The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost B - July 14, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Clay Wackerman

The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, July 14, 2024

• Amos 7:7-15
• Ephesians 1:3-14
• Mark 6:14-29

 Click here for an audio of the sermon

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

It's been nearly nine months since I arrived here at Holy Cross Monastery, and my gratitude for the experience extends deeper and wider than any ten-minute sermon can convey. I knew that I would have the opportunity to preach at some point, and for the past month, I have thought with great anticipation (and some anxiety) about what to say during my debut at the ambo. Brother Josep, my formator, encouraged me to incorporate some reflections on my time here.

When I opened the lectionary to today's gospel, I knew it would be a challenging task. I'm happy to report that there has been very little overlap between the beheading of John the Baptist and my internship at Holy Cross. I've witnessed no imprisonments, no executions, no lewd dancing in the refectory. Indeed it's been a rather pleasant time.

But when I look at the violence depicted in this text and the beauty I have witnessed here, the contrast gives me pause. I often ask

·.,-myself: how can such beauty and such violence exist in the same world? Is it possible to divide our attention between them without becoming utterly divided ourselves? The persistent duality is almost too much for one heart to bear, which is why I considered avoiding the tension altogether as I crafted this sermon. When I brought up the difficulty of this passage in a conversation with Br. Robert Leo, he assured me: don't lose your head over it.

So here I am today-head firmly attached-committed to working through this complex topic. On the surface, today's gospel reading is a gruesome one. It is the story of King Herod, who is a man of great power, yet seemingly powerless to the temptations around him. He makes a lofty promise to a dancing girl at a lavish banquet.

When she asks for the head of John the Baptist, he is too proud, too afraid to deny her. The consequences of his fear are tragic, and indeed violent.

The depiction of John's severed head in this passage reminded me of something I had seen last year when I worked as an English teacher in Thailand. I was volunteering at an art camp for elementary school children and I was tasked with supervising one of the activities. We supplied the students with paper and crayons and asked them to draw representations of their emotions. I strolled around the room, surveying the students' progress. For some students, happiness was a green field. For others, a clear sky. Another student sketched a meadow brimming with flowers. One student had drawn a severed head. He sat there very calmly, pressing the red marker into the page. I went to check on him, and he showed me his picture-a portrait of anger. I wish I could have asked this shy boy more about his

drawing-where had he seen this before? Were things OK at home?-but he was reluctant to elaborate, and in any event, my Thai language skills were not advanced enough to have such a discussion. Soon, it was time to share, and the students all gathered around in a circle with their pictures. It was jarring to behold: the ring of beautiful blues and greens broken by a single blood-red page.

As we discussed the drawings, I wished this one student had drawn something more agreeable. Perhaps the session would have gone more smoothly had he chosen to depict something like joy or wonder or peace, or if he had stayed home altogether. Fortunately, the other group leaders were able to address the tension. What happens when we have big, scary feelings? What can we do to manage them?

The students began to discuss their experiences, sharing what made them sad or afraid or angry, and what they could do when these feelings emerged. The conversation deepened, and despite the increasing gravity of the subject matter, the atmosphere of the room seemed to lighten, no longer burdened by the obligations of joy, positivity, or beauty. We started into the depths of the human heart in all its intractable messiness. That one child's violent drawing, which at first seemed to me an obstacle to the group connection was in fact a signpost directing to a different kind of unity, one more fraught, more intimate, more true.

It is this very truth that lies at the core of the Christian tradition-the truth that wounds are not just painful blemishes, but portals to deeper understanding. We have a tendency to cover them up in hopes of maintaining the appearance of beauty. Christ himself never advised this cosmetic approach. There is something beautiful about our image of Christ, a man often depicted as radiant with virtue, his thoughts so holy that they seem to shimmer upon his skin.

And yet this beauty comes to light only through his engagement with the profound horrors surrounding him-the devil, demoniacs, draconian rulers (oh my!). He was a man who walked the razor-thin line between the world's beauty and the world's violence, and he is calling us to follow in tow. He considered both the lilies and the lepers, the calm waters and the storm-wracked seas. His glory on Mount Tabor and his suffering on the cross are both crucial to his story, and they are crucial to ours, too.

To have a Christian attitude toward violence, one cannot shy away from it. We cannot force the discord to resolve into harmony or muffle it into silence. We must listen to it; we must arrange our lives around it. When I think back to that art camp in Thailand, I can see now that my desire to remove the child's violent drawing from the circle was itself a kind of violence. I had wanted things to go well. I'd wanted all the students to be happy. I'd wanted all their art to be beautiful. But animating all this hope was a dark paradox: the idea that beauty can exist without violence can be the very cause of violence itself. We want our gardens to be pretty, so we eliminate the weeds.

We want our homes to be clean, so we exterminate the insects. These are common practices. As history will tell us, the violence only compounds when we apply the same logic at the level of a community, a nation, or a race. This impulse is disastrous, and unfortunately enduring.

Throughout my time here, there have been several crises unfolding in the distance: the famine in Sudan, the civil war in Myanmar, and the persistent catastrophe in Gaza. During mass and chapter meetings here, we often offer intercessions for those afflicted by these tragedies. It is our way of acknowledging the severed head in the room. The life at Holy Cross Monastery is a life of abundance, but it is also a life of awareness. We know we cannot rid the world of violence, but we can at least remind the world that not all life is governed by it. Over the past nine months, I've talked to hundreds of guests about their relationship to this place. Invariably, they will tell me how much they appreciate the peace, the quiet, the hospitality, the food, the beauty, the people. And invariably, I will agree. A place like this is rare.

Many come here hoping to escape some of the stress of their daily lives, and many will find that escape. But to me, this place offers much more than escape; rather, it is an invitation to encounter the suffering of life deeply, and differently. This place does not promise to eliminate the suffering from your life, but I can promise you it will provide you with a new perspective on it, a view that includes the violence alongside the trees, the river, the meadow, the silence, and the cross.

Although violence may persist in beautiful places, so too does beauty persist in places beset by violence. For the past several months, I've been following the journalist Bisan Odwa on Instagram as she documents her experience of the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. Among the footage of hospital bombings and displacement camps, she dedicates one video to her favorite flower, the Palestinian poppy, its red petals splayed like rubies amid the rubble. The clip is profoundly moving; after all the chaos she has recorded, she takes the time to introduce her viewers to this coin-sized blossom as if to say: this too is worth noticing. Scholars speculate this flower, also known as anemone coronaria, is the very flower Christ himself referred to during the Sermon on the Mount. Those fields of destruction and the fields of the lilies are the same fields. Consider them.

To know Christ is to know that in a room full of beautifully drawn flowers, there will always be at least one severed head. And in a room of severed heads, there will always be at least one flower. To know Christ is to know these two beautiful, violent truths. To know Christ is to know you are capable, through faith, of holding them both-one in each hand.

Proper 10 A - July 16, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

Proper 10, Year A - Sunday, July 16, 2023

 

Isaiah 55:10-13
Romans 8:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

 

 

Click here for an audio of the sermon

The Parable of the Sower, also known as the Parable of the Soils, is one of few parables to feature in all three synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke).

The purpose of a parable is “to tease the mind into active thought” (C.H. Dodd). And it’s OK to have several possible interpretations, even if they do not necessarily agree with one another.

So it’s a little bit of a let down that the gospelers felt compelled to give us an interpretation. Whether the interpretation was spoken by Jesus in his own time is a hotly debated issue.

Once an interpretation is authorized by no less than the Son of God, it is difficult to let our imagination come up with a variety of interpretations.

But bear with me. I will venture one few imagined interpretations anyway.

Jesus’s telling of the parable is sandwiched between the admonition to “Listen!” (3b) and the admonition “Let anyone with ears listen” (9). So we are invited to really pay attention to the possibilities of the text.

There are three potential areas of attention in this parable. Each one is rich in interpretive possibilities; the Sower, the Four Soils, the Miraculous Harvest.

First, let’s focus on the Sower. In first century Palestine, the soil was not cultivated prior to seeding. The sower cast the seed everywhere without prejudging where it would flourish. And then he plowed the field afterward to make the seed penetrate the soil. Then you had to trust God would provide the rain and wait for growth.

The next possible area of attention are the Four Soils.
- There is the hardened soil of the path,
- the shallow soil with lots of rocks right underneath (sounds like the Hudson Valley to me),
- the thorny or weedy soil,
- and the good soil.

The third area of attention in this parable is the Miraculous Yield. A reasonable cereal yield is to get four to five, maybe seven times as much grain as was sown. Jesus speaks of a thirtyfold to hundredfold yield. That kind of yield would truly be miraculous and would guarantee a super bumper crop no matter how many seeds did not come to that.

Our Sower sows with abandon, without prejudging the results. Is our Sower God or the Son of Man. His kind of sowing reminds me of Jesus saying earlier in the same gospel according to Matthew that
“[the Father] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:45)

Now, are we the seed expected to sprout, grow and bear fruit? If so, we are in less of a predicament than the seed in the parable. Compared to seeds we have options. We can sometimes change some of our conditions, or move where conditions will lead us to flourish. Fate is more malleable for humans than for seeds.

And do the four soils represent chapters of our own lives?
Have we at times not been so hardened that it was difficult to let the good news touch us?
Have we never been so troubled by adversity that we couldn’t focus on the good news?
Have the appeal of success, esteem, romance and riches lured us away from our spiritual foundations?

I do not believe we are predestined to be one or the other type of soil once and for all. God has given us agency. We can awaken and evolve. That’s part of what you are here for this morning. Letting the good news in and growing with it.

But maybe, the parable is not about us individually. Maybe it isn’t about who we are, and where we are at in our spiritual journey. Maybe this is not a call to introspection: what kind of soil am I now? Maybe this is not about our conversion of heart or metanoia.

Could it be that this parable is about more good news than most of us are ready for?
Not everyone will yield fruit thirty, sixty or hundredfold. But if enough good soil is found for the seed, this miraculous yield will more than make up for the seed that did not flourish.

Maybe the Sower isn’t so foolish after all to sow everywhere. If even a few seeds grow to this amazing fruition, the harvest will be plentiful. And if this about the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom will be available to all regardless of their yield or lack of it.

That sounds like the infinitely merciful and loving God I am in love with.

It may also be that Jesus isn’t just telling this parable.

He says it’s about rejecting or receiving the word about the kingdom of heaven. It may be that he is living this parable as he tells it.

After all, crowds welcomed his signs and his message. But few persevered in the face of adversity.

Yet, from those very few, multitudes grew to know Him. Multitudes have come to believe his message of redeeming love through the centuries. Many embody this message of love in how they live. And their lives touch many more.

They yield thirtyfold, sixtyfold and a hundredfold and they may not even come to know of it during their earthly lives. So let us not worry about what kind of seed we are. Let’s focus on spreading God’s Love.


For us to grow into fruitful disciples of Jesus, we must listen, understand, properly attend to His message, and doggedly persevere in the love of God and neighbor.

And rejection of Jesus’ message by many need not stop us coming to fruition. Encountering rejection of God’s loving message does not mean the message is wrong, or that our efforts at broadcasting it is folly. Look at the lives and deaths of Jesus and his apostles.

It simply is a fact of life, not everyone will take in the message and flourish with it. But some will. And by God’s grace, flourish beautifully and plenteously, they will.

The kingdom of heaven is like a bountiful crop produced in spite of what seem to be overwhelming setbacks.
Do trust in God’s abundance.

You are the instruments of God’s Love in the world. Do consent to God’s presence and action within you. And trust that God is crafting redemption through you, whether you know it or not.

A bountiful harvest will result from your spreading his Love broadly in the world. We don’t need to figure out, and anticipate how it will happen. We don’t need to be selective about where the Love is poured out.

We need to love God and neighbor. Let’s start with that.

Amen.

Feast of Saint Benedict - July 11, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Magliula, OHC

Feast of St Benedict - Sunday, July 11, 2021

Proverbs 2:1-10

Philippians 2:12-16

Luke 17:27-33 

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

Historical facts about Benedict are limited. It’s his Rule which tells us about him and his priorities. He crafted it out of his own long experience and drawing from an already well-established stream of wisdom that came out of the deserts of Egypt and Syria. His Rule offers more a way of life than a set of regulations. There is no systematic theology, but a logic of daily life lived in Christ in community. He’s concerned with a whole and holy life: what it's about, what it demands, how to live it well. He shaped the Rule into a massive, stable container, which has been the foundation of Christian monasticism and monastic practice in the West for over 1,500 years. Although written for monastics in community, its wisdom applies to all humans in community. The more I study the Rule and try to live it, the greater my appreciation of the genius and experience of this man.

In the turbulent and brutal times of the 5th century, Benedict knew the shortness of life. To get the most out of it, he calls us to live it in the now. For Benedict, the spiritual life is not a collection of spiritual practices but a way of being in the world that is open to God and others. He warns us about going through life only half conscious or intent on being some place other than where we are. He exhorts us to open our eyes and see things as they exist around us and in us. See what enriches and what does not, what is of God and what is not. To live well with others is to live in God with our eye and ear to the Gospel. We are so often trapped in the past, angry at what formed us, or fixated on a future that is free from pain and under our control. God is in our present, he tells us, waiting for us now. 

Benedict knew human nature enough to know that people can't be bullied into growth. No one grows by simply doing what someone else forces them to do. He describes the monastic community as a workshop. Most of the 72 tools listed in Chapter 4 of the Rule have to do with the virtues necessary to maintain stability as the context for growth. Benedict envisions wholeness and holiness as a set of habits. For him, holiness is inseparable from the common life. The product of the workshop is people who are present. People who have the skills to diagnose everything inside them that prompts them to escape from themselves and others in the here and now. Monastic life offers a discipline for being where we are, rather than taking refuge in the smallness of our fantasies. Monastic life lived well should wean us off self-serving fictions. These tools of good works are simply tools for becoming fully human. 

At the end of Chapter 4 he says that the workshop is the stability of the community. The promise to live in stability is the most drastic way imaginable of recognizing the otherness of others. A great deal of our politics, our ecclesiastical life, and our personal life is dominated by the assumption that everything would be alright if only some people would go away.  In asking what it takes to develop people who can live stably together, Benedict maps out an environment where long term contact will not breed bitterness, cynicism, and fear of openness. He knew that no human community, including a monastery, is immune to disagreements and power struggles. Benedict wants his community to be an environment of transparency, peace, and accountability. The heart of the challenge is how do we live with otherness honestly, peacefully, and responsibly. 

In or out of a monastery, if one is to thrive in relationship, they must be transparent, at peace, and accountable. To become transparent, we must first confront the uncomfortable fact that we are not naturally and instantly at peace with everyone. In our vow as monks, we promise that we will not hide from each other and that there will be times we will help each other to not hide from ourselves. Without that promise, the ego’s agenda will reign. 

We  alsodepend on one another to tell the truth. Benedict advises that we open our heart to a spiritual elder so that the chains of fantasy and self-understanding that are primarily self-serving can be short circuited before they take over. It’s crucial to expose rather than to become enthralled by them. It’s about understanding the truth of our mortal, fallible nature. 

Because we need to know that the basis of a shared life is not a matter of constant and insecure negotiation with others. Benedict emphasizes peace and warns not to give what he calls “a false peace.” This is failing to face conflict, to admit the brokenness of our togetherness by making little of it, ignoring it, denying it, or seeking a resolution that makes one feel secure without healing the breach. He links the risks of false peace with warnings about anger and resentment, recognizing that they can coexist with and reinforce a refusal to name conflict. Anything we practice, we become better at. If we practice anger, we’ll have more anger. If we practice fear, we’ll have more fear. If we practice peace, we will have more peace. Change occurs by noticing what’s no longer working and stepping out of familiar, imprisoning patterns. Agitation drives out peace and consciousness of God. When we are driven by agitation, consumed by fretting, we become immersed in our own agenda which is always distorted and exaggerated. Seeking God and our own wholeness demands a degree of inner and outer peace.

We also need to be accountable, to know who is responsible for what and how that responsibility works. The only status that matters in the monastery is that of seniority---how long a monk has practiced stability. But seniority is not the only ground for insight. To discern how to draw on the depth of experience and how to avoid that experience just becoming self-confirming and self-perpetuating over the years, Benedict advocates mutual obedience. Novice and senior are obeying one another if they are attending to one another with habits that shape their lives by listening, attention, and the willingness to take seriously the perspective of the other.

Like all Christians, the follower of Benedict, struggles to live honestly and openly, with their inner life manifest to those to whom they have promised fidelity, making peace by addressing the roots of conflict within themselves and the community, and contributing their distinctive gifts to create hope. An obligation to human community and a dependence on God are the cornerstones of life according to Benedict. Today we ask our holy Father Benedict to increase in us the desire and passion for both. 

+Amen.

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 10A - July 12, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Josép Martinez-Cubero, OHC

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost - Proper 10 A - July 12,.2020

Isaiah 55:10-13
Romans 8:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

For us U.S. Americans the world seems to be falling apart these days before our very eyes. We’re not used to that. In reality, so many of us are so privileged and so used to being comfortable that our current situation feels like the world is coming to an end, our world, that is, the one that revolves around us. 

It is hard for us U.S. Americans to grasp how much suffering there really is in so much of the rest of the world. Oh yes, many of us are good people. We feel pity; we feel badly; we are sympathetic; we are concerned; and we pray for them. But the suffering in many parts of the world is very far removed from us. It is simply not part of our every day experience. It has taken a pandemic, the isolation from loved ones, the current blatant corruption of our government, the heartbreaking or infuriating systemic racism inequality and violence that now finds new license to act out defiantly in our country for us to have a little taste of the brokenness of this world that so many outside the U.S. experience on a daily basis. 

It is at times like this that the ancient wisdom of the scriptures reminds us that corruption, oppression, and suffering have existed throughout history since the beginning of time- the slavery of the ancient Israelites in Egypt, the Babylonian exile, the times of Jesus when the Judeans lived in an occupied territory, the time of the writer of Matthew’s Gospel when it was a hard time to be a Christian and huge numbers of people had to migrate to other regions due to poverty and persecution. All of these events have repeated themselves in renewed ways from generation to generation throughout history. 

So this week’s lectionary challenges us to let go and let God, even when our soul is full of heaviness and disquieted. We are to put our trust in God who is the help of our countenance and our God. The lectionary this week reminds us that as Christians we are to look at the brokenness of the world with new eyes. Thus, all the scripture texts today are full of hope and abundance and joy! And I don’t know about you but I need to be reminded that in Christ there is always hope. I need to be reminded to embrace abundance and be grateful. I need some joy!

  

In our first reading from Isaiah, the prophet promises: “For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.” In psalm 65, which is the appointed psalm for today, and here in the monastery we chant every two weeks at Vespers on Saturday, the psalmist conjures paths overflowing with plenty, fields of the wilderness rich for grazing, hills clothed with joy, meadows covered with flocks, valleys cloaked with grain; all of them shouting for joy and singing. Paul tells the Romans that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Talk about a hard thing to fathom! And then we have Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel telling a parable about a sower flinging seeds all over the place in joyful abandon, and those seeds “brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” That’s right! “Let anyone with ears listen!”     

     

Isaiah describes a God who pours rain and snow, watering everything on earth so that what needs to grow will grow: “so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” Prophets, among many things, are to speak a life-giving word of hope when all seems to point to the contrary. So the imagery of rain and snow watering everything on earth would have been quite a powerful metaphor to a people accustomed to arid conditions. The prophet's audience would surely have understood the importance of rain and snow to transform dry land into conditions able to sustain the vegetation. Rain and snow ensured food. Precipitation meant the difference between life and death. In the same way God's word has a transformative effect on the lives of the exiles who have seen their beloved city destroyed, families torn apart, houses demolished, and their country lost. 

So sure is the prophet of what he is saying that he describes a world where the mountains and the hills break out in song and the trees of the fields clap their hands in accompaniment. What awesome imagery! Instead of the thorn and brier that had been used by the prophet as symbols of judgment, shall come up the cypress and myrtle, a powerful symbol for the new life that lies ahead for the exiles after the devastation brought about by the Babylonian exile.

In the text from Matthew’s Gospel, the sower’s seeds fall on the hard path and the birds eat them. Other seeds fall on rocky ground, where they spring up quickly but wither because the sun burns their shallow roots. Other seeds fall among thorns and are choked. Still other seeds fall on good soil, and bring forth abundant grain. These are the various landscapes of the human heart. Jesus is describing our inner geography. 

I can tell you (and some of you know well) that there are days when my soil is hardened, and there are other days when my soil is quite rocky! And then there are those days when I am full of thorns, and yes, there are other days when my soil is really, really good! So I am thankful that this parable is about the nature and character of the Divine Sower, who is clearly not dependant on the quality of my soil on any given day. This parable is about the Divine Sower whose generosity is extravagant when it comes to us, the beloved creation. This parable is about the Divine Sower who is confident that what needs to flourish will flourish, maybe not everywhere and maybe not all at the same time, and that’s okay. This parable is about the Divine Sower who is unconcerned about where the seed falls because there is always enough seed. In a society so addicted to competition, comparison, and judgment, it is hard to comprehend that nothing is wasted in God’s economy. Every kind of soil can benefit from God’s seed. The Divine Sower keeps sowing generously and abundantly, even in the least promising places of our life.

God’s word goes out from God’s mouth and accomplishes God’s purpose, no matter where it lands. God’s word can soften hard ground, clear away rocks, and cut through the most stubborn of thorns to make way for the harvest. And why? Because all terrain is God’s terrain and is sustained by God’s love. We have absolutely no business telling the Creator of all that is what “good soil” looks like?  We have absolutely no business deciding who is worthy and who is not worthy of the sower’s generosity? As Paul tells the Romans and us there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ because to be in Christ is to be part of something far larger than us. It is not about what we do, but what God does for and through us because the Spirit of God dwells in us. 

May we, like the Divine Sower who dwells in us, scatter seeds with generosity. May abundant seeds of love and mercy fall from us on all the brokenness of this world until all its hardened, rocky and sun-scorched corners burst into joyful song and clap their hands! ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+   

Proper 10 C - Jul 10, 2016

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Reinaldo Martinez-Cubero, n/OHC
Proper 10 Year C - Sunday - July 10, 2016

Deuteronomy 30:9-14
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37

The Good Samaritan - Vincent Van Gogh 1890 - Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

 No beating around the bush. The message is quite clear. Jesus' parables were intended to push his listeners into new ways of thinking, to blow all the conventional notions away, and to challenge the religious elite's sensibilities of moral propriety. Over and over, Jesus broke down the barriers that his religious culture had erected. He made intimate connections between people and God by passing out forgiveness freely without the need of Temple sacrifices. He made intimate connections among people who were regarded as "other". Much of Jesus' teaching had to do with dismantling our binary way of thinking, the various ways we have of making distinctions and creating hierarchies of identity - neighbor and stranger, good and bad, us and them. He replaced that whole system of "either/or" with a new way. We are all connected, like the vine and the branches.

Franciscan friar and author, Richard Rohr writes: "...When Jesus offers the command to love our neighbors as we love ourselves...he connects the two great commandments of love...often, we think this means to love our neighbor with the same amount of love -- as much as we love ourselves -- when it really means that it is the same Source and the same Love that allows me to love myself, and others, and God -- at the same time...How you love is how you have accessed love.... How we love anything is how we love everything". Perhaps loving ourselves is about building our capacity to love in general? I can say, from my own slow conversion experience these past two years that the more I surrender and learn to love those parts about myself that are hard for me to love, those traits that seem to be part of my DNA, and I struggle to learn to live with, the more my capacity to love in general widens.

The command to love God with all one's being, to love one's neighbor as oneself, and even to love one's enemies is central to the Gospels. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus specifies this by showing how the Samaritan- the hated, unclean, heretic, bitter enemy is the one who fulfills the command by reaching out extravagantly, to one who is not only a stranger, but also his enemy. The lawyer who has challenged Jesus, correctly identifies the neighbor as "the one who showed mercy". In The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare the character of Portia describes mercy in this way:

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings,
But mercy is above this sceptered sway.
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings.
It is an attribute to God himself.

Perhaps when we show mercy, is when we are closest to God because it keeps us available to one another, and opens our heart to strangers. It requires us to realize our own weakness enough to be kind to those who are struggling with theirs. "Beware those who show no mercy", warns Sister Joan Chittister. "They are dangerous people because they have either not faced themselves or are lying to themselves about what they find there."

When I first saw the news of the horrendous acts of violence that took place this week, I was filled with confusion, disbelief, and outrage! I must admit that my first reaction was to wish retribution for the victims. But there is no way to look at those videos, as horrendous as they are, and not see the policemen's humanity. I find what I saw beyond outrageous and horrifying, but I also saw frightened men; terrified of being shot and killed. Was their reaction based on color bias and preconceived ideas about black men? As a Latino, a person of color, that was my experience of what I saw. Do I believe it to be part of systemic racism in our country? As a Latino, a person of color, that is my experience of what I see. Do I believe it has to do with white privilege? I will let my white brothers and sisters deal with that one because I have my own biases and prejudices to deal with, and to say: "Them! It's their fault!" would be, I believe, unhealthy for my spiritual life. And yes, I do want to shout "Enough!!!
 
And I hope that you, like me, want to a part of whatever would be an attempt to a solution to the racial divisions in this country. In the meantime, showing mercy to those who are like us is not what Jesus was talking about. Showing mercy to those to whom we owe a debt is not what Jesus was talking about. Showing mercy to our own group, our own family, our peeps, is not what Jesus was talking about. Jesus was talking about the much harder choice of showing mercy to the stranger, the outsider, and the enemy. This is the man who while hanging nailed to a cross, bleeding to death, and gasping for air, prayed for the very barbarians who crucified, not only him, but thousands: "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." To truly love my neighbor as myself is hard, and it is a different way of being in the world. It is the radical shift I must continue to make as I continue to learn how to live and work for that Reign of God, proclaimed by the one who befriended Samaritan, tax collector, Roman soldier, Pharisee, Sadducee, widow, leper, and the list goes on and on. So, as a follower of Jesus, and with the steady revelation of God's mercy, I must choose the deep unknowing that moves me in the direction of loving my neighbor as myself.
 
And finally, I'll say this: That Samaritan helped that man not knowing what that man would do with the mercy shown him. There's a Spiritual I know that goes something like this:

I helped my brother the other day.
Give him my right hand,
But just as soon as ever my back was turned,
He scandalized my name.
Now, do you call that a brother? No, no
He scandalized my name.

What's the end of the story? The man changed his opinion of Samaritans, and was grateful to the Samaritan the rest of his life, or as the spiritual says: just as soon as ever the Samaritan's back was turned,
he scandalized his name. We are allowed full control of the mercy we choose to show others, but what they will do with that mercy, that is not for us to control. ~Amen 

References:
 
Cynthia Bourgeault: The Wisdom Jesus (Shambhala, 2008)

Richard Rorh, OFM: The Naked Now (Crossroad, 2009)
 
Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM: Buying the Field (Paulist Press, 2013)
 
William Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice (1599)
 
Joan Chittister, OSB: God's Tender Mercy (Twenty-Third Publications, 2010)
 
Kathleen Norris: Amazing Grace (Riverhead Books, 1998)
 
Scandalized My Name (African-American Spiritual)

Proper 10 B - Jul 12, 2015

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Will Owen, n/OHC
Proper 10 B – Sunday, July 12, 2015

Amos 7:7-15
Ephesians 1:3-14
Mark 6:14-29

Christ seduces us and then draws us on to martyrdom

Christ seduces us and then draws us on to martyrdom.

Martyrdom often confounds us, even repulses us. Or we may look at martyrs—like Oscar Romero, for instance—as deified persons who possess a kind of holiness we ordinary people lack. And, of course, there are the ridiculous examples of martyrs. Take, for instance, the group that Brother Bede likes to refer to who claims to have as a relic the head of John the Baptist as an infant. But however we do so, we dismiss martyrdom to our own detriment. It is at the very heart of the Christian story of redemption and new life. Before Jesus is raised from the dead, he is martyred on a Cross. And he makes it perfectly clear that if we are to follow him, we must share that fate.

Christ seduces us and then draws us on to martyrdom.

Martyrdom rests on our obedience to the Word speaking in our hearts, and it is by the light of Christ that we walk the road that leads to our own death. Obedience has as its root the Latin word that means more simply to listen, and the kind of obedience that Christ asks of us is at its heart a deep listening to the Beloved speaking within us, calling us forward, whispering our name. The Beloved’s voice is often seductive. It claims us, names us, strips us like a lover. In his chapter on Obedience, Saint Benedict points out this dynamic:

It is love, therefore, that impels [obedient persons] to pursue everlasting life; therefore, they are eager to take the narrow road of which the Lord says: Narrow is the road that leads to life (Matt 7:14). They no longer live by their own judgment, giving in to their own whims and appetites; rather, they walk according to another’s decisions and directions, choosing to live in monasteries and to have an abbot over them. […] Almost at the same moment as the master gives the instruction, the disciple quickly puts it into practice […]; and both actions together are swiftly completed as one. (RB 1980, 5:10-12, 9)

As Benedict points out, the impetus for obedience and martyrdom is love, and its aim is union with the Beloved. As we listen to the voice of the Beloved, we fall in love more and more with Christ. And with that love as our foundation, we find ourselves eager to follow. We begin to find freedom in giving ourselves—our bodies and our wills—to Christ, in joyful obedience. That foundation of love is absolutely essential if we are to progress in the Christian life, but it is only the beginning, and it’s the easy part.

Christ seduces us, and then draws us on to martyrdom.

With our love for Christ as our focus, and conversion to Christ our one aim, we start down that narrow road that leads to life. And we find that it is, first of all, the road that leads to death, the death of the false, ego-driven self. The death of all our resistance to God’s in-pouring of grace. The death of our exporting of evil and hatred. If we follow Christ long enough and faithfully enough, we must eventually encounter the darkest parts of ourselves. We must face our own hatred, jealousy, and willfulness, our own lust, idolatry, and desire to kill the Other. Most of all we have to confront the ways we have lied to ourselves, the ways we continue, daily, to lie to ourselves.

The recent killings in Charleston have put flesh on this road to martyrdom for me. It would be so easy, especially if, like me, you’re a liberal white person, to condemn the killings as acts of hate, and to see their source as the evil of white supremacy taken root in a lost young man. Even as we might acknowledge and repudiate the racist history of America and the systems of white privilege and black disenfranchisement that history has produced, and even as we might rightly name and mourn our part in perpetuating those systems, we miss something essential, and essentially Christian. 

As long as we can point outside of ourselves to the source of evil, be it Dylann Roof, white supremacy, slavery, white privilege, easy access to guns, or any number of other horrors in this world, we excuse ourselves from the difficult and painful process of confronting our own hatred, our own violence, our own disgust. I don’t mean that there are not important lessons to learn about racial hatred in America from the Charleston killings. There absolutely are. And the killings also provide us with another opportunity to follow the voice of the Beloved beckoning us down the road toward martyrdom.

Most of us—I hope all of us—will never enter a church and kill people out of racial hatred. But we share more in common with Dylann Roof and other white supremacists than we want to own up to. We all have hatred within us. I mean real, hot, burning, bubbling hatred. We all have the impulse to kill, maim, and annihilate. Probably that hatred doesn’t come out as wanting to do violence to black people. But maybe it comes out as wanting those we live with to disappear utterly, entirely and violently when who they are seems anathema to who we are, maybe it comes out as a venomous clinging to our own will in the face of those who are different from us, maybe it comes out as seething rage at our impotence in the face of the world’s or our own intractable shortcomings.

Sometimes those forces are turned inward, too. Sometimes rather than wanting to kill or maim someone else, we crave our own annihilation. We seek to merge with another to the point that we disappear. Or we loathe and abuse ourselves. As surely as there are forces of light within us—and there are—there are depths of violence and hatred as well.

Deep listening to the voice of the Beloved eventually takes us to these places. With the light of Christ shining in our darkness, we are given the opportunity to see ourselves. I mean really, truly see ourselves. See the wounds and the pain, the hatred, the resistance, and the love, too. And when we do see in this way, something shatters. Our images of ourselves break apart. We break apart. It’s well known that we cannot look on the face of God and live. But neither can we look on our own truest face and live, at least not the way we’ve been living.

The encounter with self in its fullness, at this level, is its own martyrdom. In meeting the depths of our darkness, we join Christ on the Cross. The 20th-century mystic Simone Weil calls this encounter with the self “affliction,” and sees in it the gateway to union with God:

It is in affliction itself that the splendor of God’s mercy shines, from its depths, in the heart of inconsolable bitterness. If still persevering in our love, we fall to the point where the soul cannot keep back the cry “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” If we remain at this point without ceasing to love, we end by touching something that is not affliction, not joy, something that is the central essence, necessary and pure […]: the very love of God. (Simone Weil, Waiting for God, trans. Emma Craufurd, p. 44)

When we are crucified on the Cross of our own hypocrisy, hatred, and violence, the life born in us is Christ’s life, the very love of God. Weil goes on to describe this love. It fills the whole universe, she says, and becomes the bird with golden wings that pierces an opening in the egg of the world. After that, such a soul loves the universe, not from within, but from without; from the dwelling place of the Wisdom of God, our first-born brother. Such a love does not love beings and things in God, but from the abode of God. Being close to God it views all beings and things from there, and its gaze is merged in the gaze of God. (Weil, p. 50)

When we are crucified and reborn with Christ in this way, our life, Christ’s life, is the life of and in all things, and that means that we are in all things and all things are in us. Then we see that there truly is no way to hate another without hating ourselves, or to kill another without killing ourselves. And having already died and been born into Christ, physical death holds little fear.

Finally, we see, that the way of martyrdom, the way of the Cross, is the way of seduction. Drawn on by the caress of the Beloved’s voice, we obey, we die, and we are made one body with Christ and with all the world.

Proper 10 A - Jul 13, 2014

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY 

Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC

Proper 10 A - July 13, 2014

Genesis 25:19-34
Romans 8:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

The Sower by Jean-Francois Millet

Underlining its importance, this parable is one of six in the Synoptic Gospels that begins and ends with an admonition to “listen”. In Matthew’s Gospel the parable and its interpretation are sandwiched between stories of opposition and misunderstanding of Jesus’ ministry. The chapter concludes with Jesus’ rejection by his own hometown. This is Jesus’ personal assessment of the public response to his teaching. 

The community for whom Matthew’s Gospel was written was a hard time and place to be a Christian. Due to both poverty and persecution, massive numbers of people were migrating out of the region. Within the Church itself there were dissenters and false prophets. With this parable Jesus reminds his disciples, and Matthew reminds his community that the message is not wrong and that their efforts should not be judged by the lack of positive public response. 

Jesus begins his parable with a good dose of realism. Everyone in the crowd would be nodding their heads as Jesus describes the trials of first century farming in Palestine. Unlike a modern American farmer who carefully prepares the soil with just the right pH balance and then injects the seed into the ground, farmers in Jesus’ day cast the seed and then plowed the land. 

The parable, true to its form, is more like a riddle, hiding as much as it reveals about God. It must have been confusing to its original hearers too, because an allegorical interpretation  (vv.18-23) was finally added to clean things up and drive home the point about good soil. Whenever I heard this parable as a child I would examine myself as to what kind of soil I was made of. What could I do to be that fertile soil for God’ seed? It was always a depressing exercise, always ending with a disheartening list of my failings and a resolution to improve my pH balance. How tempted we are to spend our time, energy, and hope trying to coax growth from inhospitable places in others and ourselves. 

Are there any who have not felt closed off, distracted, overwhelmed by circumstances and situations. Can any one of us say that we have never hampered or blocked the growth of God’s seed in us? How ready we are to indict ourselves for not living up to standards and expectations? 

Despite the misleading interpretation, the story isn’t about us but about the sower. It is not about good soil but about a good sower. This sower is not so cautious and strategic as to throw the seed only in those places where the chances for growth are best. No, this is a high-risk sower, relentless in indiscriminately throwing seed everywhere---as if it were all potentially good. It leaves us to wonder if there is any place or circumstance in which God’s seed cannot sprout and take root. 

The parable’s ending is it’s greatest challenge. The story doesn’t end in a normal harvest from the good soil. It ends with a miracle, a hundredfold harvest. Jesus goes beyond simply encouraging his disciples to keep on in the face of rejection. Instead he challenges them and us to believe in God’s abundance. This parable is not simply pragmatic; it is also filled with promise. The God we serve tells us to expect the best, that there is more than enough for everyone. That’s the God Jesus calls us to trust. Jesus knows the hard ways of the world. He also knows the abundant ways of God. 

The eighth chapter of the Letter to the Romans begins with the Gospel’s astonishing conclusion: “There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” What would it take for us to trust and embrace this truth in our hearts? Any one who has lived has done things for which they blame themselves or for which they feel guilt. So how do we stop obsessing about soil quality and believe this nearly unbelievable statement? The answer, I think, is to be found in the phrase “in Christ.” 

To be in Christ is to be part of something far larger than oneself. It is to encounter a power greater than all the willpower we have ever mustered, added to all the physical power we’ve ever exerted, added to all the influence we have ever had. All this combined is infinitesimal compared to the power of God in Christ. It’s not that we’re powerless. We have the power to hurt or to help others and ourselves. It’s just that our power is so bound by our capabilities, so limited by our perspectives, so tied to our agenda. Paul describes this state by the phrase “in the flesh.” But to be “in Christ” is to be swept up in the power of the Spirit, and to be free from what has bound, limited, and tied us.  To be “in Christ” is not the result of something we do; it is something God does for us. All the initiative begins and rests with God. 

Paul doesn’t exhort his hearers to get their act together. He proclaims “You are in the Spirit since the Spirit of God dwells in you.” To believe this is to reorient one’s life toward the power greater than oneself. 

The greatest power we know in this world is death, which conquers all of us. Death’s power is not simply at the moment of our dying; it is an insidious power that creeps into our lives, our communities, and our bodies long before the moment we breathe our last. Anyone in recovery, anyone who has loved and lost, knows what a living death feels like. However even this power pales when compared to the power of the Spirit. In the concluding lines of this portion of Romans Paul proclaims, “this Spirit will give life to our mortal bodies” (v.11). In Christ God decisively breaks through everything that separates us from God, and makes it possible to live the life God intends for us, a life of abundance, an end to the old creation and the beginning of a new. “There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

The Spirit that we have “in Christ” is able to do so much more than we are able to do. Paul tells us that “in Christ” we are not constrained by our limitations, shortcomings, failings; we are not even condemned by our cruelties, hurtful ways, hateful actions. 

Instead, we are set free. It is the freedom to be part of God’s movement in the world. It transcends our individual time and space, and at the same time allows us to live fully as ourselves. This freedom is ours in Christ. It is the result of the power of God, That Good Sower, whose power is greater than the sum of all powers.

 + Amen.

BCP - Proper 10 B - 16 Jul 2006

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park
Brother Randy Greve, n/OHC
BCP - Proper 10 - Sunday 16 July 2006

Amos 7:7-15
Ephesians 1:1-14
Mark 6: 7-13

Imagine that you are one of the Twelve disciples. At the call of Jesus you have left your family, your livelihood, your familiar and safe world to follow a man who somehow captured your imagination and who performs miracles and preaches and teaches with authority about the Kingdom of God. Clearly God is with him but who or what is he? Could this be the Messiah? You’re not entirely sure. He has told you that this talk of the kingdom is no mere show that begins and ends with Him - this is the beginning of the end of the old era of sin and evil and the ushering in of a world reigned by God. Not only that but he says you will share in his works and participate with him in bringing new life. This eclectic mix of men and women - who would surely not be hanging around each other except for Jesus - suddenly finds itself entrusted and empowered with the authority of the kingdom. Jesus has begun to transform you and give you a vision of what life with God can be like. After time observing and beginning to understand what Jesus is talking about and what his actions mean, you’re sent out to preach repentance, cast out demons, and cure the sick. You’re partner is Philip or Andrew or Peter or Judas… Where do you go? What do you do? What would this power in action look like? You immediately encounter a world of danger, opposition, and mystery. Not everyone is warm and welcoming. Yet as much to your surprise as to the amazement of those you encounter - Diseases are cured, demons cast out, and new life is embraced. And despite being chased away from an unfriendly house or village, some trust you and listen, some are open to the possibility of hope and a future.
Bringing us back into the present, I would like to stop on the idea of unclean spirits; how the disciples might have engaged such spirits and how we might know and respond to them ourselves. To the ancient, pre-scientific understanding of things, the world was a battlefield where good and evil forces and influences were locked in combat within and between peoples, cultures, religions, and beliefs. Suffering, disease, and other demonically-inspired pain was the outward evidence of what was unseen but no less real. The ancient world understandably attributed spiritual origins to what they did not have the knowledge to explain by any other means. Diseases like depression and epilepsy, for example, which have biological origins, were assumed in their world to be the relentless attack of these unseen forces. So does the technology to diagnose and treat mental and physical illness solve the problem of unclean spirits? Because we can scientifically explain a condition previously attributed to unclean spirits, does that totally negate their existence? Not completely, because uncleanness and evil are still spiritual realities.
St. Ignatius of Loyola, writing in the Spiritual Exercises, sheds some helpful light on a more modern way of understanding the inner nature of what is going on here. For St Ignatius a spirit may be called an inclination, an attraction, a motivation which is either God-centered or self-centered. God-centered inclinations can lead us to our best, most authentic self in the love of God and neighbor which is new life in the kingdom. Self-centered inclinations, if followed, can lead to the bottomless pit of self-protection and self-gratification, making us numb to our real self and unable to love God and others fully. St. Ignatius then asks us first to examine our own inclinations in the light of our best self, moving us toward the God of love. To recognize evil means paying attention to what is going on inside us and around us with great sensitivity and care. We recognize the evil or unclean spirit by listening for the lie or truth in the words and actions, the inclination toward reality or unreality. In the face of evil within us or around us, we ask how the kingdom of God break into this moment, change my closed heart to one of openness, my hardness to receptivity to light and truth. As Brian McLaren says in The Secret Message of Jesus “Jesus must draw out, expose, name, reject, and banish this systemic, transpersonal evil…”
Discernment, which is the process of examining where our inclinations are coming from and where they intend to take us, is only possible by living a holy life. Discernment is not the acquiring of skills to detect good from evil spirits; it is living in Gospel humility, faith, purity, obedience, and patience so that we will see with clarity the nature of the inclinations within us and around us.
For the disciples to have had the insight and wisdom to distinguish good spirits from evil, they had to have been willing to listen and test at a deep level. Jesus himself is the model discerner who is described in the Gospel of John especially as knowing the thoughts and inner inclination or spirit of those around him. Jesus often responds to what he sees of the inner, real self rather than only to outer words and actions. He recognizes great faith in those who display simple trust, humility, readiness, and receptivity and is able to strike at the heart of the hypocrisy of religious leaders who claim to be models of faithfulness but inside are smug, arrogant, hard, and dead.
Nowhere in the New Testament do we find the “how-to’s” of discernment, but it does tell us the conditions for discernment to happen. Living in the truth and obedience of the whole Gospel, especially where that truth is not popular, easy, or pleasant, is the starting place. As we are sent out into the world, into our lives - how will we use the authority given to us? Are we attentive and awake enough to expose and reject the evil that opposes God’s best? Every day we are sent out to confront the reality of evil and suffering and, using the authority we have, to bring healing, goodness, and wholeness. We may not be sent out far. Perhaps the person most in need of our empathy and kindness is in our own house, our own family or church. The sending out is more about our breaking out of the inclinations of self-protection and self-gratification than a physical distance. The longest mission trip is often from one heart to another.
To accept the offer of healing given by another is also important. I am grateful for those times when I have been the one with the unclean spirit and been met by friends who exposed and banished the uncleanness that lurked in me. As the disciples came face to face with the fallen, broken nature of the world, I can’t help but imagine it turned them inward. Perhaps it was in their reflection on the reality of the coming Kingdom that Peter learned lessons about grace and forgiveness that Judas did not.
The authority given to the Twelve was not just a weapon used to zap demons and cure illness; it was the gift of seeing the world as Christ saw it beginning with their own transformation. To be given the authority of Christ is to share in the interests, attitudes, and affections of Christ himself, to be motivated in everything by his loving compassion. We are invited to live in such a way that we become more aware and awake to the uncleanness that besets us and to name, expose, and repel it. We are invited to embrace the deepest good for the building of God’s reign by offering hope and healing to those who need it - which is all of us.

I close with this reflection by St. Theresa of Avila:

Christ has no body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which He looks
compassion on this world
Christ has no body now on earth but yours