Holy Cross Day - Sep 14, 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Scott Borden, OHC, Prior of Holy Cross Monastery

Holy Cross Day - Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Isaiah 45:21-25
Galatians 6:14-18
John 12:31-36a


Some days in our Church calendar leave me a conflicted... I suppose as a member of the Order of the Holy Cross, this day, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, perhaps should not be one of them... but it is.

There is much that is wonderful and glorious in the history of Christianity, but nobody will be shocked if I also say that there is also much that is vile and wicked. Some of the very best in human nature has been drawn out, encouraged, and nurtured by the Church. And some of the very worst in human nature has, sadly, found encouragement in the Church as well. Our history is surely mixed.

So days like today, that lend themselves to a triumphant celebration make me nervous. Yes we have much to celebrate, but we also have much for which we can only hang our heads in shame.

The Gospel reading for today sounds a note of caution: “Now is the judgment of this world... the rulers of this world will be driven out...”

The discomfort that I feel hangs right on that bit of Gospel. For when we sing triumphant hymns and celebrate, too often, for me, it has the flavor of this world – triumph defined in human terms.

Yet at the same time, Jesus was very clear. We must celebrate as those at a wedding banquet must celebrate – a miserable, dour Christianity is just as dominated by this world as a Christianity that lacks retrospection and remorse.

This is the conflict I carry into my thinking about today – the exaltation of the cross must be a wedding banquet and a time for reflection and remorse.

It gives me great comfort that, as a member of the Order of the Holy Cross I have another vast tradition to strengthen me – the Benedictine tradition. That tradition calls me to stability and to balance. Stability requires me, as uncomfortable as I may be, to stay and wrestle with my discomfort. And balance assures me that the tension between celebration and remorse is healthy and appropriate – to leave out either end of the spectrum would be to loose balance.

Early Christians didn't have the symbol of the cross in such a prominent place as we do. In their day we would have seen more fish than crosses. Seeing crosses as often and is as many places as we do anesthetizes us to the horror in front of us. The plain meaning of the cross is brutal and horrific.

We no longer use crucifixion as a means of killing those we wish, in the name of justice, to kill. Were Jesus executed by the state of Texas, we might have a syringe, the tool of lethal injection, as the symbol of our faith... Or New York of the 1960s would have given us the electric chair... If Jesus had been executed a hundred years ago we might be looking at the hangman's noose or the rifles of a firing squad... Churches in France might be littered with representations of guillotines. In England there might be stakes with kindling piled around.

If we try to imagine any of those symbols above and behind this altar, perhaps we get a glimpse of how the cross might have spoken to those early Christians. It is traumatic and discomforting.

In exalting the cross, we are taking something that is brutal, painful, deadly... and resurrecting it in a most hopeful and life giving way... Of course, we don't do that... God does that.

Part of my discomfort with today has to do with looking back. We don't see the true horror of the cross as a cruel human tool. The cross in human hands, our hands, is an abomination. Only through God's redeeming love can it show love. We need to look back in honesty. The story of the cross is the story of redemption being possible for the most evil of things. We loose a great deal if we let the true depth of that evil slide out of the picture. For we are no different than the crowds who called for Jesus to be nailed to the cross... no different than the public servants who dutifully executed the task.

The other part of my discomfort has to do with looking forward. Jesus calls us to take up our cross and follow. But I have the sense that, starting perhaps with Emperor Constantine and continuing to my own life, too often we take up the cross and lead rather than following. Hymns like “Lift High the Cross”, which I happen to love, enhance this danger. They make us feel very good about raising up the cross, and along with that comfortable, good feeling, comes the temptation to carry the cross in directions that feel good and comfortable... But Jesus does not lead us in feel-good, comfortable ways.

It is very easy, as humans, to beguile ourselves into thinking the cross is leading us exactly where we wanted to go in the first place... It is quite convenient. It is quite sinful.

When members of the Ku Klux Klan, in our fairly recent history, burned crosses as a weapon of racial hatred and terror, they were following their own desires. They were not following the Cross of Jesus. Anders Breivic, the mass killer in Norway, who claims to be some sort of Christian, was surely following his own heart, not the Cross. From this point in history we can look at the Crusades and say that, how ever well intentioned, however faithful those who who went, they were not following the Cross of Jesus. In our Anglican tradition, the reformers who brutally killed their opponents (and that includes all sides) were not following the Cross.

We could develop a never ending list of times when we, human beings, Christians, have taken up our cross and gone exactly where we wanted to go, not following Jesus, but following our own hearts. But the only list that is important for me is the list of when I have forced the cross to take me where I want to go rather than where Jesus leads.

That is half the story. It must be faced. We dishonor this day if we do not bring to mind our failures and our frailty, if we do not confess and humbly repent.

The other half of the story is the endless list of times when people did take up their cross and follow... often at great personal cost... even to the point of death. Martin Luther King springs to mind. And Dietrich Bonhȍffer. Oskar Schindler and Oscar Romero. Constance and her companions. Hundreds of rescue workers on September 11th. Various Holy Cross brothers and countless Franciscans and Benedictines. Some acts were heroic. Others were tiny, hardly-noticed, faithful acts.

We could develop a list that never ends when we, human beings, Christians, have taken up our cross and faithfully followed without regard to cost or comfort. And in honest humility I have to be prepared to make my own list of when I have been a faithful follower. Not to do so dishonors the day.

The power of the cross is this: that something so loathsome and so detestable can be transformed by God into something so wonderful. It is death and resurrection.

That is the transformation that we need, that I need in my heart – that I can die to this world and be resurrected to God's Kingdom – not as some far off, fantastic, future thing, but here and now. Through God it is possible.

Let us walk in the light of Jesus, taking up our crosses and having the humility to follow.

Proper 19 A - Sep 11, 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Sermon for 9/11

Br. Clark Berge, minister general of SSF

Proper 19A- Sunday, September 11, 2011

Exodus 14:19-31

Romans 14:1-12

Matthew 18:21-35

Let us pray:  Compassionate God, as we gather today, we open our hearts to you and ask for the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit, recognizing that there are only two feelings. Love and Fear. There are only two languages. Love and fear. There are only two activities. Love and fear. There are only two motives, two procedures, two frameworks, two results. Love and fear. Love and fear. (Adapted from Michael Leunig, A Common Prayer, HarperCollins Religious, Sydney, 1990)

What a great joy to be gathered here today with friends and people of faith; to be reading Scriptures about forgiveness and sharing the Sacrament, being assured of God’s forgiveness and commissioned to be ambassadors of reconciliation. This is the only context I can bear to think about 9/11. The hurt is still there, and we pray for all who died, all who suffer grief or disability because of the attacks on New York and Washington DC—all the wounded. We pray for them and hold them in our hearts.  Politicians have to balance American interests and the authority of pollsters against their re-election chances when they talk about these events. Inevitably it becomes “us against them.”  It is so easy to fall into that. Yet we are called to live differently as Christians.  Embracing our pain, is there still room to love our enemies?

In the Exodus passage for today we are reminded God is very much active in human history, working in our midst to bring us out of slavery into freedom. Not everyone has moved beyond believing God takes sides in human conflict (that is a big part of the rhetoric from both Al Qaeda and some Westerners). But we must never lose sight of God’s action that is to free us from all the things that enslave us—capitalism, Islamism, “Christian-ism”, Marxism, liberalism, conservatism—and all the other “—isms.” God is actively leading us into a land of new possibilities for the human spirit. I say that with confidence because God has continued to lead his people through obstacles, from the Red Sea onwards, leading us to freedom. The evidence has mounted over the ages and God’s methods have matured. From drowning Pharaoh God gave his only Son. God raised the stakes. There is nothing God won’t do to set humanity free.

The reality of 9/11 is that a terrible thing happened. We live with the question: how will we prevent it from happening again in America, in Britain, in India, in Pakistan, in Sri Lanka, in Israel, in Palestine, in Iraq, in Zimbabwe, in south Africa, in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Norway, Syria, Northern Ireland,, Colombia, Mexico, Bali, the Solomon Islands, Japan…I’ve only just started on the list. Who can think of a country that does not commemorate a tragedy where bombs exploded, innocent and not-so-innocent people died? How can we prevent such things from happening?

What would happen if we stopped judging each other, as Paul suggests in this morning’s reading from Romans? I am not talking about “anything-goes” or suspending justice, but what if we humans started expecting the best of each other? What if we committed ourselves to a nonviolent response to whatever provocation? Not just you and me, but what if everybody made this commitment? Of course it won’t happen spontaneously. I won’t happen quickly. But I wonder if the perceived odds prevent us from even trying it at all? Alternatives can be taught, as the SSF Formator’s learned at our conference in the Solomon Islands last year the Alternatives to Violence Project. Do we cringe from being called naïve?  Spreading the message of nonviolence means working with whomever we can. It means refraining from violent thinking and action. It means being willing to keep on with it even as it seems more and more futile. Because what else can we do—us Bible-reading, Sacrament eating people?  Can we go from Altar to armory? Some have had to, and some still do. But as Religious, we don’t have to promote a diminished Gospel, a fear-based message.

The Gospel we have been given teaches love and forgiveness. Love is the opposite of fear. Love compels us to forgive our enemies. Jesus rejected violence and forgave his persecutors. That is the story that continues to inspire people throughout the ages. How many tims we fail at this is not the point. Rather the point s how often we dust off and try again. Love never ends. It is never too late to do the loving thing.

So today, as we remember 9/11, Christians using the Common Lectionary around the world hear the message from Matthew—how often should I forgive? Matthew frames the question in terms of forgiving brothers and sisters in the Church, but Jesus’ story is definitely not “churchy.”  Forgiveness frees us from retaliation. Forgiveness makes the human spirit shine. It shows the active, death-defying, all-powerful presence of god—that spiritual power of forgiveness shining in the human breast is a pillar of fire shining in the darkness of our confusion and hatreds, our pettiness and our fully justified reasons to annihilate each other. The only way to stop it, I sense from Jesus’ teachings and example, even as he hung from the cross, is to forgive.

What are the stories that make you squirm and re-evaluate your life? What are the stories that make you pray: “Oh God, I wish I could be like that: like Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker movement, Mother Teresa, Dr. Martin Luther King, Gandhi?” Central to their stories is compassion, forgiveness, and a commitment to non-violence, we hear of love overcoming fear and hate. Their stories shape, for me, everything the Gospel stirs up in me. Jesus said things, Paul taught long ago, but these men and women show how it can be done today, in the face of horrendous modern evil. They show us that we live in a reality defined and infused with love.

We’re God-loving, Bible-reading, Sacrament-eating, world-serving people: what other reality is there?

Today is 9/11 and some say it is about Islam and terrorism. I want to close by reminding us of some people I have recently added to my list of inspiring people who make me squirm, the Trappist monks of Tibhirine, whose story has become famous recently with the release of the film “Of Gods and Men.” If you have seen the film, you know Christian de Cherge was prior of Notre Dam de l’Atlas, a small monastery in Algeria. He wrote a lot about Islam and Christianity. One thing he wrote was that “Forgiveness” is one of the names for God in the 99 praises of God. We know St. Francis loved that prayer and captured it for Franciscans in his Divine Praises, joyfully repeating the names of God: “You are forgiveness…you are love…you are joy.”  Anticipating his death, Christian wrote a letter to be opened in the event of his death. Terrorists in Algeria killed him and several other monks.

If the day comes, and it could be today, that I am a victim of the terrorism that seems to be engulfing all foreigners living in Algeria, I would like my community, my Church, and my family to remember that I have dedicated my life to God and Algeria.

That they accept that the Lord of all life was not a stranger to this savage kind of departure; that they pray for me, wondering how I found myself worthy of such a sacrifice; that they link in their memory this death of mine with all the other deaths equally violent but forgotten in their anonymity.

My life is not worth more than any other—not less, not more. Nor am I an innocent child. I have lived long enough to know that I, too, am an accomplice of the evil that seems to prevail in the world around, even that which might lash out blindly at me. If the moment comes, I would hope to have presence of mind, and the time, to ask for God’s pardon and for that of my fellowman, and, at the same time, to pardon in all sincerity he would attack me.

I would not welcome such a death. It is important for me to say this. I do not see how I could rejoice when this people whom I love will be accused, indiscriminately, of my death. The price is too high, this so-called grace of the martyr, if I owe it to an Algerian who kills me in the name of what he thinks is Islam.

I know the contempt that some people have for Algerians as a whole. I also know the caricatures of Islam that a certain (Islamist) ideology promotes. It is too easy for such people to dismiss, in good conscience, this religion as something hateful by associating it with violent extremists. For me, Algeria and Islam are quite different from the commonly held opinion. They are body and soul. I have said enough, I believe, bout all the good things I have received here, finding so often the meaning of the Gospels, running like some gold thread through my life, and which began first at my mother’s knee, my very first church, here in Algeria, where I learned respect for Muslims.

Obviously, my death will justify the opinion of all those who dismissed me as naïve or idealistic: “Let him tell us what he thinks now.” But such people should know my death will satisfy my most burning curiosity. At last, I will be able—if God pleases—to se the children f Islam as He sees them, illuminated in the glory of Christ, sharing in the gift of God’s Passion and of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to bring forth our common humanity amidst our differences.

I give thanks to God for this life; completely mine yet completely theirs, too, to God, who wanted it for joy against, and in spite of, all odds. In this Thank You—which says everything about my life—I include you, my friends past and present, and those friends who will be here at the side of my mother and father, of my sisters and brothers—thank you a thousand fold.

And to you, too, my friend of the last moment, who will not know what you are doing. Yes, for you, too, I wish this thank you, this “A-Dieu,” whose image is in you also, that we may meet in heaven, like happy thieves, if it pleases God, our common Father. Amen! Insha-Allah!

(TheMonks of Tibhirine: Faith, Love, and Terror in Algeria.  John W. Kiser, St. Martin’s Griffin, New York, 2003, pp. 244-246)

Proper 16A - Aug 21, 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Adam McCoy, OHC
Proper 16A - Sunday, August 21, 2011

Isaiah 51:1-6
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20

As all the brethren know, I have just returned from two weeks away. I left, as I always do, with a small library of books I intended to read: David Brakke’s Athanasius and Asceticism; another book on asceticism, Margaret Miles’ Fullness of Life, which I should have read when it came out in 1981; two recent compilations of essays on the Venerable Bede; and Harold Bloom’s latest work of literary criticism, The Anatomy of Influence. I always do this: I pack the books I ought to read. I know I will return a much better person if I read them all, and I never do. I crack them, read a chapter or two, and then, somehow, mysteriously, move onto something else. This time I read two books which were actually a lot more fun: Jonathan Yardley’s wonderful short essays on neglected classics called Second Reading, and John Julius Norwich’s just-published narrative romp, Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy. If you want the serious history of the popes, of course, you have to go to the Germans, someone like Bernard Schimmelpfennig, who thinks it is terribly important that the reader understand that the likelihood that Peter ever even got to Rome at all is practically zero. He dissects the papacy like a coroner dissects corpses, looking for evidences of foul play.

Norwich is not of the Schimmelpfennig school. He nods his head to the grim truth that much has been lost to us in the mists of time. But he loves to evoke the living reality, so he tells the stories, and there are a lot of good and juicy stories to tell. The papacy has been around in one form or another going on two thousand years, and its story is a fascinating narrative with a cast of hundreds in the starring roles and thousands surrounding them. The Vatican officially lists Benedict XVI as number 265, and that doesn’t count the numerous popes of disputed title. There are lots of saints and quite a lot of remarkable and admirable men on that list. But there are also more than a few scoundrels, and some stories that will curl the hair of the most ardent proponent of the See of Rome. My personal favorite among the flagrantly ambiguous reigned from 1492 to 1503. Alexander VI, the first Borgia pope, was a great administrator and diplomat, a patron of the arts and of learning, and devoted to his family. He was a man of enormous charm which he used to great and positive effect at some quite dangerous and difficult moments. But as greatly charming persons sometimes are, he was also possessed of dubious personal holiness and habits of life. Among the four publicly acknowledged children by his mistress Vanozza dei Cattanei, all of whom he provided for in quite a grand way at the expense of the Church, was the irrepressible Lucrezia. I recommend Norwich to you to fill in the details.

“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” Whatever construction later ecclesiastical theory put on this statement, and it is the key scriptural basis for the primacy of the successors of Peter, it is clear that the early church thought that the Lord’s words to Peter were central to its self-understanding. Something essential about the leadership of the Church is indicated by the exchange between Jesus and Peter. Something worth looking at.

Jesus is asking his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter, without any hesitation, answers, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." An amazingly rich and complicated exchange, using in such a short space three of the most loaded titles in all of scripture, about which commentary has swirled and proliferated likely since the moment this conversation was uttered. Indeed, the first commentary on it comes from Jesus himself: The one who has identified Jesus as Messiah and Son of the living God is the rock on which the Church will be built. That is how important Peter’s statement is.

I find it interesting that Jesus uses the word rock here, and also that the early church remembered it and made it central. Remember the parable of the two houses, one built on sand and the other on rock? The one built on sand is swept away. The one built on rock outlasts the storm. Jesus wants his movement to continue long after he is gone. But he seems to be worried that it won’t last, that it will be built on a false foundation. The church requires rock for its foundation. It may be, as later was taught, that the rock is the character of Peter, and it may be that his official successors will inherit his strength of character and immovability. The colorful story of Peter’s successors shows that some were rocks and some, well, not so much. Yet mysteriously, the church endures.

But I wonder if Jesus’ statement is not about something more direct in his exchange with Peter. The rock to which Jesus refers can be interpreted as Peter’s confession, that Jesus is Messiah and Son of the living God. This is what calls forth the Lord’s declaration. Perhaps Jesus is suggesting that if a leader wants to follow in Peter’s steps, it is Peter’s confession that provides the strength and solidity, the genuineness, the integrity on which the church can continue to be built. What matters in a leader of the Church may include being a good administrator or a good diplomat, or a person devoted to his or her family (and what family doesn’t have its ups and downs!). But what makes Christian leadership genuine is that the leader points to Jesus of Nazareth and declares to all who may care to hear that it is this one – not some other – who is the one anointed to bring in the kingdom of God, that is to say, this is the one who is the answer to how we should order our lives, individually and collectively; that it is this one – not some other – who bears the divine nature in human form, that is to say, this is the one who shows us what it ultimately real.

The rock solid foundation of the Church is its understanding of who Jesus really is. Leaders who truly follow Peter, who are genuine rocks on whom the church is built in every age, indeed in our own age, are those who say with unequivocal certainty that Jesus is the one who brings in the kingdom and shows the true nature of God to us.

In eight days, on August 29, the list of official nominees for the election of the 16th Episcopal Bishop of New York is to be announced, and exactly two months later the Convention will vote, and, one hopes, elect. There are many qualities which one can desire in a bishop of a diocese as large and as complex as New York. We have had good administrators, diplomatic personalities, and men devoted to their families, though not all of them quite as colorful perhaps as Alexander VI. Whoever is elected will need many gifts, but more gifts will be needed than any one person can possess. Inevitably he or she will lack some important ones, and in ten years or so it will be clear what they are.

But there is one gift this new Bishop, in fact every bishop, in fact every Christian leader, in fact, every serious Christian, must absolutely possess. When asked the question, Who do you say that I am? by the Lord, or when asked by others, Who is Jesus?, that person should be one who, with Peter, can say with unequivocal certainty who Jesus is: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." And mean it. And understand it. And interpret it to others. And put it into effective practice in this time and in this place. And build the church on it.