The Funeral of Roy E. Parker, OHC - Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
The Funeral of Roy E. Parker, OHC - Tuesday, March 31, 2020

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Click here to watch the full funeral service on our Facebook page.

Last Wednesday I received an email with the intriguing subject line: “Hello 30 Years later, and condolences for the passing of Br. Roy Parker.” It was from Eric Seddon, and it had indeed been 30 years since we were last in contact. Eric's mother was the guesthouse director here at Holy Cross Monastery in those years, and...well, let me let Eric tell the tale as he posted it in his blog “The Jazz Clarinet.”

“I learned just yesterday, via the NY Times obituary that one of the greatest of all clarinetists, William O. Smith (better know to jazz audiences as Bill Smith) passed away last February 29th. He was 93 years old, and lived a life wherein he contributed not only some of the finest jazz of the past century, but expanded our understanding of the clarinet, continuously, for decades.... I can't help but share one little story, of how I first heard Smith's music.

I was a teenager in the 1980s, immersed in clarinet playing and specifically jazz, when I happened to meet a monk from Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, NY. My brother and I used to spend time volunteering there--we'd clean the guesthouse before retreats. One of the monks was named Br Roy Parker, and though a soft spoken man, known for the masterful calligraphy he drew, he was in fact a huge fan of jazz, and while working in his shop would often listen to Benny Goodman, Dave Brubeck, and the like. He soon learned of my love of Goodman, Shaw, and others, and we'd talk jazz regularly. One Sunday afternoon when I was there to clean, Br. Roy announced that he was switching over his whole collection of cassette tapes to the newly introduced CD format -- and he gave me first pick of anything in his shop that I wanted. I don't remember all the tapes I took home that day -- but I remember the most important: Near-Myth/Brubeck-Smith.

I had never heard of Bill Smith before, but that album opened new vistas for me as a clarinetist.... For me personally, his art remains the most fascinating and satisfying of modern jazz clarinet.

The day Bill Smith died, I'd actually been messaging a friend about his music, how much it continued to inspire me. And when I learned just yesterday of Smith's death, I tried to find contact information for my old friend, Br. Roy Parker, who I hadn't spoken to in over thirty years. I wanted to let him know about Smith's passing if he hadn't already heard, and to thank him for introducing this music to me. But it turns out Br. Roy passed away just nine days before Bill Smith. Br. Roy was a great artist in his own right, and appreciated all the technical nuances jazz musicians navigated - he would ask me all about those things with great interest. He was a great listener, and learned from what he heard. I hope and pray that he and William O are swapping notes in heaven right now.

The greatest music is so powerful that it impresses itself right onto one's life story. Br. Roy's kindness and Bill Smith's celebratory brilliance will forever be connected in my mind.”

Great music, great art, great people do impress themselves onto one's life story. And today we remember and give thanks for Br. Roy who impressed himself so indelibly onto Eric's life story, onto our life story and, I'd venture to say, on the life stories of countless others. He was, as his memorial card says, “Priest – Monk - Artist” all of which came together in a remarkable synergy characterized by gentleness, humility, kindness, creativity, passion, discipline and devotion.

There are many ways to speak of a life, many ports of entry, if you will. I want this morning to remember Roy through his art, which is to say, through his calligraphy. Though his artistry came out in so many ways. Who can forget the many years he devoted himself to baking bread, wonderful whole wheat bread and sourdough bread? Yes, sometimes it came out a little heavy, but it was always nourishing and delicious and was made with patient, loving care. Roy delighted in feeding others, whether through his bread, or through his presiding at the Holy Eucharist, which he did with Zen-like grace and recollection. Or through his preaching, which was always carefully researched and prepared. I would see him in the library for hours on end studying biblical texts, often in the original Hebrew or Greek, and consulting countless commentaries, and then, as like as not, have him appear with an outrageous prop to illustrate his point.

Br. Roy and the "Markan Sandwich"

I remember once when during his sermon he pulled out two pieces of bread surrounding bacon, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise...an apt (and yummy) illustration of the Markan “sandwich” that he was expounding. And for those of you not in the know, a Markan sandwich is a stylistic device used in the Gospel of St. Mark and characterized by the insertion of one narrative episode between two parts of another one. Got it?

Roy fed in other ways as well, especially when he served as an AIDS chaplain at Manhattan Plaza, a residence for artists in New York City, at the height of the AIDS crisis. I think it was precisely Roy's reticence and inner stillness that made him effective in this ministry. And of course having himself the soul of an artist. Cor ad cor loquitur, says the psalm: “Heart speaks to heart.” That speaking went well beyond words. It went straight from Roy's heart to that of the other.

So in the spirit of Roy, I produce my own props, works of calligraphy that Roy executed over the years. There were many, including private commissions. There were greeting cards and posters. There were names on our doors and texts both sacred and profane. And these are a few which, at least to me, capture Roy and his way of being a man of God and a man for others.

The Glory of God is the human person fully alive.

The first is the quotation from Irenaeus of Lyon, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” Roy, like all of us, struggled to be fully alive, but his struggle was not his own, it was I think, also for the glory of God. From his early days at MIT and its jazz band—Roy was a drummer—to his years in the Society of St. John the Evangelist and then in the Order of the Holy Cross, Roy struggled to grow and become ever more alive. And as is true of us all, this was a journey of fits and starts, of peaks and valleys. But Roy did become more alive and transparent as the years went on, more his own man and therefore more available to others. More fully alive. It is no wonder that this simple and I might add, best-selling piece of art went through several iterations over the years as did he. What is true of art is so often true of us all as well.

The second work is simply a recipe...it is Roy's recipe for whole grain bread, beautifully penned and illustrated. It begins with the words “In your favorite breadmixing bowl whisk honey into ½ cup lukewarm water & add yeast.” In your favorite breadmixing bowl...which presumes we have one. Maybe we do. All of us. It is the container that holds the ingredients of a rising and nourishing life.

A recipe for whole grain bread.

Third there is the Buddhist gatha:

“Let me respectfully remind you: Life & Death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to Awaken. Awaken. Awaken. Take heed. Do not squander your life."

I feel a certain personal connection with this piece as I first saw the text through the Maitri Hospice in San Francisco in 1991 and some years later shared it with Roy and the Mount Calvary community. It speaks so honestly and directly to our mortal human condition, of which we are now perhaps more aware than ever before—and gives us our marching orders and our deepest aspiration: “Do not squander your life.” Roy did not. And with God's help, neither shall we.

When life sucks...

Finally, there is this piece of calligraphy that I found in Roy's studio. I don't believe I had ever seen it before. It says, somewhat enigmatically: “When life sucks & hands you lemons...I say beat the crap out of it and demand some California oranges as well.”

Well, as we know, life handed Roy lemons in the last year of his life, when disease took away first his ability to sing, then to speak clearly, then to speak at all, then to swallow. But through it all, Roy beat the crap out of it and demanded California oranges. He demanded and succeeded in retaining his dignity and self-direction even as he became more and more dependent on others. And he did so with unfailing courtesy and patience. This nobility marked even his passing. For on the afternoon of his last day he wrote on his note pad to Br. Bernard and me: “I want to lie down and die.” And so he did, within hours. Lemons, yes, but California oranges as well, as befits someone descended of Yankee stock but born in sunny southern California.

When we planned Roy's funeral for today, we did so because we thought our guesthouse would be open and going at full tilt throughout Lent. Tuesday, March 31 looked to be a quiet day, and all the brothers planned to be home. We had not realized however that in the Episcopal Church calendar, today is also the commemoration of another great artist, the 17th century poet John Donne. Donne was, like Roy, a priest. He was also a notable preacher to British royalty, perhaps the greatest English preacher of his day. But he is most remembered for his poems. And none more than his famous “No Man is an Island”

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

The bell does toll for Roy today and for all of us. But through and beyond that mournful tolling there is also a hope and a promise lying within Donne's other emblematic poem “Death be not proud.” As he puts it:

One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

John Donne, the Christian priest and poet, knew just as our Br. Roy knew and, I trust, as we too know: that in Christ Jesus, death is overcome. And so today we proclaim with the church throughout the ages that:

“Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and on those in the tomb bestowing life.”

Oh death, be not proud. Oh death, thou too shalt die.

And you, dear Br. Roy, may you go from strength to strength in the life of perfect service in the heavenly kingdom prepared for us all from the foundation of the world through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Br. Roy Parker, OHC  1933-2020  

Proper 27 B - Sunday, November 11, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Roy Parker, OHC
Proper 27 B - Sunday, November 11, 2018

1 Kings 17:8-16
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44

For a clearer understanding of the character of the scribes of whom Jesus speaks in this passage it will be helpful to give a description which will allow us a more accurate understanding of the poor widow’s contribution to the temple treasury, some culled from the Anchor Bible commentary.

In Mark, the scribes are the principal opponents of Jesus and they are frequently mentioned — twenty-two times in all,  The present instance is the only recorded example of Jesus inveighing against the conduct of the scribes, as distinct from their teaching. Although the scribes and the Pharisees are linked in the condemnation of legalism in Matthew, it is important to draw a proper distinction.

Whereas the Pharisees had an established position, and an honorable one, as interpreters of the Law and its traditions, and were also regarded as highly patriotic, the scribes as “bookmen” were regarded mainly as recorders or collectors of opinions and less authoritative than the Pharisees. As is often the case with those of lesser status, they are represented in the New Testament as not only argumentative, but given to ostentation to magnify their public image — like a classmate of mine at the Webb School in Claremont, California who, having failed to win an athletic varsity letter — a large red capital E — from his previous school, purloined one and injudiciously wore it to breakfast the day after Webb’s football defeat by the Emerson School.

Beyond the issue of ostentation, Jesus condemned the scribes in that they are held responsible for the exactions which effectively destroyed widows’ estates, all on behalf of a temple still in building and soon to come to an end. One of the salient features of Jesus’ confrontation with the scribes in Mark is the connection made between them and the temple. Though one may protest that the costs of the upkeep of the temple and its round of sacrificial observances were the concern of the clergy, Mark’s gospel firmly lays responsibility for extravagance and excess at the door of the scribes, and they are the enemies of Jesus before the clergy enter the picture. The scribes in and around Jerusalem are quite regularly associated with the clergy. Any challenge by Jesus to the temple system and its clergy is accepted by the scribes as a challenge to their standing.

In this light, we are to understand the charge that the scribes offer long prayers. Not that they are responsible for the worship and the liturgies of the temple, but that they consistently urge upon people the fundamental necessity of keeping the interminable round of observances in being. Perhaps we ought to understand the phrase for appearances’ sake not as an indication of pretense, but as a judgment by Jesus that the observances themselves were but an outward show without substance.

The narrative of the poor widow’s offering is, among other things, a continuation of the previous attack on the scribes and their part, as Mark sees it, in the whole official establishment of Judaism in Jerusalem. The judgement of Jesus is that the scribes were like leeches on the Jewish faithful and not the least of their sins was their insistence on the support of the temple system, and all that it implied, even to the sacrificing of widows’ property. Jesus does not commend the widow at all for sacrificing all she had; rather, the story should be read as a lament for a system which could end in the destitution of a widow.

Part of us is attracted to system while another part harbors an expectation which cannot be satisfied by a system, as in Tagore’s aphorism “While God waits for the temple to be built of love, people bring stones.”  This was brought home to me some years ago on a Saturday morning in Berkeley, California some years ago outside the Jesuit School of Theology. The previous evening Raymond Brown, renowned commentator on the Fourth Gospel, had flown in to give a public lecture, and I just happened to meet him that following morning. It also happened that I was to preach the Sunday sermon at a local church on John’s account of the feeding of the five thousand for which I had figured out what seemed to me  a brilliant explanation which discounted the miraculous.  On spying Professor Brown I thought, “What a perfect opportunity to get a verification of my theory.” Dr. Brown, to be sure, listened carefully, but when I had spoken he contradicted me very forcefully regarding the multiplication of loaves, “But they were expecting this!” “Well,” I thought, “back to rewrite.”

Such expectation is displayed by both widows in today’s readings, marginalized women driven to put all their eggs in the basket of God’s promise, persons acting out of the only abundance they had, an abundance of heart.  As a matter of historical interest, by the way, the advertisements our Founder distributed for his mission talks often concluded with the exhortation “Expect Much.”

When operating at the margins of possibility, you are liable to be more ecstatic than cautious and it might land you in trouble. Like Harry James’ solo on “Life Goes to a Party” in Benny Goodman’s 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert described by the liner notes as “like someone rushing out onto an icy pond and discovering they ain’t got skates.” By that point in the concert, the vibe was so hot that Harry James was possessed by it. This is what Raymond Brown meant: Five thousand people possessed by the vibe of Jesus presiding at Passover — for sure they were expecting this. Once upon a time the philosopher Nietzsche came up with the insight that creation takes place in the realms of music, and so I imagine the expectation of those in the presence of Jesus at Passover might have been a kind of creating musical event, a Passover light opera.

The only formula I can offer for reconciling system with expectation is that they must constantly be wrestled together.

Proper 24 B - Sunday, October 21, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Roy Parker, OHC
Proper 24 - Sunday, October 21, 2018

Isaiah 53:4-12
Hebrews 5:1-10
Mark 10:35-45

CHRIST CRUCIFIED, THE POWER & WISDOM OF GOD

The gospel passage is about the disciples James and John trying for a power grab at a time when Jesus has given clear warning of his fate and the only appropriate attitude for a disciple must be related to that described by the prophet Isaiah, the scenario to which Jesus alludes by saying “Among you, anyone who wants to be great must be your servant, and if anyone among you wishes to be first, they must be the slave of all. For the Human did not come to be served, but to serve and to give himself as a ransom for the community.” These words of Jesus tie him to the description of the Servant of God in the first reading, a description long revered by the community of faith: Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases . . . He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole ... By his bruises, we are healed. . . The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all ...

CHRIST CRUCIFIED, THE POWER & WISDOM OF GOD

He was cut off from the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of the people ... It was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain ... When God makes his life an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring and shall prolong his days; through him, the will of the Lord shall prosper ... Out of his anguish, he shall see light ... The righteous one, God’s servant shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities ...

CHRIST CRUCIFIED, THE POWER & WISDOM OF GOD

Adds the Letter to the Hebrews: Because he poured out himself to death, he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors, offering up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death ... Having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him, having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

It would be appropriate here to cite the remarks of the Biblical scholar Joachim Jeremias who calls our attention to the placard over Jesus’ head stating that Jesus was King of the Jews, but in fact describes our transgressions — so many that they must be written in letters so tiny that one must draw very, very close to making it out, so close that one begins to realize:

CHRIST CRUCIFIED, THE POWER & WISDOM OF GOD

It would be important to dwell a bit on the opening sentence of Isaiah’s Servant Song on account of certain niceties in the Hebrew text, for whose understanding I’m indebted to Harvey Guthrie, professor of the Hebrew Bible at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. To put it colloquially, the vocabulary and syntax of the verse “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases” gives the verse something like five Good Housekeeping Seals of Approval for verity and reliability. Professor Guthrie comments that even without the introductive affirmative Surely, the verse would be extremely strong in its expression of the unexpected new thing which has taken place.

This Servant Song occurs in the portion of the Book of Isaiah which describes God’s new thing and the role played in it by the conquests of the Persian king Cyrus, but the most exquisite newness of the new thing trumps conquering Cyrus and lies in the Servant’s suffering and death, bringing God’s new thing to its final completion. God’s new thing is finally not “victory” or “conquest,” but the outlasting of all victory and conquest and power by a powerless suffering and dying Servant.

The perennial struggle throughout the Bible between the description of the Servant’s fate and the desire of God’s devotees to use the imagery of kingship and victory and conquest has apparently contributed to a confusion in the text of the concluding two verses of the Song, evident in the footnotes to the Hebrew and in those of the New Revised Standard Version which comprises the lectionary. One can wonder if these final verses haven’t suffered at the hands of the happy-ending tendencies of those who transmitted the text, and of all of us, including James and John who, despite Jesus’ repeated warnings about his fate, clearly belong to the happy-ending segment of the Twelve.

CHRIST CRUCIFIED, THE POWER & WISDOM OF GOD

Proper 9, Year B: Sunday, July 8, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Roy Parker, OHC

Proper 8- Sunday, July 8, 2018


Sorry, no audio recording of this sermon is available.

Br. Roy Parker, OHC 

These remarks are a four-part survey on a progression of faith from the encounter of Jesus with his fellow townsfolk on up to the present. The four parts are, first, Unfaith in Nazareth; second, Expansion of the Source of Faith; third, Expansion of the Person of Faith; and fourth, Expansion of the Community of Faith.

Part One: Can’t you just hear it in Nazareth as the hometown boy both dazzles and antagonizes! “Hey, we know this guy, Mary’s boy, ‘cause we’re always hanging out with ‘im. He gets as wasted as any of us at bar-mitzvahs and dances and stuff. Remember that one from which he was bounced and his brothers had to take him home? Not to mention the way he can put away a plate of ribs!”

Jesus summarizes the disdainful reaction of his hometown folks as an amazing lack of faith, which is also a deficiency in his disciples that he must put up with.

Throughout the New Testament we encounter those who recognize the phenomena of faith, wisdom, and prophecy, yet cannot connect with it; on the other hand, those who recognize it, and can, and do, connect.

For example, last Sunday’s story of the woman of faith with the twelve-years’ hemorrhage compared with the surrounding crowd unpossessed by such faith. Also, the notices about King Herod who recognized the prophetic character of John the Baptist respected his testimony, but could not be governed by it. Then the story of the prophet in the village of the Jewish diaspora: in a disagreement with the village council which wanted to go along with an anti-Semitic policy of the occupying government, he challenged them: “If I am right, let that stove over in the corner collapse.” Well, the stove collapsed, and as the prophet looked meaningfully at the council, they replied, “Yes, but that doesn’t matter anymore.” 

Part Two concerns an expansion of the divine figure with whom we’re apt to connect the phenomena of faith, wisdom, and prophecy. Several years ago Marin Alsop,  newly-installed Director of the Baltimore Symphony, was interviewed on NPR about her appointment to the position, including a question of why it took so long for the Symphony’s Board of Trustees to ratify her election. She replied that there is in the culture the abstract notion of a supreme male authority figure which she exampled by recounting her instinctive reaction while preparing for takeoff in a plane when the announcement came that the pilot and co-pilot were both women and she could feel the jolt of anxiety in her stomach. Then she concluded, “In fifty years we’ll be saying to ourselves: What were we thinking?!

Part Three, then, concerns the expanded possibilities of appeal to what might be likened to a mysterious androgynous authority figure. The person of faith under these conditions is described by Thornton Wilder in his novel The Eighth Day and may lend us courage in our own journeys. The narrative here is slightly adapted: 

Jane Ashley was a woman of faith. She did not know that she was a woman of faith. She would have been quick to deny that she was a woman of religious faith, but religions are merely the garments of faith — and very ill-cut they often are, especially in Coaltown, Illinois. Like most people of faith, Jane Ashley was, so to speak, invisible. You brushed shoulders with a woman of faith in the crowd yesterday; a woman of faith sold you a pair of gloves. Their principal characteristics do not tend to render them conspicuous. Only from time to time one or other of them is propelled by circumstance into becoming visible — blindingly visible. They tend their flocks in Domremy; they pursue an obscure law practice in New Salem, Illinois. They are not afraid, they are not self-regarding; they are constantly nourished by astonishment and wonder at life itself. They are not interesting. They lack those traits - our bosom companions - that so strongly engage our interest: aggression, the dominating will, envy, destructiveness and self-destructiveness. No pathos hovers about them. Try as hard as you like, you cannot see them as the subjects of tragedy. They have little sense of humor, which draws so heavily on a consciousness of superiority and on an aloofness from the predicaments of others. In general, they are inarticulate, especially in matters of faith. The intellectual qualifications for faith - considering Ashley’s faith in connection with her mathematical gift and her talent as a gambler - are developed and fortified by a ranging observation and a retentive memory. We have described these women and men in negative terms — fearless, not self-referent, uninteresting, humorless, so often unlearned. Wherein lies their value?

We did not choose the day of our birth, nor may we choose the day of our death, yet the choice is the sovereign faculty of the mind. We did not choose our parents, color, sex, health, or endowments. We were shaken into existence, like dice from a box. Barriers and prison walls surround us and those about us — everywhere inner and outer impediments. These women and men with the aid of observation and memory early encompass a large landscape. They know themselves, but their self is not the only window through which they view their existence. They are certain that one small part of what is given to us is free. They explore daily the exercise of freedom. Their eyes are on the future. When the evil hour comes, they hold. They save cities — or, having failed, their example saves other cities after their death. They confront injustice. They assemble and in spirit the despairing.

They assemble and inspirit the despairing — which brings us to Part Four, Expansion of the Community of Faith.

Several years ago when the Order of the Holy Cross was preparing to choose a new Superior, we invited Martin Smith, a former Superior of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, to address us. In the course of his remarks to our ambivalence about the office of Superior, Martin made the significant and enigmatic statement that the Superior was the person who enabled the Wisdom event to occur in the community. When I later questioned him for clarification, he explained that the Superior gathers the community for consultation. His key responsibility is to elicit what the Quakers would call ‘the mind of the meeting,’ a discernment to be accompanied by silence as well as care to tease out the views of the less vociferous.

The circular arrangement of the community is important in this. To understand its power as a collaborative conversation model and the kinds of insights that can pour into the group process, it helps to understand that when we circle up in a ring of chairs, we are activating an archetype. Archetypal energy tends to made our experience seem bigger, brighter or darker; our words take on shades of meaning, and our dialogue, decisions, and actions take on added significance. Part of the attraction to circle process is the way archetypal energy can magnify issues among the group and help transform them. Those who have experienced this have referred to the archetypal energy as ‘the magic of circle’ that occurs when the best - or sometimes the worst - comes out of us and we find ourselves capable of responding with a creativity, innovation, problem-solving and visioning that astound us. Others talk about the circle as an experience of synergy, as being able to tap into something they didn’t know was in them and could not have predicted as a possible outcome at the start of a circle meeting. Such is the occurrence of the Wisdom Event in a community, Part Four, Expansion of the Community of Faith.

This four-part development would seem to underscore something several of us noted in our Saturday Bible Sharing session yesterday, and that is the demise of the cowboy way, or put differently, the requirement for the gifted person to be backed by a communal chorus.

Fourth Sunday of Easter- Year B: April 22, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Roy Parker, OHC

Fourth Sunday of Easter- Year B- Sunday, April 22, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Roy Parker

I’ll begin with a paraphrase from the Acts of the Apostles which was just read. Peter exclaims, “There is salvation in no one other than Jesus, for there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.” Speaking at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California  several years ago, Krister Stendahl emphasized that Peter’s words were essentially love language, not intended as doctrine.  

Love language, nonetheless, which informs some remarks about resurrection by John Dominic Crossan, who says, “An exclusively divine initiative — the Resurrection — (has changed) into (a) divine-human collaboration as believers are called to live the radical ethics of a new creation or a transformed life and thereby co-create with God a nonviolent world of justice and peace. That is why Jesus could tell his companions to go out and do exactly what he was doing: heal the sick, eat with those they healed, and announce that the kingdom of God had already started in that mutual sharing of spiritual and physical power — that is, in healing and eating. 

The coming of the kingdom meant, as the Lord’s Prayer said, the doing of God’s will on earth — and it had already begun. So also with Paul. It was not ecstasy but accuracy which made him declare that ‘all of us with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory into another, for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.’ That presumes, of course, that believers are living the resurrected life that incarnates the nonviolent God of justice and peace who was revealed in Christ. We are not waiting for God to act. God has already acted and is waiting for us to react, to collaborate, to cooperate, to get with the divine program.

The ultimate claim made by the Resurrection, to put it clearly, accurately, and bluntly, is that at Easter, God’s Cosmic Clean-Up has already begun. The Resurrection-event claims that something has literally started and is therefore literally present. If it only spoke of a future event, it would be, like all such future announcements, beyond proof or disproof. But, once you announce that something has begun (in this case, God’s transfiguration of all creation), you must be able to show something. And Jesus or Paul would have accepted that challenge by saying: Come and see how our communities live. Come and see how God-in-us and we-in-God are transforming the world. Come and see how surprised we are at the way God is actually doing it.”

This admonition recalls an address to the Episcopal clergy and layfolk of the city of Boston in 1968 by the Boston City Councilor Thomas Atkins. Councilor Atkins strove throughout his life to break down barriers and become a political leader in spite of mid-century American racism. Even before entering Boston politics his career was a kind of African-American phenomenon of achievement in high school and university.  After coming to Boston to study at Harvard, he became the first African-American elected to the city council and the first to serve as a Massachusetts cabinet secretary. One could catalog other accomplishments, including his persuasion of the Mayor of Boston not to cancel the James Brown concert which was broadcast live on TV the day after Dr. King’s assassination.

Councilor Atkins’ remarks to the Episcopal establishment on that day went something like this: “You know, there was a time when African-Americans strove to move out of Roxbury and into the suburbs, but that’s no longer the case, because now  we feel that we’ve found community in Roxbury in a way that you white folks can’t find in the suburbs. And,” he added with a twinkle in his eye,  “if you’re real good, we might let you in on our secret.”  And, with Paul the Apostle, he might have added, “ .  .  . our secret, that is the mystery that has now been revealed to us in Roxbury, to whom God chose to make known the riches of the glory of this mystery for which we toil and struggle with all the energy that God powerfully inspires within us. Come and see how surprised we are at how God is actually doing it, and if you’re real good we might let you in on the secret.”

Jesus and Paul would have said, “Come and see how our communities live.”  I’ve pondered Thomas Atkins’ unspecified remarks for a long time, and the closest I’ve come to divining their meaning was suggested to me by an elderly resident of St. Monica’s Home for Women in Roxbury to which I was chaplain at the time. Ada Seth told me a story of raising two daughters during the depths of the Depression in the 1930s, how they had to close off most of the house in the winter and live in the remainder, and so forth.  Ada said that one day, out of the blue, arrived a large check from a mysterious benefactor which allowed them to expand their lifestyle. About a month later, her daughters came to her and said, “Mama, it was such fun to be poor! Can’t we be poor again?” They were not as mindful as their mother of the ghetto conditions later described by the Kerner Commission in its investigation of Dr. King’s assassination decades later, but were very aware of the enduring bonds of affection and love which  accompany the interdependence, sharing, cultural richness, diversity, and such, which characterize communities  living with adversity.


In 1968 the Kerner Commission established by Lyndon Johnson to examine the causes of the racial riots of the previous few summers released its report which rendered the failings of institutions and social forces that had delivered the country to that moment of racial reckoning, beginning in the Colonial era and continuing through the formation of what were then called ghettos. The report stated, bluntly, that what white Americans have never fully understood — but what the Negro can never forget — is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, maintain it, and condone it. The report is best remembered for its warning that, barring corrective measures, the nation would continue on its path toward becoming two societies — one black, one white — separate and unequal.


One of those weird passages in the Apocalypse, the last book of the Bible, pictures the final defeat of the ultimate evil won by God’s faithful servants. It says, “They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life in the face of death.” The Greek translated “the word of their testimony” is ton logon tes marturias — literally, “the logic of their martyrdom.”

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


When a servant of God does not cling to life in the face of a cross or a firearm, the logic of oppressive empires and racist cultures has run its course, their power and its weapons have done all they can do. But God’s logic persists; God’s powerless weakness — whose weapons are justice and compassionate solidarity and love — continues its patient, persistent, non-violent subversion of oppressive empires and racist cultures. I do not know Roxbury at present, but I suspect the 1968 secret of which Thomas Atkins spoke had to do with the deeper secret of the Good Shepherd who, appearances to the contrary, proclaims that no one takes his life from him but that he gives his life according to his essential being as fully God and fully human, gives it  as the destined means of being with us to subvert oppressive empire and racist culture, his way of taking up the life which God has written into his DNA.

Fourth Sunday in Lent Year B: March 11, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Roy Parker, OHC

Fourth Sunday in Lent Year B- Sunday, March 11, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Roy Parker, OHC 

Today’s story about the Cross implies a couple of important things on the Lenten journey toward Easter: one is the assertion to the Jewish authorities which Jesus makes later in the John Gospel, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am,” which is the revelation of his God-identity by means of the Cross; the other is the central message of Good Friday, that that particular day is, strange to say, not about the death of Jesus, but about the victory of the Cross, as if Jesus were to say,


“It’s not about me, folks, but about what God intends to do through me by means of this instrument.”           

The gospel is also about what can happen when we look toward Jesus the Savior who was fastened to the life-giving Tree as the serpent was similarly fastened to an elevated pole in the sight of the Israelites. I borrow my description of salvation partly from an interview between Bruce Springsteen and David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, which occurred at one of the magazine’s recent festivals  and complete it with a riff on the legendary OK sign adorning Chevrolet’s used car lots.


Springsteen’s remarks describe something of the interaction between the Crucified and Glorified Savior and the believer who turns to him entirely wholeheartedly. David Remnick is asking Springsteen about his manner of concert performance in the 70s, to which he replies: “Losing myself was something I was shooting for. I’d had enough of myself by that time to want to lose myself — so I went on stage every night to just kind of do exactly that. Playing is orgiastic. It’s a moment of both incredible self-realization and self-erasure at the same time.

You disappear and blend into all the other people that are out there and into the notes and chords and music that you’ve written; you kind of rise up and vanish into it. That was something I was pursuing, and I was pursuing intoxication and why people have gotten intoxicated since the beginning of time, why the war on drugs will never be successful, because people need to lose themselves; we can only stand so much of ourselves. For the audience’s part, they come not to learn something, but to be reminded of something when they come to see a performance or someone they love deeply. You’re getting people in touch with the center of themselves. 

Why do people come to a show? Well, you want to be reminded of the part of yourself which feels really alive. That’s what a great three-minute pop song does. In three minutes you get the entire picture. You get the possibility of life on earth and what that can mean and what that can do for you and do for others. It’s just encapsulated in three minutes of what can feel like nothingness, but for some reason has had the power to inspire and lift up and bring you closer to Godhead or whatever you’re pursuing. Our job is we’re repairmen, we’re reminders. I don’t get paid to play this song or that song . . . I get paid to be as present as I can conceivably be on every night that I’m out there!” So, Springsteen reminds us also of the chemistry between the Crucified and Glorified Savior and the heart of the supplicant.

     A further commentary is conveyed by Chevrolet’s legendary OK used car sign.

The OK Used Cars brand, Chevy’s used car trade-in division, started in the mid-1920s. The OK tag system was a checklist that showed what parts of the car had been checked and reconditioned prior to throwing it out on the lot. Said Chevrolet, “We developed this to protect the used car buyer, attaching a tag to the radiator caps of all our reconditioned cars — the famous Chevrolet Red OK tag — showing exactly what vital units have been checked OK or reconditioned by our expert mechanics. We believe that no fairer system of used car merchandizing has ever been devised, for it assures the customer honest value as well as a dependable, satisfactory car.” A list of thirteen items, from engine, transmission, and radiator to upholstery, fenders, and finish were systematically checked off, and the tag attached. At one time this was a big deal. Cars wore out quickly, and buying used, even recently used, was chancy. 

The OK tag put millions of minds at ease over the decades. As time went on with frequent style changes and updates rolling out of Detroit, to the fashion conscious nothing looked older than a three-year-old car, and you’d think this would leave used car buyers feeling down in the mouth. Nevertheless the OK tag took some of the sting and stigma away from buying a used car. It wasn’t brand new, of course, but that didn’t make it any less stylish or comfortable or dependable or tough or quick or peppy. Or yours.


One of my seminary classmates, Jon Olson, was rector of Christ Church, Ontario in Southern California, where I visited him upon moving to Santa Barbara some years ago. Jon was sort of a ‘beat’ artist, and among the items furnishing the sacristy was a crucifix above a prie dieu of which I have a facsimile.


The problem is that this OK tag does not apparently designate anything stylish or comfortable or dependable or tough or quick or peppy.  This particular model has obviously been totaled and not even ‘Rent A Wreck” would have it.  But we’re told it’s a sleeper, full of unsuspected value if we turn to it with all our heart. The OK tag for this particular wreckage implies features hidden from us until we hit a wall lie that which produced the wreckage.

When we hit the wall which causes god to disappear in the anxiety of doubt, there can appear what Springsteen describes as losing oneself, self-realization and self-erasure at the same time, disappearing and blending, rising up and vanishing, touching the part of yourself which feels really alive, the possibility of life on earth and what that can mean and do for yourself and others, which could be called God beyond god.  The crucified one wears the OK seal of approval because he’s utterly reliable in this regard.

  

Fourth Sunday of Advent- Year B: December 24, 2017

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Roy Parker, OHC

Fourth Sunday of Advent- Sunday, December 24,2017

NEW! Listen to Br. Roy preaching

Br. Roy Parker, OHC

"Even at Christmas, when haloes are pretested by focus groups for inclusion in mass market campaigns, they are hard to see. Annie Dillard was scrutinizing the forest floor at Pilgrim’s Creek when she looked up and saw a tree haloed in light. She had caught the tree at prayer, in a moment so receptive and full, the boundaries of bark burst and its inner fire became available for awe. But seeing haloes is more than a lucky sighting. It entails the advent skill of sustaining attention, the simple act, as Dillard found out, of looking up. The optometrist swings his goggle machine before our eyes. ‘Read line four.’ Then he flips lenses through the machine until the blurred letters of line four snap into focus. But if we break our captivity to the imprisoning print of line four and look up to line one, the letter E will carry us away with its clarity and bless the smallest of markings with surrounding light. That is how haloes are seen, by looking up into largeness, by tucking smallness into the folds of infinity. I do not know this by contemplating shimmering trees. Rather there was woman, amid the crowd of Christmas, busy at Christmas table, and I looked up to catch a rim of radiance etching her face, to notice curves of light sliding along her shape. She out-glowed the candles. All the noise of the room left my ears and silence sharpened my sight. When this happens, and I recognize the visits, I do not get overly excited. I merely allow love to be renewed, for that is the mission of haloes, the reason they are given to us. Nor do I try to freeze the frame. Haloes suffer time, even as they show us what is beyond time. But when haloes fade, they do not abruptly vanish, abandoning us to the sorrow of lesser light. They recede, as Gabriel departed Mary, leaving us pregnant.”----- Seeing Haloes: by John Shea

And according to what’s given to us this morning, Christmas is also about God’s preferred mode of moving among us, about the sort of real estate God particularly fancies. In fairness, it must be admitted that the Bible presents two stories about this real estate as if God were of two minds about it. ‘The House of Cedar School,’ as it might be called, receives its first fulfillment in the epic construction of Solomon’s Temple, an edifice congruent with the regal splendor of everything else about Solomon. Its successor, a pale imitation of the first, seems an essential symbol of the return of the exiles from Babylonian captivity. From Solomon on, the so-called ‘Tent School’ of Temple construction seems unworthy of consideration, but it persists in the tradition.

It begins with King David proposing to his court prophet that it’s ridiculous for the king to be living in a house of cedar while the ark of God stays in a tent, but although the prophet immediately encourages the king’s intentions for courtesy’s sake, on second thought he emphasizes God’s preference of a tent despite David’s desire to provide a more permanent structure. What’s going on here is the prophetic reminder of the tabernacle dwelling of the holy presence, which became institutionalized in Israel’s life as the yearly Feast of Tabernacles so that, by camping out for a week, the people would not forget where they came from, a memory whose importance your therapist will emphasize.

God’s assurance to David is twofold: in the words of the prophet, “the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house” and “(one of your descendants) shall build a house for my name”; nowhere is the building material specified, and, in fact, the language here is all about the establishment of dynasty. Otherwise, the only building hint given is that a tent is God’s preferred venue, but will it be duplex, split level, or ranch; you also have Victorian, Georgian,  Federal, and Desert Revival. Then there are the commissions Joseph executed with the help of Jesus, with a large menu of possibilities. Imagine the conversations: “Son, I realize we were occupiers, but don’t you think that Philistine split-level is just the coolest?” It’s an important question for the annual Feast of Tabernacles as important as Passover for the Jewish sense of identity. Oddly enough, the preferred design is Tel Aviv Ikea, using rather inexpensive materials, which is why they came to Joseph’s shop in the first place: four two by fours, about eight feet long, (for the upright corners), four two by twos, same length, (for the roof), for the roof covering, several slats capable of supporting light tree branches. For the sides, they discovered that old bedsheets work well, and for the front, a bedsheet attached to a wire track. Leafy tree branches are placed on the roof slats, with enough gaps to observe the night stars and Ikea recommends a seven-foot cube for the construction, allowing plenty of room for guests.

All this would help Jesus remember the saying that “While God waits for the temple to be built of love, people bring stones” and reinforce the later realization of John the Evangelist that Christmas is about how God moves among us in a tent. And not only how, but why this should be preferable to the host of tourist attractions erected to supposedly house the divine presence. Why, indeed, should the Feast of Tabernacles, a kind of camp-town meeting, be so important to Israel and why should John the Evangelist make such a point that the Word became flesh and tented among us? What is this thing with tents? Something to do with the mystery of wilderness? Wilderness, and its effect upon us — which eases the hatreds, the violence, all those hard forbidden thoughts that plague us, ease them as wild things always ease heartache. Wilderness in which the undomesticated God reunites with us, and if you recall your childhood camping adventures, you might recall your tent as a mysterious vehicle for this. The undomesticated God prefers a tent of bedsheets to a house of cedar, and when the Word became flesh, Jesus preferred the tent of suffering humanity in which to move about, the Body of Christ as described by John Shea in his Prayer to the God Who Fell from Heaven.

“If you had stayed tight-fisted in the sky and watched us thrash with all the patience of a pipe smoker, I would have prayed like a golden bullet aimed at your heart. But the story says you cried, and so heavy was the tear you fell with it to earth where like a baritone in a bar it is never time to go home. So you move among us, twisting every straight line into Picasso, stealing kisses from pinched lips, holding our hand in the dark. So now when I pray I sit and turn my mind like a television knob till you are there with your large, open hands, spreading my life before me like a Sunday tablecloth and pulling up a chair yourself. For by now the secret is out. You are home.”

Proper 26, Year A: November 5, 2017

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Roy Parker, OHC
Proper 26 - Sunday, November 5, 2017

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Roy Parker, OHC

Significant portions of these remarks are indebted to the New Yorker magazine of October 23rd, and in their entirety appeal to your intercessory prayer and action for social justice.

The Gospel passage is Jesus’ denunciation of the exploitation of power by a social class deemed prophetic and therefore untouchable. The passage is entitled “Jesus Denounces Scribes and Pharisees,” in this instance comprising the first twelve verses of Matthew 23, but, on closer inspection, practically the entire chapter is dedicated to this indictment of those entrusted with the interpretation and application of religious law in the daily life of Palestinian Judaism, those trustees who cry “Peace” when they have something to eat but declare war against those who put nothing into their mouths.

An extraordinary series of “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” comprises, apparently, the most passionate verbal denunciation by Jesus of anyone in the Gospels. We might wonder, Why does Matthew devote practically an entire chapter to the problem, whereas the other Gospels have only a couple of verses? A good guess may be that Matthew is writing for Jewish-Christians. Therefore we’re presented with a lengthy catalog of indictments against a group whose position as interpreters and teachers of the Torah — the revealed laws upon which Israel's identity depends — confers a privilege and respect which shields it from the censure one would expect. This lengthy catalog is repeatedly marked by the phrase "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!" and perhaps nowadays Jesus would have said, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, scumbags!" Each of those Woes introduces a description of how this privileged class of supposed teachers, who are actually abusers, have perverted the original life-giving revelation into something oppressive and self-serving. In fact, the starkest examples of this perversion appear to be regulations associated with the Temple, giving rise to an observation by Abraham Heschel on one occasion that the most pervasive institutional sin should be called “the sin of the sanctuary,” as true, apparently, of Christians as of Jews. That sanctuaries are a promise and possibility of a portal between earth and heaven would seem the reason.

Therefore, Jesus concludes his list of woes against the scribes and Pharisees, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how often have I desired to gather your children together . . . and you were not willing. See, your (temple) is left to you, desolate, devoid of God.”

The untouchability of those associated with the sanctuary has, as we know, been compromised by a broad indictment of the priestly caste in the Western Church; it’s differently reflected in an interview between Marin Alsop, Director of the Baltimore Symphony, and Scott Simon of NPR’s Weekend Edition at the time, several years ago, when Maestra Alsop had accepted her appointment as director of the symphony. Scott Simon asked her why the symphony’s board of directors had taken so long to approve her appointment, to which she replied that in the culture of this country there remained the myth of an ultimate male authority figure casting its shadow over the legitimacy of any such female figure. In the time of Jesus, of course,  the myth of an ultimate male authority figure was writ even larger in the popular imagination.

If it’s legitimate to regard these so-called untouchables as abusers of the tradition entrusted to them, a comparison with the current revelations of sexual abuse by other male power figures may be useful as revealing just the beginnings of an undoing of the male mystique which informs American society. Furthermore, I regard the courage of the revealers as not unrelated to the passionate denunciation expressed by Jesus in the Gospel.

We talk about assault as if it were a new phenomenon as if it weren't the people in positions of authority who are so often responsible: lawyers, judges, priests, teachers, police officers, doctors, CEOs. Why do we act so shocked? The subject of sexual abuse is treated like global warming — we think that if we pretend it’s not happening, then maybe it will go away. For years - for centuries - the economic, physical and cultural subjugation of women has registered as something like white noise. Lately, it appears that we’re starting to hear the tune.

What had been a backdrop is now in the foreground; it has become a story with rotating protagonists which never seems to leave the news. Sexual harassment and assault is an issue that crosses all boundaries, political or otherwise. It's about predators in power who know that they are untouchable and the people who enable them. Thanks to mainstream feminism, victimized women have been supported to an unprecedented degree by much of the media and the public. At the same time, political backlash insures hard limits for this support. The increasing narrative clarity about male power does not always translate to progress. For women, it feels, all at once, shockingly possible, suddenly mandatory, and unusually frustrating to speak up.

We should pay attention to the dynamics that make this progress irregular: not all abusers meet with consequences, and not all women can attain firm ground. Men are still more often held to a standard of consistency than of morality. The star abusers were disgraced, in part, because of their hypocrisy; men who never pretended to see women as equals or as worthy of respect can generally just keep on as they were. There are significant constituencies in America who are not yet interested in holding men accountable for abusive behavior. And there are still huge swaths of women - the poor, the queer, the undocumented - who can’t count on the security that feminism has conferred on its wealthier, whiter adherents, or trust that their victimization would even become news.

Nevertheless, the hunger for and possibility of solidarity among women beckons. Recently, women have been posting their experiences of assault and harassment on social media. We might listen to and lament the horrific stories being shared, and also wonder: Whom, exactly, are we reminding that women are treated as second class? 

Being heard is one kind of power, and being free is another. We have undervalued women’s speech for so long that we run the risk of overburdening it. Speech, right now, is just the flag that marks the battle. The gains won by women are limited to those who can demand them. Individual takedowns and social media stories do not yet threaten the structural impunity of powerful men as a group. On one side of the issue, the moral weight is crushing, the energy vital and sincere. On the other side, there is disavowal and retrenchment. In between are plenty of people who would rather we just talked about something else. This type of problem always narrows to an unavoidable point. The exploitation of power does not stop once we consolidate the narrative of exploitation. A genuine challenge to the hierarchy of power will have to come from those who have it.