Second Sunday of Easter - Year A

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

Easter 2 – Sunday April 23, 2017 

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

Beloved Lord of All, grant that all who have been reborn into the fellowship of Christ’s Body may show forth in their lives what they profess by their faith. Today’s Gospel brings us to look again at our own journeys of faith. And it does this in three movements and a conclusion.

First, Jesus appears to the disciples assembled behind closed doors and commissions them to do the work of God. Second, Thomas who missed out on Jesus’ visit puts his own conditions to belief. Third, Thomas is given the opportunity to have his conditions to belief satisfied and then gains unconditional belief. Finally, the last two verses of Chapter 20 of the Gospel expose the program of the writer for the whole Gospel that comes here to an end. The Gospel was “written so that you may believe… and have life in [Jesus’] name.”

Let’s go back to the room where the disciples are assembled. They are trying to come to terms with their memories, their emotions and their fears. The last 72 hours have been harrowing and frightful for all of them. After the foot washing and dinner with Jesus, everything went from bad -- to worse -- to horrifying.

In those 72 hours, Judah betrayed Jesus, Peter committed violence against an opponent, most of the disciples abandoned Jesus, Peter publicly betrayed Jesus, the women and the disciple whom Jesus loved have seen Jesus’ death on the cross, they have received help in taking their dead rabbi down and they have put him in a tomb.

Now, on this first day of the week, Jerusalem winds down from the Passover festival. In the midst of their fear, grief and pain, Mary Magdalene has brought to the disciples hope in which they don’t dare to believe. They are in a state of disoriented unbelief, locked behind closed doors for fear of the Judean authorities. The authorities who have had Jesus crucified by the Romans and might very well come for them next.

In the midst of their angst, Jesus appears amongst them and greets them with “Peace to you”. This conventional greeting probably never carried so much truth and weight for them. Peace indeed, the peace of God that passes all understanding, the peace that ignores obstacles such as walls and locked doors, the peace that comes from struggle-free belief. But even so, the disciples need to see the imprints of the nails and the gash of the spear on Jesus’ body to recognize him as whom they know him to be. And Jesus says again “Peace to you”. Only now do the disciples shed their gloom and find their joy.

Jesus then proceeds to commission the disciples to continue the work of God. They are to bear the fruit of his victory into the world, beyond this room, and into time, beyond this moment. The night before he died, Jesus had prayed: “As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (John 17:18). And now, the commission rolls on to you and me who hear the evangelist’s witness to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And as Jesus had promised, he gives us the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, the Advocate and Comforter who will be with us till the end of time to help us go into the world for God, as Jesus did. The Evangelist uses the image of Jesus breathing into the disciples; evoking for us the image of God breathing life into Adam (in Genesis 2:7) or of Ezekiel prophesying to the breath in the valley of bones (Ezekiel 37). This reminds us that, in Jesus, we receive new life. 

The assembled disciples who saw Jesus on the day of his resurrection are not much different from Thomas. They needed to see Jesus’ wounds to accept what all their being told them already; he is risen, as he promised! Thomas holds to us the mirror of our own doubts and control needs. Have you never doubted God? Have you never demanded that God meet you on your own terms? Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus first came to the assembled disciples. Could he have been the courageous one, out there in the world, facing the risks of being a Jesus disciple, while his friends cowered behind closed doors? Wasn’t he the one who said “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John 11:16) when Jesus decided to go back into Judea, to Bethany? Could Thomas have been the distraught pessimist who needed to nurse his grief alone? In any case, Thomas wasn’t there the first time around.

But when Jesus comes back to the disciples a week after his resurrection, he addresses Thomas’ needs. Jesus understands our doubts. God is willing to accompany us beyond our doubts. Jesus encourages us along the only path to abundant life: “Do not doubt, but believe.” This is not a very good place to insist on empirical, scientific methods of knowing. The text does not tell us that Thomas actually did test Jesus’ wounds. It rather seems that faced with Jesus’ presence, he came to immediate and unconditional belief: “My Lord and my God!”

Jesus says “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” In the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (NRSV), he says: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

I have no knowledge of greek translation, but I sense that this “have come to believe” is faithful to the Evangelist’s intent. The Evangelist (through all of Chapter 20 of the Gospel) shows us the passage from unbelief to conditional and then unconditional belief in most of Jesus’ disciples; Mary Magdalene, Thomas and most of the other disciples. God honors our journeys of faith.

We, here, today, can no longer see the embodied Jesus and we can not yet see Jesus in the flesh to sustain our faith. But we can buttress our faith on a host of witnesses who passed on their experience of the live and risen Christ. And we can buttress our faith on a host of witnesses who experience the living Christ even now, maybe even here.

May you also have life in Jesus’ name. May our life into the fellowship of Christ’s Body show forth in what we profess; in deeds and in words, by faith. Amen.

The Great Vigil of Easter - Year A

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC

The Great Vigil of Easter – Sunday April 16, 2017

Br.  Robert Sevensky

“Do not be afraid.  I know you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.  He is not here, for he has been raised, as he said. Come see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, He has been raised from the dead and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him. This is my message for you.” (Matt. 28:5-7)

We have been proclaiming the resurrection this morning with various symbols, each of which, in its own way, captures and expresses in very primal form the deep truth of our faith:  that Jesus Christ has passed from death to life, that he is risen and is, for us now, new life and new hope.  First with fire, then with spoken word and prophecy accompanied by that great natural symbol of sunrise; then with water and oil and the baptismal mystery and now with bells and song, and finally, and most intimately, with the Bread and Wine of new and renewed life.  Each symbol is powerful in its own way...and each symbol falls short of the fullness of the Truth. But each is also necessary and holy.

In the movement of our worship, the symbols move from the more external—from darkness and fire and light—to the more personal and internal, to the very consuming of our hope.  Yet it is one and the same proclamation made in so many different ways.

We may feel, by the end of it, having received our Easter Communion, that our work is done, that our Easter has been accomplished and that, for another year at least, we can rest comforted by the interiorized truth of Easter joy.  But Matthew's Gospel account of the Resurrection that we heard this morning leaves us, as do all the Gospel resurrection accounts, strangely unsettled.  

The work of encountering the living Lord is partial at best and never finished, even for those two lucky women who met with the angel at the tomb and grasped the Lord's feet. For the message from each is not: Stay here. Rather it is a directive, a command, to go ahead, ahead to Galilee.  It is there that Jesus will be encountered in his fullness.  And like them, we too are sent ahead, sent away, sent out.

Several years ago, our Deputy Bishop Visitor Stacy Sauls addressed our annual chapter meeting.  He talked about what might be the best name for this most intimate of ritual actions involving bread and wine that we are now embarked upon. The Lord's Supper? Holy Communion? Holy Eucharist? The Divine Liturgy?  The Synaxis? All these capture important dimensions of this central Easter act.  But, quite surprising, at least to me, Bp. Sauls said that the best name for what we are about this morning is the medieval one: the Mass. The name itself comes from the very final words of the gathering, when the faithful are dismissed with the Latin words: Ite missa est.  Go, it's finished, offered, sent up, sent out.  And like the offering, we too are sent, dismissed, pushed out into the world.  It's there that we will find Jesus:  “Tell my brothers to go to Galilee. They will see me there.”

Where is Galilee for you, for me?  Where is it that we are sent today in order to see Jesus in his risen state? To be companions of Jesus? To serve with Jesus.

Yes, to the church. And yes, perhaps to the monastery. But also to the workplace, with the life partner, with family, in the political arena, among the poor and the unattractive as well as among the rich and the powerful. Among the hopeless and the failures and the successful and the lost. At the end of our desired or dreamed for destination as well as when we are lost or confused or at our wits end.  Indeed, Galilee can be anywhere—it is anywhere—and  it is different for each of us and different for us at different times in our life journey. Yet it is there that we will see Jesus...and Jesus will see us.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu famously said:  “We are all missionaries.” We are all sent, like it or not.  Much of the time, frankly, I don't like it.  I'd rather stay put, stay comfortable and comforting—and who knows, that too may be our Galilee for a time.  But sent we are, make no mistake.  And the only hope for me and maybe for you as well is that promise that Jesus makes to us:  I am going ahead of you.  We will arrive and not find ourselves isolated or abandoned but in the mysterious company of the risen One, who has been waiting for us all along.

In his book Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel, Archbishop Rowan Williams makes this observation:

“Even in the Gospels, one thing is never described. There is a central silence...about the event of resurrection.  Even Matthew, with his elaborate mythological scenery, leaves the strange impression that the stone is rolled away from a tomb that is already empty...It is an event which is not describable, because it is precisely there that occurs the transfiguring expansion of Jesus' humanity which is the heart of the resurrection encounters. It is an event on the frontier of any possible language because it is the moment in which our speech is both left behind and opened to new possibilities.”

He adds:  “...however early we run to the tomb, God has been there ahead of us.”

And so we stand in awed silence, despite our lovely liturgies. We are sent...sent to the Galilees of our lives where we will meet the Lord. This is the Lord who has gone before us and awaits us there. We are all missionaries. We have all been sent. And we need not be afraid.

Ite missa est. Alleluia, alleluia.

Deo gratias. Alleluia alleluia. 

  

Palm Sunday Year A - April 9, 2017

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC

Palm Sunday -Year A  - Sunday April 9,2017 

Br. Robert James Magliula

Palm Sunday is a day of high emotion, teetering on the edge between happiness and heartbreak. The Christological hymn in Philippians, which predates all the Gospels, provides a way of entering into this contradiction. From his prison cell, Paul takes the story of the cross and transforms it into an exhortation to Christian discipleship: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”. Paul urges us to let Christ’s way of thinking and acting serve as a template for our own lives. His poetic reflection challenges conventional understandings of both divine and human power.

Western Christianity has long operated with a static image of God as a Supreme Monarch and a distant Critical Spectator, whose love is perceived as unstable and preferential. To human beings caught up in envy and selfish ambition, equality with such a God sounds like a great deal, something to be exploited for our own purposes. We admire strength, importance, self-sufficiency, and autonomy. This is the American way and we, unfortunately, become the god we worship.

The God whom Jesus loves and relies on, by whose power he heals and forgives sin, is not a political tyrant or an aloof authority figure. The God of Jesus Christ is overflowing with mercy and justice. Unlike us, God has no position to defend, no personal interests to protect. There is no envy or selfish ambition in the Godhead. In the Trinity the divine life is found in dispossession, in an eternal circle of unrestricted giving to the other. God’s mystery rests in mutuality: three “persons” perfectly handing over, emptying themselves out, and then fully receiving what has been handed over. The mystery of Trinity is about letting go, which looks like weakness. This “kenosis” or self-emptying, as Paul calls it, is what we see in Jesus who is the incarnation of God’s love and power.

Those who orchestrated Jesus’ death were preoccupied with power and fearful of change. Their actions are both distressing and instructive, affording us an opportunity to reflect more deeply on our own lives, as we begin Holy Week. Our present times can try our capacity to hear Paul’s exhortation to put on the mind of Christ. Whether 1st or 21st century Christians, we must ask ourselves how we exemplify selflessness and regard for others, particularly in times of controversy. If the mind of Christ is in us, how is this manifest in our character, our grappling with our internal conflicts, in the new thing God may be trying to birth in us?

As those who seek the mind of Christ, we should beware of triumphant processions that exalt rivalry and selfish ambition, knowing that Christ has emptied those human spectacles of their power. By taking the human form of a slave, the heart of God is revealed in a willingness to identify with the least. Jesus’ triumphant entry points ahead of itself to his death when the subversive character of his kingship is revealed. The self-serving, violent forces that did their worst toward Jesus are emptied of their power. In confessing and imitating Jesus Christ, we subvert the authority of the lords of privilege and violence. Matthew’s Passion narrative affirms that whatever lies ahead for Jesus’ followers has already happened to Jesus. Whatever we might suffer, he has suffered already; the death we face is the death he already endured.

In each of our lives the time will come, if it hasn’t already, when we are driven to our knees. The question at that time is not, are we strong enough to bear it. The question is, are we pliant enough to accept the circumstance and give our lives and our wills to God when our own resources are inadequate and we are utterly defeated? This is the moment of grace and decision. Faith is demonstrated in relying upon God in the lowest moments of our lives. In the liturgy of this day we meet Jesus, not as a charismatic teacher but as the one betrayed, abandoned, and facing the inevitability of death.

The people who can handle power well are those who can equally let go of it and share it. They have made journeys through powerlessness. If we haven’t touched the vulnerable place within us, we project seeming invulnerability outside and judge others for their weakness. Human strength projects and protects a clear sense of self-identity and autonomy rather than relationship. Vulnerability, surrender, trusting don’t come easily and are never going to appeal to the ego. We must reclaim relationship as the foundation and ground of everything.

We like control; God, it seems, loves vulnerability. Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, accountability, and authenticity. If we want deeper spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.

In the Trinity God has forever redefined power. The Christian God is properly called all vulnerable as much as all mighty. Jesus’ Passion incarnates this deep wisdom. As he was stripped naked, we’re reminded not to cling to the trappings we use to make ourselves feel powerful and important. It keeps us from our True Self and gets in the way of honesty, vulnerability, and community. As he emptied himself, so he says to his disciples: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross, and follow me.” Between happiness and heartbreak, this day calls us to let go, and give our fears, sorrows, and burdens over to Christ.

When we do, we allow ourselves to see God in all moments, and recognize that nothing is ever wasted, that God is in the business of generating life from every situation. +Amen.