, that we use to shield ourselves from an equally impersonal world. Although Jesus didn't have a personal home, he too leaves the public area of the Capernaum synagogue to retreat to a private household with his friends. There, death threatens to disrupt the rest Jesus and the brothers who had invited him would expect to enjoy. He finds Peter’s mother in law in bed with a fever. The duration and the intensisty of the fever or the illness that was causing it we do not know from Mark although Luke 4:38 says it was severe or great. We, however, know one thing and that is, a valued family member was unable to be up and about her work. Her calling had been taken from her by an illness. 

Jesus heals Peter’s mother in law instantly. We do not hear her asking to be healed but Jesus heals her anyway! He does this by simply taking her by the hand and raising her up. The word or verb used, raising up (Egeiro in Greek) takes a significant meaning in the gospels and in Christian communities everywhere. The word is even applied to Jesus himself. The word suggests new strength being imparted  to those laid low by illness, unclean spirits or even death, so that they may rise up again to take their place in the world. 

Once healed, she right away goes ahead to serve! Jesus later on will say that his own ministry is to serve rather than to be served. If serving characterizes the Christ of God, it also characterizes his disciples. Some Westerners and extremist feminists may see Peter’s mother in law serving immediately as an example of an oppressed woman whose whole life is pathetically a perpetual service to men. If we however read this in its Middle Eastern, as well as in the African and many of the so called “primitive” cultures, context where the matriarch of the house was the host in chief, then we will understand that rather than being oppressed, she takes the pride, honor and place of the first character in the Gospel who exemplifies true discipleship! Jesus therefore restores Simon’s home and simultaneously reveals the saving truth of who he is.  

After the healing in the synagogue and at Peter’s house, word of course spread, as is usual in a village context, that something great has taken place. So far the healings were unsolicited but this is about to change. Later in the evening at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons and we are told the whole city was gathered around the door. He cures them all and casts out demons without letting them speak because they knew him. Remember it was still the Sabbath and those of the “strict observance” or the cowards among them who hid behind the rules and regulations, wouldn't want to be seen to break the law by carrying the sick which would be regarded as work and since the sabbath ended at sundown, that is why they all flock to the house at that hour. 

Illnesses bore a heavy social cost. The sick person was unable to earn a living or contribute to the well being of a household. The ability of the sick person to take their proper role in the community, to be honored as a valuable member of a household, town or village would be taken away from them and some illnesses, for example leporosy, meant the person would be totally cut off and become an outcast.  Healing therefore is about restoration of dignity, restoration to community, restoration to a calling, restoration to a role and restoration to life! As we Christians and monastics know very well, a life without community and a calling is a bleak life!  

This morning, Jesus is reminding us that his ministry involves restoration of those cut off from community to a full role in community. Anyone who has ever been seriously ill in our own time will understand the joy of simply being back as a participant in the ordinary activities of living community life. It is then that we realize that there is nothing ordinary about life in community! The major lesson here is that Our God, made present in Jesus, always takes us by the hand and lifts us up! He heals us and makes us whole physically, mentally and spiritually, not just for our own comfort and wellbeing but for service! Healing and curing were, and still are, just signs to show that the kingdom of God has come among us. The real sign of the new age will be Jesus’ death and resurrection. Many of us are attracted to miracles and healings and fervently pray for them, which is not a bad thing in itself, but the question is, are we ready to respond to the invitation of Jesus to take up his cross?  

Paul in the second reading we heard this morning, from 1 Corinthians 9: 16-23, reminds us that we need not boast, or make celebrities of ourselves, when we proclaim the Gospel for it is an obligation that we have laid upon ourselves freely by becoming followers of Jesus, and woe to us if we do not proclaim the Gospel. We very well know that ninety percent of proclaiming the Gospel is by our way of life and only ten percent is by word of mouth. The holy saint, Francis of Assisi, understood this very well when he urged his disciples to preach the Gospel at all times and use words when necessary. We, like Paul, are called to become all things to all people so that we might by all means save some, and salvation as we have seen from the example of the Savior himself means restoring dignity to all people especially those from whom it has been robbed by evil, be it the evil naturally occuring in the world such as illnesses, or the man-made evils that include oppression, discrimination, fear, hatred, greed, poverty, and so on. This at times will and ought to put us on the cross if we are preaching the true Gospel. 

We may think that we are not strong enough or get discouraged by the times we fall short and possibly give up. Sometimes we even claim that God has abandoned us especially when the going gets tough but that is not the case. God’s promises are true for those that believe so wait and abide in him.  

This is made clear this morning in the last verse of our first reading  from Isaiah 40:31. We have been reminded that “youths may faint and grow weary, and young men stumble and fall BUT those who wait on the Lord will find new strength. They will rise up high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint”. 

There are difficulties in life that overwhelm the strongest of people. There are fears that keep eating even the strongest of human hearts. Young men faint, stumble and fall because of trusting in their own inner strength and human resources which are not a sufficient shield in the storms of life. Only God’s power is sufficient to sustain us and only His protective hand can shield us from the storms of life.  

Our God is a God of comfort and grace. He never goes back on His word, nor does he grow weary. In His loving kindness, He gives grace to the humble  and renews the strength of those that wait upon Him by faith. Even when our senses and logic seem to suggest the opposite, or appear to contradict His promises, if we have faith, it will help us soar with wings as eagles to rest in His promises. Just like an eagle’s strong wings carries it higher and higher to safety in the skies, let us pray this morning to God to strengthen our faith  so that we can trully believe we are children of the most high. Let us ask for confidence that assures us that we can soar and reach Him in faith as we face  evil, illnesses, death and all our fears both real and imaginary. 

Amen.

The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany - February 9, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany - February 9, 2020

Isaiah 58:1-9a, [9b-12]
1 Corinthians 2:1-12, [13-16]
Matthew 5:13-20

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

A group of climbers is ascending K2, the second tallest mountain in the world. The peak is 28,000 feet. One night in camp, they are besieged by a storm, and, in danger of being buried in snow, are forced to turn back. During the perilous descent, one of the climbers trips, loses his lighting, becomes separated from the group, and begins to blindly stumble and then clumsily rappel down the mountainside alone in the cold and dark. At one edge, after anchoring himself, he descends, and slowly releases all of his rope. It is not long enough. He comes to the end and still cannot not see or feel the ground. He is too exhausted and cold to ascend. Hanging in the blinding, raging storm, he cries out for help, but no one can hear or see him. He calms himself and prays for guidance. A quiet, yet firm inner voice comes immediately, “Unhook yourself from your harness and let go of the rope.” Too frightened to trust such guidance, he continues to hold on. The next day a search crew found him frozen to death, dangling in the air three feet above a level rock ledge.

The readings for this Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany take us to the end of our proverbial ropes where, if we take the texts seriously, we must either let go or continue to hold on. These words address our deepest yearnings and common fears and point the way toward fulfillment and peace. We have just heard in these texts a description of what it means to be and live as a human. They tell us that we must attend to relationships in the world, but before we can do that, we first must go inside ourselves. Here is the unveiling of an unseen reality told with a startling honesty. But we are also warned to beware of the all-to-real dangers of illusion and fantasy. These words which challenge the status quo of our common life come not by the forced imposition of laws or guilt or manipulation, but spring from an understanding of our true nature. Only when we first remember who we are can we then begin to set the world aright.

Epiphany proclaims that the Light that is the Christ has come and is glorying out into the world. All that seeks and lives in darkness is sent fleeing by the beams of this Light. Before we consider what this inner journey is about, let us note the imperatives in the texts, because they are about what is fleeing in the light of Christ. In Isaiah: loose the bonds of injustice, undo the thongs of the yoke, let the oppressed go free, break every yoke, share your bread and house and clothes; In 1 Corinthians from St. Paul: speak wisdom, seek to understand; In Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus: let your light shine, make your righteousness exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. These imperatives are essential, but they must be held within the greater context of their motivation. Why are we being commanded to do these things? Where is this action coming from? We are formed in a culture that puts “doing” before “being”. In the empire, identity, worth, and value are external, tangible, earned commodities which we win (or lose) in order to possess whatever status we desire. Even as Christians, this cultural programming can creep into our reading of scripture and push the emphasis into the realm of doing at the expense of being.

The imperatives of the texts are not seeking a transfer from the text to the world. These are not moralisms for creating fair societies. There is something more profound and radical being said here. Remember that contrary to the culture, in the Bible, “who” comes before “do”. Identity informs and inspires action. The prophetic identity works itself into us first before it can become meaningful action. God is concerned that I am made into the kind of person from whom justice and peace – good news - flow naturally, not as a religious obligation. Righteousness is first about personhood before it is about behavior. The injunctions and admonitions in Isaiah are warnings and pleadings for justice, not merely for justice’s sake, but because at the beginning of the reading the people are called by God “my people”. The immediate danger is that the people of God are acting contrary to their identity, which will bring them alienation from God and their neighbor – a state for which they were not called and are not formed. They must be awakened to themselves in order to receive the reorientation which will embody the world they long for. As so often happens with the prophets, the forgetting of identity is the core problem that leads to fear, idolatry and violence.

We wrestle with the same temptation to turn ourselves into good doers detached from hearing ourselves called “God’s people”. This is present in the Gospel reading also. For a long time what I heard Jesus say was, “Go and make yourselves salt by being saltier. Go and make yourselves light by shining more, doing more.” That is not what Jesus says. Directly and simply he says, “You are…” Before he says anything about how to live out being salt and light, he names us – not what we are supposed to do, but who we are. The acts of seasoning and shining in the world flow from our true identity.

Back at the end of the rope with the mountain climber. He is a metaphor of our discovery of ourselves as exposed and vulnerable between the illusion of our adequate self-sufficiency and the risk of trusting what we cannot see. If the climber had truly believed that he was loved and safe because he was a precious child of God and that the voice he heard in response to his prayer was real, the decision to let go of the rope would have been simple. The crisis was not about the validity of the inner voice, it was about who he was, whether he was made for fear or faith. Would he cling to the identity he could perceive, even though it would lead to his death, or would he let go and be caught by the unknown – bigger than his perception, the arms of God?

The end of your rope is a very holy place to be. The end is coming to realize the passing satisfaction of performing, earning, being good enough, doing enough. Being at the end of your rope is not a crisis resulting from failure, but a passage to spiritual maturity. At times in our lives, the rope, like the training wheels on a child’s bicycle, is a necessary and good gift from God – holding us safe, teaching us to trust. As we grow and are able to stand on our own feet, the rope will become a leash, keeping us attached to a level of safety we have outgrown and is holding us back. Growth then is only possible in letting go. Letting go is the encounter with our greatest need and our greatest fear. The end of the rope is the divine wake-up alarm of remembering, receiving, seeing, going, doing.

Jesus describes this as exceeding. Your righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees – not because it is a righteousness that does more and does it better, but because the righteousness itself is sheer gift within relationship between Lover and Beloved and is offered back to God and neighbor as free gift, without grasping, controlling, or boasting because it was not and can never be a possession. The earned holiness of the scribes and Pharisees is a heavy burden and a hard taskmaster, forever pulling oneself up the rope toward a safe ledge that never appears. It is tempting, but futile. This is why Jesus names the temptation of salt losing its taste or light hidden under the bushel basket. He is speaking of the denial of identity which spoils the salt and quenches the light. We are God’s people, salt and light. By our very existence, embodied in our obedient acts, being made like our Lord, the light bursts forth and the darkness is pushed a bit farther away. Amen.