The Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany C, February 23, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt

The Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany, February 23, 2025

• Genesis 45:3-11, 15
• 1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50
• Luke 6:27-38

 Click here for an audio of the sermon

In the name of the Lover, the Beloved and Love ever flowing. Amen.

Love your enemy. Is today’s gospel good news? Let’s explore.

 

Last week and this week, we are hearing the two parts of the short but powerful “Sermon on the plain” in the gospel according to Luke. Jesus is teaching a multitude of his disciples. Last week, we heard Luke’s version of the Beatitudes: 4 blessings and 4 woes.

 

The fourth blessing might have talked about some of our enemies. It goes like this:

“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets."

 

This blessing seems to say that having enemies is par for the course in the Kingdom of God.

 

But enemies might do worse than revile us. Are there people who harm you, hurt you or make your life painful and difficult? Today, Jesus is asking us to have mercy even on malevolent and on violent people. “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:36) Show compassion even on those who have none for you.

 

Jesus is asking us to go beyond what comes easily in human relations. We often resort to reciprocity in our relationships. We are used to the ways of the world. We usually reciprocate love to those who love us. That comes easily to us.

 

And we usually wish to reciprocate harm to those who harm us. With any luck, most of the time, we refrain from acting on our wish for revenge.

 

But isn’t revenge condoned in the Bible? Ater all, it’s in the book of Leviticus, right? We find there the saying “fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” (Leviticus 24:20) At the time, that it was written, it was considered progressive. It was known throughout the Near East as the law of retaliation.

 

Often in the time of Leviticus, retribution was greater than the initial offense. For example, a killing to avenge an injury. The law of retaliation emphasized justice and fairness (as understood at the time). It ensured that the punishment matched the crime instead of escalating the violence one or more levels up.

 

Jesus is turning this form of reciprocity upside down. He is rejecting the law of retaliation. Not only are you not to avenge yourself on your enemies, but you are to do good to them, to not judge them, to pray for them and to forgive them.

 

Think of Jesus on the cross saying ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’

 

By the way, our criminal justice system still focuses on the law of retaliation. Think of our use of capital punishment. Jesus’ teaching points to the need for his followers to support restorative justice instead.

 

In his teaching, Jesus goes one step further; you are to offer no resistance to the evildoer. You are even to meekly endure more of the evildoer’s violence. This is the hardest statement for me.

 

“If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.” (Luke 6:29)

 

I believe this statement is Jesus’ hyperbole to insist that we stick to non-violence and find it in our heart to forgive and to love. A violent response to violence justifies the offender in their own violence and sets the stage for an escalation of violence. We are to refrain from participating in the spiraling of mutual violence.

 

I don’t read that verse as encouraging victims to contribute to their own oppression. We are not called to facilitate our oppressor’s violence. But Jesus uses hyperbole to insist on our sticking to utter non-violence.

 

I believe the love of our enemies does not preclude non-violent resistance.

 

So, if you can walk away from violence, do so. If you need to resort to self-defense, that is your last resort.

 

If those who have dominion over you are abusive or violent, choose non-violence resistance.

 

And in all cases, remember that Jesus wants you to love your opponent and pray for them. This is challenging good news. But breaking the escalating spiral of self-righteous violence is good news indeed.

 

But before we get to love for our enemies, isn’t there an intermediary step? What about forgiveness? Or should we bypass forgiveness and go to love regardless?

 

True forgiveness (rather than the performative kind) and reconciliation are slow and lengthy processes. Jesus wants us to be non-violent and loving even before we have had a chance to digest the violence and the emotional response it elicits in us. This is tough.

 

But isn’t this the kind of Love that God offers; immediate, relentless, unconditional, all-encompassing Love. We are called to love as God loves. We are called to “be merciful just as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:36)

 

Rain and sunshine fall on the wicked as well as the holy. We are called to put no one beyond the boundaries of our love, not even those who harm or wish to harm us. Our love is to be boundless just as God’s love is.

 

This is relatively easy as long as we are among our well-meaning peers. But what about those who differ from us? Is there a level of alterity, of difference, beyond which we feel entitled to withhold love, to not love, to be indifferent or spiteful?

 

In order to follow Jesus, we do well to question where that boundary of otherness sits for ourselves. We are called to find that boundary, to broach that boundary and to meet and truly know those who live there.

 

With God’s help, we will find our common humanity and with God’s grace, we will learn to extend our love to all those whom God calls her children. In God, there are no alien, no “other.”

 

The golden rule sets an immeasurably high standard. “Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6:31). Stop the tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye reciprocation. Seek to enable others to have the same rights and privileges that you claim your own.

 

May it be that our country, and we ourselves, remember the golden rule when we deal with those whom we deem other and whom we are quick to judge.

 

May we pray for a decrease of our judgmentalism and an increase of our compassion even for those we deem our enemies.  

Amen.

The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany C, February 16, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 16, 2025

 

Jeremiah 17:5-10

1 Corinthians 15:12-20

Luke 6:17-26    

This morning preachers can hardly avoid noting the jarring differences between the Beatitudes that we have come to know and love from the Gospel according to Saint Matthew given as Jesus begins his Sermon on the Mount and those that we hear this morning from Saint Luke’ Gospel. The former are familiar and warm or, at the very least, reassuring. But this morning's version is more concise and, in its way, more disturbing. Jesus, teaching from the Plain or on the level place, levels with us not only in describing who is blessed but also those who are or will be facing great woe. 

It's important to understand that these are not primarily blessings and curses. They are rather a description of the deeper reality of things and people, whether we are talking about individuals or societies, nations or cultures. They are prophetic in both senses of that term. They reveal what is in fact now the deep truth and what will be further revealed in the fullness of time, when God's reign is finally and fully established in our created order. And of that, most of us have only caught glimpses, fleeting but nevertheless life giving.

We gathered here this morning are likely numbered among those who are rich and full and filled with mirth and laughter and spoken well of.  And to us, Jesus’ words are disturbing. They are probably meant to be. On the other hand, for those millions who are numbered among the poor, the hungry, the desolate, the excluded, or those reviled for the sake of Christ, these words come as liberation and consolation and promise.

The Beatitudes, whether from Matthew’s version or Luke’s, are explicitly laid out in binary form. They describe two large categories of people or institutions or structures or ways of living. We are increasingly uncomfortable with binary thinking and often for very good reasons. But in the scriptures, particularly in those books which are classified as wisdom literature--think of the psalms for example or the Book of Proverbs or Ecclesiastes--there are only two paths, two ways forward, though they are usually described in quite general terms. They are the way wise versus the way of the foolish. Or the way of the righteous versus that of the wicked. Or that way that leads to fullness of life versus that which leads to a death.

In today's Old Testament lesson the prophet  Jeremiah introduces these binary categories in powerful language:

“Thus says the Lord: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord. They shall be like a shrub in the desert and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.”

In contrast, there are those who trust in the Lord and not merely in their own strength:

“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought, it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.”

The image offered us of the blessed, the happy, likens them to trees deeply rooted in ultimate reality. They are grounded.  And no matter what happens around them, they can tap into hidden life-giving streams that will see them through the vicissitudes of life. Whereas those who trust in their own strength or in the strength of others and not in God have no such deep root and cannot withstand the recurring heat and dryness of human living.

Psalm 1, the lectionary psalm appointed for today, repeats this same imagery. In fact, biblical scholars aren't sure if Jeremiah was borrowing from the psalm or the Psalmist was borrowing from Jeremiah.  It's a  psalm well worth memorizing. In six short verses it contrasts the way of those who are happy and who delight in the Lord’s law with those who are wicked and whose way is doomed. The same illustrations are served up: of the righteous who are like trees planted by streams of water  “…bearing fruit in due season with leaves that do not wither” and of the wicked who are “like chaff which the wind blows away.”  Admittedly none of this is readily apparent in our lives or the lives of others. But it is a claim upon a deeper, if hidden, truth which we need to embrace.

Our Christian tradition offers us resources that assist us both to know concretely which way to follow in our lives along with practical wisdom and techniques , if you will, on how to do it or to do it better. There is for example sacred scripture itself. There is the guidance of God's Spirit active throughout creation and in our own hearts. There is the fellowship of the saints and ancestors and the tradition of their counsels. There is the community of believers that we call church and the precious gift of human reason. And there is the practice of virtue. All of these help us to distinguish the path that leads to life from the path which leads to a dead end. And they empower us to choose and walk that right path.   

But there's a catch, as there so often is, and it's the catch which Jeremiah names as he concludes his description of the cursed and the blessed. They are words that are all too true as we know from experience: “The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse--who can understand it?” The devious heart refers here, I believe, to the amazing and persistent ability we have to deceive ourselves or to let ourselves be deceived by others both as individuals and as nations and peoples. As Psalm 64 says: “The human mind and heart are a mystery.”   

I came of age in the 1960s and 1970s where there was a growing emphasis on complete self-transparency (“Let it all hang out”), absolute clarity, and ideological certitude. We made and continue to make an idol of self-knowledge.  Therapy, forms of therapeutic religion, even spiritual direction and practices of discernment have been presented to us, wrongly, as roads to clearness and certitude. I’m not saying that these practices are wrong; each of these disciplines, if used rightly, is useful in attaining greater transparency, greater clarity, and a certain manageable certitude.  But we will never know ourselves fully in this life even as we must strive toward it. Full knowledge is a matter for the heavenly vision given to us in part now but not yet in its fullness.

           The Jesuit priest, philosopher and author John Kavanaugh once asked Mother Teresa to pray for him to have clarity. She responded, “I've never had clarity and certitude. I only have trust. I'll pray that you trust.”  Even that great master of spiritual discernment, Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, said that in our discerning the most we could hope for is some degree of clarity, one that philosophers call moral certitude, by which they mean adequate evidence to act upon, but rarely if ever absolute certainty or clarity. As Jeremiah said: the heart is devious. Or as the psalmist said, it is a mystery, and we can never totally unpack it.

I remember reading an excerpt from Gateway to Hope by Sister Maria Boulding, an English Benedictine nun, which drove this point home. There she said: “We are more sinful than we know, more deeply flawed than we can recognize by any human insight; but grace works in us in the deepest places of body and spirit. We must live from our weakness, from the barren places of our need, because there is the spring of grace and the source of our strength…. When we can stand before God in the truth of our need, acknowledging our sinfulness and bankruptcy, then we can celebrate [God’s] mercy. Then we are living by grace, and we can allow full scope to his joy.”

The key to all of this is trust. To trust not in our own strength or in the strength of other mortals or in systems or kingdoms or governments, but in God. Again, as Mother Teresa reminds us: “I only have trust. I'll pray that you trust.”  At its heart and in the end, our faith is not about propositions or doctrines or creeds, though they have a role to play. Faith is trust in a God who is no less than personal  and who is eternally disposed toward us in love. And with whom we can be in relation.  More accurately, with whom we are already and always in relation, whether we know it or not.

As we offer our gifts and ourselves at the altar this morning, we will sing Hymn 635. I find the hymn tune lugubrious and its tone very Germanic, but its words are to me words of life:

If thou but trust in God to guide thee,

and hope in him through all thy ways,

he'll give thee strength with ere betide thee,

and bear thee through the evil days.

Who trusts in God's unchanging love

builds on a rock that nought can move.

 May this hymn be our prayer today whatever our faith or doubts, certainties or uncertainties might be. Let us trust the One who is both Rock and Refuge. The One who is Love itself. The One revealed to us in our Brother Jesus Christ…may His Name be praised. Amen.

Epiphany 7 C - February 20, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Josép Martinez-Cubero, OHC

Epiphany 7 C - Sunday, February 20, 2022

Genesis 45:3-11, 15

1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50

Luke 6:27-38

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

“Love you enemies.” A preacher once stood in front of the congregation and asked: “How many of you have many enemies?” A few people in the congregation raised their hand.” He then asked: “How many of you have just a few enemies?” This time many people raised their hand. So, he finally asked: “How many of you have no enemies?” He looked around and looked around, and finally, at the very back of the church, he saw a very old man raising his hand. Delighted, the preacher asked him to come forward, and the very old man slowly made his way to the front of the church. The preacher asked: “How old are you?” “I’m 98 years old and I have no enemies,” the old man replied. Amazed, the preacher said: “Oh this is such a blessing! What a wonderful Christian life you must lead. Please, tell us, how is it that you have no enemies?” The old man replied: “Damned bastards have all died.”

“Love your enemies.” To love our enemies, we must forgive them. And that is one of the theme of our lectionary readings today- forgiveness. In the reading from the Book of Genesis, Joseph forgives his older brothers for sending him into a lifetime of hardship: “Do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.” In his first epistle to the Corinthians, Paul writes about “seeds” that must die before new life can emerge. Those seeds surely include our resentments and wounds. We sow these “bare” and perishable seeds into the ground, and consent to “die” to everything that hinders new life, and trust that God will raise our dishonor and weakness into glory and power.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus continues his “Sermon on the Plain”: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.”  And again: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.  Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.  Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

How do we even begin to live up to this call without compromising our psychological and emotional well-being? I think the key is to have a very clear understanding of what forgiveness is, and what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not pretending that an offense doesn't matter, or that a wound doesn't hurt. Healing from a wound often takes time, and while forgiveness can be a one-way street, reconciliation is not. The reconciliation one may hope for after forgiving may not be possible. 

When I was thirteen years old, my alcoholic uncle (one of them) came into our home drunk, and got into an argument with my mother (who wanted him to leave). He became more and more agitated until, in my presence, he punched my mother in the face. I grabbed the biggest knife in our kitchen, and pointing it at him, backed him out of the house, telling him that if he didn’t leave, I would kill him. I spent many years feeling angry and resentful toward my uncle. That anger and resentment didn’t change him, but it affected me deeply in many areas of my life. By the grace of God, through my own conversion (and plenty of psychotherapy!) I was finally able to forgive him. I had to let go of my anger toward my uncle. I had to leave that scene that kept repeating in my head in the past and be done with it. I even wished the best for my uncle and prayed for him, that he would get sober, but because he never did, reconciliation was not possible. I didn’t want him in my life. I knew that having him in my life while still a drunk would have kept me connected to that horrible, violent scene I witnessed against my mother when I was thirteen. It would have compromised my psychological and emotional well-being. Sometimes we must sever ties with our offenders, even if we have forgiven them. Forgiveness is not cheap.

Forgiveness is also a process that is often messy. And no one who struggles to forgive for reasons of temperament, circumstance, or trauma should feel or should be made to feel that they're less holy, spiritual, or good than those who don't struggle with the whole process of forgiveness. Let us remember that in the Hebrew Scripture story, Joseph wrestles with a strong desire to scare and shame his brothers, and actually does, before he finally, slowly and painfully comes to the point that he can forgive them. Forgiveness can sometimes feel like going up a spiral staircase, circling and circling in order to create distance between the pain we’ve suffered and the new life we seek. 

But we must arrive at forgiveness, for our own sake. There is a well-known saying with many versions, attributed to many people from Saint Augustine and the Buddha to Nelson Mandela and Anne Lamott, so who knows who really said it or wrote it, but the version I know goes like this: “Holding onto a resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” If I'm consumed with my own pain, if I insist on making my well-deserved resentment into a weapon that I use in every interaction I have with the person who hurt me, then I'm drinking poison, and the poison is killing me, not the person who wronged me. To choose forgiveness is to release myself from the tyranny of bitterness, and to refuse the lie that revenge is sweet. After all, we all know that what’s sweet is not necessarily good for us.

In the words of Maya Angelou: “Forgiveness is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. Forgive everybody. You are relieved of carrying that burden of resentment.” “I mean having enough courage to stand up and say, 'I forgive. I'm finished with it.'" 

The act that hurt us might always be with us, but forgiveness can lessen its grip on us and help free us from the control of the person who harmed us. Forgiveness can even lead to feelings of empathy and compassion for the one who hurt us. It can lead us to see the better self of that person that God created them to be, even if they themselves are not able to find it. 

So the work of forgiveness is some of the hardest and, also, some of the most important work we can do for ourselves and for the world. May we taste the full measure of the freedom that awaits us when we choose to forgive. ¡Que así sea, en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo!

Amen+

Epiphany 7 C - Sunday, February 24, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve, OHC
Epiphany 7 C - Sunday, February 24, 2019

Genesis 45:3-11, 15
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Luke 6:27-38

My earliest image of Jesus is a larger-than-life cowboy.  In Sunday School as a young boy, Jesus was the ultimate macho tough guy, the Avenger and Conqueror, a man’s man.  What I heard in church, (and surely this is partly what was said and partly my imagination), was that Jesus’ first coming was about dying on the cross for our sins – an important act that would allow us to be forgiven and go to heaven.  Yes, he was kind and compassionate.  Yes, he cares for the rejected and desolate.  But the really good stuff is coming when he returns.  The last judgment passages in the gospels and the Revelation to John were the ultimate wish fulfillment of a Jesus who was the triumphant and patriotic figure Americans in my part of the world strived to be.  We talked about a savior who loved the world.  What we wanted was a warrior who would vanquish our enemies.  The violence and chaos of the world could only be brought to an end by an equally violent Jesus – and not before.  Yes, the real Jesus was the one who would ride in from the clouds on a white horse, sword in hand, sheep and goats – line up accordingly.  This was a much more morally acceptable Jesus than the one who had already come.  We longed for Super Jesus, we charted his course, we looked for signs…  Soon he will come and rescue us!  The message was “Get saved, get ready for heaven, or good luck in the tribulation.”  There was much more language about Jesus coming back than about Jesus alive and present. The Seventies and early Eighties in my religious world were all about getting off the planet and God getting on with the great judgment as quickly as possible.  In the meantime, we could help God with that judgment part by denouncing the obviously godless:  Communists, liberals, feminists, Yankees, and all manner of foreigner.  Although we had to wait for Jesus, we had Ronald Reagan, and he was very close.

All this was happening in my young life in a culture where violence was a given, an unquestioned fact of life.  I was physically abused, family members were victims of violence, bullying was normal, fights erupted at school, the daily news of murders somewhere in Houston.  Sometimes the 20 minutes of waiting for the school bus in the morning was a drama of survival and dominance akin to “Lord of the Flies”.  Getting off the planet did not seem like such a bad idea.  On hunting trips and out in the country, to relax, we shot stuff.  By the time I was 12, my introduction to adult power was walking through thick woods with a rifle, ready to take out whatever squirrels or birds stood in my path.

Justice was quick and visible, as it should be, I was taught:  “an eye for an eye” (it’s in the Bible!), or, “he had it coming”, “servers him right”.  What got formed, then, as is often the case in parts of the South especially, was an outer shell of manners covering over a heart that had befriended a good and holy vengeance.  The morality of violence was about context – bad people had no good reasons to be violent and good people were always justified in their violence. Thankfully, as an adult, my theological world was expanded by wise pastors and professors who helped me rethink this system.  I read and heard people who took the red letters – all of them, not just John 3:16 - seriously and I began to see that Jesus was not exactly the person I had been taught he was.  Perhaps, shudder the thought, he actually meant what he said – that “love your enemies” bit included.

Jesus really means us to live the kind of generous mercy and kindness that we hear proclaimed today.  He is not taunting us with moral impossibilities.  I may not be prone to physical violence, but I continue to exorcise the violence that is present too often in my thoughts and words.  My inner cowboy image is not totally gone.  I am just more aware of how fall short I fall and how much in need of grace I am.  Jesus articulates and embodies the highest and noblest and most difficult vision of humility and relationship possible – self-sacrificial love of one and all with everything I have and even my very body if necessary.  The alternative – the only alternative - is to spiral further into fear, division, and war.  Nevertheless, we must also reckon with the violence in the Bible itself, especially that inflicted by God’s people, that continues to be a presence and voice in our tradition.  The community has struggled with the most violent verses in the psalter.  We have even excised a few verses of Psalm 137 and 139 from our breviary because of the graphic nature of the imagery.  On this side of the empty tomb, it is good to wrestle with whether even to say such things as Christians.  But we still have phrases like “let them go down alive into the pit” and “let them be food for jackals”.  If we excised all of the calls for vengeance, it would be a much smaller book.  The psalms as well as other places in scripture certainly preserve violence as God’s prerogative and purview, so if the command now is not vengeance, but love, what is going on here?  If Jesus is not the cowboy, then who is he?  Is the antidote a passive resignation to evil?  Is the command to love, offer my cheek, give my shirt, my goods, not to judge, but to forgive and give to those in need not surrender, capitulation, defeat?
There is a third way between violence and passivity that is the heart of Jesus’ teaching and example.  From theologian Walter Wink:

“But Jesus did not teach non-resistance.  Rather, he disavowed violent resistance in favor of nonviolent resistance.  Of course Christians must resist evil!  No decent human being could conceivably stand by and watch innocents suffer without trying to do, or at least wishing to do, something to save them.  The question is simply one of means.  Likewise Christians are not forbidden by Jesus to engage in self-defense.  But they are to do so nonviolently.  Jesus did not teach supine passivity in the face of evil.  That was precisely what he was attempting to overcome!”

That phrase “nonviolent resistance” is very powerful.  It releases me to be clear about my vocation.  Wink and others – (please go and read Saint Oscar Romero, Tony Campolo, Jean Vanier, and Brian Zahnd for much more on this) - have been very helpful for me on this and similar gospel teachings in helping me see that what Jesus was about is an undoing of the endemic and assumed system of violent power and oppression that was then and is now the basis of the ordering of the world, the origin of most national borders and the wars that created them.  Jesus’ project is the kingdom in which mercy and forgiveness are the basic and fundamental ways of viewing my neighbor and being toward my neighbor.  At the same time Jesus confronts and calls out the oppressive system directly and forcefully, but not with violence toward persons.  By this third way, he frees us from the extremes of either violence on one end and non-resistance on the other.  Loving my enemy is connected to calling evil the attitudes and judgments which feed and fuel enmity in the first place.

The ongoing presence of violence is rooted in our fallen state and the corresponding illusion that believes violence is the greatest possible power.  Whenever persons are entangled in this delusion, the world becomes a series of binaries: us/them, win/lose, in/out.  The greatest fear is to be weak, emasculated, shamed, cowed, conquered.  And so we continue to fight, bomb, and kill because we are in a system where that is the only source of meaning and purpose.  The great revolution of Jesus is not an acquiescence to intransigent illusions of power, but a pointing to a greater, truer power.  Mercy, generosity, forgiveness are not passive reactions to the violence we are told is ultimate, but the means to transcend the illusion of power in order to embrace the real thing.  Once I am liberated from the attitudes and labels that drive the domination system and defined by the power of love, then I do not have to use violence in order to impose control.  Violence exposes who is not free.  Oscar Romero called this “the violence of love”.  And pastor and author Greg Boyd says, “love that refuses to retaliate is the most powerful force in the universe.”  He goes on, “Our call is to trust that the foolishness of self-sacrificial love will overcome evil in the end.”

In the end. In the end.  So it turns out that the Second Coming is important after all.  Not so that we can cheer on Super Jesus to slay the wicked, but because his return to set the world right gives the perspective that makes such sacrifice today meaningful.  Our longing for a world set right grounds us in the hope of Jesus doing what we cannot do fully by ourselves.  Jesus is the Judge and King, which means I am not.  He is the Avenger and Conqueror of all that distorts and harms his creatures.  I am not.  We are freed for self-sacrificial love because we are freed from the responsibility to play God and enforce our own version of justice now.   In the meantime, in the already-but-not-yet, we love, we trust, we wait, we hope, we resist.  True, ultimate, eternal peace and justice are surely coming.  And they are also available today.  We can live as if a new way of being is coming and indeed here among and within us.  The hope of the world to come is the reason to be faithful to this day.  Amen.

Seventh Sunday after Epiphany- Year A - Sunday February 19, 2017

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Josép R. Martínez-Cubero,OHC
Seventh Sunday after Epiphany - Sunday,  February 19, 2017

Br. Josép R. Martínez-Cubero, OHC

Today’s gospel, which is a continuation of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, contains several statements that could be seriously misunderstood if taken out of their cultural context, and if the translation is not carefully analyzed. So let us look at some of these statements.

“Do not resist an evil doer.” Considering that Jesus resisted evil every time he came face to face with it, we can feel a bit suspicious about this translation. The late North American biblical scholar and theologian, Walter Wink, made a case that the Greek word translated as resist, antistenai, has to do with violence. He notes its repeated use in the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) as a word for "warfare." Likewise, it appears in Ephesians in a context of warfare (6:13). Josephus, writing in the time of Jesus, continually uses antistenai to mean armed struggle.

Therefore, the sentence should be translated: "Do not violently resist the evil one."  This is entirely consistent with the over-all sense of the text, especially as Jesus then gives some examples of how to resist evil non-violently. It is important to remember that Jesus gives examples that make sense within his own culture.

“If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” People in ancient times did not initiate action with their left hand because it was considered unclean. If they were going to strike someone, they would do so with their right hand. The only way to strike another person on their right cheek with the right hand is by backhanding the person. This was considered an insult, and an expression of dominance.  In the first century, the people most likely to be backhanded were slaves, women, children, and people considered "lesser" than their Roman overlords. Jesus does not counsel passivity in the face of insult. On the contrary, he suggests lifting up your head and exposing the left cheek as well. Slapping someone with the palm of the right hand on the left cheek put the receiver on equal stature. Jesus suggests to stand there with head held high, and not letting someone else define you as "lesser."  We wouldn’t endorse putting up with this kind of physical violence today, but in the context of that culture it points to staying true to one’s integrity.

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” In ancient Greek culture and philosophy there are four main words that define love. Storge means affection such as the love of family. Phileo means friendship; the kind of love that develops between people who share common interests, beliefs or activities. Eros means romantic love, which includes the desire for emotional as well as physical connection. And then there is agape: unconditional, self-less love, which C.S. Lewis, in his book The Four Loves, described as a specifically Christian virtue.

Agape is the love about which Jesus is speaking when he calls us to love our enemies. More than just a feeling, agape also involves actions. It is our choice of one set of behaviors over another. Agape is intentional. Whenever we choose a response that is bigger than the treatment we receive, we are being true to our identity in Christ. And we pray for those who want to do us harm not as if God were some grand-puppeteer in the sky whose mind we can change, and so that God will intervene on our behalf. We pray because prayer changes us. The act of prayer has the power to make us more compassionate even toward those we experience as our enemies.

We can begin to practice agape with our closest relationships, with the agape we ourselves have experienced, and then, we work outwards to others. Dr. Maya Angelou often talked of the African-American nineteenth century song that goes like this: “When it looked like the sun would not shine anymore, God put a rainbow in the clouds.” She spoke about having had many clouds in her sky, but there were also the rainbows. When she had to stand up on stage, or teach classes, or direct movies, she would bring in her heart everyone who had ever been kind to her, even if they were long dead. Like Maya Angelou, we have all had times when it looked like the sun would not shine anymore, but I would dare say that we all here today have also had rainbows in our clouds, people who have shown us kindness and compassion, even when we least expected it or even when we did not earn it. And we can carry those rainbows in our heart wherever we go and spread them. We can choose behavior that does not retaliate, even if we still feel anger. We can look to affirm what is good rather than focusing only on what still needs work. When, in his first letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul wrote: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;  it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. (1 Cor. 13:1-6), he was speaking of the practice of agape.

Brother Phap Dung, a Buddhist monk at Plum Village in southern France, points out that people we perceive as our greatest enemies can be our greatest teachers because we have elements of those enemies in us. And in fact, we cannot practice affirmative compassion and unconditional love toward others until we can treat with agape those parts of ourselves that we cast out as undesirable or shameful. When we witness vulgar self-absorption we are invited to examine our own selfishness. Witnessing ignorance calls us to attend to our own blind spots. Witnessing fears being stirred up, and the promotion of isolation can stimulate us to be braver, and more generous. The practice of agape is a different orientation of the heart from everything we are hearing around us these days. It is a life long spiritual journey, often costly, but always transformative.

“Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” A better translation would be: “You all, therefore, will be consummated ones (teleioi) as your Father in heaven is consummation (teleios)." The Greek word teleios means balanced, whole, complete, fully developed. Jesus is talking about becoming who God has created us to be, in every situation, without being sidetracked, and with life-giving truth as our best tool. Truth-speaking that is steady, persistent, patient and brave.

If we live our lives according to our deepest calling, and live that calling with complete integrity, and we know, not only who we are, but whose we are, we can never be victims. No matter what the powers-that-be choose to do, there is an untouchable, eternal reality at our center. That reality is love, and it is our birthright, and it cannot be ruined by human hands or denied to us by anything that comes to pass in this lifetime. ~Amen

References:

·      Walter Wink, Jesus and Nonviolence: A Third Way (Fortress, 2003).
·      C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (Geoffrey Bles, 1960)
·      huffingtonpost.com, A Zen Master’s Advice on Coping With Trump (February 16, 2017)
·      Walter Wink, The Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millenium (Doubleday, 1999)

Epiphany 7 A - Feb 23, 2014

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bob Pierson, OSB
Year A - Epiphany 7 - Sunday, February 16, 2014


Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18
1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23
Matthew 5:38-48

“You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

The last time that I preached on this Scripture passage, which was three years ago, I received an official reprimand for my homily from the board of directors of the retreat program I was serving at the time. I was told that I had upset people and that I should not do that in the future.

What did I say? Well, I started by remarking that Christians have always had a difficult time with Jesus telling us to love our enemies. He couldn't possibly have really meant that, could he? As Christianity became more aligned with the civil authority of the day, a just war theory was developed to help Christians determine when it was morally OK to fight with their enemies.

With the just war theory in hand, Christians have been going to war, feeling completely justified in killing their enemies. But it wasn't always that way. In the early church, soldiers could not be Christian. They had to leave their military service before they could be admitted to baptism. And in our present age, the just war theory has been called into question for a number of reasons, the chief one being that modern technology has made it impossible to contain war to killing only other combatants. Too many innocent people get killed.

But even if we accepted the traditional rationale for the just war theory, we would still have to question the morality of some conflicts, like the war in Iraq, for example. The just war theory says it is never OK to be the first to attack, and clearly the United States attacked Iraq first. Religious leaders around the world, including Pope John Paul, condemned the US for starting the war with Iraq. I concluded that homily by saying that we, as Christians, need to question our leaders' judgment when they decide to go to war because they are not always morally justified in doing so.

And that's what got me in trouble. How dare anyone question the decisions of our government and its leaders? Well, the reprimand didn't convince me that I was wrong, and now, three years later I would say essentially the same thing. In fact, I just did. The one thing that has changed for me over the past three years, though, is the fact that I am much more aware of some personal enemies in my life. Now I am faced with Jesus' teaching in a much more immediate way: “God, do you really want me to pray for these enemies, after what they did to me?”

Feeling anger and resentment is completely natural and normal when we have been injured by others, especially when we know that the injury was intended. It's quite natural to want to fight back, to inflict a similar injury on those who have injured us. But it's NOT helpful to act on those feelings.

If we have learned anything from centuries of conflict and killing, it should be that violence only begets more violence, even on the personal level. And sooner or later, someone needs to choose to stop the cycle of violence, and to seek to forgive the other party, even if the other party does not want to reconcile. That's why Jesus calls us to love our enemies and to pray for our persecutors.

As Christians, we are called to go beyond the conventional standards of our day to a higher standard of conduct, to be holy as the Lord our God is holy. And loving our enemies makes sense if we have learned the lesson of the Cross—that the only way to real life, to eternal life, is to accept the suffering we cannot avoid, and to let God transform it into resurrection.

Now, I am not saying that we need to allow others to hurt us. We need to take care of ourselves, and set boundaries where possible, to prevent others from walking all over us. But it does no good to try to return injury for injury. “An eye for an eye” only makes for two blind people.

Paul's words to the Corinthians that we heard a few minutes ago come to mind as I ponder how it is possible to really live Jesus' teaching: “You are God's temple and God's Spirit dwells in you....God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.” Yes, I am God's temple because God dwells in me. But you know, my enemy can also be God's temple because God can dwell in them, too. Their injury of me cannot justify my injury of them. I need to recognize that they are God's beloved children just as much as I am, and that there has to be a better way of settling our differences than blowing each other to smithereens. “Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.”

I want to conclude my homily today with a quotation from "In the Eye of the Storm" by Bishop Gene Robinson:

“In refusing to demonize and hate his enemies, forgiving them and loving them to the very end, Jesus shows us the way to reconciliation. If we keep our eyes set on him, and upon his self-giving, self-sacrificing love, then we will know the way forward. Whatever difficulty may come, no matter how hard it gets, we will know how it eventually will end. We need not be afraid. God's fatherly saving grace will not be foiled, God's Son's sacrifice on the cross will not be in vain, and God's Holy Spirit will continue to lead us into reconciliation.” (page 160)

Epiphany 7 A - 20 Feb 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Borden, OHC
RCL - Epiphany 7A - February 20, 2011

Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18
1 Corinthians 3:10-11,16-23
Matthew 5:38-48

Today we find Jesus in Matthew's Gospel in a rather contrary mood... We have heard one thing, but Jesus is here to tell us something different... This section of Matthew begins with Jesus saying “do not think that I have come to abolish the Law...” and then sharing a series of 6 antithetical reflections: You have heard it said do not murder, but I say don't even think about it... You have heard it said do not commit adultery, but I say... and so on.

On a purely superficial level, it appears that Jesus, true to his word, is not doing away with the law, but is, rather, delivering a new type of “hyper-law” - far more demanding than that old law ever was. Under this new notion of law, even poor Jimmy Carter had to cast himself an adulterer... I dare say, none of us are safe.

And so we come to today's reading of the good news... You have heard it said an eye for an eye, but I say if someone strikes you on the right cheek, offer them the other cheek as well. If they want your coat, give them your cloak as well. If they demand one mile, go two...

There is a major shift in the nature of Jesus' antithetical offerings. But I'm not sure they are getting any better... I'm almost certainly going to end up an adulterer and a murderer... now I have to be ready to be beaten up and stripped naked... Dale Carnegie would have a few things to say about this approach that Jesus is taking to winning friends and influencing people...

What on earth is Jesus up to? What can we do to make sense of these teachings?

Jesus may not have come to abolish the law, but Jesus is no lover of the status quo.

The law, in faithful Jewish observance, was as lofty as you could get. Knowing the law, loving the law, following the law was as devout and Godly as you could be. There was no greater love of God then a profound and careful observance of the law.

And along comes Jesus saying, essentially, that the law is far from the highest ideal – it is the lowest common denominator... it is the absolute bare minimum... Jesus is demanding something much more complete than adherence to the law.

Look how provocative Jesus is being: Every antithesis begins “You have heard it said...” That's shorthand for you have heard it said in holy scripture: If Jesus were to begin his challenges with “The Bible says one thing, but I say something else” just imagine the discomfort he could generate in a good “Bible-believing” Sunday congregation church...

I think that is just exactly what Jesus wants to do. He is creating maximum discomfort among the maximally pious crowd. Jesus is preaching to the choir, as it were, but the sermon is not the desired message.

In a sense, what Jesus is saying is “I haven't come to end the law – but I have come to end the way you think about the law... the way you live the law.”

Just in case we've forgotten what is at the heart of the law, the Lectionary gives us this wonderful passage from Leviticus: You shall not defraud, you shall not slander, you shall not hate in your heart any of your kin... you shall not take vengeance, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. That is the law and it is surely beautiful.

And along comes Jesus: You have heard it said you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy – but I say love your enemies and pray for your persecutors...

Jesus makes an interesting leap in this statement. Scripture, in Jesus time, was the Hebrew scripture we know as Old Testament. And none of Jesus' listeners would, in fact, have heard from Hebrew scripture that they were to hate their enemies – Hebrew scripture does not have any such command. To be sure, Hebrew scripture talks about God hating the unrighteous, but the faithful are not called to hate. Jesus knows that.

I have to wonder if it was the case at Jesus time, just as it is today, that some folks are very certain about what is in the bible, and they are just as certainly wrong.

I suspect, for example, a lot of good and faithful Christians would not flinch if I made the following statement: “The Bible says love the sinner, but hate the sin...” It's a phrase that probably traces its roots to St Augustine, but not to scripture. Yet its freely bandied about in religious circles and so it “sounds” plausible. Or if I asserted that “The Bible tells us that God helps those who help themselves.” Such an assertion might draw little protest from many a congregation – though the quote actually has its roots in Aesop's Fables, not in scripture... In scripture, God helps those who have no other help.

Is Jesus messing with the devout? You have heard it said... hate your enemies. We all have probably heard that said, or something close to it, but Jesus is quoting something other than proper Jewish tradition – and I think that may be part of his purpose. Some of what we take for law is just not, as we learn in Porgy and Bess, necessarily so...

Jesus may be working to rattle some of our assumptions, but that is incidental. The real purpose seems to be rattle our conclusions. The real effect is to change our way of life.

In this Epiphanytide, we have been preparing for the Gospel with a fragment of a hymn by Ephrem of Syria. The hymn reflects on the way in which incarnation speaks of God's grace. Incarnation doesn't speak of God's glory – for there isn't anything particularly glorious about being born a fragile, human child. It doesn't speak of God's might, for it is a powerless act. It doesn't speak of God's infinite nature, for it is very finite. But it does speak endlessly of God's grace.

And that is what I find in today's Gospel. Jesus, fully human, calling us to be more fully human... calling us to be more filled with God's grace. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

The reading ends with an ominous sounding instruction: Be perfect, as God in heaven is perfect. Using the word “perfect” is a bit jarring. In this entire Gospel passage Jesus has rather firmly established human imperfection. If we have thought about murder or adultery, then we are the same as murderers and adulterers... so where is this idea of being perfect coming from?

If perfect means a spotless living of the law, then we are doomed.

But perfect has a second meaning – a richer and more complex meaning... the meaning of wholeness or completeness.

We use the word in this way these days normally in a negative context – we talk about a perfect idiot, or a perfect disaster, or a perfect storm, for example. But you get the idea.

This is what Jesus is talking about – Jesus is calling us to be wholehearted, complete, and total in our love of God and, at the same time, our love of God's creation, most especially of our fellow human beings.

This idea of perfection is a process more than a destination. After all, a perfect idiot is perfect because he keeps getting better at it... he is improving the process of being an idiot...

Now doesn't that give us something to aspire to...

Jesus cuts right to the heart of what it is to be a follower, of what it is to be faithful. We must be prepared to change how we understand our tradition. We must be prepared to change the way we respond to others by being ever more willing to respond in a way of sacrifice and love. The way to a deeper and more loving relationship with God is through a deeper and more loving relationship with our brothers and sisters – realizing that everyone is included in that category of brothers and sisters...

Jesus has liberated us from a human ideal of perfectionism and replaced it with the Godly ideal of perfect wholeness. And so let us be perfect.