The Fifth Sunday in Lent C, April 6, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Francis Beckham, OHC

The Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 6, 2025

• Isaiah 43:16-21
• Philippians 3:4b-14
• John 12:1-8

Click here for an audio of the sermon

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you, O God, my Creator and my Sustainer. Amen.

In these waning days of Lent, it’s been good for me to sit with this morning’s readings. For me, each one reflects in a special way an important perspective on the transforming potential of penance that, taken together, paint a remarkably meaningful picture of God’s promise of hope for us – a promise I know we are all yearning for.

Lent, like life, is meant to be a journey out of brokenness and into wholeness, with reflection, prayer, and acts of service as our guides. The fruits of this journey, of course, are greater knowledge of self and of God, and closer communion with creation and one another – including those we know, as well as those we do not.

And, so, with only seven days to go until Holy Week, our readings seem to be urging us to remain focused in this final stretch. For my part, I detect three key reminders. The first is tomaintain a firm and faithful hope in the future God has already prepared for us. “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old,” God declares through the prophet Isaiah. “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”

The second is to re-frame the view of my past self – especially my ‘worldlier’ achievements and ambitions, as well as my old self-doubts, criticisms, and disappointments – in light of the Cross; that is to say, as being worth ‘letting-go-of’ for the sake of drawing closer to God.

And finally, despite my anxiousness to skip the perils and pain of the Passion, Cross, and Tomb by flying directly to Easter morning, to instead slow down, and heed the example of Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus, by embracing the profound holiness of the present moment.

In the second reading, we hear from Saint Paul, who, writing to the church at Philippi, urges them to join him in imitating Jesus’ complete self-emptying. He begins by reflecting on his own past, telling them how he now views all of it – from his respectable Hebrew lineage to his righteous observance of the Law – as nothing but loss because of Christ. “[T]his one thing I do,” Paul says, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” Despite what many in our culture would have us believe, Paul’s words are a reminder that there’s no future in the past.

With Paul’s plea for us to let go of our fleshy pasts in favor of attaining the heavenly future assured in Isaiah, we’re left with one remaining ‘tense’ to consider; it’s the one that, more often than not, tends to get overlooked. And that’s the present tense. Or, in our case today, the Present-Lent tense.

 

Far from being merely a stopover between the past and future, the present matters very much. The future, although it’s our goal, is nevertheless a mystery. Despite its blessed assurance, what we will be has not yet been revealed. And the past is no less an enigma.

While it’s true that we’ve all spent most of our lives in the past, the vision of our former selves tends to grow ever dimmer and distorted with the passage of time. Lately, I have become increasingly aware that, for all points and purposes, I hardly recognize the person Iused to think of as myself; in many ways, he’s as much a stranger to me today as the person I’ve yet to grow into, although, there remains something familiar about him. So, the present is the only place we can truly live; it’s the bridge between who we’ve been and who we’re bound to become; it’s where we encounter God, process our past experiences, and become ready for what lies ahead. It’s no coincidence that, five times a day here at the monastery, the bell calls us back from our distractions and into the presence of God and each other in this chapel.

Today’s gospel reading shows us the sacredness of ‘Right Now’, the in-between space, and why being present to it is what gives meaning to both the past and the future. I’m incredibly moved by Saint John’s account of Jesus’ time at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus because, in so many ways, it’s an extraordinarily gentle and humane transition from his ministry of proclamation and healing to his time of suffering and sacrifice. In the preceding passages, John tells us that, ever since he raised Lazarus from the dead, the Pharisees have been openly calling for Jesus’ arrest and death, and he knows it. He’s been lying low with the disciples in Ephraim, a town described as being “in the region of the wilderness,” but with the Passover approaching, Jesus now has to begin his journey back toward Jerusalem. His time is very near – but, for the moment at least – it’s not here yet. Jesus can still be in the present with his friends for a bit longer, and he has no intention of denying them – or himself – that gift.

John tells us, “[T]hey gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.” This is neither a scene of hiding out in the wilderness, nor one of making a self-sacrificing entrance into Jerusalem. This is an immensely relational scene of friends spending an evening together, living in the moment, giving and receiving hospitality, sharing a meal, and enjoying one another’s company. In my imagination of this story, the mood must have been like that of any farewell dinner; that is to say, a bittersweet time of joy tinged with grief at the impending departure of someone who is dearly loved, who is here with us now, but who we know won’t be for much longer. And, even as we try to focus on being present, we’re far too aware that the hours, minutes, and even seconds are ticking down till we know we won’t have them with us anymore; and while we aren’t ready to let them go, we know we can’t keep them.

I suppose that, among those in the house, there must’ve been varying degrees of comprehension about exactly how final this gathering was. But Mary, at least, grasps the gravity of the situation. Knowing that Jesus is soon to be taken from her, she uses this precious opportunity to express her love for him in the most meaningful way she can. After all, Jesus has done so much for Mary, including giving her own brother, who was dead, back to her. Her act of anointing Jesus’ feet is profoundly intimate. It is both an act of service, and a burial ritual. By taking his foot into her hand Mary is literally holding onto Jesus in this moment while it lasts. By using costly oil, she is expressing how deeply she treasures her friend beyond any amount of money; he is literally priceless to her, worth more than anything the world values or esteems. When we consider how much any of us would give to keep a loved one with us for just a little while longer, it’s no wonder Mary does this. But as the twentieth-century essayist and diarist Anaïs Nin writes, “You can’t save people. You can only love them.” And that’s exactly what Mary does.

Of course, if Mary is among those who recognize the sanctity of this moment, Judas undoubtedly represents what it means not to appreciate the value of the present. Naturally, we resent Judas for dishonoring Mary’s grief-laden act of love. Inextricably and unrepentantly wedded to the world’s flesh, Judas is unable to appreciate – or probably even to recognize – the profound spiritual and physical communion taking place in his presence. Using charity as a pretense, he protests what he perceives to be a waste of a large sum of money that could be going to the poor, if by ‘poor’ we mean ‘Judas’ bank account’. (Incidentally, a pound of nard, or spikenard, costs more than $1,200 today; and its price in first-century Judea would likely have been far greater.)

But even if we’re not as overtly driven by greed as Judas, it’s still important for each of us to be on guard against becoming so wrapped up in our own self-interests, or even just in the practical concerns of life, that we deprive ourselves and those we care about of our full attention, thoughtfulness, and acts of love. Jesus’ response to Judas, of course, puts it best: “Leave her alone,” he says. “She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

“You do not always have me.” And, we do not always have Lent. While we are called always to live in the spirit of Lent (Saint Benedict is very clear on this point), this season is only one of several on the Church’s calendar. Along with Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost, Lent is with us only for a little while each year, so that we may feel the urgency of reaping its particular graces. So, before things heat up next week, may we use what remains of this holy time to dwell with Jesus in Bethany, recognizing and cherishing his presence in those we care for and love – embracing their brokenness, appreciating their gifts, and being grateful for having them with us on our journeys into wholeness. And may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, be with us and remain with us always. Amen.

Lent 5 B - March 17, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Aidan Owen

The Fifth Sunday in Lent B, March 17, 2024

• Jeremiah 31:31-34
• Hebrews 5:5-10
• John 12:20-33

 Click here for an audio of the sermon

In my prayer and preaching this Lent, I’ve been following the throughline of covenant. Our readings have told the story of God’s continual refinement of her covenant, which begins with Noah as the representative of the whole creation (very important that we recover that ecological understanding) and follows through God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah, and then in the giving of the law through Moses on Mt. Sinai. At each point along the way, the people violate this sacred covenantal relationship with God. But rather than abandon them (us), God rejigs the covenant.

This reworking on God’s part is itself a revelation of divine love. God’s promise becomes more and more specific as it moves from the whole creation, symbolized by a beautiful sign in the sky, into the stone tablets of the law. That specificity is meant, not as a prison for human agency, but as a grace that can lead to our freedom. 

Infected as we are with a radical protestant reading of Paul, we have often come to view the law, and therefore the covenant, as a dead thing in opposition to the living spirit. But, of course, our Jewish ancestors in the faith knew, just as our Jewish siblings still know, that the law and the covenant that it represents was and is a means of grace, a beautiful and life-giving doorway into the full flowering of the life of God. If they and we know the law more in its violation than in its keeping, that has everything to do with human frailty—and yet even our failure to keep the law opens us more and more to God’s abundant mercy.

This morning we hear God’s promise, given through Jeremiah, to refine the covenant yet once more: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me.” Where once God made her covenant with one person on behalf of the whole creation, now God promises to write that covenant on every single heart. Where once God mediated the covenant through law written on stone tablets, now God promises to write that law on the tablets of our hearts. Where once the elders conveyed knowledge of God to their people, now God promises to be so close to her people that everyone will know God in the innermost part of their being. God will be closer to us than our own breath, and every heartbeat will whisper her name.

Of course, we know how well that worked out. We have only to look around us at the world we have created to see that even God’s indwelling presence cannot guarantee our virtue. Even written on the tablet of our heart, the law cannot corral this restless human nature of ours. But God’s mercy is such that God chooses to leave us free to choose whether and how to respond to God’s love. So that, whether we conform to God’s way or violate it, we are steeped in mercy.

In her new book Reading Genesis, Marilynne Robinson writes “The old Christian theologies spoke of felix culpa, the fortunate fall. This is in effect another name for human agency, responsibility, even freedom. If we could do only what God wills, we would not be truly free, though to discern the will of God and act on it is freedom. Our human nature as fallen and our human nature as divine have a dynamic […] relation with each other, meeting at infinity, perhaps.”

Our total freedom to choose either good or evil, life or death, is perhaps God’s greatest mercy to us. Our lives and our choices are not predetermined. Yes, we know that we are all driven by instinctual forces, manipulated by past traumas and the unmet needs of our child selves, shaped by beliefs so deeply held as to be shadows on the wall of our consciousness. And yet, we are not now, nor have we ever been, predetermined or predestined. We are radically, frighteningly, and miraculously free. 

I can say with certainty that it is a miracle some of us are here today worshipping and loving and laughing and singing and not dead or in prison or drugged into oblivion. Because yes, we may be assaulted daily by the shadows of the past and the urges of our unmet longings and the compulsions the advertisers stir up in us, and yet still there remains that quiet tapping on the inner chamber of our hearts, that whisper of a voice that calls our name if get quiet enough to hear it.

Jesus himself offers us this example in this morning’s complex and rich passage from John. It’s one of the few times we hear something of Jesus’ inner thoughts. He knows that he is nearing his death and, in that death, the fulfilling of God’s purpose for him. Human as he is, he shows some reticence to accept death. But then he chooses actively to surrender himself to God’s will. That choice is not incidental. It is everything! Jesus has a choice. Like us, he has total freedom to walk away. Without that freedom, his obedience to God would be a puppet show, and his death and resurrection would mean nothing at all. His radical freedom—and ours—are the fountain from which the living waters of God’s love flow into our hearts. 

We might wonder how Jesus comes to be able to surrender himself to God’s purpose. The clue is in the voice from heaven. Each time that voice has echoes in the scriptures, it proclaims God’s love for Jesus, calling him the beloved child—first at his baptism and then at his transfiguration. By now it would see the mere echo of God’s voice in the thunder above him reminds Jesus of who and whose he is. And like the voice of a loving parent, God’s voice settles Jesus enough to choose once more the path of self-giving love.

This is the kind of obedience to which God calls us—not slavish or begrudging or tepid—but born from the sure knowledge that God loves us and wills for us our salvation and our healing. God desires nothing less than to drive the ruler of this world from our hearts and our lives, so that, like Jesus, we can lay down our lives for the world in radical and miraculous freedom. We can think of obedience as a chore, some kind of boring or difficult task that we know we need to do but would rather not. But the very fact that we can obey is itself God’s grace to us, the freedom of the children of God written on the flesh of our hearts.

I know that our lives are challenging. Often they’re boring, too. Sometimes they’re painful. And sometimes, hopefully more and more as we grow in Christ, our lives shine out with the radiance of God’s love and we hear in the thunder above us the reassurance that yes, we, too, are God’s beloved children. Our lives, in all their complexity, are God’s grace to us, and we can choose to see and celebrate and cultivate that grace, a freedom that is itself grace and opens the way to more grace. Because the more we learn to recognize God’s mercy to us, the more we come to see that everything, absolutely everything is grace. It is a miracle to be alive, my brothers and sisters. You are God’s miracle and God’s promise. 

Lent 5 A - March 26, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Aidan Owen OHC

The Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A - Sunday, March 26, 2023

 

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Romans 8:6-11

John 11:1-45

Click here for an audio of the sermon

In the name of the One God, who saves us and sets us free. Amen.

The summer between my second and third years of seminary, I spent two quiet weeks at the Monastery. I had just finished a ten-week CPE program at a New York hospice, and I was burned out. The guesthouse was closed at the time for the community’s summer vacation. Without air conditioning, the guestrooms were oppressively hot and humid, but I stayed on the ground floor in a room that had once been a chapel, ministered to by the cooling breeze off the river.

I spent nearly the whole of my first week in a rocking chair on the large cement porch overlooking the river, reading. I also slept a lot, seduced by the late afternoon heat. My days were largely solitary, except for the three Offices and two meals with the brothers. And an old and familiar loneliness crept up.

The second week I hardly read at all. Mostly I sat staring at the glint of the river slowly dragging itself first north and then south and then north again. I stared, not to memorize the landscape’s contours, but to situate my roaming mind and spirit against a gentle backdrop. The sway of the meadow’s golden swells lulled me into a reverie that was restful. I had become so used to all the glass and concrete of New York, that, all this space, and me the only person in it, seemed the essence of eternity.

During those hours sitting and staring into the wide-open space, I realized that my spirit and my body needed meadows and rivers and mountains and trees. I needed air and starlight. The dawning understanding that now was the time to enter the monastery came first into my body and did so as I found myself renewed and welcomed by the landscape.

Then, too, there were conversations with the community over meals and individually. Br. Andrew told me, in his lilting Scottish brogue, “You’re a monk. I don’t say that to everyone, and I’m never wrong.” He also told me he loved me, and I believed him. I could hardly sit alone with him without the unnamed longing for home and father and love welling in my eyes. Often as we talked I’d let the tears roll down the soft hills of my cheeks. Andrew wasn’t the least bit startled. He was so completely himself that, like the meadow and the river, he had space for me.

I had a similar sense of spaciousness when I ate with the community. They engaged me gently, leaving me a distance that could have seemed reticent in another context. I intuited that distance, though, to be a respectful acknowledgment of the fullness and the mystery of my humanity. It was as if the routine of hours marked by a bell, lived over a lifetime, opened you to an understanding of the true impenetrability even of your own heart and also to an unhurried spaciousness for disclosure and connection, an acknowledgement that not everything has to be told or asked all at once, that true knowledge of another, of God, of ourselves unfolds over years and decades.

One way to tell the story of how I became a monk is to say that the Monastery is the only place that had enough space for me. I didn’t want a good enough life. I wanted eternity. That summer, as I stared at the waving grass or talked quietly with the brothers, I wondered is this how Lazarus felt as his friends and neighbors slowly unwound the clothes that bound him, as he stepped from the cold damp of his tomb into the light and the air?

We don’t know, of course. The text builds and builds to its crescendo: “Lazarus, come out!” Then the gentle ebb: “Unbind him, and let him go.” And then the silence echoing out from the storm. We hear Jesus’ grief, Mary’s grief, Martha’s grief. We hear the wonder of the crowd, the beating of our own hearts in anticipation of the great arising out of the tomb. And then, silence and stillness.

When your bones have come back together, bone to its bone. When the breath of God once more buoys your chest. When the shroud is unwound and you are suddenly, miraculously set free from your grave clothes, what happens next?

Wonder, certainly. Awe, absolutely. Gratitude, of course. But also disorientation, disbelief, maybe even dismay and outrage. For those who have endured trauma or suffering, on whatever scale, it’s sometimes much harder to live than it would have been to sink into the rest of death. In fact, one of the documented features of trauma is a kind of survivor’s guilt. Those who have seen the grave from the inside and made it out again know that by any reasonable measure they should not be here.

It’s easy to say that we should feel gratitude and wonder at the ways God continually brings life out of death. And, yes, absolutely—our God is the wonder-worker, the one coming into the world every minute to save us and set us free. And also, when we’ve been shut up—sometimes for our entire lives—in the darkness of the tomb, the sun will burn our skin and eyes.

What I don’t usually tell folks, when they ask why I became a monk, is that, over the years the spaciousness of the meadow and the table have sometimes felt like a crucible. We are never fully ready for the life that really is life to come to us and make us whole and free. Because life burns away death, like the sun melts the frost. And to the extent that we are not fully alive, the breath of God filling our bodies once more, must crack the joints and free the blood.

Sometimes, we can only learn the silence, stillness, and emptiness we need for resurrection when wrapped in the darkness of the grave. Sometimes, when we’re groping in our shrouds and squinting in the dark wondering where or how God may be at work in our lives or in the world, it may be that, like Jesus waiting two more days for his beloved friend to fall asleep in the Lord, God is allowing us the spacious calm to prepare for the new life that awaits us. We aren’t ready until we’re ready. And often our hearts have to break to have enough room in them for the love and the life God intends for us.

Yet, even as we sometimes grope in the damp darkness of the grave, Jesus waits with tear-stained cheeks, like a mother in labor with her child. So let us not lose heart, even as we may groan and yearn and call out for God’s new life to be born in and through us. God is ever-faithful, and what may seem to us slowness or stopping may actually be God’s grace giving our eyes enough time to adjust to the light. Because God is good, and that is everything.

Lent 5 C - April 3, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Sevenksy, OHC

Lent 5 C - April 3, 2022

Isaiah 43:16-21

Philippians 3:4b-14

John 12:1-8

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

Last week we heard Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son, so called. It is a remarkably moving and profound reflection on the human condition, and it was so lovingly explored with us by Brother Aidan. But what does ‘prodigal’ mean? It wasn't until well into adulthood that I discovered that the word had more nuances of meaning then I realized. On the one hand of course, it refers to being recklessly wasteful or extravagant, such as in disposing of goods or money. And that is probably the meaning that most of us associate with the parable of the Lost Son that we heard last week. But there is a second, related meaning of prodigal understood as lavish in giving or yielding, generous, openhanded. It is this meaning that we need to hold in mind this morning as we listen to the gospel story of the anointing of Jesus.

We hear today of a woman, in this case Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, anointing Jesus in preparation for his burial. This story is, in one form or another, told in all four canonical gospels, though as usual John's gospel gives it a particular spin or emphasis. It is placed right at the outset of the beginning of the passion narrative, just six days before the Passover and Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, and death. And ready or not, we are catapulted into Passiontide. What makes this a prodigal act? Well obviously, the expense of the ointment. The gospel narrative tells us that it is worth 300 denarii or about a year's wages. Can that be true? And if it is true, we might find ourselves asking, with the disciples or (in John’s gospel with Judas) the question, “Why this waste? This ointment could have been sold and the money given to the poor.” It does seem, rationally speaking, to be a rather extravagant and over the top action. Yet Jesus immediately intervenes to stop any criticism of Mary. He says, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” Indeed, in the gospels of Matthew and Mark, Jesus goes on to say of her action: “…wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.” (Mark 14:9) Following the model of an Ignatian meditation, I'd like to share three points about this event and John’s take on it. First, and I regret that I need to say it, but it must be said: Jesus’ response to Mary’s critics, that the poor are always with us, is no excuse for not caring for those who are poor or in need. Jesus is here alluding to a passage from the book of Deuteronomy, and anybody in that circle would have known the whole quote and we should as well. Let me read it: “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.’” (15:11) There is a continuing obligation on our part to open our hands and our hearts to the poor. Our Lord’s saying this serves as a reminder to us all. This is part of the ordinary obligation of Christian living. But, let it also be said that amid ongoing obligations and ordinary life, extraordinary events can and do call out extraordinary responses from one or another of us. And Mary of Bethany was one who was called out. Second, the writer of John's gospel places this event not in the household of Simon of Bethany, as the do the authors of Matthew and Mark, but in the household of Jesus’ friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus. And unlike the woman in the other gospel accounts, this woman is not anonymous. She has a name, she has a family—though admittedly a rather nontraditional family—and she has a relationship with Jesus. Yes, we'd like to know more about all these family members, but what we do know is that they are people with a respected place in their community and culture, people with shared dreams and hopes, and people with complex and life-giving relationships with each other and with our Lord. They are friends of our Lord, and it is in the womb of their friendship that Jesus finds comfort and rest. I find it not only interesting but encouraging that this event, so tender and prophetic and yes, shocking, happens within the intimacy of discipleship understood as friendship and in a place where Jesus can find a home. Third, let’s be frank. This is a pretty wild act on Mary’s part, isn't it? And we're not just talking about the cost of the ointment, its value. There's also the issue of the hair. I'm not sure how the culture of Jesus’ day might have viewed the anointing of the head or feet of a man by a woman, especially in quasi-public setting, but I can't help but imagine that the wiping of the feet with her hair made some of the onlookers just a little bit nervous, kind of the way I get nervous when I see public displays of affection or intimacy. What got into her that she was moved to do this? There is of course something spontaneous about it. The gospel says that she bought the perfume or ointment so that she might keep it for the day of Jesus’ burial. But somehow, she recognized that this was the moment. Suddenly she realized that she needed to act without, I imagine, thinking too much about it or agonizing over it but just doing it, period. Her knowing was that kind of knowing where we realize only later the magnanimity and enormity and consequences of what we had done. Perhaps that's part of what falling in love is like. It's seldom moderate, at least at the outset. There's an insistence, and indeed even a madness, about it which gives it much of its meaning and lasting power. I think of the Friar Laurence in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet saying to Romeo as he awaits the arrival of his beloved: “Love moderately. Long love doth so.” Of course, as they meet, they throw themselves into each other’s arms, at least in the Zeffirelli movie version; they're having none of that. Their love is immoderate and spontaneous and ultimately tragic. But I wonder if falling in love with God doesn't elicit and need something of that immoderate character, that kind of energy and abandon where we're all in or we're not in at all. Two decades ago, we were blessed for seven years here at Holy Cross with the presence of Mary Klock, a Catholic Religious Sister of Mercy who shared in our life and taught many of us profound lessons in holy living. Mary was of strong Irish Catholic heritage and one day quoted a poem to me which captured my imagination. It was The Fool by Patrick Pearse. Pearse was an Irish political leader and revolutionary, one of the architects of the Easter Rebellion of 1916. Many see him as a patriot, others as a terrorist. That’s the inherent ambiguity of political revolution. In his poem Pearse urges us, as he urged the Irish people, to be all in. It's a dangerous poem, one which can be read as advocating violence. But at the heart of it, I believe, is also encouragement to live prodigally, with abandoned and with trust. I quote a portion: I have squandered the splendid years that the Lord God gave to my youth In attempting impossible things, deeming them alone worth the toil. Was it folly or grace? Not men shall judge me, but God. I have squandered the splendid years: Lord, if I had the years I would squander them over again, Aye, fling them from me! For this I have heard in my heart, that a man shall scatter, not hoard, Shall do the deed of to-day, nor take thought of to-morrow’s teen, Shall not bargain or huxter with God; or was it a jest of Christ’s And is this my sin before men, to have taken Him at His word? The lawyers have sat in council, the men with the keen, long faces, And said, `This man is a fool,’ and others have said, `He blasphemeth;’ And the wise have pitied the fool that hath striven to give a life In the world of time and space among the bulks of actual things, To a dream that was dreamed in the heart, and that only the heart could hold. O wise men, riddle me this: what if the dream come true?

What if the dream come true? What if, after all, the ointment was not wasted? What if the love was immoderate, even embarrassing, maybe even tragic? I am reminded of Mary Oliver’s question: “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” No matter how old we may be, that question lives.

This has been a season of prodigals: the Lost Son, prodigal in his wastefulness, and his father, prodigal yet more in his loving forgiveness and welcome. There is the prodigal Mary of Bethany, whose wildly spontaneous generosity filled her house with fragrance, covering over the odor of her brother Lazarus’ death even while preparing the Lord for his own entombment. And of course, there is the greatest prodigal of all, our wildly generous Lord Jesus Christ who gives himself freely for us and for our sake and out of love for us and out of all proportion. With this anointing, he begins his journey to the cross and it is to that cross to that we now turn our faces. This is the same Lord who teaches his disciples and us that there is no greater love than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends.

O, brothers and sisters, what a Friend we have in Jesus. Amen.

Lent 5 B - March 21, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC

Fifth Sunday in Lent  - Sunday, March 21, 2021

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Hebrews 5:5-10

John 12:20-33

Some of Christianity’s harshest critics accuse it of focusing too much on suffering, death, and the next life, destroying our capacity to enjoy this one. This isn’t totally wrong. A lot of fear and anxiety has been generated by the Church through the centuries, but it’s naïve to think that human beings are naturally content, or that suffering and death don’t make us anxious. No spirituality can pretend to be mature without grappling with the haunting questions of suffering and death. This was certainly raised for us this week with our brother Tom’s death.

Christianity does not apologize for the fact that within it, the most central of all mysteries is the Paschal Mystery, the mystery of suffering, death, and transformation. Christ is central, and central to Christ is his death and rising to new life so as to send us a new spirit. This is central but misunderstood and often ignored. We pay lip service but seldom try to understand what it means and how we might appropriate it within our own experience. Most human beings flourish on condition that they do not think of dying. We collude with one another in denying our mortality even in the midst of a pandemic. Spiritual teachers, including Benedict, are unanimous in telling us that freedom depends on overcoming our forgetfulness of death. Yet we fill our lives with preoccupations in order to not face death. We all have our drugs of choice in attaining this end. If we are free to look in the face of our death in the midst of life our energy can be released for trusting, hoping, and loving. In a state of denial, we postpone doing the unfinished business we need to do, thinking we have all the time in the world. When we give voice to the self that has the courage to break silence about death, it will change our life. Ultimately, I think our happiness depends on it.

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” These words of Jesus define the Paschal mystery. In order to come to fuller life and spirit we must constantly be letting go of present life and spirit. Grains of wheat must in a sense die to what they are if they are not to remain alone and fruitless. Humans must die to their love for their own lives, lest loving themselves above all else, they lose their lives and destroy themselves. Jesus both taught and illustrated this in his own life.

In our Gospel today, Jesus anticipating his death, says that his very soul is troubled, yet he does not ask to be spared, but sees in it the reason for his life. His surrender to God invites us to live in that precarious day to day dependence on God. This surrender is not the surrender of submission to an enemy, but the laying down of resistance to the One who loves infinitely more than we can imagine, the One who is more on our side than we are ourselves. 

Jeremiah’s prophesy of God’s new covenant is a harbinger for us of the good news of Jesus Christ. When the Babylonians razed the Temple and dragged King Zedekiah off in chains, the twin symbols of God’s covenantal fidelity were destroyed. Not only did the people lose power and prestige, freedom and security, they also lost the assurance of God’s faithfulness in the devastation of destruction. The prophet assures the exiled Israelites and us that our God will bring newness out of destruction and give hope where there was none. God offers us the means from within to be faithful by removing distinctions of class and privilege and writing on our heart the capacity for keeping the new covenant. With the Greek Gentile seekers who request to see Jesus, all will be drawn to him. In him we see the vulnerability of the God who meets us in our trials, ultimately liberating and redeeming us. 

This paradox of the cross is also on display in the Letter to the Hebrews which portrays Jesus and his redemptive work using the extended metaphor of the Jewish High Priest in the Yom Kippur liturgy. Jesus as high priest stands before God on behalf of humanity. His obedience in suffering leads to new life and makes him the source of salvation to those who trust in him. He stands with us not over us. He bears in his person all the cries, tears, and supplications of the people.

If we are to follow where he leads, it’s important to distinguish and choose between two kinds of death and life. There is terminal death and paschal death. The first ends life and all possibilities. The latter ends one kind of life and opens a person to receive a deeper richer form of life. The image of a grain of wheat falling into the ground and dying so as to produce new life is an image of paschal death. There is also resuscitated life and resurrected life. The first is when one is restored to one’s former life and health. The latter is not a restoration of one’s old life but the reception of a radically new life.

The Paschal mystery is about paschal death and resurrected life. It begins with suffering and death and moves on to the reception of new life and spirit. It is a process of transformation. Only after the old is grieved and let go of is the new spirit given. Jesus’ great Passover from death to life is our model, and we will soon to re-enact it liturgically from Holy Week to Pentecost. Death is marked on Good Friday, new life on Easter, grieving the old and adjusting to the new in the forty days of Easter, refusing to cling, letting go, and letting the old bless us on Ascension, and finally accepting new Spirit on Pentecost. 

We observe the paschal cycle liturgically once a year, but in fact it is a daily re-enactment since we experience many deaths in our lives. There’s the death of our youth, our wholeness, our dreams, our honeymoons, our health, our ideas of God, of monastic life, of the Church. Unless we mourn properly our hurts, our loses, life’s unfairness, our shattered dreams, and all the life we once had, we will live either in an unhealthy fantasy or an ever-intensifying bitterness. Grieving is key but unfortunately our tolerance for it is limited. It consists not only of letting go of the old, but of letting it bless us as well. It’s necessary to let our roots bless us whether they were healthy or not. We face many deaths daily and the choice is ours whether those deaths will be terminal----snuffing out life and spirit, or paschal---opening us to new life and new spirit. 

The essence of freedom is to act without fear to be who we truly are, knowing that is what is most pleasing to God, and knowing that our actions reflect what fills our hearts. Those who would see, serve, and follow Jesus will recognize him even in the weariness and worry of their paschal journey, letting go, trusting, and surrendering ourselves to the Spirit.

+Amen.

The Fifth Sunday in Lent - March 29, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Maximillian Esmus, n/OHC 

The Fifth Sunday in Lent - March 29, 2020 

Ezekiel 37:1-14
Romans 8:6-11

John 11:1-45

Click here for an audio version of this sermon. 

He’s back! Your brother is really returned! He stumbles toward you, tearing away his burial cloths. As the initial shock subsides, he catches your eye and gives a huge smile of delight and surprise. He throws open his arms and draws you and your sister into a joyful, if somewhat smelly, embrace. Your family, torn by illness, premature death, and grief, is once again restored. By God’s healing power, all has been made well.

Or so it seems for the moment. It’s worth recalling how the story continues. We left off hearing that many of the Judeans who witnessed this sign believed in Jesus. But in the very next verse we read that “some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what he had done.”¹

This raising of Lazarus, Jesus’s ultimate act of healing, proof that God’s life-giving power reaches even beyond the grave, is, for the religious authorities of Jerusalem, the very last straw. In short order, a council of hand-wringing Pharisees is called, a price is placed on Jesus’s head, and the deadly machinery of betrayal, indictment, and crucifixion is set in motion. The council also makes a plot to kill the now famous Lazarus. They’ll do anything to halt the ongoing spread of Jesus’s ministry and message.

They thought to themselves, “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.”² The Pharisees likely were not wrong in this calculation; oppressive imperial regimes tend not to favor large-scale popular movements such as the crowds following Jesus. In all honesty, if I, like the Pharisees, were faced with the potential destruction of everything I hold dear, my home, my livelihood, and my most cherished religious practice, would I act any differently? Would I really hear with the ear of faith, and discern the word of God in Jesus and follow him? Or would I, too, be busy plotting a strategy for my own survival? I don’t know.

These readings bring up for me the fundamental question of faith: What does it mean to be faithful? To be faithful is to follow where God calls, and to do as the Lord commands, as best as I can discern it in this present moment. Faith is the abolishment of fear. Not abolishment in the sense of the denial or elimination of fearful feelings, but the choice to let God alone be the guide of my actions, not my felt needs or wants or doubts.

We have an example of faithfulness in Ezekiel. God challenges him, “Can these bones live?” and he gives an endearingly tepid response: “O Lord, you know…” Not exactly a electrifying statement of faith. Ezekiel seems not quite ready, at the intellectual level to say “yes” to the impossible, but his true faithfulness lies in the fact that he spoke God’s word to those bones anyway. Imagine how silly it would feel, prophesying to the inanimate; that is, until they actually start to come alive. Imagine announcing to an exiled people their impending restoration, when no evidence of any such thing is forthcoming. As impossible as it might have seemed, Ezekiel spoke the prophecy.

Turning back to the start of the Gospel, we have an example of faith in Thomas the disciple, who said, “let us go and die with him.” He doesn’t seem swelling with hopeful belief here. Yet it doesn’t matter – he went, and got the others to follow.

Examine the faithfulness of Mary, and of Martha, who, when told her brother will live again, mutters, well yes, there is the resurrection at the end of time. It’s relatively easy to believe in a distant, far off vision. But today? Here? Jesus says, “Yes, right here and right now. The resurrection and the life is standing here talking with you. Do you believe that my followers will have life?” Again, she gives a kind of sideways answer: “Yes, I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God.” She stops short of expressing hope in seeing her brother again. The sisters do not doubt Jesus’s power, but remain wedded to the quite true fact that no life can reenter a body which is already stinking from the processes of nature.

At least, those are their expressed beliefs. But look at the sisters’ actions: Mary does lead Jesus to Lazarus’ tomb. And despite her complaint about the stench, Martha does have the stone removed. They cooperate with Christ’s saving acts anyway.

And look at the faithfulness of Jesus himself. His heavenly Father intends him to reveal God’s glory, and Jesus lets nothing get in the way of letting God guide his actions to this end. Let’s go back to the beginning to the story. Why do you suppose, after hearing of Lazarus’s illness, Jesus stayed two days longer where he was? He could have gone right away in secret and ministered to him. He actually tells us plainly why he delayed: That God’s glory might be revealed. Waiting two more days allowed time for word of the death to spread throughout Judea, time for a large number to travel from Jerusalem to Bethany to offer their condolences. I think Jesus paused to ensure that the maximum number of people would be there to witness his ultimate sign.

Jesus must have known that the crowd would include people who would report him to the authorities, that this act would greatly increase his notoriety and hasten his death sentence. He also must have known that before long, Lazarus would become a target as well, and grief would once again visit upon this beloved family of Bethany. Jesus knows that their lives, like the lives of all his disciples, will be marked by pain and trial. So he weeps with them, and for them. How easy it would have been to turn aside in order to preserve his life, in order to avoid endangering the earthly lives of his disciples! But no. Nothing would dissuade him from acting in complete faithfulness to his call to speak God’s Word to Lazarus, to his sisters, and to the crowds.

Faithfulness is about the choices we make. Belief, in terms of intellectual beliefs or even gut intuitions, may or may not be present at the moment faith is called for. I’m learning that those sorts of felt certainties are a rare gift from God which, in any case, I am ready to receive only after I’ve made the choice to act in faith.

I, for instance, feel no certainty at all that everything will work out to God’s greater purpose in this viral epidemic. I cannot at present see how God is going to bring new life out of this experience of disease, which is ravaging bodies, ravaging families, and in the necessary steps taken to reduce its spread, ravaging our economy, leaving many wondering how they will make ends meet in the coming months. I, sometimes, can accept the world as it is as part of the gift of life. And sometimes, I struggle to understand how a world that features deadly viruses, cancers, and a host of natural disasters, is the same world that God created and called “very good.” My capacity to articulate belief stops short of saying, “all shall be well.” I just don’t know.

I think God is teaching me, in today’s lessons, not to be overly concerned that I do not feel God’s presence, that I cannot see how God is working, or that I cannot make myself believe in seemingly impossible outcomes. My lack of understanding God’s ways does not preclude me from faith. Faith means choosing to act in a way that demonstrates trust in God. To act under the assumption that God loves me more than I could possibly know or feel.

Faithfulness means not waiting for God to take away all my fears and set the conditions just right before I agree to respond to his call. Faithfulness means discerning and doing God’s will while experiencing fear and doubt. And upon doing it, faith means not clinging to the outcomes of my efforts. Our model in this is Jesus himself, whose efforts to inaugurate the Reign of God, when judged by human standards, ended in utter failure. We are called to the kind of poverty of spirit that commends into God’s hands the fruits – or lack of fruits – of every work, grasping at nothing.

So my prayer today is not for the right mental states or for the comfort of emotional security. I pray for the grace to love what God commands and to do it. I pray we all may have the strength to discern what is the will of God, and respond accordingly. Where does this strength come from? From love, the love of Christ that dwells in you by the power of the Spirit. Richard Rohr put it this way:

"Love has you. Love is you. Remember that you already are what you are seeking. Any fear ‘that your lack of fidelity could cancel God’s fidelity, is absurd.’ Love has finally overcome fear.”³ 

Grounded in love, may we answer God’s call, the same call given Ezekiel: to speak forth God’s holy Word to one another, inviting the Holy Spirit to come enflesh our dry bones and breathe new life into our world.

---

1. John 11:46
2. John 11:48
3. Richard Rohr, "Love is Stronger Than Death," Friday, March 27, 2020

Fifth Sunday in Lent - Sunday, April 7, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. John Forbis, OHC
Fifth Sunday in Lent - Sunday, April 7, 2019

Isaiah 43:16-21
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

It’s Lent 5, the last Sunday of Lent, and now the Cross is beginning to cast its shadow even as far as two miles over one house in Bethany.  However, considering there’s a death warrant out, not only for Jesus but Lazarus as well, two miles isn’t that far, and tensions are high.

There sit the two condemned to death side by side feasting at the table.  Martha is working, of course.  Judas, agitated, isolated, alone and barely able to conceal the fact that he is betraying Jesus to the Jewish authorities, watches Mary at Jesus’ feet again. 

Only this time, Mary’s not just listening.  She’s bathing his feet.  A fragrance from a rare aromatic plant from the Himalayas used by ancient sages for worship curls through the room like it is worth all the 300 denarii it cost.  That amount equals a laborer’s yearly wage, an outrage and obscene display.
 
Furthermore, Mary, one of the women of the house, insults herself taking on the role of a servant girl, a slave or something more lascivious.  She bundles in her hands her hair like supple broom and wipes Jesus’ feet. Paul calls this part of a woman’s body the most glorious.

How could Jesus just take this all in and succumb to such a seduction? 

John calls Judas a thief and discounts his verbal protest as a veil for greed.  Judas has been stealing from the common purse who knows how long.  He is the betrayer, but fear can so overwhelm someone that he is led to actions that even betray himself. 

Judas is so confused and baffled about Jesus, he is blind to anything beyond his own survival.  But can any of us be exempt from such a liability?  Besides, at least some of the disciples could be harboring some of the same thoughts; at least, Judas has the audacity to say them. 
 
But why does Jesus open himself to this lavish, sensual touch?  Because the shadow is darker and more enveloping for him than anyone else in the room.  He also knows just how much darker that shadow will get.  So does Judas, and so does Mary, it seems. 

But here he doesn’t have to teach, heal, perform miracles or do anything.  This is the rare time in his life where all he has to do is to receive what Martha, Mary and Lazarus give best.  Even now they are doing what comes so naturally for them. 

Mary’s spice counteracts the stench of death of which Martha was afraid Lazarus would reek upon opening his tomb.  Jesus is so affected by her gesture that it compels him to perform the same devotion to his disciples just a few days later.  If Judas were with them, he would wash Judas’s feet as well.  Mary teaches Jesus and Judas more than anyone thought was possible.

But then, the shadow sends everyone inside the house back remembering the stories of the instrument of torture they heard about since they were children.  Can Judas or any of the disciples face such a destiny for themselves or for their teacher?  Does it all end there?

Isaiah’s words echo for all of them now, “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.” 

In this house in Bethany, Jesus lives as he dies.  He is being prepared for the burial into the hearts of a man awakened by a new wind and who was possibly the first recipient of this ointment and two sisters who do only what they know to do – attend to him in their own unique characteristic ways.

Imagine offering Mary’s human, physical touch to Jesus, Martha’s intimate meal before his anguish and death, and Lazarus’s unbreakable bond with him.  We can. 

There are probably some of us here who do, and others who have some sense of a desire to do so.  Then, there might be others of us who are afraid to do so.  The poor are always with us.  We are surrounded by the instruments of daily grinding torture meted out to those who couldn’t possibly dream of having a home or washing Jesus’ feet even with water.  There is the laborer who’s yearly wage is barely or sometimes not enough to keep her or her children properly clothed, fed and in good health.

There is Judas, the disciples, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, another condemned man.  There are Jesus’ accusers, the crowds who cry out, “Crucify him!”, the High Priests and Scribes, Pontius Pilate and the Roman soldiers who mocked and beat him mercilessly.  There’s Barabbas and the thieves suffering the same agonies on both sides of Jesus.  They are among us and some even within us.
 
Yes, we will always have the poor, but does it all end with a burial?  Not with Mary, Martha and Lazarus’s celebration of life amidst so much loss and death.

The shadow that is cast on all of them and us is just cruciform – no sign of any body.  And it will soon be without one again along with an empty tomb in a remote garden left with only linen wrappings and a cloth that was on his head.  Another woman will be the first to see him after his burial and fall at his feet as well.

It is all so new, so terrifying, so heartbreaking, confusing and misunderstood.  It’s tactile and fragrant and takes our breath away while giving us new life in return. It is the opportunity to give and receive love extravagantly even to and from those who spurn it. and then wince at how pungent that love is filling our hearts with Christ.

Fifth Sunday in Lent -Year B: March 18, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br.  Scott Borden, OHC

Fifth Sunday in Lent Year B- Sunday, March 18, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br.  Scott Borden, OHC

As Lent progresses we are called to turn our thinking from repentance, our work at the start of Lent, to focus on Jerusalem – specifically on Jesus' journey to Jerusalem. Today's scripture readings are clearly part of that shift.

The shift is not just a call to think literally about the city of Jerusalem and the pending crucifixion. Embedded within the shift is a call to change the way we think about God.

We start in Jeremiah... "I will make a new covenant... I will write it in their hearts... I will forgive their sins and remember them no more." Long before Jesus, Jeremiah is already telling us that God is changing the relationship. The new relationship is built on loving forgiveness. But the call is more urgent in Jesus time. Jesus is the embodiment of the new covenant that Jeremiah is talking about and crucifixion is, in some way, the sealing of that covenant.

It's also worth noting that when Jeremiah speaks of "they" and "them" – he is talking about "we" and "us"... we are the beneficiaries of grace, of salvation. This dreadful walk that Jesus is making is, after all, for us.

John's telling of the Gospel brings us up to date on events just before the Crucifixion. A crowd is assembling for the festival – that would be the Passover Festival – when faithful Jews remember the release from slavery in Egypt, the story told in Exodus.

Jeremiah is telling us about a new covenant of forgiveness – of freedom from bondage to sin. And John is telling us about events taking place during the ancient festival that celebrates the freedom of Jews from bondage in Egypt. A new relationship with God is in the midst of these stories.

Clearly as we journey with Jesus through the events we know are coming, the underlying message is one of freedom and release rather than one of sorrow and remorse.

John's narration begins with some Greeks... we don't know much about them, how many they were, who they were. These details are, apparently, not important. What they do tell us is that this Jesus Movement has outgrown its roots in Judaism. Before we get comfortable with that, I think we have to consider that this Jesus Movement may be outgrowing much of today's Christian thinking. But that’s a different sermon for another day...

The narration seems a bit clumsy. The Greeks find Phillip and tell him they want to meet Jesus. Philip doesn't take them to Jesus but instead goes to find Andrew... and then Andrew and Phillip go to find Jesus and tell him. What do they tell Jesus? We don't really know, but it's probably along the lines of "Hey Jesus... there are some Greek folks here who want to meet you."

Jesus gives an answer that is, to say the least, a non-sequitur. "The time has come", he says, "for the Son of Man to be glorified." What has this got to do with some Greeks who just wanted to say hi... We get no help on that because Jesus continues with a discussion of death, seeds, fruit, and eternal life.

"Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." By now our Greek chorus is probably saying "OK, we're just going be going ..." But Jesus isn't done. "Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor."

Jesus gives some clear clues that sorrowful times are at hand and then seems to tell God what to do: "Glorify your name."

And God answers... "I have glorified it and I will glorify it again." Part of me wants to hear God saying "Jesus – don't tell me what to do..." Part of me wants to hear a threat – "I will Glorify my name and then we'll see how you like it..." Apparently, much of the crowd can't even recognize the voice of God – they hear thunder.

Jesus clarifies that God is speaking for our benefit, not his. How much we are like that crowd? How many times does God speak and we only hear thunder? Or something... anything but the voice of God. How often do dismiss the voice of God as something else? That is a humbling thought.

Jesus goes on: "Now is the time of judgment! Now the rulers of this world will be driven out! I will draw all people to myself."

The situation feels ominous, perhaps even dangerous. Thunderclaps from God precede a tirade from Jesus. But if you focus on Jesus' words and ignore the thunder, we could understand Jesus to say he will embrace all of us – draw us all to himself. He will wrap his arms around all of us and draw us close in a wonderful and loving embrace.

That is sandwiched in between "I will be lifted up" and "Jesus said this to indicate what type of death he would have." As we turn toward Jerusalem it's hard not to think about crucifixion. John seems to be underscoring that thought. But if we remove the bread from the sandwich, we have a message of love from Jesus – all of us will be drawn in. How inclusive. How expansive.

People who know me know I love my qualifiers. One of the first things you learn in broadcast journalism is that qualifiers make just about any sentence true. "Human beings have landed on Marz" is obviously false. But "according to some folks, human beings have landed on Marz" can be true. You have to love those qualified statements...

But Jesus puts no qualifiers in his statement. I will draw all "faithful" to myself... I will draw all "right thinking" or "right living" people to myself... I will draw all Episcopalians to myself... All monastics... No. There is no qualifier. I will draw all people...

Jeremiah tells us that God will be written in our hearts – not in our minds. And Jesus tells us about a pending embrace when we all get drawn in. This is a radical shift in the way people have been accustomed to relating to God. Gone is the God who punishes our sins. Gone is the angry God. Gone is the God who favors our tribe and destroys the others... Faithful people for generations have known God by studying the law. Now they must look to their hearts. This is still very much our struggle.

John gives us this discussion by Jesus of seeds falling into the ground and dying, only to rise again. Certainly, part of what John is telling us is about the near-at-hand death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. But if that was the only story John wanted to tell, he certainly could have been more direct.

I think John wants us to hear a larger context. Death and resurrection is not only about Jesus. It's about all of us. Our understanding of God must die in order for a new understanding, a new way of knowing God to take its place. Our ways of living and ordering our lives and culture must die in order for a more Jesus-oriented life to come into being. Ultimately, we must die in order that we can be free of death – death being our attachment to things of this world. This is the Glory of God.

We live in a culture that fears death. And not just death, we fear aging in any way. Plastic surgeons are among the best paid medical professionals in our society. We can, at great cost, create the illusion of eternal youth, but it is a lie. The message in this morning's Gospel is that rather than denying death, we must embrace it. This is surely not an invitation to suicide or murder... it is a spiritual call. In our understanding death is not the final word. It is the thing that comes before resurrection.

As Lent gives way to Holy Week and Easter the question we can ponder is how can we die? What of my own attachments can get nailed to the cross with Jesus? What pieces of myself can I toss into the tomb? Can I kindle a bonfire of my own vanities at the Easter Vigil? What space can I clear for resurrection to fill? What seeds can I drop into the ground? And what might spring up from them?

Faith is trusting in things not seen.

There is an old hymn which we generally think of as a Christmas song – Jesus Christ the Apple Tree. The text uses the image of an apple tree for the resurrected Jesus. And I want to call a bit of to mind partly because Advent and Lent, Christmas and Easter, must always be bound together and also because I think it has some special use in the last part of Lent:

This beauty doth all things excel. By faith I know, but ne're can tell

The beauty which I now can see in Jesus Christ, the Apple Tree.

For happiness I long have sought and pleasure dearly I have bought.

I miss'd for all, but now I see tis found in Christ, the Apple Tree.

I'll sit and eat this truth divine. It cheers my soul like spiritual wine.

And now this fruit is sweet to me that grows on Christ the Apple Tree.